Tax Credits
Lord Evans of Rainow Excerpts(9 years, 1 month ago)
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Seema Malhotra
I will give way in a moment.
A family with one earner on the minimum wage will be more than £1,500 worse off next year and almost £7,000 worse off over the Parliament.
The claim that we have heard most is that working families should not be concerned because the minimum wage will see significant increases in the next few years. As the Institute for Fiscal Studies has made abundantly clear, the claim that those increases will close the gap is arithmetically impossible. Paul Johnson, the director of the IFS, summed it up:
“The key fact is that the increase in the minimum wage simply cannot provide full compensation for the majority of losses that will be experienced by tax credit recipients”.
He said:
“Unequivocally, tax credit recipients in work will be made worse off by the measures in the budget on average.”
Damian Hinds
I must make some progress.
The tax credit reforms are an important part of fiscal rebalancing, but they are only one part. On the same day that the tax credits lower threshold and higher taper rate take effect, we are reforming dividend tax and pensions relief for those on high incomes, and initiating a further clampdown on tax avoidance. Those are three measures among a set that also includes: the end of permanent non-dom status, restrictions on landlords’ tax relief and the continuation of a top rate of tax that is higher than it was in 4,718 of the 4,753 days the Labour party was in office. If we look at how the burden of deficit reduction is spread through society, the simple fact is this: the distribution of spending among income groups is constant between 2010 and 2017, while the burden of tax has shifted towards the best-off.
Graham Evans
Does my hon. Friend agree with the former Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, who said that subsidising lower wages in the way that tax credits do was never, ever the intention?
Damian Hinds
My hon. Friend brings me on, quite handily, to my very next point. When tax credits first came in, their aim was entirely noble, but they quickly soared out of control. The total cost more than trebled between 1999 and 2010, ending up costing £30 billion in 2010. Scandalously, while spending spiralled under the previous Government, in-work poverty actually rose by 20%. Now, we can kick a problem down the road or we can do something about it. We chose to do something about it. Our reforms do not abolish tax credit or anything close.
Graham Evans (Weaver Vale) (Con)
I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me to speak in this important debate.
Britain is home to 1% of the world’s population and accounts for 4% of the world’s gross domestic product and 7% of the world’s welfare spending. Tax credit expenditure more than trebled in real terms in the decade between 2000 and 2010. In fact, Britain has the highest expenditure on family cash benefits in the world. In 2011, we were spending twice as much as the OECD average. Without sound public finances, there can be no economic security for working families, and the country cannot pay for the hospitals and schools that people rely on.
Those who suffer most when the Government run unsustainable deficits are not the richest, but the very poorest. As the Prime Minister made clear in a speech at Ormiston Bolingbroke in Weaver Vale, there is nothing progressive about burdening our children or paying more in debt interest than we spend on schools. There is nothing progressive about debt.
George Kerevan (East Lothian) (SNP)
Surely the hon. Gentleman is aware that a central portion of the national debt is owned by the Treasury and that we pay a substantial part of the interest payments to ourselves.
Graham Evans
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but I have to say that I have a vested interest as I have three young children. Is he saying that we should increase our debt? Should the debt of £1.3 trillion be £2 trillion, £3 trillion or £4 trillion? How much more debt does he think this country should leave to our children to pay back?
Graham Evans
Or should it be £5 trillion, £6 trillion or £7 trillion? I will give way again to the hon. Gentleman so he can tell me.
George Kerevan
The SNP is more than willing and happy to reduce the national debt year by year and annual borrowing year by year, but I say again that something over a third of the national debt is actually owned by the Treasury, so he cannot go on saying that interest payments go to somebody else; they go to ourselves to fund hospitals, for example.
Graham Evans
The hon. Gentleman is saying that the Scottish National party is happy to increase the national debt. That is the message: the national debt is going to go up. That is what socialism does and what socialists say. They are not concerned about the national debt, which is currently £1.4 trillion and getting higher. We can hear the message coming through loud and clear from the SNP.
