Oral Answers to Questions

Anna Firth Excerpts

Tuesday 19th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Hunt]

I say very simply to the hon. Gentleman, who used to be an hon. Friend, that the Budget will mean that the UK economy will grow faster than that of France, Germany, Italy or Japan in the next five years. That is doing the right thing for the country.

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

T3. I would like to thank the Minister for the opportunity to meet UK Finance yesterday, which told me and other MPs that the industry plans to roll out 225 banking hubs in the next 18 months. Given that my constituency has lost every single bank branch over the last few years, will the Minister help me to make sure that Leigh-on-Sea, which has 250 retailers, will get one of those 225 banking hubs?

[The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Bim Afolami)]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question. First, it is important to note her consistent championing of this issue for her constituents, for which she deserves huge commendation. To her precise question, it is important that industry, not the Government, makes decisions about bank branches or banking hubs, but she has made her case very ably. I urge her to work with Cash Access UK and LINK to ensure that she has the best chance of securing one of those new 225 banking hubs, as outlined by the industry, in her constituency.

National Insurance Contributions (Reduction in Rates) (No.2) Bill

Anna Firth Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 13th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Davies]

My hon. Friend is right to point that out. A fundamental benefit of reducing tax is that it improves growth in our economy, because more people will be in work and working longer hours. That obviously generates more productivity for our economy, and ultimately more tax revenues for the Exchequer. It is a fundamental Conservative principle that we want lower taxes, and we are delivering that today because it is fiscally responsible to do so, and we are able to do so.

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making such a powerful case for cutting taxes, a fundamental Conservative principle. The Bill will put £960 back into the pocket of the average worker in Southend, who earns £36,400, and will put £1,920 back into the pockets of a family in Southend with two people on the average wage. Does he agree that that is a considerable and welcome tax cut for hard-working people in Southend?

[Gareth Davies]

My hon. Friend is right to point that out. I would add to those figures: since 2010, we have lifted millions of people across the country, including in Southend West, out of paying any tax at all by doubling the point at which people start paying tax in our country. People can now earn £1,000 a month without paying any tax, and that is a great achievement of a Conservative Government.

Although I welcome the fact that Labour Members will apparently vote for our tax cuts today, I hope that they will forgive me for sounding slightly sceptical about their sudden conversion to the cause of lower taxes for working people. While they do not oppose the measures, they also did not propose them. In fact, Labour has consistently voted against successive Conservative-led tax cuts between 2010 and 2021, which delivered a doubling of the personal allowance, as I mentioned to my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Anna Firth). On the one hand, they bemoan the level of taxation, but cannot tell us a single tax that they propose to cut, or what the level of taxation would be under Labour. On the other hand, the shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones), described our ambitions to remove unfairness in the tax system as “morally abhorrent”. Labour Members still cannot tell us how they will pay for their many spending commitments. They are completely all over the place. It is only the Conservatives who truly believe in reducing taxes on working people.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Redwood]

I will not join my hon. Friend in suggesting that it could be disastrous to go into the election—I hope that, when we get to the election, it will be looking rather better. But I do agree that it would be great to have sorted out the IR35 taxation mess before we get to the election—after all, there could still be many months of happy Conservative Government ahead if that is the Government’s wish—as that would be a much better outcome. Failing that, it would be good to put it in the manifesto, but the self-employed would be quite right to say to the Conservatives, “If you have now got to the point of putting it in the manifesto because you think it needs changing, why didn’t you just fix it?”

[Anna Firth]

My right hon. Friend is making a brilliant speech. He is talking about the self-employed, and in Southend and Leigh-on-Sea more than 98% of my businesses are small or medium-sized—in fact, the vast majority are micro. Does he, like me, welcome the raising of the VAT threshold in the Budget? Does he think that over time it would be welcome to continue moving that threshold, which is such a brake on the growth of small businesses? It is a brilliant thing that we have done, but could we take that further?

[John Redwood]

My first request of Chancellors in recent Budgets has been that there should be a sizeable increase in the VAT threshold. I opened the bidding at taking it up to £250,000, because I think we should want get on with these things, and we should want to allow the self-employed to take on their first one or two employees and get their business to a certain scale before this colossal bureaucratic burden comes down upon them. I have not yet persuaded my hon. Friends in the Treasury. I am pleased that Chancellors have moved from saying, “No, we don’t want to do that at all,” to saying, “It can now be done.” But if the Government are to do it, they should get on with it, mean it, and look as if it is going to make a real impact.

