There seems to be a presumption in Deputy McDowell's argument that every two income family has children and child minding expenses, which is not true. If anything, a greater number of single income families have children. For obvious reasons, a large number of two income families have no children and, therefore, have no child minding expenses. That is an over-simplification and a rather simplistic argument.
If one believes that people should be given allowances for travelling to work and for child minding, they should be targeted at those who need them. Otherwise, one is making a general statement in relation to the specific. I repeat that I am talking about similar people in similar circumstances. If we want to talk about child minding expenses or the cost of travelling to work, let us do that. However, the fact is that it is equally inequitable, according to Deputy McDowell's' argument, that somebody works 40 hours a week slogging behind a machine and is paid £10,000 for their effort while somebody in another profession, such as a barrister or a doctor, works for 40 hours a week and is paid £1,000 a day for their effort. I agree that this is totally inequitable.
I wish there was some way of stopping it, but unfortunately there is not. However, this is not the argument in question. The argument is simple; people in similar circumstances and on similar taxes should pay the same. A married couple, irrespective of their working relationship, should be treated as such and should get double the allowance. The advantage of that is that it allows for all circumstances to be totally and flexibly dealt with in an equal way and does not create the wrinkles that we currently have in the system. Our system is full of wrinkles because we always think of a couple as either having two equal incomes or only one income. Ultimately, I want to see a flexible system because it could deal with a married couple as a couple, irrespective of their personal arrangements.
I fully welcome Deputy McDowell's suggestion that the cost of travelling to work should be taken into account. On average, rural people pay a lot more to travel to work than those in urban areas, who can normally avail of subsidised transport services to get them there and back.