HC Deb 11 April 1978 vol 947 cc1155-6
1. Mr. Tim Renton

asked the Secretary of State for Social Services what percentage of claims for supplementary benefit come from families when at least one adult in the household is paying income tax.

The Minister for Social Security (Mr. Stanley Orme)

I regret that this information is not available, but we estimate that less than 0.5 per cent. of claimants or their wives are paying income tax whilst receiving supplementary benefit.

Mr. Renton

Are not there a number or households where supplementary benefit is received regularly but where one or more regular dependants are at the sime time earning enough to pay tax? Does not this emphasise the overlap between the taxation and benefit systems and the need for a reappraisal of the whole untaxed supplementary benefit system?

Mr. Orme

Adults in households may include adult sons or daughters who are not dependent on the claimants and whose means are not investigated. There are also instances where a benefit—say, a housing benefit—takes the claimant above the tax level and, therefore, tax is then payable.

Mr. Moonman

On the related subject of the A.6 form used by my right hon. Friend's investigators, will he accept a further personal plea from hon. Members on both sides of the House who are deeply concerned about the use of this form in investigating the marital circumstances of people who may find their particulars on a computer, with the information being used for many years to come?

Mr. Orme

I understand my hon. Friend's feelings, and I answered a parliamentary Question of his on the subject only last week. I suggest that he and those of his hon. Friends who are concerned about this matter may care to discuss it with the chairman of the Supplementary Benefits Commission, Professor Donnison, and they may like to come to see me after they have discussed it with him.

Mr. Sproat

Is not there something desperately unjust about the interaction of wages, taxes and benefits when so many people can be better off by not working than by working? Does the right hon. Gentleman agree, for example, that it must be wrong that a postman can receive a net wage of £39.49 for a five-and-a-half day week starting at 5.30 in the morning when at the same time, apparently, another gentleman living on Dartmoor can get £132 a week in tax-free benefits for doing absolutely nothing?

Mr. Orme

The hon. Gentleman is once again misrepresenting and exaggerating the position. Only those with low incomes and large families—and they are very few in number—are likely to be better off. Fewer than 5 per cent. of men earn £45 a week or less, and many of them are young men without children. Fewer than 5 per cent. of those on benefit have four or more children, and many are one-parent families. It is the poor whom the hon. Member continually attacks.