Amendment of the Law

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Thursday 20th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (Con)]

It made a pleasant change to listen to a Budget that had not been pre-announced in the previous day’s newspapers. That is as it should be, and it is a welcome change from what went on in the past, when details were leaked and briefed beforehand.

Parts of the Budget are absolutely magnificent, and I am particularly pleased about the decision to raise the income tax threshold. Many of my constituents are on relatively low incomes. Before 2010, people paid income tax after the first £6,500 of income, but now they will pay it only after the first £10,500. It is absolutely right that people be allowed to keep more of the money that they earn. It is absolutely fair to have this tax break—it is a tax break for everyone—and it does the right thing by incentivising work. It helps to end the crazy situation that has been engineered whereby the state takes tax from families with one hand and gives handouts with the other—a bizarre situation that got vastly worse between the years 2001 and 2010.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman talks about the £10,500 limit, but will he spare a thought for the thousands of workers on Teesside, and millions more across the country, who do not earn anywhere near £10,500? They are seeing a rise in the cost of living, energy bills and everything else, and they are not benefiting at all from the Budget. Has he got something to say to them?

[Mr Carswell]

I would love to cut tax right across the board on a whole range of things, which would help people in that situation. The reduction in income tax for people on relatively low incomes will undoubtedly be welcomed.

I am also thrilled and delighted—it warmed the cockles of my free-market heart—to hear about tax breaks for savers. With interest rates having been so low for so long, it has been a pretty torrid time for savers. The raising of the personal tax-free savings allowance is fantastic news. So, too, is the removal of the artificial distinction between different types of ISAs. The more we can encourage people to save, the better. One person’s deferred consumption and saving is somebody else’s loan or credit.

I cheered, too, when I heard about giving folk flexibility as to how they use their pension pot. The implications of that are potentially profound and radical. It could mean that pension pots no longer die with people. It could mean that they become a vehicle for passing wealth down the generations. The implications are potentially huge and welcome.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

This is a budget that does little or, in many cases, nothing for the millions in the lowest income groups in this country. Unsurprisingly, the chief executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has said:

“This is a Budget for the people who already have, not the people who need to benefit most from the return to growth.”

It is a lost opportunity to help the 13 million people on low incomes, who are unlikely to see any benefit from these measures. That assessment fits in with the analysis of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which shows that more than 300,000 children will be pushed back into absolute poverty over the course of this Government and that, on present trends, 900,000 children will be returned to relative poverty by 2020. That will undo everything that the last Labour Government did to tackle poverty. The Budget sets a cap on overall social security spending while doing little or nothing to tackle the drivers of rising social security spending, especially among working people who are being squeezed by rising housing costs.

I want to talk about two policy areas that lie behind these failures. As we have heard, households have suffered the longest period of falling living standards and squeezed wages since the 1850s. We have had 50 consecutive months of a wage squeeze below inflation. I came into politics because I was driven by concerns about unemployment, and the growth in job numbers is undoubtedly good news, but it would be completely wrong to see the growth that has been achieved in recent months as an unalloyed success story. Among other things, one third of a million families are now working fewer hours than they want, with more people being forced into part-time employment. The latest job figures show 211,000 people entering self-employment, which represents a large proportion of the recent jobs growth. Self-employment is undoubtedly a good thing for many people, but one problem is that it is strongly associated with low pay. Low pay is part of the crisis that is underpinning the fall in living standards.

[Alex Cunningham]

My hon. Friend has quoted one organisation; let me quote another. Gillian Guy of Citizens Advice has said:

“The chancellor talked about making, doing and saving. This budget needs to work for those who are making do and can’t save”.

Are those the people that my hon. Friend is talking about?

[Ms Buck]

I am talking about the 13 million people on very low incomes, many of whom have incomes that are so low that they will not benefit from the change in the income tax threshold, welcome though that is. It will do nothing for the people whose earnings are already below it.

There are 5 million workers on low pay in the UK—one in five of the work force. That is one of the highest proportions in the developed world. The academic consensus shows clearly that the minimum wage, although fiercely and wrongly opposed by the Conservatives, boosted earnings without causing unemployment. It has all but abolished extreme low pay, but in recent years there has been an increasing spike in the number of workers on the minimum wage. The proportion of workers on the minimum wage has grown by nearly 60% in the past five years. Rather than being part of a continuous process of uprating the pay of those on low incomes, it is now becoming the going rate in many sectors. That is one of the causes of falling living standards for millions of people and of increased social security spending.