Tax credits cost £l billion in their first full year, but have since risen to an estimated £30 billion over the last year, yet over the same period in-work poverty rose by 20%. The status quo on tax credits is clearly not working. Indeed, the former Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, said that tax credits were
“subsiding low wages in a way that was never intended.”
It is vital to address the root causes of low pay rather than simply continuing endlessly to subsidise low pay through the benefit system. Reforming tax credits is crucial to achieving a sustainable welfare system that is fair both to the most vulnerable in society and to hard-working taxpayers who have to pay for it.
These reforms do not stand in isolation, but are part of a joined-up, wider offer to working people by this Government. With the announcement of the introduction of a new living wage by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor during his summer Budget, and the strides taken to raise the personal allowance, people will not only earn more but keep more of what they earn. It always pays to work.
On top of that, we doubled the number of free childcare hours of which parents can take advantage to 30, introduced tax-free childcare and froze fuel duty, saving a family £10 every time they fill up their tank.
Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman is talking about how people working on low pay should be grateful for the so-called living wage. Let me make the point again that this is not a living wage: it is not £7.85; it is not enough for people to live on. Let me provide an example. On the basis of changes to the tax credit threshold and the taper, a medical secretary with two children earning £22,236 a year can be expected to be £2,109 a year, or £40 a week, worse off in 2016 than in 2015. Will the hon. Gentleman comment on that?
Graham Evans
What I will say is that employers must step up to the plate. They must pay higher rises—rising salaries. The living wage will rise to £9 during the term of the present Parliament, and because the Government have increased the personal allowance, people will earn £12,500 before paying any tax whatsoever.
The combination of those changes will make eight out of 10 working families better off. A typical family in which someone is working full time on the minimum wage will be £2,400 a year better off by the end of this Parliament. By 2020, the annual income of a single parent with one child working 35 hours a week and receiving the current national minimum wage will have increased by more than £1,500.
Poverty can be left behind only through work. The reforms of tax credits focus support on the families on the lowest incomes, while favouring support for working families through the tax system and earnings growth rather than through benefits. They will move Britain from a high welfare, high tax, low wage economy to a lower welfare, lower tax and higher wage economy.
Tax Credits (Working Families)
Lord Evans of Rainow Excerpts(9 years, 4 months ago)
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Shabana Mahmood
My hon. Friend has made a powerful point, and I agree with all that she has said.
Graham Evans (Weaver Vale) (Con)
When Gordon Brown introduced tax credits in 1998, he said that the cost would be £2 billion. It is now £30 billion. Will the hon. Lady tell us whether that is too much, too little, or about right?
Shabana Mahmood
I think that what we are talking about is the cost of making work pay in the economy that we have at the moment. As I will explain in more detail later, the Government are doing things the wrong way round. As was pointed out by the Chair of the Work and Pensions Select Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field), we must establish a higher-skill, higher-wage economy before we remove the support for those who are stuck on low pay. I would prefer people not to be in that position.
Graham Evans
Working tax credits of £30 billion—my hon. Friend may have noticed my question to members of the Opposition Front-Bench team whether that was too high. They did not answer. Does not the whole debate show that Labour is the party of welfare?
Mr Gauke
I fear that my hon. Friend is right. Given what we inherited, it was necessary to introduce wide, comprehensive reforms to reward work and allow people to fulfil their potential. We have cut taxes. We have capped benefits so that no household earns more in out-of-work benefits than the average household earns by working. We are simplifying the benefits system through the roll-out of universal credit. We tightened the rules to prevent abuse of the system and, perhaps most importantly, we ensured that there were decent, full-time jobs for people to go to. At the same time, we have ensured that benefits continue to help the most vulnerable.
Before I set out how we will continue to help working people to achieve their aspirations, I shall say a few words about tax credits. Tax credits have helped to support many of our most vulnerable families. Over the past five years, we have channelled the support they provide towards the people who need it most—for instance, by increasing the disability element of tax credit in line with the consumer prices index. The next five years will see us continue to roll out universal credit, which will simplify the complex web of benefits and tax credits currently in place.
