§ Miss Jo Richardson (Barking)With your permission, Mr. Speaker, I beg to present a humble petition signed by some 11,500 most loyal subjects of the Crown and supported by the Child Poverty Action Group, Gingerbread, the National Children's Bureau, the Low Pay Unit and some 20 organisations with particular concern for hard-pressed and single-parent families, campaigning as the Child Benefits Now Campaign. The prayer says that the petitioners therefore humbly pray that the House of Commons implements in full the Child Benefit Scheme to improve the position of families and to adjust the benefits annually to keep up with inflation.
I invoke my right, Mr. Speaker, to ask the Clerk of the House to read the petition in full.
The CLERK OF THE HOUSE read the petition, which was as follows:
To the honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled. The Humble Petition of the undersigned showeth 1770 that the child benefit scheme which would have replaced family allowances and child tax allowances with an adequate tax-free child benefit payable to the mother, as approved by your Honourable House, would have brought substantial help to hard pressed families and especially to mothers. Wherefore your Petitioners pray that the House of Commons will do all within its power to ensure (i) the immediate implementation of the full child benefit scheme so that families are better off, and (ii) that child benefits are adjusted annually to keep in pace with inflation.And your petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray &c.
§ Mr. Peter Bottomley (Woolwich, West)With your permission, Mr. Speaker, and that of the House, I beg leave to present a petition signed by 11,500 people representative of both others in the country and 14 million children and their 13 million parents.
The petitioners pray that
the House will have brought forward the Child Benefit Scheme amalgamating family allowances and child tax allowances.For reasons that I shall not go into the scheme has been delayed, and the petition asks that there should be immediate implementation of the Child Benefit Scheme, and for child benefits to be adjusted annually to keep up with inflation as are the benefits that are paid to pensioners in this country. I agree with the petitioners that children and families are just as important as other groups, such as those in work and the retired.As my petition is uncommonly similar to the last one, I shall not invoke my right to ask the Clerk to read it.
I beg leave to present the petition.
§ To lie upon the Table.