Oral Answers to Questions

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

There was a significant tax cut in the Budget that has been greatly welcomed by drivers in my constituency and elsewhere, namely the extension of the 5p cut in fuel duty and the freezing of the escalator, but does the Chancellor accept that by postponing that decision until an election year—next year—he is simply continuing the fuel duty fiction that our Committee has highlighted?

[Jeremy Hunt]

I am delighted that my hon. Friend welcomed the freezing of fuel duty, which means that over the period for which it has been frozen, the average motorist will have saved £200. There is a specific reason why I wanted to continue to freeze it this year: combined with the extension of the energy price guarantee, it will reduce CPI inflation by 0.7% in a year in which headline inflation is still over 10%.

Silicon Valley Bank

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Monday 13th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Treasury Committee.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

May I put on the record my gratitude to the Minister, his colleagues and officials, and to people at the Bank and in the City in general, who have obviously worked flat out all weekend to deliver what turns out to be the best possible outcome in these difficult circumstances?

On the importance of the sector to the UK economy, did the Minister and the Bank treat this situation any differently because of the sector in which SVB was operating, or would they have tried for the same sort of solution for a bank in any sector? Was the Minister as concerned as I was about reports that investors required the firms that they were funding to put money into the bank as a condition for investment? Finally, given that other banks have collapsed in the US—other small banks, including one that specialised in crypto—does he think that crypto is in any way contributing to financial instability?

[Andrew Griffith]

I thank my hon. Friend, one of my predecessors and the Chair of the Select Committee, for her support and comments. The degree of concentration in a particular sector is unusual—it was an unusual feature. The business model of Silicon Valley Bank in the UK was different from that in the US, partly because of the tight regulations that we have here. For that reason, I have not seen any evidence that the banking of crypto-asset companies was something that contributed. Rather, once the Fed had taken its action, we saw the impact on the bank here. That is why it was right for the Bank to act to give us the space to protect that bank and to achieve the outcome that we announced this morning.

Digital Pound

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Griffith]

It is always a pleasure to hear from the hon. Lady, in what I think was a welcome from His Majesty’s Opposition for the joint consultation between the Treasury and the Bank of England. She rightly raised issues that I assure her are addressed in the consultation, about which we would like to hear. They include how to ensure privacy, which will be embedded in the design. It is important that we come forward with, potentially, a digital pound precisely to avoid this space being colonised solely by, for example, private large tech companies.

I can assure the hon. Lady that this issue will not in any way distract from our important work on financial inclusion. Cash will indeed continue, and no part of the consultation talks about in any way replacing it. Rather, this is about ensuring access to that currency, so that potentially it will no longer be gated behind existing financial institutions; it could be something that new participants make available to citizens without some of the constraints that are sometimes put on the financial services system. The consultation also addresses the risk, which the hon. Lady rightly raised, should everybody withdraw their money all at once to invest in this digital currency.

However, the hon. Lady’s comments were a speech of two halves, and the second half was as wrong as it was unnecessary. This Government have never promoted a crypto wild west. The current Financial Services and Markets Bill contains more measures to protect consumers. The risks that consumers face have always been extremely clear, but when it came to financial promotions, one of the biggest challenges we faced was the Mayor of London and Transport for London, which gained a reputation for accepting particular adverts from the crypto industry.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

The Treasury Committee has opened an inquiry into crypto, and this morning we had a session at which the chief executives of the major high street banks appeared before us. The real question we wanted to ask them was why they have been paying our constituents so little on their savings since the Bank of England started to increase rates. Is not the logical conclusion of the consultation process that my hon. Friend has opened today that each of us should be able to hold a digital currency account at the Bank of England, and to earn the Bank rate on our holdings and disintermediate the entire banking sector?

[Andrew Griffith]

I thank my hon. Friend for her, as ever, wise points, as well as her wise chairmanship of the Treasury Committee. It is absolutely imperative that savers get the interest rates that they are entitled to. I commend my colleagues in National Savings and Investments, who have significantly increased the rates offered to savers. Of course, she also raises one potential opportunity, in that, although a digital pound would sit alongside our existing financial services infrastructure, it potentially offers consumers and citizens a different choice, which could involve the ability to hold currency through intermediaries other than the current banks.

Oral Answers to Questions

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Select Committee.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

The Treasury Committee recently published a report titled “Fuel Duty: Fiscal forecast fiction”, because we do not think the Chancellor will really be able to raise fuel duty by 12p, as is currently baked into the Office for Budget Responsibility numbers. Will the Chancellor be able to respond to our report before the Budget?

