Housing Benefit and Supported Housing

Debate between Brandon Lewis and Owen Smith

Wednesday 27th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Brandon Lewis]

My hon. Friend highlights the weakness of the Opposition’s position. They never look at the entire picture; they just want to make short-term political points.

[Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

Will the Minister confirm that the coalition Government, including the Tory party, spent £130 billion more than the previous Labour Government on welfare, breaching £1 trillion for the first time under any Government? Is that not a fact?

[Brandon Lewis]

The hon. Gentleman highlights the terrible mess that the coalition Government inherited. There was no fairness for hard-working taxpayers in such a system. There was nothing progressive in trapping people in lives without hope for a brighter future. The welfare system that his party left was broken, yet the Opposition have since then opposed every single decision we have taken to fix it. We have never heard from them proposals for alternative reforms, which can mean only that they oppose making any difficult decisions at all. It is easy to make noise, but much harder to do the right thing by the British people. We have seen one tactic time and again—scaremongering, exploiting the concerns of the very people they claim to represent, and playing politics with the lives of vulnerable people. Today’s debate is no exception.

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[Brandon Lewis]

rose—

[Owen Smith]

I will give way to the Minister if he will tell us what he is going to do about local housing allowance.

[Brandon Lewis]

The hon. Gentleman has managed to brush over the fact that his colleague who spoke earlier was a Minister who was involved in bringing in the spare room subsidy originally. Perhaps he could confirm that our affordable housing programme has delivered 6% more supported homes per year than did the Labour equivalent?

[Owen Smith]

It is interesting that the Minister did not ride to the rescue of his hon. Friend the Member for Lewes: he knows that she does not know what she is talking about on this subject.

The hon. Lady could have a further look at the Budget book produced by the Government for the same spending review, which shows clearly that £515 million is the saving anticipated from the cuts. The IFS goes further and says that by the time the cuts are fully implemented, the Government might save £1.1 billion. The largest part of that is the change equalising housing benefit with local housing allowance, not the one-year stay of execution that we have heard about today. Now that I have explained the position, does the hon. Lady wish to intervene?

Finance (No. 4) Bill

Debate between Brandon Lewis and Owen Smith

Wednesday 18th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Owen Smith]

No, the hon. Gentleman has just heard my answer. Throughout this Parliament, we would not have done that. No tax rate is set in stone for ever, but the question of whether we would reverse that decision is irrelevant because we are not in government. You lot are, and you cut it, but that would not have been our priority. Neither was it the priority of the present Chancellor just 18 months ago. When we introduced the 50p rate, we said that we wanted those with the broadest shoulders to pay the most, in order to deal with the global turmoil—[Interruption.] Members should just listen for a moment. When he was shadow Chancellor, the present Chancellor said that he agreed with us. In October 2009, he said that

“we could not even think of abolishing the 50p rate on the rich while at the same time I am asking many of our public sector workers to accept a pay freeze to protect their jobs. I think we can all agree that would be grossly unfair.”

I still agree with that.

[Brandon Lewis (Great Yarmouth) (Con)]

rose—

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[Owen Smith]

I am not sure that he is a dilettante, but I certainly think he does not pay terribly much attention to details. Had he paid attention to details, he would not have said what he did earlier today in Prime Minister’s questions, when he told the House that the 50p rate had raised next to nothing, only to have his Exchequer Secretary confirm just a few hours later that the actual amount it had raised was £700 million. By my way of looking at it, in a period of fiscal austerity £700 million is not nothing, it is rather a large chunk of change. Certainly the £3 billion that we might lose over an extended period is a very large chunk of change.

I do not know how the Government continue to argue that we are all in it together, when they have given a tax cut to 14,000 millionaires, or how—this is a political point—they can continue to say that the only thing that matters economically is to cut the deficit. They have chosen to forgo a lot of money next year. Let us call it £700 million, but it will be far more. They have done that to give a tax cut to millionaires, so how on earth can they continue to say that only thing they care about is cutting the deficit?

[Brandon Lewis]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it was a mistake to introduce a bonus tax that was not only a one-off, but that was set up so that it would encourage people to pay less and therefore reduce the amount of money going to the Exchequer, as opposed to introducing an ongoing levy that will continually bring money into the Exchequer and therefore benefit the country?

[Owen Smith]

One needs to consider these things in the round. We have heard repeatedly from the Government that they will take more money from the rich than the previous Government and do more on tax avoidance, but none of those claims stands up to scrutiny. The previous eight Labour Budgets did more on tax avoidance than the current Government—those are not my numbers, but those of the IFS. The notion that the rich in this country are paying five times more than the poorest is clearly fallacious.

[Brandon Lewis]

Will the hon. Gentleman clarify what he said because he has not answered my point, which was not about tax evasion? Does he agree that an ongoing bank levy will raise more money than a one-off tax would have done?

[Owen Smith]

If Labour had won the election, it may have changed its view and continued the bank bonus tax. The Opposition certainly believe that Government ought to impose a bank bonus tax in addition to the current levy—[Interruption.] Well, the bonus tax was introduced for a one-off period, but I think a Labour Government would have continued it based on our priorities and values that we described in respect of the 50p rate. We would not have thought it right at this juncture, in a period of fiscal austerity, either to give a big benefit to the wealthiest individuals or to ask the wealthiest corporations to pay a lesser amount.

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[Brandon Lewis]

rose—

[Owen Smith]

I shall keep going for a moment.

That is before we consider the actual tax cuts being introduced in the year-on-year reductions in corporation tax and the other changes to the controlled foreign companies legislation.

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[Owen Smith]

At the risk of stepping off-piste again and incurring your wrath, Sir Roger, all I would say is that that is another example of this Government’s incompetence. A year ago they were trying to squeeze the oil and gas companies by introducing new taxes on them. Then the Government were lobbied like billy-o for a year, and what have they done? They have effectively reversed the position. They have introduced a slightly different measure, but bluntly, they have taken money from one pocket and put it back in the other. If the Government had been a little more competent, if they had shown a little more foresight and if they had thought things through a little, as they so clearly have not done with this desperate Budget, they might not have made those mistakes.

[Brandon Lewis]

To return to the bank levy, the hon. Gentleman has referred again to the potential reintroduction of the bank bonus tax. Bearing in mind that the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling) said that it could only ever be a one-off, is the hon. Gentleman saying that the previous Chancellor was wrong, or will he say how many times something has to be reintroduced before it is no longer a one-off? I am just curious.

[Owen Smith]

I am saying that Chancellors have to keep things under review. In a period of fiscal austerity such as we are in right now, I am confident that a Labour Chancellor—particularly one as knowledgeable and shrewd as my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling)—would have found ways to try to exact a fair return and a fair set of receipts for the Revenue from the bankers, who, we must all remember, were complicit at least to some degree in some of the problems that we have faced over the last few years.