HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) is responsible for administering child benefit. Child benefit claims forms are available by contacting the child benefit helpline number or, alternatively, customers can complete the form which is available on the HMRC website and post it to HMRC.

HMRC also distribute child benefit claim forms through Bounty packs, a free information and samples pack given mainly through hospitals to new mothers following the birth of their child. In 2011-12, HMRC paid Bounty £90,805 to distribute a total of 901,298 English and Welsh language claim forms this way.

The number of child benefit claim forms distributed by Bounty for the previous four years is set out in the table below.

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) is responsible for administering child benefit. Child benefit claims forms are available by contacting the child benefit helpline number or, alternatively, customers can complete the form which is available on the HMRC website and post it to HMRC.

HMRC also distribute child benefit claim forms through Bounty packs, a free information and samples pack given mainly through hospitals to new mothers following the birth of their child. In 2011-12, HMRC paid Bounty £90,805 to distribute a total of 901,298 English and Welsh language claim forms this way.

The number of child benefit claim forms distributed by Bounty for the previous four years is set out in the table below.

Most departmental resource budgets (the resource departmental expenditure limits, excluding ring-fenced depreciation), were reduced at the Autumn Statement, by 1% and 2% in 2013-14 and 2014-15, respectively.

The proportion is lower for departments with budgets that continue to be protected, in line with the policy set at the spending review 2010: health (0% in both years); education (0.3/0.6%) and energy and climate change (0.2/0.6%).

The percentage reduction is also smaller for the devolved Administrations as their budgets were adjusted in line with the Barnett formula and statement of funding policy.

Local government is exempt from the reduction in 2013-14, as local authority budgets have already been reduced by a comparable amount through the decision to hold council tax down in that year. HM Revenue and Customs is also exempt from both years of the reductions, to enable it to continue to focus on tackling tax avoidance and evasion. The reductions to the international development resource budget resulted from adjusting official development assistance for the updated gross national income forecast and equate to 2.8% and 4.8%, respectively, in 2013-14 and 2014-15.

All multinationals plan and manage their tax compliance. The amount of tax they have to pay is affected by a range of factors, including how they arrange their affairs. There are a range of rules designed to ensure that profits earned in the UK are taxed here. HM Revenue & Customs ensures that multinationals pay the tax that is due under UK tax law.

The Financial Services Compensation Scheme will continue to provide protection for up to £85,000 per depositor, per authorised institution.

The level of protection is set out in the EU Deposit Guarantee Schemes Directive, which sets a maximum harmonised limit of €100,000. In line with this, the UK limit is £85,000.

The Government’s actions, taken to reduce the deficit and rebuild the economy, have secured stability and positioned the UK as a relative safe haven. Interest rates are near historic lows, benefiting families, businesses and the tax payer. Returning the UK to sustainable, balanced economic growth is the Government’s overriding priority.

The Government have recently commissioned the independent Scientific Integrity Group to review evidence from industry and other sources on the efficacy of voltage optimisation as an energy efficiency measure. The views from this expert group will help with an assessment of the benefits of this technology and its potential for its inclusion within the standard assessment procedure and, in turn, the Green Deal.

There are currently no plans to introduce a reduced rate of VAT for voltage optimisation.

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) is responsible for the regulation of financial services firms under the powers in the Financial Services and Markets Act (FSMA) 2000. HM Treasury sets the legal framework for the regulation of financial services.

The CF Arch Cru matter is complex, involving a number of entities, some regulated by the FSA and some regulated by the Guernsey Financial Services Commission (GFSC). UK investors have suffered considerable losses through their holdings of two UK open-ended investment companies, the CF Arch Cru funds. These funds were invested in certain Guernsey-domiciled companies (the Guernsey cells), listed on the Channel Islands Stock Exchange. These were closed-ended schemes authorised by the GFSC and were not authorised or recognised collective investment schemes in the UK.

The UK Government have no power to pursue Guernsey for redress. However, the FSA is working with the Guernsey authorities regarding these matters.

