Conduct of the Right Hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip

Anneliese Dodds Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

A very happy St Andrew’s Day to all in the Chamber.

I take no particular pleasure in debating this motion, but it is, of course, a pleasure to follow the Paymaster General, the right hon. and learned Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis) and the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford), who opened today’s debate. I have to say that I find it strange to see massed ranks of Conservatives in the Chamber for this debate, when they appeared desperate to flee the Chamber no fewer than two weeks ago for the debate on publishing Owen Paterson’s contracts.

[Gary Sambrook (Birmingham, Northfield) (Con)]

rose—

[Anneliese Dodds]

If the hon. Member is about to justify why he was not here for that debate, I look forward to hearing from him.

[Gary Sambrook]

Talking of massed ranks, where are all the Labour Members? I saw on Twitter yesterday a graphic that said Labour was back in business. I am not too sure what business, but it is not the business of this House. Is it not the case that the reason they are not here is that they have no plan, no vision and no credibility to run this country?

[Anneliese Dodds]

I regret that the hon. Member seems terribly confused. I am sorry about that. This is an SNP Opposition day debate. As I will go on to explain, sadly it is his Government who lack a plan and lack, in regard to this motion, the necessary competence and credibility against corruption. If he could answer on those subjects, I would be very grateful, because he was not in the Chamber for the debate on the contracts. He certainly did not speak in it. I suspect he was not willing to do so. Indeed, it seems easier for some to defend the indefensible than to stand up for transparency, probity and the public interest. All I can say is that I really hope, for the sake of Conservative Members in the Chamber, that those in charge of junior ministerial appointments are watching carefully.

[Dawn Butler]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that on the Labour Benches we believe that the “Ministerial Code” should be followed, that Ministers should be compelled to come to the House and tell the truth, and that if they do not tell the truth, they should be dealt with as the “Ministerial Code” states they should be. Unfortunately, they are led by the Prime Minister, who is the chief liar in charge.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I will come on to the “Ministerial Code” because it is, sadly, highly relevant to this debate given the appalling way in which it has been treated by the Conservative Government. Indeed, the overall Conservative attitude, that rules simply do not apply to this Prime Minister or his Government, is genuinely dragging our politics through the gutter. I see that the motion references the sixth principle of public life—honesty—but I would have referenced the other principles too: selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness and leadership. On those principles, the current Prime Minister is, unfortunately, falling short, the Conservative Government are failing to get a grip, and working people are paying the price.

[Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)]

The hon. Lady talks about honesty and integrity. Could she please confirm how many Labour MPs have ended up in the nick over the past 10 years?

[Anneliese Dodds]

The major difference between my party and the hon. Member’s is that wherever we in the Labour party see rules being broken and inappropriate action, we act against it. We do not try to change the rules and stitch up the system for our friends—that is the major difference.

In my reading before this debate, I came across quite a curious piece that I am sure many Government Members will have seen: the Prime Minister’s foreword to the “Ministerial Code”. It commits the Government to upholding—I am not making this up—

“the very highest standards of propriety”.

The principles of public life are lauded as “precious” things that

“must be honoured at all times”—

that, from a Prime Minister who tried to rip up the standards system to save one of his friends who was found to have engaged in an egregious case of paid advocacy by the Committee on Standards.

The foreword also states that there should be “no bullying”—that, from a Prime Minister who refused to sack his Home Secretary after an independent adviser on standards found that she had broken the ministerial code because her approach to staff had

“on occasions... amounted to behaviour that can be described as bullying”.

The foreword states that there should be “no harassment” —that, from a Prime Minister who imposed a three-line Whip to keep one of his MPs in Parliament after he was found by an independent panel to have sexually harassed a member of staff.

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

I am hoping that the hon. Lady will use this opportunity to apologise to my predecessor Ruth Smeeth for the bullying and harassment that she faced from Labour party members simply for being Jewish.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I will, of course, respond to the hon. Member’s comments because, just as I said to his hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson), when the Labour party finds action that is inappropriate, we act. We have changed our systems. We have made sure that we comply with what is required of us. If the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) wishes to defend his party happily allowing a Member who has been found to have engaged in sexual harassment to be back on its Benches, that is up to him. It is his decision.

In that foreword on standards, again, the Prime Minister states that there should be:

“No misuse of taxpayer money”—

that, from a Prime Minister who gave us the VIP lane for personal protective equipment contracts, with £3.5 billion of taxpayers’ money given to party donors and Conservative cronies who were recommended by Conservative Ministers, MPs and Downing Street officials. Those contracts so often failed to deliver while our nurses and care workers struggled and while many British firms’ offers of help were passed over.

[Matt Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)]

Is the hon. Lady really denigrating the efforts to get hold of PPE, and does she not know the history? The Labour party also put forward proposals and Labour party members and Labour donors also helped in that huge effort to get PPE.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I am slightly surprised to hear that the right hon. Member wishes to draw attention to what took place in that regard—

[Matt Hancock]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Anneliese Dodds]

No, because I will respond to the right hon. Member’s point. He asked whether I was aware that Labour MPs and others were making recommendations. I am absolutely aware, because we were all trying to do that to ensure that we had the best response, but the difference was that they were not entered into that VIP lane. One can see that in the list of firms that was recently published. If he wants to state that among that list, there were Labour MPs’ names rather than those of his Conservative colleagues, he must have been looking at a very different list from me.

[Matt Hancock]

I am grateful for the opportunity to set the record straight; I hope that after I speak, she will withdraw those comments and that the Labour party will no longer use that argument. The contract with Excalibur Healthcare Services, which is run by a Labour donor, was introduced from a Labour MP through me. The very good man who runs Excalibur Healthcare, in fact, helped to launch the Labour party’s science manifesto in 2005, so she can now withdraw the allegations. What she should say is a big “thank you” to everybody who helped to get PPE when it was so badly needed.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I really regret the fact that instead of responsibility being taken and it being stated that the system will be changed for the future, we are seeing an attempt to rewrite history. I was not the one who stated that Conservative-related actors were more likely to obtain contracts; the National Audit Office pointed it out. Yes, Labour figures were making recommendations to have a better response, as I mentioned a moment ago, but in doing so we were focused on those who could genuinely aid our response. We were not focused on pub landlords, for example, or on others who had had no prior experience in the field.

[Matt Hancock]

rose—

[Anneliese Dodds]

I do not want to upset the House, Madam Deputy Speaker, so I am very happy to take another intervention if you do not mind.

[Matt Hancock]

If I may, I will set the record straight on one further point. I have heard this point about the pub landlord; I just want to tell the hon. Lady and the House and put it formally on the record—after which I hope that the Labour party will stop this slur—that the gentleman in question never got or applied for a contract from the Government or the NHS at all. That is a fabrication pushed by the Labour party—it is a load of rubbish. What was happening, however, was that a huge range of people were helping out with the national effort, including members of the Labour party.

[Dawn Butler]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Anneliese Dodds]

No, I will not give way. [Hon. Members: “Withdraw!”] And I most certainly—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. We have had a perfectly reasonable exchange between the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock) and the hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds). We do not need shouting about it. We are dealing here in facts and good argument, not shouting.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

No. I appreciate what the hon. Lady is saying, but it is not a point of order; it is a point of debate. Perhaps she might like to address it later in the debate.

[Anneliese Dodds]

It is indeed the case that facts have been laid out in courts of law; they stand for themselves.

I have to say that at a time when our national health service and our care workers and volunteers up and down the country are yet again supporting the covid effort, I think that it is incredibly important that this Government be transparent. [Hon. Members: “Withdraw!”] I will not withdraw what I have said, but I hope that the Conservative Government will withdraw what they have said about not being transparent—a point that I will come to in a moment.

The foreword written by the Prime Minister says that there will be

“no actual or perceived conflicts of interest”.

Sadly, we know that there have been so many. Peerages have apparently been handed out to anyone who can meet the £3 million entrance charge and agree to a stint as Conservative party treasurer. David Cameron and Lex Greensill were given the run of Whitehall to beg for access to hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money. More than half a billion pounds in testing contracts was handed over to a company advised by a Conservative former Minister, without competition and behind closed doors, with a second contract dished out to Randox Laboratories after it had failed to deliver on the first.

I am grateful to the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock) for the comments that he has just made. If he believes in transparency—

[Matt Hancock]

And in facts.

[Anneliese Dodds]

Indeed. Well, transparency reveals facts, does it not? I therefore hope that he will encourage his Government to do what this House stated only two weeks ago that they must: publish the minutes from the meeting between Lord Bethell, Owen Paterson and Randox over the award of money-spinning contracts. Parliament decided that that must happen two weeks ago, and the Deputy Speaker reminded Ministers to do it in a timely fashion last week, but they are still dragging their feet. They say that they cannot possibly make the minutes public for another two months. That seems like rather a long time in which to establish the facts, does it not?

