Owen Smith – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Owen Smith on 2015-11-19.

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, for what reasons expenditure on personal tax credits has increased since 2009.

Damian Hinds

The OBR’s Welfare Trends Report 2014 sets out how historical spending changes have been driven by, for example, changes to caseloads and average awards.

As it sets out, policy decisions between 2003 and 2009 increased the caseload of tax credit claimants and increased discretionary uprating of the child element, contributing to expenditure as a percentage of GDP increasing from 1.1% in 2003/04 to 1.9% in 2009/10.

By 2010, 9 out of 10 families with children were eligible for tax credits. Reforms under the Coalition government decreased this to 6 out of 10.

http://budgetresponsibility.org.uk/wordpress/docs/Welfare_trends_report_2014_dn2B.pdf