Finance (No.2) Bill

I am astonished by the Minister's blinkered approach in sticking to the robotic text, ““This has absolutely nothing to do with independent taxation,”” when it patently does. If a higher rate taxpayer is being asked to pay for income that their partner or spouse receives, that clearly breaches the principle of independent taxation. The hon. Gentleman would not be drawn into the mechanism by which the scheme would be set up, but, given the great fanfare with which the policy was announced at the Conservative party conference, I would have thought that by now the panic stations at the Treasury might surely have subsided, and that he would be able to share with the House exactly how the measure would work. I am glad that the hon. Gentleman congratulated my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition on the arrival of his new baby. May I, too, add my congratulations to my right hon. Friend? It reminds me that I should have possibly declared an interest in child benefit at the beginning of the debate, but there may be a sufficient quantum of participants to make that unnecessary. My hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans) was right to describe the chaos involved in the measure. He asked, will tax circumstances be adjusted for in-year changes in circumstance? The answer is no, unless of course a child happens to be born at the very beginning of the tax year, but perhaps that is part of the Government's plan: children will be able to be born only at certain parts of the year, or by quarter, so that HMRC is able to apply the tax rules with administrative ease. My hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) pointed out the Government's sketchy plans in relying on a declaration by the higher rate taxpayer in order to disclose about child benefit something of which, of course, they may or may not be aware. The fact that the Office for Tax Simplification—again, much vaunted when it was established—does not seem to have been consulted or involved leads me to suspect that the OTS may well have been set up for the benefit of high net-worth individuals, rather than to simplify the tax arrangements of ordinary taxpayers. The Minister has failed to set out how the child benefit taxation arrangement will work. There are hundreds of thousands of families throughout the country hanging on his words and trying to find out how on earth the scheme will be arranged, particularly given the perversity that will be introduced through the high marginal rate of taxation. Do not let us forget that that extra pound could result in an individual losing £2,000 in child benefit.