Amendment of the Law
Debate between Andrea Leadsom and Ed Balls(9 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Andrea Leadsom)
I thank hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber for their contributions this afternoon. For some, it will have been their last contribution in the Chamber. I congratulate them on choosing such an important final debate.
The truth is that everybody wants economic growth and greater employment. No Government in the world say that they want less growth and fewer jobs. However, there is a big difference between talking about something and achieving it. This Government are proud of our achievements: the fastest growth of any major advanced economy in the world, employment at a record high, unemployment at a record low, rising living standards, a falling deficit and the return of national optimism. And we have done all that within five years of the worst ever peacetime recession, which was caused not only by the financial crisis, but by the spending of the Labour party from 2001 onwards.
There have been some very good contributions this afternoon. The hon. Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey) raised the sale of the student loan book. I can tell him that the first tranche is expected to be sold by the end of 2015-16 and that over a five-year period the sales are expected to generate between £10 billion and £15 billion in revenues.
The hon. Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) spoke about living standards. Perhaps I can lay his concerns to rest by telling him what Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies said was
“the difference between Mr Osborne’s £900 better off and Mr Miliband’s £1,600 worse off”.
He said:
“In part the difference arises because Mr Miliband is talking about gross earnings, not net incomes. The latter allows the fuller description of what has happened to household living standards.”
It is important for all Members to understand the reality of how our economy is performing.
Andrea Leadsom
The right hon. Gentleman will realise that I have just quoted Paul Johnson of the IFS. I stand by what the IFS has said, which is that, from 2010 to 2015, the average household is £900 better off.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Mark Simmonds) welcomed the fall in unemployment, the many who have been taken out of tax, and the fuel duty freeze, which has been great for his constituents. My hon. Friend the Member for Dudley South (Chris Kelly) spoke about the fact that Dudley is full of hard-working people, and said how our support for businesses has helped them. He will certainly be missed in this place.
The hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) criticised many of the coalition’s cuts but did not say how he would sort out the huge financial mess left by the Labour party in 2010. My hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) gave impressive figures for improvements in his constituency, not just to the local economy but also to local public services. As he pointed out, a strong economy means that we can pay for excellent public services. I wish him every success in his career when he leaves this place.
The hon. Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) welcomed the increase in personal allowances and the rise in gift aid for charity cash collections. I join her in congratulating Giggles and Games in her constituency on its prize for a thriving business. My hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) raised the important issue of housing. He welcomed the Budget creating 20 housing zones, and made important suggestions about the need to improve housing supply, including through self-build. The hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) talked about problems of poverty in her constituency, but acknowledged that the route out of poverty is work. She should welcome the fact that the total claimant count in her constituency is down by 39% since 2010. She also raised the issue of real-time data for credit reference agencies. The FCA is continuing to focus on achieving real-time data sharing, and significant progress is being made.
My hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Mary Macleod) pointed out the economic benefits to her constituency of regeneration and making work pay, as well as the business rate reliefs for her high street and support for the creative industries. She highlights the urgent need for faster broadband and more new housing, and I agree with her about that. The hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) challenged the quality of the jobs available, so I am sure he will be pleased to know that since Q1 2010, more than 70% of the increase in employment has come from full-time workers, two thirds of whom have been in high-skilled occupations, and that the claimant count in his constituency is down by 25% since May 2010.
Economic Growth
Debate between Andrea Leadsom and Ed Balls(11 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Ed Balls
I want to make some progress, then I will take some more interventions.
This is not simply the Queen’s Speech of a coalition Government who have ground to a halt; it is much worse than that. At a time when living standards are falling; when child poverty is rising; when more than 950,000 young people are out of work; when, as we learned today, unemployment is rising again and is now higher than at the general election; when, as we also learned today, prices are rising four times faster than wages in our economy; when our economy has flatlined for three years; when overall business investment has stalled and actually fallen in the past two years; when, as a result, our triple A credit rating has been downgraded; when the Office for Budget Responsibility says that the deficit reduction plan has completely stalled; and when the International Monetary Fund is now in town saying that the Chancellor is “playing with fire” by sticking to his failing plan, you would think that the priority for the Prime Minister, the Chancellor, the Cabinet and the Conservative party would be to see what they could do to boost economic growth and long-term investment in our country. But no, it seems that that is not their priority.
Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
We have already had a credit downgrade from one of the agencies, and the agency made it clear that that was a result of the problems that our economy has had in recovering. Is the right hon. Gentleman not concerned that if we were to abandon our plans, there could be a further downgrade? If we simply did as he suggests and opened the floodgates to more debt and borrowing, we would put our economy into severe crisis as a result of rising interest rates and a lack of credibility in international markets.
Ed Balls
I ask the hon. Lady to reflect for a moment on the logic of her position. For the past three years, she and the Chancellor have consistently said that they had to stick to the plan, even though growth was low, even though the deficit was not coming down and even though living standards were under pressure, because otherwise they would lose the triple A credit rating. Now they have lost the triple A rating, but they still maintain that they have to stick to the plan. That is completely illogical. The credit rating agency said in terms that it had downgraded us because there was no growth in the economy, and that that was choking off deficit reduction. Sticking with a failing plan that is not working and that has resulted in the deficit reduction being stalled is not the way to keep our credit rating—if that is the Government’s objective. The way to keep it is to get the economy moving, get people investing and get people back into long-term sustainable jobs. Until we do that, the Chancellor is going to continue to fail.
Andrea Leadsom
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for letting me have another go. I put it to him that he really does not understand the point about the credit rating agency in this context. The whole point about confidence in the British economy is that people need confidence in Britain’s ability to get out of the economic mess that his Government left us in. This is not about the absolute level; it is about market confidence. He must surely understand that keeping a very good credit rating is essential in order to have an affordable cost of borrowing.
Ed Balls
I do not want to prolong this argument, but I must explain to the hon. Lady the term structure of interest rates. The 10-year bond yields are the accumulation of market expectations of three-month interest rates added up every three months over 10 years. Why are our long-term interest rates so low? It is because people think that short-term rates are going to stay low because the economy is flat on its back. People would have to be economically illiterate to think that our long-term interest rates were driven by market confidence at a time when we are being downgraded by the agencies. Our long-term interest rates are low because our economy is not growing.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation
Debate between Andrea Leadsom and Ed Balls(11 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Ed Balls
The problem with what the Chancellor is doing this year—cutting in-year spending—is that it is the opposite of the automatic stabilisers. He is cutting spending and the OBR says that it is having a direct impact on economic growth. I sympathise with everybody who loses their job, including the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb). In my constituency unemployment has come down, but working families are worse off because of cuts to tax credits, the bedroom tax and cuts to child care. The £700 million-a-year tax break for new child care is no compensation for the £7 billion a year cut in support for families.
Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that inequality in income has dropped significantly since May 2010?
Ed Balls
I think the hon. Lady may find that that is before the millionaires’ tax cut kicks in in 14 days’ time.
The hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton asked whether I am being serious. I am being deadly serious about the failure of this Government’s economic plan. They are failing on growth and on borrowing, and living standards are falling as families and businesses pay the price. I warned the Chancellor two and a half years ago that his plan could not work and that, given that a global hurricane was brewing, it was the wrong time to rip out the foundations of our own house. I told him that monetary policy in a situation akin to that of Japan in the 1990s or of the world in the 1930s could not do the trick to restore growth. I warned him that attempting to have the biggest tax rises and fastest spending cuts in our post-war history, and probably beyond, would backfire and choke off recovery rather than support it.
The Under-Secretary of State for Skills, the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock) is the Chancellor’s former adviser and he is now a member of the Business Secretary’s ministerial team. He wrote an article in The Times in the autumn of 2010 in which he said—this is the Chancellor’s former adviser—that faster deficit reduction would lead to stronger growth. He said, as the Chancellor has also argued, that this was an example of expansionary fiscal contraction, but fiscal contraction has not been expansionary—it choked off the recovery. If the Chancellor was relying on advisers like the hon. Gentleman, it is no wonder that he got into such trouble.