If those vital minutes simply do not exist, Ministers should do the right thing and come clean about it here today, rather than pretending to spend the next two months looking for them. I offer the Minister, and indeed those sitting on his Benches, the chance to do that right now. I offer them the chance to intervene and let us know whether the minutes exist or not. No one is meeting my gaze, so it seems clear that we shall have to wait until the end of January to know what is happening about those minutes.

[Robert Largan (High Peak) (Con)]

I was not planning to contribute to the debate, but the hon. Lady has been talking about conflicts of interest and timely waits, and she also said earlier in her speech that when the Labour party sees people breaking the rules, it acts. I have written to the hon. Lady twice, and I have written to the Leader of the Opposition a number of times over the last few months, about her former flatmate Ruth George, who has an atrocious record when it comes to anti-Jewish racism. It was she who said, when Luciana Berger quit the Labour party, that she and other members of her group were funded by Israel. Will the hon. Lady respond now to that conflict of interest, and agree that she should not be in the Labour party any more?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman must resume his seat. He should not be attacking personally in that way.

[Anneliese Dodds]

Just for the record, as the hon. Member stated in his own letter, those issues have been taken up and dealt with. [Interruption.] He said that in his own letter. Perhaps he needs to go back and reread it.

We surely cannot stand idly by and allow this situation of cronyism to continue. The current regime of standards and rules on the conduct of Ministers relies too much on convention, in these unconventional times. It gives the Prime Minister the power to act as judge and jury even when his own conduct is in question. That is why my party, the Labour party, has come forward with a five-point plan to clean up our politics, to strengthen and uphold standards in public life, and to protect taxpayers’ money from the egregious waste and mismanagement that we have seen during the pandemic.

We would start by banning second jobs for MPs, with only very limited exemptions, to make them focus on the day job, not the one on the side. We would stop the revolving door between Government and the companies that Ministers are supposed to regulate, banning ministers from taking lobbying, advisory or portfolio-related jobs for at least five years after they had left office. We would stop Conservative plans to allow foreign money to flow into British politics, and we would create strict rules to stop donations from shell companies. We would end the waste and mismanagement of taxpayers’ money with a new office for value for money along with reform of procurement. Finally, we would establish a new, genuinely independent integrity and ethics commission to sit across Government, with the power to investigate Ministers, take decisions on sanctions for misconduct, and ban former Ministers from taking any job linked to their former roles for at least five years after leaving office.

[Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)]

I am very confused by what the hon. Lady has said, because I am under the impression that three current Front-Bench Labour parliamentarians in the House of Lords work for lobbying companies. How can you say what you have said at the Dispatch Box—

[Alexander Stafford]

I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker. How can we talk about these issues when current members of the Labour Front Bench work for lobbying companies? It is hypocrisy of the highest order.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I regret the fact that the hon. Member is confused. There appears to be a fair amount of confusion this afternoon. Labour has set out those measures for MPs, and we have made it very clear that we would not stand back, as his party appears to be doing. We would take that action because we are determined to clean up politics for the future. Indeed, those measures are urgent and necessary because the current system relies on having a Prime Minister who respects the rules and understands that there must be consequences for breaking them.

Labour set out those radical proposals for reform because it is so urgently needed. When it comes to cleaning up crony contracts, we are insisting on transparency because we have to learn from the mistakes made by the Conservatives, not least during this crisis, and I am afraid that we also have to learn from mistakes made by any party, including the SNP. I regret that the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber, for whom I have a huge amount of respect, was not more reflective on the actions of his own party today. The SNP Government had already been criticised for treating journalists and politicians differently in their responses to freedom of information requests when the SNP’s Health Secretary tried to have freedom of information requests suspended. Disturbingly, it has been revealed that an SNP Cabinet Minister then directly intervened to try to prevent the publication of statistics on care home deaths before the Holyrood elections. The Financial Times newspaper has had to battle to force the SNP Government to reveal the total cost of their guarantee to Sanjeev Gupta’s businesses, which appears to be to the tune of more than half a billion pounds. Labour believes that sunlight is the best disinfectant, in Whitehall and in Holyrood.

Rules are there for a reason: to regulate our Parliament and its elected representatives; to uphold standards in public life; and to protect our institutions from the cancer of cronyism and corruption. As the Prime Minister has discovered in recent weeks, ripping up these rules is thankfully easier said than done. But while he fails to take action to strengthen the system, working families in our country continue to pay the price. In response to what the Minister tried to set out before, I say to him that they have been paying the price. They have been paying the price with the longest squeeze on living standards in this country since Napoleonic times, with rising fuel prices and no plan to tackle them, with life expectancy falling in many parts of our country and with 5.5 million people on NHS waiting lists. They are also paying the price with rail in the north being scaled back, and they will pay even more of the price with the Conservatives’ working-class dementia tax. The Minister tried to claim that his Government were delivering what the people of this country wanted, but they do not want the Conservatives picking their pockets, they do not want their incompetence on public services and they do not want their sleaze, graft or corruption either.

Oral Answers to Questions

Anneliese Dodds Excerpts

Tuesday 27th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

Fishing is at the heart of many of our coastal communities, and I pay tribute to Mr Chapman and my hon. Friend for their commitment to the sector. I am happy that the Government are also championing and committed to the sector, and we have announced a £100 million fund to modernise our fleet and infrastructure. That is on top of £32 million that will replace EU funding this year, and £23 million that was made available earlier to support the sector, while adjusting to new export requirements.

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

A year ago, the Chancellor personally announced the coronavirus large business interruption loan scheme, or “our loan scheme for large companies”, as his Department put it. Allowing Greensill Capital access to that scheme put hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money and thousands of jobs at risk. The Prime Minister said he would publish every personal exchange related to covid contracts. Has the Chancellor published his every communication relating to Government business on Greensill, including with David Cameron—yes or no?

[Rishi Sunak]

We have actually responded to all the requests that I have been asked and, indeed, gone above and beyond in providing disclosure. I would say a couple of things to the hon. Lady. First of all, I am very happy to co-operate fully and constructively with both the independent Boardman review and the Treasury Committee inquiry, and those processes have begun. Secondly, on the substance, it is important to remember what was going on. We were in the midst of a financial crisis and we were keen to explore all avenues to support small and medium-sized businesses. We have heard in the House today that there are still challenges, so it was right to examine all avenues to do that. This was just one of many strands of work that the Treasury and I conducted, rightly and appropriately. It is important to notice that, in the end, we rejected the taking forward of any proposals on supply chain finance.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I will take that as a no. It appears that the Chancellor is less committed than the Prime Minister himself to transparency. That is not what I would call levelling with the British public. Let us see if he can level on another significant Government failure: the delay to imposing restrictions last autumn, which cost lives and our economy dear. In late October, when I asked the Chancellor if he was blocking a circuit breaker, he said,

“I agree with the Prime Minister”—[Official Report, 20 October 2020; Vol. 682, c. 889.]

Now it is being suggested that he sided with others against the Prime Minister. We have grown used to the Chancellor chopping and changing his mind, but can he explain whether this change of heart is driven by science and the needs of our economy, or by the internal politics of the Conservative party?

[Rishi Sunak]

The hon. Lady is confusing multiple things. She has asked me previously about circuit breakers. At the time there was a debate, appropriately, about whether a national intervention was right at a time when the epidemiology across this country was incredibly varied. That is something that the deputy chief medical officer himself spoke about at a press conference, and he said it would be inappropriate at that time to take forward national interventions. That is what I was referring to.

To go back to the shadow Chancellor’s previous comment about transparency, in fact I voluntarily published extra messages to aid the transparency of this process for people. I am fully committed to working constructively with the inquiry, both the Boardman review and the Treasury Committee inquiry. It is worth reminding the shadow Chancellor of something she herself wrote last April in The Daily Mirror:

“The ‘Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme’ seems to be stuck in the banks, and not getting to small businesses in particular, where cash flow is desperately needed.”

Well, the Government were also looking at how to get cash flow to small businesses, and I am sad and disappointed about what a conveniently short memory she has.

Oral Answers to Questions

Anneliese Dodds Excerpts

Tuesday 9th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

My right hon. Friend has raised this industry with me multiple times, and he is right to do so. Although some food and drink wholesalers have been significantly impacted, others—for example, those that predominately serve the public sector—have not been, so I do not think it would be fair to provide blanket support. He talked about a postcode lottery. The other side of that coin is empowering local government and local decision making, and I believe that is the right approach. We have announced £425 million of additional discretionary support to local authorities, but I am sure that his raising the issue in the House in this way will give his local council and others the steer they need to direct support to this important industry.

