Call for General Election

Debate between Anna Turley and Kevin Hollinrake

Monday 12th January 2026 Westminster Hall

[Anna Turley]

The hon. Member got up and talked about the glass being half-empty. If we are restoring trust in politics, it is important that we remind people about all the things that are happening. Of course, we know that it takes time for people to feel that in their pockets. We are confident that with every pay cheque this year, they will feel that more and more. However, the reality is that we should stand up and remind people about the changes that Governments make and that these changes have not happened by chance, but because of the choices made by this Labour Government, and I am proud to defend them.

In talking about the reasons for calling this debate, Opposition Members have talked about manifesto promises and so on. I want to run through some of the manifesto promises and commitments that this Government have made, to knock down their argument. This year we will take £150 off energy bills, the living wage is up £900 per year, we have extended the £3 bus fare, interest rates have been cut six times, we have frozen prescription fees to keep costs under £10 and we have taken 500,000 children out of poverty—that is an extra 3,000 in my constituency of Redcar. We are also protecting the triple lock for pensioners, which is worth over £1,900 over the course of this Parliament.

As the hon. Member has said, people in his constituency are still feeling the squeeze from the cost of living, but that is exactly why we have provided 30 hours of free childcare to help mums who are struggling to get into work and to get the support they need with childcare. That is £8,000 per year for parents. We have set up 750 primary school breakfast clubs to help those kids to get a healthy start in life. I have been to see them, and children not only get a healthy meal to start the day but dance classes and exercise to get their blood pumping and to get them ready for the day and ready to learn. They are breaking the cycle of poverty, which we have seen hold back too many children in our constituencies.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Does the Minister agree that we do not end dependency and bring children out of poverty by driving their parents out of work? Hundreds of thousands more people are unemployed because of the policies that the Minister’s party has pursued. Does she acknowledge that that is the case?

[Anna Turley]

The hon. Gentleman was in Parliament when 2,300 jobs in the steel industry were lost overnight in my constituency. We had to deal with the consequences of that. His party know all about putting people out of work. This is about breaking the cycle. Three quarters of the children growing up in poverty are in working households. The economy that we saw develop under the Conservative Government was one where work just did not pay. People were working all the hours and shifts they could, and they still were not able to feed their families. That is why we are supporting parents in getting back to work and getting their children happy, healthy and fed in school.

I also want to support the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Amanda Martin) about the veterans strategy. There are 9,000 veterans in Portsmouth who have benefited from the hard-working campaigning she has done in her constituency. We have seen a big uplift in defence spending, and that is something I am deeply proud of in this country. We face a deeply insecure world at the moment. We have a Prime Minister who is rebuilding Britain’s standing on the global stage and is putting defence spending at the heart of economic regeneration in constituencies like ours.

I could go on about manifesto pledges that have been met, such as banning trail hunting, ending hereditary peers, and the Football Governance Act 2025 giving fans a real voice in their football clubs. We promised 2 million more NHS appointments; we have delivered 5 million more already. We have halved the number of asylum hotels. There have been 1 million potholes fixed. My hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Jim Dickson) has campaigned very hard about roads and potholes in his constituency.

We are supporting renters by abolishing no-fault evictions. We have established Great British Energy to drive our energy renewal in this country. We have delivered pension justice for mineworkers. In my constituency, thanks to Cleveland police, from May we are going to see a named police officer in every ward. That is 3,000 more police already. That is a lot done, but as I think my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin (Alistair Strathern) described it, these are downpayments on progress. This is just the beginning. With every month, more and more people will start to feel the benefit of the Labour Government in their pockets, and I am proud to have delivered that.

The hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) talked about the importance of stability for small business. He is absolutely right, and calling for another general election completely flies in the face of that. Conservative Members may have enjoyed the chaos and upheaval of the last Government, where we had four elections and a referendum in four years. I was here; I witnessed it all. That had a disastrous effect. The public voted to end the chaos, and they want us to get on with governing the country and fixing the mess that the last Government left behind. That takes time and patience, but this Labour Government are committed to delivering on the change that the country voted for in the last general election.

