HC Deb 27 February 1975 vol 887 cc686-7
12. Mr. Mike Thomas

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what steps he is taking to implement the Government's commitment to protect the less well off from the effects of inflation.

Mr. Healey

Since entering office, we have approved a record uprating of pensions and associated benefits and have increased the maximum amount of family income supplement. We gave a £10 Christmas bonus in November and are committed to a further uprating of pensions and related benefits in April with another uprating later in 1975. Family allowances will also be increased. The poor have been particularly helped by our food subsidy programme and the further reductions we have secured in the prices of basic items through the voluntary agreement. We have also imposed a freeze on rents and given selective rate and rent rebates.

Mr. Thomas

Will my right hon. Friend accept that although that progress is good and useful, there is a real chance that the poor will in fact become poorer in 1975 and that there is now a need for a comprehensive poverty programme, bringing together the different Departments concerned, so that one Department does not subsidise food while another pushes up the price of another essential product? Will he also accept responsibility for co-ordinating such a programme because, at the moment when I ask him Questions about it, he tends to transfer them to the Prime Minister, yet when I ask the Prime Minister, he tends to transfer them to my right hon. Friend?

Mr. Healey

I assure my hon. Friend, whose concern and interest in these matters is well known, that I shall try to see that that buck stops passing, even if it means that it stays with me.

On the question of the co-ordination of Government policies on poverty—

Mr. Thomas

A poverty programme.

Mr. Healey

The co-ordination of policies on poverty adds up to a poverty programme. I have accepted responsibility within the Government machine for such co-ordination.

Mr. Gwyn Roberts

According to the right hon. Gentleman's Department, there are between 27,000 and 31,000 people in receipt of family income supplement who are nevertheless paying tax. Does not that make nonsense of the system?

Mr. Healey

The problem of the poverty trap, which is well known to those hon. Members on both sides who are concerned in these matters, is a very difficult one, with which no Government have yet found an adequate means of dealing. We take offsetting measures, for example, through the FIS, to help those who pay tax but are nevertheless below the poverty line.