Deprivation/Child Poverty

I freely admit that it is not easy, but the Minister has all the clever people behind him and the very bright civil servants, a number of whom are in the Chamber, who are able to do that. In broad terms, we need to consider having a more gradual taper so that there is not such a dramatic cut-off. We have heard examples from Labour Members about people who are worse off. The Chairman of the Select Committee said that some people are £30, £40 or £50 worse off, in spite of the ““better off in work”” calculations telling them that they will be £25 better off. That particular case was probably because of the loss of passported benefits. If the benefit system were analysed in detail—I accept that that is serious work and is not something that the Department could do overnight—I think that that would be found to be a serious issue and a major barrier to getting people back into work. I commend to the Minister and his officials the need to consider that area. The benefit system in this country, as opposed to most other OECD countries, to a marked degree treats couples much less favourably than single people. The Government's equivalisation tables say that a childless couple need about 75 per cent. of the combined incomes of two single people, as single people and single parents need to receive more, and a couple should not need twice as much. The Government say that a couple with two children need about 80 per cent. of the combined income of a lone parent and a single person. However, when one analyses the benefit system in rather greater detail, one finds that workless couples receive only about 60 per cent. of the benefits received by two workless single people. There is a range of countries that have a different benefit system and do not discriminate against couples in the way that our benefit system does: Canada, Iceland, Germany, Luxembourg, Norway, Ireland, France, Belgium, Spain, Finland, Austria, Sweden, the Netherlands and Switzerland, to name just a few.