Productivity
Lord Evans of Rainow Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Greg Hands
It is a bit churlish to debate the precise details like that. The fact remains that car production in this country is extremely impressive. We should celebrate that throughout the UK, including in Scotland.
Greg Hands
Let me make a bit of progress.
The high productivity that I have mentioned is very good, but we need to be equally honest about the areas where we can do better. We need to improve our literacy and numeracy skills, and our OECD position for intermediate skills needs to rise. To match the highest rate of female participation in the workforce in the G7, which is in Canada, or in the OECD, which is in Iceland, we would need over 500,000 or 2.5 million more women to enter the labour force respectively. Our gross value added growth is still too reliant on London and the south-east. We are not building enough housing, and our investment in roads and rail has not yet undone the effects of the decades in which we under-invested. All that means that our economy needs to find an extra gear.
We should view this debate in the context of the broad decreases in productivity growth across the OECD over the past few years. We are not unique in this regard. Other G7 countries, including Germany and Italy, have seen their measured productivity per worker fall since 2007. We have to accept that productivity is a major challenge, but it is not a new challenge—it has been around for decades. To meet that challenge, we must look calmly and seriously at the variety of factors that affect productivity, and put in place wide and ambitious long-term reforms.
Importantly—the hon. Member for Nottingham East needs to engage with this point—those reforms must not jeopardise other elements of our economic growth. That is the approach that the Government will take in our productivity plan, because productivity is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. It is all about prosperity. When we publish our productivity plan, I hope that the Labour party will see fit to support it, because we agree that improved productivity will be good for living standards across the country and help us to meet our fiscal commitments, which is a point that he raised.
Greg Hands
I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans) and welcome him back to the House after his fantastic election result last month.
Graham Evans
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. Will he remind the House of the previous Labour Government’s record over 13 years? In 1997, 20% of GDP was from manufacturing, but by 2010 that had dropped to less than 10%.
Greg Hands
My hon. Friend is right that the previous Labour Government had a dreadful record on manufacturing, and that is one of the key challenges—this reads through to productivity—facing us this Parliament.
Royal Bank of Scotland
Lord Evans of Rainow Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Graham Evans (Weaver Vale) (Con)
I am delighted to welcome my hon. Friend to her place. Will she remind the House who gave Fred “the Shred” Goodwin a knighthood for services to banking?
Harriett Baldwin
I thank my hon. Friend for a good question that reminds us not only of the failure of the banking regulatory system under the previous Government, but of the rewards for failure. Labour allowed Fred Goodwin to walk away with an enormous pension and a knighthood.
The Economy
Lord Evans of Rainow Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Chris Leslie
The clue was at the beginning of the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. Labour leaders do work well together in local government, and when we hear the Chancellor’s response to this debate they might find that there are a few surprises and a hidden agenda with a bit of a sting in the tail for them over the next few months.
What about the rest of the spin in the Queen’s Speech, such as extending the right to buy? Everyone is in favour of home ownership, of course, but the scheme proposed by Ministers is so badly thought through, throwing housing associations into chaos, that even the Mayor of London—for it is he—has called it the “height of insanity”.
There was a further piece of spin, of course: a tax lock designed purely to stop the Chancellor raising VAT again. Do not get me wrong, we welcome any effort by the Chancellor to legislate against his own record and his own worst instincts, but this legislation does nothing more than prove that he does not even trust himself on tax. Of course, it does not give any guarantees about other stealth tax rises elsewhere, nor does it prevent him from acting on his other instinct of always prioritising tax cuts for the very richest over those for those on middle and low incomes—[Interruption.] Conservative Members are all shouting from the Back Benches, but the Chancellor’s eyes are down on his notes. Is the Chancellor planning to cut that top rate of tax from 45p on earnings of more than £150,000? I will give way to the Chancellor if he can clarify for us whether that is his plan. Will he cut that rate of 45p for those earning £150,000, or not?
