Tax Credits (Income Thresholds and Determination of Rates) (Amendment) Regulations 2015 — House of Lords, 2015-10-26
Topic: Social Welfare
Patricia Hollis (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, on the amendment standing in my name, two issues concern this House. The first is whether this amendment improperly challenges Commons financial privilege—a constitutional issue. The second is whether this amendment improperly challenges Government cuts to welfare—the policy issue Let me address the first, on constitutional propriety. As the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, said, when we have framework Bills on childcare and social security, all the serious detailed work is done, rightly, by regulations—that is, SIs. We can amend Bills; we cannot amend SIs, yet often we do not know the Government’s intent until we see the SI itself. We then face either a draconian fatal Motion or a lamenting regret Motion that changes nothing, so instead this is a delaying amendment. It is not fatal, as the Government know. It was drafted with the help of the clerks and it calls for a scheme of transitional protection before the House further considers the SI. Essentially, the cuts would apply to new claimants only. Frankly, that new SI could be drafted in a week and implemented next April exactly as planned However, does it none the less break convention by trespassing on Commons financial privilege? No. The advice from the Clerk of the Parliaments—and he has seen and confirmed my words on the specific issue—is that Commons financial privilege is exercised in two ways. We can amend an education Bill, say, but the Commons can reject our amendment if the Speaker certifies that the Commons has financial privilege on this issue. Secondly, says the Clerk, the Commons can pass a supply or money Bill, which we cannot amend. He goes on: financial privilege does not extend to statutory instruments—it simply does not. Nor are statutory instruments covered by the Salisbury/Addison convention. The more so, I would add, because the Prime Minister ruled them out himself, and he did because these layered elements to tax credits are all affected by the taper and the cuts As has been said, if the Government wanted financial privilege, these cuts should be in a money Bill; they are not. If they wanted the right to overturn them on the grounds of financial privilege, they could be introduced in the welfare reform Bill on its way here; they did not. So why now should we be expected to treat this SI as financially privileged when the Government, who could have made it so, chose not to do so? It is not a constitutional crisis. That is a fig-leaf possibly disguising tensions in the Commons between members of the Government. We can be supportive of the Government and give them what they did not ask for—financial privilege—or we can be supportive instead of those 3 million families facing letters at Christmas telling them that on average they will lose up to around £1,300 a year, a letter that will take away 10% of their income on average. That is our choice. Those families believed us when we all said that work was the best route out of poverty and that work would always pay. They believed the Prime Minister when he promised that tax credits—and they are one package—would not be touched But why do people need tax credits? There is a lot of misunderstanding about this. If the House will allow me, consider two women in a call centre: one is single, working 35 hours a week, who from April earns £13,000 a year for herself, and the other, a deserted mother with two young children, managing 25 hours a week, earns £9,000 a year for the three of them. The Government are completely right that we should certainly not subsidise employers’ low pay, but no employer could pay the deserted mother twice as much per hour as the single woman on the next phone in the call centre to make up for her family’s circumstances. The employer cannot do that and it is not reasonable to ask it to do so. That is the job of tax credits. They reflect family circumstances, which an employer cannot reasonably do.