Living Standards (Hansard, 9 May 1972)

§ 10. Mr. Duffy
asked the Secretary of State for Social Services what steps he is taking to arrest the widening gap between the living standards of the poorest in work and those earning the medium wage.

§ Sir K. Joseph
The available information in the articles published each year in Economic Trends on the incidence of taxes and social service benefits do not suggest that there was a widening gap up to 1970 between the incomes of the poorest in work and those earning the medium wage, so far as families with children are concerned. Since 1970 the present Government have provided additional help to low-income families designed to safeguard and improve their position.

§ Mr. Duffy
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that other evidence, notably that provided by the Child Poverty Action Group, suggests that the gap between the living standards of the poorest in work and those earning the medium wage has widened over the years and is wider now than at any time since 1945? Only in 1906 was the position worse than it is today. Yet all that his Government are doing by way of relieving the low-paid workers is further to ensnare them in a trap of so-called ameliorative measures.

§ Sir K. Joseph
I do not accept those generalisations. The raising of the tax threshold in two successive Budgets has made a remarkable difference to the spending power, even in real terms, of the lowest-income families, on to which must be added the family income supplement, take-up of which has sharply increased since the recent advertising.

§ Sir B. Rhys Williams
Is it not obvious that a rise in the cost of living has a much 1115 more adverse effect on a man with a family to support than on single persons? Is not that an unanswerable case for increasing family allowances, even if only in the interests of wage stability?

§ Sir K. Joseph
I hope my hon. Friend will agree that the tax credit scheme which was proposed in the Budget by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, and which is shortly to be the subject of a Green Paper, meets a great part of the case he is putting.