Finance Bill

Alun Cairns Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy]

My hon. Friend makes a good point as always. That is the crucial thing. Under the Conservative Government, the increased take-up in medical insurance from 500,000 to 600,000 did not necessarily have anything to do with the tax relief that was introduced; it happened because the NHS was in absolute crisis. Waiting lists were going through the roof under the last Conservative Government. People were terribly scared and did not feel confident that the NHS would look after them in their ill health. There were significant improvements under the Labour Government, which meant that fewer people felt the need to take out private health care.

Let me turn to the fairness argument. It remains to be seen how much the Health Secretary’s experiment through the measures in the Health and Social Care Bill—driven once again by a preoccupation with private sector involvement in health care—will eventually take from health care budgets. We know that £850 million will be spent on redundancies alone, and the estimates are that £2 billion of PCTs’ budgets are earmarked for what can only be described as—in those infamous words of the coalition agreement—a “top-down reorganisation”. Despite the Prime Minister’s promise of real-terms increases, NHS expenditure is falling in real terms. The King’s Fund has calculated that the NHS will have £910 million less to spend over the spending review period. Patients and staff know all too well that front-line services are being affected, but tax relief for private patients will not help them.

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)]

Do I take it from the hon. Lady’s comments on health spending that she is condemning her colleagues in Wales, who are cutting health spending by £1 billion over the next three years?

[Kerry McCarthy]

I am sorry, I did not quite catch the end of that because a colleague was talking to me. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman wants to make that intervention again.

[Alun Cairns]

I will happily repeat the point. Do I take it from the hon. Lady’s earlier comments about growth in health spending that she condemns her colleagues in Wales, which is the only place where Labour is in power? They are cutting health spending by £1 billion over the next three years.

[Kerry McCarthy]

The Government are here to answer for the activities for which they are responsible in the English health service—it is one of those things that goes with devolution. We have heard from Government Members in this debate that the Government are increasing spending on the NHS. They have trumpeted that over and over again—it was meant to be a platform on which the Conservatives sought election—but the truth is that there is not a real-terms increase in spending on the NHS. When inflation is taken into account, there is actually a cut in NHS spending, and it is time that the Government owned up to that.

I am under pressure to finish my speech and allow those on the Government Front Bench to come in. [Interruption.] As hon. Members can see from the fact that not one but two Opposition Whips are sitting behind me, shouting at me to hurry up, I am indeed under pressure.

How can Conservative MPs tell the hundreds of thousands of people who have signed up to the “Save our NHS” campaign that a spending commitment priority for this Government should be subsidies for private medical insurance? The coalition has tried to deny that it is creating a market in the NHS, but now Conservative MPs do not even want it to be a fair one, by creating incentives for the private sector. If the Treasury thinks it wise to spend such considerable sums, I hope that it is clear by now that they could be much more wisely and fairly spent on the NHS for the benefit of everyone, not the few who need it least. Why not invest in the NHS as a universal service of which we should all be proud, rather than sending the clear message to patients and enormously dedicated NHS staff that private health care is better? Is the coalition planning to run down the NHS to such an extent that people will need to resort to private insurance?

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) knew when the relief was withdrawn in 1997, not only could those funds be of great value to the NHS, but ending the relief could fund a reduction in the VAT charged on domestic energy supplies to 5%—a rate that the Conservative Government had increased to 8%, and which they would have increased still further to 17.5%, had they not been defeated by Opposition MPs. The Labour Government at the time made clear their priorities. Rather than giving a tax break to older people who could already afford health insurance, they chose a tax cut that benefited everyone, but made the most significant difference to older people on low incomes who were struggling to heat their homes.

It is worth reminding the House that the Conservatives wanted to reverse that policy and reinstate the relief in 2001. Now, 10 years later, they still have the wrong priorities —priorities that will quite simply be incomprehensible to the average person feeling the effects of this Government’s reckless spending cuts. It is estimated that 4.5 million families in the UK are living in fuel poverty, while people are facing 10% increases in their electricity bills, which are likely to increase still further as a result of the coalition’s poorly thought out plans for a carbon floor price, which we will debate perhaps in the early hours of tomorrow morning or next week. Moreover, this Government have decided to cut the winter fuel payment for pensioners.

Faced with individuals and families who will struggle to heat their homes this winter, are the Government taking positive, responsible action to help them? No; instead, they have already hiked up the VAT bills of a couple with children by £450, and those of a pensioner couple by £275, and their Back Benchers think that it is more important to reverse a decision taken to help with fuel costs and instead give tax relief to the minority who can already afford the luxury of private health insurance.

The Labour Government lifted 1.1 million pensioners out of poverty, but there is a continuing need to support those on the lowest incomes. I fear that these proposals betray how some Conservative Members neglect the needs of the poorest pensioners. With the new clauses, they want to add insult to injury by giving tax breaks to the richest to buy private medical insurance, while poorer pensioners have no option but to rely on the NHS—a service that the coalition seems determined to decimate. New clause 1 explains that the relief would apply to people over 65 but, as we all know, the coalition is planning rapidly to increase the state pension age, which will affect the associated support for older people. Does the hon. Member for Mole Valley therefore envisage the age limit increasing with the state pension age, or does he disagree with the Government’s timetable?

