Finance (No. 3) Bill

Alex Chalk Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Monday 12th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

Hopefully, the hon. Gentleman will welcome the announcement that the Chancellor made in the Budget that we will provide a £1,000 uplift to the universal credit work allowance, which will be worth, when we reach full roll-out, a total of £630 million for 2.4 million recipients of that benefit.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

Does the Financial Secretary agree that were we to go back to the situation in 2010, when people had to start to pay tax after their first £6,750-odd, that would mean that ordinary, hard-working taxpayers would have to pay an additional £1,000 in tax and would therefore have less money to meet their day-to-day priorities?

[Mel Stride]

My hon. Friend is right. The problem with Labour’s approach to taxation, and to personal taxation in particular, is that it is a huge discouragement to going out and creating wealth and jobs and the kind of economy that supports the vital public services that Members from all parties wish to see prosper.

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[Peter Dowd]

Look, we are always prepared to look at any idea, but we are trying to deal with the problem today. We are trying to deal now with the hundreds of thousands of elderly people who are not getting the service they are entitled to.

[Alex Chalk]

Back in 2010, at the height of the crisis the hon. Gentleman’s party left us with, it was a Labour Chancellor, Alistair Darling, who said that Labour would close the deficit by 2020. That will not now happen until 2025. How can the hon. Gentleman credibly suggest that this is an austerity Budget?

[Peter Dowd]

That is remarkable coming from an hon. Member who is a member of the party that promised us all that the deficit would be gone by 2015.

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[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

What a pleasure it is to follow the hon. Member for Warrington South (Faisal Rashid), but I profoundly disagree with what he has just said. In his last point, he referred to eight years of economic failure, but nothing could be further from the truth. It is worth pausing for a moment to consider some key figures. In 2010, this country was spending a total of £700 billion or so a year and bringing in just £548 billion of tax revenue. In other words, a full £152 billion was borrowed. Fast forward eight years, and this country will spend £842 billion in the next financial year. Why? Because the economy has grown by 17% in that time. Crucially, of that £842 billion, a full £810 billion will be raised in tax revenues. In other words, that £152 billion deficit has shrunk, and shrunk dramatically. The reality is that a country that in 2010 was staring into the abyss can now look forward to a future and say, “Our best days are ahead.” Had this country not got on top of its finances over the past eight years, it would have been not the rich who would have suffered but the poor, the needy, the vulnerable and the hungry. If we look at countries such as Greece and Venezuela that have lost control of their finances, we see that it is the poorest in society who suffer most.

It is important to note a point that increasingly seems to be lost but should not be, and that is how far we have come in respect of employment. The country risks taking it for granted. We have 3 million more jobs than in 2010. In 2010, unemployment had gone up by half a million; that is half a million people whose futures were curtailed, whose opportunities were reduced and whose dreams were eroded. Unemployment means misery, lack of self-esteem and wasted potential. It means hollowed-out communities and a corrosive sense of despair. We should reflect on the successes that have happened since 2010.

Unemployment in our country today stands at just 4%. In Cheltenham, it is under 2%, compared with the rate in France, which is 9%. It is 8% in the eurozone. In Italy, youth unemployment stands at 32%. When I speak to young people in my constituency—last week over the recess, I was speaking to young people at St Mark’s Junior School—I am able to say that, as they grow up and reach the age of 18, I want them to be in a position where they can choose whether to go to university, which is fine, or whether to have an apprenticeship, which is also fine, but, if they want to go into the world of work, driving true social mobility, there also are opportunities for them to do so.

[Danielle Rowley (Midlothian) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman talked about success. Unemployment may be falling, but in-work poverty is rising much more quickly. Is that a success?

[Alex Chalk]

Income inequality is declining. Any poverty is, of course, something that we want to address, but the best route out of poverty is through employment. If we were to ask individuals whether we should turn the clock back to 2010 when we had half a million more people unemployed, I do not think that they would choose to do so. The reality is that there is no true economic strength without fairness.

