Income Tax (Charge)
Mel Stride Excerpts(2 weeks, 6 days ago)
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Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)
The Labour party pledged at the last election to usher in a new form of politics based on transparency and integrity. When pressed, Labour Members ruled out a large number of tax rises. One of these taxes, as the Labour manifesto explicitly stated, was national insurance:
“we will not increase National Insurance”.
Yet, only a few short weeks later, what has happened in this Budget? Employers’ national insurance contributions have been raised, which is a direct breach of the Labour manifesto. Do not take my word for it—Paul Johnson, the head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, has said exactly the same.
Of course, despite being at the scene of the crime, the Government have since hidden behind their alibi that, somehow, putting up employers’ national insurance contributions will have no impact on working people, but that is simply untrue.
Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mel Stride
My right hon. Friend is a sensible man to give way to, and I will do so in a moment.
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury recently admitted on Sky that putting up national insurance for employers will directly impact working people—of course it will. The Office for Budget Responsibility lays out in black and white that the consequence will be over 50,000 fewer jobs, with about 70% of the cost of this increase in taxation ultimately being borne by those who work, through lower wages. Are these not working people?
The Secretary of State mentioned her youth guarantee and the importance of youth. I simply observe that youth unemployment fell by over 40% under the previous Government, whereas it rose by over 40% under the last Labour Government. That is how successful the Labour party is.
Of course, because both the rate and the threshold have been increased, the national insurance increase will disproportionately impact those on lower wages, including the youngest workers.
Sir Edward Leigh
I warmly congratulate the new shadow Chancellor on his appointment. It is richly deserved, given his tremendous work as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in getting people back to work.
In opening this debate, the Secretary of State said that she is only attacking wealthy people. My right hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride) is talking about working people, so will he emphasise that our party stands four-square behind working farmers? These people, with only 250 acres, just want to pass on their business to their son, but they are being cruelly attacked by this Government.
Mel Stride
My right hon. Friend is right that this is another broken promise. At the general election, the now Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs gave an unequivocal guarantee to farmers across the country that there was no question of farms being brought into inheritance tax. There is a good reason for the exemptions and relief, because if inheritance tax is levied on family farms that are passed down to another generation, those farms will have to be broken up, with parts sold off to pay the tax.
I am glad that my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) mentioned this, because the OBR has said that, by 2030, this measure will raise the princely sum of £520 million, which is enough to run the national health service for just one day. Has a more modest sum ever raised so much misery? I think not.
The Chancellor assured us that she will not fiddle the figures by changing the fiscal targets, yet we have seen the fiscal targets changed to allow this Government to borrow an additional £140 billion.
This is not a good time for the Secretary of State to talk about pensioners, but she mentioned them at the end of her speech. They were so badly let down by the means-testing of the winter fuel payment, and they were not told in advance to expect anything like it. Ten million pensioners across the country will lose up to £300 as a consequence of this measure. The Government claim that only the wealthiest, only the millionaires, will be affected, but two thirds of pensioners below the poverty line will have this benefit removed.
Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)
I am grateful to the new shadow Chancellor for giving way. I could be wrong, but was he not the Secretary of State who took through the legislation to suspend the triple lock—the one and only time it has been suspended—which has since cost pensioners £500 a year every year?
Mel Stride
We fought for the “triple lock plus” in our manifesto, which would have spared millions of pensioners from being dragged into income tax, many for the first time, under this Government’s arrangements. There were, as the hon. Gentleman knows, particular circumstances in October 2022, including inflation surging above 11%.
What are the broad effects of this Budget? The tax burden will rise to the highest level in the history of our country—higher than in 1948, when we first started to collect the data. We will be borrowing a staggering £140 billion over the next five years. What are the consequences of that, apart from passing on debt to future generations, who will have to pay it by way of higher taxation in the future? It is the crowding-out of private business investment, which this Government say they are eager to drive up.
If we look at OBR’s forecast from the spring Budget last year and for inflation in every year under this Budget, it is higher in every single year. Why? Because there has been a huge fiscal splurge, particularly in the first two years of the forecast, that will require a monetary response, so interest rates will stay higher for longer. That will mean, the OBR estimates, an extra 0.25% on mortgages—or over £400 extra for the average family, up and down the country. According to the OBR’s forecast, wages will stagnate across the period, with lower real household disposable income than under the spring forecast, when the Conservative party was in government.
