Charter for Budget Responsibility
Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts(10 years, 8 months ago)
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Ed Balls
I will make my speech on the welfare cap in a moment. I want to go back to the remark the Chancellor just made about last night’s vote. We have said that we do not think we should go ahead with the next cut in corporation tax and instead use all the money for a freeze in business rates for small businesses. Is the Chancellor really saying that large companies are business, but small businesses do not count? [Interruption.]
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. Just to remind everybody, shorter interventions would be helpful. We have 11 speakers to follow and I know the Front Benchers are desperate to hear the Back Benchers.
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. I want to hear the Chancellor. All the howling behind the Chancellor is not helping me, or other people who want to listen to him. I want to hear the Chancellor as, I am sure, do those on his own side.
Mr Osborne
If the right hon. Gentleman has something useful to say, let us hear it.
Mr Deputy Speaker
Seriously, I could not hear the Chancellor and I want to hear the shadow Chancellor. I want a little bit more respect to both sides.
Ed Balls
We are proposing that all the money from deferring the cut in corporation tax goes to small business in a business rates freeze. That is not a rise in the taxes on business, unless the Chancellor thinks that somehow small businesses are second class and do not count. Is that really what the Chancellor is saying?
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. I think we have heard enough noise. I want to hear the question that has been posed to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and I want to hear the reply. If people do not want to hear, I can explain where the door is. Somebody will be going through it if we do not have calm.
Ed Balls
The Chancellor must not mislead and misrepresent on the welfare state or on business taxes. Labour is not committed to an increase in business tax. He has said that three times. Every time he has said that, he has misled this House. I am saying that all the money from the corporation tax rate will go back to small business. That is the right position. Every time he misleads this House I will correct him, Mr Deputy Speaker.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
It was not aimed at an individual; it was aimed at the speech, I presume.
Ed Balls
We have said, Mr Deputy Speaker, that all the money from not proceeding with a further cut in corporation tax will go to small business with a business rates—[Interruption.] When the hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith) and the Chancellor say that is a tax rise for business, that is only true if they do not think small businesses are proper businesses, which is a bit like saying, “If you didn’t go to Eton, you didn’t go to a proper public school.”
Ed Balls
First, I went to an even lesser private school than the Chancellor of the Exchequer. [Interruption.] Neither of us went to Eton, unfortunately. [Interruption.] I agree with the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) that the rise in employment is good news, but I am concerned that in his—[Interruption.]
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. Mr Shelbrooke, we missed you on Budget day, but I am not missing you today, am I?
Ed Balls
The thing I am concerned about—this relates directly to the welfare cap—is that in the constituency of the hon. Member for The Wrekin long-term youth unemployment has gone up by 129% since 2010. I presume the hon. Gentleman would agree that that rise, based on the jobseeker’s allowance claimant count, is a real concern. I think he should be backing our welfare reforms. The fact is—[Interruption.] If the deputy Chief Whip, the right hon. Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands), is saying that because the hon. Member for The Wrekin has got a large majority, he does not have to worry about youth unemployment, that would be rather revealing. I hope he was not saying that.
Let me get on to the subject of the welfare cap. The Chancellor has failed to balance the books, he is contradicting his own charter by increasing national debt when it says he should be reducing it in 2015, and he has failed to control welfare spending. We have had plenty of tough talk and divisive rhetoric from the Chancellor, but his failure to tackle low wages, to deal with the cost of living crisis and to get more homes built means that he is spending £13 billion more than he planned in the spending review of 2010, and in last week’s Budget that was revised up by £1 billion in social security spending next year and the year after.
I want to explain where we are. We support the welfare cap. We support what is in the welfare cap. We agree that long-term bearing down on the costs of ageing is a good idea, but it should not be in the welfare cap in the next Parliament; we have agreed with that all along. We have also said we would match the Government’s spending in 2015-16, and the welfare cap over these five years, which we support, would rise on that basis. Although we support that, however, we will make different—
Mark Pritchard
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I said that the shadow Chancellor is a fair and reasonable man, and I know he would not want, even unintentionally, to mislead the House. He has got a lot of figures before him, so I have a great deal of sympathy for him, but the fact is that in my constituency of The Wrekin there has been a fall of more than 27% in youth unemployment over the past 12 months.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
That is a point of correction, rather than of order.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Mr Burns, I think you need to relax as well. No hon. Member will mislead this House, and I am sure that is not what the shadow Chancellor intended to say and I am sure he will be happy to withdraw it.
Ed Balls
I will not give way. We know from the head of the OBR that if an agreement is reached by this summer, this reform independently to audit all tax and spending commitments, including all issues referring to social security spending, can be done in time for next year’s general election. It is a matter of political will. The Chancellor seems to be happy to spend his time, and that of the House, trying to set political traps—traps that keep backfiring on him—but he does not seem happy, and neither do other Government Members, to join the hon. Member for Ipswich and allow the OBR to audit the Conservative party manifesto or our manifesto, so that we can have a proper, open and transparent debate at the next election. Why does the Chancellor not join this cross-party consensus and let the OBR play that role? What has he got to hide? This is really not a trap—it is just the right thing to do.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
May I just announce that we will start with a five-minute limit and see how we go from there?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. Mr Burrowes, you have nothing to hide, and I certainly do not want to hear you shout again—I want to hear Mr Gummer. You may not. If you do, you know where to go. Mr Gummer, you have the Floor.
Ben Gummer
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. To return to the core of the matter, this is important because it will hold both Governments and Oppositions to account. The shadow Chancellor might have wished to misconstrue the purpose of my private Member’s Bill. It is a pity he does that when he claims he is trying to forge a cross-party consensus, because it is wrong—
Ben Gummer
Not at all. Now his Back Benchers may wish to draw their own inference from that. In private, the shadow Chancellor has been going round saying that he would change it. He would put one in and take one out. [Hon. Members: “Ah.”] Even in the House, he will say that he will supplement one benefit—withdrawing the winter fuel allowance from richer pensioners will raise £100 million and he would use it to pay for the reversal of the under-occupancy charge, which will cost £500 million. How does he make up that £400 million difference? He has been forced to come to this House to explain his maths. That is precisely why this cap is important. It forces a degree of accountability on the shadow Chancellor in making him explain to the British public how his sums add up, when it is clear that they do not. How does he account for the £400 million difference between the two? [Interruption.] I wish to know the answer as does the British public. [Interruption.]
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman has only 30 seconds remaining. Stop shouting him down. I want to hear him.
Ben Gummer
The cap is good for Government finances and it is good for accountability because it forces the Opposition to be honest, even though they are seemingly unwilling to be so. It is also important in terms of how we deal with this welfare crisis. It will force Governments to deal with the underlying causes of welfare dependency rather than just jacking up the bill every time they are faced with a difficult problem.
amendment of the law
Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts(10 years, 8 months ago)
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Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)
First, I offer my condolences to the right hon. Gentleman, as a fellow Leeds MP, for the loss his family has suffered. As a fellow Leeds MP, he will know some of the pressures of development in Leeds, with some 70,000 units to be built in the city, despite talk in the Leeds core strategy. Does he agree that we must be careful about where these large-scale developments are built? If we are massively to change the shape of the village of Scholes in my constituency, say, that would have the unfortunate effect of lowering house prices and putting people into—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I think that the right hon. Gentleman, as he knows the area so well, has the message.
Hilary Benn
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his kind words. If he will bear with me, I shall directly address his point about where the houses should go in a moment.
We need to build more homes. Everybody recognises that. That is why, for example, we called for a help to build fund supported by Treasury guarantees to assist small and medium-sized builders in accessing finance to build some of those homes. I welcome the fact that the Government have listened and set up a builders’ finance fund, but history teaches us that we need to do more if we are successfully to change the way in which the market works.
Let me reflect on that for a moment. In the 1930s, when we reached the highest level of private house building ever achieved in the UK, the top 10 house building companies had a market share of 6% or 7%. In 1988, firms completing fewer than 500 units a year produced about two thirds of UK housing but by 2012 that had fallen to less than a third. In other words, as the number of small and medium-sized builders has declined and the big firms have grown larger, it has become easier for the more dominant firms to buy up the land. That is why small and medium-sized builders and custom builders say that it is hard for them to get access to land, so I agree that it is about helping them with finance, but it is also about enabling them to get the soil they need to build on.
The Secretary of State spoke about self-build and the House will remember that the former Housing Minister, now the chair of the Conservative party, promised a self-build revolution and pledged to double––double––the self-build sector. But the facts show that, last year, far from doubling the size of the sector, the number of self-build homes fell to the lowest level for 30 years. That is some revolution.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. There will be a six-minute limit on speeches—I have increased it by one minute.
Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)
May I join in the expression of condolence to the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) and say how sad I was to hear his news?
I want to welcome the Budget and reflect for a moment on the Chancellor’s considerable achievement. Fortified by a coalition and stronger for it, with the most appalling legacy left by the last Government, he has managed to turn things around so that our country is now well on the path to better days, with a growing economy, a remarkable number of new jobs emerging and an exciting future about which we can all be optimistic —in particular, I hope, our young people, many of whom are having a tough time of it.
I want especially to mention the Chancellor’s wise decision to freeze fuel duty, which is now 20p lower than it would have been under a Labour Government. Together with a well judged freeze in the council tax, on which I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, that will make a real difference to hard-pressed families in Mid Sussex and elsewhere. I want particularly to congratulate the Chancellor on the welcome plans that have been set out for supporting exports, science and innovation, and of course on the game-changing package of support for savers and pensioners, which has undoubtedly commanded the broadest support possible, and rightly so.
I hope that people now realise—I truly think that they do—the profound difference between the wilful, almost grotesque irresponsibility of the last Labour Government and the steely, genuine determination of the current Administration to get on top of the serious difficulties with a long-term economic plan whose success is now quite clear for all to see. However, the new networked world in which we in this country have to make our way, and for which it must be said we are ill prepared, is manifesting every day a global flow of ideas, innovations, new collaborative possibilities and new market opportunities, not only here but all over the world. To be frank, if we get it right, the world should be our oyster.
There are plenty of businesses and people who understand that. They understand that by tapping into the global flow of new ideas and opportunities, they can become the key to something that we badly need in this country: far greater productivity. It is nowhere near good enough here, and it is the key to growth and increasing prosperity.
All of that will inevitably, and sadly, involve seismic change. I congratulate the Government on the announcement in the Budget of £42 million for the new Alan Turing institute and £74 million for the cell therapy manufacturing centre and the graphene innovation centre, all of which will greatly increase our chances of helping to export our way out of financial difficulties by accessing the fastest-growing markets around the world, particularly in the life sciences, agricultural products, science, medicine, energy and of course services.
My great anxiety is how our country will cope as we try to respond to changes in technology, globalisation and markets that have, in a very short time, made the decently waged, medium-skilled job increasingly unavailable. That is very serious for an economic model such as that in our country, and it is my firm belief that in not too short a time, most of the decently paid jobs will inevitably be those where high skills are at a premium.
I applaud the work of my right hon. Friend the Education Secretary and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills as they try to answer those challenges, but we must now acquire a new level of political imagination, a combination of further, large education reforms, and an unprecedented collaboration among schools, businesses, universities and the Government, to change fundamentally how people are trained, and enable them to keep on training and learning throughout their working life. That will require major tax reforms and for us to consider in a more careful manner—I say this very deliberately—some of the immigration changes that are under way, in the interests of our economic growth.
Those ideas need to come from across the political spectrum. They will not be the prerogative of any one party, and there will need to be a willingness to meet people half way. We need to attract and enable the kind of talent to come to this country that can constantly spin off new ideas and start-ups, which are undoubtedly already the cause of most new, good jobs. It makes perfect sense: if we are to have more employees, we need more employers. Although that huge transformation, driven by the networked world and all that it involves, takes place—
Amendment of the Law
Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts(10 years, 8 months ago)
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Ed Balls
The site for that new and welcome investment was designated under the last Labour Government as a result of my hon. Friend’s campaigning. We all want manufacturing investment to rise, but what worries me is that over the past two years, since the Chancellor’s “march of the makers” speech, manufacturing output has actually fallen by 1.3%. That is the reality.
As for house building, it is at its lowest level since the 1920s. We believe that the new Governor of the Bank of England is right to be worried that the recovery is not yet secure or balanced. That is why it is vital that the Chancellor does more to get more homes built for millions who aspire to get on to the housing ladder but find it hard at the moment. I have to say to him, we backed Help to Buy, but he should have reduced the limit from £600,000. There should not be a taxpayer guarantee for people buying homes for £500,000 or £600,000. We also need to do more to invest in affordable housing. That is the only way to avoid a lop-sided recovery, demand running ahead of supply and rising prices, putting pressure on the Governor of the Bank of England to slow the housing market through higher mortgage rates earlier than we need in the recovery. That would put business investment at risk and undermine the budgets of hard-working people across our country.
The Chancellor should have listened to the CBI, the International Monetary Fund and the Opposition and acted more boldly to boost investment in housing supply. He should have listened to Labour, and he should have listened to the Business Secretary, too. We have both warned of the danger of lop-sided and unbalanced growth. Like us, the Business Secretary was right to warn back in 2010 that the pace of deficit reduction risked choking off recovery. The Prime Minister was wrong last autumn to dismiss the Business Secretary as a Jeremiah when he warned about the unbalanced nature of the recovery by saying:
“We mustn’t now settle for a short-term spurt of growth, fuelled by an old-fashioned property boom…there are already amber lights flashing.”
