DWP Committee Renews Call for Tax Credit Numbers

Committee renews call for Tax Credit numbers

The Commons Work and Pensions Committee has today written to the Treasury to ask again for information on the numbers of people flowing on and off tax credits, and the average duration of a tax credit claim, which the Treasury has declined to provide in response to Parliamentary questions tabled by Committee members last week.

Frank Field MP, Chair of the Committee, said: “In devising and costing its tax credit reform and amendments to it, the Treasury must have crunched at least some of the numbers around flows of people on and off tax credits, just as they must have the analysis that we and the Treasury Committee have asked for of the true picture of the net impact of the proposed tax credit cuts. So the fact that they have not produced these data must mean either that they are sitting on it for reasons of their own, or that they are going into all these policy changes as blind as we are. Both scenarios are almost equally worrying. I would reiterate our and others’ calls for the Treasury to provide this information urgently, so that we can understand the impact of the changes and the various options for mitigating them that the Chancellor is considering announcing in his Autumn Statement.”

See attatched letter to Damian Hinds MP

Damian Patrick George Hinds (born 27 November 1969) is a British Conservative Party politician and the Member of Parliament (MP) for the East Hampshire constituency. He is Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury.