Social policy charity CARE has today expressed its disappointment in yesterday’s Budget.

The Budget provided the Government with the opportunity to recognise marriage in the tax system, to make our fiscal arrangements more sensitive to family responsibility and help those on low to modest incomes.

The transferable allowance for married couples promised in the 2010 Conservative Manifesto and confirmed in the 2010 Coalition Agreement will achieve all three of these objectives.

Instead, however, the Government chose to further increase the personal tax allowance and by more than they had initially suggested.

This is very unfortunate.

Increasing the personal allowance to £10,000 will disproportionately benefit those in the top half of the income distribution and make our fiscal arrangements more individualistic, whilst introducing a transferable allowance for married couples will disproportionately benefit those in the bottom half of the income distribution and make our fiscal arrangements more sensitive to family responsibility.

Happily the Coalition Agreement to recognise marriage through a transferable allowance still stands. We would urge the Government to now make its implementation an absolute priority.