Finance Bill

David Burrowes Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Bruce]

No, because I took interventions from Opposition Members earlier.

The direct costs of family breakdown are variously calculated at between £24 billion and £41.6 billion per annum—a huge amount of money that cannot be ignored, especially in times such as these. When faced with such enormous figures, a provision such as the transferable tax allowance to support marriage, and in turn to support stable families, who in turn form an important element of promoting the stable communities that we all want and that are so very much needed today, is surely worth considering.

I am aware of the argument that the principal cause for those different life outcomes is not marriage but family income, but that analysis is too simplistic. No one is trying to argue that family income is not relevant—it is—but in my view, insufficient recognition has been given in recent years to the importance of family stability in promoting the health and well-being of children.

[Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)]

In my hon. Friend’s careful preparation for her speech, did she analyse whether other countries have given similar recognition to marriage?

[Fiona Bruce]

I did indeed, and I shall refer to that before I close my speech.

The CSJ report “Fractured Families” demonstrates significant differences in family stability between married and unmarried couples in the early years of parenthood, after discounting other factors such as age, income, education and race. Even the least well-off 20% of married couples are more stable than all but the richest 20% of cohabiting couples.

It is appreciated that we do not need to preach or moralise, but if we are to be truly family-friendly we must ensure that choosing to marry is no more difficult in this country than it is in any other developed country.

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[Jim Shannon]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention and for the passion in his voice.

Mindful of those points, it is a minimal responsibility of policy makers to remove all obstacles to marriage resulting from fiscal policy. Indeed, there is a good case for considering what steps could be taken to support marriage. I believe that the proposal before us is one suggestion that we should be considering. In the light of that, I am delighted by what the Prime Minister has said. Some people in this Chamber would say, “If the Prime Minister supports it, we don’t,” but if the Prime Minister says something good, let us support it, whether he is the Prime Minister or not—and if one of my colleagues says that something is good, then that is good as well.

[Mr Burrowes]

The hon. Gentleman is making the case on behalf of his constituents and presenting his own personal view, but does he also recognise that a strong case has been made in those countries that recognise marriage in a way that this country does not?

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[Kate Green]

I cannot question the hon. Gentleman’s evidence about Northern Ireland, but I can say that the position across the United Kingdom as a whole is that a higher rate of marriage correlates with people in higher socio-economic groups. We were helpfully reminded by the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) of an important question, which relates to the second point about the evidence: even if we could do something to spread the advantages of marriage across wider society, would a tax break do this? I have seen and heard no evidence, either this evening or during the many years that I have studied this subject, to show that a tax break persuades people to get married or to stay married. In that sense, particularly in these constrained fiscal circumstances, it seems extraordinary to spend public money on a mechanism that has no evidence to prove that it works effectively. There are real issues to address in respect of what the evidence shows us. Saying that does not devalue, in any way, the importance of marriage; I merely say that when we spend money, we need to know what outcome we expect it to achieve.

[Mr Burrowes]

I, too, recognise the hon. Lady’s expertise. It is difficult in these debates to unite on what we are for. She opened her contribution by discussing children’s well-being, and surely she would agree that there is evidence to suggest a correlation between children’s well-being and marriage. This issue should not just be the preserve of the few and the privileged; it should be an issue of social justice and extending it to the poorest, who can benefit from incentives and support in relation to marriage. That is what we are about, so surely we should unite in this House on that issue.

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[Mr Jackson]

Not at the moment; I may do so later. If a reasonable person from any other European country stumbled into the Chamber tonight, they would wonder why we were debating the issue. It is an existential issue of what we believe as public servants—as politicians—about the institution of marriage. That is not to traduce or do down the massive contribution that those who are, for a variety of reasons, single parents make to their family. They love their children and care about their family, and they are a part of the community. However, it is incumbent on us to say what we think is right. I commend the courage and dedication of my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh), who is willing to be unfashionable sometimes and speak out on what he believes is right.

This is a totemic issue, because my party put it in its election manifesto. It recapitulated that point in the coalition agreement and has argued for this specific policy, so it is not one that we can lightly cast aside as irrelevant now that we are in a coalition in which there must be give and take. Many of us have always believed that it is vital to take poorer working people out of tax. We heard about a cornucopia of so-called Tory errors, going back to the minimum wage. Let me remind Opposition Members that the gap between the richest and poorest 10% widened under the Labour Government. A former very senior Government member professed that he was

“intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich”;

that is a fact. No one has a monopoly on care and compassion for people.