In addition to assisting the FSA, the GFSC is conducting its own investigations relating to those entities within its regulatory scope.

Under Section 270(5) of FSMA 2000 and Statutory Instrument 2003/1181, the FSA provided HM Treasury with an assessment of the authorisation and supervision of collective investment schemes in Guernsey. A comparison of protections will depend on specific protections available to investors and will vary according to the nature of the investment.

Collective investment schemes which fall outside the designated criteria are restricted in their promotion to UK investors, including under Section 238 of FSMA 2000. The Guernsey cells were subject to such restrictions as they were not authorised or recognised by the FSA.

The table below sets out the payments made by HM Revenue and Customs to Bounty.

Information on payments that may have been made by other government departments is not held centrally.

The table below sets out the annual cost, number of Members and average cost per Member for the House of Commons, House of Lords and European Parliament.

The figures for the House of Commons are taken from the House of Commons annual accounts 2011-12² (for both administrative and Members’ budgets) and the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority annual accounts 2011-12³.

The House of Lords figures are for taken from the House of Lords annual accounts 2011-12⁴.

For the European Parliament, figures are taken from the European Union Budget of 2011 financial report⁵. The European Parliament increased from 736 Members to 754 from 1 December 2011.¹ Reported annual cost of €1,555 million, converted at the December 2011 exchange rate of €1.18 = £1² http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/commons/resource-accounts³ http://parliamentarystandards.org.uk/About%20Us/ Corporate%20Publications/Annual%20Report%20and% 20Accounts%202011-%202012.pdf⁴ http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/Id/Idresource/35/35.pdf⁵ http://www.europarl.europa.eu/aboutparliament/en/ 00059f3ea3/The-budget-of-the-European-Parliament.html

Any future debt relief for Sudan would take place as part of a wider reform programme that may be prepared by the IMF and would be subject to decisions made by the boards of the IMF, World Bank and Paris Club, on which the UK Government are represented. This would be subject to the same requirements and obligations as for any other country.

It is important that the Government of Sudan demonstrate their full commitment to the reduction of poverty across the whole country. Ongoing conflicts are a significant cause of poverty and an obstacle to the implementation of development plans.

The Government are introducing a new employee shareholder employment status. Employees adopting the new status will receive a minimum of £2,000-worth of shares. Any gains made, on up to £50,000-worth of shares, will be exempt from capital gains tax (CGT).

The Government will take steps to prevent manipulation of CGT exemption available on shares received under the status. The draft capital gains tax legislation, published on 11 December 2012, sets out a number of anti-avoidance provisions, including rules to preserve the integrity of the £50,000 limit and to prevent those in control of a company from accessing the CGT exemption.

The Government agree with the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) that predicting take-up of new policies, such as the new employment status, is difficult. However, some further clarification is needed. The OBR refers to tax planning—not avoidance. Encouraging take-up of this targeted employment policy should not be misconstrued as encouraging avoidance. In addition, the potential costs of the policy referred to by the OBR are estimated to take place well beyond the end of the forecast period.

If further provisions are needed to address particular avoidance risks, the Government will have the opportunity to include these at a later date, with a view to ensuring that this policy does not become disproportionately costly to the taxpayer. The Government keep all areas of tax policy under review at all times.

The number of people with higher-rate income tax liabilities is projected at 4.10 million in 2012-13 and 4.72 million in 2013-14. In 2009-10, 3.19 million people paid income tax at that rate.

These estimates are based on the 2009-10 Survey of Personal Incomes data, projected to 2012-13 and 2013-14, using economic assumptions consistent with the Office for Budget Responsibility’s December 2012 economic and fiscal outlook.

The Chancellor set the Monetary Policy Committee its remit, at Budget 2012, to target inflation of 2%, as measured by the 12-month increase in the consumer prices index. The Government have no plans to change the inflation targeting framework.