Graham Evans
Why in 13 years of the Labour Government did they not increase the top rate from 40p to 50p?
Chris Leslie
We have heard those arguments. I was asking the Government whether they plan to cut the top rate of tax of earnings of £150,000 from 45p, and perhaps down to 40p, and there is silence from the Government Benches and from the Chancellor. Perhaps he will come to that later in his speech.
The Queen’s Speech was high on rhetoric but was in reality the usual combination of diversion and distraction. As ever with this Chancellor, there is more than meets the eye. All the rhetoric is just the tip of a Tory iceberg, with 90% of their real agenda hidden below the surface, still invisible from public view. That agenda will not even be partly revealed until the emergency Budget on 8 July. Until then, serious questions remain unanswered about what drives the Government, and in what direction.
The trajectory of overall cuts set out in the March Budget goes beyond what is needed to eradicate the deficit by the end of the Parliament. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Queen’s Speech still leaves us totally in the dark about more than 85% of the Chancellor’s planned £12 billion of welfare cuts. Just this morning, the IFS criticised the Government for giving a
“misleading impression of what departmental spending in many areas will look like”.
Frankly, there is growing disbelief across the country that the Chancellor can protect those in greatest need while keeping his promises to the electorate on child benefit and disability benefits. My hon. Friends will not have failed to spot during Prime Minister’s Question Time yesterday how the Prime Minister, when challenged by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) on the question of disability benefits, digressed into all sorts of reminiscences about the campaign trail and how much fun it was going to various meetings. The Prime Minister promised that
“the most disabled should always be protected”
and I will be looking to the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to keep the Prime Minister’s promises. The Government might have secured a majority, but they did not secure a mandate for specific cuts to departments or services because those were never explained or set out before the election. Nor have we ever had an explanation of how they will pay for their multi-billion pound pledges on tax and services or, crucially, for the NHS.
The Opposition agree with yesterday’s OECD assessment that a fair approach is the right one to take—sensible savings and protection for those on middle and lower incomes. Cuts that decimate public services would be too big a price to pay, especially as they may even result in higher costs in the longer term. We also heard how 8,000 nurse training places were cut in 2010. The use of agency nurses then proliferated to fill the gap. Is it any wonder, therefore, that NHS trusts now face a deficit of about £2 billion? Part of the reason the deficit is so big is that productivity has been so poor. Britain has the second lowest productivity in the G7, and output per worker is still lower than in 2010. This should have been at the top of the Chancellor’s agenda throughout the last Parliament, but he did not even mention it in his last Budget speech. For the Tories, it seems that productivity just springs magically if the Government just get out of the way, unrelated to any fiscal or policy choices that they make.
Mr Osborne
I am not feeling particularly intimidated by the hon. Gentleman because he is spouting the same old anti-aspiration, anti-sound public finances nonsense that we have heard from the Opposition for the past five years.
Let me make progress and come to the central point. We have to tackle the endemic weaknesses in the British economy that no Government have been able to solve in the past: we are not productive enough and we do not export enough, save enough, train enough or build enough.
Mr Osborne
Let me make a little progress before I give way to my hon. Friend. We do not see enough of the prosperity and opportunity produced by our economy shared across all parts of our United Kingdom. The Queen’s Speech addresses those weaknesses head on. The housing Bill will ensure that more new homes are built and that tenants of housing associations get the opportunity to buy their own homes.
Mr Osborne
As the Prime Minister made very clear yesterday, we will follow the principles that we followed in the previous Parliament, when we protected the most vulnerable in our society and actually increased the amount we were able to give to the most disabled in our country. In every single intervention about economic policy today, in the different debates we have had since the Queen’s Speech, and at Prime Minister’s questions, Labour Members have demanded more public spending, complained about a public expenditure cut, or implied that there should be higher welfare bills. That is what we have heard about over the past few days—more spending and higher welfare bills that can be paid for only by more borrowing and higher taxes on the working people of this country. That would undermine the security that we have restored to our economy.
