The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Dr Thérèse Coffey)
It is a pleasure to respond to the hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds) in this Budget debate. I think it is fair to say that, since the start of the pandemic, our priority as a Government has been to protect the lives and livelihoods of people right across this country. That is why my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, over the last year and again in this Budget, have taken unprecedented steps to support British people and businesses, including help for those who need it most. That includes further measures using our fiscal firepower to revitalise our economy, get people back into existing jobs and encourage investment to help create new jobs.
Let us remind ourselves of the steps we have already taken. Through the furlough scheme, we have supported more than 11 million jobs. This unprecedented cushion of support has helped millions of people to stay connected to their employers who could otherwise have been made redundant. Through the self-employment income support scheme, we have helped more than 2.5 million self-employed workers with grants and business loans, as well as targeted support for those on benefits.
Not everyone was fortunate enough to be furloughed, though, and through the £20 a week increase to universal credit, we ensured that those who faced a drop in earnings or were newly out of work received extra support during this difficult period. I am proud of our swift action at the start of the pandemic and throughout to support an extra 3 million people through universal credit and other benefits. That has been thanks to the hugely dedicated staff of the Department for Work and Pensions, which I consider to be the Department of Wonderful People, who delivered that support competently and compassionately.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
The Secretary of State will have seen the evidence that disabled people have seen a big increase in their grocery costs during the pandemic, and yet people claiming employment and support allowance have had no extra help at all. Why have they not been supported?
Dr Coffey
As the right hon. Gentleman will be aware, and as the Chancellor has said repeatedly, there was a specific reflection at the time of introducing the extra £20 a week uplift to recognise the issues regarding people who were newly unemployed. I am conscious that the right hon. Gentleman’s Select Committee is undertaking an inquiry on people with disability and employment, and we will provide evidence in due course, when we can perhaps discuss that matter further.
Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
I would like to reinforce what my right hon. Friend said about the fantastic work of her departmental officials. The fact that her Department has not been in the headlines much over the last months is due to the efficiency of her officials. When some of those officials are looking for a transfer, might she recommend that they go to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, to try to imbue that department with some efficiency?
Dr Coffey
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for highlighting the really good work undertaken by officials. I would also like to thank my ministerial team, because we have worked together to do this. Indeed, arm’s length bodies such as the Health and Safety Executive have also done really good work in trying to ensure that workplaces are safe, helping employers to ensure that that is the case and minimising the transmission of this wretched coronavirus that we have endured. I will bear in mind his thoughts, but I do not think it is in the interests of the DWP to take on the DVLA as well.
Last week, the Prime Minister set out the road map that will lead us out of lockdown and back to the way of life that we are all eager to enjoy. As we all play our part in controlling coronavirus, and after a particularly wretched winter, we are ratcheting up for what I hope will be a spectacular summer. But we know that recovery will not be instantaneous for everyone, which is why the Prime Minister said explicitly that we would not just pull the rug out from under people’s feet as we start to see light at the end of the tunnel. That is why yesterday my right hon. Friend the Chancellor set out targeted measures in the Budget that would deliver on that commitment to help people and businesses through these next few months as we open the economy and deliver on our plan for jobs, helping people who are still impacted by coronavirus to get back into work.
First, to support low-income households we will extend the temporary £20 increase to universal credit for a further six months, on a monthly basis, taking it well beyond the end of this national lockdown. Working tax credits are administered by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, and claimants will receive a one-off covid support payment of £500—this is largely driven by the way that system works operationally. That is in addition to all the other Government support for people on low incomes, be that support with some of the most expensive bits of the cost of living, through things such as the increase to the local housing allowance, which is going to be preserved in cash terms, or with other elements, such as through council tax support.
Stephen Timms
The Secretary of State said that the universal credit uplift would be extended on a monthly basis. Does that mean that if circumstances warrant it, the uplift will be continued beyond September of this year?
Dr Coffey
The clear intention is that this is an extension of six months, because that will take this well beyond the aspect of the national lockdown. I was particularly making the point about monthly payments because I have always been clear that this is about UC continuing on a monthly, rather than one-off, basis, and that would be the preferred approach. I am pleased that the Chancellor has agreed with me on that and on making sure we keep that regular payment uplift for the next six months.
Secondly, we have self-employed people on UC, and in addition to the further help through our self-employment income support scheme we will suspend the minimum income floor for a further three months. That means that hundreds of thousands of people will continue to receive financial support based on their current actual earnings, rather than on the assumed amounts we would normally undertake through the gainfully self-employed test.
