Finance (No. 2) Bill

Adam Thompson Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 16th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Adam Thompson (Erewash) (Lab)]

I was elected to this House to be a voice for working people, and the thousands of families in Erewash who, in 2022, saw their mortgages skyrocket because the Conservatives sent markets spiralling with billions in unfunded tax cuts. The people who I represent did not vote for Liz Truss—most of them did not know who she was. It was hard-working families up and down the country and in Erewash who paid the price for her failures all the same. That should never happen again.

What my right hon. Friend the Chancellor did last month in the Budget—made actionable by this Bill—was take the necessary decisions to ensure that there will never be another Liz Truss moment. The Bill will, by the end of the decade, deliver the fiscal headroom that we require to withstand shocks and help pay down the national debt. It does so while we deliver record levels of public investment, and without a return to the brutal, crippling austerity that gave this country 14 wasted years under the previous Government.

Change is already under way. The economy is now forecast to grow faster this year than previously expected, and as record investments and trade deals made and secured by this Government pay off, and reforms to stifling planning rules finally come through and deepen, it can grow further. In the first year of this Government, average wages grew more than they did in the entire lost decade of the 2010s, and what happens when workers have more money? They do not sequester it in Dubai or the Cayman Islands; they spend it—on housing, on food, on our high streets, in the pub, and on their children, the greatest investment of all. Rewarded properly for their labour, they fuel our economy.

[Graham Stuart]

I wonder when the people of this country will catch up with the hon. Gentleman and start to express the appropriate gratitude for all that has been bestowed on them by this Government.

[Adam Thompson]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his amusing intervention. I am sure that time will tell.

We must all contribute to Britain’s renewal, and there are things that only Government can do to secure that renewal. If we want to get the NHS back on its feet, fix our crumbling schools, cut waiting lists and truly invest in Britain’s future, we must pay for it. We know that the alternatives proposed by the Opposition parties lead only to calamity. Liz Truss showed us that when Governments cut taxes for the wealthy, it is working people who end up paying. Nor should we want infinite borrowing, however; I do not want to spend £1 in every £10 serving debt interest. It should go to our schools, our hospitals, and our country.



So yes, in the Budget and in the Bill, the tax burden has increased, but it is those with the broadest shoulders who will bear the greatest weight—those with property to let, those with shares to sell, those paid not through wages but through dividends, those with such vast savings that they pay tax on the interest alone.

[Robbie Moore]

rose—

[Ben Maguire (North Cornwall) (LD)]

rose—

[Adam Thompson]

In the interests of time, I will not give way again.

These are income streams that are overwhelmingly enjoyed by the highest earners, and it is, by and large, the already well-off who will pay more under the Bill. Its provisions include changes to national insurance relief on pension contributions through salary sacrifice schemes—again, a mechanism primarily used by the highest earners. They include reforming council tax, so that someone living in a £10 million mansion in central London does not pay less council tax than a terraced house owner in Ilkeston and Long Eaton. They include a new surcharge on homes worth more than £2 million, which will be paid by fewer than 1% of homeowners. This Budget was for working families, for the everyman and the everywoman, for children and for young people. It was not a Budget for millionaires, billionaires, slum landlords, investment bankers, or the bosses of big corporations.

[Robbie Moore]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Adam Thompson]

As I have said, in the interests of time, I will take no more interventions.

Instead, we are taking action to cut the cost of living and strengthen our public services. There will be £150 off average energy bills next year, rising to £300 for the poorest households—again, money back in working people’s pockets. As inflation continues to fall, it becomes easier for the Bank of England to cut interest rates, as it has repeatedly under this Government. Prescription charges, train fares and bus fares have all been frozen. There are 5.2 million more appointments in our NHS, with 250 new neighbourhood health centres, cutting waiting lists and bringing care back closer to where people actually live.

The Opposition parties will decry these measures, exposing our fundamental differences. Reform—whose Members are not here today, I note—would sell off our NHS to the highest bidder, and force people to pay for the care they need. Meanwhile, the Conservatives are calling for mass redundancies in the public sector, enough to sack every police officer in the country twice over. They are against the minimum wage, they are against protections for workers, and they have no plans for growth or renewal—just policies that would leave working families worse off, while their donors get richer and richer.