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

In 2017 the Chancellor asked a Member of this House whether Labour’s proposed increase in corporation tax

“would make it more or less likely that international investors would want to invest here in the UK?”—[Official Report, 12 September 2017; Vol. 628, c. 218WH.]

What’s the answer, Chancellor?

[Rishi Sunak]

I am delighted that the hon. Lady is raising the topic of corporation tax at this Budget. I feel that we have had various different versions of the Labour party policy on this topic over the past couple of weeks. What I can say is that we are honest with the British people about the challenges facing our public finances, and we have set out a fair and honest way to address those challenges. This will remain one of the most internationally competitive places anywhere in the world to invest, to grow a business and to create jobs, and this Government will always deliver on that promise.

[Anneliese Dodds]

Last week, the Chancellor said he wanted to “level with” the public. He mentioned a moment ago that he wanted to take an honest approach. Well, the head of the NHS just confirmed that he budgeted for the 2.1% pay rise that nurses expected, so we need a straight answer now from the Chancellor: why do the Conservatives believe that our nurses are worth less now than they were before the pandemic?

[Rishi Sunak]

I pay tribute to all those working on the frontline of our NHS and other public services. They are doing a fantastic job, and that is why this Government have supported the NHS with tens of billions of pounds of extra funding through this pandemic and will continue to do so. With regard to public sector pay, we set out a policy in November, but, given the situation, we were taking a more targeted approach to public sector pay to balance fairness and to protect as many jobs as possible. The hon. Lady will know that the NHS was exempted from that policy and NHS workers will receive a pay rise next year.

Government's Management of the Economy

Anneliese Dodds Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House believes that the last decade of UK economic policy weakened the foundations of this country’s economy and society, leaving the UK particularly vulnerable when the coronavirus crisis hit; further believes that many Government choices and actions during the coronavirus pandemic have exacerbated the problems that pandemic has caused, leading to the UK suffering the worst economic crisis of any major economy; calls on the Government, as the UK emerges out of the pandemic, to address the deep inequalities and injustices in this country and take the UK forward to a stronger, more prosperous future through a new partnership between an active state and enterprising business; further calls on the Government to protect family finances by reversing the planned £20 cut in Universal Credit, reversing the key worker pay freeze and providing councils with the funding they need to prevent huge rises in council tax; and calls on the Government to introduce a new British Recovery Bond to allow people who have accumulated savings during the pandemic to have a proper stake in Britain’s future and to back a new generation of British entrepreneurs by providing start-up loans for 100,000 new businesses.

Next Wednesday is a pivotal moment in this country’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and our emergence from this crisis. When the Chancellor stands up to deliver his Budget, he faces a choice: he could take us back to the short-termist, irresponsible policies that left our economy and our country so dangerously exposed before the crisis hit, or he could learn from the mistakes made over the past 10 years and move forward, to a stronger, more prosperous future. Our economic recovery is at stake and the Chancellor cannot afford to get it wrong. He cannot continue to duck the big decisions, nor to go missing when he is most needed, and he must make the responsible choices that have been so frequently lacking over the past year.

We cannot get away from the fact that our country has been hit harder than most during this crisis, and much harder than it needed to be. That is despite the herculean efforts of our NHS and social care, and other key workers; the incredible national commitment we have seen from those who have volunteered up and down our country; the ingenuity of our scientists; and the hard work and commitment of businesses and workers up and down the land. The UK was not fated to have the highest death toll from covid in Europe, nor to suffer the worst economic crisis of any major economy.

Such grim statistics relate to decisions taken or not taken during the crisis, but also to 10 years when the foundations of our economy and our public services were weakened. The UK entered 2020 as one of the most unequal countries in Europe. Wages had flatlined for 10 long years—the worst decade for pay growth in generations. Yet as pay stagnated, childcare costs spiralled for families across the country. Household finances took such a hit that one in four families had less than £100 of savings in the bank when the crisis hit. At the same time, the public services we all rely on had been stripped back and stockpiles of vital equipment had been run down, providing a worryingly low level of resilience.

All this happened because the party opposite was not willing to take the responsible decisions required to set our country on stronger foundations. Instead, after the global financial crisis, Conservative-led Governments hammered family finances and withdrew funding for public services, in moves that have now been widely criticised not just by Labour, but by the likes of the International Monetary Fund and the OECD.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Some of us think that this allegedly Conservative Government are already spending far too much and regulating too much. Will the hon. Lady make the commitment that Mr Blair and Mr Brown made when the Labour party was last in opposition: that whatever happens, a future Labour Government would not spend a greater proportion of national income on the public sector?

[Anneliese Dodds]

I certainly would not spend public funds in the way this Government often have. I will come on to that in a moment. For me, the question is not the quantum of spend; the question is whether spending has been appropriately directed, whether it has been appropriately managed and whether there has been strong financial control. Sadly, in many aspects of this crisis, those values have not been held to, as I will go on to explain in the rest of my remarks.

The agenda we saw over the past 10 years of cuts in order—in theory—to deliver speedy fiscal consolidation did not even achieve its primary objective. The British people were told they had to tighten their belts so that we could all do our bit to pay down the national debt, yet that debt rose from £1 trillion to £1.8 trillion under Conservative-led Governments before the crisis hit. Ten years of failing to address the structural weaknesses in our economy meant that when covid-19 arrived on our shores, we were dangerously unprepared.

Yet the hits to our health and our economy still did not need to be as severe as they have been. Recent decisions have all too often exacerbated the problems we have faced. The Chancellor has failed repeatedly to understand that the health crisis and the economic crisis are not separable—they cannot be traded off, one against the other. If economic support does not go hand in hand with the imposition of necessary public health restrictions, we cannot get a grip on the virus, nor will economic activity return to normal. If infections are not reduced, not only will restrictions be in place for longer, but people will lack the confidence that is needed to get out and start spending again.

Time and again throughout this crisis, the Chancellor has sought to pull back economic support with the virus still raging. He sought to wrap up the furlough scheme at the earliest possible moment, in the face of all the available evidence and calls from businesses, trade unions and the Labour party alike. As the costs of that approach became clear, there was a last-minute scramble to come up with a replacement scheme that saw four versions of a winter economic plan in the space of six weeks before winter had even begun. And then quite literally at the eleventh hour, he extended furlough in any case.

The same was true of business support to areas under local restrictions. Local leaders were forced to conduct a series of sham negotiations, only to emerge with the same £20 per head payment each for their local area, with no sense of how long that needed to last and no connection to local business need. That pattern is in evidence again. As we stand here today, businesses face yet more looming cliff edges: business rate payments falling due in just over a month’s time, VAT spiking for our hard-hit hospitality sector, and furlough due to end on 30 April.

The Prime Minister said yesterday that we should be driven by the data, not by dates, but instead of having acted weeks ago to provide the certainty that businesses crave, the Chancellor is determined to wait until the theatre of his Budget next week to make any announcements. That is not driven by the data on business confidence and economic impact. Indeed, today we learned of the 1.7 million people now in unemployment and the prospect of 1 million more losing their jobs in the months to come. Instead, that is an approach driven by politics.

This has combined with a situation where public funds have time and again been wasted and mismanaged. Hundreds of millions have been spent on contracts that have simply not delivered, and funding has often not been targeted where it is needed most, despite the Welsh Labour Government showing how effective targeting funds at small businesses in particular can be. Coronavirus may have closed much of our economy, but this Government’s approach is crashing it. Next Wednesday is a chance to change course, to learn from the mistakes of not just the last 11 months but the last 11 years, and to put us on the path to a more secure and prosperous economy.

In the midst of a jobs crisis, we need urgent action to support people back into work, especially our young people, for whom time out of work can scar future prospects permanently, yet the Government’s much vaunted kickstart scheme is only helping one in every 100 eligible young people, and their restart scheme has not in fact started at all. Instead, the Government must learn the lessons of successful schemes, such as the future jobs fund, which built on the strengths of existing local institutions to deliver sustainable employment.

We need action, not rhetoric, to support the creation of new jobs. There is a tremendous opportunity here to align job creation with our net zero ambitions. Labour has called for the acceleration of £30 billion of green investment in the next 18 months. We have demonstrated how that could support the creation of 400,000 new green jobs. Incredibly, the Chancellor cut £300 million from the planned capital budget in November. His shambolic green homes grant has been so badly delivered that it is actually costing jobs. We urgently need a change of course, so that we can support business to build the new jobs of the future.

