Amendment of the Law
Helen Goodman Excerpts(14 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Pickles
This is a very clear example of the difference between how we do business and how the Opposition did business. We are not going to tell the people of Bristol where the enterprise zones will go—they are going to tell us.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
There is confusion in the north-east because what the Chancellor said in his speech about enterprise zones—that there will be one in Tyneside—was not the same as what the Budget documents said: namely, there will be one in the north-east. There is an enterprise zone on Teesside, but the geography of the other one in the north-east is not clear. Does the Secretary of State have any insight on that?
Mr Pickles
There is one in Teesside and an additional one within the northern area. In truth, it is up to the local enterprise partnerships to put the thing together. [Interruption.] The hon. Lady wants to control everything from here, but I have to say that she was not very successful in doing so. What is wrong with an approach in which rather than us down here in Whitehall telling the people of the north-east what to do, the people of the north-east tell us how they will do things?
We are taking measures to help get the house building industry firing on all cylinders. Every new home supports four jobs in house building and two more in related industries. The availability of new homes helps people move around the country for work. Getting the housing industry moving again is key to restoring growth. Under the new Government, house building starts are up 23% and construction orders for new private housing are up 50% compared with Labour’s last year. But we need to go much further. There are about 200,000 granted planning permissions out there in the country, but the homes are not being built.
The answer is not targets; it is addressing the root causes. First, there is a tight mortgage market, so we will introduce a new form of support that will help first-time buyers get a foot on the ladder: a 20% equity loan, co-funded by Government and developers. That will put ownership within the grasp of 10,000 first-time buyers. We will reform the stamp duty land tax rules on bulk purchases of new homes to boost equity investment. We will help to reduce the sector’s reliance on mortgage funding.
Secondly, there is the problem that elements of the planning system are holding up the building of new homes. Let us go back to the 200,000 granted planning permissions. It is fair for councils to agree a contribution to the area where developers are planning to build to ensure that the development is sustainable, perhaps by providing a new park or playground, or by paying for road widening. However, what looked like a reasonable request three or four years ago may no longer look quite so reasonable if it stops necessary development happening altogether. If those commitments make it simply too expensive to build, we need to be realistic. Councils should not compromise on the essentials to make a development acceptable to the local area, but unrealistic agreements negotiated in the boom times should be reviewed to help new developments move forward quickly.
Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)
I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the register.
I warmly welcome the Budget and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor’s broad judgment of the economy. I particularly commend him for sticking to the plans he had outlined earlier, so that—painful though it may be, and mindful, as we must be, of the difficulties—we can deal properly and speedily with the appalling state of the economy bequeathed to the Government by their thoroughly irresponsible predecessors. Measures are now firmly in place to repair the economy, to ameliorate the gross waste of public money, to pay down the deficit and to put in place the architecture for a growing and expanding enterprise economy, with all the opportunities for jobs, increased competitiveness, substantial improvement in the effectiveness of essential and greatly valued public services and support for wealth creation.
Clearly major challenges and difficulties lie ahead, but the Chancellor has set out a clear vision for growth, with the aim of creating in the United Kingdom the world-class businesses of the future, of all sizes and in all activities, and consolidating a way ahead for all our industries and commerce. I was taken today with a letter in the press from some of Britain’s most successful business men that said that the steps taken
“will be a massive boost for start-ups, and will help entrepreneurs to secure finance to get their ideas off the ground.”
That is just so. It is exactly what is required.
Of course, I welcome the announcement on apprenticeships, but as I have made consistently clear to Ministers on many occasions, all the good will in the world cannot replace the over-bureaucratic burden currently in place that often makes it difficult to take on apprentices. If these targets are to be achieved, the process must be made a great deal easier. These are matters with which the Department concerned must deal with great vigour. The opportunities to expand the skills of our young work force are real and vital, and I hear from businesses on all sides their desire to get on with this matter in a speedier manner. To this end, I strongly urge my right hon. Friend to pay careful attention to the views of Professor Alison Wolf, who has developed some very good ideas on these matters, and the excellent work done by my right hon. Friend Lord Baker of Dorking.
I welcome the steps taken on deregulation, and I was pleased to see that the Government’s earlier work has been built on in the Budget in a number of areas. However, those steps are nowhere near good enough yet, and progress across Whitehall is extremely patchy. For my part, I believe that greater authority and impetus should be given to the war on unnecessary, debilitating and grinding red tape, which holds back so many of our businesses and infuriates so many of our best people, who have great ambitions that they cannot fulfil because of the burden that the state places on enterprise.
Nicholas Soames
No, I am very sorry; I am afraid that I cannot.
I call on the Chancellor and the Prime Minister to bring back Lord Young, who understands such matters well, knows the grislier ways of Whitehall and is ideally qualified to lead a tough, cross-departmental effort to enforce the measures needed to reduce onerous administrative burdens, particularly on our small and medium-sized businesses. I know that many Ministers are aware of the importance of doing that, but from the Back Benches making progress often feels like wading through very deep mud. The sometimes apparent weakness of the civil service, judicial activism, thickets of regulation, and an infantilised and often financially illiterate press can all make it impossible to progress. The Government need to make a big effort to move on the issue.
On taxation I need say only this. A more competitive, simpler and more stable tax system will be better for everyone, rich and poor alike. Such a system would also go a long way towards restoring our badly lost international competitiveness, to which the last Government did such terrible damage.
Finally, let me briefly say a word about banks and the language of relentless negativity that is doing great harm to the City of London, which is one of the greatest assets that this country has. That language—particularly of the Opposition, but also of much of the press—is self-defeating, illiterate and often infantile. It needs to stop, and the debate needs to grow up. Many new jobs in banks headquartered in London are now being located overseas. That is very bad news. The Chancellor has averted a fiscal calamity. I am optimistic about the future of this country, but we face a long, hard slog.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
I am pleased to have the opportunity to contribute to this year’s Budget debates. Last Wednesday, the Chancellor of the Exchequer had a choice to make. He could have corrected the judgment he made last summer in the light of December’s stall in growth and the huge instability in the oil market, but he made a different choice: he chose to continue with his £81 billion of public spending cuts. Notwithstanding the remarks made by the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom), I fear that the Government’s supply side measures will not produce a revolution in entrepreneurialism. The evidence for that is the Chancellor’s own growth forecasts. The forecasts for the early years have been reduced by far more than those for the later years have been increased, and that is because everything is dwarfed by the massive fiscal retrenchment. The cuts are deeply unfair and they are a strategic blunder.
I wish to focus for a moment on the cuts to the poorest families: the cuts to the social fund. At the beginning of March, the Department for Work and Pensions announced an immediate end to crisis loans for cookers and beds. Why? Before the election, the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb), who is now a Minister of State at the Department for Work and Pensions, said:
“People who apply for crisis loans are desperate and have nowhere else to turn…The Government has got to practice what it preaches to the banks and make more cash available through these loans to help families through hard times.”
Now he prioritises sticking to the Budget and says:
“We need to ensure that crisis loan support is correctly targeted at those who need it most”.
Does he honestly believe that bedding is not essential? Does he think that mothers of disabled and incontinent children do not need beds and bedding? Can Government Members imagine how a mattress smells after six months’ use by an incontinent child?
Helen Goodman
The hon. Lady says yes, so she obviously thinks it is satisfactory for poor children to live in that way—a way that I am sure she would never allow her own children to live.
Do Government Members think that children in poor families should have only cold food—even in winter? Would they like to say to their small child on a cold afternoon in November, “Oh you can’t have baked beans on toast. You’ve got to have a cheese sandwich”? No wonder DWP Ministers are not having an outing on the Treasury Bench during these Budget debates. Clearly they do not want to face the criticism they know they would get from Labour Members.
