£20 a week tax break for married couples

[southeastastra]

so say the tories fgs

I think it is about time that married couples are supported better and not unfairly penalised within the tax credit/benefit system. Especially those at the lower end of the income scale where at present, Labour is screwing the lifeblood out of them.

The feminist left in the 60-70's supported the idea that it was better for couples to split up than remain in unhappy marriages, they always stated the wife beater evil husband scenario. This has undermined the value of marriage. What they fail to recognise is that many families were still suffering the after effects of a world war. Repercussions that have really destroyed the fabric of our society.

Actually Robert Owen and other Philantropists made a huge contribution to our present socitey and without these pioneers we would not have many of the positive institutions and opportunities and freedoms that we have today.

I'm not a tory but I do resent the attitudes that denigrates married life and the roles of women as mothers and fathers as fathers. As mothers we are expected to rush back to work aswell as caring for our babies, when mothers should be supported to look after their families properly.

I lived in France for a while, the tax system favours married couples with children. Check out any french park, full of families with two parents, looking happy!

How are married couples "unfairly penalised within the tax credit/benefit system"? Genuinely interested in examples

I was listening to somebody on the radio on the way home from work. She was going on about how a married couple were penalised compared to a single parent by the tax system. I just didn't get it - I thought the comparison should have been between married and unmarried parents who were co-habiting.

i work full time and i am a single parent. i do look after my family properly and when we go to the park we are absurdly happy, whilst their father does whatever the hell he does elsewhere.

i find it particularly objectionable that people think my family is failing because their dad pissed off. My children are all doing exceptionally well at school, if thats the way that we want to measure things. They're generally polite. try hard, want to go to uni, like doctor who, wwant to see the new harry potter film. i don't think they are any different because their dad doesn't live with us, so why does IDs want to treat them differently?

It's not a very PC thing to propose, though.

Croc of shite

They could say £100 per bloody week It is till not enough to get them voted in

The stats say the system actively disadvantages married ppl and makes being unmarried financially advantageous on tax grounds. There were also the stats, 1 in 3 cohabitees break up before the the child is aged 5, or 1 in 12 if married. Given the Unicef report that said our children were somewhere at the bottom of the league table for happiness and well-being, anything that helps redress that is to be welcomed. Compare us with our European counterparts where it is the norm for parents to be married, there may well be something in this.

I think that ppl will consider voting for this because ppl are motivated by money and because of the majority's perception that marriage is the prefered status if you have children.

Haven't read the Tory doc, only the papers slant on it, and they haven't fully spelled out how/what, but my issue with married allowance was that you got it for being nmarried (whether or not you had children), and I couldn't understand why I, as a full tax payer should pay for someone elses tax break just because they chose to get married.
Any tax break IMO should be targeted at the family...
So is ol' David supporting the family or the institution of marriage (diff things IMO)

If he's trying to tackle social breakdown then £20 a week isn't going to help.

You're right Blackduck - he's confused between supporting 'families' in whatever form and marrying everyone off.

Which is what Gordon was aying on Today this morning; target the support at needy children, whether their parents are married, separated, single, quadruple....

But teh tax credits system is based on household income, not whether the parents are married or not.

IHT and widow's pension benefit the married.

Stats about children of co-habitees doing "less well" than children of marrieds are so open to interpration though. What counts as a co-habitation? How do the stats compare of long-term couples - married or not?

The tories are over-simplifying things, as usual - Family Breakdown = low qualifications, unemployment, drug abuse etc. That's usually poverty at teh root of these things.

Batters - I think I was saying exactly that if you take the whole of the sentence in context - What I have felt and seen since having my baby is that so many women HAVE to go back to work when their children are young to work to pay for basics such as housing, food, bills etc.. I don't think british society really places such a high value on motherhood as other cultures. Perhaps this is why our children are so unhappy compared to the rest of Europe.

Also I did a child protection course a few years ago and I've been trying to find the actual statistic but the level of physical and sexual abuse is MUCH MUCH higher in families without the biological father present.

I am grateful for the tolerant society that we live in and grateful for the choices that women can make in todays society. No one can criticise anyone until they have been in a particular situation, BUT I don't think that the Tories are really saying that other lifestyles are bad, they are just saying that they want to support married parents.

Whether they are right or wrong to do so is debatable but having worked with families in Social services for the last ten years I have seen enough children in poverty on vile sink estates to realise that they are better off with two parents even if they are poor. At least they have two parents there to impose some discipline and give them the support they need to keep from getting involved in alcohol, drugs, gangs and crime and if an extra £20 a week helps these parents to stay together as opposed to splitting up to get Housing Benefit and income support as a singe mum then great.

Oh and when I made the reference to couples in a french park looking happy..I didn't mean that single parents and children aren't happy simply that I saw a cultural difference over there...so many couples in this country are so stressed, and end up splitting up because of the stresses of our way of life...it just seemed that "family life" is a priority in France and as a consequence, families are happier.

I'll have extra £20 a week but I wont vote tory