We need to stop ordinary families carrying the can for these mistakes. Showing that he has totally failed to heed the warnings of the International Monetary Fund and others, the Chancellor is ploughing ahead with plans for a triple hammer blow to family finances, forcing local authorities to hike council tax, cutting social security by more than £1,000 a year, and freezing pay for key workers. That is not just poor reward for those who have sacrificed so much over the last year; it is economically illiterate, sucking demand out of our economy at a time when we need it most. The Chancellor is instead heavily reliant on spending by those who have been able to build up some savings during the crisis. Not only have more people in our country lost income during this crisis than have been able to save, but in addition the Bank of England has shown that the vast majority of these savings will likely be retained and not spent.

Instead, we need a different approach—one in which we stop leaving people, businesses and whole areas of our country behind. We need to harness the potential of Government working with businesses and trade unions to build a better, more secure future. We must take the strategic decisions that would restore the foundations of our economy and prepare us for the challenges and opportunities of the decade ahead.

First, we need to support families across the UK by scrapping the planned cut to universal credit, reversing the key worker pay freeze and backing councils so that they do not need to impose inflation-busting tax hikes. That will build confidence and build our local economies. We must harness the spirit of unity and solidarity that has defined the British people’s response to this crisis, by allowing those who have been able to save to invest in British recovery bonds, thereby keeping their money safe while taking a stake in our country’s future.

We need to lift the burden of debt from our small businesses by enabling them to pay back covid-related bounce back loans once they are making profits again, rather than continued debt preventing them from investing and taking on new staff. We have to expand the start-up loan scheme to support 100,000 new British businesses over the next five years, backing the entrepreneurial spirit that we need for economic growth.

The economic approach of the Conservative party has been severely tested over the course of a decade and been found to be seriously wanting. Indeed, over the past year it has been tested to destruction. We cannot afford a repeat of those mistakes—a return to policies that have been so weak and provided so little resilience. We need a new approach: a Government who are on people’s side, who understand the value of public services, and who give families and businesses the security that they need in the tough times and offer them hope in the years to come. Next Wednesday is a fork in the road. I urge the Chancellor take the right path to a better, more secure economic future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lee Rowley (North East Derbyshire) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to contribute today.

I start by scratching my head, as I often do when looking at the motions for Opposition day debates. They always have a limited and distant relationship with the truth and what is happening on the ground, but this one is a particularly telling example of that problem. Let us look at the words in the first sentence of the motion—

“that the last decade of UK economic policy”

undermined

“the foundations”

of our country. Even having that discussion is almost ridiculous. But we seem to have to have that debate, because those in the Labour party consistently fail to understand the repair that has gone on since the challenges and the problems that they left us in 2010. I have noted, over the last 10 years, both as a Member of Parliament since 2017 and, before that, as somebody who was interested in politics, the lack of alternative policies and programmes of any credibility or coherence; so the suggestion that there is now some kind of brilliant answer on the other side of the debate is the epitome of chutzpah, and I do not find it credible in the slightest.

Colleagues have spoken earlier of many of the things that have been achieved over the last 10 years, in extremely difficult circumstances—the highest rate of employment for many decades; a consistently growing economy, whose growth was at the higher end of that of some of our western neighbours; a massive reduction in the deficit caused by the bad decisions taken in 2008, 2009 and before; tax cuts to both business and people; and, for the first time, before the coronavirus pandemic hit, a debt-to-GDP ratio that was starting to come down—the fact that we do not leave more debt to our children and grandchildren.

The most interesting part of the debate so far came in the intervention by the hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), who I have the greatest of respect and time for, on my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh). He asked the Labour party to consider some basic tenets of fiscal responsibility and credibility, for the first time in a decade and a half. The hon. Lady said—I had to go back to check it on Parliamentlive—“the quantum is not important. How much we spend is not important”—in the same way as the deficits are not important, or the debt, or fiscal restraint, or paying our own way?

[Anneliese Dodds]

rose—

[Lee Rowley]

I am sorry; the hon. Lady had many minutes to explain that, but I do not have the same time as she does.

The only thing that is important for the Labour party is spending—spending more, whatever the type, whatever the situation, whatever the issue. Be it in times of economic surplus, like under Blair and Brown, spend more—a £15 to £25 billion deficit. In times of economic hardship, like in 2008, 2009, spend more. In times of economic recovery in 2010, like in Ed Balls’ Bloomberg speech, fiscal stimulus, spend more. Then the, quite frankly, Lilliputian Corbynite economics of spend, spend, spend. This is the problem with the Labour party: they fail to understand the basic tenets of the economic problems and opportunities that we have. For that, they will be on those Benches, calling Opposition debates, for much longer.

Oral Answers to Questions

Anneliese Dodds Excerpts

Tuesday 26th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

My hon. Friend is right about needing the private sector to drive growth and create jobs. I am pleased to tell him that the Prime Minister and I chaired the first meeting of the Build Back Better Business Council, where we outlined our plans to invest in infrastructure, innovation and skills alongside businesses. We have also established a new Office for Investment, led by Lord Grimstone, which is charged with securing high-value investment opportunities, and I look forward to hearing from him ideas that we can productively take forward.

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op) [V]]

In recent days, the Treasury has been at loggerheads with the Department for Work and Pensions, insisting on taking £20 a week from the pockets of 6 million families. It has also been at loggerheads with the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, by claiming that financial hardship is not inhibiting self-isolation. Why is the Treasury putting our economic and health recovery at risk in this way?

[Rishi Sunak]

The hon. Lady should not believe everything she reads in the newspapers. The Treasury and this Government have put in place a comprehensive and generous set of support to help people get through this crisis, and the results show that we have protected those on the lowest incomes the most.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I was actually following the words of the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and of SAGE, but I appreciate the Chancellor’s response. The kickstart scheme was much heralded, but yesterday we learned that it appears to be missing out around 99 of every 100 young jobseekers. What does the Chancellor say to them today?

[Rishi Sunak]

I am not entirely sure I know the figures that the hon. Lady is referring to. What I can say is that, since this scheme was announced at the beginning of July and opened for applications in September, it has created over 120,000 jobs for young people. That is, I think, an extraordinary achievement. I pay tribute to the team at the DWP for doing that. I am grateful to the thousands of businesses that are taking part in the scheme. They are working with us to provide hope and opportunity to a generation of young people so that they are not scarred by coronavirus, but can look forward to a brighter future.

Economic Update

Anneliese Dodds Excerpts

Monday 11th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op) [V]]

I start by joining the Chancellor in sending my very best wishes to the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire). I know I speak for everyone on the Opposition side of the House in wishing him a speedy recovery.

Six weeks have passed since the Chancellor last addressed this House. In that time, the Prime Minister scrapped his proposed relaxation of public health rules, introduced a new tier 4 level of restrictions for London and large parts of the south-east, and then superseded all of that with the imposition of a third national lockdown. After the Prime Minister’s most recent announcement, Parliament was, of course, recalled, and Members were given the opportunity to ask questions of the Prime Minister, the Health Secretary and the Education Secretary—but the Chancellor was nowhere to be seen. His sole contribution to a set of announcements that had profound implications for our economy was a 90-second video on Twitter, which begged as many questions as it answered.

There was no indication of how long the new grants are expected to cover and no clarity on how the discretionary funding for local councils has been calculated, nor of how it will be allocated. Funds being provided to the devolved nations were badged as new money, before the Treasury hastily amended its website to reflect that that money had already been committed to in December. We heard nothing about what would happen to those people who had started a new job since the beginning of November and are now ineligible for furlough. We heard nothing about what level the fourth grant for self-employed people would be set at, nor when that grant would be made available. We heard nothing for those people who have been excluded from Government schemes right from the very start, and we heard nothing about what the Chancellor would do to fix the broken system of support for self-isolation.

I was relieved to hear this morning that the Chancellor had undertaken to address the House today, but I deeply regret that, having last year blocked measures that would have helped to protect the NHS and secure our economy, today he appears to be out of ideas, urging us to look towards the sunny uplands but providing nothing new. The purpose of an update is to provide us with new information, not to repeat what we already know.

In addition, the Chancellor just now gave a highly partial picture of the state of our economy, talking of a rise in savings but not mentioning that over 5 million people are estimated to have taken on over £10 billion in debt just to get through the last year. He talked of corporate cash buffers, but did not mention that City experts have predicted that there will be over £100 billion in unsustainable corporate debt by the end of March.

