Protection from Redundancy (Pregnancy and Family Leave) Bill

Catherine West Excerpts

3rd reading
Friday 3rd February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

I am proud to bring this Bill to the House today. It is good to see the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) here and I thank him for all his engagement with the Bill since he came into post; it has been a very good working relationship and I am grateful to him for all his efforts and support. I also want to take the opportunity to say how grateful I am to his predecessors, the hon. Members for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), for Loughborough (Jane Hunt) and for Watford (Dean Russell), all of whom have been incredibly helpful and provided important support in the Bill’s early stages. I also want to take the opportunity to pay tribute to the officials at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, who have done an excellent job, as have the Clerks in this House; their work has instrumental in ensuring that we got to this point today.

It is also good to see hon. Members from right across the House here this morning. I thank colleagues from across the House who have previously contributed and helped us to get to this point. I think we are all in agreement that despite everything that has happened in this place in the past 12 months, everyone has put their shoulder to the wheel and worked together to ensure that the Bill has made it to its Third Reading. This Bill has enjoyed strong cross-party support. I am determined to ensure that we maintain that good work today and the Bill is sent on its way safely to the other place, where the noble Baroness Bertin will take up the baton. She has been a strong tribune for women and I know that the Bill will be in very safe hands.

Today, we have a precious opportunity within our grasp to make a real difference to more than 50,000 pregnant women and new parents each year. Many of us here know all too well the trials and tribulations of becoming a new parent. Everything can be a worry: how quickly or slowly the newborn is hitting milestones—breastfeeding, rolling over, sitting and crawling. A never-ending list of questions is racing through one’s mind: “Why are they crying? Why are they not crying? Is that bottle that I have put through the steriliser four times clean?” A lot of these worries are about issues beyond our control, but today we have the chance to alleviate some of that anxiety by ensuring that one thing new parents are less worried about is whether they will have a job to return to after taking parental leave. We are all aware of the challenges facing families today amid a cost of living crisis: rocketing childcare costs; a scarcity of affordable housing; high inflation; and job insecurity.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech and I am delighted that his terrific Bill is already on its Third Reading. Does he accept that not only is there an important family side to this Bill, but, with the economy having its troubles, we are also seeking to encourage people to maintain their life in work with this Bill? So not only is it family-friendly, but it is going to give a spur to the economy.

[Dan Jarvis]

I am grateful for that intervention and I completely agree. My hon. Friend makes an important point. We have tried hard to craft this piece of legislation in a way that, as my hon. Friend says, is very much family friendly, but is also friendly to businesses and employers. We have huge productivity challenges in this country, and certainly the business owners who I talk to in Barnsley, in South Yorkshire and beyond believe in the importance of investing in their workforce. That is good for the employee, but it is also good for the employer.

We have worked hard to achieve the right balance. One of the ways in which we can demonstrate that balance is that we have support from those representing workers—the trade union movement—but also the support of the CBI. I am particularly proud of that. We have been able to find that sweet spot we always wanted: to be family friendly and support women in the workplace, but to do so in a way that is also helpful to businesses.

Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill

Catherine West Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 24th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

It is a pleasure to speak to the Government’s amendments to the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill. I know that all hon. Members agree with its core ambition to bear down on the kleptocrats, criminals and terrorists who abuse our open economy and, critically, to strengthen the UK’s reputation as a place where legitimate business can thrive.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

I want to say at the beginning of proceedings how fantastic it is to have a Minister who deeply cares about the topic—we are expecting significant movement on amendments. On the UK’s reputation, Transparency International and other non-governmental organisations do important work in this area, including finding out about companies such as the Azerbaijani kleptocrats’ laundromat that had a slush fund of £2.9 billion, and its malign influence particularly on the Ukrainian war. Does he agree that it is not a moment too soon for the Government to tackle such issues?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The hon. Lady gives me a significant reputation to live up to. She is right, however, that some of the things that we have seen, not least with regard to the Ukraine war, have been the catalyst for much of this overdue legislation. We are keen to bring forward exactly the measures she refers to.