Amendment of the Law
Debate between Andrea Leadsom and Ed Balls(12 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)
The British economy is stagnating, unemployment is rising month by month, the Government’s deficit reduction plans have gone wildly off track, middle and lower-income families and pensioners are facing rising petrol prices, rising energy bills and falling living standards—and what did the Chancellor do in his Budget yesterday? Did he admit that his economic plan has failed? Did he act to kick-start the stalled recovery? Did he give any hope to young people facing long-term unemployment? Did he set out any vision of how, over the next 20 years, Britain can compete in the world and win the investment and skilled jobs we need? Did he ease the pressure on families by cutting fuel duty, or by cancelling perverse and unfair cuts to tax credits and child benefit? No. The centrepiece of the Chancellor’s Budget, his top priority, and the political imperative for this oh so political Chancellor, was to spend more than £3 billion next year cutting the top rate of income tax for existing top rate taxpayers. People earning more than £150,000 a year—300,000 of them—are getting an average tax cut of £10,000 a year. How out of touch can he get?
To add insult to injury, the Chancellor sprung another surprise tax rise by freezing the age-related personal allowance for 4.5 million pensioners and abolishing it entirely for soon-to-be pensioners. People on modest incomes who have worked hard and saved hard all their lives will be hit by the Chancellor’s tax grab on pensioners while he gives a £40,000 tax cut to 14,000 millionaires. What can we say about that?
Ed Balls
I will in a second—I look forward to it.
As the Financial Times reports this morning:
“Some Tory backbenchers offered support for the measure”—
on pensioners—
“although they refused to be identified for fear of alienating their elderly constituents.”
Perhaps in a second some of those Conservative Back Benchers will break cover and back the pensioners tax grab in the Budget, but they are right to be worried, because all across the country, the real electorate will be thinking, “A tax cut for millionaires, paid for by millions of families and pensioners across this country? Same old Tories: looking after their friends while families and pensioners pay the price.”
Andrea Leadsom
I am grateful to the shadow Chancellor. Is he as delighted as I am that we will be introducing within the next couple of years a single, unmeans-tested pension at a significantly higher rate than the current one?
Ed Balls
We will have to wait to see the details. There will be some winners and some losers, but the one thing that we can categorically confirm today is that thousands of pensioners in the hon. Lady’s constituency will lose up to £300 a year as a result of yesterday’s Budget. She did not say whether she supported that—hardly a clarion call of support for the Chancellor’s pensions tax grab.
Ed Balls
No.
I am going to read again what the Business Secretary said on the top rate of tax, because it is such a great quote:
“Some believe that if taxes on the wealthy are cut, new revenue will miraculously appear. I think their reasoning is this—all those British billionaires who demonstrate their patriotism by hiding from the taxman in Monaco or some Caribbean bolt-hole will rush back to pay more tax but at a lower rate. Pull the other one.”
I have to ask him then: why is he going to stand here today and defend a Budget that tries to do just that?
We all know what the Deputy Prime Minister said last September. Let me tell the House—if anyone is interested in what he says. He said:
“I do not believe that the priority at a time like this is to give a tax cut to a tiny, tiny number of people who are much, much better off than anybody else.”
Let us be honest. None of us is remotely surprised that the Deputy Prime Minister has completely capitulated, just as he did on VAT, tuition fees and the NHS, but the Business Secretary is another matter. He knows that our proposal to kick-start the recovery is right because he told the Chancellor to do it. He knows that our proposal to set up a business investment bank is right because he told the Prime Minister to do it. And he knows that cutting the top rate of tax now is the wrong priority, deeply unfair and a betrayal of his and his party’s values and progressive tradition.
