Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Barbara Keeley and George Osborne

Wednesday 25th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

Q13. The care sector faces a crisis made worse by the Chancellor’s failure to fund increases in the minimum wage properly. The 2% social care precept does not cover all the costs, so the Local Government Association asked the Chancellor to bring forward £700 million of better care funding from 2019 to this year and next year to help with the increased costs. Will the Chancellor listen to local councils and will he fund his own minimum wage policy?

[Mr Osborne]

Of course, we always listen to local authorities and are in dialogue with them, but we have given them the power, which many have used, to apply a social care precept, which came in in April in many areas. At the same time, we have put more money into the better care fund, and we are therefore confident that social care is funded. However, I agree with the hon. Lady that more needs to be done to help the social care sector, and the key thing here will be integration with the national health service over coming years so that the service is much more seamless for our citizens.

Spending Review and Autumn Statement

Debate between Barbara Keeley and George Osborne

Wednesday 25th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

My hon. Friend came to see me to fight on behalf of her constituents who see their lives disrupted when the channel tunnel is blocked and lorries queue up on the motorways and block local roads. She, together with other hon. Friends with constituencies in Kent, came to me with a proposal to relieve that congestion and the impact of Operation Stack. We are making a quarter of a billion pounds commitment to the county of Kent to help it deal with that traffic problem and provide a permanent solution.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

As my right hon. and hon. Friends have been telling the Chancellor, he is trying to push the issue of underfunding of social care on to local councils. A total of £4.6 billion has been taken out since 2010, and the gap is growing at £700 million a year. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) said, there is fourfold difference between the ability of different areas of the country to raise funding through the 2% council tax increase. How is he going to close this gap when there is no extra funding from the better care fund until 2017?

[Mr Osborne]

Overall funding for social care will be protected in real terms. The council tax premium can be levied, and the better care fund will have an additional £1.5 billion to make sure that it can help local government integrate with the national health service. Our objective is to achieve over the next five years the integration of health and social care services across the country. Places such as north-east Lincolnshire, Northumberland and Greater Manchester have made big progress in this area, and I hope that the hon. Lady’s local area also takes steps in that direction.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Barbara Keeley and George Osborne

Tuesday 21st July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We are going to help his constituents to buy their own home. The Help to Buy scheme has helped 100,000 people; the new Help to Buy ISA will help the families he represents save up for that deposit; and of course we all still want to see more starter homes being built. We have to address the acute housing shortage in London, and we have the policies to do it.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

Why are the Government abandoning people with savings and those who own their own homes? They are going to be forced to spend their savings and sell their homes to pay for their social care costs. The Chancellor raised the hopes of those older and vulnerable people before the election with a pledge that no one would have to sell their home to pay for care. Those people will feel badly let down by the Government’s U-turn. Did he ever intend to keep that manifesto pledge?

[Mr Osborne]

We are going to introduce that cap on care costs in this Parliament. It is a bit rich coming from a Labour party that was in power for 13 years and did absolutely nothing to cap those costs. That is why we are introducing the cap. We have also already introduced the changes that enable people to provide for their future care costs without having to sell their home. We are making those changes, alongside the support for savers and pensions, so that we move away from the society and economy built on debt that was left to this Government to an economy that builds and rewards savers.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Barbara Keeley and George Osborne

Tuesday 22nd March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I do not know why Opposition Members want to talk down the British economy. What the chief economist at the CBI said contrasts with the hon. Gentleman’s remarks about manufacturing. The chief economist said:

“The outlook for UK manufacturing output growth is very encouraging.”

We are going to support manufacturing. We have the corporation tax cut that I announced in last June’s Budget, and we have the new centres for innovation and manufacturing. We are going to help manufacturing, whereas Labour shrank manufacturing.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

Talking of making things, a small manufacturing firm in my constituency is investing in the development of a new engine. If it moved into production, hundreds of jobs would be created in the 15th most deprived area in the country. Will the Chancellor tell us why the Government have cut Labour’s investment allowances, which would be just the thing to help and support a small and vital manufacturer like the one in my constituency?

[Mr Osborne]

Manufacturers, including the one to which the hon. Lady has referred, benefit to the tune of £250 million from the reductions in corporation tax that we announced in the June Budget. That is what we have done to support British industry. As I have said, under the Labour Government British industry shrank: while the share of the economy taken by financial services grew by a third, the manufacturing share halved.

Autumn Forecast

Debate between Barbara Keeley and George Osborne

Monday 29th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

The short answer to my hon. Friend is yes. One of the specific aspects that we want to look at is how Government should be helping businesses grow, rather than standing in the way of that. That includes procurement for Government. The Government spend too much of their money on the largest companies in the country and not enough on some of the smaller companies. That is one of the things that we seek to improve.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

On public sector jobs, the Chancellor says that headcount reduction will happen over four years, but as he knows, some local authorities are facing budget reductions of 20 or 30% next year alone, due to front loading and loss of specific grant. Will he consider rephasing the cuts to local government so that we do not see 140,000 local government job losses next year?

[Mr Osborne]

I said at the time that it was a challenging settlement. I have removed some of the ring-fencing—indeed, almost all the ring-fencing—to allow local authorities the maximum flexibility to deal with that, but unfortunately I inherited a situation where the country was borrowing £1 in every £4 that it was spending. At a time when people are looking at European countries, we can see what happens to European countries that have high budget deficits and no credible plan to deal with them, so I have had to take those decisions. As I say, if the Labour party wants to put forward a plan to remove the structural deficit without affecting the local government settlement, let us hear it.