In 2006, 10.6% of the population were covered by private medical insurance, and only 3% by personal private medical insurance. The latest figures that I have seen indicate that just 7% of people over 65 have private medical insurance, so the clear motivation behind new clause 1 is the choice to prioritise a very small percentage of the population at a time when the country and the NHS cannot afford it. Inflation is running at more than double the target rate thanks to the Chancellor’s decision to increase VAT, growth is flat-lining, the jobseeker’s allowance claimant count is increasing and more than 80 claimants are applying for each vacancy in some areas. That all means that the Government will have borrow £46 billion more than they planned last autumn, so how on earth can this measure be a priority?

I urge the Government to reject these new clauses, to consider how the money could be much better spent and to secure the future of the NHS as a high-quality service that everyone can access and trust. Instead of an unfair income tax cut for the few, we need a temporary emergency VAT cut that will benefit everyone, particularly those on low and middle incomes, and that will give a much-needed boost to the economy to reduce the deficit over the long term in a fair and balanced way. I conclude by asking the hon. Members who tabled the new clause what their priority is. Is it a tax cut for the minority who can afford private health insurance, which would undermine and undervalue the NHS, or a tax cut that would help everyone at a time when the economy needs it most?

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The UK economy is not growing and people’s standards of living are being compromised. Confidence amongst individuals and families is falling—that is key when we are looking at future economic growth prospects. Economic growth forecasts are being downgraded by all around except the Government and the unanimous response to today’s revised figures is that we are in for a period of subdued growth at best. As I say, the situation now is different from that of nearly three years ago when the VAT cut was first used as a part of fiscal policy. Back then, we were preventing the situation from getting worse and the recession from deepening; now we are looking at how we can generate growth. Part of the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ reason for backing policies such as a temporary VAT cut is that there is a time frame—people can see an end and know that they must spend to take advantage of it, as advocated by my new clause 9.

[Alun Cairns]

I give the hon. Gentleman and his party credit for having had consistent policy on this matter, but has he had any indication about where the official Opposition stand on his amendment? There has been some indecision within the official Opposition, with policies being announced without the shadow Cabinet knowing about them.

[Jonathan Edwards]

We will have to wait and see. I just hope that my words are powerful enough to entice them to come through the Lobby with us, but I am afraid we will have to wait until a little later in the evening.

I was talking about one positive reason for a temporary VAT cut, but that would not be my main, or only, consideration. The purpose behind the cut would be to help the millions of ordinary people who would benefit from not having to pay those extra pennies and pounds every day to the Government, which they could then use to spend or save elsewhere as they saw fit. They could spend them on other goods and stimulate the economy in that way or they could keep them to pay off their debts. At the moment, many costs have been factored into the margins of businesses and many businesses have not yet raised their prices to meet this new inflation from both VAT and other spending increases. If we can keep prices down through the use of a temporary VAT cut and keep high street prices down with it, we will help families. On the other hand, if we can secure the margins for shops and companies, we will help business. I hope that Government Members will agree with that point. Either scenario would be a win-win situation for families and business. Negating a key element of inflationary pressure would also enable monetary policy to be kept loose for longer, which I would imagine is a key objective for the Treasury and the Monetary Policy Committee.

In closing last year’s debate on the effect that the VAT increase would have on the budgets of public sector organisations, the devolved Governments and charities, I asked the Government what analysis they had made of the impact that increasing VAT would have on the operating costs of those bodies, as one study had estimated that increasing VAT would cost charities alone an extra £150 million per annum. I would be grateful if the Minister addressed that specific point in winding up. We will be pushing for a division on new clause 9, as it would introduce a temporary reduction and is more likely to generate support across the House. New clause 6 would be our preferred solution in the long term, but I will not push it to a vote tonight.

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[Mr Hanson]

The policy is clear. If the Exchequer Secretary looks at new clause 10, he will see that we want an assessment of the impact of VAT that looks at how we should deal with the question of VAT across the whole UK. Let me start by saying that we have a deficit reduction plan, as he knows, and a plan to save resources to tackle the deficit, and we have a plan to ensure that we meet the needs of this country. He will know that we have consistently supported opposition to the Government’s VAT rise since they brought it forward.

[Alun Cairns]

I note that the right hon. Gentleman is speaking to new clause 10, which is very different from the proposal made to the House only a week ago. Is this yet another shift in official Opposition policy?

[Mr Hanson]

The hon. Gentleman cannot get away from the fact that he has imposed a VAT rise on businesses, families and hard-working people in Vale of Glamorgan and elsewhere in the UK, and he could have avoided that tax in different ways. On the same evening that the Conservative party has proposed tax relief on support for private medical insurance—[Interruption.] Well, I may be mistaken, but I believe that the hon. Members for Christchurch (Mr Chope) and for North East Hertfordshire (Oliver Heald) are Conservative Members of Parliament. The hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) has imposed a VAT rise on his constituents that is unfair, damaging business and will damage the UK economy.

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[Mr Hanson]

I remember that very well. The Conservatives said at that general election that they would not double VAT. They did not double it, but they increased it by 7%. Perhaps the Liberal Democrats have learned some lessons about breaking election promises.

[Alun Cairns]

I seem to remember that Labour opposed all those increases in VAT, but not once did it reverse them. Is that true?

[Mr Hanson]

No, I think we did. I have been here quite a few years now, and I recall that in 1993 the Conservative Government increased VAT on fuel and had to reduce it because of measures supported by the Labour party in opposition. The hon. Gentleman may not remember that.