I am surprised that the Secretary of State raised the subject of living standards. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimates:
“The average family will be £770 worse off in real terms by October 2029 compared with today.”
I am also surprised that she raised the issue of poverty. When we were in government, we faced so many lectures from Labour Members, while we were bringing poverty down—the number of pensioners in absolute poverty fell by 200,000.
Mel Stride
The number of children in poverty fell by 100,000 in total. I will come to the record of this Government in a moment, but first I give way to the Secretary of State.
Liz Kendall
Figures from the Department that the right hon. Gentleman used to be responsible for show clearly that 700,000 more children now live in relative poverty after housing costs. Does he accept that? Yes or no?
Mel Stride
As the right hon. Lady knows full well, it is accepted that the key measure is absolute poverty after housing costs. She cannot flit between one measure and another when it suits her. The reality is that it is projected that 100,00 more children and 300,000 more adults will be in poverty as a consequence of the Budget.
Mel Stride
How can I finally resist the hon. Gentleman, who is just itching to make some point about integrity? The Floor is his.
Neil Coyle
The shadow Chancellor raises the issue of integrity and he talks about poverty. Many disabled people live in poverty. When he was Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, he told the House that there would be no investigation into the Department for Work and Pensions for unlawful treatment of disabled people. Does he owe this House, or does he owe disabled people, an apology?
Mel Stride
I stand by our record when I was Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, particularly on the support that the Department gave to the disabled, not least the results that we achieved in encouraging and helping them into work, which is the best possible outcome.
When there has been such a perpetration of deceit, there must be the alibi—the smokescreen—which is, of course, the fictitious, confected black hole of £22 billion. Labour Members rubbed their hands in glee when the OBR said it would be looking into the matter. It reported back, on the day of the Budget, and what did it find? It found that it was not able to legitimise that black hole of £22 billion, and came up with a figure for in-year fiscal pressure that was below half that. It observed that if it had been focused on that figure at the time of the spring Budget, conversations would have been held, and it is conceivable that the number would have been smaller still.
From our experience in government, we know that it is quite normal practice to manage in-year fiscal pressures, and to net off the underspends against the overspends. In reality, this black hole is “a dead parrot”. It has ceased to be. If it was not nailed to its perch, it would be “pushing up the daisies”. Far from being just “shagged out” after a prolonged squark, Madam Deputy Speaker, it is dead: the black hole is “an ex-parrot”.
Luke Murphy (Basingstoke) (Lab)
I am grateful to the shadow Chancellor for giving way. Based on his performance, everyone on the Government Benches heartily welcomes his promotion. Does he accept that the OBR says in the letter he mentions that its forecast would have been “materially different”?
Mel Stride
I have just explained exactly what the OBR said. It said that it does not legitimise the black hole—the £22 billion, which has been repeated yet again from the Government Front Bench.
Opportunities were missed in this Budget, not least around driving up productivity. We know that Labour Governments spend money. We know that Labour Governments tax people a lot—that is what they do. What they do not do is spend the money with any strings attached. There has been a 14% pay rise for train drivers and 22% for junior doctors, but not one suggestion that there might be improvements in productivity to accompany that spending. That is unlike the Conservative party when we were in office: under my right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash (Jeremy Hunt), we had a very clear, fully funded plan for the national health service and a long-term workforce plan to drive up productivity.
Let me come to the issue of welfare. It is gratifying to hear the Secretary of State confirm that the Labour party is going ahead with some of the more important reforms that we brought forward, such as that to the work capability assessment.
Mel Stride
The Minister for Employment shakes her head, but my understanding is that while the Government may say they will make some changes, they are quite happy to take the savings that are baked into the OBR’s forecast. The Secretary of State is right to clamp down on fraud, but it is important that she does not misrepresent the fact that the approach she is taking is exactly the same as the approach we were bringing forward to do that.
The reality is that some DWP budgets are growing to an extent that they need to be arrested in order for us to have a successful economy. If we were able to hold the number of people of working age with a health or disability component to their benefit at the level it is now for the next five years, there would be a saving of about £14 billion; if we were able to get it back to where it was before the pandemic, over £30 billion would be saved. When the Conservative party was in government, we had a clear plan to begin to address that issue. We have heard nothing from the Government about how they will tackle that fundamental fact.
