John McDonnell
Family Tax Credits
On Monday April 28th John Redwood MP challenged Dawn Primarolo over the government's failure to pay more than a million people who are entitled to child and working tax credit.
Mr. John Redwood (Wokingham): Will the Paymaster General confirm that her figures, and the Government's figures generally, show clearly that more than a million people who are eligible to claim have not yet claimed and are not sure when they will, and that on her own admission today, another million people have claimed and cannot get the money paid on time? Is that not a disgrace? What does she intend to do about it, and will she say sorry?
Dawn Primarolo: I do not think the right hon. Gentleman could have been listening when I said that 3.2 million people are already being paid, or are about to be paid because they are paid monthly. An additional 1.3 million people are receiving their money because they are on income support or JSA and receive the increased payment. That leaves the claims that have been submitted to the Inland Revenue in the past weeks and months and need to be cleared as quickly as possible. I said in my statement that we had received more than 1 million claims since the beginning of March. I told the House that for those applications that the Inland Revenue had received by last Friday, the families would be paid by next week, unless there are outstanding inquiries about the details on the form that must be clarified to ensure that the families get the right amount. Where there are difficulties, interim payments can be made.
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