I also remind the House of what the Business Secretary said about unbalanced growth just a few weeks ago:
“The shape of the recovery has not been all that we might have hoped for”.
He was right to make those warnings, but time after time over the past few years when he has publicly made such warnings about the risks, he has been ignored. The problem is, the Business Secretary is a member of the Cabinet that is doing the ignoring. How can he keep on ignoring himself again and again?
As for the top-rate tax cut, which I know a number of Government Members have criticised, I remind the Business Secretary that he said at the weekend:
“I don’t understand why people need a million quid a year.”
What we do not understand is why he has given people on a million quid a year a tax cut of £42,500 each and every year. He asks for sympathy—he told The Guardian a few weeks ago that
“since being in government I have become much more enslaved these days”.
I say “Free the Cable One”. Is it not the sad truth that he is not enslaved but in hock? He is not captive, he has capitulated. It is a Tory agenda, and he is part of it. He knows it, and he should get out of it before it is too late.
As for the Chancellor, he has certainly been busy in recent weeks, and not just preparing his Budget. The manifesto is being written, the team is being assembled, the campaign is under way. But the enemy is not called Ed, and it is not the general election that is preoccupying him. He has his eyes on a different prize. This is what his new best friend, the Education Secretary, said to The Mail on Sunday—[Interruption.] Government Members do not want to hear what he said, do they? [Interruption.]
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I think we do want to hear what the right hon. Gentleman has to say.
Ed Balls
They do not want to hear this, so before I remind people of what the Education Secretary said, let me tell the House what was said yesterday about the cost of living, the Budget, and all those matters, by the outgoing Conservative hon. Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price): “The biggest impediment”—[Interruption.] I really think that hon. Members, especially those with small majorities, should listen to what she said.
Financial Statement
Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts(10 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Before I call the Chancellor of the Exchequer, it is convenient to remind hon. Members that copies of the Budget resolutions will be available in the Vote Office at the end of the Chancellor’s speech. It may also be appropriate to remind hon. Members that it is not the norm to intervene on the Chancellor of the Exchequer or the Leader of the Opposition.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr George Osborne)
I can report today that the economy is continuing to recover, and recovering faster than forecast. We set out our plan, and together with the British people we held our nerve. After the mess we were left, we are putting Britain right, but the job is far from done. Our country still borrows too much; we still do not invest enough, export enough or save enough, so today we do more to put that right.
This is a Budget for building a resilient economy. If you are a maker, a doer or a saver, this Budget is for you. It is all part of a long-term economic plan—a plan that is delivering security for the people of this country. I have never shied away from telling the British people about the difficult decisions we face, and just because things are getting better, I do not intend to do so today. Yes, the deficit is down by a third, and now in the coming year it will be down by a half, but it is still one of the highest in Europe, so today we take further action to bring it down.
Yes, investment and exports are up, but Britain has 20 years of catching up to do, so today we back businesses who invest and export. Yes, manufacturing is growing again, as my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle (Andrew Stephenson) just reminded us, and jobs are being created across the country, but manufacturing halved under the last Government, with all bets on the City of London. So today, we support manufacturers and back all regions of our country. While as a nation we are getting on top of our debts, for many decades Britain has borrowed too much and saved too little, so in this Budget we make sure hard-working people keep more of what they earn and more of what they save.
Yesterday we set out our support for parents with tax-free child care. Today support for savers is at the centre of this Budget, as we take another step towards our central mission: economic security for the people of Britain.
Let me turn to today’s forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility. I am grateful to Robert Chote, Steve Nickell and their team, and thank Graham Parker for agreeing to serve with them for another term. It is a credit to the OBR that we now take it for granted that the figures presented at this Dispatch Box are not fiddled but fair and independent. A year ago at the Budget, the OBR forecast the economy to grow by just 0.6% in 2013. It now confirms that it grew by three times as much. At the autumn statement, it significantly revised up its expectations for future growth. Today I can tell the House it is revising up its forecast again. A year ago, it predicted that growth in 2014 would be 1.8%; at the autumn statement, 2.4%; today, the OBR forecasts growth in 2014 of 2.7%. That is the biggest upward revision to growth between Budgets for at least 30 years. Growth next year is also revised up, to 2.3%; then, it is 2.6% in 2016 and 2017; and with the output gap closed around a year earlier than previously predicted, growth returns to around its long-term trend, at 2.5%, in 2018. Taken together, these growth figures mean our economy will be £16 billion larger than was forecast just four months ago.
There is another prediction the OBR makes today that the House will want to know about. Six years ago, Britain suffered a great recession. We had the biggest bank bail-out in the world. We had the biggest deficit since the war. We suffered the deepest recession in modern times—or as the shadow Chancellor put it, some mistakes were made. But later this year the OBR expects Britain to reach the point when our economy is finally larger than before it collapsed six years ago. That is because we are now growing faster than Germany, faster than Japan, faster than the United States—in fact, there is no major advanced economy in the world growing faster than Britain today.
But we should be alert to the risks. The euro area is slowly recovering, but as the OBR cautions today,
“further damaging instability remains possible”.
There is volatility in emerging markets, and while for now the OBR does not expect the situation in Ukraine to have a “large impact” on us, it does warn that an escalation risks higher commodity prices, higher inflation and lower growth. It is a reminder of why we need to build our economy’s resilience.
At home, the biggest risk is clear: abandoning the economic plan that is working. And nowhere is the success of that plan more evident than in job creation. Today again we are reminded that the most important consequence of our plan is more people in work, with each job meaning a family more secure. Some in this House predicted that our plan meant a million jobs would be lost. They were spectacularly wrong. The pace of net job creation under this Government has been three times faster than in any other recovery on record: 1.3 million more people in work. The latest figures today show a staggering 24% fall in the claimant count in just one year, and the fastest fall in the youth claimant count since 1997. The OBR now forecasts one and a half million more jobs over the next five years and unemployment down from the 8% we inherited to just over 5%., and the OBR predicts earnings will grow faster than inflation this year and in every year of the forecast. That is why the country can afford a real-terms increase in the national minimum wage. This is a Government whose plan is delivering jobs. We now have a record number in work; a record number of women in work; and for the first time in 35 years, a higher employment rate than the United States of America. That is what we mean when we say we are getting Britain working.
There can be no economic security if there is no control of the public finances. Before I presented my first Budget to this House, the Government were borrowing £1 in every £4 they spent, and we were faced with the threat of a sovereign debt crisis. We have taken difficult decisions, each and every one of which was opposed. But thanks to those decisions, the IMF now says that we are achieving the largest reduction in both the headline and the structural deficits of any major advanced economy in the world. There were those who said repeatedly that the deficit was going to go up. Instead, I can tell the House that the OBR has revised down the underlying deficit in every year of its forecast. Before we came to office the deficit was 11%. This year it says it will be 6.6%—lower than forecast and down a third; next year, 5.5%—down a half; then it will fall to 4.2%, 2.4% and reach 0.8% in 2017-18. In 2018-19, it is forecasting no deficit at all; instead, at plus 0.2%, a small surplus. But only if we work through the plan.
The Government’s fiscal mandate is met, and continues to be met a year early, yet while the underlying structural deficit falls, it falls no faster than was previously forecast, despite higher growth. This goes to the heart of the argument this Government have made: faster growth alone will not balance the books. Securing Britain’s economic future means there will have to be more hard decisions—more cuts. The question for the British people is: who has the credibility to deliver them?
Let me turn to the underlying cash borrowing numbers. Britain was borrowing £157 billion a year before we came to office. This year we expect to borrow £108 billion. That is £12 billion less than forecast a year ago. Indeed, even since the autumn statement the OBR has revised down borrowing in every single year. In 2014-15 it says it will fall to £95 billion. Then it falls again to £75 billion in 2015-16, then £44 billion, and then down to £17 billion. In 2018-19 we will not be borrowing at all—we will have a small surplus of £5 billion.
Taken together, these new figures mean Britain will be borrowing £24 billion less than was forecast. That is more than we spend in an entire year on the police and criminal justice system. Lower borrowing and a smaller deficit mean less debt. While we meet the debt target one year late as before, the OBR has revised down national debt in every single year of the forecast. It expects it to be 74.5% of GDP this year, 77.3% next year, peaking at 78.7% in 2015-16—lower than the 80% previously forecast—before falling to 78.3% in 2016-17, then falling to 76.5% and then 74.2% in 2018-19.
So, growth is up, the deficit is set to halve, debt is lower. and the biggest single saving of all is a £42 billion reduction in the interest payments we will have to make on that debt, saving every family in the nation the equivalent of almost £2,000, money that was going to creditors around the world, now going to pay for the NHS and other public services.
It is because we have a credible fiscal plan that the Bank of England can provide the support needed to businesses and families. Yesterday I confirmed the appointments of Anthony Habgood to chair the court and Ben Broadbent and Minouche Shafik to be the new deputy governors for monetary policy and for markets and banking respectively. All three make a strong team at the Bank stronger still.
I today reconfirm my remit for the Monetary Policy Committee, including the target of 2% CPI inflation, which the OBR expects will be met this year, next year and in the years ahead. I also set out the remit for the Financial Policy Committee, the body created by us to avoid the mistakes of the past. Although the OBR forecast that house prices will remain below their real-terms peak until at least 2018, I have asked the committee to be particularly vigilant against the emergence of potential risks in the housing market. To enhance our resilience and protect us from economic shocks, we will also continue rebuilding our foreign exchange reserves. Those reserves are now 50% higher than when we came to office.
Of course, the prerequisite of sound money is a sound currency, and the £1 coin has become increasingly vulnerable to forgery. It is now among the oldest coins in circulation, and one in 30 £1 coins is counterfeit. That costs businesses and the taxpayer millions each year, so I can tell the House that we will move to a new, highly secure £1 coin. It will take three years. We will consult industry. Our new £1 coin will blend the security features of the future with inspiration from our past. In honour of our Queen, the coin will take the shape of one of the first coins she appeared on: the threepenny bit. A more resilient pound for a more resilient economy.
Sound money depends, too, on sound public finances. We are entering a critical phase and we must learn from the past. Every time a post-war Government have embarked on public spending cuts, real spending has risen back to its previous heights within three years. Sure enough, there are those today who say: “Ease up, spend more, borrow more.” That would mean debt rising towards 100% of GDP, undermining growth. It would be a huge mistake, and we are not going to let that happen.
Many Chancellors faced with a recovering economy and improved borrowing forecasts before an election would be tempted to squander the gains. I will not do that today. These gains were hard won by the British people, and we are not going to jeopardise their economic security. Britain is not going back to square one, so in this Budget all decisions are paid for. Taxes are lower but so, too, is spending, for we must bring our national debt substantially down. Analysis published today shows that just running a balanced current budget does not secure that. Instead, Britain needs to run an absolute surplus in good years. We will fix the roof when the sun is shining, to protect Britain from future storms.
So I can confirm that, in addition to the cuts this year and next, there will be cuts in the next Parliament too. To lock in our country’s commitment to this path of deficit reduction, we will seek the support of Parliament in a vote, and I will bring forward a new charter for budget responsibility this autumn. We are taking further difficult decisions now so we can reduce the deficit and protect our NHS and schools and meet our obligations to the world’s poorest by contributing 0.7% of our national income to help them. I am proud that we are doing that.
On public service pensions, we implemented the reforms proposed by John Hutton. Once again the House will want to thank him for his work. We will ensure that schemes are properly valued, saving the taxpayer over £1 billion a year. We are continuing with pay restraint in the public sector—an essential part of maintaining sound finances and economic stability. We will also insist on the prudent management of departmental finances. Thanks to the efforts of my colleagues in Cabinet, these now regularly come in under budget. In order to lock in these underspends, I said in December that we would reduce spending by £1 billion in 2015-16. Today, I am making that overall billion-pound reduction permanent.
I look forward to the work my excellent colleague the Chief Secretary is now doing, with the Cabinet Office, to find further efficiencies. Difficult decisions on public service pay and pensions, further savings in Departments, a cap on welfare bills—none of these decisions is easy, but they are the right thing to ensure that Britain lives within her means.
We set out today the details of that welfare cap, and we will seek the support of Parliament for it in a vote next week. From housing benefit to tax credits, the full list of benefits included in the cap is published in the Budget document today. Only the state pension and the cyclical unemployment benefits are excluded. I am setting it at £119 billion in 2015-16. It will rise, but only in line with forecast inflation, to £127 billion in 2018-19.
Britain should always be proud of having a welfare system that helps those most in need, but never again should we allow its costs to spiral out of control and its incentives to become so distorted that it pays not to work. In future, any Government who want to spend more on benefits will have to be honest with the public about the costs, will need the approval of Parliament, and will be held to account by this permanent cap on welfare.
The distributional analysis published today shows that the Budget decisions, and the decisions across this Parliament, mean that the rich are making the biggest contribution to the reduction of the deficit, because we are all in this together. [Interruption.]
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. The right hon. Gentleman needs to get to the end of the speech without anybody having to intervene.
Mr Osborne
The independent statistics show that under this Government income inequality is at its lowest level for 28 years, lower than at any single moment under Labour. Thanks to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister’s leadership we have driven the international efforts to develop tough new global tax rules that stop rich individuals hiding their tax and companies shifting their profits offshore. Here at home we are collecting twice as much as before through compliance—collecting the taxes that are due—and the number of registered tax avoidance schemes has fallen by half.