This is a particular challenge for London. Londoners did not benefit as much from the introduction of the national minimum wage as did people in many other parts of the country, because of the slightly higher wages. The trend towards more workers earning at or just above the level of the minimum wage has exacerbated the crisis in living standards in London.

As well as low pay, another challenge—and another driver of social security spending—is housing costs. It was interesting to see that yesterday’s report from the Office for Budget Responsibility stated:

“The largest driver of the rise in spending on housing benefit has been caseload growth in the private rented sector…The rising proportion of the renting population claiming housing benefit may be related to the weakness of average wage growth…almost all the recent rise in the private-rented sector housing benefit caseload has been accounted for by people in employment.”

The relationship between low pay—and a failure to uprate pay over a number of years—and rising housing costs is driving more and more people, particularly working people, into dependency on housing benefit.

None of us wants to see expenditure on keeping people unemployed or lining the pockets of private landlords by subsidising higher rents. We all want to see a fall in social security spending on these things, but while pay is low, while average living standards are not rising and while rents are rising, we are going to see more costs and expenditure in that area. But there is a solution. The Chancellor promised a rise in the national minimum wage to £7, but we saw a 17p increase. Many employers across the country could pay more than the national minimum wage and they should be encouraged to do so.

We will not see a cut in social security spending unless and until we reverse the calamitous fall in the building of social housing, which is the only safe and secure means of ensuring that low-income people have low housing costs. Combine those two things and we will see a major shift away from the social security spending, which we would like to see fall, into a rise in living standards for millions of people. This Budget has not been able to provide that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

When the Chancellor rose to his feet yesterday, people across the country hoped he would have something to offer on the escalating cost of living and an economy that has seen the value of wages shrink. People in the north-east hoped he would offer help to do something about the highest unemployment levels in England. Nearly 1 million young people out of work, many for more than a year, hoped for some kind of job guarantee that would see them earning a living and learning along the way, and public sector workers hoped for a better deal and a fair reward for their work, but it was not to be. Instead, as we heard my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition say, we have a Government who are able to give millionaires a £200,000 tax cut but cannot increase nurses’ pay by £250 a year. This is a Budget with inequality written all over it.

By failing to address the growing problems of inequality, higher prices, falling real wages and catastrophic housing shortages, the Chancellor has confirmed that any recovery that exists is being felt only by the privileged few. I have already alluded to the comments from Citizens Advice chief executive, Gillian Guy, who said:

“The Chancellor talked about making, doing and saving. This Budget needs to work for those who are making do and can’t save.”

She continued:

“We’re halfway through the austerity programme and many spending cuts have yet to bite. Families are feeling the cumulative impact of the stripping away of support and services from all sides.”

Citizens Advice tells us that

“3 in 5 people worry about the effect rising household bills will have on their finances over the next year…Half of UK adults— 27 million people—will have to cut their spending to cope with household costs. 1 in 4 people coming to Citizens Advice have some kind of debt problem”

and that 40% of them have dependent children.

That tells a tale not of a country where people are benefiting from the Government’s policies, but where inequalities are growing and families are suffering. Nowhere is that more the case than in the north-east, which, having contended with colossal cuts in the public sector and minimal investment, continues to have both the highest rate of unemployment and the lowest average weekly earnings in England.

Working people are already £1,600 worse off under the coalition Government than they were before the general election in May 2010, but that is exacerbated in the north-east by wages that are about £50 per week less than the UK average and almost £200 per week less than wages in London. Yet the Chancellor’s announcements yesterday do nothing to address this unfairness. While some will feel the marginal effect from the tweaks made to the personal tax allowance, thousands of hard-working and low-paid people across Teesside, striving to eke out a living for their families, will be even worse off as their limited incomes are stretched even further to meet rising energy, food and other bills. Many in my constituency simply earn too little to benefit from the Chancellor’s tax cuts, and can only dream of earning the £1,250 per month that can now be saved tax-free in ISAs, let alone being able to save this amount.