Graham Evans
I wonder whether the Chancellor is aware that, as I speak, IBM is signing a multimillion-pound contract in my constituency of Weaver Vale on high-speed computing, in partnership with the Science and Technology Facilities Council at Sci-Tech Daresbury—the enterprise zone. Does he agree that this has happened only because of our long-term economic plan for reducing the deficit and cutting taxes, that the British people know that only the Conservatives are the party of business, and that the whole world knows that Britain is open for business?
Mr Osborne
Let me say how fantastic it is to see my hon. Friend back in his place, because he has fought so hard for his constituency in delivering the Mersey Gateway bridge, the rail improvements in his constituency, and, as he mentioned, the major investments in science at Daresbury, including in high-performance computing. Today’s announcement from IBM shows what happens if we get our science and technology policy right as a country—we attract investment from all over the world.
Oral Answers to Questions
Lord Evans of Rainow Excerpts(10 years ago)
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Mr David Jones (Clwyd West) (Con)
1. What progress he has made on his policy to create a northern powerhouse for the UK economy.
Graham Evans (Weaver Vale) (Con)
6. What progress he has made on his policy to create a northern powerhouse for the UK economy.
Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)
9. What progress he has made on his policy to create a northern powerhouse for the UK economy.
Mr Osborne
As a Cheshire Member of Parliament, I know that the north Wales economy is closely connected with the economy of the north-west of England. We have already committed ourselves to reopening the Halton curve, re-establishing a regular direct rail link between north Wales and Liverpool for the first time since the 1970s. That is something that my right hon. Friend asked me to do, and campaigned for. Moreover, High Speed 2 gives us the potential of a station at Crewe, which will greatly increase capacity for journeys to north Wales and reduce journey times. We are ready to listen to further ideas for ensuring that prosperity is experienced in north Wales as well.
Graham Evans
For 13 years Labour neglected jobs and growth in the north, including Weaver Vale, thus creating an economy that was dangerously unbalanced. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is only the Conservative party, with its long-term economic plan, that will deliver job security for the whole United Kingdom, not just the south?
Mr Osborne
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. A record number of people are now employed in the north of England, but the gap between north and south grew under those 13 years of Labour government. If the House wants one example of a project that was waiting to be completed but was entirely neglected by the Labour Government, it is the Mersey Gateway bridge, which this Government are now building and to which they are committed—and, thanks to my hon. Friend’s campaigning, there will be no tolls for local residents.
Oral Answers to Questions
Lord Evans of Rainow Excerpts(10 years, 2 months ago)
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Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
1. What progress he has made on his long-term economic plan.
Graham Evans (Weaver Vale) (Con)
14. What progress he has made on his long-term economic plan.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr George Osborne)
The Government’s long-term economic plan is working, and the International Monetary Fund expects the United Kingdom to grow faster than any other G7 country this year. But the job is not yet done; there are growing risks abroad from a disappointingly weak eurozone and persistent risks at home from Opposition Members who would abandon the long-term plan and return Britain to the economic mess they left it in.
Mr Osborne
My hon. Friend is absolutely right about that. We heard lots of scare stories from the Opposition about how this scheme would be used only in central London and the like. The fact is that today’s figures show that almost 50,000 people have been helped by Help to Buy, and that 80% of those have been helped outside London and the south-east of England. In her own council area, more than 300 families have been helped. Members of Parliament from west Yorkshire would like to note that Leeds is the No.1 location for people using Help to Buy. The scheme is working, it is about backing aspiration and it is about helping people get on in life.
Graham Evans
Businesses and families across my constituency will all benefit from recent investments in the Halton curve railway, the Mersey gateway bridge and the Hartree centre for supercomputing in Daresbury. I urge my right hon. Friend the Chancellor to continue the important work he is doing as part of the long-term economic plan to build the northern powerhouse, which will continue to create jobs and economic security in Weaver Vale and across the north of England.
