I ask the hon. Lady to be a little bit patient, because I am coming to those very points shortly.
On assessments, we are required, under the Equality Act 2010, to take due regard of protected characteristics, but it is not just for that reason that we do so. It is not just for that reason that I and my fellow Ministers took those issues into account at every stage; it is because we believe it is the right thing to do and we wish so to do.
To come to the hon. Lady’s intervention, a number of reports are already out there. We have heard about tax information and impact notes. I do not think the Opposition should dismiss them. They did not mention the distributional analysis the Treasury provides and publishes at the time of the Budget, or the public expenditure statistical analysis, which looks at how expenditure affects different protected characteristics and runs to hundreds of pages in length. What the Opposition are calling for is fundamentally impractical. That is the heart of the matter and the answer to the hon. Lady’s question. Such analyses almost invariably focus on the static situation. They focus on the effect of tax and income changes on individuals without considering the behavioural changes they induce and the implications of changes in the wider economy, such as the level of employment. They are selective and tend to avoid focusing on those who benefit from public services or are affected by taxation. For example, the provision of childcare, social care and health services is normally exempt from such analyses.
The final point, which has been raised already and which the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) indeed recognised, is that where an individual’s income changes, that individual will almost invariably live within
a household with other individuals. She said that the personal allowance increase for taxation disproportionately benefited men, but of course men often live in households with women, and income is distributed across the household. The same is true, of course, where a woman benefits and brings income into a household in which men are also present.