In answer to questions, the DWP has told me that last year crisis loans for cookers and bedding totalled some £27 million. Where are people supposed to turn instead? Are they supposed to turn to the voluntary sector? I recently met families in my constituency, all with disabled children, who had benefited from that excellent voluntary sector organisation the Family Fund. Last year, the Family Fund helped 55,000 families with items such as cookers and bedding and its total budget was £35 million. Are the Government going to increase the grant to the Family Fund by £27 million to make up for the cuts to the crisis loans? Last year, the Family Fund included a picture of the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr Cameron) in its annual report—I wonder whether it will do that next year too. I am sorry that the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) is the only Liberal Democrat Member here to be reminded that the Minister responsible for this is the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate.
The problem that this country faces is not that it is bankrupt; the problem this country faces is that it has a Government who are morally bankrupt. This is hurting, but is it working? Taking the four years from 2010 to 2014 together, the independent Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts that growth will be down, unemployment will be up, the social security budget will be up and net public sector borrowing will be up by a massive £40 billion. Already this looks like a catastrophic error of judgment and a strategic blunder. There is an alternative: a sensible path to fiscal consolidation as set out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling), which was about bringing down the debt, promoting growth and keeping people in work. There is an alternative, and on Saturday 300,000 people came to London to demonstrate in favour of it.
Amendment of the Law
Helen Goodman Excerpts(14 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Sammy Wilson
My fear is that, not just in Northern Ireland but throughout the United Kingdom, the measure will be more like a branding exercise and good for a soundbite, rather than something that will have any real impact. I hope that the measure has an impact, but, if I look at the amount of resources that will go into the zones, and at what really is required to lift such areas, I fear that it will not.
Other changes have been mentioned, such as those to the tax structure, and I noted what the Chancellor said, but some of them might not include extensive consultation—the issue is complex—and might be years away. So, again, they look good in the Budget, but what is the immediate impact going to be?
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
On that point, it is interesting to look at the changes to national insurance contributions, which are forecast to have an impact right out to 2016, because they show that the proposed bringing together of the two taxes—national insurance and income tax—will not happen for at least five years.
Sammy Wilson
I hope I am not quoting the Chancellor wrongly, but I think he talked about nine years in the future before those changes have an impact, so again we have to ask, “What is the impact going to be?”
Mr Syms
It was nothing to do with light-touch regulation; in fact, we needed more competent regulation. The Financial Services Authority was not up to the job, and the Bank of England would have done a better one.
The key thing is that we now have a great imbalance in our economy. Over the long term, Britain has always tended to have public spending of about 40% of GDP, taxation of about 40% of GDP, and a national debt of about 40% of GDP. We have always managed to grow and export, and to be a fairly successful economy. We now have to yank public spending and the deficit back to those sorts of levels. As was pointed out earlier in the debate, even after five or six years, we will only be back down to where we were towards the end of the Labour Government when we had to go into deficit to deal with the difficult economic situation.
I think that the Government’s response is sensible. It is planned over five or six years, and is gradual. For all the talk of expenditure cuts, the expenditure cuts will be gradual over that period. The plan, as the Chancellor set out today, is for the economy to grow. That should generate more tax revenue. The difficulty, of course, is that we will have to raise taxation, as can be seen in the plans, to help balance the budget. I hope that that is more of a short term, rather than a medium to long term thing, because we need to build incentives back into the British economy.
Helen Goodman
On that point, has the hon. Gentleman not noticed that table 2.1 on page 42 of the Red Book shows that, over that period, personal tax allowances will increase substantially, because the switch to CPI and the changes to national insurance outweigh significantly—by several hundred million pounds—the increase in personal allowances that the Chancellor made? This is a tax-raising Budget, not a neutral Budget as he said.
Mr Syms
The key fact is that the Government whom the hon. Lady supported left us with massive debts. There is no honest or honourable way in which we can deal with that problem, other than taking tough decisions, which will involve many of our constituents paying considerably more money. Over the next five years, unfortunately, more money will come in through taxation. There is no way around that. That is the legacy that Labour has left us. If we want to be responsible, to get the economy back into balance and to have long-term economic growth, we have no choice but to take tough measures.
Dame Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) (Lab)
At the end of every Budget speech, the Chancellor has to pull a rabbit out of the hat. I will begin my remarks on the rabbit that I was not expecting today. It is something that will affect my constituency. Because I have been sitting in the Chamber since the Chancellor made his speech, I have not been able to quantify exactly how it will affect my constituency, but I have great fears that it might have a devastating effect.
I should explain that as a Member for Aberdeen, the economy of my constituency is based on the offshore oil and gas industry. I should also explain that I am the chair of the all-party group on the offshore oil and gas industry. Aberdeen has survived the downturn probably better than anywhere else, because the oil industry has been fairly buoyant. Unemployment in my constituency has risen from only 1.9% to 2.5%. I appreciate that that will sound very good to many Members. I fear that because of the rabbit that the Chancellor pulled out of his hat, that may not continue.
I speak, of course, about the fair fuel stabiliser. I think that that has the potential to destabilise the offshore oil and gas industry quite dramatically. I appreciate that the Chancellor was looking for something so that he could bring down fuel prices. However, it appears from the Red Book that huge amounts of money will come from the North sea. Apart from in the financial year 2011-12, in which the amount that will be given back to the taxpayer is £1.9 billion and only £1.78 billion will come in from the North sea from the increase in the supplementary charge, in every other year more will be raised by the Exchequer from the North sea oil and gas industry than the Chancellor will give away by bringing down petrol prices.
Helen Goodman
I also noticed that very interesting line in table 2.1—line 28. It shows that the proposed revenue stream is the same in every year. However, as the Chancellor said, that will depend on the oil price. Unless he is absolutely confident that the oil price will remain at the same level throughout the period, these are completely unfounded forecasts and estimates.
Dame Anne Begg
Indeed, if the oil price goes up, the amount that the Chancellor gets will go up. These must at best be guesstimates. Therein lies the problem for the offshore industry. The North sea is a mature province, but there is still a lot of oil left. In fact, there are probably as many known oil reserves in the North sea today as there were in the 1970s, but they are much harder to reach and more challenging to get out of the ground. The one thing that the offshore oil and gas industry needs is stability—stability in what the Chancellor is going to do. The last time the tax revenues for the offshore industry were changed, by the last Labour Government, there was a slowdown in the industry for a good two years before it recovered. The industry complained about the unexpected nature of that change and the fact that it was not able to plan for it. This change comes into effect from 12 o’clock tonight, so it will come as a huge shock to the offshore sector that it will be affected.
Dame Anne Begg
With all due respect, that is not how the Chancellor has sold it. Even if there has been a windfall, perhaps it would have been better had he given some warning of the change so that people in the oil industry in particular could have taken account of it in their planning.
When we look at the Red Book, we see that the change is not tax-neutral. It states that by 2012-13, the tax raised will be £2.2 billion, and that it will be £2.1 billion the following year. The Chancellor is expecting to raise more than £2 billion a year—a much larger amount than is being given back to the consumer who buys petrol at the pump. Line 6 on page 42 of the Red Book shows that the Chancellor is taking more from the offshore oil and gas industry than from the banks, by a factor of 10.
Helen Goodman
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for being so generous in giving way. The other interesting thing in those numbers is that whereas the Chancellor claimed that the banks would not benefit from the corporation tax change, we can see from the Red Book that corporation tax reliefs will rise over the period in question but the bank levy will absolutely collapse.
Dame Anne Begg
Indeed, the bank levy will come down to just £100 million by 2015-16.
The change to the oil and gas charge has come as a bit of a shock, and it worries me. From looking at the Red Book, I am getting more and more worried about what the Chancellor has announced today. The Red Book states:
“The Supplementary Charge on oil and gas production will therefore increase to 32 per cent from midnight tonight.”
There was no warning, and it will have come as a big shock to the industry. The effect could be dramatic in my constituency. I only hope that the Chancellor has thought the matter through and had some discussions with the industry. I suspect he has not, and I am worried about what will happen.