The Bill contains a very considerable package of measures to deliver on our ambition. It includes the largest reform of the UK’s company registration framework in 170 years. Crucially, it provides transparency, exactly as the hon. Lady says, and affords and enables scrutiny. There are significant penalties—indeed, criminal penalties—for those, both individuals and their advisers, who seek to avoid that scrutiny. It also provides significant new powers for law enforcement and the private sector to protect the UK from fraud, international money laundering, illicit Russian finance and terrorist financing.

It is for this reason that I want to record my sincere thanks to all the right hon. and hon. Members who served on the Public Bill Committee. We had very constructive, frank and open debate—which I think should be welcomed on both sides and from both different perspectives—and really diligent scrutiny of the Bill. Their work has very much helped us to ensure that this legislation does not fall short of its important aims, and indeed has been improved as a result.

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[Seema Malhotra]

I thank the hon. Lady for her comments. She is alluding to a theme that goes through the Bill: we cannot expect this to suddenly be the answer to everything, so we have to keep it under review and to have the mechanisms for that review, including effective information coming to Parliament.

The Minister has just spoken to the Government’s amendments. We are pleased to see that there have been some concessions following Committee. The Government have tabled about 25 amendments that remove powers to exempt directors from identity verification requirements. That is a huge concession by the Government to a central question asked by us in Committee about the completeness of the legislation, the extent of the Secretary of State’s powers and the challenge required for parliamentary oversight. The extent of these powers risked riding a coach and horses through the defences against economic crime that we are seeking to build through the legislation. But even after those amendments, a number of Henry VIII powers are left unchecked. I am sure that will be debated in the other place.

The next welcome concession is Government new clause 15, which imposes a duty on the Secretary of State to prepare and lay before Parliament reports about the implementation and operation of parts 1 to 3. That significant step, however, is surprisingly weak as regards setting any expectations of what Parliament would expect to see in the report. That is why my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) and I tabled new clause 16, which has cross-party support and is similar to amendments tabled by colleagues in Committee. Under our amendment, the purpose of the report would be clearer and stronger. We would have an annual report with an assessment as to whether the powers available to the Secretary of State and the registrar were sufficient to enable the registrar to achieve her objectives under proposed new section 1081A of the Companies Act 2006, which is inserted by clause 1.

[Catherine West]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech and pushing for even better legislation. Does she agree that that particular proposal would lead to a change in culture, which is what we really need? That annual reporting system would lift the game and improve the culture of the way business is done in this regard.

[Seema Malhotra]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The amendment would do two things. It would change the culture of how Parliament operates and plays a role in tackling economic crime. It would also shift the culture based on our expectations of business, how business should behave and how directors should be held to account, as well as shift the culture in Companies House and the work of the registrar. For all those reasons, it is an important area for development.

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[Catherine West]

Does my hon. Friend believe that this afternoon’s debate has covered the important area of phoenix companies and consumer protection? There is clearly a role for the registrar in detecting fraud and ongoing recidivism.

[Seema Malhotra]

That is part of what we seek, but there is further to go. I know that amendments tabled by other colleagues also draw on the issue of phoenixing and the importance of preventing it. Checks on directors of companies that have been struck off and measures addressing the ease of administrative restoration are tools that we could employ to tackle phoenixing and protect customers along with other businesses and creditors.

Amendments 105 and 106 draw on a wider theme, which is that what we want in the Bill is duties, not powers. We want to see a clear outcomes focus. We want to legislate for things to be done, not for the potential for the registrar to do things—a very important distinction. First, amendment 105 specifies that it should be a duty, not a power, for the registrar to allocate a unique identifier to a director. Secondly, amendment 106 states that the registrar should ensure that the same unique identifier is used for that person in

“any other entries they have on the register under the same name or a different name.”