What we have had from the Government on welfare expenditure is the announcement that the welfare cap will be set, at the end of the scorecard period, at 5% above the OBR’s forecast for spending on those benefits. That is not a restraint; that is permission—an invitation—to spend ever more on welfare without hitting the cap. The Government have no plan and the taxpayer will continue to pay for it.
So what do we have to show for this Budget? Compared with the spring: lower growth, lower living standards, lower wages, higher taxes, higher borrowing, and increased interest rates and mortgages. This is a Budget of broken promises, and when the dust has finally settled and this lot have gone, as we step over the fallen—the former farmers, the pensioners, the one-time businesspeople, the poor and the vulnerable—there we will find the shattered remains of the working people of this country, betrayed by a party that lied to them, and they will never forget it.
Several hon. Members rose—
Carer’s Allowance
Mel Stride Excerpts(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)
I welcome this debate on this important matter. There is unanimity across the House that carers up and down this country do an extraordinary job, often in very difficult circumstances. We owe them a huge amount, and not only for the compassion and social value that their work brings, but for the financial and fiscal benefits, as Carers UK has identified, because of the costs that the taxpayer is not required to pick up.
I recognise the experience that the leader of the Liberal Democrats has in this area, through his campaigning and his personal experience. I think he said that it was good that the Liberal Democrats had brought forward a motion today that was devoid of any politics, but I am not sure that I entirely agree with him. The motion of course contains much that we can all agree on, but the relevant poisonous pills within it will ensure that when we divide later—I confidently predict that the motion will fall—only the Liberal Democrats, and perhaps a few other minority parties, will go through the Aye Lobby. They will then be able to crank up the Risographs so that their leaflets can say that only they care about this particular matter. That is far from the truth. My party, the official Opposition, cares very deeply.
When we were in Government, we brought forward a number of measures to ensure that we supported those carers. The level of carer’s allowance has increased by £1,500 since 2010. In 2023 it was my party that brought in the statutory entitlement to one week per year of carer’s leave. It was only last year that we, through the better care fund, provided £327 million to those in desperate need of respite from their caring duties. The care Act of this year increased the rights of carers and also the duties placed upon local authorities. I am also pleased to tell the House that, even more recently, my hon. Friend the Member for East Grinstead and Uckfield (Mims Davies), the shadow Minister for Women and Equalities, attended an event here hosted by Carers UK so that we could continue that really important dialogue.
Mel Stride
I think the right hon. Gentleman will find that that measure was supported by our Government—[Laughter.] No, no—most private Members’ Bills are not supported by the Government of the day and therefore make no progress. We were happy, whatever legislative vehicle was available, to ensure that that important measure came into effect on our watch.
Let me speak for a moment about the complexities of carer’s allowance, because this is really important. It goes to the heart of many of the assertions that have been made in the Chamber today. This is how it works. It is £81.90 per week. We expect somebody who is in receipt of that benefit to be providing care for 35 hours or more to one or more individuals. There is an element of trust in the way the benefit works, because the Department for Work and Pensions cannot establish exactly what individuals are doing up and down the country, and therefore there is an earnings limit, which is a proxy for the amount of paid work that somebody is doing, rather than the amount of time they are spending looking after a loved one. That is the purpose of the limit.
A complication, which has not yet been raised in this debate, is that someone’s income has to be adjusted in order to determine whether they are above or below that limit. There are adjustments. For example, they can reduce their declared income in this respect by 50% of any pension contributions they may make. They can adjust the amount of income that they compare to the limit for any equipment that they purchase in respect of their caring obligations. There are also travel costs. If someone is self-employed, various business costs can also see a reduction in the level of income. This lies at the heart of why there is a challenge in notifying people of whether they are above or below the earnings limit, because it is impossible, at the centre, to determine the answer to that question, for the reasons that I have given.
Mr Amos
The right hon. Gentleman espouses the benefits of cross-party working in an interesting way. Whatever adjustments are made to the earnings limit, will he join those on the Liberal Democrat Benches in asking the Minister to allow a higher level of earnings? That is the crucial factor that prevents so many people who badly need carer’s allowance from getting it.