I wonder what other nasties are lurking in the Red Book. Last time it was the 10% sanction on housing benefit when someone had been out of work for a year, which we did not discover until days afterwards. I am glad that the Government have backed down on that and that today’s Red Book shows that money again.
From a cursory glance at the Red Book, I discover something that comes as a bit of a surprise to those of us who were here for Prime Minister’s questions today. The Leader of the Opposition asked the Prime Minister why the Government were taking the higher-rate mobility component of disability allowance from people living in residential care. Those who were here will remember that the Prime Minister replied, “We are not”—a simple, straightforward answer. However, line d on page 44 of the Red Book is about the plan to
“remove mobility components for claimants in residential care from April 2013”,
with a figure of £155 million to be saved. That is different from the last Red Book, which stated that the change would come in in 2011-12 and save £135 million. All that the Government have done is delay it by two years. As the Leader of the Opposition pointed out, the change is still in the Welfare Reform Bill, and here it is in the Red Book. Perhaps the Prime Minister might want to come to the Chamber and apologise for not having been as accurate as he might have been.
Stephen Williams
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman has been making that case in private to his well-connected friends. I and my colleagues have also been making the case for a green investment bank, not a green investment fund. It has been confirmed as a green investment bank today and it will have £3 billion of seedcorn capital to get it off to a flying start. It is going to start a year earlier than originally suggested. By the end of this Parliament, it will be able to issue bonds so that if we wish, we could all deposit our funds with that bank to invest in our green future.
I also welcome the investment made in innovation and skills, particularly in technology innovation centres. I talked a lot in the last Parliament about the skilling of our young people and how we needed to get more people to take up apprenticeship places, so the confirmation of 50,000 more places today means that there will be 250,000 more in this Parliament than we were left by the last Government.
Speaking as someone who before entering this House spent 17 years in a career in the private sector, advising small businesses on how to set up and take off, I welcome the confirmation or enhancement in the Budget of many reliefs designed to help new and innovative businesses to take off and the fact that by 2014 we will have the lowest rate of corporate tax in the G7. We now look forward to a further period of reform.
The hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg) rightly mentioned the integration of the income tax and national insurance schemes, on which there is to be consultation after the Budget. It is, of course, 100 years since Lloyd George, my political hero, introduced the national insurance scheme. During the slump of the 1920s, however—this deals with the point made by the hon. Lady—the actuarial soundness of that scheme was essentially undermined, and ever since then the fiction has been maintained by Governments of all hues that it is a separate fund. In fact, it is a second income tax in all but name, and the time has come to reform it. I am very glad that the Government are going to do that; and because they are going to consult on how it should be done, all the issues raised by the hon. Lady about contributions-based benefits are likely to be dealt with.
The other reform to which I look forward is the move to a system based more on sustainability, involving a tax on carbon. I am delighted that the Chancellor has confirmed the introduction of a new carbon floor price. On behalf of the Liberal Democrats, I will shortly produce a paper fleshing out how that can work during the rest of the current Parliament.
It is disappointing that we have not been able to agree internationally on further taxes on aviation—both coalition parties wanted an aeroplane tax rather than air passenger duty—and I hope that international agreement will be secured so that that can be achieved. However, I welcome the confirmation that we are to end the absurd anomaly whereby the jets that most of us use when travelling abroad are subject to air passenger duty while private jets are not. Under the existing law, a plane full of football fans going off to watch their heroes must pay tax, while the team itself takes off in a private plane and pays none.
The measures that have already been outlined, and the reforms to which we look forward, reward hard work, incentivise enterprise, and make progress towards a low-carbon economy.
Let me deal finally with the issue of the banks. I welcome the fact that the Government have introduced a levy that will be permanent, throughout the life of this Parliament. It has been confirmed today that the banks will not benefit from the reduction in corporation tax, and that the levy will be increased in future. We shall have to wait for the results of the Vickers review to find out whether there are proposals to break up the banks.
Helen Goodman
How can the hon. Gentleman say what he has just said about the banks, given that the bank levy is falling from £600 million to £100 million within three years? That is patently ridiculous.
Stephen Williams (Bristol West) (LD)
I understand that the bank levy is about £2.5 billion a year. The Chancellor announced recently that the levy, which was £1.8 billion in its first year, would be increased to £2.5 billion, and today it has been confirmed that the banks will not benefit from the reduction in corporation tax and that the levy will be increased.
Another issue connected with the banks is what we should do with our ownership, as taxpayers, of Lloyds Banking Group and the Royal Bank of Scotland. That is an issue with which the Government will have to deal at some point in the next few years. A couple of weeks ago I published a pamphlet, with CentreForum, which suggested that the shares should be given to the people so that the state could recover the £67 billion that was invested in the banks bail-out in 2008. The citizen should enjoy the upside: the citizen should enjoy the growth in those shares in the future. I hope that my Treasury colleagues will look favourably on that proposal as they decide what to do with the legacy from the last Government.
The Liberal Democrat-Conservative coalition Government have dealt with Labour’s toxic legacy, but Labour Members seem to be still in denial about the problem. They have not acknowledged its existence, let alone shown any sign of contrition for their role in the deficit. The Leader of the Opposition produced some very good jokes today—I will give him that—but he could at least have made an apology. We have started to clear up the mess. Today’s Budget sets in train a plan for a Britain that is fairer, with a stable economy and a low-carbon future. It recognises the need to help households with their budgets now, and to give them confidence that the economy and their country are back on track.
Several hon. Members rose—
Richard Harrington
With the possible exception of the la-la land factor, my hon. Friend is absolutely right.
I want to talk about some specific factors that are important to business people, and therefore important to growth. There is a lot of talk about banks and the availability of capital, and about what the Government should do and what they have not done. Again, I want to comment based on my experiences in the constituency. The bank lending situation is getting better; there is no doubt about that, as the loans are beginning to come through. In Watford alone, under the enterprise finance guarantee loan scheme, 23 companies have already borrowed money amounting to £4 million. That is a comparatively small sample and it reassures me for the future that this scheme, which is to be expanded, does work, and that it does so in a comparatively short period of time.
It is very fortunate for us that interest rates are low, but the decisions made by businesses do not change when fluctuations are minor, such as 1% up or 2% down. Their decisions do change when the situation reaches a ludicrous point; I was once left with a loan on which I was paying 2% over base when the base rate was 15%. Variations such as 1%, 3% or 5% make little difference. Again, what matters is confidence in the economy and confidence that the Chancellor has done the right thing today. So I must encourage what the Government are doing on the fundamentals, because people and businesses will want to borrow money only when there is confidence in the future and confidence that we are doing the right thing.
My next point relates to the availability of skilled staff. Despite the fact that 3.7% of people in Watford—more than 2,000 people—are on jobseeker’s allowance and 700 or 800 young people there are not in education, employment or training, I visit factories and businesses that cannot recruit staff of the right calibre every week. A few weeks ago, I visited Davin Optronics, a manufacturing company that uses skilled labour to make lenses—it deals with complicated stuff. Its fear was that its work force were getting older and younger people did not want to join manufacturing businesses. That is a fundamental issue and we have to change attitudes.
Helen Goodman
How does the hon. Gentleman reconcile that situation with his Government’s policy on tuition fees and the fact that this week children in this country are being told that they cannot take three sciences at GCSE because of the cuts to school budgets?
Richard Harrington
The hon. Lady and I were at university at broadly the same time, so we were very privileged. We could debate tuition fees for hours, but no matter what one’s arguments on that, the new regime has not changed the current situation and we are, thus, dealing with Labour’s policy on tuition fees at the moment. I would be happy to debate tuition fees with her on another occasion, but the real issue is that we have young people and older people who are unemployed, and we have vacancies in jobs that people will not go into. The Government’s efforts on work experience for young people—today’s announcement on that was tremendous—and on expanding the apprenticeships scheme are very important, as are the technical universities. I commend those efforts because we must have a work force who have the right skills. That is not solely about graduates; it is also about people who are leaving school and are doing apprenticeships and further education courses. What the Government are doing to help will change the availability of staff.