Charter for Budget Responsibility

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker, and may I associate myself with those passionately expressed words from the Chair?

I did think there might be a few more people here this evening to talk about the charter for Budget responsibility, after we have had so much debate across the country about the Office for Budget Responsibility and its forecasts over the last year or so. This was the year when the Office for Budget Responsibility made it into the headlines on numerous occasions, so I thought there might have been a bit more of a heated debate. I listened to the words of the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden), and I am not sure I understand at the end of his speech whether the Opposition are in favour of tonight’s motion and of the charter. I am not sure whether they are in favour of Budget responsibility. In fact, I did not hear any suggestions at all for solutions to the criticisms that he raised.

This evening, I reiterate, for those who were not here in early 2010, the rationale for the setting up of the Office for Budget Responsibility. It was because, in the Treasury of 2008, 2009 and early 2010, it was far too easy for the Government simply to make their own forecasts and to mark their own homework. I think there is merit in having someone external to the Treasury and oblivious to ministerial pressure come up with a set of forecasts. We all acknowledge that none will be perfect, or have perfect foresight about the future, but that externality means there is a way of marking the Treasury work and the Treasury projections. A Chancellor can certainly make an argument about why they may take issue with some of the elements going into the forecast, and there is often a more dynamic quality to tax revenues than is perhaps put into some of the external forecasts referenced this evening. A Chancellor can certainly have a debate about the numbers, but we do need to remind ourselves of the importance of this process and its external nature.

The other point I want to raise is about the fiction, which the Treasury Committee highlighted in one of our recent reports, that clouds the Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts for fuel duty. Again, this practice goes back many Chancellors and many Governments, and it is about putting into the projections for future tax revenue a ratchet up every year of fuel duty, yet for the last 12 or 13 years, every Chancellor coming to the Dispatch Box has decided not to implement it. It would be astonishing—I note that the Chief Secretary gave me a little cheeky smile—to see what is currently projected for fuel duty in the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast, which is for an extra 12p to go on to fuel after the Budget if the Chancellor does nothing. I think we can all agree that that is fiction. I cannot see the Chancellor coming to the Dispatch Box on 15 March and increasing fuel duty by 12p—I would be astonished—because the temporary one-year reduction of 5p will expire and there is the cumulative impact of the ratchet over the years.

I just wanted to highlight that there is some element of a work of fiction in the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast. It would be healthier for all concerned if a more realistic approach could be taken to the forecast for fuel duty not just in the short term, but in the medium term, because I think we all recognise that there will have to be a change, as more and more people are buying electric cars, in how we tax transport and drivers. I also wanted to publicise how our Committee has come together on a cross-party basis to make that point.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

I call the SNP spokesperson.

Non-domicile Tax Status

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2023 Commons Chamber

[James Murray]

I thank my hon. Friend for drawing attention to the impact that tax avoidance has on the public purse and on people across this country and to the fact that the Prime Minister probably understands some of these issues very well indeed.

As my hon. Friend set out, people are feeling the impact on this country’s economic growth as we lag so far behind other countries around the world. People are feeling the impact of so many parts of our public services breaking at the seams, and people are feeling the impact as the big challenges of the future get kicked ever further into the long grass.

We need a Government with a plan to grow the economy, with the drive to get ahead of the challenges of the future and with the determination to reform and strengthen our public services. Nowhere is that clearer than with the NHS, as more than 7 million people wait months and even years for treatment, unable to work or to live their lives to the full. We know that, to make the NHS fit for the future and able to support a healthy society and economy, it desperately needs reform and sustainable funding from a growing economy.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a typical, anti-aspirational socialist rant straight out of the book called “Politics of Envy”, but he is not actually speaking to the motion on the Order Paper. Why has he put “28 February” in that motion when he could just wait for the Budget on 15 March?

[James Murray]

It would only be a Conservative MP who could criticise an Opposition shadow Minister for suggesting that people should pay their fair share of tax.

I was speaking about the NHS, so let us look at the Government record on the NHS and see what can be done. We know that, after 1997, Labour’s reforms and funding from a growing economy meant that our country had an NHS of which we were proud. If we win the next general election, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) the shadow Health Secretary has set out, one of the first steps we will take to get the NHS back on track is to use some of the money raised by scrapping non-dom status to implement a workforce plan that addresses the root cause of the crisis the NHS is in. Under our plan, we would double the number of medical school places to 15,000 a year. We would double the number of district nurses qualifying each year. We would train 5,000 new health visitors a year. We would create 10,000 more nursing and midwifery clinical placements each year.