Thirdly, through amendment 108, we want to reduce the risk to the integrity of the register by tightening up the arrangements for the confirmation statement. A proposed director must confirm in writing either that they already have a unique director ID with the register under the same or a different name and state what it is, or that they do not yet have a unique ID. If an individual chooses to go by a different name, or may have dual citizenship and use a different passport for ID, or may even have a fake birth certificate suggesting a different date of birth, how will the registrar know? This is a protection for the system in the event that an individual is subsequently found to have lied about their identity.

I suspect that, broadly, we are in the same place when it comes to what is intended to happen through this legislation, but it would be helpful if the Minister could confirm that by answering a couple of questions. First, does he expect the registrar, under the arrangements that he has proposed, to issue a unique ID to each new director and to existing directors on the database, and should we understand that, for all intents and purposes, the power will operate in practical terms as if it were a duty? Secondly, in a search on the Companies House website, will clicking on a director’s name bring up all their directorships, linked internally by the unique ID, even if they go by different names in different companies? Perhaps the Minister would like to intervene in response to those two points.

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[Catherine West]

My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does she agree that the US model is worth looking at? Law enforcement agencies that are successful get a percentage of the proceeds of their success back to recycle to employ more people to do more enforcement. It is a virtuous circle, whereas our rather hands-off approach is perhaps less effective.

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right and I will refer to that a little later in my contribution.

There is another report on HMRC’s supervision of company service providers. It looked at 672 of the company service providers and only 95—14%—were found to be compliant with checking that AML regulations were enforced by their members. More than half—352—were non-compliant, but only a third of those 352 were ever deemed to be non-compliant and were pursued through the courts; they received an average fine of £8,000.

This litany of ills demonstrates why we need to sort out the supervision of company service providers before we enact the legislation, and that is why our amendments in the name of the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness are so important. We need to be certain that the company service providers have been properly checked and supervised before we let them loose on verifying data for the new register.

The Treasury is already reviewing the supervision mechanism. I saw just recently that consultation on that review will start in the second quarter of 2023. What I am saying to the Minister is: where there is a political will, there is a political way. There is absolutely no reason why the review should not be completed and implemented concurrently with implementation of the legislation contained in the Bill. By putting that in the Bill, we would make certain—with my greatest love for every civil servant in the country—that that gets enacted. If we do not do that, we will end up with another dud register. We are giving him and the Government a pragmatic and practical suggestion that will simply make the Bill work as it is intended.

Prepayment Meters: Self-Disconnection

Catherine West Excerpts

Thursday 15th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Anne McLaughlin]

I absolutely agree on that. I should thank the hon. Lady, because I have a ten-minute rule Bill on this matter and she spoke up for it last week in allowing it to continue in this place. I will come on to that. It is so ironic that the poorest people are paying the most. We get to pay less, yet we are paying in arrears.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady is making an excellent beginning to her speech. Does she agree that what we see from the energy companies is the “rocket and feathers principle”, where the prices skyrocket when they first come in but then they drop like feathers? The gas price has actually gone down, so why are some people paying up to £4,300 for their energy just on their gas bill when that far outstrips what one would be paying on a direct debit or other form of payment for gas?

[Anne McLaughlin]

Yes, I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady on that. The whole system is wrong and crazy. Let me go back to what I was saying about the people who are just disconnected for their £5 or £10 of debt. When they are disconnected, they cannot boil a kettle or heat a room. They cannot even heat an electric blanket. They cannot wash their clothes, have a shower or watch TV—they cannot even charge their phones. In some cases, which I will come on to, they can no longer operate disability aids—that is an absolute disgrace. It means that I, as a well-paid MP and someone who is clearly able to pay their bills, could stop paying them just on a whim and, unlike someone on a meter I could then run up hundreds or perhaps thousands of pounds-worth of debt to my energy supplier before being disconnected, whereas people on prepayment meters—the ones with the least money—are limited to a debt of only £5 or £10 before they are cut off. It is that inequity that I want addressed.