Five thousand pounds is not much. Lots of people get their business to around £75,000 to £80,000—I have met them in my constituency, as I am sure have most Members in theirs—and then they say, “I’ll have a month off,” or, “I’ll close the B&B for more of the off-season period,” or, “I won’t take on any more contracts, because I really don’t want all that hassle.” They will say, “I’m just a self-employed plumber”—or caterer or whatever—“and I’m good at what I do. I don’t want to become a VAT expert and I don’t want to have to spend a fortune on consultants to take me through this rigmarole of trying to keep the books straight on VAT.” I think we would benefit greatly from allowing that flexibility. The Bill helps, because it does reduce self-employed national insurance costs, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Anna Firth) said, it would be much greater if we dealt with the VAT threshold at the same time.

I would like to extend the conversation, which the Opposition clearly want to have and the Government need to respond to, about affordable and unaffordable tax cuts. First, I note that the Opposition dub all tax cuts—apart from the odd one they vote for—as unaffordable, whereas any amount of public spending is affordable. That is a strange asymmetry. The truth is that the Budget deficit is a combination of increased spending and reduced taxation, and one needs to look at both sides, which should be treated similarly.

The other thing that the Opposition must understand, from listening carefully to Ministers, is that getting rid of all national insurance employee contributions is just an idea; it is not a pledge and it is not a policy. It is clearly not baked into the next five years of figures. We have the Government’s five-year financial plan in the Budget, which sets out in general terms what the levels of tax revenue and overall spending will be—we await more detail for future years on spending from the public spending review in due course—and we know what the current feeling is on taxation, because we are just voting that through at the moment, based on the Budget. We know that future Budgets will make changes to taxes.

I am sure that Conservative Budgets will make reductions in taxes—assuming continuity of Conservative Government—but the Government are not promising to take off all this national insurance in one go, or indeed to make any particular change to national insurance next year or the year after. That is the right position to be in. However, given that there is plenty of time to think this through—it is not urgent policy—I urge my hon. Friends in the Treasury to set out more of the consideration than the arguments before coming up with a firm pledge or a timetable for implementing a tax cut that they want.

We do need to begin with the contributory principle, which is still the main feature of the national insurance fund as we have it today, relating almost entirely to the state retirement pension. The old contributory benefits for unemployment and sickness have been largely removed from the national insurance fund—there are only residual, small amounts left—and now come out of general taxation and are voted on in the normal way. The contributory fund is primarily for the pension, which is reflected in the fact that everyone in receipt of a state retirement pension—or in expectation of one when they get to the relevant age—will have their pension based on their contribution record.

It is also true that Parliament over the years has amended how one qualifies for those contribution records—in some circumstances one can be at home and qualify for deemed contribution, which is all good and fair—but it is still very much a contribution-based system. If we suddenly went away from such a system, we would need to answer the question: how do we settle eligibility for state pension? Many of my constituents would not think it a good idea if we invited in migrant workers in their 60s to do two or three years’ work here, having settled here quite legally, and then said, “You can have a full state pension.” They would feel that was not quite what people had in mind, because all previous generations have had to be here and work for many years to gain that entitlement. So there would be issues of fairness.

If the Government’s proposition is only that they would quite like to get rid of all employee contributions, I suppose we could keep the contributory principle by proxy, because people would have an employer contribution record, which I guess modern computers could divulge in a form that made a proxy for the eligibility of that person for a pension. However, it would still leave a hole in the national insurance accounts, because with just employer revenue we would have less national insurance revenue coming in than pension going out, so there would need to be technical adjustments or the abolition of the fund and some other reassurance mechanism that people would get their entitlements for the state pension, however those new entitlements were calculated.

This is a complicated area. I have been around this policy area on several occasions in the past for various leaders, Chancellors and shadow Chancellors, and I have always concluded that it would not be a good idea to try to merge the whole of the national insurance taxation system with the whole of the income tax system. I still think there is some merit in keeping the contributory principle. It now mainly relates to the pension, which is probably what one settles for, given how much other benefits have gone up and how one could not put all that extra burden on additional national insurance contributions.