While the vast majority of wealthy people pay their taxes, there is still a small minority who do not. We will now require that those who have signed up to disclosed tax avoidance schemes pay their taxes, like everyone else, up front. This will apply in future to schemes covered by our general anti-abuse rule too. If people feel they have been wronged, they can of course go to court. If they win, they get their money back with interest. We have already consulted on this idea; now we will implement it. The OBR confirms that this will bring forward £4 billion of tax receipts and it will fundamentally reduce the incentive to engage in tax avoidance in the future.
Public tolerance for those who do not pay their fair share evaporated long ago, but we had to wait for this Government before there was proper action. Today we go further still. I am increasing the budget of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to tackle non-compliance. We will block transfers of profits between companies within groups to avoid tax. We will increase tax credit debt recovery rates for those with sufficient earnings. We will give HMRC modern powers to collect debts from bank accounts of people who can afford to pay but have repeatedly refused to do so, like most other western countries. We will increase compliance checks to catch migrants who claim benefits that they are not entitled to, saving the taxpayer almost £100 million. We will take action to curb potential misuse of the enterprise investment and venture capital trust schemes, and we are expanding the new tax that we introduced to stop people avoiding stamp duty by owning homes through a company.
We will expand the tax on residential properties worth over £2 million to those worth more than £500,000, and from midnight tonight anyone purchasing residential property worth more than £500,000 through a corporate envelope will be required to pay 15% stamp duty. None of this applies to homes that are rented out. Many of these are empty properties held in corporate envelopes to avoid stamp duty. This abuse will end.
Another abuse has been the manipulation of the LIBOR rate. Our regulators are broadening their investigation to the foreign exchange markets and I will keep the House informed. Financial services are a hugely important industry to this country which I want to promote around the world. But I also want the fines paid by those who have demonstrated the worst values to support those who demonstrate the best of British values. I am talking about the men and women in our armed forces who risk their lives to keep us free. So I will continue to direct the use of the LIBOR fines to our military charities and our emergency service charities too. Because the sums continue to grow through the fines, I can today extend that support to our search and rescue and lifeboat services, and provide £10 million of support to our scouts, guides, cadets and St John Ambulance. I am today waiving inheritance tax for those in our emergency services who give their lives protecting us.
I will also relieve VAT on fuel for our air ambulances and inshore rescue boat services across Britain, and provide a new air ambulance for London, all in response to huge and heartfelt public demand and the campaigns of my hon. Friends the Members for Hexham (Guy Opperman), for Brentford and Isleworth (Mary Macleod) and for Argyll and Bute (Mr Reid).
Tomorrow is the 21st anniversary of the IRA bomb that killed young Tim Parry and Johnathan Ball. Survivors for Peace was set up by Tim’s parents, Colin and Wendy, and it no longer receives lottery funding. My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) and the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Dame Tessa Jowell) have both raised this issue, and I know myself what incredible work they do. To honour the memory of all victims of terrorism, we will provide the funding that this programme needs. Last month with the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, my right hon. Friend the Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell), I visited Lockerbie to pay my respects on the 25th anniversary of that tragedy. We will support the scholarships created for local people there to study in the United States.
Further, this summer, many services of remembrance will be held in our cathedrals to mark the great war, so we are providing £20 million to support the repairs that these historic buildings need. We will also support the celebration of the 800th anniversary of the signing of the Magna Carta next year. King John’s humbling defeat centuries ago seems unimaginably distant—a weak leader who had risen to the top after betraying his brother, compelled by a gang of unruly barons to sign on the dotted line. I will provide a grant to the Magna Carta Trust to ensure that today’s generation learns the lessons of the past.
We will not have a secure economic future if Britain does not earn its way in the world. We need our businesses to export more, build more, invest more and manufacture more. Our exports have grown each year and the OBR today forecasts rising export growth in the future. Our combined goods exports to Brazil, India and China have risen faster than those of our competitors, but we are starting from a low base and we have many lost years to catch up. Britain has to up its game on exports, and today we do. With Stephen Green, and now Ian Livingston, we are expanding the reach and support that UK Trade & Investment offers British businesses. For many firms the truth is that they can win the contract only if they are backed by competitive export finance. For decades the British Government have been the last port of call, when we should be backing British businesses wanting to sell abroad. Today, we fundamentally change that, and we are going to start with the finance we provide our exporters. We will double the amount of lending available to £3 billion, and I can announce that from today the interest rates we charge on that lending will be cut by a third. Instead of having the least competitive export finance in Europe, we will have the most competitive.
We will also reform air passenger duty to end the crazy system where you pay less tax travelling to Hawaii than you do travelling to China or India. It hits exports, puts off tourists and creates a great sense of injustice among our Caribbean and south Asian communities here in Britain. From next year, all long-haul flights will carry the same, lower, band B tax rate that you now pay to fly to the United States. Private jets were not taxed at all under the previous Government. Today they are, and I am increasing the charge so they pay more. And because we want all parts of our country to see better links with the markets of the future, we are going to provide start-up support for new routes from regional airports, such as Liverpool, Leeds or, indeed, Inverness. More support for businesses; competitive finance; cheaper global flights—I want the message to go out that we are backing our exporters, so that wherever you are around the world you cannot fail to see “Made in Britain”.
One key British export is the North sea’s oil and gas. We will take forward all recommendations of the Wood report, and we will review the whole tax regime to make sure it is fit for the purpose of extracting every drop of oil we can. We will introduce now a new allowance for ultra-high pressure, high temperature fields to support billions of pounds of investment, thousands of jobs and a significant proportion of our country’s energy needs. Even with these measures, the North sea is a mature basin, and the OBR has today revised down the forecast tax receipts by a further £3 billion over the period. The Scottish economy is doing well and jobs are being created, but this is a reminder of how precarious the budget of an independent Scotland would be. These further downgrades in the tax receipts would leave independent Scots with a shortfall of £1,000 per person—Britain is better together.
Our country needs to export more and it also needs to build more. House building is up 23%, but that is not enough. That is why we are making further reforms to our planning system and offering half a billion pounds of finance to small house building firms; it is why we are signing city deals across the country to get more built, with a new funding deal this week for Cambridge; it is why we are giving people a new right to build their own homes and providing £150 million of finance today to support that; it is why we are funding regeneration of some of the worst conditions in urban housing estates that we have in this country, and we are extending the current support for mortgage interest scheme to 2016; and it is why we have got Help to Buy.
We are extending the Help to Buy equity loan scheme for the rest of the decade, so that we get 120,000 new homes built. In the south-east, where the pressure is greatest, we are going to build new homes in Barking Riverside, regenerate Brent Cross and build the first new garden city in almost 100 years at Ebbsfleet. The Opposition have said they already announced the homes in Ebbsfleet a decade ago, and they did make the announcement. Do you know how many homes have been built since then? It is less than 300; it was more “ebb” than “fleet”. Instead, we are going to build 15,000 homes there, put in the infrastructure, set up the development corporation and make it happen. I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) and for Gravesham (Mr Holloway) for their tremendous support. And we will be publishing a prospectus on the future of garden cities. Taken all together, the housing policies I announce today will support over 200,000 new homes for families—we are getting Britain building.
We are also going to get Britain investing. Britain has under-invested for decades. We are the first Government to have committed to long-term and rising capital budgets, and this autumn I will set out the detailed plans for the projects that will be supported for the rest of the decade. We have been reminded again this week of the benefits of high-speed rail and what that will bring to the north of our country, and I am determined that it goes further north faster. Today, I have approved a £270 million guarantee for the Mersey gateway bridge, thanks to the hard work of my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans). And, tomorrow we introduce legislation to give new tax and borrowing powers to the Welsh Government to fund their infrastructure needs, and they can start now on work to improve the M4 in south Wales.
Because of the exceptionally poor weather this winter, I am making an additional £140 million available, on top of what has already been provided, for immediate repairs and maintenance to damaged flood defences across Britain. Our roads have taken a battering, too. My hon. Friend the Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis) has been a very persistent campaigner for resources to repair the potholes in his constituency and across the country. His persistence has paid off and I am making £200 million available, which local authorities can bid for—I trust Northampton will be making an application.
Modern infrastructure is part of a successful economy. So, too, is a modern industrial strategy. If Britain is not leading the world in science and technology and engineering, we are condemning our country to fall behind. So we will establish new centres for doctoral training, for cell therapy and for graphene—a great British discovery that we should break the habit of a lifetime with and commercially develop in Britain. To make sure we give young people the skills they need to get good jobs in this modern world, we have doubled the number of apprenticeships, and I will extend the grants for smaller businesses to support over 100,000 more apprentices. And we will now develop new degree-level apprenticeships, too.
In my maiden speech here in this House I spoke of Alan Turing, the code breaker who lived in my constituency, who did more than anyone else—almost—to win the war and who was persecuted for his sexuality by the country he helped to save. I am delighted that he has finally received a posthumous royal pardon. Now, in his honour, we will found the Alan Turing Institute to ensure that Britain leads the way again in the use of big data and algorithm research. I am determined that our country is going to out-compete, out-smart and out-do the rest of the world.
Government investment is part of the story, but we need business investment, too. When we came to office, Britain had one of the least competitive business tax regimes in Europe—now we have the most competitive. Thanks to the Office of Tax Simplification, we have already cut burdens on administration, and I am grateful to Michael Jack, John Whiting and their team for their hard work. Today, we accept their recommendation to move the collection of class 2 national insurance contributions into self-assessment, abolishing for 5 million people this wholly unnecessary bureaucracy. And we have cut business tax rates, too. Corporation tax was 28% when we came to office. In just two weeks, corporation tax will be down to 21%, high street stores will get £1,000 off their rates and every business in the country will get the employment allowance—a £2,000 cash-back on jobs. Next year, corporation tax will reach 20% and we take under-21s out of the jobs tax altogether.
So businesses are keeping more of their money to create jobs and invest in the future—today, I want to go further. Many of the enterprise zones we created are now flourishing, so the business rates discounts and enhanced capital allowances will be extended for another three years. And I can confirm that, with the Northern Ireland Executive, we will establish the first enterprise zone there near Coleraine. I am raising the rate of the research and development tax credit for loss-making small businesses from 11% to 14.5%. Two years ago, I launched the seed enterprise investment scheme to help finance start-ups. It has been a great success and I am making it permanent. We are backing investment into social enterprises with a social investment tax relief at a rate of 30%. And we are supporting our creative industries, too. The European Commission has today approved the extension of our film tax credit, and I will apply the same successful approach to theatre, especially regional theatre. From this September, there will be a 20% tax relief for qualifying productions—and 25% for regional touring. And we are expanding by a third the size of the cultural gift scheme.
But I want to do something today that helps all businesses to invest. In 2012, I increased the annual investment allowance tenfold to £250,000. This generous allowance was due to expire at the end of this year, but all the business groups urged me to extend it. So we will, but we will do more. We will double the investment allowance to £500,000, extend it to the end of 2015 and start it next month—99.8% of businesses will get a 100% investment allowance. Almost every business across Britain will pay no up-front tax when they invest in the future. It costs £2 billion in the short term, so when we say that we are going to get Britain investing and to back growth around the country, we mean it.
A resilient economy is a more balanced economy, with more exports, more building, more investment and more manufacturing too. We have got to support our manufacturers if we want to see more growth in our regions. To those who say that manufacturing is finished in the west, I say look at America, which will see up to 5 million new manufacturing jobs by the end of this decade, and I will tell you why. US industrial energy prices are half those in Britain. We need to cut our energy costs. We are going to do this by investing in new sources of energy, new nuclear power, renewables, and a shale gas revolution. We are going to do this by promoting energy efficiency. Today, we are tilting the playing field—extending the 2% increase in company car tax in 2017-18 and 2018-19 while increasing the discount for ultra low emission vehicles, and reducing the rate of fuel duty on methanol. But above all, we are going to have a £7 billion package to cut energy bills for British manufacturers, with benefits for families and other businesses too.
First, I am capping the carbon price support rate at £18 per tonne of carbon dioxide from 2016-17 for the rest of the decade. This will save a mid-sized manufacturer almost £50,000 on its annual energy bill, and it will save families £15 a year on their bills too, over and above the £50 we have already taken off.
Secondly, I am extending the existing compensation scheme for energy-intensive industries for a further four years to 2019-20. Our steelmakers, chemical plants, paper mills and other heavy energy users make up 35% of our manufacturing exports and employ half a million people. This scheme helps the companies most at risk of leaving to remain in the UK.
Thirdly, I am introducing new compensation worth almost £1 billion to protect these energy-intensive manufacturers from the rising costs of the renewables obligation and the feed-in tariffs, otherwise green levies and taxes will make up over a third of their energy bills by the end of the decade.
Fourthly, I am exempting from the carbon price floor the electricity from combined heat and power plants, which hundreds of manufacturers use. This entire package will be delivered without any reduction in the investment in renewable energy.
Today, I have cut the cost of manufacturing in Britain. Half of the firms that will benefit most are in the north of England, and a third are in Scotland and Wales. Thousands of good jobs are protected. We have a more resilient economy, a Government on the side of manufacturers and a Britain that makes things again.
We are backing exports, backing manufacturing and backing a Britain that builds. We also want to help hard-working people keep more of what they earn and of what they save. That is what we have done by freezing council tax, freezing fuel duty and raising the personal allowance to £10,000. From next year, there will be tax-free child care—20% off for up to £10,000 of child care costs for parents, and an early years pupil premium to help the most disadvantaged.
