Finance (No. 3) Bill

Indeed. It is a fact of life that child care often remains the prime responsibility of the woman. Child benefit is paid to the woman for that purpose. Clause 35 does not deal with child benefit—I do not wish to test your patience, Mr Evans—but, in principle, the purpose of the Labour Government's original policy proposals was to expand free child care for people who could not afford it otherwise, to help to support women to get back into work and to help individuals to support their children. As I understand it—I am willing to be contradicted and to hear clarification from the Minister—the impact of the proposals is that fewer child care places will be available than the previous Labour Government proposed. That must be a matter of some concern. Indeed, in our original amendment, we proposed a review of child care provision to consider the impact of all these measures. Clause 35 proposes changing higher-rate relief to basic-rate relief for higher-rate taxpayers, but we should not consider it in isolation; it is only one change among many on child benefit and the other issues that I have mentioned that raise concern among the official Opposition. The Minister will know, because we discussed this in the debate on the last group of amendments, that the OECD has recently released a report that warned that child poverty was set to rise, thanks to the Government's policies. I am proud of the fact that one of things that we did was to lift more than 500,000 children out of poverty. Sadly, it looks as though that policy will be reversed. The impact of clause 35 and the Government's proposals on spending the associated resources represent a different choice from the one that the previous Labour Government intended to make, and the Minister needs to focus on that. The Labour Government made progress on tackling child poverty. When we left office, it was expected that about 1 million children would be lifted out of poverty by our actions. The impact of clause 35, as I read it, relates to high earners. I accept that the relief was badly targeted, but I repeat that I want the Minister to clarify how the changes in expenditure that he proposes as a result of clause 35 will impact on child poverty issues. The OECD has found that"““progress in the UK has stalled, and””" child poverty"““is now predicted to increase””." The measures in clause 35 will not assist the progress that the previous Labour Government made in providing a lift out of child poverty for the poorest families in society. At a stroke, unless the Minister contradicts me, by not using the expenditure as originally planned by the previous Government, he will be removing the ability to invest in the child care places that were planned for the poorest members of our society.