The Chancellor needs to acknowledge the reality of the crisis we face—a crisis made worse by his Government’s irresponsibility, with our economy having suffered the worst recession of any major economy. He needs to act accordingly. I therefore ask him to respond to the questions that businesses and workers desperately need answered. Will he update the furlough scheme to reflect the dates of the current lockdown? When will he set out the new incentive scheme he promised to provide for businesses that will now not receive the job retention bonus? When will he provide details on the next self-employment income support scheme? What does he say to people who have been excluded from Government support schemes from the very beginning and who still are not helped by today’s announcement? How long will businesses have to make the new one-off grants last for? When will councils find out how the new discretionary funding will be allocated and on what basis it has been calculated?

Does the Chancellor believe that those who are classified as clinically extremely vulnerable should be automatically eligible for furlough if they cannot work from home? When will he fix support for those self-isolating, when the evidence for change is overwhelming? When will his much vaunted Project Birch actually start to deliver for struggling manufacturers? Will we have to wait until the Budget for recognition of all these problems and solutions to them, as was suggested by his social media account?

We had all hoped for a more optimistic start to 2021 than a new national lockdown and yet more uncertainty about the future, but the people of Britain understand that they have to make sacrifices. They are doing their bit for the national effort while the vaccine is rolled out. They are fulfilling their side of the bargain. The Chancellor must fulfil his.

[Rishi Sunak]

I thank the hon. Member for her response, and in particular for her comments about my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), which I appreciate.

I think that it is right, where possible in this House, that we acknowledge those areas—many areas, in fact—where there is agreement on both sides of the House: for example, on wage support, on business support, on loan guarantees, on funding for critical public services, on tax deferrals and tax cuts, on support for renters and homeowners, on support for job creation, retraining and skills, on support for children learning at home, on support for the self-employed, on support for the NHS, on support for the vaccination roll-out, and on testing. I could go on. The truth is that, politics aside, there is in fact significant unity of purpose in this place: to protect the most vulnerable; to vaccinate our people as quickly as possible; to reopen our country; and, finally, to rebuild and begin the process of recovery. Given this agreement, while it is right to acknowledge the difference in degrees and emphasis that the hon. Member poses, it is clear that on the fundamentals there is, in fact, little disagreement.

Let me turn to the shadow Chancellor’s specific areas of concern. With regard to the formula for the local authority grants, I can tell her—as was, I think, published—that the formula for the additional half a billion pounds will be the same as that for the £1.1 billion that was issued shortly before the end of last year. With regard to the furlough dates, she will be pleased to know that the change in date from the original spring date through to the new date at the end of October, before the announcement of the new scheme and the extension, will bring an additional 3 million people into coverage for the furlough scheme. I am sure that she will join me in welcoming that the scheme has protected more than 9 million jobs over the past several months. It is, of course, already possible for people to be furloughed if they are clinically extremely vulnerable or have childcare difficulties, but those decisions are, of course, to be made by individual employers and their employees. It would not be right for the Government to put a blanket mandate in place. The hon. Member is right that the Budget is the appropriate place to consider her various other questions, given the scale of the response and the fact that all our major avenues of support have been extended through to the spring.

The hon. Member made a comment about this country having experienced the worst recession out of anyone. It is important in this place that people have the right facts, particularly when those facts impact people’s confidence and understanding of what is happening. I must gently point out some facts, which I am sure the hon. Member knows, because she will have studied this carefully. She will know that, when making international comparisons between the performance of our economy and others, it is important that we are careful because everybody calculates things in very different ways. Indeed, as the Office for Budget Responsibility mentioned in its latest report—which I am sure she will be able to read—and as the Office for National Statistics has highlighted, in this country we calculate public sector output very differently from almost any other country. It is very clear that the way in which we calculate that output flatters other countries and disadvantages us when it comes to making such comparisons. As those independent forecasters have pointed out, when corrected for that difference, we find that our economic performance is actually very much in line with comparable countries. It is not the worst, and I do not think that it is good for confidence or for people’s understanding of the situation for that to be propagated.

Throughout this crisis the Government have always been pragmatic. When changes must be made, we have made them, and when help has been justified, we have always provided it. We are now so close to the end of this difficult period for so many people that I would ask the hon. Member at this time to recognise that the national interest is best served by our co-operation, not partisanship. The vaccine roll-out is the most important priority of this Government and provides us with the path to getting out of this situation, protecting people’s health and releasing the restrictions that are hampering our economic recovery. That should be our focus—I know she will agree with me on that—and it is in that spirit, in the best traditions of this House, that I hope we will be able to see out this crisis in the coming months.

Taxation (Post-transition Period) Bill

Anneliese Dodds Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 9th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a year to the day since the Chancellor boasted that there was no need to plan for no deal because

“we will have a deal.”

Yet today, as we debate this Bill, we stand on the brink of a no-deal Brexit that would destroy jobs and livelihoods right across the United Kingdom. We have only 22 days to go until the end of the transition period, with still no deal in sight.

When we debated yesterday the Ways and Means resolutions associated with this Bill, a number of Government Members claimed that agreements between nations are often only finalised at the last minute—that there is nothing out of the ordinary about this Government’s approach. That is because for run-of-the-mill agreements there is a fall-back option, a status quo. But failing to reach a deal now does not mean a return to the status quo—that we stay as we are. It means extensive economic damage to the tune of an additional 2% loss of GDP, on top of the 4% loss of GDP that the Office for Budget Responsibility has calculated would be the impact of a very thin deal: the type of thin-as-gruel deal that the Conservatives look set to deliver.

[Mr Perkins]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, but even the statistics that she refers to regarding the overall impact on the economy mask the absolutely catastrophic impact that no deal would have on individual businesses and individual industries. I had the pleasure of visiting the Toyota factory in Derby. No deal means that the entire purpose of that factory being based in Derby is under serious threat. Alongside those statistics about the overall impact, it is really important that we recognise that the situation is much worse than that for individual businesses and industries.

[Anneliese Dodds]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There is potentially a very, very severe impact from no deal, but, as I will go on to explain, there is already a concrete and very acute impact on our economy. I am particularly concerned about the situation for many businesses based in Northern Ireland.

This damage will be long lasting, likely to outlive even the impact of the current covid crisis. Our country cannot afford this. We have already experienced the steepest economic downturn in the G7 due to the covid crisis, and are predicted by the OECD to experience the slowest recovery in the G7. Just the prospect of a potential no-deal outcome is already leading to chaos in the midst of a pandemic. Stockpiling by companies, caused by the threat of no deal, is exacerbating supply blockages at our ports.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The economic damage that the hon. Member is talking about should a deal not be agreed would also be inflicted on the European Union, particularly certain parts of the European Union, such as the Republic of Ireland. She criticised the UK Government for the way that they have negotiated. Does she have no words of criticism for the EU negotiators in this two-way negotiation?

[Anneliese Dodds]

Of course we need application and a determination to conclude a deal on both sides; that surely is obvious. But the fact remains, as I will go on to describe, that it was the UK Government that, rather than tabling this Bill many weeks ago, which they could have done, decided to effectively retain provisions that threaten to break international law. That is on the Government’s head, and it is something that the Government must surely be responsible for.

The irresponsible approach that we have seen recently speaks to a wider pattern over the last 12 months of recklessness with public finances, broken promises to the British people and short-term thinking that is doing long-term damage to our country. The Prime Minister promised the British people that he would get Brexit done. He said he had an “oven-ready” agreement. Whatever he has got cooking ahead of his dinner with von der Leyen tonight, my message to him is to get on and deliver what was promised.

[Sir William Cash]

I would just like to point out to the hon. Lady that Labour Governments, not to mention Conservative Governments or the coalition Government after 2010—there is a host of examples by a number of Governments—have passed treaty overrides, on exactly the same principles relating to Finance Bills, in the past. If she wants to construe that as breaking international law, she can, but the reality is that it is consistent with article 46 of the Vienna convention.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman mentions that situation, because it has been referred to by those who favoured the Government’s approach previously. However, I gently state to him that if he is referring in particular to provisions against tax avoidance—the example of a general anti-avoidance rule—then, sadly, I believe he is mistaken. In that case, that commitment and the ability to apply such rules was actually a fundamental principle agreed to by this country as part of a multilateral agreement that it concluded with the OECD, so I fear that that example is not as telling as he may wish it to be.

With just three weeks to go until the end of the transition period, the Government published late yesterday afternoon the 116-page Bill that we are discussing now, setting out detailed new rules for tax and customs duties. Members of this House have been given less than 24 hours to scrutinise a major piece of post-Brexit legislation that will impact businesses and individuals across the country, especially in Northern Ireland. Many of the clauses in the Bill, particularly those covering customs and excise duties, require the Treasury to make regulations that will set out the actual detail of its proposals at a later date, so even with the publication of the Bill, businesses and individuals still do not have the information they need to prepare for the end of the transition period.