Thirdly, the further extensions of the furlough scheme to the end of September represent a huge investment in people, keeping them connected to their current jobs and employers. I urge employers and employees to take full advantage of this additional time of furlough to get ready to return to work, and do the training and refresher courses, so they are ready to hit the ground running as their business fully reopens. Taken together, I believe that these temporary extensions will provide essential support as we move along the road map, restart the economy and transition to our full recovery.
Thanks partly to the extension of the furlough scheme, the OBR is now expecting a better jobs outlook than it was in its November forecast, with unemployment now expected to peak at 6.5% at the end of this year, instead of 7.5%, which was its previous forecast. Although that represents a third of a million fewer people than the OBR previously forecast, I fully recognise that the OBR is still predicting that, sadly, unemployment will rise by a further half a million people compared with now. As we have always said, we cannot, sadly, save every existing job, but my right hon. Friend the Chancellor set out yesterday extraordinary measures of support to help businesses stay in business and to create new jobs. The supercharged super-deduction on capital investment is exactly the kind of initiative that can stimulate businesses to invest here in Britain, leading to brand new jobs.
I am very conscious of what the hon. Member for Oxford East said, which is why we have undertaken significant work across government on our labour market sector plans in working through the opportunities we can create, not only by resurrecting some businesses and sectors that have been temporarily affected by the lockdowns but to bring in new jobs. I particularly commend initiatives such as the freeports, which we know will be creating tens of thousands of extra jobs right around the country. I was delighted that Freeport East was successful, as it covers the ports of Felixstowe and Harwich, one of which is in my constituency. It was a great pleasure to work with businesses across Essex and Suffolk to make that happen, particularly with the creation of a green hydrogen energy hub. That is really important investment that will be coming now thanks to the freeport initiative, and I know that the same will be happening right across the country. I can see people in this Chamber, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price), whose constituents will benefit from her ports coming together to be a freeport.
Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)
Perhaps I could advise the House that this affects not only the ports in my constituency; it is also a partnership with the Ford plant in Dagenham. My right hon. Friend will be aware that there are employment challenges in that borough—it has a very high unemployment rate compared with the rest of London—and the freeport initiative opens up the opportunity for Ford to breathe life back into that site, given the redundant diesel technology that it currently produces. That will attract new investment from a global player. Should that not be welcome?
Dr Coffey
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I know how much of a champion she has been for the people of Thurrock and the surrounding areas in making sure that they have that opportunity. Indeed, there are opportunities right around the country. We will hear contributions later from Members for the north-east, who will be championing, and are delighted by, not only the freeport in Teesside but the Treasury North campus in Darlington. I am sure that the Leader of the Opposition’s campaign director, who is now in the other place, will also be thrilled that Treasury North will be in Darlington.
Right across the country we are laying the platform for businesses to create jobs, and my Department is ready and primed—indeed, we are already delivering—as we put our foot to the floor, our pedal to the metal, on our plan for jobs. Over this year, as our economy starts to recover, my priority, and that of the Government, is getting people back into work, investing in skills and training, and helping people to get up the career ladder and increase their income.
We came into this pandemic with record high employment. That was down to successive Conservative Governments since 2010 focusing on supporting people in moving to and progressing in work, including by reforming the welfare system through universal credit, which is a conservative benefit. Unlike the legacy benefits, whereby people would often be worse off working under tax credits and similar, universal credit is a benefit that always makes sure that work pays.
I am truly astonished that the Opposition continue to want to scrap universal credit, when it has clearly done its job of getting money into people’s pockets within days of their making a claim when newly unemployed, and remembering that 40% of UC recipients are working and it automatically puts extra money into people’s pockets when their hours are reduced, never mind the £20 uplift for covid.
We know that we have a huge task ahead of us, but I am confident that we will deliver, fuelled by the firepower of our plan for jobs. Just as we have had the jabs army putting vaccines into people’s arms, we now have the jobs army of our work coaches, with an extra 13,500 recruited to bolster our support to help get people back into work.
In the jobs market, sadly it is the hopes and prospects of our young people that have been affected more than most. That is why we launched kickstart, a scheme that helps to give young people that first key step on the jobs ladder and offers employers effectively free access to the next generation of talent, as long as they provide an additional real job and job support.