Today we can do more to help. Let me start with duties. I can confirm that the fuel duty rise planned for September will not take place. Petrol will be 20p lower per litre than it would have been under the plans of the previous Government.
Turning to gambling duties, fixed odds betting terminals have proliferated since gambling laws were liberalised a decade ago. These machines are highly lucrative, and therefore it is right that we now raise the duty on them to 25%. We will also extend the horserace betting levy to bookmakers who are based offshore, and we will look at wider levy reform and at introducing a “racing right” to support the sport.
While the number of betting machines have grown, the number of bingo halls has plummeted by three quarters over the last 30 years, yet bingo duty has been set at the high rate of 20%. Now that fuel duty is frozen, my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) has turned his energy and talent into a vigorous campaign to cut bingo duty, ably assisted by my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous). They want the rate cut to 15%. I can go further. Bingo duty will be halved to 10% to protect jobs and to protect communities.
Let me turn now to tobacco and alcohol duties. Tobacco duty has been rising by 2% above inflation and will do so again today, as previously confirmed. This escalator was due to end next year, but there are no sound health reasons to end it, so it will be extended for the rest of the next Parliament.
We have introduced new laws to prevent alcohol from being sold below minimum tax rates, and this helps to prevent supermarkets from undercutting pubs and it helps to stop problem drinking. It is a far more targeted approach than the alcohol duty escalator, which was introduced by the previous Government and hated by so many responsible drinkers. Today, I am scrapping that escalator for all alcohol duties. They will rise with inflation, with these exceptions: Scottish whisky is a huge British success story. [Hon. Members: “Scotch whisky.”] To support that industry, instead of raising duties on Scotch whisky and other spirits, I am today going to freeze them, and with some cider makers in the west country, who have been hit hard by the recent weather, I am going to help them by freezing the duty on ordinary cider too.
Then there is beer. I know the industry, led so ably by my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths), has been campaigning for a freeze, but beer duty next week will not be frozen; it will be cut again by 1p—pubs saved, jobs created and a penny off a pint for the second year running.
It is a central part of our long-term economic plan that people keep more of the money they have earned. When we came to office, the personal tax allowance was just £6,500. In less than three weeks time, it will reach £10,000. That is an income tax cut for 25 million people. Today, because we are working through our plan, we can afford to go further. Next year, there will be no income tax at all on the first £10,500 of your salary—£10,500 tax free and £800 less in tax every year for the typical taxpayer. Our increases in the personal allowance will have lifted over 3 million of the lowest paid out of income tax altogether, and I am incredibly proud of what we have achieved.
I can also confirm today that the higher rate threshold will rise for the first time this Parliament, from £41,450 to £41,865 next month, and then by a further 1% to £42,285 next year. Because I am passing the full benefit of today’s personal allowance increase on to higher rate taxpayers, people earning £42,000, £43,000, £50,000, £60,000—all the way up to £100,000—will be paying less income tax because of this Budget. We have tax cuts for those on low incomes, and those on middle incomes too—help for hard-working people as part of a long-term economic plan delivered by a coalition Government and a Conservative Chancellor. I am linking the rate of the transferable tax allowance for married couples to the personal allowance, so it will also rise to £1,050—help for 4 million families that they will take away and that we are proud to provide.
Our tax changes will help people in work, but there is a large group who have had a particularly hard time in recent years, and that is savers. This matters not just because they are people who have made sacrifices to provide for their own economic security in retirement. It matters too because one of the biggest weaknesses of the British economy is that it borrows too much and saves too little. This has been a problem for decades and we cannot fix it overnight. It is no surprise that the OBR forecasts the savings ratio falling, so today we put in place policies for savers that stand alongside deficit reduction as a centrepiece of our long-term economic plan.
The reforms I am about to announce are only possible because, thanks to this Government, we have a triple lock on the state pension; more people are saving through auto-enrolment; and we are introducing a single-tier pension that will lift most people above the means test. That secure basic income for pensioners means that we can make far-reaching changes to the tax regime to reward those who save. Here is how. First, I want to help savers by dramatically increasing the simplicity, flexibility and generosity of individual savings accounts. Twenty-four million people in this country have an ISA, and yet millions of them would like to save more than the annual limits of around £5,500 on cash ISAs, and £11,500 on stocks and shares ISAs. Three quarters of those who hit the cash ISA limit are basic rate taxpayers. So we will make ISAs simpler by merging the cash and stocks ISAs to create a single new ISA. We will make them more flexible by allowing savers to transfer all of the ISAs they already have from stocks and shares into cash, or the other way round, and we are going to make the new ISA more generous by increasing the annual limit to £15,000—that is £15,000 of savings a year tax free, available from 1 July. I am raising the limits for junior ISAs to £4,000 a year too.
But the £15,000 new ISA is just the first thing we are doing for savers today. Secondly, many pensioners have seen their incomes fall as a consequence of the low interest rates that Britain has deliberately pursued to support the economy. It is time Britain helped them out in return, so we will launch the new pensioner bond, paying market leading rates. It will be issued by National Savings & Investments, open to everyone aged 65 and over, and available from January next year. The exact rates will be set in the autumn, to ensure the best possible offer, but our assumption is 2.8% for a one-year bond and 4% on a three-year bond. That is much better than anything equivalent in the market today. Up to £10 billion of these bonds will be issued. A maximum of £10,000 can be saved in each bond. That is at least a million pensioner bonds. Because 21 million people also invest in premium bonds, I am lifting the cap for the first time in a decade from £30,000 to £40,000 this June, and to £50,000 next year, and I will double the number of million-pound winners.
I still want to do more to support saving, so, thirdly, we will completely change the tax treatment of defined contribution pensions to bring it into line with the modern world. There will be consequential implications for defined benefit pensions upon which we will consult and proceed cautiously, so the changes we announce today will not apply to them. But 13 million people have defined contribution schemes, and the number continues to grow. We have introduced flexibilities, but most people still have little option but to take out an annuity, even though annuity rates have fallen by half over the last 15 years. The tax rules around these pensions are a manifestation of a patronising view that pensioners cannot be trusted with their own pension pots. I reject that. People who have worked hard and saved hard all their lives, and done the right thing, should be trusted with their own finances, and that is precisely what we will now do: trust the people. Some changes will take effect from next week. We will cut the income requirement for flexible draw-down from £20,000 to £12,000; raise the capped draw-down limit from 120% to 150%; increase the size of the lump sum small pot fivefold to £10,000; and almost double the total pension savings someone can take as a lump sum to £30,000. All of these changes will come into effect on 27 March.
These measures alone would amount to a radical change, but they are only a step in the fundamental reform of the taxation of defined contribution pensions I want to see.
I am announcing today that we will legislate to remove all remaining tax restrictions on how pensioners have access to their pension pots. Pensioners will have complete freedom to draw down as much or as little of their pension pot as they want, anytime they want: no caps; no draw-down limits. Let me be clear: no one will have to buy an annuity.
We are going to introduce a new guarantee, enforced by law, that everyone who retires on these defined contribution schemes will be offered free, impartial, face-to-face advice on how to get the most from the choices they will now have. Those who still want the certainty of an annuity, as many will, will be able to shop around for the best deal. I am providing £20 million over the next two years to work with consumer groups and industry to develop this new right to advice. When it comes to tax charges, it will be possible to take a quarter of your pension pot tax-free on retirement, as today, but instead of the punitive 55% tax that exists now if you try to take the rest, anything else you take out of your pension will simply be taxed at normal marginal tax rates, as with any other income—so not a 55% tax, but a 20% tax for most pensioners.
The OBR confirms that in the next 15 years, as some people use these new freedoms to draw down their pensions, this tax cut will lead to an increase in tax receipts. Government Members understand that when you cut a tax rate that is punitively high, that can increase revenues. These major changes to the tax regime require a separate Act of Parliament, and we will have them in place for April next year. What I am proposing is the most far-reaching reform to the taxation of pensions since the regime was introduced in 1921.
There is one final reform to support savings that I would like to make. There is a 10p starting rate for income from savings. It is complex to levy and it penalises low- income savers. Today, I am abolishing the 10p rate for savers altogether. When I abolish a 10p rate, I do not sneakily turn it into a 20% rate like the last lot: I am turning it into a 0% rate: no tax on these savings whatsoever. We will almost double this zero-pence band to cover £5,000 of saving income. One and a half million low-income savers of all ages will benefit. Two thirds of a million pensioners will be helped.
The £15,000 new ISA; the pensioner bond; people given access to their own pension pots; a right to impartial advice; the 10p rate for savers abolished to zero—the message from this Budget is this: you have earned it; you have saved it; and this Government are on your side. Whether you are on a low or middle income, whether you are saving for your home, for your family or for your retirement, we are backing a Britain that saves. The central mission of this Government is to deliver economic security. We are not promising quick fixes. Instead we are taking the next steps in our long-term plan. The forecasts I have presented show growth up; jobs up; and the deficit down. Now we are securing Britain’s economic future with: manufacturing promoted; working rewarded; saving supported. With the help of the British people, we are turning our country around. We are building a resilient economy. This is a Budget for the makers, the doers, and the savers, and I commend it to the House.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. If you like the Budget, I need to put the Question.
Provisional Collection of Taxes
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 51(2)),
That, pursuant to section 5 of the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act 1968, provisional statutory effect shall be given to the following motions:—
Pension schemes (registration of pension schemes etc) (Motion No. 29.)
Alcoholic liquor duties (rates) (Motion No. 45.)
Tobacco products duty (rates) (Motion No. 46.)
Stamp duty land tax (threshold for higher rate applying to certain transactions) (Motion No. 73.)—(Mr George Osborne.)
Question agreed to.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
I now call upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer to move the motion entitled “Amendment of the Law”. It is on this motion that the debate will take place today and on the succeeding days. The remaining motions will be put at the end of the Budget debate on Tuesday 25 March.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation
Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts(10 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)
The Chancellor spoke for nearly an hour, but he did not mention one central fact—[Interruption.]
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I think that the deputy Chief Whip knows better. We have not even got started. I hope that he will calm down.
Edward Miliband
The Chancellor spoke for nearly an hour, but he did not mention one central fact: the working people of Britain are worse off under the Tories. Living standards are down, month after month, year after year. In 2011, living standards, down; 2012, living standards, down; 2013, living standards, down. Since the election, working people’s living standards are £1,600 a year down. You are worse off under the Tories—[Interruption.]
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. To be quite honest, I thought that the House was doing really well today. Courtesy was quite rightly shown to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I expect the same courtesy to be shown to the Leader of the Opposition. I want to hear it, and your constituents want to hear it.
Edward Miliband
They do not want to talk about the falling living standards of people across this country, Mr Deputy Speaker.
The 2010 Tory manifesto promised an economy where people’s
“standard of living… rises steadily and sustainably”
but they have delivered exactly the opposite: standards of living falling sharply and steeply. Today the Chancellor simply reminded people of the gap between his rhetoric and the reality of people’s lives. Living standards have been falling for 44 out of 45 months under this Prime Minister, unmatched since records began. No amount of smoke and mirrors today can hide it. We already know the answer to the question that millions of people will be asking in 2015: “Are we better off now than we were five years ago?” The answer is no. They are worse off, much worse off—worse off under the Tories.
The Chancellor trumpeted the tax allowance today, but what he did not tell us is that it is the same old Tory trick. He did not tell us the rest of the story. He did not mention the 24 tax rises introduced since he became Chancellor. He forgot to mention that he put up VAT, taxed away child benefit, raised insurance tax and gave us the granny tax. It is a classic Tory con: give with one hand and take away far more with the other—same old Tories.
The Chancellor painted a picture of the country today that millions of people will simply not recognise. This is Cameron’s Britain 2014, with 350,000 people going to food banks, 400,000 disabled people paying the bedroom tax, 1 million more people paying 40p tax and 4.6 million families facing cuts to tax credits. But there is one group that is better off—much better off. We all know who they are: the Chancellor’s chums, the Prime Minister’s friends—[Interruption.] The Prime Minister rolls his eyes, because he does not want to talk about the millionaires’ tax cut. There was no mention of it in the Budget speech. They are the beneficiaries of this year’s millionaires’ tax cut.
If you are a City banker earning £5 million and feeling the squeeze, do not worry, because they feel your pain. This year that City banker was given a tax cut, and not just any tax cut. It is a tax cut worth £664 a day, £20,000 a month and more than £200,000 a year. So the Prime Minister chooses to afford a tax cut worth more than £200,000 a year for that banker, but he cannot afford a pay rise of £250 a year for a nurse. And these are the people who have the nerve to tell us that we are all in this together. It is Tory values and Tory choices—same old Tories. Of course, the leader of the Liberal Democrats is with them every step of the way. Day after day he claims that he does not support Tory policy, but day after day he votes for Tory policy.
Now, to listen to the Chancellor today, for a recovery that arrived three years later than he promised, he expects the country to be grateful. Back in 2010 he told us that by the end of 2014 the economy would have grown by nearly 12%. Today the figures show that it has been barely half that, and he wants the country to be grateful. Back in 2010 he said that the Government would clear the deficit in this Parliament, by 2014-15. Today he wants the country to be grateful because he says that he can do it by 2018-19. Three years ago he told us, in his 2011 Budget speech, that he would deliver an economy
“carried aloft by the march of the makers.”—[Official Report, 23 March 2011; Vol. 525, c. 966.]