Earlier today, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster said there would be “further clarity” forthcoming on these matters, but again without saying when. In fact, the Minister talked a few moments ago about those details coming in due course. His letter to Members spoke about the fact that there would be information on this later; “in the coming days” was the formulation at that time. How can he really expect businesses to plan on that basis—on the never-never up to 1 January?

This last-minute approach was not necessary. It is no use pointing to the complexity of the ongoing negotiations. We know that this Bill could have been published a long time ago because the Government have been floating a Finance Bill for months, so why yet another last- minute scramble? My right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) set it out very clearly: because the Conservatives had a not-so-cunning plan to use this Bill as negotiations reached a critical point by threatening to override the withdrawal agreement. At a time when we are seeking to negotiate new trading relationships across the international community, and when the Government are trying to project an image of global Britain to the world, this tactic certainly sent a clear message, albeit not the message the Government intended.

It is welcome that the Government finally saw sense yesterday, although we have already seen damage being done. Both in relation to the provisions in the Bill and more generally, the time is running out to ready our country for the challenges ahead. The Public Accounts Committee was clear last week that:

“Government is not doing enough to ensure businesses and citizens will be ready for the end of the transition period”.

It expressed concern at reports from industry bodies that the Government had not provided the key information needed for businesses to prepare. Indeed, the Committee indicated that more than a third of small and medium-sized enterprises still believed that the transition period would be extended.

The Cabinet Office has admitted that it is well behind in recruiting the customs agents desperately needed for 1 January, despite more than £80 million having been spent so far. Yet again, earlier today, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster refused to specify exactly how many additional customs agents had been recruited. Overall, £4.4 billion has been spent by the Government on preparations for Brexit and the end of the transition period, yet we are still not ready.

[Jesse Norman]

I am terribly grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way. She has criticised the Government for spending £80 million in support of traders and a facilitated approach to the border. Could she tell us whether she thinks that number is too large or too small?

[Anneliese Dodds]

With enormous respect to the Minister, the problem with his Government’s approach is the fact that they do not indicate what they have got with that spending. As I said, £4.4 billion has been spent on preparedness for Brexit and for the end of the transition period, and the £80 million that he refers to, but there is no indication from the Government of how many additional customs officers we have received as a result of that spending. I hoped that he was intervening on me to provide an indication of the additional workforce that has been recruited. It is a matter of regret that he was unable to do so.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

The hon. Lady is quite rightly querying how money has been spent. I do not know whether she has had letters from the Government asking MPs, as small businesses, to get ready for Brexit. I got two of them, including one that referred to me as an MSP, so perhaps the Government are not spending their money particularly wisely or accurately.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for that very relevant point. I am sure that it is not only Opposition Members but Government Members who have had many businesses contacting them, often in despair, about the communications and advertisements asking them to get ready when there is so little indication of what they have to get ready for.

Yesterday morning, the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee heard from the Food and Drink Federation, which said that the guidance being published now was already too late. Some 43% of its members who supply Northern Ireland have said that they will not do so in the first three months of next year. That is desperately worrying. TheCityUK said that in the worst-case scenario, 40% of the UK’s EU-related financial activity could be lost. Every day between now and the end of the year counts to get a deal, and failing that, to plan for the no-deal outcome that the Prime Minister himself conceded would represent a failure of statecraft.

With that in mind, Labour supports this Bill passing. Labour is a responsible Opposition, and we are determined to see the minimum disruption possible, but we cannot support such continued lack of clarity on critical issues. When businesses need clarity as a matter of urgency, it is not good enough to state that further guidance will be forthcoming. At the very least, they need a timetable for the provision of that greater certainty. They need to know what rules of origin will apply from 1 January. The continued lack of clarity could create unprecedented new costs. They need to know when appropriate tariff codes will be published. They need to know whether the Government will be providing easements, and they need to know these things in concrete terms, not through the winks and nudges that have substituted for clarity so far.

Businesses need to know whether there will be a pause in penalties arising out of this legislation and, if so, what would be done to counterbalance that and prevent wilful avoidance. They need to know whether the measures in the Bill countermand the existing guidance provided to Northern Irish businesses, some of which was updated just on 7 December. They need to know, as revealed in The Irish Times, whether and when the information on the trusted trader scheme for Northern Irish business—details of which have allegedly been coming out of internal communications —is going to be fully published, so that businesses can follow that scheme.

I want to end my contribution by asking the Minister to place himself in the shoes of a small manufacturing company. We have many excellent such companies across the United Kingdom—in Northern Ireland and in Great Britain. Companies will already have faced enormous challenges during this period because of covid. Potentially, they have staff off because they have to self-isolate. Potentially, there is continuing uncertainty about the future of furlough because of this Government’s unwillingness to provide that certainty. Potentially, they were counting on the job retention bonus, but they are not going to receive it. They are now trying to plan which members of staff they will need to have in the company at work to get ready for 1 January. The stress and strain are immense.

The Minister and his Government must do all they can to overcome those uncertainties and help businesses to plan. That is the least they can do for businesses and the people who work for them, who have had such a hard year.

Oral Answers to Questions

Anneliese Dodds Excerpts

Tuesday 1st December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

My hon. Friend is right to champion his local businesses, something he knows well from his own experience. I can give him that reassurance. I know it has been a very difficult time for his small and medium-sized companies. They have my assurance that I will keep working hard to support them. He knows, better than most, that they will drive our recovery.

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

Last week, the Chancellor said that public sector workers on less than £24,000 would be guaranteed a pay rise, but then said that they would receive a fixed increase of £250. Will he correct the record to confirm he is delivering a real-terms pay cut for many teaching assistants, prison officers and police constables?

[Rishi Sunak]

I stand by what I said. Those earning less than £24,000 in the public sector, 2.1 million people, or 38% of all people working in the public sector, will receive a guaranteed fixed increase of at least £250.

[Anneliese Dodds]

Even if no deal is avoided, we appear to be headed for a thin-as-gruel deal with the EU. The Office for Budget Responsibility says that that would lead to a long-run loss of output of about 4%. That is on top of the slowest recovery from covid in the G7, as predicted by the OECD today. The Chancellor previously said that his Government’s deal would reduce costs for ordinary working families and promised its impact would be modelled. Will he provide that modelling and is he confident that it will show that positive impact?

[Rishi Sunak]

I would not want to pre-empt the outcome of the ongoing talks, which I can say are constructive and proceeding with full intensity. I am very hopeful that they can reach a positive conclusion. More broadly, regardless of the exact nature of our trading relationship with our European friends and allies, I remain very confident in the economic future of our country and the opportunities that will come our way.

Spending Review 2020 and OBR Forecast

Anneliese Dodds Excerpts

Wednesday 25th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. This spending review was a moment for the Chancellor to take the responsible choices that our country needs. It was an opportunity to protect key workers, secure the economy and recover jobs in every part of our country.

During this crisis, we have seen who has taken responsibility: community health workers working round the clock to keep us all safe; the teachers who kept working so that key workers could too; the delivery drivers and shop staff who made sure that we had critical food supplies. Earlier this year, the Chancellor stood on his doorstep and clapped for key workers. Today, his Government institute a pay freeze for many of them. This takes a sledgehammer to consumer confidence. Firefighters, police officers and teachers will know that their spending power is going down, so they will spend less in our small businesses and on our high streets; they will spend less in our private sector. Many key workers, who willingly took on so much responsibility during this crisis, are now being forced to tighten their belts now; not in the medium term to which the Chancellor refers, but now.

In contrast, there has been a bonanza for those who have won contracts from this Government. Companies with political connections have been 10 times more likely to win Government contracts. So many businesses have worked tirelessly through the pandemic to support local communities, to keep critical supplies going and to produce drugs and vaccines—at cost price in AstraZeneca’s case—working with some of our country’s best scientists. But in their response to this pandemic, the Conservative Government have wasted and mismanaged public finances on an industrial scale: £130 million to a Conservative donor for testing kits that were unsafe; £150 million for face masks and £700 million on coveralls that could not be used; a £12 billion hit to our economy because the more effective, shorter, circuit breaker was blocked and a lengthier, more expensive lockdown put in place instead; £12 billion so far spent on a test and trace system that is still not working; and, today, news of £10 billion in additional costs for personal protective equipment, which was at least partly down to the Conservatives’ lack of pre-pandemic planning.

This waste and mismanagement is part of a longer-term pattern, showing that claims today around levelling up simply do not match the evidence: hospitals in Liverpool and Sandwell left unbuilt, over deadline by years and over budget by hundreds of millions of pounds; not a single starter home built, despite almost £200 million being spent; Northern Powerhouse Rail still not even approved six years after being announced; the courts modernisation programme three years behind schedule, letting victims down up and down the country; and people in the north more likely to have been made redundant during this crisis holding everything else equal.

