Budget Resolutions

Debate between Bim Afolami and Darren Jones

Tuesday 12th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Bim Afolami]

It is not our plan to resurrect anything from the mini-Budget. We have our plan and we set it out in our Budget.

As the son of a doctor and a pharmacist, as many of us are on the Government Benches, I am mindful that any good doctor will say that in order for the medicine to work, one has to complete the course and stick to the plan. This Budget sticks to the plan we set out in 2023 and has three key objectives: to reward work, to grow the economy and to improve productivity. Before I get on to those points, I will address some of the remarks made by hon. Members during the debate.

The hon. Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) made a point about some of the most vulnerable in our country and their access to credit. I commend her long-standing support for her constituents, including the most vulnerable. We are extending the household support fund, as she will know, and we are making it easier to access the debt relief order. The right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms) welcomed the decision to extend the household support fund. In response to his question about making the fund permanent, that is a decision for the next fiscal event, whenever that will be.

I say to Members of all parties who are concerned for the most vulnerable that this is a Budget and a Government for them. Since 2010, the real income—the take-home pay—of those working full time on the national living wage is 35% greater than it was in 2010. On rewarding work, thanks to the actions that this Government have already taken, falling inflation means that wages in real terms are on the up, even while unemployment is low. In response to the question raised by the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden), real household incomes overall have increased by 8% since 2010. But we all know that we can go further. The simplest and most effective way to do so is by reducing people’s taxes and getting rid of the double taxation on work, which means reducing national insurance.

I was listening carefully to the shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who is a man I rather like. [Hon. Members: “Ah!”] I rather admire him. We came to the House at the same time. We are practically the same age—he is about five months younger than me, but let us not go into that. But I was very surprised to hear him say—he can intervene on me if this is not correct—that it was “morally abhorrent” to cut national insurance.

[Darren Jones]

I always welcome the chance to return to the Dispatch Box. Just to answer the hon. Gentleman’s question, I said that it was morally abhorrent to abolish national insurance contributions at a cut of £46 billion a year with no plan to pay for it. The Minister has the opportunity once again to tell us how he is going to fund the £46 billion.

[Bim Afolami]

This is great fun, Mr Deputy Speaker. I say to the shadow Chief Secretary that we have been very clear about this. We have cut national insurance by a third in the last two fiscal events. It is our long-term ambition to do so and to eliminate this double taxation on work. If Labour Members do not believe that we should eliminate this double taxation, they should say so.

Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill

Debate between Bim Afolami and Darren Jones

2nd reading
Wednesday 17th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)]

I declare my interest as set out on the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am grateful to the Government for having reflected in the Bill so many of the recommendations in my Committee’s report on post-Brexit competition and consumer law policy. Although I am grateful to the Minister and shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra), for thanking me for my work, I should humbly put it on record that there would be no report were it not for my colleagues on the Committee, my Clerks, and the witnesses who gave evidence.

I will not test the patience of the House by listing all the Committee’s achievements in this respect, but I will focus on one area that our report talked about—oversight of the Competition and Markets Authority and other regulators that operate in the digital market space—where provisions are missing from the Bill. The CMA is an independent regulator, but it is directly accountable to Parliament for the performance of its functions and duties. Only yesterday, we welcomed its chair and chief executive officer to the Business and Trade Committee to answer questions on topical cases, its annual plan, the draft strategic steer from the Department and, indeed, this Bill.

In practice, Committees such as mine only really scrutinise regulators, agencies and arm’s-length bodies on their day-to-day performance perhaps on an annual basis at best, or once there has been a failure. We recognised that ourselves in respect of issues at the energy regulator, Ofgem, which we only uncovered once there had been a multibillion-pound failure in the market. We gave ourselves an action in that report, as well as in our post-Brexit competition and consumer law report, to enhance our oversight of the CMA and other regulators to avoid this happening again.