But what has actually happened since then to the rebalancing he promised? Manufacturing output has fallen by 1.3%, construction output has fallen by 4.2% and infrastructure investment is down by 11.3%. Every time he comes to this House he promises a rebalancing, and every time he fails. The Chancellor talked about housing today, but what has he actually delivered? The Government have overseen the lowest level of house building since the 1920s and rents have risen twice as fast as wages.
At the heart of the argument we will have over the next 14 months is this question: whose recovery is it under the Tories? Under them, it is a recovery for the few, not the many. Bankers’ pay in London is rising five times faster than that of the average worker. This recovery is not working for working people whose living standards are falling. It is not working for the millions of women who see the gap between men and women’s pay rising. It is not working for the low-paid people promised by the Chancellor—[Interruption.]
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. Mr Williamson, you are in danger of exploding, which would be good neither for you, nor for the Chamber. Come on. Let us listen.
Edward Miliband
They do not want to talk about the low-paid workers promised a £7 minimum wage by the Chancellor but given just 19p more an hour. Under this Government it is an economy of the privileged, by the privileged and for the privileged.
Instead of admitting the truth about what is happening in most people’s lives today, the Government want to tell them the opposite. They tell people that their wages are rising when they are falling, just like they tell people that their energy bills are falling when they are rising. They tell people that they are better off, but everyone knows the truth. They can change the shape of the pound—it does not matter if it is square, round or oval—but if you are £1,600 a year worse off, you are still £1,600 a year worse off. You are worse off under the Tories.
They cannot deliver because of what they believe. His global race is a race to the bottom. It means people being forced to do two or even three jobs to make ends meet, not knowing how many hours they will get from one week to the next, and with no idea what the future holds for their kids. Low wages, low skills, insecure work—that is how they think Britain succeeds. That is why they are not the solution to the cost of living crisis. They are the problem.
We needed a Budget today that would have made the long-term changes that our economy needs, in housing, banking and energy. But they cannot do it. They will not stand up to the vested interests. They will not tackle developers sitting on land, even though they cannot solve the housing crisis without that. They will not force the banks to improve competition even though small businesses say they need it. They will not stand up to the energy companies and freeze energy bills, even though the public support it. Same old Tories. We know what their long-term plan is: more tax cuts for the richest, while everyone else gets squeezed. [Interruption.]
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. This is getting totally out of hand and we certainly do not want any more pointing. I am worrying about the danger to Anne Milton’s hearing; the way she is shouting is not good for her or the Chamber. I want to hear the rest of the speech in peace. I certainly do not want all the muttering and challenges that have been running along the Benches. I will take it more seriously if I have to get up next time.
Edward Miliband
We know what their long-term plan is: more tax cuts for the richest while everyone else gets squeezed. What does the Chancellor say about the people dragged into paying 40p tax? He says that they should be happy and that it is good news for them. So this is the new Osborne tax theory: if you are in the middle, paying 40p, you should be pleased to pay more, but if you are at the top, paying 50p, you should be helped to pay less. Same old Tories.
It is no wonder that even their own side think they are totally out of touch. Even now, after all the embarrassment of the millionaires’ tax cut, they will not rule out going further. Maybe today we can get the straight answer that we have not had so far. Will the Chancellor rule out a further tax cut for millionaires to 40p? Just nod your head if you will rule it out. Come on, come on. Just nod your head. Maybe the Prime Minister would like to. Just nod your head. [Interruption.]
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. There may be an influence of the wolves and the pack running around. That can be used in the zoo, but it will not be used in this Chamber.
Edward Miliband
It is very simple—all the Prime Minister needs to do is to nod his head if he is going to rule out cutting the 45p tax to 40p in the next Parliament. Just nod your head. Come on. There we have it. There they go again—they will not rule it out. Does that not say it all about them? They really do believe that the way you make the rich work harder is to make them richer and the way you make everyone else work harder is by making them poorer.
Just as they paint a picture of the country that working people will not recognise, so, too, themselves. The Prime Minister is an expert in rebranding. Remember the huskies, the bike and the tree? That was before they said, “Cut the green crap.” What is the latest rebranding from the Bullingdon club? It is beyond parody. What do this lot now call themselves? [Interruption.]
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. Mr Williamson, I will not tell you again. I am sure your roast beef is ready for you—you might be better off eating a little raw meat than giving us the noise that we are getting in here.
Edward Miliband
What do this lot now call themselves? They call themselves the workers’ party. Who is writing the manifesto for this workers’ party? We have a helpful answer from one Conservative MP:
“There are six people writing the manifesto…five…went to Eton”.
By my count, more Etonians are writing the manifesto than there are women in the Cabinet—no girls allowed. This week, we have heard it right from the top. Here is what the Prime Minister’s former best friend—[Interruption.] They do not like to hear it do they, Mr Deputy Speaker? Here is what his best friend—[Interruption.]
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. If Members wish to go outside and show people, they can do so by all means. I certainly do not need you to hold up papers all the way through. Quite seriously, respect is due to the Leader of the Opposition the same way it was given to the Chancellor. I want to hear him; if you do not, there is the door—please leave.
Edward Miliband
Here is what the Prime Minister’s former best friend, his closest ally, the Education Secretary, had to say about the Prime Minister’s inner circle. He said it was ridiculous, preposterous, unlike anywhere else in the world. They know they are in trouble when even the Education Secretary calls them a bunch of out-of-touch elitists. Where is the Education Secretary? I think he has been banished. Ah—he is hiding! He has been consigned to the naughty step by the Prime Minister. It is time we listened to Baroness Warsi and took the whole Eton mess out of Downing street.
We do not need a party for the privileged few; we need a party for the many. That is why a Labour Government will freeze energy bills, guarantee jobs for unemployed young people, cut business rates, reform the banks, get 200,000 homes built a year and abolish the bedroom tax. This is the Budget that confirms that people are worse off under the Tories—a worse-off Budget from an out-of-touch Chancellor. Britain can do better than them. Britain needs a Labour Government.
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. Before I bring in the next speaker, I announce an eight-minute limit.
Mr Tyrie
I do not know about the political agreement point, but of course the effects of the stabilisers operate on both the tax and the spending sides. I think the Government were right to do what they did.
The Government have also been right to see off calls fundamentally to alter fiscal policy by sharply relaxing deficit reduction and increasing public spending. One of the main reasons it was important that they did not listen to those calls is that credibility in fiscal policy is hard won. It is built up over time—over many years—and it can easily be squandered. The Government resisted that temptation.
I will say a few words about the historical context. Looking to the 1930s, when stagnation set in and the agony was prolonged, partly because automatic stabilisers were suppressed and partly because far from engaging in QE, the then coalition Government did exactly the opposite: they lengthened the maturity of the debt and sucked money out of the economy. That is why the 1930s were so painful.
Now that we have a recovery, some are complaining that it is not the one we ordered. They complain that the recovery is consumer-led or uneven across sectors, regions and income groups. Well, of course it is. All recoveries of any value trigger a reallocation of resources, and therefore all recoveries change the shape of the economy. A recovery rarely takes root where the jobs were lost or the firms failed; it was ever thus and it will be the same this time. As the Chancellor stressed in his speech, jobs are being created at a record rate, but we cannot expect those jobs to be in exactly the same places as the jobs lost in the downswing. I am confident that, as in all previous recoveries, if we can sustain this recovery—and even if it is uneven, as it will be—it will, in time, deepen and spread through the whole economy. The figures for previous upswings support that.
The crucial question now, though, will be whether we can sustain the deficit reduction plan. A threat to deficit reduction will come from siren voices who say, “With the recovery under way, we can go back to spending money we haven’t got.” We are already hearing that. We need to remind ourselves that we are still spending about £7 for every £6 we collect in tax. It is true that we are in better shape, but with a deficit of about 6.6% of GDP, as the Chancellor announced today, we will remain vulnerable to economic shocks unless we do more to tackle it.
Another risk to deficit reduction is one of simple arithmetic caused by ring-fencing—something that the Treasury Committee has flagged up on several occasions. It will become increasingly difficult to find cuts to an ever-shrinking share of non-ring-fenced departmental spending. In other words, with ring-fencing of nearly half departmental expenditure, finding these savings will get tougher year by year. The Chancellor has argued, rightly, that polling evidence shows that that ring-fencing reflects public preferences. I think that is true for health and education, but it is not supported in the area of overseas aid. Spending on aid has risen by over a third in real terms and will rise even more because it is linked to GDP. Politics always points to ever-more ring-fencing; economics to less. Eventually, ring-fencing will have to be revisited, however difficult it is for all political parties.
Perhaps I should say a little about the risks—
Fairness and Inequality
Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts(10 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr MacNeil
People who say that Wales’ tax take is not equivalent to its expenditure are quite short-sighted. They fail to realise that they are living in the United Kingdom, the tax take of which has not matched expenditure since 2001, and is not likely to do so until 2018. This is a UK that records a deficit year after year, and has a debt that grows year after year.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. Obviously, Mr MacNeil will want to catch my eye to make his speech. I would not like him to use it all up now, so shorter interventions.
Jonathan Edwards
The point that is often forgotten is that despite the fact that London is one of the richest parts of the European Union and that communities such as mine in Carmarthenshire are at the bottom of the European wealth league, public expenditure per head is higher in London than it is in Wales—that is until very recent figures, which showed that Welsh spending had caught up. It is an incredible situation. I could not make this up.
The way in which monetary policy is formulated is also in severe need of reform. The week before last, I tabled an early-day motion calling for the Bank of England, or the Sterling Central Bank as it should be renamed, to be reformed better to take into account the economies of the UK when formulating monetary policy. The Governor should appear for scrutiny before the relevant Committees of the devolved legislatures, and meet with the devolved Governments, just as he has to with the Chancellor and the relevant Select Committees in Westminster.
In addition, the four external members of the Monetary Policy Committee should be nominated by the four nations, rather than hand-picked by the Chancellor of the day from the self-serving banking elite. [Interruption.] I am grateful to my friends from Northern Ireland who supported that early-day motion. There is an interesting story in the Western Mail about the need for the Welsh Government and the Northern Ireland Assembly to collaborate in the event of Scottish independence, be it a yes or a no vote, to ensure that we are not bombarded by Westminster. I hope that it might be a small step on the road to greater collaboration. Instead, what we have is a drive towards regional pay in the public sector, introduced by the previous UK Government and now developed by the coalition, which ghettoises low-wage economies outside London.
Labour has gone a step further, with a pledge to cap benefits on a geographical basis if it forms the next Government. That means that the unemployed and disabled in Wales will receive fewer payments than those who happen to live in London. Wales will have lost more than £1 billion during 2013-14 due to cuts in benefits. Those include payments that people in work receive to top-up low wages. That money would have been spent directly in the Welsh economy, but is now lost.
Rather than hitting the sick and unemployed with a stick and labelling them “scroungers”, why do we not embrace the active labour market programme employed so successfully in Sweden? It is an interventionist policy, in which the Swedish Government spend twice the amount per capita that is spent in the UK, creating tailored action plans. The programme has productivity and mental health benefits, so it ends up costing the taxpayer far less, as individuals are moved from social security into employment, and it eases considerable pressure on heath services.
It is increasingly clear that the Treasury has been re-infected with the British disease of basing growth on inflating house prices backed up with taxpayers’ cash—the Help to Buy policy. Far from rebalancing the economy, the Treasury is reintroducing boom and bust. Instead of delivering an equitable share of infrastructure investment across the UK, the Exchequer lavishes London with its grand design projects, be it the Olympics, Crossrail 1 and 2 or High Speed 2. UK Trade & Investment does not deliberately channel foreign direct investment into the poorest parts of the state, unlike its German counterpart, Germany Trade & Invest, which has a statutory duty to do so. Is it not sobering that despite the cold war and a physical wall between the east and west of its country, Germany today is far more balanced in geographical wealth than the UK?
Other places have shown the way. Germany is a federal republic, and the constitution requires fiscal equalisation among the Länder. That is a timeless requirement on all parts of government, and policies are required no matter the era. After reunification, when poorer East Germany joined developed West Germany, a massive effort meant a variety of measures were implemented, including financial transfers to poorer regions and industrial development policies.
The same could be done from Westminster, but it has not been. The alternative is the approach favoured by the London parties, whereby investment is concentrated in London and the south-east, and wealth inequalities continue to rise. It is clear that it is time for a change. Where are the voices in support of such a change? Who will turn back the tide of growing inequality? We know that we cannot rely on the Tories in London, so unashamed are they in their love of banking and the financial elite. Where is Labour? Why is it not standing up against inequality? Its amendment seeks to wreck our motion, absolving it of its role in creating rising inequality over the past decade, but it is bereft of policies.
Last week, some of Labour’s Wales-based Members defended the UK as a redistributive Union. They are deluding themselves, both about their record in government, as inequality rose during that period, and about the current situation. A closer examination of their voting record would suggest that their rhetoric is unsupported by action. I cite their abstention on the Welfare Reform Bill, which introduced the cruel and dreaded bedroom tax; their abstention on a cut in the top rate of income tax; and their refusal to support any measure to help to promote measures to provide the Welsh Government with the economic powers that they need to move the Welsh economy forward.
Caroline Lucas
For the benefit of us all and to enable a more enlightened debate, it would be helpful if the Government stopped pretending that the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown)was responsible for the collapse of Lehman Brothers. I blame the Labour party for a lot, but the idea that the current economic crisis was somehow caused by that is ludicrous. It was a global economic crisis and—
Stephen Crabb
I applaud the hon. Lady for her attempt to rescue the reputation of the former Chancellor of the Exchequer and Prime Minister. The truth is that the trajectory of public spending was already far too high, even before the banking collapse. There was a structural deficit that placed at risk the stability of the UK finances even before the banking collapse.
Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
While Opposition Members would like to absolve Gordon Brown of any guilt over the collapse of the banking system, only this morning in the Treasury Committee we were looking still at the debacle of the Co-operative bank—
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. When I say “Order” I expect the hon. Lady to sit down. The intervention is becoming a ramble, but more importantly we are talking about a Member of Parliament, not by name I hope.
Stephen Crabb
The choice still facing the United Kingdom is either to stick to the long-term economic plan to secure a better, more financially secure future for hard-working people and their families throughout the country, or to listen to the Opposition parties and the motion before us calling for a return to the days of spending and borrowing beyond our means, leaving our children and their children to pick up the bill.
Mr MacNeil
Devil the fear, as my old Irish mother would have said, devil the fear—no chance at all. I think the hon. Gentleman will see, as he pays more attention to the words to come, that the only Tories on this side of the House are probably the red Tories.
I listed the books I mentioned earlier for a reason. We must be aware that we do not have to reinvent the wheel to get people more opportunities and chances in life. Much of the research and science has been done, and the information has been gathered. Perhaps if we stopped, looked and learned from what is around us we would stop falling into the same traps that different generations have fallen into. Why should inequality matter—why is it important? Is it merely because a number of influential professors with Nobel prizes have written books? I would contend that they have put intellectual bones on our instinctive emotions of sympathy and empathy for our fellow people when we see them in situations that disturb us and we think are wrong. This is why nations have international aid budgets and why we give to charity. Sometimes it can be argued that the money is not always best directed, but nevertheless it is useful in the main. It shows an underlying striving for fairness and is a reproach against inequality within the broad set of people.
My first engagement with the idea of inequality was in the religious education class in Craigston primary school at the age of seven or eight, or perhaps even six, with Mrs MacCormick, God bless her. Looking back, I often think that we were really doing philosophy classes rather than RE classes. The example given was this: “If you’re given a box of chocolates at home would it be best to eat them all yourself or share them with your brothers and sisters who have not been given any chocolates?” I have to say that this scenario created a tension in my mind given my great love of chocolates. As you can see, Mr Deputy Speaker, I do not have so much a sweet tooth as a whole set of sweet teeth. I was caught in the tension between doing what was manifestly right and what I really wanted to do on another level. The consensus quickly grew in the class that it was best to share—even among six, seven or eight-year-olds. I am pleased to see you nodding in agreement, Mr Deputy Speaker.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
I assure the hon. Gentleman that I was not nodding in agreement; I was just wondering whether there were inequalities within the chocolates.
Mr MacNeil
Very good, Mr Deputy Speaker.
It is a slight concern of mine, however, that the captains of industry, as they get called, or the high-bonus City bankers or hedge fund managers, have never had that experience at a young age and have not engaged meaningfully with sympathy for the situation that others may be in as they gobble all the chocolates of productivity that our economy has produced, believing instead that they are self-made men and self-made women who worship their own creators.
Michael Connarty
I would be quite willing to brief the hon. Gentleman later about the technicalities of why the vote was not called on that particular night.
The hon. Gentleman is talking about a sociological analysis, but some people have moved on since then and done a socialist analysis. When society is divided into those who support capital and those who support labour, what happens is that the forces of those who have the power in the land—the landed classes—join with the merchant class to support capital, and they have succeeded in increasing the value of capital by driving down the cost of labour. That is why we have the inequality we have, and that is the structure of the society we—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. It is very good to have a lecture, but not during an intervention. If the hon. Gentleman wants to catch my eye later, I am sure he will be able to do so and give me a lecture then.
Mr MacNeil
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that interesting intervention. As an MP for a left-of-centre party—sadly, the hon. Member for North East Somerset is no longer in his place to hear this—I am asking how it is possible that our society and, indeed, many other societies, particularly in the English-speaking world, can tolerate inequality, which has now grown to levels beyond those of the 1920s. Has something primitive been transmitted to our minds through the media? The belief that the poor are poor because they are undeserving and have not worked hard enough is a primitive thought. People have to be helped, because we are complex creatures living together in society. People have deep psychological needs and some can suffer from the paralysis of feeling swamped or depressed when they feel stuck or trapped.
Yesterday’s report by the Living Wage Commission, “Working for Poverty”, looked into the scale and problem of low pay and working poverty in the UK. The first shocking statistic I stumbled on came from the work of the Resolution Foundation, which had tracked low-paid workers for a decade between 2002 and 2012. Despite working for a decade, only 18% of those people had managed to escape low pay in that 10-year stretch. In other words, people in low pay had a four in five chance of remaining there.
The report further notes:
“1.3 million employees remained stuck in low pay for the subsequent decade, and a further 2.2 million workers held higher paid jobs but returned to low paid jobs by the end of the decade.”
That is and should be depressing. Imagine the feelings of the people we eyeball who have been living with that reality on a daily basis for a decade.
There is good news and bad news. Over the past decades, the wealth of this and other countries in the west has grown as productivity has increased. The bad news is that the fruits of that productivity have been disproportionately distributed. According to the BBC’s wealth gap analysis, as the wealth pie grew and there was more to slice up, many people got roughly the same slice of the pie while others took a share that would embarrass a lion.
Between 1997 and 2007, the income of the top 0.1% grew by 82% to an average of £1.179 million annually; the top 0.5% saw an increase of 66.5% to an average of £452,000 annually; and the top 1%, which, of course, includes the previous two groups, saw their income rise by 60%, but their rise was only about a quarter of that of the 0.1%.
Meanwhile, between 1997 and 2007—the happy decade, as some in financial circles call it, before the crash of six years ago—the bottom 90%, which includes most of society, saw their wages rise by only 17%, a disproportionate slice of the economic pie. Another way of looking at it is that the fraction of pay the bottom 90% were getting in comparison with the top 1% had fallen by a fifth over that decade. As Professor Stiglitz says:
“A corporate CEO will not exert less effort to make the company work well simply because his take-home pay is $10 million a year rather than $12 million.”
The “Working for Poverty” report contains a series of nuggets and goes fearlessly into some thought-provoking factors.
Mr Jim Hood (Lanark and Hamilton East) (Lab)
I am quite amazed that the hon. Gentleman is surprised that I and many other hon. Members are against his nationalism. To put my comment last week in context, I said that despite the lying of the SNP Government and the Westminster Government here, I would not support nationalism and would therefore vote against his Government. He should not be surprised, because I have always opposed nationalism. I always will oppose nationalism, because I do not make judgments about people on the basis of the side of the road or the side of the bed they were born on.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I think the hon. Gentleman has got the message across.
Mr MacNeil
I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman has intervened, but I am surprised that he says he is against nationalism, because we live in nations. That is why we have the United Nations of about 193 nations. I am not sure exactly what structure he favours. Is he is in favour of the abolition of the Parliament in Westminster and of the UK state?
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman must sit down. I will be helpful: we have had a good debate about chocolates, and I want to get back to inequality. I certainly do not want to get bogged down in the rights and wrongs of abolition. I know that he is desperate to finish his speech on inequalities, and I am desperate to hear it.
Mr MacNeil
My speech is about making lives better for people wherever they are from and wherever they are worldwide. That is the important point to bear in mind.
The “Working for Poverty” report even touches on the untouchables of our society—football clubs. It states:
“Research from Citizens UK shows it would take a full-time cleaner 13 years to earn what top footballers earn in a week. Football clubs are important institutions in communities across the UK. They should be setting an example to employers nationwide.”
I must praise the columnist for The Observer Kevin McKenna who, like me, is a supporter of Celtic football club in Glasgow, the richest team in Scotland. Sadly, a few months ago, Celtic refused to pay the living wage to all its staff at the ground. It turned Mr McKenna’s stomach that those subject to such wage inequality could rub along, shoulder to shoulder, with people earning tens of thousands of pounds a week. That has also turned the stomachs of many football fans, especially given that Celtic had cashed in on the story of Brother Walfrid, a Marist brother who now lies at rest in Dumfries, who started Celtic as a means to help the poor of the Glasgow east end in the 1880s. I do not mean to single out Celtic, but to give an example of the toleration of those in even rich organisations for the shocking pay levels given to people the whites of whose eyes they see daily. Frankly, it removes the shine, lustre and glitz from the big football clubs of our land when we realise that gritty reality and see it up close.
Mr MacNeil
It is disappointing that more Members have not engaged in the issues of poverty and inequality. Cynics would say that if this were a debate on Members’ pay, conditions and benefits or any other reform of the House of Commons, the Benches would be full. Alas, we are debating a topic far removed from that. That is why I have tried to humanise the debate.
I was not going to read Becca’s story from the Living Wage Commission, but it is a cracker of a story. The report states that she
“lives in Leeds and has worked in minimum wage jobs since she was a teenager. Now in her thirties, she has a degree and wants to start up her own business, but she can not find the money or the time.”
She says:
“I have pretty much always worked for minimum wage. I worked in an office photocopying for two years, I have worked in customer service, I once sat watching a TV screen and counting cars on clickers. I’ve done all sorts.”
That is another example of a person who is trying to better herself, but who is—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I have a good feel for the examples, as, I am sure, does the House. This should be the hon. Gentleman’s speech, not just a speech full of examples from other people. I have allowed a few examples to go, but I have heard enough for now. I want to hear from the hon. Gentleman, rather than other people.
Mr MacNeil
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is because of my modesty and kindness that I want to share the wisdom of others. I do not see myself as the sole well of wisdom. [Interruption.] “Thankfully,” say my SNP colleagues.
We have to consider how poverty and inequality are affecting young people. I spoke to a young person recently who said, “It’s difficult being young. Houses are expensive. We have tons of student debt. The costs of living are rising and wages don’t go up. It’s sort of tough being young at the moment.” That young person was right. I was at university when student loans came in. I followed a demonstration against student loans that was led by a student who later became an MP. I later saw him on television backing Labour’s introduction of tuition fees in 1998. I cannot remember his constituency.
There has been a sharp rise in the number of 24 to 34-year-olds who are living at home with their parents. As Joe Stiglitz said, that is not due to a rush of filial devotion, but because they have no choice. The economic cards are stacked against them. Youth unemployment is high in many countries. It is too high in Scotland and higher still in the UK as a whole. Instead of getting on with their lives, the young find themselves in a holding pattern.
The SNP has done what it can in Scotland by keeping tuition fees at zero, which is saving families from paying £36,000 for a four-year degree. Families risk having to pay that if we vote no to independence. We know that there are cuts down the line and some people think that this is a something-for-nothing society and that certain things should be taken off the table. We do what we can with the powers that we have, but we want to do so much more.
An exciting proposal in the White Paper that will tackle inequality is to follow Sweden’s example on child care. Parents of early-years children in the UK face the highest child care costs in Europe. Parents in Scotland spend about 27% of household income on child care, compared with the OECD average of 12%. Independence would give us the opportunity to make transformational changes to the way in which Scotland provides child care services. That will allow women, in particular, to work without worrying about the cost of looking after their children. With independence, the benefits of their work, such as economic growth and tax revenue, will stay in Scotland and contribute to the costs of child care provision.
The Scottish Government plan to have a universal system of high-quality early learning and child care from the age of one up to school entry. At the end of the first year of an independent Scottish Parliament, every three and four-year-old and vulnerable two-year-old will be entitled to 1,140 hours of child care. That is the same amount of time as children spend in primary school each year and is equivalent to 30 hours per week over 38 weeks. That is an important aspiration. It demonstrates one way in which we should be moving our society forward. It would certainly be a way to reduce inequality.
It has been argued that inequality has caused the rise in household debt because people try to keep up with the Joneses. There are more pernicious examples of what inequality can do. Professor Paul Krugman states:
“Before the financial crisis of 2008 struck, I would often give talks to lay audiences about income inequality, in which I would point out that top income shares had risen to levels not seen since 1929. Invariably there would be questions about whether that meant that we were on the verge of another Great Depression—and I would declare that this wasn’t necessarily so”.
In the end, it turned out that that was the case. Once again, we are not arresting the growth in inequality. Are we on the verge of repeating the same mistake? I wish that we would learn, but we seem not to be doing so.
Some voices in the world are talking about inequality. Yesterday, the mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, made a speech about tackling inequality in New York. My only criticism is that, when one looks at the detail, it is quite timid. The Pope has said:
“The promise was that when the glass was full, it would overflow, benefiting the poor. But what happens instead, is that when the glass is full, it magically gets bigger nothing ever comes out for the poor.”
The church and nation committee of the Church of Scotland addresses that issue frequently and, as I said, the Church of England’s Archbishop of York has also done great work. A number of US Senators are aware of the problems and what is happening.
In my view, Governments should concentrate on growth and jobs. The deficit obsession and austerity cult has taken demand from the economy and probably led to a slower recovery—we have probably lost years as a result of the policies that were followed. We cannot fully prove that because we do not have a controlled environment in which to do so scientifically, but the feeling among many economists is that growth has not returned as strongly as it should have done, and that when it did come back it was three years delayed.
We are in food-bank Britain; we have the bedroom tax hammering people. VAT, one of the most regressive taxes, has been increased to 20% in this Parliament. That is a real shame and something that hits people disproportionately. We have had the cut to the 50p tax rate. That probably cost £4 billion to £5 billion in revenues, although the Commons Library has stated that behaviour alteration should mean that it will cost only £0.5 billion. Only £0.5 billion? That means that the cut to the 50p rate of tax has cost the Exchequer and not raised any extra revenue.