Mel Stride
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, and of course the motion states that there should be an increase—an unspecified amount, but it is there none the less. I think the answer to his question is that it is a balance, because the higher we put up the earnings limit and the more generous we are to carers, which of course is something we all want to do, the more people can earn and the longer they can work. Potentially, therefore, if this is acting as a proxy for the amount that people are working, they might not have the real time to spend 35 hours a week caring for a loved one. So it is inevitably a balance. I certainly accept that this is worth reviewing, and I note that the Minister for Social Security and Disability, the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms), when he chaired the Work and Pensions Committee, called forcefully for a significant increase in the level of carer’s allowance.
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
The right hon. Gentleman has obviously set out a number of the adjustments that need to be made, but in doing so he has outlined just how complex the system is and therefore exactly why we have had the scandal in the first instance. Does he agree that we should be asking the Minister to ensure that in the carer’s allowance review we simplify this process? I can assure him that many unpaid carers are not doing 35 hours a week.
Mel Stride
Indeed. What we want, ideally, is a system that is as simple as possible. The motion suggests that we bring in a taper, but that would be a complication of the system. I will come to why there are problems with that. It is easy to suggest these things, but the detail often makes them really quite complicated.
The last Government made it clear, when someone applied for this particular benefit, exactly what the arrangements were. When uprating occurred every year, we wrote to everybody to explain the uprating and to inquire as to whether any changes in their circumstances or earnings might impact their entitlement to benefits. And it was we, not this Government, who in our May update to our fraud plan brought in the pilots for texting to alert those on carer’s allowance that they may—I say “may” because the Department will not know—be close to exceeding the earnings limit. I am pleased that the Minister has indicated that the Government will continue with our fine work, but let us be very clear who it was that started those particular measures.
Nesil Caliskan (Barking) (Lab)
On that point, would the right hon. Member therefore accept that the Department for Work and Pensions is in a complete mess and that unpaid carers in our constituencies are having to pay the price and bear the brunt of that because the system is clearly not working for them?
Mel Stride
No, I would not. I am not ruling out the possibility that it may yet become a mess, but certainly on our watch it was never a mess. In fact, it dispenses about £280 billion-worth of transfer payments both to pensioners and through the benefits system, and by and large it does a remarkable job in doing that efficiently. I want to pay tribute to all the officials and civil servants that work in that Department. They work incredibly hard and, for the vast majority of their time, produce outstanding results. None the less, of course, we can always point to elements of the system where things break down, and we must always strive to get better. That is why I welcome the Government’s review.
The suggestion that the Government should not seek the repayment of overpayments is absurd. We cannot go that far. If someone goes over a threshold, we cannot say, “Do not worry about it.” We might as well not have the threshold in the first place. By all means, change the threshold—that may be a perfectly legitimate thing to do. Otherwise, the threshold should be removed altogether.
Some Members will perfectly legitimately raise failings in the system, but when I was Secretary of State there were examples of fraud. For instance, one individual was working 100 hours a week as a taxi driver while apparently still having the time to spend 35 hours a week looking after a loved one. To my mind, that is clearly fraud, so we cannot write off absolutely everything. The Department does the right thing by looking at this issue on a case-by-case basis.
Jess Brown-Fuller
If a carer receives a bonus from their employer for doing a good job and it takes them over the threshold, should they lose their carer’s allowance?
Mel Stride
Quite possibly not, which is why the Department operates on a case-by-case basis. That is the correct approach, rather than a blanket approach that says it does not matter if someone goes over the threshold. As I said, if there is never going to be a requirement for repayment, we might as well not have a threshold at all. In some cases, going over the threshold is egregious. The Government know this, and they will have to take it into account.
Mel Stride
It is difficult to give a precise answer; what does the right hon. Gentleman mean by “a small amount over the earnings limit”? We know that, for the vast majority of the thousands of people in this situation, it will almost certainly be small amounts, including some very small amounts. None the less, fraud and error are a significant challenge across the benefits system, and need to be addressed. Any responsible Government will take that approach. Simply to say, “We have a problem, so we should take off the brakes and have no limit. We should let people claim what they like, whatever it might be, even if it is fraud”, as suggested by the leader of the Liberal Democrats, is not viable.