Photo calls are not enough. We need delivery like the promotion of green manufacturing in the west midlands by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) and the work of Labour Mayors and councils across the country. We need a Government in Westminster who take their responsibility towards all four nations seriously. That means informing the Finance Minister of Northern Ireland about the shorter timescale for this spending review ahead of time and fulfilling the “New Decade, New Approach” commitments. It means doing the right thing by the people of Wales to repair flood damage and make safe legacy coal tips. It means ending the barney between Westminster and Holyrood and instead working together in partnership to protect jobs and livelihoods.

It means a shared prosperity fund that is effective because it is delivered not on the whim of Conservative Ministers but from our devolved Governments and our regions. The levelling-up fund that the Chancellor just announced—his rabbit out of the hat—yet again, just as with the Beeching reopening programme, involves MPs going to Ministers and begging for support for their areas, rather than that change being driven from local communities. So much for taking back control! This is about the centre handing over support in a very top-down manner.

Labour has been clear about the responsible choices that we wanted the Chancellor to make today to recover jobs, retrain workers and rebuild businesses. To recover jobs, Labour called for £30 billion of capital spending accelerated over the next 18 months, focused on green initiatives, supporting 400,000 jobs and bringing us in line with countries such as France and Germany. This Government’s ambition is for half that number of new jobs. To retrain workers, we needed an emergency programme to support people back into work, but kick- start has been slow to get started, and the skills offer for those over 25 will not start until April. The Chancellor said at the beginning of his speech that our economic emergency “has only just begun”—try telling that to people who have been out of work since March.

Restart, announced today, must meet three key tests to be effective. It should help people who need it most, not cherry-pick. It should be up and running as soon as possible, yet it appears that only a fraction of Restart funding will be available next year. And it must involve local actors who know their communities, not be imposed from Whitehall. Of course, job search support ultimately only works if sufficient new jobs actually exist. That is why we needed ambitious action to boost our economy and to support our businesses.

To rebuild business, we called for a national investment bank. I welcome the announcement of a new UK infrastructure bank, given that valuable years have been lost since the Green Investment Bank was sold off. Now the Chancellor must boost its firepower, and he must deliver on his Department’s responsibility for the drive to net zero. We have known since the Stern report that the climate crisis is the biggest long-term threat to our economy, yet far too often, this spending review locks us into a path that will make the transition to net zero harder, not easier, locking our economy out of the green jobs of the future.

To rebuild business, the Chancellor also needs to listen to business. We are less than a week from the end of the lockdown, yet we have heard nothing about whether extra support will be provided through the additional restrictions support grant for areas subject once again to tough restrictions. The Chancellor is still threatening employers with an increased contribution to furlough in January, at the worst possible time for increasing and building confidence.

In fewer than 40 days, we are due to leave the transition period, yet the Chancellor did not even mention that in his speech. There is still no trade deal, so does the Chancellor truly believe that his Government are prepared and that he has done enough to help those businesses that will be heavily affected? Will he take responsible action to help those excluded from Government support? Why is he still refusing to make the speedy fixes to universal credit that Labour has advocated, which would aid the self-employed, and why will he not provide families with certainty by ensuring that the increase in universal credit continues beyond April?

The IMF has made it clear time and again that now would be the worst time to slam on the brakes and put the car into reverse. It has called for a “meaningful additional push” from our Government to maintain fiscal support until the recovery is on a sound footing. The UK’s GDP is 10% smaller now than it was at the end of last year. We have seen the worst downturn in the G7. We needed ambitious action today to stimulate growth and maintain demand, and we needed the Government to take responsibility for the real reasons why people and communities up and down our country are being held back.

Over the past 10 years, child poverty has risen by 600,000. We have had the worst decade for pay growth in eight generations. The cost of childcare has risen twice as fast as wages. The number of young apprentices has plummeted. Last quarter, we saw the highest level of redundancies on record. Social care is in increasing crisis and, despite the Conservative party’s manifesto having promised a long-term solution, we are still waiting.

It was trailed in the press that the Chancellor would be moving 20,000 jobs out of London, yet cuts to local authorities over the past 10 years have seen 240,000 jobs lost—12 times that figure of 20,000—with the hardest-hit communities often those in the north, midlands and south-west. Today, the Chancellor could have matched his Government’s promise to do whatever is necessary to support local authorities through this crisis; he did not. And yet again he showed his Government’s lack of confidence in their own measures by failing to provide an equality impact assessment.

The measure of this Government will not be the number of press releases issued during this crisis or the number of pictures it published on Instagram; it will be the responsible action that they took, or did not take, for the sake of our country.

Next year, the eyes of the world will be on the UK as we assume the presidencies of the G7 and the UN Security Council and host the COP26 summit, yet now is the time that the Chancellor has turned his back on the world’s poorest by cutting international aid. It is in Britain’s national interest to lay the foundations for economic growth around the world—no wonder many British businesses have condemned his move.

Businesses have been more and more vocal about the problems with this Government’s last-minute approach, always one step behind when we need to plan responsibly for the future. We must learn the lessons from previous failures and ensure that the next challenge—the roll-out of the vaccine—is dealt with as efficiently, effectively and speedily as possible.

Next time, we need a comprehensive spending review that takes responsible choices—to build a future for our country as the best place in the world to grow up in and the best place to grow old in. People should have opportunities on their doorstep, not at the other end of the country. Everywhere in the UK should feel like a good place to set up home. That is what the Chancellor must deliver.

[Rishi Sunak]

I will address all the points made by the hon. Lady in turn, but it is important to note, up front, that despite her criticisms, there is actually a lot that she and her Opposition colleagues should welcome: more funding for public services; a pay increase for NHS workers; support for those on the lowest incomes; a once-in-a-generation investment in infrastructure; a multi-billion pound commitment to support those looking for work; a new schools building programme; and the Prime Minister’s 10- point plan. I could go on, Mr Speaker.

It is right that the hon. Lady should provide challenge, but I think, even if she does not, that the British people will judge this spending review as a reflection of their priorities: protecting jobs, defeating coronavirus, strengthening our public services and upgrading our infrastructure. If there is any politics here at all, surely it is unifying, and I think that, deep down, she will recognise that.

Let me address the specific points. The hon. Lady asked about pay and the importance of consumption, and I agree that of course there is an impact on consumption from pay. She will know that the marginal propensity to consume is obviously greater the lower down the income spectrum you go, which is why, in particular, we have protected the incomes of those on lower incomes.

Anyone in the public sector earning less than the UK median salary of £24,000 will receive a pay rise of £250 or more. Taken together with all the other things we have done, including giving a pay rise for those who work in the NHS, this will mean that the majority of public sector workers will see an increase in their pay next year. Also, pay progression and promotions—all of that—will carry on. We have increased wages for those on the national living wage: an extra £345 a year, as the wage rate goes up to £8.91. That, again, will help to drive consumption.

The hon. Lady rightly talked about delivery. We believe very firmly in making sure we can deliver the change we promised the British people. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury, my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay) and I chair something called project speed, which is already delivering benefits, with plans for the landmark A66 upgrade shortened in time and reduced in cost, so we can get on with delivering what the people want on time and on budget, making a difference in their communities.

The hon. Lady asked about the levelling up fund and, I thought rather bizarrely, seemed to suggest that local Members of Parliament were not a good reflection on their local communities and able to articulate the local needs of their communities. I say to colleagues on the Opposition Benches that I am more than happy to hear from them and their local areas about the needs that they want met, because this Government will meet the needs of local communities up and down the country.

The hon. Lady talked about support for businesses during coronavirus. We have already put in place support through this winter period. The local restrictions grants we announced a while ago are paid monthly and they work. If your business has been closed, you will receive a grant of up to £3,000 per month depending on your rateable value. If you are a hospitality, leisure or accommodation business in a tier 2 area, where obviously the restrictions have an impact on your ability, you will receive a grant of 70% of that value up to £2,100. Those amounts mean that the business can help to cover the fixed costs of rent. They, of course, have access to the furlough scheme right the way through winter.

That comes on top of the other recent support announced for businesses. Today, I announced major reforms to the way the apprenticeship system works, giving businesses what they have long asked for: the flexibility to spend unused apprenticeship levy funds down the supply chain with small and medium-sized enterprises, and the ability to frontload payments for training. We are also looking at ways to introduce even more flexibility for some professions. We also recently announced an extension of the annual investment allowance for a further year up to £1 million, giving 98% of small and medium-sized businesses the ability to write off investments in full next year, which will help to drive their recovery.

