Income Tax (Charge)
Ben Obese-Jecty Excerpts(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
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Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)
This Labour Government pledged that taxes would not be increased on working people, but they could not even stick to that. It does not matter how cleverly worded their manifesto was, these tax raises are undoubtedly not in the spirit of the sentiment on which Labour’s entire election campaign was founded.
Small businesses have been left reeling by the measures imposed on them. Duncan Blake is a GP at the Priory Fields practice in Huntingdon. I recently visited the practice and discussed some of the challenges it faces. He warned how the increase in national insurance contributions and the lowering of the thresholds will serve only to undermine access and patient care, in addition to the significant financial pressures that GP practices already face. Practices such as Priory Fields are wedded to the NHS and dependent upon it for funding. There is no ability to increase prices to absorb increased costs. GP practices are not eligible for employment allowance, so will bear the full brunt of these rises. Why are the Government not treating GP practices like other parts of the NHS and reimbursing those costs?
Rebecca Paul (Reigate) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the increase in employer national insurance contributions will impact charities, as well as businesses and GP surgeries? They include the Children’s Trust in Tadworth, in my constituency, which is a leading charity that provides support to children with brain injury. That charity now needs to find an additional significant—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. Interventions must be brief. I think the hon. Lady has made her point.
Ben Obese-Jecty
I agree with my hon. Friend.
In my constituency, farmers have been left reeling by the Government’s ruinous family farms tax that effectively ends the family farm through their reckless slashing of agricultural property relief, yet the Government repeatedly claimed there would be no tax rises on “working people”. Are the Government honestly suggesting that farmers are not “working people”? Those on the Government Benches made repeated assurances over the past year. The duplicity of the Labour party on this issue is breathtaking. At last year’s Country Land and Business Association conference, the now Environment Secretary stated that
“we have no intention of changing APR.”
The CLA has said that the change could harm 70,000 UK farms, declaring it a “betrayal” that
“puts dynamite beneath the livelihoods of British farming.”
The Prime Minister and the Environment Secretary were more than happy to leverage support from the countryside, with glossy photoshoots of rambling around the countryside in designer wellies. Indeed, the Prime Minister was very eager to make his pitch to rural communities during his Country Life article and photoshoot in September last year, in which he said:
“The need for stability now is urgent: farmers need to plan for the long term more than ever before.”
I doubt farmers were expecting that long-term planning to include being forced to sell 20% of their farms, making them unviable, or taking a 20% loan to cover those costs, potentially saddling the next generation with debts that farming is not profitable enough to repay.
Only yesterday, the Chancellor stated on the BBC that:
“Only a very small number of agricultural properties will be affected”.
A £1 million farm is 100 acres. According to DEFRA’s agricultural facts summary, published the day after the Budget, on 31 October, the average UK farm size is just over 200 acres. How can the Chancellor make her claim when the relevant Government Department has itself contradicted her position?
Given the speed and alacrity with which the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero has covered the countryside with solar panels, it should come as no surprise that the Government are so eager to force farmers out of business, freeing up swathes of the countryside to be sold to developers for more of the same. The Government will be forced into rowing back on this policy, whether it be now or after the visual spectacle of demonstrating farmers blockading Parliament Square with tractors. I urge the Government to do the right thing now, rather than being forced to do so in a few weeks.
Oral Answers to Questions
Ben Obese-Jecty Excerpts(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)
Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Liz Kendall)
May I say briefly, Mr Speaker, that as my right hon. and learned Friend the Prime Minister has said, 7 October last year was the deadliest day in Jewish history since the Holocaust, and we stand firm in our commitment to bring the remaining hostages home and secure the immediate ceasefire and aid that civilians in Gaza and Lebanon desperately need.
An estimated 880,000 of the poorest pensioners are not claiming the pension credit they are entitled to, so they do not get the winter fuel payment or pension credit of up to £3,900 a year. That is why we have launched the biggest ever drive to increase pension credit uptake and ensure that the poorest pensioners get the support they deserve.
Ben Obese-Jecty
Having spent the run-up to the election scaring pensioners into voting for them by claiming it was the Conservative Government who were a threat to their wellbeing, some of our poorest pensioners will now be forced to find out how difficult it is to keep warm huddled around Labour’s gaslight. Given that the Government’s own equality analysis states that only 100,000 of the 880,000 pensioners who are eligible for pension credit are expected to apply for it, if all those who are eligible do apply, how much more will that cost compared with the initial saving from removing the winter fuel payment?
Liz Kendall
I say gently to the hon. Gentleman that upon coming into government, we discovered that 880,000 pensioners are not claiming the pension credit they are entitled to. Given that his former Government failed to take action to deal with that issue, I suggest that instead of making that point, he works with his council to increase pension credit uptake and looks at the £1.8 million we have given to Peterborough council to make sure that all the help for pensioners, including on winter fuel, is made available.