Mel Stride
I will give way, but I invite the right hon. Gentleman to explain how he would deal with fraud when he is pushing for none of the overpayments to be returned.
Ed Davey
I made it very clear in my speech that there could be examples of fraud, so I ask the right hon. Gentleman to check the record. I could not have been clearer, and we have talked about this at length in other fora—indeed, we made it clear at the general election.
I am afraid that the right hon. Gentleman has shown to the House that he failed to get a grip of this issue when he was Secretary of State. He recognises that the vast majority of overpayments were small amounts, often because the DWP, in which he was Secretary of State, did not pass on information to HMRC. I am afraid that he is digging a hole for himself.
Mel Stride
Regardless of what the right hon. Gentleman may or may not have said in his opening remarks, the text of the motion cannot be disputed. On the point of whether anyone should be expected to repay, the motion says that this House
“believes that carers should not be forced to face the stress, humiliation and fear caused by demands for repayments of Carer’s Allowance”.
To me, that suggests everyone. The motion goes on to say that the Government should “write-off existing overpayments immediately”. It is clear and obvious that that would include any fraudulent payments.
It may be that the earnings limit could be increased, but there would be a fiscal cost. Indeed, the Liberal Democrat manifesto reforms would cost about £1.5 billion, which is significant. We would have to take account of the balance between being more generous to carers and respecting the 35-hour rule, if that remains.
Finally, whenever there is a cliff edge, it is suggested that tapering will solve the problem, but that neglects the fact that it introduces complexity, which is the very thing that universal credit, for example, was designed to iron out. The system was like spaghetti, and nobody could quite understand how it worked. In the tax system, for example, the personal allowance tapers away after £100,000. Many people just stop working further when they reach that level of earnings, because it is not worth their while, given the marginal tax rate.
There is an interplay between universal credit and carer’s allowance, because people who earn more will end up having their carer’s allowance withdrawn. There is already a taper within carer’s allowance to make sure that work pays, so that as people earn more, their benefit is reduced but not sufficiently to make them worse off. Under the system advocated by the Liberal Democrats, there will be two tapers in two interacting benefits, which I do not think would best serve anybody, least of all carers.
Madam Deputy Speaker is seeking my conclusion. I welcome this motion, and like other parties in this House, we stand four-square behind our carers, who do an extraordinary job. I wish the Government well with their review, which we will consider seriously and objectively, as we are all on the side of carers. I stand by our record in office, of which I am proud.
Oral Answers to Questions
Mel Stride Excerpts(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
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Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)
In the general election, the Labour party promised that it had no plans to means-test the winter fuel allowance, yet we learn that millions of pensioners are to be affected. Indeed, in 2017 the right hon. Lady’s party produced an analysis suggesting that around 4,000 pensioners would die prematurely were this policy to be brought into effect. Does she stand by that figure of around 4,000? If not, how many premature deaths does she believe will occur as a result of this policy?
Liz Kendall
In 2017, the right hon. Gentleman’s party manifesto promised to means-test winter fuel payments. Until Conservative Members know that they have to apologise to the British people for the 200,000 extra pensioners in poverty over the past 14 years, and for a £22 billion black hole in the public finances, which we are now putting right but that has put the public finances at risk, they will remain on the Opposition Benches and we will remain on the Government Benches.
Mel Stride
I think I need to correct the right hon. Lady: there were actually 200,000 fewer pensioners in absolute poverty under the previous Conservative Government. She quite rightly is pressing the uptake of pension credit, but if all those who are eligible for it take it up, that will cost £3.8 billion, which is substantially more than the saving that is scored at £1.4 billion. If she is successful in her aspiration, the costs will substantially outweigh the savings; if she is not successful, potentially millions of pensioners will be plunged further into poverty. May I ask her which it is?
Liz Kendall
There are 200,000 more pensioners in poverty, and I am happy to put those figures into the public domain to set the record straight. The savings we have put forward take into account the increase in uptake that we foresee. Unlike Conservative Members, we are determined and will do everything possible—they should perhaps ask themselves why they first announced the merger of pension credit and housing benefit in 2012 and then put it off until 2028—to change things and get people the money they are entitled to. We will bring that forward to ensure that all the poorest pensioners get what they are entitled to.
Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)
On 10 September, two days before recess, I led a debate in this Chamber, secured by the Conservative party, on the winter fuel allowance. The right hon. Lady spoke just now about transparency, but there was no equality impact assessment made available for that debate. Indeed, on 30 August, by way of a written question, my hon. Friend the Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans) established that the Government had no intention of publishing that particular report. Yet on 13 September—two days after the debate and the vote, and one day after Parliament had risen—the report was made available. It was clearly, in my opinion, deliberately withheld. Does the right hon. Lady agree?
Liz Kendall
That is not true. The Conservative Government did not even allow the Office for Budget Responsibility to do an analysis of Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-Budget and sat on 31 publications that, under their own rules, should have been published. We published an equality analysis. The right hon. Gentleman will know that that was never done for secondary legislation when he was in government, but this Government will be open and transparent, which is what we are already doing.
Social Security
Mel Stride Excerpts(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
Before we start, I inform the House that I will bring in the Secretary of State at the end of the debate. I call the shadow Secretary of State.
1.30 pm
Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)
I beg to move,
That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty, praying that the Social Fund Winter Fuel Payment Regulations 2024 (SI, 2024, No. 869), dated 22 August 2024, a copy of which was laid before this House on 22 August, be annulled.
The Labour party—the Government—said in the general election that it would bring in a new style of politics; politics centred on integrity and transparency. So it was that during the election, we held them to account and pressed them on tax, among other matters. We will find out, with the Budget at the end of next month, whether they were telling the truth—I have my suspicions. But we have already discovered one thing right now. We also pressed them on the winter fuel payment, from which millions of pensioners benefit up and down the country. Why? Because the Conservative party stands four-square behind our elderly. We believe that they should have security and dignity in their later years.
We received cast-iron assurances from the Labour party. In fact, the then shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the right hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones)—[Hon. Members: “Where is he?”] That is a good question. He said when pressed that the Labour party had “no plans” to do anything in respect of the winter fuel payment. Indeed, Labour candidates up and down the country gleefully pointed to their manifesto as having no mention of doing anything on this particular matter. But look at what has happened in a matter of a few short weeks. What happened to integrity? What happened to transparency? They went out of the window—broken promises already. The special contract that Labour sought to have with the British people based on integrity and decency has been smashed into a million pieces.
What is the impact of these measures? To a degree, we do not know—I will come to that—but we do know that nine out of 10 pensioners will lose the winter fuel payment of up to £300 at a most difficult time of year for millions of them, and a time when the energy price cap is going up by 10%. There is a suggestion from Labour Members that somehow only the wealthy—the millionaires—are affected. Far from it: two thirds of pensioners living below the poverty line will have this benefit removed. [Interruption.] Labour Members do not like hearing it. The 880,000 pensioners who we know are eligible for pension credit but are not yet receiving it will also suffer—[Interruption.] Labour Members chunter from sedentary positions, but although they say that they will have wonderful campaigns to get everybody who is entitled on to pension credit, in reality, even if they did so it would cost the Exchequer £3.8 billion, which is over twice the money that they say they will save. It is an absurd policy that their own plans are actively working against.
The haste with which this has been carried out is simply jaw-dropping. We do not have any impact assessments.
Mike Amesbury (Runcorn and Helsby) (Lab)
Will the shadow Secretary of State give way?
Mel Stride
I will in a moment. We do not know what the impact will be across the income distribution. No Member of this House knows what the impact will be within their own constituency. We do not know what the recommendation of the Social Security Advisory Committee will be. Why? Because it will not be given the information until tomorrow, we are told. And of course, the measure does not form part of what it should: a major fiscal event with the Office for Budget Responsibility scoring it and an economic and fiscal outlook accompanying it.
Mel Stride
I will come to the hon. Gentleman.
In fact, the only authority to comment thus far on these measures is the House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which said:
“We are unconvinced by the reasons given for the urgency attached to laying these Regulations and are particularly concerned that this both precludes appropriate scrutiny and creates issues with the practicalities of bringing in the change at short notice.”
That, I think, says it all.
Mike Amesbury
I thank the shadow Secretary of State for finally giving way. Will he clarify which Conservative leadership contender has called for the means-testing of the winter fuel allowance?
