Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Christine Jardine and Jeremy Hunt

Tuesday 6th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

6. What recent assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of economic growth forecasts for 2024 and 2025.

[The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Jeremy Hunt)]

We announced 110 growth measures in the autumn statement. Taken together with the measures in the spring Budget, the independent Office for Budget Responsibility says that they will have the biggest impact on output that it has ever measured in a fiscal event, increasing GDP by 0.5% by 2028-29.

[Christine Jardine]

The UK economy is set for slower growth than previously thought. The International Monetary Fund predicts that next year we will have the second worst growth in the G7. In Scotland, the SNP has increased taxes, which we have heard about already, and Scots now face six bands. Stagnation there is even worse, and businesses and households in my constituency need reassurance. Will the Chancellor tell us what he will do to give confidence to people up and down the country that we will soon see economic growth?

[Jeremy Hunt]

May I gently correct the hon. Lady on the IMF? It said that over the next four years, UK growth will be higher than in Germany, France, Italy and Japan. I agree about SNP tax rises, but I point out that the Liberal Democrats have some tax rises of their own. They want to increase capital gains tax, which would be incredibly damaging for Scotland’s financial services industry, which employs thousands of people.

Economic Growth

Debate between Christine Jardine and Jeremy Hunt

Tuesday 14th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Hunt]

As the hon. Member might have heard if she had been at oral questions, we are acting on this and have been consulting on a solution since March this year—I started that at the spring Budget—but we want to get the answer right. We want to crack down on rogue lenders but also ensure that the financing that appropriate people can offer responsibly is available.

I want to talk about the pressures on ordinary families, because the shadow Chancellor also talked about incomes and the tax burden on working families. What has happened since 2010 to adults on the lowest legally payable wage? When we took over from Labour, that wage was £5.93 an hour; today, it is £10.42 an hour. After inflation, gross pay for those on the lowest legally payable wage has gone up by 20%. The number of people on low pay, defined as less than two thirds of median hourly earnings, has halved. At the same time, because Conservative Governments want to make work pay, we increased the thresholds before which people start to pay tax or national insurance from £5,700 to £12,570. Take-home pay after tax for people on the adult main minimum wage has therefore gone up by more than 25% after inflation. That is a bigger percentage increase than for people on much higher incomes.

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

Notwith-standing what the Chancellor has said, my constituents in Edinburgh West, like those in much of the rest of the country, were listening intently to the King’s Speech for a Bill or anything that might help them with the cost of food and specifically energy this coming winter, but there was nothing, and it has been admitted that the petroleum Bill will not do anything to help households in this country. Does he appreciate why ordinary working families think that the Government are simply out of touch?

[Jeremy Hunt]

With respect, I think the hon. Member needs to look at the facts. We have given an average of £3,300 in cost of living support to families across the country this year and last. In Scotland, 700,000 households have benefited from our cost of living payments, which have reached more than 1 million pensioners.

I want to return to my main point about the impact of making work pay. As a result of that change, not only have a lot of people been lifted out of poverty, but unemployment has gone down by a million, after going up by nearly half a million under Labour, and the unemployment rate has halved. That is the difference: if we make work pay, as the Conservatives do, we lift people out of poverty and put people into work.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Christine Jardine and Jeremy Hunt

Tuesday 21st March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Hunt]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise this issue, as is my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie), who does so on every single occasion she can. Nuclear is important because there will be times when the weather does not generate the energy we need from renewable sources. That is why we announced in the Budget that we are going ahead with Great British Nuclear and with the competition for small modular reactors, provided that an investigation this year finds that that is viable, and we will class nuclear power as environmentally sustainable, subject to consultation.

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

A number of small businesses in my constituency are struggling with their energy costs, and two have recently gone to the wall, but major companies in the whisky sector are also struggling. The Chancellor says that the Government are doing what they can to support them, but does he appreciate that that is not how it feels in Scotland? This major industry, with its high-intensity use of energy in distilling, is facing a 10% increase, which will mean that something like 75% of the price of a bottle of whisky goes to the Exchequer. The industry does not feel like it is being helped. Does he appreciate that it feels like it is being kicked at a very difficult time?

[Jeremy Hunt]

I recognise the challenges that the distilling industry and many other industries are facing. That is why we are giving more than £100 billion of support to businesses and consumers, but I would say to the hon. Lady that Scotch whisky has received nine cuts or freezes in the last 10 Budgets, so we are doing everything we can.

Economic Update

Debate between Christine Jardine and Jeremy Hunt

Monday 17th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Hunt]

It is because I do not want that to happen that I have taken the very difficult decisions today.

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

I am sure that the Chancellor would agree that certainty is key to stability for businesses. As has already been mentioned by one or two of my hon. Friends, the Scotch whisky industry, and the spirits industry generally, is now facing uncertainty because of his U-turn on freezing the duty, and it has no certainty about whether or when the duty will go up, or when it will even know. Can he commit to letting the industry know at an early date—as soon as possible—what will actually happen to it, as it is vital to many of our constituencies?

[Jeremy Hunt]

We will conclude the decisions on what we will do in terms of excise duty reform generally as quickly as we can, but for now, I am afraid that the difficult decision that I announced today stands and we will not be able to proceed with the freeze from next February.