It cannot be wrong to look at examples in other European countries, see that their fiscal policy decisions work, and decide to look at a similar policy. I like, respect and trust the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury; he is a decent man of his word. He will have heard the strength of views and the passion on the Conservative Benches. He will also have heard the filibustering by the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), which reached a nadir when he effectively said in his final remarks that people were essentially too thick to fill in their tax forms. I know that filibustering is an art form, and he has perfected it, but that is gilding the lily and taking things to a ludicrous length. This is not a subject for knockabout politics; it is about real changes to support people.

[Mr Burrowes]

My hon. Friend makes a good and important case. Many people quite properly raise concerns about the gap between the rich and the poor growing over the years, but why do the same people not also raise concerns about the position of one-earner married couples on an average wage with two children? Their tax burden has increased over the years, too. Why are people not rising up and expressing concern about that discrimination, which will lead to real child poverty if we do not deal with it?

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[Michael Connarty]

Not yet.

It is not just a matter of putting a marriage partnership or a firm partnership ahead of any other. My hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) spoke strongly and has worked hard on single parenthood, but I happen to believe, in most cases but not all, that a partnership provides a much stronger place for children to grow up in than that provided by any single person—male or female—who has to go it alone. Therefore, our society has a lot of value when we can encourage partnerships.

We still have the oddest situation in Europe—and among many other countries outside Europe—because we do not recognise de facto partnerships. De facto partnerships are not civil marriages but agreements by people without either a civil or Church marriage to remain in a relationship and to commit to themselves and to any offspring.

My son lives in Australia, and he shared a de facto partnership for a number of years, recognising that if he or his partner had died their pension would have transferred to the other. In this country I have friends who, like me and my spouse, have been together for 41 years. They have had to get married because they might be coming to the end of their lives—not for a long time, I hope—and their pensions would have died with them.

That was a moral judgment which the previous Labour Government made, and it was shameful, because we should have had civil partnerships for all who wished to have them, and we should have recognised de facto partnerships as much as same-gender partnerships. That is how we should have looked at things, but we should not give cash incentives, as the new clause seeks. Indeed, that was the contradiction in the contribution from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), because he said that he was not about incentivising partnerships through finances and then spoke on behalf of the new clause—which would incentivise partnerships.

[Mr Burrowes]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Michael Connarty]

I have a call from my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) first.

That is what is wrong with the new clause. It is about spouses, it is backward looking and moralistic and it will not help children at all. It is sad that one in five marriages breaks down and that civil partnerships break down, so we must encourage people through the way we finance them and help them to keep their relationships together, because finances as much as personal fall-outs break down relationships.

[Michael Connarty]

My hon. Friend has made that point before, and he puts it better than I could.

My mother, who now has sadly passed away, was soured by the Labour Government very early on when we took away the additional money for single parents. From then on, every time I went to her house on a Sunday, she would start by saying, “Welcome,” and then she would say, “You and your Tony Blair,” and for the rest of my visit berate me for what we had not got right. She was a great touchstone, however, because she saw that the defence of children and the future of children were important, not the rest.

The new clause is a backwards step, but I am hopeful that the Minister will not support it and that such legislation will never get through. It states that only marriage—not any other relationship—is good enough or as good as we would wish.

[Mr Burrowes]

The hon. Gentleman is experienced in European affairs, given his chairmanship of the European Scrutiny Committee and his general interest in European matters, so I have a question. Why do France, Germany and Italy all recognise marriage in the taxation system? Indeed, let us widen that question. Why do only 24% of OECD citizens live in countries that do not recognise marriage in the taxation system? Has he ever asked why our European neighbours recognise marriage but we do not?

[Michael Connarty]

People must ask those Governments, but many recognise de facto partnerships as well, and their recognition is based on not just the marriage to which the new clause refers with “spouses”. That is the point. This is about one small group that we in this country used to see as a backward thing. We have moved beyond that now, and it is time we put it behind us. Perhaps others will catch up with us soon enough when they realise that it is partnerships that matter, not specifically spouses in a formal marriage.