I therefore urge the Government to ask themselves questions about the timetable, affordability, wisdom and, above all, what they wish to do with the national insurance system as a whole, the contributory principle—which still means a lot, particularly to older users of the system—and what a more modern system might look like. That is Green Paper and policy discussion territory, and it is invited as part of this debate because the Opposition have tabled amendments to try to tease some of these matters out. We cannot settle this today, however; we need a lot of documentation and research to update some of the numbers and complexities, which I remember poring over in the past, so we can see how this might work.

So, it is good news that we are getting a tax cut, and good news that we can have some more tax cuts to come, but I ask the Government please not only to think about cutting national insurance, on which they have done a big and a good job, but to think about some of the other taxes, such as the VAT threshold and IR35, and such as taxes on energy where we are still completely uncompetitive in this country because energy taxation is so high, relative to China and the United States of America, let alone relative to our European competitors—they tend to have higher energy prices but we are still uncompetitive against them.

So we need to look at all of that, and when we are looking at future Budgets we need to work away at finding more headroom. I am very pleased that this national insurance cut is effectively allowed under Office for Budget Responsibility rules because the Government have seized the initiative on the productivity decline, which has been very sizeable over the covid period in the public services, and the Government are putting back around £20 billion of lost productivity in future years. That is a modest target given the scale of the decline, and it is another reason why the public finances have been thrown into disarray by covid: we did not merely have all the extra costs during the covid period, but we now have ongoing considerable extra cost to run our public services because we cannot even get them back up to the levels of productivity they had hit in 2019 before the covid crisis. We need to look at other ways of finding headroom. Productivity is a good mine for finding headroom so we can improve the quality and cut the cost of what we deliver in the public sector.

I still think the Bank of England should be stopped from selling its colossal bond portfolio at huge losses and sending the bill to the taxpayer. That is unsupportable and the fact that taxpayers and the Treasury have had to find £34 billion year to date to cover the whole range of Bank of England losses, which include capital losses on the bonds, is a sign of how out of control this is. We need to stop that kind of thing. It would also be very helpful in getting us out of this technical recession, because the monetary policy has shifted from being massively too expansionary and inflationary, as it was during the covid period, when some of us warned about the way the Bank carried on for too long with printing money and buying bonds. I was very happy with the first tranches because it was essential to offset, but the last tranche was over the top. The Bank has now lurched to being too tough and has therefore created a technical recession that we need not have had, and if it stopped quantitative tightening bond sales, that would start to ease the markets up a bit more and allow us to grow a bit more rapidly and therefore generate more tax revenue.

So I hope there is some food for thought here for the Government when they look at their progress so far. The national insurance cuts are good, but they should study the overall reform rather more carefully and think it through and not make it the only kind of tax cuts in the future. There are other tax cuts now that are more urgent and that would grow the economy more quickly, and they would be targeted rather more on enabling more people to work for themselves and more small businesses to grow, and on us having more capacity, particularly in high energy using areas.

Building Societies Act 1986 (Amendment) Bill

Anna Firth Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 7th February 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Bim Afolami]

I was. I just realised that it is almost 38 years later.

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

An auspicious year.

[Bim Afolami]

Exactly—an auspicious year for me.

The Bill amends section 7(3) of the 1986 Act to exclude three specified sources of funding from the 50% wholesale funding limit for building societies. By excluding these sources of funding from the wholesale funding limit, building societies will be able to raise additional wholesale capital, which strengthens their arms to compete with retail banks while promoting competition within the financial services sector.

Building Societies Act 1986 (Amendment) Bill

Anna Firth Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 19th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

I will keep my comments brief, not least because we have had so many learned and expert speeches, particularly from my hon. Friends the Members for Dover (Mrs Elphicke) and for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman). That is not the only reason I intend to be brief. We have many important Bills that we want to discuss today, not least, of course, my own Pet Abduction Bill, which is coming next.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) on introducing this important piece of legislation. I fully support it. I declare an interest immediately, as I have had a number of mortgages over my time. We have a mortgage with the Halifax and of course we have had various savings accounts, although none with building societies at the moment.

Building societies fulfil a fantastic purpose. They are often, as we have heard today, the last institution standing on many high streets, still providing a face-to-face banking service. That is exactly what is happening in my constituency in Leigh-on-Sea, which I shall come on to. I welcome the Bill because it aims to put the building societies on a more level playing field with other retail deposit takers, such as banks, particularly on their capital raising and corporate governance requirements. It will make them more competitive and they will therefore be more effective in the financial services sector. Not only will building societies offer more to consumers and my constituents, but they will offer better support to their members. I can only see positives, particularly given everything we have heard about the support that building societies give to the first-time buyer and have given for many, many years.