As I have set out, there are manifesto pledges that have been met, and there are manifesto pledges that are being delivered. I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friends for highlighting so many of the positive impacts that this Government are having on the lives of their constituents. We will continue to take difficult and strong decisions in the national interest, after 14 years of failed Conservative Government. We saw a merry-go-round of failed Prime Ministers who slashed our public services, crashed our economy and frayed the social fabric of our country. Their Governments cut the NHS year after year and betrayed the promises they made to their country. As the Prime Minister said in his new year message, this is the year the country will “turn a corner” along the path of national renewal.

We will not shy away from making the big calls that are right for our country’s future. We are proud of the progress so far. We know that people will feel the change this year in their pay packets and on the streets. We are proud to stand on our record at the next general election and we look forward to it. In the meantime, we will get on with delivering the change that the public voted for—the change they expect from a Labour Government—and building a fairer, more hopeful and better Britain.

Local Government Finance Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Anna Turley and Kevin Hollinrake

Tuesday 31st January 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Q Would you accept that, despite the fact that it might take time to get to a final position—there will be a transitory period—the formula should be based on cost drivers, not on what has gone before?

Jo Miller: Yes.

[Anna Turley (Redcar) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q Staying on the point about fairness and distribution, can you elaborate on what you think could be the characteristics of potential losers? Ms Miller, you mentioned structural deficit. As we work through the next couple of years on the detail of this, what are the demographic and economic characteristics you think we should be looking out for, as we try to balance some of the challenges to be faced? Do you think there is a commitment within the local government family to work collectively and collaboratively on this, or do you think we will see tension around competition and people wanting to put their local authority before the greater good, perhaps?

Sean Nolan: You start off.

Jo Miller: We are going to do a double act, if that is okay. First, I think you asked us what the characteristics of good look like. For me, that starts with: what is the essence of our contract with the British people? What do they have a right to expect from the state and what can the state expect from them? I believe we live in a something for something society, in that sense; therefore, what does that mean about the state of the state? How do we recognise, for example, that in the part of the world where I work, people live less long than in some other places, but in their last 10 years they live in very poor health? Yet we have a public health grant that is currently based on how long people live, not the essence of their health. How can we use these systems to take away some of the things at the moment that do not recognise that kind of fairness and equality, which need to be built in? I am pleased that we can incentivise growth, but the challenge is to make sure that we can incentivise all sorts of growth, not just those that relate to property or particular industries. That is a challenge that I cannot see being met by the Bill at the moment.

I suppose there has to be a baseline for everybody. We should encourage and incentivise growth and we should take business with us. In terms of that, will we collaborate? I do not know whether devolution has showed us in our best light in that regard. From a skills point of view, I can guarantee that the country can spend the money it is spending better, and get better outcomes. I do not think it is a good use of people’s time to be having the conversation about what good looks like 15 or 24 times over, when we could have it far less than that. It is a challenge to the sector and the Government should hold us to it, because if we start just with “I’m all right, Jack”, we will have more of the extreme events that we are having at the moment visited upon us.

Sean Nolan: If I can interpret the question about the formula review and needs, it is very difficult to look ahead and describe what the characteristics will be. Professionally and personally, I think this is an opportunity to look at cost drivers and a different way of viewing the formula. In an open way, what are the cost drivers? An important point is that, because this is a zero-sum game, because it is looking, on day zero, at how you re-divide the current cake, you are talking about winners and losers. More importantly, though, you are talking about relative need, so it is not an absolute statement. It is important to have real openness about what those indicators are and a real opportunity for the whole country to engage in whether it is the right set of indicators, so there is a sense of building consensus about what is meant by “fair”. This is just about the formula itself. On your second point, because it is a zero-sum game with winners and losers, you will inevitably have split personalities all the time. It may sound a bit foolish to say, but in my experience, people can contribute an argument to the greater good, but the following day, they live in a metropolitan, county, district or London situation, and they are thinking, “How does this work for London?”

Ultimately, I think the sector and the system will just have to recognise that when it gets to the moment when all the formulae have been churned, all the exercise of consultation has been done and it comes out with a result, that will shift money significantly, even with transition. It does not matter how good the consultation will be; you will get lots of cries of “Foul”; that is inevitable. You just need to cope with that, look back and think, “How well have we actually conducted the consultation? Can we actually defend our thought processes?”

