Treasury and Work and Pensions

I shall be brief in my response. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for all the work that he and other Members have done on Farepak. What the whole debacle shows is that the poorest people in our society need more protection, not less. Time and again, as in the amendment on the Order Paper, the Opposition use moderate, compassionate language to mask traditional Tory positions. They said that the test of their economic and social policy is"““how it helps the least advantaged in our society…the bottom 10 per cent.””" That is fine, but let us apply that test to a few policies that they have proposed. The shadow Chancellor was challenged today on the Opposition’s plans to abolish stamp duty on share transactions. That would be worth precisely nothing to the poorest people in our society, but would be worth hundreds of millions of pounds to the richest. He was also asked about his plans to abolish inheritance tax. Again, that would be worth absolutely nothing to the poorest people in our society but worth hundreds of millions of pounds to the richest. I concede that allowing income tax allowance to be transferred between married couples is a bit better and not quite so regressive. Here a massive 3 per cent. of the benefit would go to the poorest 10 per cent. of families, but 1.2 million of the poorest couples would not gain a single penny. If we take together the proposals for a higher income tax allowance, a new 20p basic rate and the removal of tax credits from higher rate taxpayers, only a third of the poorest quarter of households would see any benefit at all; two thirds would not gain a penny. But every single household in the richest quarter benefits; most of them would be more than £1,000 a year better off. These are all Conservative proposals and every single one of them fails their own test; they benefit the richest most and the poorest least. The same old policies: tax cuts for the few, paid for by spending cuts that affect us all. In today’s debate, the supposedly new Conservatives are talking about helping families work hard to balance work and family life, but they voted against increased maternity leave and maternity pay. They talk about skills—