It is not a new problem. As many Members will know, the noble Lord Tyrie, who chaired the Treasury Committee during the banking crisis, has written and spoken extensively about this issue. It is a challenge for most Committees. Gov.uk helpfully lists the number of agencies and public bodies sponsored by each Department, and that of my Committee has 21, including the Competition and Markets Authority, the Land Registry, Companies House, the Insolvency Service, ACAS, the Financial Reporting Council, the Trade Remedies Authority, and the Pubs Code and Groceries Code Adjudicators. That does not even include the Post Office or the British Business Bank.

[Bim Afolami]

I agree with everything the hon. Member has said so far. Does he agree with the proposal of the Regulatory Reform Group, which I chair, that there should be a specialist Committee to look at the regulators on an ongoing basis, in addition to the work that his and other Select Committees do in this House?

[Darren Jones]

If I answered shortly with the word “Yes” it would ruin the rest of my speech, so I am going to keep reading through my notes. However, the hon. Member, having asked that question, will understand the direction of travel.

The Minister was pointing at himself, I think noting for the House that he of course has responsibility for all those organisations. He will know, from our Committee perspective and the role that Parliament has in the oversight and scrutiny of the Minister’s performance and that of his Department, that we can have capacity challenges. Other Committees have the same problem: the Culture, Media and Sport Committee covers 42 agencies and public bodies, while the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee covers 33, and so on. The Bill before the House, which I welcome, is a great example of an agency being given new powers, a wider remit, more work to do and the job of taking ever more wide-ranging decisions, but there is nothing in the Bill about enhanced accountability and oversight of the CMA. The challenge there is that we have to get the balance right.

Parliament will want the CMA to be effective in its core duty of promoting and delivering competition. In our evidence session yesterday, there was an interesting tension about whether we deliver effective competition by regulation and intervention, or by deregulation and getting out of the way. I think that illustrated the interesting tension between oversight of the Competition and Markets Authority and its independence. While the regulator must take clear decisions based on its legal duties and the required technical assessments, what will Parliament think if, over time, a number of interventions taken together paint a picture of the UK as not being a good place to start, scale up or exit a business? How will we know in this House if that is the case, and how can regulators be held to account for the impact of their decisions over time?

This friction came up again only today. We took evidence yesterday on the Microsoft and Activision case, which is a major intervention by the Competition and Markets Authority, and I understand the Chancellor has said this afternoon, about the Competition and Markets Authority, that

“I do think it’s important all our regulators understand their wider responsibilities for economic growth.”

If the regulator does not already understand that and if the Chancellor does not have confidence in the regulator, we have a problem. What view should Parliament therefore take in the context of this Bill going through the House?

Clearly, independent regulators should not be interfered with by Parliament in making their day-to-day decisions. Parliament should be crystal clear that it is not our job to take those decisions. Expert regulators should not be told what they should do or think by, with the greatest respect to many colleagues in the House, generalist Members of the House of Commons. However, with increased powers and responsibilities—not least following our exit from the European Union, where there was inbuilt enhanced scrutiny in the European Parliament of these decisions—it is crucial that this Parliament steps up to provide the enhanced accountability required.

In short, the right to exercise independence and the requirement to be accountable are not mutually exclusive. As we have heard, there is a certain cross-party support for this position and an increased demand for reform, but there is not much in the Bill or from the Government that I have heard to facilitate that. There have been suggestions, which I generally support, that either we have enhanced capacity and resources for existing Select Committees to do more work in holding regulators and arm’s length bodies to account for their day-to-day work, or that we set up a new specialist Select Committee that takes on the job of having oversight of regulators across Whitehall. Some people will be concerned by the suggestion of additional Committees, either because of the perceived need for regulators to have to engage, inform and appease parliamentarians on a day-to-day basis and the amount of time that may take, or because of the influence that lobbyists may have on a fixed number of parliamentarians on the Committee tasked with oversight of the regulator.