Mel Stride
I am left feeling that that intervention was barely worth the wait.
The fact that we even have a debate today is near miraculous given the resistance from the Labour party—we have it thanks to the scrutiny that the Conservative party is providing to the Government. We know that petitions have been railing against the measures: 100,000 people have signed the Silver Voices petition, a third of a million the 38 Degrees petition, and over half a million the Age UK petition. They are calling on the Government to think again. The press, particularly the Express newspaper, is doing a sterling job in bringing these matters to our attention. Even the trade union movement, including Unite, is pointing a finger at the Government and saying that they are picking the pockets of pensioners.
Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
There is a sense of disappointment. Yesterday, the Health Secretary was dragged in here because a multimillion-pound-making consultant in the health industry is wandering corridors with access to papers, and today pensioners are being betrayed. Does my right hon. Friend agree that when people voted Labour, they thought that they were getting change and transparency? They were promised higher standards; they are getting the opposite.
Mel Stride
I thank my right hon. Friend for his appropriate intervention. He is right, of course. The only surprising thing is how remarkably quickly this has all fallen apart.
The Government will take responsibility for what has happened. They will blame us, with this fictitious black hole. The Leader of the House has suggested—I invite Labour Members to support her in this assertion—that the measure is necessary in order to avoid a “run on the pound.” It is just as well that Labour is not in charge of the economy, or we might end up in a real mess.
Deirdre Costigan (Ealing Southall) (Lab)
Does the shadow Secretary of State agree that if a local council had run its finances into the ground, in the way that his party did to the country’s finances with a £22 billion black hole, he would have called in the commissioners in the morning and instigated swingeing cuts? Can I ask him—[Interruption.] Given that that is the case, and that he now seems to have decided that his party no longer cares about balancing the books, will he apologise—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
Order. I call the shadow Secretary of State.
Mel Stride
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. That slightly lengthy question might be better addressed by way of a rather lengthy letter to the leaders of Birmingham city council.
Of course, all politics is about choices, and what this Government have done is cave in to their trade union paymasters. They have settled way above inflation. Junior doctors—22%. Train drivers—14%. They have stood up for their trade union paymasters on the backs of vulnerable pensioners, and that is not right. If it is not the case that the trade unions are running the Labour party, hands up everybody on the Government Benches who has not received money from the trade unions for their campaigning or their private office. [Hon. Members: “One!”] One person. Therein lies the truth about who is running the Labour party.
Of course, we have seen all of this before. Under the last Labour Government, we had the 75p pension increase, we had Gordon Brown’s stealth tax on private pensions—£118 billion in total—and was it any surprise that we ended up with the fourth highest level of pensioner poverty across the whole of Europe?
Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)
The right hon. Gentleman talks about choices and pensioners. When his party chose to suspend the triple lock in 2021 and give a below-inflation increase to pensioners, costing them £500, what was his concern then? Why did he say nothing?
Mel Stride
The hon. Gentleman is entirely wrong. We went into the election promising the triple lock plus. Unlike his party, under which millions of pensioners are going to be dragged into income tax spend, many of them for the first time, we were prepared to stand up and say that we would not do that.
Jim Shannon
I commend the right hon. Gentleman and his party for bringing forward this issue, which is massive for my constituents and those across the whole United Kingdom. I say this with respect to the Labour party: this policy does not conform to any Labour party policies that I have seen in the past. Pensioners who have contacted me say that they are concerned because the threshold is too low, because pension credit will take nine weeks to process even if it gets to the 28% who are eligible in Northern Ireland, and because the £400 that the Labour Government have approved will not come until spring next year. Those are three reasons why the motion has to be supported.
Mel Stride
The hon. Gentleman is entirely right, as always, and I completely agree with every word that he has just said.
We are the party of the triple lock, and we were the party of the triple lock plus. We are the party that has raised the state pension by £3,700 since 2010, and we are the party that has seen 200,000 fewer pensioners in absolute poverty since we came to office. That is now going to go into reverse.
I will now, rather more gently and rather more quietly, make an impassioned plea to Government Members: look to your conscience. You know in your hearts that these measures are wrong, that the Labour party has broken its promises, and that these measures will lead to untold hardship for millions of elderly and vulnerable people right up and down the country. You now have an opportunity to join with us and put a stop to it.