The hon. Lady talked about welfare. Again, I stand proud of this Government’s and previous Conservative Governments’ record on this issue since 2010: hundreds of thousands fewer people in absolute poverty; several hundred thousand fewer children living in workless households; and income inequality lower coming into this crisis than when we first came into office.

This Government care greatly about those who are most vulnerable. We have demonstrated that during this crisis by the support we have put in place. The evidence shows that those on the lowest incomes have been protected the most by this Conservative Government. And that does not stop. The temporary uplift in universal credit runs all the way through to next spring, providing security for those families. Of course we will look, when we come to next spring, at the best way to support people and their families when we have a better sense of where the economy is and where we are with the virus, but we are providing extra support for next year: £670 million to help struggling families meet their council tax bills, worth about £150 each for families up and down the country. We also said we will maintain the £1 billion increase in the local housing allowance that we instituted this year into next year, providing support for many millions of families. We are also making available further funds, as the House knows, to provide extra support for food and meals for children throughout the holidays next year.

The hon. Lady talked about support for local authorities. Perhaps she has not seen it yet in the document—that is fair enough—but we announced over £3.5 billion of extra support for local authorities next year specifically to deal with coronavirus. That comes on top of their core spending power increasing at decade-level highs of 4.5%. That £3.5 billion is there to help to meet the shortfall in sales fees and charges, and the unrecoverable losses in business rates and council tax that they have experienced this year, as well as £1.5 billion for general pressures. Let no one say that we are not standing behind our local authorities at this difficult time.



Finally, the hon. Lady asked about green issues. I think she compared us with France and Germany and questioned this Government’s and the Prime Minister’s ambition. Let me say this about our plans. They are, I believe, among the most comprehensive and ambitious of any developed economy. She talked about France and Germany, but in this country we are phasing out certain vehicles in 2030; in France, it is 2040. In this country, we are phasing out coal in 2025; in Germany, it is 2038. She talked about the billions of pounds being spent by our friends, but it is important when we make these international comparisons that we understand the detail of what the other countries promise. The German numbers include the subsidies for renewables; ours do not. That happens separately outside our plan and is worth £44 billion, supporting renewable energy in this country through the tariff system, which is what Germany alluded to. The German numbers also include support for public transport, which ours of course do not, because that is something we do just in the ordinary course of business. I am proud of this Conservative Government’s record. We are the first major economy in the world to legislate for net zero, and our economy has decarbonised faster than any other in the last 20 years. This Conservative Government will deliver the Prime Minister’s plans to get us to net zero, and that is something that I hope the whole House can welcome and support.

In conclusion, this spending review puts the full force of the Government behind the priorities of the British people, and while we may have many disagreements with the Opposition, I am confident that, in private at least, they will recognise the significant investment we are making to protect jobs, strengthen our public services and improve our infrastructure. We in this House are all answerable to the people we represent, and it is in their interests that we serve. Today, we have made some difficult choices to fulfil that responsibility, but with the positive news about the development of vaccines, the winter covid plan being announced by the Prime Minister and the very real hope that we are finally entering the final stages of our fight against coronavirus, now is the time for us to come together. The British people have been through so much this year, as have right hon. and hon. Members, and it is my belief that, with this spending review and the fresh hope given by medical advances, we can finally begin our recovery. Now, difficult decisions and all, we must deliver on the priorities of the British people.

Future of Financial Services

Anneliese Dodds Excerpts

Monday 9th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

We have become used to disjointed, last-minute policy making recently in this House. Today’s events—with a statement entitled “the Future of Financial Services” on the very day that the Financial Services Bill is being debated—surely takes this to new heights.

The UK produces 1% of global emissions, but companies and financial institutions based here produce 15% of those emissions. Action from the Government to match the green ambitions of many in financial services cannot come too soon. Recent developments have unfortunately gone in the wrong direction. Over the last decade, the UK has pumped £6 billion into overseas fossil fuel projects via UK Export Finance, so will the Chancellor do as Labour has demanded and immediately ban the financing of fossil fuel projects through UK Export Finance?

Labour supports the move to greater disclosure of climate-related information. Two months ago, we called on the Government to show leadership and introduce mandatory reporting ahead of COP26. The Chancellor’s announcement and that of the Financial Conduct Authority this morning are positive, but they only relate to a “comply or explain” basis, with full implementation not set for many years—until 2025. The climate crisis demands bolder action. Will the Chancellor move to mandatory reporting in the 2021-22 reporting year?

Again, the introduction of green gilts is welcome, but they are mechanisms, not ends in themselves; they obviously depend on where the money raised is then invested. So far this year, the UK Government have announced around £5 billion in green investment. That compares with £36 billion in Germany and £27 billion in France. Where is this Government’s ambition for a green recovery from the coronavirus crisis, and where is the replacement for the green investment bank that the Conservatives sold off?

As the Chancellor rightly said, the financial sector is of course critical in ensuring that start-ups and scale-ups can access the capital that they need to grow and succeed, and that is so important right now. But that must go hand in hand with oversight and protection. The drive to encourage more tech companies to list on our stock exchange cannot come at the expense of corporate responsibility, so what will he do to ensure the long-term health of British companies and the protection of British investors? And where is the action here to protect people’s access to local bank branches and to cash on their high streets? There is more in this statement about stablecoins—hardly the talk of living rooms up and down the land—than there is about people’s access to cash.

While we debate these often welcome measures, we must not forget the elephant in the room: this Government’s mishandling—I am calling it that because that is what it is—of ensuring market access for our firms to our largest trading partner. One in every 14 UK workers is employed in financial and related professional services, yet the City of London Corporation has recently said that the approach to negotiations makes them feel like the

“neglected child of an acrimonious divorce”.

With weeks to go until we leave the transition period, we still do not know whether the EU will determine that our rules are equivalent to its own. The Chancellor’s predecessor said that

“achieving equivalence on day one should not be complicated.”

The deadline for achieving equivalence was June of this year. By that date, the UK had filled in just four of the 28 forms that it needed to complete. This Government cannot even complete the paperwork on time to secure market access to our largest export industry. The Chancellor said that today he was setting out our approach to equivalence. That should have been done months ago; it is such a critical aspect of the UK’s economy.

We have already seen damage being done. EY research suggests that over 7,000 jobs have already gone and that £1.2 trillion in assets are set to be relocated from the UK, with potentially worse to come as firms making plans decide not to locate those plans and jobs within our borders. It is too late now to strike a deal that would preserve market access securely; too late now—a phrase, sadly, that we are coming to associate with this Chancellor. Let me ask him, when did one of our most important sectors fall so far down his list of priorities?

[Rishi Sunak]

I was hoping that this would be a rather more technical discussion. It was telling that we had all those questions from the hon. Lady but not really, until the last sentence, any word of praise or recognition for this industry. [Interruption.] Absolutely, it was about trying to score political points, sneering and sniding, with no recognition of the importance of this industry up and down the country and all the people who are employed in it—no recognition whatsoever. When I talked about the hard-working people in this industry who were making sure that customers had access to their branches and access to loans during the coronavirus, all I heard was muttering. That is not the right praise for the people in this industry because they have been working very hard and it is appropriate that they get the recognition that they deserve for that—and they will get it from this Government.

The hon. Lady asked about the TCFD disclosures and comply or explain. Comply or explain is the approach that others have taken. We will be the first major economy—the first in the G20—to mandate disclosures by 2025. A road map has been published today. It is the most ambitious timetable that any major economy has done to date. In fact, it goes far beyond what was recommended by the taskforce. I think that is something that Government Members at least will very proud of.

The hon. Lady asked about access to cash. She should know that, in the middle of October, on about the 15th, we published our access-to-cash call for evidence, which I announced back at Budget in March. The responses to that will inform our future legislative strategy. We laid out clearly that we believe it is important that everyone has access to cash. Depending on the responses to that consultation, we will decide on the appropriate next steps.

The hon. Lady commented on our response to the equivalence process from our EU partners. I think she was trying to accuse us of being slow in replying, or not quite replying sufficiently. That will be news to the team that has spent months producing 2,500 pages of responses to the Commission responses. I might add, as she seems more willing to defend the EU in its conduct of this process, that we have not had a single question back from the European Union after sending 2,500 pages of responses over to it. I might also add that we did not feel it necessary to send it thousands and thousands of pages—we adopted a constructive approach that required very little answers, given that we know its current regulatory arrangements because we all share the same ones.

We have chosen to take an approach that prioritises financial services. Rather than wait, we have acted unilaterally to provide certainty to our financial services firms and to enshrine our reputation as a place where global firms can come and do business, because this will always be the most open, the most competitive and the most innovative place to do financial services anywhere in the world.