In the debate last Thursday—I am coming to a conclusion, Mr Deputy Speaker—it was sad that many of those Members who had the opportunity to speak in a very time-limited debate made no real mention of the future, and there was no mention at all of poverty. Unfortunately, we seem to have made a god of money, and we treat those who do not get hold of it as somehow inferior beings. In fact, as somebody once remarked, the cure for cancer might well be found in a child living in a poor household. They should be given a helping hand and an opportunity for their future because—who knows?—they could help us some day.
I have a couple of final reflections. It was said of Nelson Mandela that he not only liberated the blacks in South Africa, but also the oppressors. When I look at inequality I see, of course, great insecurity at the bottom, but I also see insecurity at the top. People realise that when the safety nets are removed, they themselves are a step or an accident or two away from going down. If those people do not have a society with safety nets in place for their own security, they can never fully relax. They need to get more and gather more because—who knows?—they, a relative or a friend might need it.
That struck me very strongly when I was at Alabama state university on an exchange programme with a US Congressman and we went to see a game of American football. We were taken to the president’s box of the university, and there were people who had made it in life. I met a man from Leeds, but it struck me that despite having made it, the talk was all about health insurance, health care, and what sort of plan people had—conversations we do not have in this country. In reality, there was deep insecurity because the social nets were not there to help everybody. When the nets are not there for the poorest and most vulnerable, we, our friends, our relatives, the relatives of relatives and friends of friends, are all but one step away. It is not a nice situation to be in, and I could see the fear in the whites of their eyes. Even though they personally had made it in society, there was massive insecurity around them.
Just as Nelson Mandela liberated the blacks and the oppressors, so too does the arresting of inequality liberate the poor and the rich—not quite in equal measure, but it certainly liberates them both from the insecurity that inequality brings to us all. We should work to get rid of inequality, and I hope that when we have independence, we can prove that one of the best ways of fighting inequality and poverty is through the prosperity that I expect we shall bring to Scotland.
Guto Bebb
There is certainly an argument that to increase the minimum wage when, as things currently stand, the Government have already taken tax out of the minimum wage, would look as if they were kicking businesses for the sake of kicking them. I have supported the fact that the Government have increased the personal allowance dramatically, which has made work pay for people in many circumstances, but my point is that taking time over a decision is not something we should be ashamed of. Indeed, we should be proud of taking time to make the right decision on something that is so important for a constituency such as mine, where 27% of the working population are either self-employed or work for small businesses.
I must take issue with a few points raised by the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) in his opening remarks. He began his speech by talking about Hywel Dda, who was indeed classified as one of the better Welsh kings. I was, however, surprised to hear the hymn of praise to a royalist from an avowed republican. Indeed, in terms of Hywel Dda, or Hywel the Good, being good, perhaps the true title should be Hywel the not-so-good. In addition to being the man who classified and created Welsh law, he also ordered the execution—the murder, I should say—of his brother-in-law in order to take over the kingdom of Dyfed, which is the current constituency of the Under-Secretary of State for Wales, my hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb). Furthermore, so as to extend his kingdom to the north and take over the whole of Wales, he also dispossessed the two sons of Idwal Foel from Gwynedd. When giving examples, I think we must put the man in the context of his time. It is interesting to highlight, however, that the Hywel Dda laws were in many ways ahead of their time in trying to achieve a level of equality between the sexes—not something that we saw in other parts of the United Kingdom for a very long time.
I also take issue with the comments by the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr about a proportional system of electing people leading to greater engagement with the political process. It is an attractive argument, but one that can be rejected simply by looking at the situation in Wales. We have 40 Members of Parliament who are elected on a first-past-the-post basis, and 60 Members elected to the Welsh Assembly, which uses a version of proportional representation. In a constituency such as mine, however, 70% of the electorate—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I am a bit worried that we are getting in to a debate on proportional representation. I presume the point is linked to fairness and equality somewhere.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. In fairness, the hon. Gentleman has had a good day. He has made a lot of interventions and he spoke for almost an hour, so to try to make another speech is unacceptable. A lot of Members want to get in.
Guto Bebb
I reject the hon. Gentleman’s argument. To have more equality, we need more jobs and economic opportunities. The hon. Gentleman argues that that would happen with more Government spending as a proportion of the economy. If that was the case, then Wales would be, by a long stretch, the most successful part of the United Kingdom, because there is no part of the UK more dependent on the public purse. The dependency on public spending in Wales has led to failure not over the past three or four years, but over a 15 to 20-year period. It has not led to economic growth or prosperity, and it has not led to economic opportunities. Indeed, the very reverse is true: the size of the state in Wales is one of the reasons why the rebuilding job being undertaken by the Westminster Government is so important. In a Welsh context, we have created an economy that is unbalanced and has not created the variety of jobs needed to support our young people and ensure that we have an equal society. I argue very strongly that anybody who says that the answer to all economic issues in a Welsh context is more public spending is simply wrong.
National Insurance (Contributions) Bill
Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts(10 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Government new clause 5—Limited liability partnerships.
Government amendments 1 and 2
Mr Gauke
New clause 4 is needed as it addresses a tax issue arising under existing partnership tax rules where the immediate entitlement to partnership profits is restricted by the alternative investment fund managers directive—AIFMD. HMRC received further information about this during the partnerships review consultation. Following their discussions with the funds sector representatives and the Financial Conduct Authority with responsibility for the AIFMD implementation in the United Kingdom, the Government intend to put in place a statutory mechanism to address the issue, subject to parliamentary approval.
It is important to note that the vast majority of fund managers would not be affected; only those who operate through a partnership would be affected. Under existing partnership tax rules, tax is charged on profits as they are earned, rather than when they are received. An unfunded tax charge can therefore arise on profits that are allocated to an individual partner of an AIFM partnership and which are then deferred in line with the regulatory requirements of the AIFMD. That is because the partner cannot access the deferred profits in the year when they arise.
The new mechanism that the Government propose is designed in such a way as to meet the Government objective of a partnership review to achieve fairer taxation by stopping tax-motivated allocation of profits in mixed membership partnerships that typically include individual and corporate members. The new power introduced under new clause 4 will support the introduction of the mechanism and will be used to change the relevant national insurance contributions legislation by regulation, once the related Finance Bill 2014 legislation becomes law. It will also allow NICs legislation to be amended in future to reflect any subsequent changes to income tax legislation in that area, to maintain symmetry between tax and NICs positions.
New clause 5 and amendment 2 replace clause 13, which would have removed limits on the Treasury categorising members of limited liability partnerships who satisfy certain conditions as employed earners for the purposes of NICs, rather than self-employed earners. New clause 2 provides an express power to treat LLP members who meet certain conditions as employed earners for NICs purposes. Those conditions will be set out in regulations and will follow income tax legislation introduced in the Finance Bill 2014. Broadly, it will mean that the individual member of the LLP has no or little real economic interest or risk in the LLP, and instead will be rewarded by a fixed salary. Those conditions will be based on proposals on which HMRC has consulted, as part of the public consultation on changes to partnership tax and NICs rules. HMRC has been advised that in response to those proposals, structures with only corporate members were being promoted as a way around the proposed legislation. The schemes involved the individual establishing a personal service company or other intermediary, with that intermediary becoming a member of the LLP in place of the individual in order to avoid those provisions.
New clause 5 provides power to make regulations to achieve the policy objective of the measure, and counteract the artificial imposition of a company or intermediary to avoid the impact of the measure. Regulations will follow new income tax legislation in the Finance Bill 2014. That power will enable the reclassification by regulation of certain LLP members as employed earners for NICs purposes, even when they hide behind a company or intermediary.
The treatment of members of LLPs as self-employed was designed to replicate the position of traditional partnerships. The new clause will ensure that those tax rules are not used to create a tax advantage, and it creates a level playing field between partnerships that have not sought to misuse tax rules for LLPs and those that have done so. I appreciate that that was a rather technical explanation for rather technical new clauses, but I hope it was of use and that the House will agree that new clauses 4 and 5 be added to the Bill, instead of clauses 12 and 13.
Cost of Living
Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts(11 years ago)
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Chris Leslie
I do not know whether you voted against those measures, Mr Deputy Speaker, but we appreciate any efforts to help alleviate the cost of living. Does the hon. Gentleman believe that when people fill up their tank at the petrol station, they think, “How grateful we are to the Conservatives for the cost of petrol today”? When it comes to the cost of living—[Interruption.]
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. The hon. Gentleman has been very generous so far, but he cannot give way to six people at once. Let us get our act together and try to get through the debate. There are 21 Members who want to speak, and I am sure that other Members will want to hear them.
Chris Leslie
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am still on the first page of my speech. I remind Government Members that the profits of the energy companies, which in many ways are the drivers hurting many of our constituents, have risen astronomically in recent years. Since the general election, energy company profits are up from £2 billion to £3.7 billion. Members will have read in The Independent yesterday that profits were £30 per household at the time of the general election, that they rose to £53 per household in 2012 and that they are now expected to be £105 per household this year, and yet the Government continually cower in trepidation of the big six gas and electricity corporations. They are not just recoiling from any willingness to challenge their behaviour, but in their cowardice the Government defend the status quo as though nothing can be done.
Labour says that energy bills can and should be frozen while Parliament legislates to reset the energy market to one that provides true competition, reduces scope for excessive profiteering and offers reductions for customers when wholesale prices fall.
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. Everybody else has sat down, but somehow the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) feels he can hang around for another five minutes. I assure him that he cannot. The Minister will give way when he wishes to, not when the hon. Gentleman demands. [Interruption.] I do not need help from others, either.
Chris Leslie
I think that shows that we have touched a nerve. We know that the best we can expect from the autumn statement—[Interruption.]
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. Did somebody shout out something about cowardice? No; okay, carry on.
Chris Leslie
I did not catch what was said, but we will see what Hansard records.
We know what will be in the autumn statement next week. The best we can expect is that the Chancellor will probably transfer about £100 or so off people’s energy bill and on to their tax bill instead. That is a ruse.
Robert Halfon
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. The hon. Gentleman has said that his Government tried to help motorists, but he inadvertently forgot to mention that they raised fuel duty 12 times.
Mr Deputy Speaker
I assure the hon. Gentleman that that is not a point of order. He has made that point on many occasions and I did not need reminding.
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. We can all make a judgment about that, but it might be helpful to remind Members that there are many speakers to come, so if we are going to have interventions they have to be short and not speeches. I will be honest with Members: anyone on my list of speakers who makes a long intervention will go down the list accordingly.
Chris Leslie
The hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) is short in his contributions on most occasions. I note that he wanted to change the subject from energy prices. The problem is that, time after time, the Conservative party has no answers for the public, who want politicians—their elected representatives—to take action on the cost of living, particularly on energy prices. As long as the hon. Gentleman and all his colleagues let the rip-off merchants and unfair profiteers continue with business as usual, the public will take exception to the deceitful claim that we are all in it together.
Mr Ellwood
I urge the hon. Gentleman to be cautious about questioning whether this subject is being taken seriously by Government Members, because the record should note that there are more Government Members than Opposition Members present to debate this important issue. On energy, will he now concede that Labour failed to ensure that the lights will be kept on in this country by failing to invest in nuclear energy? More than six nuclear power stations have closed down. That is why energy prices have gone up—because we are not making our own energy.
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. I asked for short interventions. Please shorten them, Mr Ellwood, or we will not take any more from you. I am sure you will want to get another one in later.
Chris Leslie
There are only another 18 months during which there will be more Conservative Members than Labour ones in this Chamber. I hope that the hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) is watching the clock, because they are running out of time.
The Prime Minister has broken not only that list of promises, but more records than most Prime Ministers over the decades, and not in a good way. How has he been a record breaker? Since entering No. 10 Downing street, he has delivered a record-breaking cost of living crisis, with wages failing to keep pace with prices for an unprecedented 40 out of his 41 months in office. That is the longest period of diminishing real wage values since records began.
A record-breaking number of people now rely on food banks just to get by—it has tripled in the past year alone—with more than 350,000 families requiring food parcels in the past six months.
Alun Cairns
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. The hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) has inadvertently misled the House in that the quotes attributed to me are wholly inaccurate. I ask him to withdraw what he said.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
I do not know whether what was said is true or false, but the hon. Gentleman has put the facts on the record. I am sure that that point can be sorted out later, no doubt over a cup of tea.
Stephen Doughty
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am sorry to raise another point of order, but the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan suggested that I may have misled the House—
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. Let me reassure both hon. Gentlemen that I am not going to decide who is right. You have each claimed that you are right and that the other is wrong. It is on the record, and people can make up their minds tomorrow. I want to continue with this debate.
Chris Leslie
My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth may have time later to elaborate on the quote. It may be incorrect, and we will see whether journalists want to look into that.
Kwasi Kwarteng
I have no idea what the hon. Gentleman is talking about. I am very pleased and somewhat flattered that he should be referring to the Free Enterprise Group on the Floor of the House. What was the size of the deficit when his party left government in 2010? What was the absolute size of the deficit and what was the proportion of the deficit—
Chris Leslie
The national debt was about £800 million. The national debt—[Hon. Members: “The deficit.”] I know what the hon. Gentleman said. I could hear what he said. I am giving him the figures. The national debt—[Interruption.] It seems that Government Members do not want to talk about the national debt. The national debt was about £800 million. It is now £1.2 trillion. As Brucie might say, “Higher, higher!”