Let us not forget that while the Chancellor was making heedless efforts to encourage saving, Britain’s household borrowing is at a record high, equivalent to an average household debt of £54,000. So while the chairman of the Conservative party tediously patronised hard-working people by lauding minuscule cuts to the costs of beer and bingo, more families owe more money than ever before. This low-wage recovery means many have to deplete any savings they may have had, driving greater inequality and fuelling a growing demand for extra support—most worryingly, in the form of food banks.

Such naivety is just another demonstration of exactly how out of touch the Conservative-led coalition is with hard-working families. But too often the north-east is characterised precisely by the challenges that inequality poses, and not by the potential that exists in the region were it to be given the right opportunities to thrive and flourish. It is those opportunities that the Chancellor failed to deliver. Enhancing the mix of skills and knowledge within the regional economy, aligning them with those needed by businesses in the north-east, would be the first step to closing the skills gap.

While businesses such as Sembcorp on Teesside are managing to create jobs and recruit apprentices, many smaller firms struggle to share their expertise and skills owing to the lack of support they need to make a real impact. We have had some help from the regional growth fund money and an enterprise zone, and the Budget contains some welcome, albeit limited, positive news for energy-intensive industries on Teesside. But welcome as those things are, their value pales into insignificance in comparison with the support and investment for the north-east each year from 1997 to 2010. We really could have done with something in the Chancellor’s Budget to stimulate growth in the green economy on Teesside, an area that holds great potential both for growth and investment. Companies such as Air Products and INEOS are investing on Teesside, despite ongoing and tedious regulatory hurdles, but the Chancellor yesterday offered no incentive for others to follow suit. As a result, potential investors have been deterred and we have seen a large-scale investment slump from an all-time high of £7.2 billion in 2009 to £3 billion in 2012. This Budget comes back to one word: inequality.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sajid Javid]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is under this Conservative-led Government that the rich are paying a higher proportion of tax than in each year the previous Government were in office.

Yesterday’s Budget also provided targeted support for some of those industries that are critical for our economy. It showed that we are supporting our construction sector by offering £500,000 to small house-building firms; that we are supporting our oil and gas sector by introducing a new allowance for ultra-high pressure, high-temperature fields, a measure that will increase investment and jobs; and that we are supporting our creative economy by introducing a theatre tax relief and extending our film tax credit, a measure that will build on the astronomical success of films such as “Gravity”. All those measures will put money and trust back into the hands of businesses, and give them the power to invest, expand and employ.

Yesterday’s Budget was all about trust—trust in the imagination and hard work of the British people to turn our economy around, and trust in the fiscal prudence of the British people to take their hard-earned pensions when they want, and to invest and spend them how they want.

[Alex Cunningham]

Will the Minister give way?

[Sajid Javid]

I am afraid that I do not have time.

Most importantly, the Budget was about trust in British businesses, as was highlighted by my hon. Friends the Members for Dudley South (Chris Kelly), for Poole (Mr Syms), for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) and for Norwich North (Chloe Smith).

[Alex Cunningham]

rose—

[Sajid Javid]

I will give way quickly.

[Alex Cunningham]

I am grateful to the Minister. The IFS has said today that the pension changes are based on “highly uncertain assumptions” that could lead to “market failure”. Would the Minister care to discuss that?

[Sajid Javid]

The pension changes will give people a choice that they have never had before: it is their pension, and it is their choice.

Our businesses are not, as the Opposition would have us believe, the enemy; they are the reason why our economy is growing faster than any other advanced economy. They are the reason why more than 1.6 million jobs have been created in the private sector during the past four years. Many Opposition Members have spoken today about the importance of bringing down unemployment, on which they are absolutely right to focus. They might have some good ideas about how to do it, so I thought that I would look at the facts. I can report that unemployment went up during Labour’s last term and has fallen under this Government in the constituency of every Opposition Member who has spoken today. For example, in the constituency of the hon. Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson), who is not in his place, unemployment went up 98% under Labour, and is down 29% under this Government. In the constituency of the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex), it went up 96% under Labour, and is 17% down under this Government. Which Opposition Member saw the largest increase in unemployment? The right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) saw a record increase of 184% in unemployment in his constituency during Labour’s last term, when he was in office, but it is down 21% under this Government. As expected, Opposition Members know how to create problems, but they have no idea how to solve them.

This Government trust businesses and want to help them, and we want to help the savers, the doers and the makers. This Budget does all those things, and I commend it to the House.

Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.— (Mr Gyimah.)

Debate to be resumed Monday 24 March.