Health and Social Care Levy (Repeal) Bill

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 11th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

We will deliver growth if we encourage people across the whole income spectrum—people doing jobs on lower incomes, those on higher incomes, businesses big and small alike. We need to encourage the entire economy, which is why tax cuts in the growth plan are broadly based, like the tax cut we are debating now. We need to encourage them all, which includes companies and people who are internationally mobile. I used to be technology Minister, and most technology businesses have a choice about where they locate. They are very internationally mobile. They could go to New York, San Francisco, Singapore—they could go anywhere in the world. We need to ensure that every part of the United Kingdom is attractive to such businesses, and the growth plan intends to create those conditions that make us attractive as a nation.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

The Minister seems to have mentioned everything except the need for a healthy workforce. Local authorities spend £1.2 billion every year on social care needs caused by smoking, and that will get more expensive if the Government fail to address the issue of tobacco. This morning the Health and Social Care Secretary hinted that she will do less, not more, to tackle the dangers of smoking. Will the Minister join me and press her to bring forward the tobacco control plan, to help protect the health of the nation and save health and social care costs?

[Chris Philp]

I do not think I should trespass into the realm of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and Deputy Prime Minister. She will make her own views and policy on that issue without intervention from me. We are ensuring that the NHS is well funded so that it can provide the treatment our constituents need. Our commitment to NHS funding is undiminished.

Let me turn to the Bill, which repeals the health and social care levy. Members will recall that the health and social care levy was originally announced in September last year, and the Health and Social Care Levy Act 2021 received Royal Assent on 20 October last year. The levy had two phases: first, a temporary 1.25% increase for employers and employees in the current tax year; and then from April 2023 a formal surcharge of 1.25%, which would have affected not just those of working age but also those of state pension age. The Bill repeals that Act with elegant simplicity. Clause 1 states simply:

“The Health and Social Care Levy Act 2021 is repealed.”

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[Alex Cunningham]

The hon. Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) has made this point: if £17 billion is being removed from the Exchequer, how can we have all that extra spending on the NHS and on social care if there is no additional taxation?

[Chris Philp]

As I pointed out, we will set that out on the 31st. The Chancellor has a number of measures in mind to make sure, over the medium term, that this is fully funded, and critically, so that we can do this and the other things in the growth plan—this is obviously only one measure among many—to make sure that we get debt falling as a proportion of GDP. Hon. Members are asking entirely reasonable questions, but the point of the medium-term fiscal plan, and the details that will accompany it on 31 October, is to answer precisely those questions.

Let me set out the benefits that the move will confer on employees earning more than £12,570 and self-employed people earning more than £11,909. The average saving for people in work who are earning more than those thresholds will be approximately £330 next year. Combined with the increase in the threshold that took effect last July, the saving for the average worker earning above those thresholds will be £500 next year. That will clearly be welcome at a time of economic challenge. Moreover, almost a million businesses—920,000—will get an average tax cut of just a shade under £10,000 next year: £9,600, to be precise. That will be very welcome indeed.

It is worth being clear that the increase in the threshold that was put through a few months ago means that people on lower incomes pay very little in national insurance or income tax these days. I am sure that Members of this House who want to see the burden of taxation made as light as possible, particularly for those with lower incomes, will strongly welcome the increase in the threshold. It follows the very substantial increases in the income tax threshold over the past 12 years, from about £6,500 back in 2010 to £12,500 today, which have lifted people on the lowest incomes out of national insurance and out of income tax entirely.

I have already made the point that the reversal of the levy is part of a much wider plan. Over the coming days and weeks, my colleagues the Secretaries of State for various Departments will announce further supply-side measures to stimulate growth in our economy, including by making the planning system faster, making sure that business regulations are not unduly onerous, improving childcare, addressing questions concerned with immigration and agricultural productivity, and improving digital infrastructure. As I have said, we will do so in a way that makes sure that debt over GDP falls over the medium term.

[Alex Cunningham]

Will the Chief Secretary give way?

[Chris Philp]

I was about to finish, but as the hon. Member is an old friend, I will give way one last time.

[Alex Cunningham]

I am grateful; I enjoyed my time dealing with justice issues opposite the right hon. Member. Twelve years ago, one of his predecessors—a Lib Dem, in fact—cancelled the new hospital for Stockton. The need for one is far greater than ever and the Chief Secretary seems very capable of splashing the cash, so will he finally approve funding for a new hospital in Stockton?

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[James Murray]

I am going to make some progress. I may let the hon. Gentleman intervene again in a few moments.

As I was saying, right now our message to the Prime Minister and the Chancellor is to keep on U-turning. They need to U-turn on their whole disastrous approach to the economy, which the Chancellor set out just over two weeks ago. That Budget—in all but name—was the most destructive, unfair and irresponsible fiscal announcement in a generation.

The Prime Minister and the Chancellor should now U-turn on their decision to lift the cap on bankers’ bonuses. They should U-turn on their refusal to ask oil and gas giants to put some of their eye-watering excess profits towards helping keep to people’s energy bills down. They need to U-turn on their discredited, dangerous trickle-down approach to the economy. It is time for them to reverse their disastrous kamikaze Budget, which has unleashed an economic crisis that they made in Downing Street, and which working people are paying for through higher mortgages and prices.

[Alex Cunningham]

My hon. Friend says, rightly, that we support this particular U-turn, but is he not as perplexed as I am about where all this money will actually come from—or does he know that, rather than having a magic money tree, the Tories have a full orchard?

[James Murray]

My hon. Friend is right to point out that the Conservatives’ sums simply do not add up. However, you do not have to take our word for it, Mr Deputy Speaker. Just look at the markets: they have issued their own judgment on the Conservatives’ so-called economic plan, and they are not convinced.

As we consider the repeal of the Health and Social Care Levy Act, it is important to remember how the Government’s decision to bring in this national insurance hike came to pass in the first place. Over the last 12 years under the Conservatives, we have been stuck in what the Chancellor himself rightly described last month as a “vicious cycle of stagnation”. With tax revenues stagnating under low growth, the Government made it clear that they felt the only way to raise more funds was to raise taxes on working people.

On Second Reading of the legislation that is being repealed today, the then Chief Secretary to the Treasury tried to defend the Government’s approach, saying that this new charge would

“enable the Government to provide additional funding to the NHS so that it can recover from the pandemic.”—[Official Report, 14 September 2021; Vol. 700, c. 843.]

We argued at the time that if the Government felt that they had to raise taxes, those with the broadest shoulders should contribute more, but the Government refused. They pushed ahead with this tax rise on working people and their jobs, and they refused throughout the debate on the original legislation to ask those with the broadest shoulders to take more of the burden. Now, as they repeal the legislation for the national insurance increase, they have abandoned any attempt at fiscal responsibility altogether, with an economic approach that has borrowing at its heart.

In a letter sent to the shadow Chancellor and the shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care on 22 September, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury wrote:

“The additional funding used to replace the expected revenue from the Levy will come from general taxation and may require further borrowing in the short-term.”

Labour takes a different approach. Our pledges are fully and fairly funded. As the shadow Chancellor has set out, we would boost NHS investment by ending the outrageous non-dom tax loophole exploited by the super-rich. We will use money from what is saved by scrapping that arcane practice to double the number of district nurses qualifying every year, to train more than 5,000 health visitors, to create an additional 10,000 nursing and midwife placements every year and to double the number of medical students so that our NHS has the doctors it needs.