--- Later in debate ---

[Anna Turley]

Q My question is particularly to Professor Travers. How do you build resilience into the process? I am thinking particularly about an area such as mine, Redcar, where the loss of one company—the liquidation of SSI—resulted in the loss of £10 million in business rates overnight to our local authority. If we are going down the route of more devolution and moving potentially to more and more being retained within a local authority, how can you mitigate that over-reliance on a large company within that process?

Professor Tony Travers: Clearly, England has an economy that is heavily interdependent. Geographically, it is quite a small country; it feels big, but it is quite small compared with a number of American states, for example. We are now moving away from the system in which local authorities were largely protected; in fact, so long as the national non-domestic rate involved 100% retention, they were completely protected from any of the vagaries in the local business rate base. However, as we move back towards a system—this is a back to the future reform; we had local business rates up to 1990. We have moved away from the national non-domestic rate, which was introduced in that year. From 2011 onwards, there was more risk of the kind of change you described—and with the introduction of 100% retention, even more still.

I have always been in favour of greater local autonomy, but it begs the question whether there is a need, in a relatively small and relatively homogeneous country such as England—that would be true for Scotland and Wales, too—for central Government to retain, as they did in Corby, when the business rate yield fell there after the Corby plant shut, the capacity to intervene in the short term when something like that happens. It is an anti-localist measure, but I think it is the way most councils and MPs in Britain would expect central Government to behave when there is a one-off hit to the system. I think you would have to retain some form of capacity for national Government to help when some massive change takes place in the short term. When there is a huge new plant or some other big growth in the business rate occurs that is not on the central list, that is a different question—would you take account of that the other way round?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Q In your introductory remarks, Professor Travers, you said you would prefer to move to a totally locally-funded situation, but your remarks just then seemed to step away from that. How are those two things consistent?

Professor Tony Travers: It is an inconsistency. I am trying to say that, so far as possible, most local authorities in England could easily operate on the basis of council tax, business rates and some mild redistribution most of the time. However, there will be cases, particularly when there is a radical change in the local tax base or some unexpected need, in which the Government may need to intervene.

Personally, I like to separate out the occasional need to intervene from trying to use the underlying local government finance system year to year to take account of all of the changes that go on in a complex economy such as ours. I am a localist, but I concede that there is always going to be a role for central Government in a country such as England—or Wales or Scotland—to intervene to smooth out the big changes that inevitably and randomly occur.

Housing Benefit and Supported Housing

Debate between Anna Turley and Kevin Hollinrake

Wednesday 27th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe).

These measures are about striking a fair deal: a fair deal for those in accommodation, a fair deal for those who provide accommodation and a fair deal for the taxpayer. There needs to be a balance between the rent increases in the social housing sector and those in the private rented sector. Over the past 10 years, there has been a 60% increase in the social housing sector and a 23% increase in the private rented sector. I therefore consider that the 1% reduction in housing benefit is a fair measure. It is fair to the taxpayer and to tenants, but it is also a fair deal for the housing associations, and one that I believe they can manage.

This is, of course, all about balancing the books, which UK Governments have done in only 28 of the last 34 years. That has led to a cumulative debt of £1.6 trillion. The present Government have reduced the deficit from £150 billion to £75 billion, but there is much more to do. In the last eight months, since I have been in the House, the Opposition have opposed every single cut. So how would they balance the books? Would they cut funds for healthcare, the armed forces, welfare or pensions? I invite them to make constructive suggestions.

Housing associations have a responsibility to use taxpayers’ money wisely. The top 100 housing associations employ, collectively, 91,000 people, and the number has been growing. Is a 1% reduction per annum feasible in an organisation with 1,000 employees? Yes, I believe it is. It is managed on a regular basis in the private sector.

Not only are these changes fair, but they will result in huge savings. They will save £255 million by the end of this Parliament, and £1.1 billion a year will be saved by future Parliaments. Of course, consolidation and greater efficiency may be needed.

[Anna Turley]

Does the hon. Gentleman not recognise that the impact on supported housing will fly in the face of any notion of economic credibility? When accommodation of that kind is closed, there will be knock-on effects: people will resort to NHS care or more costly residential care, and the impact on the taxpayer will be higher. This is not good economic policy.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

There is no doubt that we need to house vulnerable people in supported and specialist accommodation, and that our homes, hostels, refuges and sheltered housing need such support. They constitute a much more labour-intensive part of the market, involving personal care, supervision and maintenance.