The Prime Minister’s Statement to the House of Commons on 17 December 2012¹ on the outcome of the December European Council and the Government’s

Explanatory Memorandum on European Union Documents No. 13682/12, 13683/12 and 12854/12, on the Commission’s proposal for a Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM), set out the following key points:

the current allocation of competencies between home and host supervisor and the member state of the banking group would not change;

in terms of its regulatory impact, the new supervisory structure may result in additional costs for entities which have operations in participating member states—such as complying with additional requests for information from the European Central Bank (ECB), as well as relevant national competent authorities. However, these costs are anticipated to be small, relative to the benefits to be derived from the establishment of the SSM, in terms of strengthened supervision within the eurozone; and

in terms of its financial impact, credit institution subsidiaries of UK firms established in participating member states would fund the new supervisory function of the ECB through payment of a levy. At least some of the cost could be offset by a reduction in the levy charged to finance national regulators.¹ http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/ cmhansrd/cm121217/debtext/121217-0001.htm#1212174000003

The amount that banks participating in the Funding for Lending Scheme can borrow from the Bank of England and the fee they pay for it are linked to their lending performance to UK households and businesses. Banks that maintain or increase their net lending pay a fee of 0.25% per year. Banks that decrease lending pay an additional 0.25% for each percentage point reduction in net lending, up to a maximum of 1.5%, in the case where lending falls by more than 5%.

It is still too early to judge the impact of the scheme on lending rates. However, mortgage rates quoted by banks have reduced by up to 0.4 percentage points since June 2012.

The Government expect full recovery of the amount that Iceland is liable for, regarding failed banks. Information on payments in respect of Icelandic banks can be found in Sections 30, 31 and 33 of the Treasury annual reports and accounts 2011-12¹.

During 2011-12, the administrator for Icesave paid out dividends to HM Treasury and the FSCS of £1.3 billion. Of this, £0.4 billion was used by the

Financial Service Compensation Scheme to repay part of the loan with HM Treasury, £0.7 billion was allocated to the Depositors’ and Investors’ Guarantee Fund share of the loan and the remaining £0.2 billion was used to reimburse HM Treasury for its statutory debt payments for deposit balances in excess of £50,000.

Negotiations with Iceland over the terms of a loan agreement in respect of the compensation paid to UK depositors of Icesave, the UK branch of Landsbanki hf, are ongoing. Progress is currently suspended pending the outcome of proceedings by the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) Surveillance Authority against Iceland in the EFTA Court in respect of Iceland’s alleged failure to meet its legal obligations to UK and Dutch depositors under the EU deposit guarantee directive.¹ www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/hmt_annual_report_2012.pdf

The European Union's Council Regulation (EU) No 270/2011, of 21 March 2011, imposed an asset freeze on 19 persons identified as being responsible for the misappropriation of Egyptian state funds under the Mubarak regime.

This EU regulation requires that all assets owned or controlled by designated persons are frozen, but it does not make provision for the recovery of proceeds of corruption.

For reasons of confidentiality, the Treasury is unable to disclose the information requested regarding individual assets frozen in the UK under this EU regulation.

At the time of the House of Lords debate on 5 December 2012, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimated that, between the first quarter of 2010 and the second quarter of 2012, private sector employment rose by 1.2 million. This excludes the impact of the reclassification of 196,000 employees of certain further education bodies from the public to the private sector in the second quarter of 2012.

In the latest release of the Labour Market Statistics on 12 December 2012, the ONS made routine revisions to its estimates of public sector employment levels back to 1999. These revisions have also affected the private sector employment estimates. Following the revisions, between the first quarter of 2010 and second quarter of 2012, private sector employment is estimated to have increased by 1.08 million.

In the third quarter of 2012 (latest available data), private sector employment rose by a further 65,000. This quarterly increase means that between the first quarter of 2010 and third quarter of 2012, private sector employment has risen by 1.15 million.

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) considers the findings from all investigations conducted by other agencies and factors these into its supervisory approach for the firms it regulates.

The FSA does not comment on whether a firm or individual is the subject of an FSA enforcement investigation.