Mr Jackson
I know that the hon. Lady has some expertise on these issues. She can rest assured that my criticism will be confined mainly to the Leader of the Opposition, who delivered a master class in opportunism and vacuity. His loquacity was in inverse proportion to his intellectual insight. In his 15 minutes of speaking, no policy whatever was articulated.
The Budget is supported by the OECD, the International Monetary Fund and business leaders such as the deputy director of the CBI, John Cridland, and David Frost of the British Chambers of Commerce. It is about the Government putting in place the conditions for sustainable, balanced economic growth. Let us remember that the Institute for Fiscal Studies still says that public finances remain in a critical condition, but we have had no alternative whatever from Her Majesty’s Opposition. Indeed, we might have to call in Professor Brian Cox, the noted cosmologist, to search for the black hole where the Labour economic policy should be.
Mr Jackson
I will make some progress; I am sure that I can let the hon. Lady in a bit later. The priorities of the Budget are primarily to reduce the deficit; rebalance the economy, which was left out of kilter by the Labour Government, with an over-concentration on financial services, the housing market and public expenditure; reform public services; and grow, via initiatives such as the green investment bank, green expertise, knowledge, skills and jobs. If I may give a plug, yesterday a collaboration was announced between Peterborough city council and Cranfield university on a centre for renewable energy and biofuels, to be based in Peterborough.
We need to move towards a high-wage, low-taxation economy with less pressure on household incomes, and the Budget provides a road map for that. No one denies that we have had to make some very tough decisions in the comprehensive spending review and in last year’s emergency Budget. There were real-terms cuts in departmental expenditure; the cut to departmental expenditure will be, on average, 11%. However, we should remember that between 1998 and 2010, there was a real-terms increase in budgets in each Department of anything between 2% and 8%. The fiscal tightening between now and 2015-16 will mean that we have to reduce public expenditure and put taxes up, with capital gains tax, tobacco, fuel, the bank levy, consumer prices indexation and child benefit affected. Contrary to received wisdom among Opposition Members, the richest 2% will be hit hardest by the tax benefit and other changes.
What choice do we have? Labour’s poisonous legacy and debt millstone left us with simply no alternative. In 2010-11, we had to borrow about £140 billion—perhaps around £10 billion less than expected. Only Ireland has a bigger cyclically adjusted deficit. Labour ran a structural deficit some seven years before the banking crisis in 2007-08, and we entered the financial crisis with the largest structural deficit in the G7. The national debt doubled between 1997 and 2010. In May last year, we were at significant risk of a downgrading in our international credit rating, with a catastrophic impact on public services, business and consumer confidence, a long period of stagflation, and a contraction in the economy.
Mr Jackson
The hon. Lady will know that the markets have recognised that the fiscal consolidation that the Government had to put in place as part of a policy of growth in the private sector and consolidation in the public sector has resulted in a lessening of the pressures in the gilt markets, with gilt yields down to 3.53% since May last year, and every 1% is £1 billion of interest payment. Of course, that is change in the pocket to Labour Members; we are spending £120 million on debt every day.
Mr Jackson
No, not at this moment.
To put that in context, £95 million could have been spent on schools each day, but we are servicing Labour’s debt, and we could be spending £35 million on police, £25 million on social care, and £90 million on defence. The entire budget deficit that the Labour party ran up in government is £42.7 billion. That is 40 Type 45 destroyers, 33 Astute class submarines, 42,700 MRI scans, or 1.3 million nurses. That is the reality of the appalling profligacy and mismanagement of the Labour Government. We do not hear alternatives. We hear a policy that is dishonest, incoherent and irresponsible. The right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) shares very few values, I imagine, with the former US President Ronald Reagan, who once said, “I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself.” That sums up the Labour party’s attitude in government, and the deficit denial on the Opposition Benches now.
Even some sensible and pragmatic Labour supporters are troubled by the incoherence and the substitution of political opportunism for a realistic alternative policy. The erstwhile Cabinet member, the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears), said at the weekend:
“The public expects us to at least give a broad direction—but I think they are worried that we haven’t been as clear as we ought to be.”
She is absolutely right.
The former general secretary of the Labour party, Peter Watt, went further. In a rebuke to the institutionalised deficit denial of the shadow Chancellor, Mr Watt said on the labour-uncut website that Labour
“is . . . a highly toxic brand. . . we are still opposing every cut . . .It might make us feel better and win some short term popularity. But it isn’t an answer to the charge that we had become economically illiterate and had allowed massive overspending.”
If there is one lesson that I can offer the Labour party from our long period in opposition, it is this: rarely is it enough to be populist to win the respect of the electorate. That rarely forms the basis of a credible election strategy.
Helen Goodman
Is the hon. Gentleman satisfied with a Budget to which the oil and gas industry responded this afternoon by expressing its shock and stating that the investment climate has been seriously damaged and the Budget will drive jobs away from this country?
Mr Jackson
That is one viewpoint from one group of people. Others, such as Baker Tilly, the tax accountants, say that it is an excellent Budget. So do the CBI, the OECD, other industry groups, house builders and others. [Interruption.] I am glad the hon. Lady thinks it is humorous that people are supporting my right hon. Friend’s Budget.
Oral Answers to Questions
Helen Goodman Excerpts(14 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Hoban
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The OECD is one of a number of organisations that have supported our plans. The IMF has said:
“The government’s strong and credible multi-year fiscal deficit reduction plan is essential to ensure debt sustainability.”
That theme continues to come across from international organisations, which demonstrates that we are on the right track to get this economy growing again and ensure that Britain continues to live within its means after a decade of a Labour Government who maxed out on the nation’s credit cards.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
11. If he will (a) prepare and (b) publish an assessment of the relative effect of his forthcoming budget on women, families and ethnic minorities.
The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Mr David Gauke)
Consistent with the approach taken at the June Budget, the Government will publish analysis on the Budget’s overall impact on households across the income and expenditure distributions in the Red Book. The Budget is an overall statement of economic policy containing a wide range of measures, and it is not possible to make a robust assessment of its overall impact on specific groups.
Helen Goodman
I am surprised by that answer. Since the general election, the Government have made 17 distinct cuts to tax credits and child benefit, which are paid to women. Tomorrow, the Chancellor will announce increases in personal allowances, which will benefit millions more men than women. Does the Minister think it is fair that money should be taken from women to give it to men?
Oral Answers to Questions
Helen Goodman Excerpts(15 years ago)
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Justine Greening
Yes, I can, and of course my hon. Friend is not the only person to hold that view. The secretary-general of the OECD said only last week that Britain needed to “stay the course”. He realises, as did the Bank of England Governor Mervyn King when he talked about our deficit as being “clearly unsustainable”, that if we had not set out a credible plan and got a grip on our public finances to tackle the deficit, we would have run the risk of an even sharper fiscal tightening later down the road, a loss of confidence and higher interest rates in future.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
It costs £150 to give a person debt advice, and it costs £50,000 to rehouse a family. Will the Economic Secretary explain why Treasury Ministers are cutting the funds to citizens advice bureaux to provide such advice, and why that is a good way to cut the debt?
Justine Greening
We are looking at ways in which we can ensure that people still get the debt advice that they need, and of course a lot of the grants are provided by local authorities. There is no point in Opposition Members talking about debt, because it was their party that created the problem in the first place.
Comprehensive Spending Review
Helen Goodman Excerpts(15 years, 3 months ago)
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Danny Alexander
I agree wholeheartedly with my hon. Friend. If we had not tackled the deficit, the poor in this country would have suffered most.
Danny Alexander
I will give way to the hon. Lady, and then I will press on.
Helen Goodman
I am grateful. The Chief Secretary has pointed to the forecasts made by the OBR. He will know that between 1994 and 2008, the private sector created 100,000 jobs a year. In that period, growth was 2.8%. The OBR projects growth of 2.4%. How, then, is it possible that 1 million jobs can be created in the forthcoming period?