I am sure that we all have our stories to tell about how exciting it was when we got our first mortgage and the keys to our very first place—a flat, in my case—and about what an important step that was for us all. After someone gets their first job and starts to pay tax and make a first contribution to society and the economy, the next thing is getting their first home and becoming a stakeholder in our property-owning democracy. Sadly, that experience is not available for as many young people as it was in my time. That is a crying shame, and I hope that the Bill will lead to building societies beginning to expand even more into that first-time market.

What I really want to talk about is the fact that in recent years bank branches have closed in Southend West. I do not have a single bank in my constituency offering that essential face-to-face service. I only have the Nationwide, a fantastic building society on Leigh Broadway.

[Sir Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

As the Member of Parliament for Nationwide, whose headquarters are in Swindon, I am delighted that my hon. Friend mentions that building society, its leading role in mutuality in this country and its commitment to high street branches, which are a vital lifeline for our community. I am grateful to her.

[Anna Firth]

I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend for his intervention. Nationwide does so much in all constituencies where there is a branch. My Nationwide in Leigh-on-Sea has a dedicated cost of living expert who is helping the most vulnerable members of our society navigate the challenges caused by the cost of living crisis. The branch is also going out of its way to ensure that people who are not as tech savvy as some of the rest of us, particularly the elderly—I have a very elderly constituency on in Leigh-on-Sea—get that extra help. They have tea and tech events, which are very popular, that teach people how to use online banking and apps to manage their money. Digital exclusion is a real problem in our society, and it is so encouraging that the building societies are doing so much more. I could wax lyrical about all the other things that the Nationwide is doing, but because of the Bill that is up next, I am not going to.

I will end on the need for face-to-face banking services. The banking hub is a very good model, but none of the banks will provide such a hub if there is a building society that provides face-to-face services. But one should not exclude the other. I have been campaigning on this issue, but this is a fitting moment to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire Dales (Miss Dines) for her “Save Our Banks” campaign, which I wholeheartedly endorse.

I fully support the Bill and thank the hon. Member for Sunderland Central for introducing it. I hope it will ensure that building societies can do even more for their local communities, not just in Southend West but across the whole country.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the shadow Minister.

Autumn Statement Resolutions

Anna Firth Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wallasey (Dame Angela Eagle). As I listened to her speech, I came to the conclusion that we have something in common: we both seem to welcome tax cuts. She does not seem to think that they have gone far enough. I wholeheartedly welcome this Budget. It a serious Budget for growth, a Budget that sets the course for the long-term success of our country, a Budget for businesses, a Budget that rewards hard work, and a Budget that rewards our pensioners and senior citizens.

Tackling inflation has rightly been the Government’s top priority over the past year. We have all seen the horrendous effects of double-digit inflation on the cost of living, on energy prices, on households and on our constituents. I believe that the Chancellor and his team deserve all our praise for the dogged way in which they have kept to the programme and delivered. They have more than delivered, because inflation has more than halved over the past year. That will make every single one of my Southend and Leigh-on-Sea constituents better off, which I wholeheartedly welcome.

Being Conservatives means that we believe in growing the economy by giving people and businesses the freedom to succeed. We believe that lasting wealth creation depends on cutting taxes and reducing regulation. Our way is to set businesses free. I do not want to get too party political at this stage in my speech, but that is not the way of the Opposition, who have traditionally been about ramping up borrowing, increasing debt, and, obviously, increasing mortgage rates.

My priority—always—is to make Southend and Leigh-on-Sea safer, healthier and wealthier. I judge all legislation against those three simple tests, and this autumn statement will undoubtedly make my constituents wealthier. The vast majority of Southend and Leigh-on-Sea residents work hard, work full-time, and own their own homes. They deserve to keep as much of their own money as possible, so I welcome the fact that, thanks to the long-term responsible decisions taken by the Chancellor and his team last year, we can now begin to get back to cutting taxes. We are not going as far as I would like, but we are making a good start.