Mr Osborne
Of course, I want Weaver Vale and Cheshire to be part of that northern powerhouse, and may I commend my hon. Friend for the campaigns he has fought to get the second Mersey crossing, the Halton curve and the investment in Daresbury? Those are things that Labour MPs, including the one who used to represent his seat, campaigned for for years and got nothing from a Labour Government. We now have a Conservative MP delivering for his constituents under a Conservative Chancellor.
Oral Answers to Questions
Lord Evans of Rainow Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Andrea Leadsom
The legal challenge is in line with all legal challenges of this sort. To protect the British financial services sector, it is very important to try to challenge the proposal. There has been a House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee report on the cost of similar legal challenges. It is not excessive—it is £25,000 to £35,000, or of that order—but the point is that we in this Government are trying to align risk and reward, which is absolutely crucial for the success of the financial services sector.
Graham Evans (Weaver Vale) (Con)
3. What recent steps he has taken to make saving more flexible.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr George Osborne)
This Government believe that people who have worked hard and saved hard through their lives should be trusted with their own pension savings in retirement. That is why, following the Budget, we have already given people much greater access to their pension savings and why, from next April, they will have complete freedom of access to their defined contribution scheme.
Graham Evans
This year’s Budget exposed some people’s innate belief that those who have worked hard and saved all their lives could not be trusted with their own money. Will my right hon. Friend the Chancellor reassure savers in Weaver Vale that he rejects such patronising views, and will he update the House on his plans to let people choose how to spend their own money and to make savings far more flexible?
Mr Osborne
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. The fact that the Labour party had nothing to say in response reflects the muddled approach: it did not support the measure, but it did not know what to do with a popular Budget proposal. We are absolutely clear that we reject the patronising view, pursued by the previous Government, that the state knows better than individuals how to spend their money. Trusting people, reducing taxes, supporting savers—that is this Government’s approach.
Oral Answers to Questions
Lord Evans of Rainow Excerpts(11 years ago)
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Nicky Morgan
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. We will always look at the evidence, and if cares to write to me, we will certainly take that into account.
Graham Evans (Weaver Vale) (Con)
5. What estimate he has made of the number of jobs created in the private sector in the last 12 months; and if he will make a statement.
Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)
11. What estimate he has made of the number of jobs created in the private sector in the last 12 months; and if he will make a statement. [R]
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr George Osborne)
In the past year, employment in the private sector has increased by 380,000, more than offsetting the fall in public sector employment of 104,000. For every public sector job lost, more than three have been created in the private sector. That confounds the predictions of those who thought it could never happen.
Graham Evans
Unemployment in my constituency is lower than it was when I became the MP. With the further good news that Waitrose is creating 140 new jobs in Northwich later this month, will my right hon. Friend the Chancellor set out how small and medium-sized enterprises will benefit from a reduction in national insurance contributions?
Mr Osborne
I am delighted by the news of the new jobs being created by Waitrose in Northwich; as my hon. Friend well knows, I represent part of that town. That will be good for the people who live in it, and I hope that some of my constituents will find work there. The employment allowance, which we debated in this Parliament this week, is going to take £2,000 off the national insurance bill of every firm, but the biggest benefit will be felt by the smallest companies; 450,000 firms will be taken out of employer NICs altogether. That is a real boost for business, and it shows how we can help to support the recovery.
Oral Answers to Questions
Lord Evans of Rainow Excerpts(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Osborne
I make it a practice, like previous Chancellors, not to comment on the exchange rate, but let me make a broader point about monetary policy. At the Budget, I set a remit for the Bank of England to consider the use of forward guidance. Since we last met, the Monetary Policy Committee has, of course, made an independent judgment to take that up and has made a very clear statement about the future path of interest rates.
Graham Evans (Weaver Vale) (Con)
T7. Does my right hon. Friend the Chancellor agree that manufacturing surging to a three-year high and investment intentions rising to a six-year high show that this Government are committed to securing a balanced economy?