Danny Alexander
In fact the OBR forecast more private sector jobs than the hon. Lady suggests. She will know that in the past two quarters several hundred thousand jobs have been created in the private sector. I will explain later in my speech the measures that we are taking to support the private sector.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
At the end of the period, in 2014-15, the Government plan to spend £92 billion a year more, on current spending, on services than Labour did in its last year—that is a large 15% increase in the amount of cash. We need to ask ourselves why it is that every year public spending increases, yet the Government are proposing some extremely difficult or, in some cases, undesirable choices to be made in subsequent years to try to live within that rather big figure. I suggest to the Government that there are three areas that they could work on, and that their doing so would be in all our interests in this House, because if they could manage them better, they might not need to make so many of those difficult choices in the later years and would still be able to live within their totals and get the deficit down.
The first reason why there is a squeeze on some programmes that many Members do not want to see squeezed is the big rise in money allocated to pay for inflation; the plans assume quite a lot of public sector inflation over the five years. If the Government can do better at buying in goods and services—they are a very big purchaser and they say they are going to do so—they might reduce the average price of bought-in things. Instead of having positive inflation, they would have negative inflation on that part of the programme. If they can do a good deal with their employees, reassure them and get them to accept the kind of measures on pay that are being suggested—I believe that they are talking about a two-year pay freeze, for example—that will take a lot of extra inflation out of the system, because the biggest single item in these budgets is of course pay. Again, the more that we in the public sector can share the pain by moderate means, such as accepting pay restraint, the less we will have to take the difficult choices in later years that are built into the programme.
The next thing is staff numbers. A lot has been made so far in what passes for a debate in this House about having 490,000 fewer jobs in the public sector by the end of the period. These are not 490,000 redundancies. Given the large rate of resignations and retirements in the public sector to which the Chancellor has referred, I hope that most can be taken care of by eliminating posts after people have resigned or left.
Helen Goodman
I am most grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. Of course, in a very small-minded way, what he says is right. If those jobs are cut, where does he think that young people will get the new jobs that they need?
Mr Redwood
In the private sector, which is already generating tens of thousands of jobs every month. That is what we need to do. I am not saying that there should be a complete staff freeze. For example, if 480,000 a year are leaving, which was the Chancellor’s figure in the Budget, 250,000 people could be hired while still achieving half the reduction in the first year. I think that the Chancellor might have been a bit optimistic, but he referred to an 8% rate. If the percentage was half as great, the reduction could still be made in the first two years. There could be reductions of 250,000 without a single redundancy.
I urge my right hon. and hon. Friends not to pursue the redundancy route wherever possible. It is expensive, unpleasant and disruptive. I do not want to see lots of people retiring early from the administrative services on big pensions, and I do not want to see redundancy payments made with people coming back into the public sector at a later date, leaving us to wonder why all the cost and disruption has been incurred.
The next big area that puts pressure on the increased money is debt interest. I entirely agree with the Government, and with Opposition Members who knew this when they were in government, that we have to bring the deficit down before it kills the whole budget. If we allow the deficit to keep on rising, as the Opposition originally proposed, debt interest will take more and more of the increased spending and we will have to make unpleasant cuts to the things that matter. How can we reduce that debt interest burden more quickly? If we can get more cash into the public sector, starting today—we do not need to wait to start the programme next year, as is implied in the figures—we will reduce the increase in the debt day by day. If we sell more assets, we will not have to raise so much money in the debt markets, which will keep the debt down.
It is very good news that the Government’s programme has restored a lot of confidence in the markets, so that the rate at which they now have to borrow is now lower. That will obviously make a contribution to getting the debt interest rate programme down.
I have to say to the Government that I do not think that we can afford to give £80 billion to foreign countries over the CSR period. If we add the overseas aid programme to the European Union programme, the total is £80 billion over the period. I do not want to take any money away from the poorest countries or from humanitarian aid. Those are good things and I fully support the Government’s intention to carry on with them, but I do not think that there is any need to subsidise China, India or Russia—nuclear weapons powers with, in the case of China, $2.5 trillion in the bank. It is a bit odd to give China a grant when we then have to borrow the money from China to pay the grant to China. That cannot make any sense.
I believe that the Government are now going to remove the aid to the richer and more successful countries. Cannot we pocket that for a couple of years and then become more generous when we have the deficit under control? May we please get the European amounts down? They are the most unforgivable ones; poor people in Britain are paying tax to offer grants to rich countries in Europe, and that is not acceptable in the current conditions.
The more that these pressures—the grants abroad, debt interest, costs, inflation and staff numbers—can be abated, the more we will have money available to do better things with the growing programmes. It is good news that nine of the Departments have level or rising cash throughout the period, but it is bad news that one or two other Departments will find that the shoe pinches a lot. That is why I think that we need to make more rapid progress in controlling costs and staff numbers, particularly in administration, and in dealing with the debt interest programmes, so that we have a bit more free to ease those areas that will be very tight in future years.
I do not for one moment believe the figures from 2013 to 2015 anyway, because I think that they will be subject to subsequent revision because of the pressure of events. As inflation changes, we will need to revise them. As the state of the economy changes, we will need to revise them one way or the other. Let us hope it will outperform and we will have a bit more scope.
As an election draws near, politicians tend to want to spend more, so we should discount the 2013-15 figures and concentrate on what is happening now. Will the Government please bring forward as many of the reductions as possible to this year, and not wait until next year? The more we save now, the less we borrow and the more the pressure is reduced on subsequent years’ programmes.
Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)
I commend Ministers on the spending review, because finally we have a Government who are prepared to address the big picture.
In the last four years of the previous Government, Britain dropped from third to 13th on the international rankings for economic competitiveness, partly because of rising global competition, but also because of the excessive inflation of the public sector. As a result, British productivity lags behind our major international competitors. According to EUROSTAT data, between 2000 and 2008, European Governments who spent 42% or less of GDP created 27% extra jobs. Governments who spent more than 42% had jobs growth of just 6%. In that period—before the banking crisis—Britain jumped from the high-jobs-growth camp to the low-jobs-growth camp. The amount of GDP consumed by the UK Government rose by 11% to 48%, and sure enough jobs growth was a paltry 5%. The evidence is plain: we cannot spend our way to economic growth.
There is nothing ideological about wanting to create jobs, and there is nothing socially fair about the welfare trap. I hear the calls every week from Opposition Members to soak the rich, but today the top 5% of earners in this country pay almost half the country’s income tax. If that is not a fair share, fine, but where would the Opposition raise taxes, and by how much? The real risk with their strategy is that the brightest talent will flee this country, if they believe that talent and graft are punished rather than rewarded. The brain drain does nothing for social fairness. The July Budget and this deficit plan have brought Britain back from the cusp of default.
Yesterday, we saw Standard & Poor’s triple A rating restored from negative to stable, and the task now is to drive economic growth and competitiveness. However, the spending review also addresses fairness at three levels. First, there is the snapshot of winners and losers that there will be in any budgetary process, and the matter of protecting the lowest-paid public sector employees from the pay freeze, the pupil premium and the triple lock on pensions. We must address the glaring unfairness in pay not only between the public and private sectors, but within the public sector. The best paramedic in this country can earn just one tenth of what the top NHS manager can earn. What does that say about our priorities? Some are bucking the trend. Sir Norman Bettison, the chief constable of West Yorkshire, described the idea that the public sector is competing with the private sector for talent as “costly and irresponsible nonsense”. He proposes to address public sector pay restraint incrementally, starting with the highest paid 25%. His proposal merits close consideration.
The second dimension of fairness in the CSR relates to the intergenerational allocation of resources. According to the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, a failure to tackle the deficit would leave each member of the next generation having to pay £200,000 extra in taxes just to enjoy the same level of public services that we and previous generations have enjoyed. What is fair about leaving our children with a tax bill of £200,000 each?
