Working Tax Credits

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, what underlines this change and the need for it, as well as the unsustainability of the huge cost of working tax credits, is some of the unfairness and behavioural incentives in the system. This Government firmly believe that working people on low earnings should gain through money that they earn rather than from government subsidies. The switch from reducing reliance on benefits to increasing personal allowances is part of a significant change to getting more families to gain more from working than has been the case to date and for incentivising second earners into work. There was also a basic unfairness in the system as it was in that a single parent had to work 16 hours but a couple had to work only 16 hours between them. Therefore, underlying what the Government have announced are a fairness and an incentivisation and behavioural change that are very important.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

My Lords, what advice would the Minister give to the woman interviewed on the “Today” programme last month? She is in a part-time job that she loves. Her husband is an unemployed builder who cannot find work. She is at her wits’ end because her employer will not give her extra hours and no alternative work is available to her. What is she and thousands of others in a similar situation supposed to do when they are struggling to manage without working tax credit and the only alternative realistic option is to give up work, which is the very opposite of what the Minister says that this Government believe in?

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I did not hear that particular case and it is very difficult to comment on individual cases, particularly when one has not heard the details. I appreciate that many of the changes we are making across the tax and spending playing field are painful for very many people in this country. I do not minimise the effect on the 200,000 or so, including couples with children, who we are asking to find another eight hours on top of what they may do otherwise.

We should not play down the prospects for finding employment in this country. Nearly 1.1 million people found a job in the fourth quarter of 2011. Some 600,000 of those had been unemployed and had got into employment, and 459,000 were previously inactive. At the moment, the number of job vacancies is rising. At the last count, it was 464,000. I do not underestimate at all the effect on individual cases but there are jobs out there and more than 1 million people in one quarter found employment.