Tina Antwi spoke with Dan Boucher, Director of Parliamentary Affairs for CARE

Dan: It places a greater burden on household budgets, both for single-parent families with two children, and on one-earner couple families with children.

Tina: Why do you think other western countries tackle this issue much better than the UK?

Dan: All of the developed western countries have benefit systems, but alongside the recognition of family responsibility that they provide through the benefit system, they also recognise family responsibility in the tax system. They don't tax everyone as individuals, they tax people having regard for whether those people have family responsibility or not. That's because as countries they have taken the decision that their tax system is sensitive to family responsibility.

It's important to be really clear that our tax system used to be sensitive to family responsibility: we used to have child tax allowances that would mean that the tax that was asked of you was moderated in light of the number of children that you were sustaining. We also had married couples' allowances that had regards to whether you had any obligations with respect to a spouse. Altogether, the married couple's allowance and the child tax allowances provided that recognition of family responsibility - but child tax allowances were done away with in the 70s and married couple's allowance was done away with in the 90s, ultimately got rid of in 2000. The Government's commitment to introduce a limited transferable allowance for married couples is an important first step to reinserting into our tax system recognition of family responsibility.

Tina: The Government are hoping to encourage mothers with new childcare subsidies next year. Do you think such incentives are enough and, if not, what do you think the Government need to do to address this issue?

Dan: The childcare provisions exacerbate the difficulties faced by one-earner couple families because they are going to be made available to all families apart from one-earner couple families. This is unfortunate in as much as one-earner couple families, where one parent stays at home to look after the children, the role that they are providing is a very valuable role as well. It's very unfortunate that the way in which the incentives are being provided are trying to create an incentive for both members of the couple to go out to work. That doesn't have proper regard for the fact that many parents want to make the sacrifice whereby one of the couple stay at home to look after the children: they don't want to be living in a place where they are being pushed to become a two-earner couple family.

One of the concerns that has been expressed about the country and where the country is headed at the moment is that our social infrastructure is not as strong as it once was and there are concerns about child development not being what it once was. In that context, families where a couple make a sacrifice and they decide that one of the couple would stay at home to look after the children so that there is always someone there for them, we would argue that that choice is something that should be honoured and recognised rather than couples of that kind being discriminated against and being denied support. The person who stays at home is doing a very valuable and a very important job investing in the development of their children.

The provision of a transferable allowance goes some way to address that, in as much as it enables the contribution made by the stay-at-home parent to have some financial recognition, as part of their personal allowance will be able to make a positive impact on the family's income. That at least in some small way, recognises the contribution of the stay-at-home parent.