Cutting taxes for 27 million working people from January, by cutting the main rate of national insurance contributions from 12% to 10%, is a great start. It means that the average person in Southend West and Leigh-on-Sea, earning an average of only £36,500 a year, will see an almost immediate tax cut of £480 per person. If it is a family with two earners, as most of them are, they will see a tax cut of £960 per year—nearly £1,000 a year, starting from January. A senior nurse at Southend hospital will be better off by £600 a year, and the average police officer will be better off by £630 a year. I welcome putting that money back into the pockets of my hard-working constituents, because we on the Conservative Benches know that employment is the long-term route out of poverty. I am delighted that the welfare reforms in the autumn statement will cut the number of people in this country who are signed off work on benefits, to ensure that their potential is not wasted in the long term. Making a concerted effort to help people back into work is not nasty: it is responsible, compassionate, and ultimately caring.

I also welcome the support for small businesses in the statement. Over 98% of businesses in Southend are micro or small businesses; Southend is a city of entrepreneurs, and I am very proud of them. As such, I welcome the extension of the 75% business rates relief for retail, hospitality and leisure until 2025 and the decision to freeze the small business multiplier, which will be a huge benefit to businesses in Southend and Leigh-on-Sea. Having been self-employed for many years, I also welcome the support we are giving to the self-employed by cutting class 2 national insurance contributions from April 2024 completely. Again, we are putting more money into the pockets of the hard-working.

Permanent full expensing will mean the biggest business tax cut in modern British history. Again, it is clear what side Conservative Members are on: we are on the side of businesses, the job creators, and those who are working hard. I also welcome the fact that fuel duty will remain frozen, maintaining the 5p reduction introduced last year. Some 80% of Southend households have at least one car or van—significantly higher than the national average—and 40% of my employed constituents drive to work, so being a motorist is not a dirty word in Essex. We enjoy our cars and are proud of them, and of white van man. Let me say this loud and clear: there will be no ultra low emission zone in Essex. Kremlin Khan can keep his communist measures in London; we will not have them in Southend.

We must also look after our pensioners and the poorest in society. There are nearly 18,000 pensioners in Southend West, and we must do the right thing by them. As such, I welcome the fact that the Chancellor has reaffirmed his commitment to the pensions triple lock and pension credit. I thank him and his team for listening to the many representations from Conservative Members to keep that triple lock, which will rise in April 2024 by 8.5%. That is going to mean an extra £70 a month for my pensioners—nearly £900 a year.

More importantly, I welcome the fact that this Government are positioning the UK to be a global leader in the industries of the future. We had a revolution in banking when I started my career in the City, and it has created a long-term tax take on which we all depend in part today. Creating the industries of the future is an investment in high-paid jobs and in the tax take that we will all be relying on as we get older. Last year, we became the third trillion-dollar tech economy in the world; our tech sector is now double the size of Germany’s and three times that of France. Our life sciences sector is the biggest in Europe. Offshore wind has been mentioned; we do more offshore wind than any other country in Europe. We are now Europe’s biggest film and TV production centre. Those successes are all investments in our future, and they are not quick fixes—they are not things that just happen. They are due to long-term strategic decisions, laying the foundation for future success. It is because of these long-term strategic decisions that we have grown faster since 2010 than France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria, Finland, the Netherlands and Japan. In fact, I think the Chancellor even mentioned a few more countries in his statement.

I would say that what is happening nationally is reflected in Southend. I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire (Nigel Huddleston), who has joined the Treasury team, is no longer in his place because he will know, from attending our trade summit in September, that Southend is not just a historic, successful, scenic seaside city but that it has a growing life sciences sector, with world leading businesses such as Olympus KeyMed and ESSLAB, to name but two. In fact, the Thames estuary, backed by the Government, has been named the UK’s No. 1 growth area, with the potential to create 1.3 million jobs and add £190 billion to the nation’s economy by 2050. I would welcome—and I continue to encourage the Chancellor to look at this—the creation of new investment zones, in particular focusing on new cities. The Chancellor recently said,

“don’t bet against Britain—it’s been tried before and it never works.”

I would say, “don’t bet against Southend either”, and certainly not against the mighty Southend United, as the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins), who is not in his place, knows only too well.

