Budget: Household Impact

Baroness Manzoor Excerpts

Wednesday 16th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord O’Neill of Gatley]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that important point. As I hoped to suggest at the appropriate moment—it is here—this Government were elected with the clear intention of reducing the burden of taxation and bringing us to a lower-tax and less welfare-dependent society. That is what is being done further in this latest Budget.

[Baroness Manzoor (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that going on the backs of the poorest and most vulnerable in our society cannot be the way forward, if we want a genuinely equal society that really looks after the very poor and most vulnerable—people with illnesses who cannot go out to work, or people who are on tax credits who already go out to work and are suffering because they do not get the wages due to them?

[Lord O’Neill of Gatley]

My Lords, I do not want to bore Members of the House by repeating things I have already said but the distributional analysis shows that the biggest burden has been on the highest quintiles. Let me highlight another important factor: this morning, we had the latest employment and earning statistics. In addition to the rather pleasant news that unemployment has fallen further, we have reached a new level of record full-time employment and, very encouragingly for all members of our earning and working society, average earnings have accelerated now to a level of 2.9% year on year, making it clear that the benefits for those in work are starting to increase more and more.