Helen Goodman
What is fair about those of us who had a free university education not paying extra tax while our children are to be burdened with extra debt?
Mr Raab
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, but the problem is that the university budget as it was configured under the previous Government was simply unsustainable. That is but one of the many examples of where they ducked the problem of reform and we have addressed it.
Finance Bill
Helen Goodman Excerpts(15 years, 7 months ago)
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Danny Alexander
I will not give way.
Clause 7 amends the tax rules for the expenses incurred by Members of Parliament, following the creation of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority. I know that that is of interest to many Members. The clause will broadly have the effect of maintaining the tax system and treatment that applied to similar expenses paid under the previous regime.
Helen Jones
Indeed, and if my hon. Friend will permit me I shall come on to that issue in a moment.
Before I move on, I want to mention the cuts that will specifically hit families with young children, including the scrapping of the baby element of child tax credits and the scrapping of the new toddler credits for one and two-year-olds. That will cost an eligible family more than £1,000 a year, even before they start paying the price of the VAT rise.
Helen Goodman
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to point out the devastating impact on families. Has she looked at the serious impact of the cuts in housing benefit on households with people who are in work and households with old-age pensioners? From the housing benefit cuts alone, it looks as if 1 million people will suffer further reductions of between £500 and £1,000 in their incomes.
Helen Jones
My hon. Friend is right, because some of the nastiest, meanest cuts in the Budget are to housing benefit and mortgage support. Mortgage interest support will be limited to the average mortgage rate, meaning many families will no longer be able to meet their payments. If someone is unlucky enough to lose their job and be out of work for 12 months, even if they have done their level best to find a job and applied for everything going, and even if there are no jobs, their housing benefit will be cut by 10%. That is not a work incentive, as the Government seem to think; it will lead to a spiral of repossessions, homelessness, family stress and breakdown, which will simply increase the cycle of worklessness.
Is that really what the Prime Minister meant when he said that this Government were going to be the most family-friendly Government on record? They will not be for families in my constituency.
Mr Meacher
The opposite conclusion should be drawn from the Irish economy. The Irish Government made huge, swingeing cuts of 12% to 15%, which absolutely decimated that economy. Sooner or later, of course there will be a revival in all economies, but at a fearful cost. We shall very much be going down the route of the Irish economy if this Budget goes through. If the hon. Gentleman were to go to the Republic of Ireland and ask people’s view of the finance budget of three or four years ago, I think that he would get a very different impression.
Helen Goodman
I support my right hon. Friend’s interpretation of what has been going on in Ireland. The construction industry has been completely destroyed, and there are empty shells of houses all around the countryside. Unemployment is sky high and, for the first time in many decades, people are emigrating from the Republic.
Mr Meacher
My hon. Friend helpfully assists my argument.
I want to be fair and point out the Government’s proposals on corporation tax and the small companies tax to get firms investing, as well as the national insurance cuts for firms outside the south-east to aid new hiring. That is all very welcome, but those measures will be more than cancelled out by the additional Tory spending cuts of £32 billion a year by 2014-15, and the additional £8 billion in tax increases. Let us take a highly topical example. It has been pointed out that the construction industry gets 40% of its work from public sector contracts. The 700 cutbacks in the schools building programme announced yesterday, and the nadir in house building, which is now at its lowest ebb since 1923, will almost certainly cost tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of building workers their jobs over the five-year period.
I shall give the House another example. According to the Treasury Red Book, the OBR forecast for public sector net investment is that it will be flattened from its current level of about £49 billion to just £21 billion in 2014-15. That is a staggering drop. It is not just a marginal change or a change in direction but a staggering reduction. So I repeat, where is the growth going to come from, especially as the banks are not lending? The Bank of England reported a fortnight ago that the flow of net lending to UK businesses was still negative. In other words, people are repaying money to the banks, rather than the banks handing out money to businesses. That compares with the situation in the first half of 2007, when there was annual growth of 20% in the relevant M4 figures for banks lending to businesses.
The great fallacy of the Bill—the fantasy black hole at the centre of the Budget—is that as the devastating public spending cuts take effect, the private sector will expand its hiring and investing to compensate. That is the Government’s argument, but the premise is completely indefensible. Why should the private sector do that? The only reason that private businesses invest is because they see the possibility of profitability and expansion, but where will that come from when consumption is falling, when the banks are not lending and when export markets are fading? Where is the growth to come from? All the coming misery is allegedly unavoidable because there is a crisis in the bond market, which there is not, and because the UK is supposedly like Greece, which it certainly is not.
Many of my colleagues have pointed out the real risk involved in this deficit-cutting fixation to shrink the state. Let us make no mistake, this cannot be justified economically; it has ideological motive. That is the fundamental bottom line in assessing this Budget. It will impale Britain on a very low growth path for years ahead, with rising joblessness and stagnant gross domestic product, even if the country does avoid a double-dip recession, although the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice admitted the other day with typical frankness that that remains an open possibility.
Even in the Chancellor’s own framework for the Budget, there remains the question of striking a balance between tax increases and spending cuts. The Chancellor chose an 80:20 ratio, but that is far more heavily weighted against public spending than in previous economic episodes of this kind, including under previous Tory Governments, such as that of the early 1990s. Poorer households will unquestionably be the main victims of the spending cuts, and even the tax increases—notably VAT—will of course impact most harshly on the poorer half of the population. This is anything but a fair Budget.
Even the two new taxes that impact directly on the rich will have little effect on them. The £2.5 billion bank levy will mainly be offset. There has been no mention of this, but it is fixed at the very low rate of 0.07% of eligible liabilities. One could hardly find a tax rate lower than that. One can be sure that it will be largely avoided through balance sheet adjustments away from short-term wholesale funding, together with other devices such as group restructuring and de-leveraging.
The second tax change that will affect the rich is the increase in capital gains tax to 28%, but that still takes it only halfway to parity with higher rate income tax, which is where it ought to be, and where Nigel Lawson—Nigel Lawson!—left it in the 1980s. The change will still allow people with very high incomes to dress up their income as capital gains so as to halve the tax that would otherwise be payable. The idea that the rich are making an equivalent sacrifice and—to use the mantra that I think will come back to haunt the Government—that we are all in it together is nothing more than a sick joke.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
May I begin by congratulating hon. Members on a series of excellent maiden speeches? My hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans) spoke. I did not know that area of the country at all before he did so, and I feel much better informed as to its great beauties. The hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) told the House, to its considerable relief, that he is not going to be a pugilist, as one of his predecessors once was, so I am glad to note that, if he disagrees with my speech, I may not end up with a broken nose—[Interruption.] I could not quite catch that, and I expect the Hansard reporters could not, either. My hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer), as Edmund Burke said of Pitt the Younger, is not so much a chip off the old block, as the old block itself. And finally, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Stephen Barclay) told us that he was—on the internet, under the same name—a cabaret artist. I may be rare in the country at large, but in this House probably not, in that I much prefer a political speech to a cabaret artist, so I am very glad that we had the wrong website for him.
Let me come to the matter at hand, the Second Reading of this incredibly important Finance Bill. It is, like the one in 1981, of considerable controversy but great importance. We have heard at length, but interestingly, from Opposition Members that, actually, this is not a serious circumstance, and that, if we pay off the debt, though a bit too high, in dribs and drabs, all will be well. Sadly, that just is not correct. The deficit that we have faced has reached levels that in peacetime we have never had, and a key factor about the funding of the deficit last year has been missed. It was that almost all the gilts that were issued were bought by the Bank of England under its programme of quantitative easing. That programme has now stopped.
Even with this Finance Bill, we face an increase in the amount that the Government need to raise from £40 billion to £160 billion, and if we had stuck to the Opposition’s proposals it would have been higher still. Where does that money come from? Who is willing to give this country £160 billion? As it is collected, who finds it harder to borrow? The answer is the very businesses that Opposition Members say find it difficult to make investment decisions. If we borrow and borrow, and the Government use up all the money, we force up interest rates for mortgage holders and squeeze out the investment that private companies need to make.