I am concerned that the hon. Member for Oxford East and the Opposition are giving kickstart a bit of a kicking. Instead of slamming it, they should be supporting it. The Chancellor and I launched kickstart in September, the first young people started their jobs in November, and since then I am pleased to be able to share with the House that around 4,000 young people have now started a job, with 30,000 vacancies to be filled in the next month, and there are more in the pipeline. More than 140,000 jobs have already been approved, with agreed funding, which is more than the 105,000 that the future jobs fund of the last Labour Government created over its entire lifetime—and we have achieved it more quickly.
This is not, however, a tit-for-tat on numbers; this is about real people and helping them with their lives, right here, right now. Take Cerys, for example, who is 19 and had sadly lost her job in catering last year. With the help of her work coach, Cerys has started a kickstart job with Northam Care Trust in North Devon as a care worker. In her own words, this has changed her life. With the ongoing interest from employers and our making it even easier for them to join kickstart with direct applications through DWP, I am confident that by the end of this year, we will have helped a quarter of a million young people become kickstarters, setting them up for a great future.
With kickstart getting into the fast lane, the rest of our plan for jobs is also firing on all cylinders. Recognising that some sectors may continue to struggle, we have doubled the number of places on our sector-based work academy programme—SWAP—scheme to 80,000 this coming year. SWAPs help jobseekers to upskill, retrain and find a route into a new sector with a guaranteed interview for a real job. We are also supporting people in their job searches through our job entry targeted support—JETS—scheme and our job-finding support digital offer, which is now operating across Great Britain, helping those who need only light-touch support.
These schemes are working for people in every constituency. Take Marius from north London. He recently lost his job in the hospitality industry after 15 years and was worried about his future prospects. His local jobcentre referred him to a SWAP, and, after completing just a two-week course to build skills and experience, he was offered a job in the care sector.
This summer, as we restart the economy, businesses will get their restart grants, and we will also restart people’s careers. The new £2.9 billion restart scheme will provide intensive help to over 1 million jobseekers who, sadly, have been out of work for over a year. But we are also helping our jobs army with further assistance by considering new tools to help them diagnose people’s skills and help transform their lives. As part of the Budget, we are investing just over £1 million to pilot the use of new innovative technologies, such as artificial intelligence tools, to match jobseekers’ skills to vacancies they may not otherwise have considered. Work coaches and test sites will start signposting claimants to these services from August.
Also in this Budget, we have brought forward some measures that we know will help people still on low incomes. In particular, we are bringing forward to next month a measure that will allow universal credit claimants who request a new advance to help them with their budgeting to spread the phasing of that support over 24 months rather than 12. That will allow them to retain, on average, £30 more per month up front. We are also bringing forward a reduction in the maximum amount that can be deducted from a claimant’s standard allowance for debts such as rent or utility bills, from 30% to 25%. We expect that that will allow more than 350,000 families with the highest levels of debt to retain up to £300 extra per year.
On top of these measures, we are going further to help some of the most disadvantaged and vulnerable in society. We had already agreed to have exemptions on the shared accommodation rate for care leavers and people who have been in homeless hostels from 2023, but I am pleased to say—this is thanks particularly to the Minister for Welfare Delivery, my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince), who is here in the Chamber today—that we are bringing forward those exemptions by two and a half years, so that we will provide additional housing support for care leavers up to the age of 25, and for younger claimants who have spent at least three months in a homeless hostel, from next month. That will give them the stability and the foundation to take on the opportunities that work can provide, and will provide, to help them build their future.
We have also added a further £59 million of support for local welfare provision, so that the covid winter grant scheme will be extended into the Easter period, helping the most vulnerable families with the cost of food and bills.
My right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury will respond to some of the questions asked by the hon. Member for Oxford East, but it is fair to point out to the House that, among public services, we have already allocated an extra £55 billion of support; we have already initiated, or we are preparing for, the catch-up summer for children; and we will continue to invest in our public services. We are already increasing the number of nurses. We are increasing the number of police officers. I think the public pay uplift is for those people with salaries below £24,000, not the figure to which the hon. Lady referred. We are also making sure that the national living wage rises above inflation from next month.
The hon. Lady also pointed out aspects of statutory sick pay. She will be aware that that is the minimum rate required to be paid by employers; many pay a lot more than that. However, in recognising that universal credit supports people on low incomes, the Department of Health and Social Care introduced the self-isolation payment of £500 in order to help people who need to self-isolate and would otherwise be deprived, perhaps, of a lot more of their usual income. That is a sensible approach that we have taken.
