Given this Government’s record on the measures introduced in Finance Act after Finance Act, the support provided to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs in additional powers and resources for this area and the fact that yield has increased very substantially during this Parliament—from £17 billion in 2010 to £26 billion now—we are confident that further savings can be found. Through a combination of measures dealing with tax evasion, tax avoidance and aggressive tax planning, we believe that £5 billion can be found.
I now turn to how the Bill will help hard-working families. This Government have a proud record of reducing tax for the lowest-paid. Not only will the Bill deliver our commitment to raise the income tax personal allowance to £10,600 from the start of the new tax year, but it will legislate to raise it to £10,800 in 2016-17 and to £11,000 in 2017-18. By 2017, a standard rate taxpayer will be £900 better off than under the previous Government’s plans and that an individual on the national minimum wage working up to 30 hours a week will not pay any income tax whatsoever. That is a tax cut for 27 million people, and it means that this Government have taken almost 4 million of the lowest-paid out of income tax altogether.
We are passing on the full gains of that policy, so for the first time in seven years, the threshold at which people pay the higher tax rate will rise not just in line with inflation, but above inflation. It will rise from £42,385 this year to £43,300 by 2017-18. Under the Bill, the rate of the new transferable tax allowance for married couples will rise to £1,100, providing help for more than 4 million couples. We are legislating to exempt children from air passenger duty so that, together with measures introduced in the Finance Act 2014, a family of four flying to Australia will now save £194. The Government have made clear their commitment to support households in the UK and to put more of their hard-earned money back in their pockets, where it belongs.
Finally and briefly, I turn to tax simplification, which was touched on earlier. Under this Government’s new approach to tax policy making, we published more than 250 pages of draft legislation in December for technical
consultation. As such, the majority of measures contained in the Bill have been drawn up following lengthy consultation with interest groups and businesses. The Bill continues to build on the excellent work of Michael Jack and John Whiting at the Office of Tax Simplification, and it includes a package of measures that will help to simplify tax administration for businesses in several ways.