Helen Goodman
I am trying, but I am having great difficulty following the hon. Gentleman’s train of thought. On the one hand, he says, rightly, that the deficit and the debt stock are too large, but he then connects that with extremely high interest rates. We do not have extremely high interest rates; we have record low interest rates at the moment.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am sorry to say that the hon. Lady left my train of thought at the wrong station. The point I was making was that, if we carry on issuing gilts at an even faster rate, long-term interest rates will rise, and it is on long-term interest rates that mortgages end up being priced. If we look at the gilts market, we see that the very thought—the prospect, the hope—of a Conservative Government saw it rally, therefore reducing the cost of borrowing to people in this country, whether Her Majesty’s Government or private individuals. So yes, we have very low overnight rates, but the long-term rate set by the gilts market is more important for mortgages.
Mr Jones
It will, and I shall refer to that later. It will affect many people in my constituency, including some of the poorest.
In introducing his Budget, the Chancellor said:
“This emergency Budget deals decisively with our country’s record debts. It pays for the past, and it plans for the future. It supports a strong, enterprise-led recovery, it rewards work and it protects the most vulnerable in our society. Yes, it is tough, but it is also fair.”—[Official Report, 22 June 2010; Vol. 512, c. 166.]
His apprentice, in the form of the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, came before us today. He is wheeled out every time the Conservative party wants to do a nasty deed. I would have thought that he would wake up to the fact that the Conservatives use him and the Liberal Democrats as a shield.
Mr Jones
I am not sure that it is, because the Chief Secretary knows what he has signed up to. With his great experience as press officer for the Cairngorms national park, I am sure that he knows danger when he sees it. We need to expose the Liberal Democrats’ rank hypocrisy. They went into the election campaign arguing against most of the things to which they have now signed up. They have abandoned decades of commitment to some of the poorest in our society.
Those actions are predicated on a myth. The hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie) identified it earlier when he mentioned Canada. That is a worthwhile example, because if we want to explain what is happening, we need to examine in detail what happened in Canada in the 1990s. The Government are copying not only every single measure that the then Canadian Government introduced but the tactics, including the great consultation with the Canadian people about how to cut the budget.
Helen Goodman
I am sure my hon. Friend is aware that a large proportion of British Government debt is bought by domestic savers rather than overseas savers. That is another reason why the British Government are much less at risk from the international markets.
Mr Jones
The way the Government are going with this Budget, I am not sure that it will be. The hon. Gentleman will have to get used to the fact that we will question the Government on the proposals because they will have a draconian effect on my constituents in North Durham.
I must refer not just to the retail trade or charities, but to the Conservative grass roots. Tim Montgomerie, on his website ConservativeHome, said:
“First, it hurts the poor most of all and, second, both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats said they had ‘no plans’ to increase this tax. At a time when trust in politics is so low we don’t need ‘plans’ to emerge tomorrow.”
That was in advance of the announcement that is contained in the Bill.
The other sector that the Bill will have a dramatic effect on is the construction sector. Yesterday, we saw the Building Schools for the Future programme decimated, directly affecting thousands of jobs. I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) is back. He mentioned the decimation not only of BSF in his constituency but of other projects that have been put forward. Again, business and construction will have to carry the cost of the VAT increase.
Another sector that will be affected will be charities and the work that they do. I know that under the new Conservative approach, as part of the big society, charities are supposed to be stepping up to the mark, but they will be the ones that will be affected.
Helen Goodman
Has my hon. Friend noticed with respect to charities that the Government have now proposed to let welfare-to-work contracts on such a basis that only large companies with a lot of capital will be able to deliver them to unemployed people, thereby ruling out the voluntary sector from being involved in that worthwhile work?
Mr Jones
From a sedentary position, my hon. Friend rightly says that this is a stealth tax, and again, it will affect some of the poorest in our community. Earlier in the debate, we were talking about the level of fuel duty and rural communities where a car is not a luxury but an essential item that enables people to get around. This Budget will increase the insurance premiums for those drivers, with young drivers being particularly affected. Just because of their age, those drivers pay the highest premiums and they will have to pay an extra 1% under this Budget. In some cases, that will stop young drivers being able to get access to insurance.
Helen Goodman
On that point, does my hon. Friend agree that this will inhibit young people from learning to drive? Being able to drive is often an extremely important skill for people to have when looking for a job.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
In considering the Bill, we need to address three basic questions. First, does it raise the right amount of money? Secondly, will it promote growth? Thirdly, is it fair? Table 1.1 on page 15 of the Red Book is particularly useful. It lays the policy that the new coalition Government inherited alongside their own tax and spending increases. One of the most interesting things that it shows is that over the five-year period, the extra spending reductions required are £112 billion, and the extra tax increases required are £33 billion.
The policy that the Government inherited of halving the budget deficit over four years was set out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling) in March, and the detail of how that would be done was repeated today by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne).
One of the key issues that we have not considered so far tonight is whether we should be more concerned about the size of the deficit or the size of the debt. Government Members continually stress the importance of the deficit, but the main reason that the deficit is significant is because it contributes to the debt. Page 23 of the Red Book contains chart 1.3, “Consolidation in the cyclically-adjusted current budget”, and chart 1.4, “Public sector net debt”. They show the tremendous difference that will be made by the policies being pursued by the coalition Government. The policies that my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West laid out would have produced a debt to GDP ratio in 2014 of 75%—a high number and not where we would like to be in the long term. But for all the pain and agony that the coalition Government will impose on the country the net impact will be to reduce the debt to GDP ratio by 5% to 70%—just a 5% reduction. It is not even a 5% reduction now, but in 2014. We are being asked to believe that the markets will take a very different view of this small difference in four years’ time. That is the altar on which we are told we should smash our public services. That is why Labour Members regard this as a deeply ideological Budget.
David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)
I have been sat here now for an hour and a half listening to this passionate debate and one thing has come across loud and clear. The hon. Lady just gave figures for four years down the line. Does that not give you an indication of the amount of debt your party left this country in?
Mr Speaker
Order. May I gently say to the hon. Gentleman that I do not have a party? Some people have known that for some time.
Helen Goodman
In order to achieve that difference in the debt to GDP ratio four years hence, we will see cuts of 25% across most Departments, four times greater than those that Geoffrey Howe tried to impose on the country in the early 1980s. Even so, the tax burden will also rise by £33 billion. We have to question the judgment of a Government who are taking that amount of money out of the British economy.
Another issue is whether the Budget will promote growth. It is clear that in overall terms it will not do so. That is clear from the revisions to the forecasts made by the OBR, which show that growth is down and unemployment is up. Given the huge cuts proposed in the public sector—we heard about the first slice yesterday to the Building Schools for the Future programme—not only will the number of public sector jobs be reduced, but the knock-on effect will be significant increases in job losses in the private sector. The Government’s contention that 2 million private sector jobs can be created is just not credible. That is far more than was achieved in the 1990s when interest rates were cut aggressively and the pound depreciated by 25%. In those years, it took seven years for employment to grow by 1 million. Obviously, interest rates cannot be cut aggressively in the current situation, and it is highly unlikely we will see a depreciation of the pound against the euro, given that the European economies—our largest market—are in the state they are in. Under the Labour Government, 2.5 million jobs were created over 13 years, but that included extra jobs in the public sector, a housing boom and huge increases in financial services. The Government are now putting forward a prospectus that is simply not tenable. The argument that we have to attend to the level of the deficit because private sector investment is being crowded out by the public sector is also not credible, given that the economy has 4% spare capacity.