It is important to say that, of course, in order to help control coronavirus infections, we had already changed the rules so that workers could receive statutory sick pay from day one rather than the eighth day of being off work, as well as extending it to people who are self-isolating rather than just sick themselves, so we have already taken measures in that regard to help others. In addition, I think it is an estimated £3 billion of extra support that has gone to local authorities next year to help manage the impact of covid-19 across their services and on their income. Of that, half is non-ring-fenced to ensure that they can adjust to what is needed.
The hon. Lady referred to some of the extra support that will be going in to support towns and other places around the country, with the new town deals that are coming, the community ownership fund—which is particularly interesting—to help communities to buy local assets such as pubs and theatres, and opening up as we get ready for the UK shared prosperity fund. We are already setting the scene with the community renewal funds and the levelling-up funds. I think those measures should be welcome.
Let us not pretend otherwise: as we reflect on 2020 as a wretched year when many people have lost family members, lost friends and lost colleagues, there is no doubt that the British spirit has been tested, but the response has been remarkable and, frankly, typical of the Britain I love. Our focus, with the successful vaccine roll-out, should be on giving hope and confidence to millions of families and businesses that there genuinely is light at the end of the tunnel. While the focus has rightly been on the jabs army, we are mobilising our jobs army to help people to get back into work as we speed towards our recovery.
This Budget builds on what is already one of the most generous and comprehensive economic packages in the world to provide further support and protection. We are ratcheting up our support. We will be super-charging skills. We will rebuild, revitalise and regenerate our economy and level up across the country. I am really looking forward on 21 June to toasting the victory of the vaccine over the virus, when we will get back to normal, building back better and building back fairer, with a brighter future for Britain.
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Jesse Norman)
The hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) was absolutely right to highlight the second day of a Budget debate as a moment when we can discuss these bigger issues. I join him in thanking nearly 50 colleagues for their contributions, but I am afraid I disagree with him on some of his diagnosis; perhaps, in the course of my remarks, I can explain why.
The hon. Gentleman claimed that the Budget had no ambition. You do not have to listen to me or the Chancellor, Madam Deputy Speaker, if you want to know whether the Chancellor’s Budget had ambition; you can simply listen to the Resolution Foundation, which said:
“This was a big, policy focused, budget. It rightly sought to boost the recovery before turning to fix the public finances, in both cases with a large (potentially too large) focus on Britain’s firms.”
That, I think, is pretty clear. It also said:
“Continuing furlough to September will reduce the rise in unemployment ahead, with the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) expecting it to peak at just 6.5 per cent (down from 7.5 per cent). If realised, this would be”—
I am quoting—
“by far the lowest unemployment peak in any recent recession, despite this being the deepest downturn for 300 years.”
That would include the Labour recession of 2008. So we can only hope and pray that these measures may have something like that effect, but to suggest that they are short of ambition is quite wrong.
If I may, let me just remind the House of the scale of what we are attempting. There are three great themes to the Budget. The first is the need to support people and businesses through this crisis; the second is the need to begin to fix the public finances; and the third is the need to lay the foundations of our future economy. Those are all big issues. As the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde rightly pointed out, those are big matters which we are grappling with, and gripping, from the Dispatch Box and from the Chancellor’s own Budget.
Let us just touch on those. Supporting businesses and people—that would be extending furlough to the end of September. It would be the further grants we have made to the self-employed: the restart grants, a new set of grants designed to help the retail, hospitality, leisure and personal care businesses—I emphasise personal care businesses, such is the very important role they play in our economy—to get going again. The business rates holiday, which has been extended for three months before tapering for another nine months. Extending the VAT cut to 5% for a further six months before tapering it for another six. Continuing our stamp duty cut. Extending universal credit and working tax credits by six months. More money for apprenticeships. New recovery loans. A large package for the arts, culture and sports.
That is one component of this Budget, but of course, as the Chancellor has rightly emphasised, we must engage with the work of fixing the public finances, and that is why we are asking the largest and most profitable firms to pay more in two years’ time by increasing corporation tax. But of course we are giving at the same time, in the shorter run, a super-deduction. I think that is a very thoughtful policy. What that essentially says to those businesses—something like £100 billion is held on corporate balance sheets at the moment in the UK—is that we need to get away from the patterns of underinvestment by business, and this is a way of attempting to move corporate Britain in that direction. It may succeed, it may fail, but it is a very worthwhile attempt to kick-start that business investment that will be foundational, not just to recovery from the pandemic but to our long-term prosperity. Of course we have taken a variety of other measures to support the public finances and then to build the future economy.