Mr Deputy Speaker
It had better be a point of order, Mr Newmark, if you want to get in early. I do not want to have to put you near the bottom, because I know that this matter is important to you.
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. I was not taking a point of clarification, but a point of order.
Mr Newmark
It is a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. The hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) was asked a question about the deficit. Unfortunately, his answer was about debt. Rather like Rev. Paul Flowers, he does not know basic economics. [Interruption.]
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. I will let that go. It is up to the shadow Minister how he wishes to answer the question. It is not for you, Mr Newmark, to waste the House’s time on an irrelevant—[Interruption.] Order. On an irrelevant point of order. If you do not mind, we will have no more.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. You also want to speak, Mr Davies. You are constantly on your feet. I want to hear Mr Leslie. I also want to hear what the Government have to say. I will not hear either of them with the amount of time we have taken so far.
Chris Leslie
That is a good point, Mr Deputy Speaker, so I will be brief in talking about the hon. Member for Spelthorne and the Free Enterprise Group. The Free Enterprise Group published plans to slap a 15% increase on essentials such as food and children’s clothes through VAT and to triple the tax on heating bills. A number of hon. Members who are in the Chamber today are members of the Free Enterprise Group. They might be shuffling away from the hon. Member for Spelthorne now.
Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend realise that the reason why some of us worry about the proposals of the Free Enterprise Group is that they are all of a piece with what the Tories have done already, including a drop of £35 a week in real wages in my constituency, the imposition of the bedroom tax on the poorest people and, contrary to what they say, increases in council tax for the poorest people? The reason Tory Back Benchers worry about being seen as the party of the rich is that they are the party of the rich.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
I am concerned because the debate has been going for 36 minutes already. The time limit on Back-Bench speeches is due to be five minutes. I do not want it to go below that. At this rate, a lot of Members will drop off the list.
Chris Leslie
I want to draw my remarks to a close, so I will not take any more interventions.
In a moment, my hon. Friends will be subjected to the Minister claiming that the Government alone are responsible for the long overdue return of economic growth. What he cannot grasp is that growth is appearing despite his policies, not because of them. As the Nobel prize-winning economist, Paul Krugman, said of the Government’s attitude just the other day,
“It’s like hitting yourself over the head with a baseball bat for years. Then, you stop hitting yourself with the baseball bat and say, ‘See? I feel much better now—hitting myself with a baseball bat was clearly the right thing to do’.”
That sums up their view perfectly. They do not understand that only the return of strong economic growth will tackle the deficit in any meaningful way. Three years on, they still have not cottoned on.
The reason we have a cost of living crisis is that the historic connection between economic growth and household wealth has been severed. Even though it looks like we are finally seeing some growth in some parts of the economy, that growth is not being shared fairly. Indeed, GDP per capita remains flat. I pay tribute to the companies and households that have managed to keep it together despite the Chancellor’s inaction. What we need now is help for those who are trying to do their best—the people who never complain, who never say that they should be at the front of the queue, who go to work and who manage as best they can. Those people need real help with their energy bills and child care costs. They need us to tackle low pay and to freeze business rates for small firms.
The challenge for the autumn statement is to take action now on the cost of living, not to use sleight of hand to pile more burdens on the taxpayer. We need long-term reforms that ensure that there is a balanced recovery that is built to last, not short-term, knee-jerk flip-flopping. We need fairness for the many, not tax cuts for the few. The Government are out of touch with the mood of the public—the wealthy elite are looking after the wealthy elite and are all in it together. They are timid in the face of excessive profiteering from big energy companies, while the rest get broken promises on the economy and the deficit from a Government who are lurching to the right and reverting to type. The British people cannot afford this Government any longer. Britain deserves better.
Helen Jones
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I note that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury is not present. Can you investigate whether that is because the Lib Dem part of the coalition no longer takes responsibility for economic policy?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
As the hon. Lady well knows, that is not a point of order. It is certainly not a matter for the Chair and does not want to be. I call the Financial Secretary.
Sajid Javid
I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller).
Sajid Javid
I will give way to my hon. Friends in a moment. The Opposition spokesman talked about breaking records, so let us take a quick look at Labour’s record breakers—they are enough to make Roy Castle jump up and down with excitement. Labour gave this country the deepest recession in living memory, and the biggest budget deficit in our post-war history, and the largest in the G20. To answer the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller), Labour was borrowing almost £160 billion—£300,000 a minute, or £5,000 every second. Labour gave this country the largest bail-out the world has ever seen. [Interruption.]
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I find it strange that I cannot hear the Financial Secretary because Government Members are making so much noise. I would have thought they ought to listen to him, just as I wish to hear him.
Sajid Javid
I think the House missed hearing about another record breaker that Labour gave this country, which was the largest bank bail-out the world has ever seen. That is Labour’s legacy, and if the Opposition spokesman wants to apologise, he is welcome to do so.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. The hon. Lady has made her intervention. She cannot keep going.
Sajid Javid
The hon. Lady needs to check her figures. She will see that, as I have said, the sharpest rise in the debt-to-GDP ratio took place during the last 10 years of the Labour Government.
Living Standards
Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts(11 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Gauke
The fact that we have credibility in our fiscal policy means that the Governor of the Bank of England has been able to say what he has said about the greater certainty for interest rates, which is helpful for businesses. If we throw away that fiscal credibility, we will make life more difficult for businesses wanting to get credit.
We have talked about what the motion contains. It says that we should get more people into work: we agree with that. Over the year, employment has increased by 301,000, and unemployment has fallen by 49,000. In July, the claimant count fell, for the ninth consecutive month, to 1.44 million, the lowest level since February 2009. This is the result of a Government who have created the right tax and regulatory environment for businesses to flourish. The proposals from the Opposition would put all of that at risk.
We hear about bringing forward capital investment. We also recognise the need for infrastructure investment to spur the jobs and growth of the future, and that is why in June the Chief Secretary unveiled the biggest public housing programme for more than 20 years; the largest programme of rail investment since Victorian times; the greatest investment in our roads since the 1970s; fast online access for the whole country; and the unlocking of massive investment in cleaner energy to power our economy forward. We have increased expertise in Whitehall and we are working hard to deliver those projects as soon as possible.
The cost of living is an important issue, and we recognise that times are tough for many people. But let us look at the difference between the parties. Whereas we have reduced income tax for 25 million people—we have increased the personal allowance—the previous Government doubled the rate of income tax on low-paid workers. This Government have ensured that we have credibility so that we have been able to keep mortgage rates low: the Opposition would lose our credibility. Council tax doubled under the previous Government: it has been frozen under us.
The previous Government raised fuel duty 12 times while in office and had plans to raise it six more times subsequently—the equivalent of 13p per litre—and we have frozen fuel duty. When we came to office, the UK had almost the highest child care costs in the world, and we will help families with child care. Energy bills soared under Labour. Between 1997 and 2010, the average domestic gas bill more than doubled. Electricity bills went up by more than 50% and Labour remains committed to an expensive 2030 decarbonisation target that will only add to energy bills, whereas this Government are forcing energy companies to put customers on the lowest tariff. When it comes to beer duty, Labour planned to raise the tax: we not only froze it, we cut it.
My hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin), in an excellent speech, asked how we ensure that we have the sustainable growth that we need. We need sustainable public finances—an argument that we have made consistently and that has been consistently opposed by the Opposition. We need a highly skilled work force, and that is why 500,000 apprenticeships have been undertaken under this Government. It is why we are undertaking ambitious educational reform. We need welfare reform, with a system that makes sure that work is rewarded—not something that we inherited from Labour. We need a competitive tax system that encourages investment in the United Kingdom, not one that drives it away. We need to deal with the regulatory burdens that prevent growth—we have undertaken planning reform, which will help to increase housing supply.
What do we get from the Opposition? We get a Labour party that presided over a squeeze in living standards from 2003; a Labour party that must accept some responsibility for the deepest recession in a century; a Labour party that doubled the rate of income tax on low-paid workers; a Labour party that planned for increase after increase in fuel duty; a Labour party that remains signed up to decarbonisation targets that would increase energy prices; a Labour party that has consistently set out an economic policy that would consist of more borrowing, an approach that would lead to higher mortgage rates and ultimately higher taxes; and a Labour party that has opposed our council tax freeze. For Opposition Members to lecture us on living standards is extraordinary. As President Obama might have said, it is the audacity of the hopeless.
If we want to help hard-working people—I think we all do—it is vital that we stick to the task. [Interruption.]
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. There are too many private conversations. I am struggling to hear the Minister.
Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill
Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts(11 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. In the light of the fact that the International Monetary Fund has upgraded the United Kingdom’s projection for growth, and that the European zone’s projection has been downgraded, I wonder whether you have been given any indication whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer will be making a statement, as I, for one, would like to congratulate him.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
On the last part of the hon. Gentleman’s question, I think that he has already achieved what he wants. The answer to the first part of his question is no.
Third Reading
Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)
After the global banking crash, my constituents in Northumberland wanted to see better banking, higher standards, fewer scandals, greater competition and a greater degree of choice and service. In the past three years, this Government have been on a slow but continual journey to reinvigorate British banking and clear up the mess that we inherited.
I believe that over the next couple of years smaller regional banks will spring up throughout this great country, and I want briefly to address the House on that matter. Paragraph 49 of the banking commission’s main summary gives an excellent summation of its views on competition in retail banking. I refer anybody interested in this to the grave and weighty paragraphs 313 to 343 of the larger volume, where they will see, in particular, the evidence of Anthony Thomson, the co-founder of Metro Bank, with whom I have worked at great length over the past two years to try to reinvigorate the regional banking market.
That culminated in a series of efforts that have been made with the various regulatory authorities, starting with meetings that my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr Tyrie) and I had in February 2012 with Mr Hector Sants, the then chief executive of the Financial Services Authority. Mr Sants followed that up by writing on 12 March 2012:
“We are conscious of the balance to be struck between ensuring high standards at the gateway, and the importance of allowing innovation and appropriate levels of access for new firms…there has been public debate about the potential advantages of new entrants in the area of small, regional banks focused on servicing the SME sector. In such cases we will be proportionate in our approach and would invite all firms with a viable business model and appropriate levels of resources to a pre-application meeting to help guide them through the application process”.
Those were wise words and a significant step by the then chief exec of the FSA.
Then came the Bill that became the Financial Services Act 2012, which, I am pleased to say, passed its Second Reading in this House on 23 April 2012. To my surprise, the Labour party voted against clause 5, which specifically emphasised
“the ease with which new entrants can enter the market, and…how far competition is encouraging innovation.”
Be that as it may, the banking commission and other parties hugely improved the approach to regional banking. I support the efforts of everyone involved and echo the words of the Minister and the shadow Minister.
Following a huge amount of effort outside this House to encourage regional banking, Mr Thomson and I held a conference in Gateshead on 7 June that was attended by 142 delegates, including the Minister. More important, however—this is of key relevance to the banking commission’s findings—Sam Woods, the director of the domestic UK banks division at the Prudential Regulation Authority, and Victoria Raffe, the director of authorisations at the Financial Conduct Authority, were also in attendance on that day. Those two people are in effect the gatekeepers of regional banking and of the authorisations and regulation that lie ahead. They were welcome and made the case that regional banks are the way ahead.
I for one expect at least three or four banks to spring up in the north-east over the next 12 to 18 months, ranging from asset-backed lenders such as Cambridge & Counties bank—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I know that the hon. Gentleman is going to draw his speech into the Third Reading, because this is the Third Reading debate. The two must come together and it would be helpful if that happened sooner rather than later.
Guy Opperman
I will totally draw it into Third Reading, Mr Deputy Speaker. Those particular persons are very much affected and are working hand in glove with the Bill, which I support wholeheartedly.
John Mann
I sit on the Treasury Select Committee; the hon. Gentleman served on it, so we have a modicum more information on these matters, as do other hon. Members, than our constituents. Nothing has changed for them, however. Fundamentally, there has been no segmentation of the market, which is why the new challenger banks are getting no further. Only a tiny, tiny proportion of business is going to them. We have not restructured, even though in RBS and Lloyds TSB we have the perfect opportunity, owing to the crisis, to restructure. Across the world, we see vast numbers of people suffering and Governments of every political persuasion being voted out because of the financial crisis and the decisions they have made. This Government might face the same dilemma. I am not commenting on whether the decisions on the deficit and debt are right or wrong economically, politically or socially—that is a critical debate, but it is a different debate—but the fact that we are in this situation and we are not addressing it for the future in anything but the most micro-management way is part of that weakness.
The Government might want to give themselves plaudits and say, “Well, perhaps we’re doing a little better than the Government of Greece or Spain,” or whichever Government it is. The Americans can slap themselves on the back and say, “Unlike the Brits, we’ve got our act together. We’ve targeted their banks. We’ve portrayed them as the wrongdoers. We’ve managed to shift some of the powers to ourselves,” which is precisely what is going on among the political, banking and business classes in Washington and New York. They are winning that battle.
I will end on this point. This is a world crisis. My research document proves that every one of the top 50 banks in the world, without exception, have been involved in criminality in recent times. That is staggering for any industry. For us to hold that industry together with sticking tape, not even with the most damaged and shattered elements, including those that have had to be nationalised, such as Lloyds TSB—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. Mr Mann, your time is up—that is the story of your life at the moment.