Osborne: Tories will give tax breaks to married couples in bid to make a stronger society

Shadow chancellor George Osborne last night insisted the Tories were ready for government, with tax breaks for married couples a key plank of their strategy for a stronger society.

Tory leader David Cameron has been a long-standing supporter of using the taxation system to support marriage, but it was thought Mr Osborne was less keen on the idea.

However the shadow chancellor said there was ‘no disagreement’ between the two men on the issue - although he conceded they did differ on other area of policy.

Mr Osborne said: ‘Marriage will be recognised in the tax system.

‘If I am David’s Chancellor, which I fully expect to be, then I will implement that.

‘There is no disagreement there at all. Of course, everyone is entitled to choose how to live their lives and some marriages do fail, but we know that, in general, marriage is an institution that contributes to building a stronger society.

‘That is why Labour was wrong to stop supporting it through the tax system.’

Details of the policy, likely to appeal to Conservative traditionalists, have not been finalised, nor has it been revealed how the tax cut will be funded.

Giving an insight into the workings at the top of the party as it prepares the policies which it hopes will win the next election, Mr Osborne said he and Mr Cameron ‘don’t always agree on everything’.

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph he said: ‘But on the big fundamentals - the changes necessary to the Conservative Party, keeping the Conservative Party on the centre ground in British politics and the economic changes that we need to make - we pretty much see eye to eye.’

The first days of a future Conservative government were already being plotted out, Mr Osborne said.

‘We’re thinking a lot more now about how we would act as a government and the things we do early on as a government.

‘We don’t want to be just people who are good at winning elections, we want to be good at governing.’

Mr Osborne, the Tories’ election mastermind, accused Gordon Brown and Labour of being ‘obsessed’ with the resurgent Conservatives under Mr Cameron.

He said: ‘I think they are totally obsessed with us and spend their whole lives working out in minute detail what Cameron’s going to say.

‘In fact, he should just get on with being the PM and lead his country.’

Party sources said any marriage tax perk would be an ‘early priority’ of a Tory Government.

Although they would not spell out any details, it is thought the plans could include some sort of restoration of the Married Couple’s Tax Allowance, which was scrapped by Gordon Brown in 2000 when it was £197 a year. At its maximum it was worth £285 a year.

The removal of this tax incentive has been blamed for accelerating the decline in marriage that has taken place over the last few decades.

In 2006, the last year for which details are availiable, there were just 236,980 weddings in England and Wales - the lowest number since 1895 and the lowest proportion of marriages compared to the population since counting began in the mid-Victorian era.

The figures showed that married people have now become a minority amongst all adults for the first time since records began.