We all know all we need to know about the Deputy Prime Minister, but we all had—and have—higher hopes for the Business Secretary. I have to say to him—and to his colleagues—that I understand the incredibly difficult position he is now in, but I have to ask him: what on earth would the Vince Cable of five years ago think of what he is doing now? As the sketch writer in The Independent wrote last week:
“Vince has been so hammered by events…It isn’t clear any more that he could ‘press the nuclear button’ hard enough to make it go off.”
Prove us all wrong, Vince—prove us all wrong.
The Chancellor used to say, “We’re all in this together.” Not any more. In tough times, the choices that this Tory-led Government are making tell us everything we need to know about them and how totally out of touch they are with what life is like in our country. Here are the facts. The Chancellor’s plan has failed. Trying to raise taxes and cut spending too far and too fast has backfired. The country needs a Budget for growth and jobs. Instead, we got more of the same, and with his tax cut for millionaires, he is piling insult upon injury for millions of families and pensioners across this country.
The Economy
Debate between Andrea Leadsom and Ed Balls(13 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Ed Balls
I will give way in a few seconds.
The test for the Treasury is not whether it can eventually get back to growth, but where it will make up the lost ground in jobs and living standards.
In this debate, I challenge the Chancellor to agree with me on three propositions: first, his plan is not working; secondly, he has the opportunity to change course; and, thirdly, there is a better and fairer alternative economic policy for our country—better for jobs, better for living standards, and a better, fairer way to get the deficit down.
Ed Balls
I have plenty more; we will come to them in a second. Just think, “Good publicity, good publicity, it’s all good publicity.” It did not do the hon. Member for West Suffolk any harm; it did not do him any good either.
We do not hear much from the Chancellor these days about snow being the explanation for the contraction of the economy at the end of the year, because as he knew at the time, it also snowed in America, Germany and France, and they all posted stronger growth. In fact, Denmark, Ireland, Greece and Portugal were the only other countries with falling output in the last quarter of 2010. The Chancellor of all people, a regular skier on Europe’s slopes, should have known that even in winter it does not snow in Greece and Portugal. Instead we hear a new weather-related line. He blames the global headwinds, factors outside his control—rising oil prices, food prices, the eurozone, the Japanese earthquake, all reasons why prudent Chancellors should always be vigilant and choose caution over complacency. It is ironic to hear the Chancellor and the Prime Minister blame the rest of the world for Britain’s economic difficulties, as they did the opposite for their last four years in opposition.
Compared with other countries facing the same global headwinds, we are doing worse. We have gone from being in the top half of the EU economic league, to fourth from bottom in the past few months. It is no wonder that the OECD Deputy Secretary-General said a few weeks ago that
“we see merit in slowing the pace of fiscal consolidation if there is not so good news on the growth front”.
Even the IMF has said that
“there are significant risks to inflation, growth and unemployment”.
The excuses are not working, and the Chancellor is starting to be rumbled.
Andrea Leadsom
Does the right hon. Gentleman recognise that when the Government took office, our country was on credit watch for a downgrade? Does he welcome the fact that this country’s borrowing rates are similar to those of Germany and nowhere near those of Portugal and Greece? Does he further recognise the impact that his proposal effectively to reduce VAT rates right now, unfunded, would have on our current national deficit?
Ed Balls
The irony of a Conservative MP opposing tax cuts in VAT for families while allowing a tax cut, compared with last year, for the banks, is almost overwhelming. As everyone who studies the figures and not the political spin knows, we went into the crisis with lower national debt than France, Germany, America and Japan. Every country had a rise in its deficit, so of course we did. The fact is, however, that our gilt yields were very low and falling month by month before the general election, even as the opinion polls narrowed—
Ed Balls
It is fine for the hon. Gentleman to be thinking of his intervention rather than listening to the answers, but the fact is that we had a lower budget deficit and lower national debt than we inherited in 1997. The IFS, in its report, “The public finances: 1997 to 2010” said:
“By 2007–08, the public finances were in a stronger position than they had been when Labour came to power in 1997.”
That entirely disproves his point.