To renew Britain costs money. To restore confidence in the public finances takes time. To get the economy growing again is a serious challenge, but we are meeting it. The choice is between the measures in the Budget and the Bill, and a return to austerity, and I know which side I am on. I will never apologise for standing up for working people, and for saying that the highest earners should pay their fair share. Nor should the Chancellor, the Government or the British people.

Spending Review 2025

Adam Thompson Excerpts

Wednesday 11th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves]

Stories like that are exactly why the Deputy Prime Minister and I have prioritised investment in affordable homes. Nobody should have to live in those conditions in the 21st century—and, with the reforms we are making and the money we are putting in, they will not have to for much longer.

[Adam Thompson (Erewash) (Lab)]

I thank the Chancellor for her statement today. I welcome all the choices she has made, but especially the investments in Derby and the wider east midlands, which will be an enormous boon to my constituents in Erewash. I also warmly welcome her commitment to ending the use of asylum hotels in this Parliament. The Tory party let the asylum system get completely out of control. Does the Chancellor agree that investment now will result in savings of billions as the system is fixed?

[Rachel Reeves]

The investment we are putting into Derby and Nottinghamshire is significant, with small modular reactors, investment in defence and investment in fusion, creating good jobs and paying decent wages right across the east midlands. I do not think that taxpayers’ money should be used to pay for asylum hotels, which is why we are reducing the cost of asylum accommodation by around £1 billion during the course of this Parliament and ending the use of asylum hotels.

Non-Domestic Rating (Multipliers and Private Schools) Bill

Adam Thompson Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 25th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Adam Thompson (Erewash) (Lab)]

I will focus on the removal of private schools’ eligibility for charitable business rates relief. Before I was elected to the House I was a scientist, but before I was a scientist I trained as a secondary school teacher. In school, I saw at first hand the dedication and resilience of my colleagues, but I also bore witness to the challenges that they faced—challenges that led many, many teachers to leave the profession after only a few years. I left after only my training year, citing the unsustainability of marking books at 1 o’clock in the morning, planning lessons at the weekend and never seeing my family as the reasons why I could not continue in the profession, despite loving being a teacher. I chose to leave the profession to do something that I feel is much easier: to take a doctorate in engineering.

When I trained 10 years ago, teaching had a profound retention issue, but now it is worse. One in 10 new teachers leaves after just one year in the role; one in four leaves after just three years. Little over half of teachers see their career last more than 10 years. Many are outstanding teachers who do not want to leave the profession. Even now, I miss teaching every day.

The picture in our education system gets worse when we look at maths and science, subjects that I know the whole House believes are vital. The maths teacher shortage began in 2012, and in 2023 the intake of new maths teachers was just 60% of the Government’s target. I was a physics teacher, and in 2023 there were six times as many vacancies for science teachers as there were in 2010. In my view, the failures of the previous Government’s education policy led to this abysmal state of affairs, and they are profoundly unacceptable.

[Patrick Spencer (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman is talking from personal experience about an important part of our education system. He talks a lot about teachers and the previous Government’s failed education policy, but will he take a moment to recognise the vast improvements in our performance in international league tables and the fall in the disadvantage gap in the years leading up to covid-19? Will he at least give some credits to the outputs, not just the inputs?

[Adam Thompson]

I will come to some of those points further on in my speech, if the hon. Gentleman is willing to hang on for a few minutes.

I trained as a teacher when the former Member of Parliament for Surrey Heath was Education Secretary. He made significant changes to the education system during his tenure, as the hon. Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Patrick Spencer) has just alluded to. Those were changes that I and the vast majority of my colleagues at the time strongly disagreed with. Those changes ignored decades of pedagogical research and favoured the metrification of our children over learning. They harked back to the rote learning of 50 years ago and set pedagogy back decades.