I do not believe the Minister will tell me today that this situation is fair. I would be amazed if he did try to argue there was anything equitable about this treatment. So, as I have said in the past, I am hopeful, verging on confident, that the Government will support what I am calling for here. As I said at the start, the Government need to do it quickly—they need to do it now. I know how slowly things move in this place, but I also know the Government can move quickly when they need to, and I argue that they really do need to. I am desperately worried about people out there. I am worried that people are going to die—people who would have lived, had this awful practice been outlawed.

However, I want to start by talking about a very important group of people who do not fit that category, because they are not going to live for much longer regardless of the result of my campaign. I have been speaking to Marie Curie about its “Dying in poverty” campaign and have heard about the people it is supporting: people who return home after a lengthy stay in hospital or a hospice, try to top up the prepayment meter and discover that the large sum they have topped up by just is not enough.

Why is that? Because every day they were in the hospice, they racked up daily standing charges. They were not there and they did not use gas or electricity, but they have a big debt to pay off before they can even access heat or light. Worse, their daily standing charges are higher than our daily standing charges. When we consider that the average cost of an electricity bill can rise by 75% for someone who is terminally ill, it is doubly unfair. Would any of us want that situation for our own families? Of course we would not—and if it is not good enough for our families, it is not good enough for anybody’s family.

I want to run through some of my main concerns about these meters. Those on prepayment meters are generally on them because they are on low income and most are given no choice. Citizens Advice described the process as follows: people have a period where they are unable to pay their bills and their energy supplier is obliged to negotiate a repayment plan that takes in to account their ability to pay for the debt and their ongoing energy consumption. Because of the higher costs, however, many people do not have enough money to cover their ongoing usage, let alone pay towards arrears. They begin to fall behind on payments and, to recover that money, the supplier gains entry to their home and installs a prepayment meter.

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[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

It is a real pleasure to follow the passionate speech by the hon. Member for East Lothian (Kenny MacAskill), and I could not agree with him more. Despite our constituencies being so different, there are a lot of similarities, because in Hornsey and Wood Green, we have far too many people who are doing it tough this winter and are stuck on these dreadful prepayment meters, where the standing charges seem to change overnight without any advice and the tariffs are particularly high. Members across the House have emphasised the social inequity of this situation.

I pay tribute to the chief executive of the citizens advice bureau in my constituency, Mr Daniel Blake, and all his volunteers, who do an enormously positive job to help people in their hour of need. I pay tribute to my constituency caseworkers and all those throughout the House who work tirelessly day and night to assist our constituents when they have no heating, hot water or electricity. That is increasingly common, despite the fact that we have had sub-zero temperatures for at least 10 days now. I also pay tribute to the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead), and his team, who do an excellent job in briefing MPs on the situation with prepayment meters and are trying to research and provide up-to-the-minute advice for our constituents.

I broadly want to mention the dreadful customer service. I offered to assist my constituency caseworker with some work this week, because she was rather snowed under. It took 55 minutes for E.ON to pick up the phone, and this is probably what a lot of our constituents are experiencing; because they are at the bottom of the pile, they do not get heard. Other constituents have written to me telling me that they have not yet received their energy rebate vouchers. Since October, my constituents should have been receiving their £66 per month to help with soaring bills, yet they have not had any help. One of my constituents told me:

“I have been trying to get my voucher, with no success. I have tried calling British Gas several times and have been on the phone for hours but no one picks up. I have no other way to tell them that I have tried. I am now worried I will lose this voucher!! We are entering December now.”

This is in sub-zero temperatures. I have written to the energy companies about this, and I am still awaiting a response. The MP hotline is also failing to respond on time. We know that some of the most vulnerable people in our society use prepayment meters, and many are having to pay more for their heating and pay back any debt.