The other area I want to touch on is apprenticeships. On skills, business-led local skills improvement plans have been a big success, particularly in Essex, where we have an excellent one run by the Essex chambers of commerce. However, we do need the Government to commit to long-term funding beyond the current 2025 cut-off point to truly embed them into the skills landscape, and I would like to continue that conversation with the Treasury team. Of course, apprenticeships offer a chance for people to earn while they learn and gain industry experience, and I welcome the fact that we are committing a further £50 million to a two-year apprenticeship pilot to explore new ways to stimulate training in growth sectors. However, at the same time, the apprenticeship levy does need to be reformed. Apprenticeships are not always the best solution to all training needs. I have a brilliant college in Southend, the South Essex College, and I have heard many times that greater flexibility is needed in the types of training for which the levy can be used. Many firms need shorter, more modular training to enable individuals to upskill quickly. I hope that the Government will look at allowing a percentage of the apprenticeship levy to be used on other forms of accredited training offered by approved providers.

To conclude, I welcome the autumn statement. The measures contained in it are good for my constituents in Southend and Leigh-on-Sea. I believe they are good for the country, and I look forward to supporting them at the beginning of next week.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Financial Services and Markets Bill

Anna Firth Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Monday 26th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con)]

As many colleagues across the House have said, the Bill addresses one of our most important industries and therefore is one of the most important Bills we will be considering in this Session. At the outset the Government said their aim with the Bill was to make UK regulation appropriate and proportionate, to be internationally competitive, to boost growth and to enable better outcomes for consumers and business, and those themes come through strongly in the Lords amendments. I should have said at the outset that I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

It was a pleasure to serve on the Bill Committee, which the Minister conducted in a constructive way, listening to a number of comments about accountability and transparency, which I shall come on to later. In Committee we spent a lot of time discussing financial inclusion, and the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) was critical of the Minister and rejected the proposal for having arrived late. Actually, that guard for financial inclusion is already in the substance of the consumer duty being digested and implemented by the FCA. Much as I am sometimes cautious about what a regulator says, the fact of the matter is that the regulator says that it has those powers already.

I will not detain the House on the work that the Minister has done on deforestation, because my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) has spoken about that more eloquently. I ask the House to think carefully and to support the Government’s amendments in lieu on the net zero objective, because the amendments in lieu sensibly ensure not only that the Bill builds on the Climate Change Act 2008 and the Environment Act 2021, but that regulators consider the exercise of their functions “relevant” to the making of such contributions. At I said at the outset, the Government intended the Bill to be both appropriate and proportionate, and for regulators conducting functions in this area, “relevant” seems to be a key point.

The Minister will know that throughout Committee, I was keen to discuss the secondary competitive objective and ensuring transparency and accountability. Throughout Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Craig Tracey) and I raised issues about membership of panels, metrics and the need for reports, and I congratulate the Minister on listening, because, with some of the amendments that he proposed on Report and the tranche of Government amendments coming from the Lords, the Bill has a lot of good. Much as I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) that a Joint Committee of the House to scrutinise and hold the regulator transparent would be the perfect solution, I do not think we should let perfect get in the way of good, and there is a lot of good in this Bill, particularly with a number of the amendments that create a need for a report. I also congratulate the Minister on looking at the membership of panels. Far too often, there is a temptation of regulators to mark their own homework, and we must ensure that does not happen if the regulator is to be accountable and, therefore, regarded as effective.

It is clear that the secondary objective is a secondary objective, but if we are to have a thriving financial services industry in the future, this jurisdiction must enjoy international confidence and be internationally competitive. It has been said any number of times, but the costs of becoming a new entrant—with new applications, in some cases—are 14 times more than in other jurisdictions. That cannot be right. The movement in this Bill to sort that out and place a burden on the regulator for international competitiveness is key.

My final point, the Minister will not be surprised to hear, is that I am pleased to see what amendments 37 and 38 do. They seem utterly sensible and in line with the need, first, to be transparent, as in amendment 37, and secondly, to be appropriate and proportionate, as in amendment 38. When the Government produce the secondary legislation, I am keen that they define carefully the metrics for how the reports that the regulator produces are judged, to consist of operational effectiveness, the health of the market and the regulatory burden, as well as international comparisons, because that will be the key test of the Bill. I know he will take those things on board in future discussions. I look forward to supporting the Government this evening.

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

I rise to speak in support of Lords amendments 72 to 77, which seek to protect the right to free cash access services for customers. I thank the Minister very much for his hard work in preserving this valuable resource and also for listening to and engaging with Back Benchers from all parts of the House.

Mortgage Charter

Anna Firth Excerpts

Monday 26th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Hunt]

I do not have any private forecasts that I have not shared with the House. What I can say is that about 0.9% of families with mortgages are currently in arrears, and that is nearly four times fewer than in 2009.