I must take issue again with the point made by the hon. Member for Warrington South. He suggested that raising the personal allowance a year early to £12,500, resulted in only “meagre” benefits—that was his expression. For the average family in my constituency, two wage earners each earning the average wage of about £28,000, that will mean a combined addition to the family budget of £260 a year. Does he want to stand up and seriously suggest that that is a meagre benefit? Does he? It is not a meagre benefit. It is more money in people’s pockets to focus on their priorities—on support for their children, support for their futures and support for their daily lives.

Strong families and strong communities require strong healthcare. It is important to note what managing the economy—taking a balanced approach—means for healthcare. It was the Leader of the Opposition who suggested during the last election that a 2.2% increase in health spending would make the NHS the “envy of the world”. Well, it is this Government who will be spending 3.4% above inflation every year. The figures are stark: the total budget will go from about £122 billion a year today to £149 billion a year in 2023—a real-terms increase above inflation of £20.5 billion a year.

[Karen Lee]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, to recruit enough nurses to fill all those vacancies and all those jobs that his party is going to create, we need to reinstate the nursing bursary?

[Alex Chalk]

It is critically important that we do not have a cap for those people who want to become nurses. One thing I found very depressing when I was first elected back in 2015 was that people wrote to me saying, “I want to become a nurse, but I can’t become a nurse, and yet the trust is off taking trips to other parts of the world to recruit nurses from overseas, while I cannot do it here in the UK.” That is something that we should not allow to continue. It is important that the money is spent in the communities that require it. In Cheltenham at the moment, trust managers want to shift all general surgery facilities from Cheltenham to Gloucester, but, as 58 clinicians wrote only today, that would be a mistake. It would be unsatisfactory for care in the whole of Gloucestershire, and I am calling on the trust to think again.

There was also £400 million for potholes, which is a priority for my constituents and something that I take very seriously as well. That is an extra £8 million or so for Gloucestershire. I also welcome the measures to safeguard businesses in our high streets. We all know that they are facing increased pressures, but to take a third off the business rate bill of small businesses in my constituency is a shot in the arm for our high streets and is something of which we can be proud. When I went round high streets in Cheltenham over the weekend, the news from the Chancellor was welcomed. Businesses could look towards a future with real optimism. The scope to roll out these measures is only provided by managing the economy fairly and sensibly. We do not take measures simply because we take some pleasure in eradicating the deficit for the sake of it; we do so because we want to create opportunity in our society. We want to say to our young people, “Be brave and be bold about the future because it is an exciting future.” A country that loses control of its finances loses control of the prospects of its young people. That is why I take pride in what the Chancellor has delivered and why we can say in confidence across this House that the United Kingdom’s best days lie ahead.

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[Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for letting me speak a bit earlier than I expected. It is a great pleasure to be called so early and I will not abuse that generosity by speaking for too long, because I know that many colleagues want to speak in the debate. I just wish to cover a few areas that have come up in the debate and the Budget more generally: first, the higher rate tax thresholds, which have been mentioned by many hon. Members; secondly, corporation tax and small businesses; thirdly, debt, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) spoke about so interestingly; and, finally, fuel duty and car taxes more generally, which is pertinent to my constituency, with its 9,500 car workers.

On the higher rate tax, I was interested in what was said by the right hon. Member for Twickenham (Sir Vince Cable), who is no longer in his place. There is an amendment in the name of all the Liberal Democrats and it is good to see them here this evening in such numbers. The amendment mentioned the

“provision for a £1.3 billion tax cut for higher earners”.

I pressed the right hon. Gentleman to explain what that would actually mean for productivity and for what we term fiscal drag, a term first used when Gordon Brown was Chancellor of the Exchequer. It happened in the early part of the Labour Government, which came to office in 1997, and was eased over time. In 2010, it was decided, as an issue of morality, that we would also freeze the higher rate of income tax at the threshold. The reality is, however, that in the long term that has quite a damaging effect on the economy. It means that people are being brought into the higher rate of tax who really should not be there. I know that in my constituency there will be, for example, deputy headteachers, locum GPs and middle managers in local government who are paying the higher rate of tax. They would not have done so within the last generation, but they do now.