The suggestion was made by some colleagues across this Chamber that the Budget was a piecemeal effort; that could not be further from the truth. Forty-five new town deals. The £150 million community ownership fund. The freeports in England. The infrastructure bank. I have been very closely involved with the infrastructure bank, and I can tell you that it will potentially be a very significant institution. It has, of course, its starting capital, but it also has firepower of up to £40 billion. That is not a trivial amount of money, and placing it in Leeds could not be a more emphatic demonstration of the Government’s commitment to levelling up, as the move by not just the Treasury but other Government Departments—the Department for International Trade, BEIS and the MHCLG—to join in a new campus in Darlington has been. As my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) said, that will transform that town, but it also sends a much wider signal: “By their fruits shall ye know them.”
It is all very well talking about these things. Those towns and areas could have been supported by the Labour party over decades and they were not. This Government are stepping forward to make that difference. Of course, the difference will not be just in the investment—the pounds, shillings and pence that are spent there. It will be in the lifting of expectations, the career opportunities, and the possibility of framing a new narrative based on different assumptions about how the world works than just those to be found in London. That is profoundly exciting and important.
Of course, we are talking also about the levelling-up fund, Help to Grow, and a very important development on future breakthrough. I love the fact that we will support not just levelling up but our green investment through the UK infrastructure bank. That will be a very important part of the picture. Let me turn to some of the comments made by colleagues, because they were very well taken. There are many areas where I am not sure that I always agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood), but when he said, “Go for growth,” he was absolutely right to emphasise the growth aspects of the Budget.
My hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Simon Jupp) pointed out, rightly, that the Budget delivered for Devon. He was absolutely spot on about that. I disagreed with my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) about corporation tax. He needs to understand, if I may say so, that the rise in corporation tax was the result of many aspects of things. What is noticeable about it, though, is that it did not trigger an enormous increase in business investment. That is one of the reasons why we have adopted this slightly different approach.
I agree very much with the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher), who pointed out the importance of the start-up grants that will support beauty and personal care businesses. He was absolutely right about that. He mentioned the town deal and the east midlands freeport, and rightly so. I agree with the hon. Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton), who said he was pro our UK infrastructure bank being located in Leeds. He was right to say that. That was not by any means the picture taken by the hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon), who also spoke, but I think that the hon. Member for Leeds North East was right in saying that.
The point that my hon. Friend the Member for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Mohindra) made in praising the Chancellor’s honesty and directness when engaging with us struck a chord with me. I think it strikes a chord with many people across the House and in the wider public. My hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Jane Hunt) pointed out the importance of skills—absolutely right. My hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell) pointed out the value of the super-deduction plan. Again, I thoroughly agree with him.
It was nice to hear my great friend, my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price), talk about the importance of her Thames freeport. That is right. I was surprised that the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Paula Barker) did not welcome the Liverpool city region freeport, which I think will be a tremendous boost to that area. I think she was wrong to say that. I think it will be widely welcomed, particularly as it gets up and running. I share the view of my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock on that.
I respected very much the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones) as she sang the glories of Croydon. That was a beautiful moment in our debate. I very much liked the possibility that you, Madam Deputy Speaker, might, as my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Dean Russell) invited you, teach the world to sing. I look forward to that very much. Perhaps in a future debate we can be treated to a yodelling intro in the style of the late New Seekers—or am I betraying my age?
My hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) was absolutely right. He pointed to the town deal that existed for Ipswich. He pointed to Freeport East, and said, or implied—I am sure he would say—that this is a Government who do what they say. I am very pleased that, in that regard at least, we have been able to deliver for him in a way that we have delivered for many other places across the country that historically have been ignored.
Let me end by thanking hon. Members for their comments. We are trying to do something big here. We are trying to respond to the big issues that the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde rightly flagged. He is wrong about what he claims are cliff edges. There is, in each of the cases I have described, a tapering effect in the major reliefs, which is designed to return us to something akin to normality if we can follow the road map and get out of the position we are in. The fact of the matter is that, as the Resolution Foundation pointed out, we are in the worst crisis, the deepest downturn, for 300 years. That is not a fact we can ignore, and it is a fact that it is incumbent on us, across the House and in this Government, to address.
Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.—(Tom Pursglove.)
Debate to be resumed on Monday 8 March.