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

I thank the Chancellor for his statement. A third of my constituents have mortgages and will welcome this range of measures. Now that the majority of the mortgage market is fixed, not floating, does he agree that rising short-term interest rates will not necessarily result in falling inflation and that we need to look at other measures such as making sure that interest rate increases are passed on to savers so that they keep their money in the bank?

[Jeremy Hunt]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Notwithstanding the fact that 85% of mortgages are now fixed to some degree, an extra 1.2 million families will feel the increase in interest rates over the months between now and the end of the year. That will be felt by many families, but we should do everything in our power to tackle inflation, because in the end that is the only way to end the misery for so many people.

Oral Answers to Questions

Anna Firth Excerpts

Tuesday 20th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Hunt]

With respect to the hon. Gentleman, he should get his facts right before making that kind of suggestion. He got them wrong.

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

In-person banking facilities are vital to everyone in Southend West, yet in recent years we have lost all but one of our bank branches. A new community-based post office banking hub model is being rolled out, so will the Minister support my efforts to get one of those into Leigh-on-Sea?

[Andrew Griffith]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question. She will be aware of what is in our Financial Services and Markets Bill, and I can update the House by saying that the Government have tabled an amendment to protect free access to cash withdrawal and deposit facilities. I would be happy to meet her to discuss her constituency’s needs.

Digital Pound

Anna Firth Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Griffith]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question and for her work as chair of the crypto and digital assets APPG. I hope it has been a productive number of weeks with the consultation paper on the regulation of cryptoassets and today’s joint consultation paper with the Treasury. The APPG does good work in educating and providing opportunities for Members of this House to engage with this rapidly growing area, which is important to financial inclusion and ensuring that we design in financial inclusion at the start.

The hon. Lady makes a very important point about international interoperability. About 90% of all member countries of the Bank for International Settlements surveyed are looking at doing something similar, so it is right that we engage. We have a strong position of leadership in the financial community, as well as an adherence to the highest quality regulatory standards. That is absolutely in keeping with what we are trying to achieve today.

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

I absolutely welcome the Minister’s statement and the commitment from him and the Government to keep the UK at the forefront of innovation in financial services. I heard his answer to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant) that this will be a zero interest-bearing currency, but surely in the fullness of time we cannot have a situation where banks deposit their money at the Bank of England and get the full 4% base rate, while retail consumers and individuals get zero. If the Minister agrees with that, is this not a way to stop the consumer being ripped off by the big four and getting only 0.83% on their interest, while the banks are getting 4% from the Bank of England?

[Andrew Griffith]

I thank my hon. Friend for her endorsement of today’s proposals. She should know that I am as concerned as she is about the fair deal for savers in general. As interest rates have increased, it is absolutely appropriate that savers benefit. It is a virtuous activity, and one that we on the Conservative Benches are very keen to support. The issue of central banks paying other banks interest on deposits is complex. There is a matrix of regulatory advantages and disadvantages from the status of being a bank, and I would be very happy to engage with her more to understand that.

IMF Economic Outlook

Anna Firth Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2023 Commons Chamber

[James Cartlidge]

On the contrary, the whole point of why we mention the pandemic is not to say that we are the only country affected, but to explain the global headwinds that we face as a country. The hon. Lady talks about energy costs, but the Office for Budget Responsibility’s forecast is that the energy price guarantee will reduce the peak of inflation in this country by 2.5%. Inflation is an issue and it is global, but we are taking strong measures to ensure we deliver the Prime Minister’s target of halving it.

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

Is it not right that the IMF welcomed the autumn statement and said it struck

“the right balance between fiscal responsibility and protecting growth and vulnerable households”?

Given that the IMF has also said that cumulative UK growth over 2022 to 2024 is predicted to be higher than in Germany and Japan and similar to the USA, is that not exactly why we should stick to the measures set out in the autumn statement?

[James Cartlidge]

My hon. Friend makes a brilliant point and reminds us that not only did the IMF talk this morning about our strong performance in 2022, but at the autumn statement it welcomed those measures and recognised that a balance must be struck between fiscal consolidation and supporting the most vulnerable. The best example I can give is that from April, far from support with high energy costs being withdrawn, there will be a new £900 payment for families on benefits. That shows we are getting the balance right between the fiscal discipline necessary to work with the Bank of England to reduce inflation and ensuring that families are supported through these challenging times.