[Harriett Baldwin]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Is it in order for the Opposition spokesman to be talking in such general terms about a wide range of things, without actually addressing the motion on the Order Paper?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

If I had heard anything out of order, I would have called the shadow Minister to order. I am quite content with what he is saying at this moment in time.

IMF Economic Outlook

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Treasury Committee.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

Will the Minister take this opportunity to reflect on last year when, despite the headwinds of the coronavirus, the invasion of Ukraine, huge hikes in energy costs, rising interest rates and high inflation in this country, UK businesses managed to generate more than 4.1% of economic growth—twice that of the United States, 25% higher than China, and higher than the eurozone?

[James Cartlidge]

The Chair of the Select Committee is spot on. Instead of talking down our economy, she makes the key point that, despite all those challenges, we had strong growth last year because of British enterprise. That is why, on Friday, the Chancellor, himself a former entrepreneur—there are not many of those on the Opposition Benches—said that we will back advanced manufacturing in the high-growth sectors to ensure that we continue to live with that level of growth in the future.

Wagner Group: Sanctions Regime

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[James Cartlidge]

Well, I am talking about Ukraine, because I think that that is the key issue here. It shows we were preparing for what happened, although, obviously, the situation was unprecedented when Ukraine was invaded. We are clear about the fact that our officials and Departments worked as fast as possible to bring forward an ambitious range of sanctions—which of course happened in March last year when the Prime Minister was Chancellor—and they are having a significant impact on Russia and its economy.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

Although we cannot discuss a specific case, “Wagner Group” is written on the Annunciator and I wanted to add a further question about the regime that we are operating within the Treasury. I urge the Minister to go further than he committed to doing in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns), the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, because the Wagner Group is clearly such an evil organisation and what it is doing in Ukraine and across north Africa is so evil. Will the Minister today, from the Dispatch Box, ask OFSI officials to have a red flag system whereby anything related to the Wagner Group is flagged up individually to the Minister responsible?

Non-domestic Energy Support

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Monday 9th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)]

I call the Chair of the Treasury Committee.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

I welcome the Minister’s announcement. He rightly points out that President Putin has, by illegally invading Ukraine, effectively weaponised the cost of energy against western economies, and he is right to highlight that we have been able to withstand that attack with £18 billion of support over this six-month period.

We now have a gas price close to where it stood before the invasion of Ukraine, and businesses across the country have realised the big risk they face in terms of their energy costs. Will the Minister encourage them not to pass on the cost of higher energy through inflation to their customers, and instead call for the wholesale price of energy to feed through more swiftly to the retail price our businesses pay?

[James Cartlidge]

I think this is the first time I have taken a question from my hon. Friend since her appointment to the chairmanship of the Treasury Committee and I congratulate her belatedly on her success. She makes the good point that wholesale prices have fallen significantly. The gas price is back to where it was before the invasion. Of course, we should be clear that before the invasion it was still elevated in relative terms historically, not least because there was an increase in energy prices following the reopening of the economy after the pandemic. Of course, we do not want prices to be passed on to customers in terms of inflation—that is the last thing we want to see—but I should stress that one reason why we are giving extra support to energy and trade-intensive sectors is that, because they tend to trade internationally, they are particularly exposed to those price pressures and find it harder than other companies that are energy intensive but not trade exposed to pass on those high prices.

Oral Answers to Questions

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Treasury Committee.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

I wish you, Mr Speaker, your team and the Treasury team a merry Christmas. Has the Chancellor had a chance to read the Treasury Committee’s report, published last week, about the welcome that we give to the cost of living support that he has announced for next winter? Did he also note our points about the potential cliff edges in that £900 support, and the recommendations we made to spread those payments more evenly over the course of next winter?

[Jeremy Hunt]

I wish my hon. Friend and all members of the Treasury Committee a merry Christmas. I have read a summary of their report, but I have saved the entire document for my Christmas reading, and I am immensely looking forward to that. The most important thing is that we are offering extra support for people who are vulnerable—support that amounts to £13 billion next year—and that comes before the support with people’s energy bills and a lot of other measures. My hon. Friend makes a very important point about cliff edges, which we will reflect on carefully.