When people—this applies in the private sector as well—who pay the higher rate of tax are offered any extra work or overtime, they make a calculation: “Do I take that or do I trade that off against what my tax will be as a result of this?” If people are being charged too much tax at this marginal rate, that reduces productivity, and that, in itself, has a damaging effect on the economy. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) mentioned, in 1987, the then Chancellor, Nigel Lawson, lowered the rate of tax from 60p in the pound to 40p in the pound—and guess what? We actually took more tax in as a result.

This is a fundamental point that also applies to corporation tax. Labour Members have made their views very clear in that they would like a restitution of the rate of 26% for large businesses and 21% for small businesses. However, with regard to corporation tax, the proof of the pudding is in the eating—that is, employment. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) said, the unemployment rate in the UK is 4%. I grew up in a town in the north of England in the 1980s, when the unemployment rate was about 25%. We went through a horrendous recession in our light industrial town. We could not even dream of a rate of 4% at that time. In the EU, unemployment is 8%, on average, and it is 9% in France. My hon. Friend also mentioned Italy and Spain. Think about all those lost opportunities and lost lives through high unemployment. This beds down in communities—I have seen it for myself. The way in which we bring about a culture of work and of higher employment is fundamental to the development not just of productivity but of our society itself.

[Alex Chalk]

Does my hon. Friend agree that unemployment has such a crushing effect on self-esteem and self-worth, and that that is one of the key reasons we should celebrate increased employment—not just for the sake of statistics but because of the individuals whose life chances lie behind them?

[Julian Knight]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention—that is absolutely true. If someone is unemployed for 18 months, they are often unemployed for the very long term—for the rest of their life, in some instances. It ruins lives, shortens lives and makes those lives more miserable.

The way in which we have approached corporation tax is absolutely correct. On small business rate relief, my hon. Friend, again—I do not wish to just copy his speech—talked about how that had been very well received in his business community and on his high street. It is a blessed relief that will bring a much-needed boost to our small businesses and to our high streets, which we have to nurture. We cannot have the high street of just the bookmaker, the pub next door, and the charity shop—although charity shops do very valuable work. We need diversity in the high street, not just in terms of retail but living space, opportunity, health and social services.

On debt, as I said in the Budget debate, with a ratio of 82% to GDP, we really should not give ourselves a pat on the back. It is not a good place to be at all. It makes us less likely and less able to effectively withstand the winds of global recession that happen on a cyclical basis. However, we have chosen a path by which, over time, we bring that under control. There are two ways to reduce the GDP-to-debt ratio: through productivity or inflation. The choice of British Governments, for years and years, was inflation. Inflation is a fool’s errand: it destroys living standards and destroys savings. The second approach is productivity. I am really pleased to see in the Red Book that many elements of this Budget really focus and home in on productivity, but we need to keep that going. We need a step change in our economy in this respect.

I turn to what I call car taxes. As the vice-chair of the APPG on fair fuel, and the former chair of said august APPG, I am absolutely delighted to see the freeze in fuel duty. However, I want to make a point about diesel cars in this respect. That is not, obviously, just because my constituency has 9,500 workers in this sector and 93% of the engines that come off the track are diesel cars. We have seen a 45% fall in diesel sales, and that hurts the Exchequer.

This problem originated in Wolfsburg. The irony is that the Germans are now changing their approach with regard to diesel, so the originators of the difficulty within the diesel market are now looking at the market and saying, “Hold on a minute—we need to ensure that clean, modern diesels are supported.” We have a higher excise duty on modern, clean diesels. According to the AA, 270 of the diesel cars currently tested are now within tolerance in that respect. If we have this disincentive, people will hold on to their older cars for longer. These cars can run for a quarter of a million miles—I know; I have one. That means that the older EU5 and EU4 engines will stay on the road longer and pollute more. We need to get really smart about this and construct the tax system to support all modern petrol and diesel engines while, at the same time, aiding the transition towards new technologies.

On the Budget as a whole, it is quite remarkable to note, as a former personal finance journalist, how we used to have a merry time pulling Budgets apart. We could almost guarantee that, by the end of the first day, we would have something to go at the Government on. With this one, that is not the case. That is a testament to the Chancellor and the team. I will be absolutely delighted to vote for this Bill tonight.