I turn to the measures in the Bill. On corporation tax, the coalition Government are cutting the rates—this is a long-standing pattern with the Tories—while cutting the allowances. What will that do for growth? How will that enable the economy to be rebalanced in the way the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills says is so important? Cutting allowances for investment is bad for manufacturing. The small and medium-sized firms in my constituency, where there is a lot of engineering and small manufacturing, provide several examples demonstrating what the problems are. Over the past month, I have visited two firms that make packaging, which means they supply the retail industry. Obviously, if shops are not doing very well, those firms are not doing very well. Clearly, they need a lot of big machinery to make the packaging, and if they are to continue to have the new, up-to-date machinery to do that, they need investment allowances.
Not so long ago, I visited a building and joinery firm that also has a lot of expensive machinery that it needs to keep up to date, and it also needs these investment allowances. Its contracts are largely dependent on the public sector and on schools and police stations being refurbished, so these cuts in the public sector will have huge knock-on effects in the private sector. Let us take a final example: a chemicals firm making sealant for aircraft. How will it fare with cuts to the defence budget, which is one of the budgets not being protected? Once again we have a complete picture that is totally incoherent. What the Government offer in practice and what they say they want to achieve are two completely different things.
Many hon. Members have commented on the unfairness of the low level of the bank levy and on the fact that the banks will gain more from the corporation tax cuts than they will lose from the increase in the bank levy. However, no one has asked why the bank levy is only being introduced from 1 January 2011. I would like Treasury Ministers to explain why there is a delay in the introduction of the bank levy. Surely that gives the banks a lot of time to move their assets around and avoid this tax, at which, as we all know, the financial services are particularly adept.
The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Mr David Gauke)
indicated dissent.
Helen Goodman
The Minister shakes his head. They clearly do not know the answer.
The Conservative-Liberal coalition cannot agree on its environmental policy either, which is presumably why, rather than acting on environmental taxes, we now have yet another commission to look into the climate change levy. Once again, therefore, a potentially progressive measure is being put on the backburner. We do not know when it will happen. We do not know when we will see progress on it.
Many hon. Members have spoken about the unfairness of VAT. The Government claim that they had no choice, but of course they had a choice, and they have made it. Their choice has been to change the national insurance regime and replace the increase in national insurance with an increase in VAT. However, one of the things that the Government will not admit is that VAT is also a tax on jobs. VAT also drives a wedge between the cost on employers for the goods and service that employees buy, and what they pay for them, so the notion that we can have an increase in VAT without seeing an impact on the number of jobs in the economy is yet another fantasy.
The Government have not explained what they are doing about the lower rate of VAT, on essentials, and many Opposition Members would like some clarification on that.
The third and final issue that I would like to discuss is fairness in the income tax and benefits system. The Liberal Democrats say that raising the personal allowance is their major attempt to be fair to poor people. The attempt is being made, but it has not produced the upshot that the Liberal Democrats are looking for. Rather, it has failed, because they have not taken account of the interaction with the tax credit reductions and the cuts in welfare benefits.
The distribution figures on page 66 of the Red Book purport to show what the position in the Budget is. However, a day or so later, we all discovered that chart A2, entitled “Impact of all measures as a per cent of net income by income distribution”, in fact included not just the measures taken by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in announcing his June Budget, but the measures taken previously by my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West, which were jumbled up with them. When those figures were stripped out and separated by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, we could see that the distributional impacts were totally different. Whereas my right hon. Friend’s Budget took less than 0.5% from the poorest and almost 7% from the richest, the June Budget took 2.5% from the poorest and 0.5% from the richest, so the claim of fairness is completely fraudulent.
Ms Angela Eagle
Has my hon. Friend also noticed that, mysteriously, the tables in the Red Book to which she has referred stop in the financial year 2012-13, which as it happens—I am sure that this is purely coincidental—is just before all the cuts in the public sector happen?
Helen Goodman
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The major cuts in benefits—in housing benefits, tax credits and benefits affecting families—come in the two final years.
The other thing that Members on the Government Benches simply do not seem to understand is the impact of the changes on work incentives. The Government say that they want to promote a climate for growth. One would think that if they were trying to promote a climate for growth, they would improve work incentives. The Government are about to test to destruction the theory that simply cutting benefits will improve work incentives. That is illustrated in another table in the Red Book—the Red Book is, I have to say, a rather useful document—which shows the changes in the marginal deduction rates. That table shows that almost 100,000 people will see increases in their marginal deduction rates as a result of the Budget—that is, a worsening of their incentives.
The level of transparency in the document is totally inadequate, and it has been extremely difficult to get information out of the Government. However, in conclusion, I would like to ask: what is the balance of risk that the British economy now faces? Is it spiralling inflation or is it deflation? The choice that the Government have made is far more likely to push us towards deflation.
Before he sat down, the Chancellor or the Exchequer said that the richest should pay the most and that the vulnerable would be protected in the Budget. The Government have failed every test. They have not been fair, they have not promoted growth, they are raising far too much money and this Budget will fail the nation.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation
Helen Goodman Excerpts(15 years, 7 months ago)
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Simon Hughes
I am, and always have been, very clear about that issue. When it was obvious that there was no possibility of a coalition with the Labour party, we had the option either of letting the Conservatives become a minority Government or of being in coalition with them. I am very clear that it was better for the country and for the issues that matter to me that we were part of the Government—that we were influencing matters and ensuring that there was a shared programme, not a Conservative programme. I say that completely honestly, and the hon. Gentleman, with a constituency that is in some ways not dissimilar to mine, would expect as much. I have made it my business to battle for the people whom I represent in order to ensure that we end up with a fairer Budget, and a fairer Britain as the outcome. The election, the Budget and the next exercise, the spending cuts, must all be judged on whether we end up with a fairer Britain.
Let me therefore address the remaining issues that follow from that. There has been some press speculation that, because certain items are expensive, they are unaffordable and should be dropped. They include items for the poor, such as the freedom pass and the winter fuel allowance. There is no issue between me and my friends on the Treasury Bench, but the coalition deal is a deal and what has been agreed must stand. There cannot be any unpicking of items in that deal, otherwise the whole thing risks falling apart. There is no suggestion of that from the Government; there is a suggestion from outside the Chamber of changes. However, the deal must be that we go down the committed road. We signed up and the Conservative party signed up, all compromising where appropriate, and that must stand. If there were any suggestion that it change, there would be trouble. I do not think that it will change, because I have heard nothing from colleagues in government suggesting that they want it to, but let us be clear from the beginning: it is a deal, and if it is stuck to, it will last the five years.
I turn to yesterday’s Institute for Fiscal Studies report. The IFS is a respected organisation. It made clear that the Budget as a whole increases fairness, but that if it excluded the matters that were implemented by the Labour Government in the Budget earlier this year it would not be. However, the Budget does not exclude them; it has endorsed and continued them. The right hon. Member for Doncaster North and I know each other well, but the Government have continued with those elements that the previous Labour Chancellor introduced in the routine Budget earlier this year.
Simon Hughes
No, we are not taking credit for it—we are just making sure that we look together at the measures that this country has as its tax regime in the coming days and months.
On that basis, this is a Budget that produces greater fairness. There is difficulty in reaching the people at the very bottom end of the income scale who are not in work, and there are other difficult areas. However, my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary and my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb), the Pensions Minister, who come from a proud tradition of knowing these issues well and campaigning for the poor and the disadvantaged, would not have signed up to something that undermines all the sorts of campaigns that they have been fighting for.
There remains the issue of VAT. I did not want a Budget with a VAT increase, nor did the Conservative party, and nor did the Labour party. I have no idea what was the view of some people in the Tory party behind the scenes, but there was a rumour that they would think it was a good thing. That is why, during the election campaign, we said that we thought it was a bad thing and challenged them to agree with us. Nevertheless, none of us ruled it out. I wish it were not here, as it is clearly less progressive than other taxes where people pay on the basis of income, but it is a necessary measure given that we have to fill the huge debt that the Labour party has left us.
We will vote for the Budget next week. However, if there are measures in the Finance Bill whereby we can improve fairness and make for a fairer Britain, then we will table amendments to try to do that. That is where we can make the difference, as we will during the spending review that will follow in the months ahead.