Austerity was already being very much felt in the sector. Teachers were expected to put in the same effort, but with fewer resources and with their pay frozen. Now it is worse. After a decade of Conservative Education Secretaries following in the footsteps of the former Member for Surrey Heath, teachers’ pay has taken a significant real-terms cut. In many ways, he inspired me to enter politics as a Labour Member—a sentiment that I know many of my colleagues on this side of the House share. Opposition Members may challenge me about why I raise these points, but I think they are all part of what the Bill is about. They are about keeping teachers in their jobs, paying them fairly and giving them the resources that they need to give our children the education that they deserve.

The previous Government set a goal that all children should finish year 11 with at least GCSEs in maths and English. That is a laudable goal, which has my full personal support, but last year just 45% of children in England—not even half—achieved it. Only one state secondary school in my constituency of Erewash attained results above that average, and even in that top-performing school, just half their children in year 11 attained GCSEs in maths and English. Every other state secondary school in my constituency was below that 45% average, and at the worst-performing the result was fewer than a third.

I should note that I place none of the blame for those issues on the local schools themselves. I have met several local heads and many teachers, all of whom it is powerfully obvious to me have made incredible sacrifices to deliver excellence in our local education system, and all of whom have been burned by the failures of education reforms introduced throughout the past decade. The people of Erewash elected a Conservative Member of Parliament in 2010, 2015, 2017 and 2019, and in return the previous Government let their children down.

I have been talking a lot about state schools, which is only natural when they are the schools that 94% of our children attend, but I would also like to highlight the major independent school in my constituency, Trent college in Long Eaton. In the run-up to the election and since then, I have been around as many of the schools in Erewash as I can, and Trent college is no exception. I have spoken many times to staff and pupils, and this weekend I attended a show put on by the incredible Wildflower community choir at the school’s chapel. It is a wonderful school, with excellent staff led by the brilliant Bill Penty. The staff provide fantastic opportunities to all the pupils who attend. The facilities are the best I have ever seen in a school and the staff do a huge amount for our community, but it is a simple fact that the vast majority of my constituents cannot afford to send their children to Trent college and that many of its pupils come from outside my constituency.

A great part of what this Bill is about is making sure that the incredible opportunities received by the children at Trent college, and the aspirations that they are encouraged to have, are available to all children in Erewash. I want every child in Erewash and the country to receive the best education they possibly can. This Bill will support the extension of those opportunities to every child in every state school in Erewash and the country.

[Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is giving a thoughtful and impassioned speech. Notwithstanding his support for the Government’s policy, I wonder whether he regrets the fact that it is being introduced midway through the year, so that children, including those with special educational needs, will find themselves struggling to get involved with the curriculum and to fulfil the examinations for which they have put in a lot of effort and preparation.

[Adam Thompson]

I remind the right hon. Gentleman that if Opposition Members did not want us to have to take drastic measures to re-establish our country’s economy, they should not have left a £22 billion black hole in it.

I want to flag a particular failure in the education system that was brought to crisis by the previous Government: the provision of SEND education. It has long been under-supported, and after the past decade, things are worse. Opposition Members will claim that the Bill will make SEND provision worse still. Let me tell them that for SEND children and their families in my constituency and across Derbyshire it is scarcely conceivable that things could get any worse. Some 20% of the casework that I receive in my office relates to SEND problems. The recent Ofsted report on SEND services offered by Conservative-run Derbyshire county council found that it had “widespread” weaknesses, that communication with parents was “poor” and that children’s needs were often not accurately identified or provided for. The report is utterly damning—it is the worst Ofsted report I have ever seen—and Derbyshire county council’s failures are extreme. For my constituents, the local elections cannot come soon enough.

I was very pleased when the Chancellor announced in the Budget an extra £1 billion to support SEND services. Having spoken extensively to parents of SEND children in my constituency, I can say that they are not worried about whether private school fees might increase; they are worried about whether their children will be able to go to school at all. This Bill is about providing equality of opportunity. It is about ensuring that a child’s postcode or their parents’ income does not determine their chances in life. This Bill will provide funds to fix our state schools, reverse the bite of austerity, get more teachers into school and help them to stay there, ensure that all children are properly included, and ultimately provide them with the education they all deserve.

I feel strongly that supporting this Bill is my duty to my Erewash constituents and to its schools, its teachers, its children, their parents and the future of our towns and villages. It is my duty, therefore, to vote for the Bill.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.