XN000022-1996-03-07 — Page 9

FS: Well, two quite different questions.

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I do attach importance to family values and I have said so in the Budget speech. It doesn't mean that I am encouraging very big families, going beyond the scope of But it is, of course, what the family planners think is reasonable and rational. necessary to recognise the financial burden of a larger family in relation to a smaller one. There has always been an incentive in our revenuc system, in our tax system to give allowances for the second, for the third and the fourth child. But, if you look at it carefully, Francis if you look through this carefully, the allowances for the third and fourth child are less than the allowance we give to the first two children. This indicates the priority we believe is important in the system itself.

Then you are talking about the level of CSSA. It is clearly an area which has been debated long and hard in the community, particularly among the social welfare sector. Only this morning I was exposed to a large number of telephone calls suggesting that perhaps we are now sailing quite close to the wind on CSSA.

But quite clearly, also, if you look back on the sort of messages and the sort of pressure that the Administration have been put under in the Legislative Council, in the professional bodies, it was a clear message that any additional new money that we may be able to find, which is generated by the growing economy, we should devote that sort of money to the welfare sector and that has been the priority we have adhered to and I do not see that there is a case, a clear case, that the level of CSSA payment is actually discouraging people from working, otherwise there would not be a common outcry about the unemployment rate because a lot of people are still very anxious to re-enter the employment market, the labour market. But it is something we I'm sure, in the Administration, would be guarding against. We will not produce a safety net going beyond doing a function, beyond that of a safety net.

P

Question (Commercial Radio follow-up): In effect, if I understand what you are saying, the Administration has effectively succumbed to the political pressure to spend this money because it's very difficult to justify how much you are holding on to?

FS: 1 say nothing of the sort. What I am saying is we must be able to construct a Budget which meets community aspirations and at the same time a Budget which would be totally consistent with my budgetary guidelines and I think my Budget has complied with those two criteria.

KC Kwong has mentioned this other point which I've omitted, that our provision on CSSA has a very firm foundation. The firm foundation is the outcome of the Household Expenditure Survey in which we have looked at those peoples' spending pattern in the assisted sector and those people who are outside that sector and that would be a useful benchmark against which we could verify CSSA level of assistance.