In fact, the cost of energy is not just an issue for those who are on prepayment meters. I noticed in yesterday’s press that there is even an MP who is feeling so out of pocket that he has had to claim over £3,000 from the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority because he is not able to afford his energy bill. This is obviously affecting a great many people. I would imagine that with our income, we are in a slightly better position than others. I will not mention this person’s name, because I have not checked with his office. This is a wide-ranging issue facing many in society, but the people we should be worried about in terms of the public health implications are, as my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) and others have said, people who either cannot reach their prepayment meter to adjust it or who have significant disabilities.

I look forward to hearing what the Minister says about the vouchers, because it has been well covered in the press and I hope it has been the subject of discussions with the private companies. He traditionally has been a great champion of consumers, and I hope he has not lost that zeal since he got into the bureaucracy; I am sure he has not and is just as passionate. I am sure that he listened to the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin) and will take immediate action this afternoon, so that we can all go and have our Christmas break knowing that our constituents will not be left at Christmas and new year dealing with suppliers who fail to pick up the telephone, MPs’ staff pulling their hair out because they are not getting replies through the MP hotline, or standing charges that flip up without any advice at all.

As many will be aware, energy prices have soared in the last year. One constituent told me:

“It’s impossible to understand how families will manage to find thousands of pounds extra a year and the anxiety throughout the country is almost palpable. My rent (private sector) will go up significantly and I will almost certainly have to move as a result”.

People on prepayment meters have to pay a daily standing charge, and their electric and gas costs are significantly higher. To give one example, I received a text saying that it cost £12 for a 20-minute use of hot water—that is for four young students who are trying to survive, have their showers and get themselves ready for their studies. Extrapolated over a 12-month period, that is over £4,300 just for gas, which powers the heating. This is clearly completely unacceptable and desperately needs an urgent review.

I am extremely concerned about the high cost of prepayment meters and the impact on our constituents. Another constituent told me:

“I’m a single pensioner living alone and I’m honestly scared by what I’m reading on my prepaid meter. Prices aren’t going to come down in the future—they’ll only rise”.

What is being done to help our pensioners, many of whom are in damp and cold homes all day? We saw the tragic loss of life of a tiny child to damp and cold in the last month. We must redouble our efforts to put more pressure on the energy companies, so that they take immediate action for the most vulnerable on prepayment meters who are paying over the odds and in advance for energy that they have not even used.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making some excellent points, and this debate is incredibly important, which is why I signed the original motion. Does she agree that it is wrong for people who are already in arrears and need help with their bills to have to pay about 2% more, which I think is estimated at £84 between October and December?

[Catherine West]

The hon. Gentleman is right to emphasise that point. He lives on the cold Gloucester plain, which can get very chilly and snowy at this time of year, so he will understand the desperate anxiety that many people in this situation are feeling. I hope the Minister will take urgent action on this, because it is not a situation that affects people in only one part of the country. It is often people in privately rented accommodation, and these prepayment metres are literally taking all the money they have.

I want to briefly mention the inherited debt problem, which some Members will be aware of. When a tenancy changes, new tenants move in and inherit the debt from the tenants who were there before. In some cases, they put their £10 in thinking that it will keep them going for a couple of days, not realising that they are carrying the debt of the tenants before. That £10 then disappears, and they find themselves having to put in £50 or £60—which they may not have readily accessible, given all the costs that go with a new tenancy—and negotiate with a completely new provider. There has to be a way of regulating that more and getting the regulator to be much more proactive and agile in these situations, so that we do not have this inherited debt problem and new tenants do not have to suddenly find hundreds of pounds just so that they can switch on their heating. I hope that the Minister will address that problem in his remarks.

Will the Minister also comment on the practical difficulty when a supplier changes? I am aware of a constituency case in which service was very disrupted when a prepayment meter switched from npower to E.ON, which eventually got on top of the mess it inherited from npower, but the tenants had a very difficult time with only basic information. What can be done to clarify and explain the enormously costly standing charges and unit cost prices currently being charged to those in the most vulnerable housing in the UK?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the SNP spokesperson.

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[Dr Whitehead]

I thank the hon. Member for emphasising her optimism; let us see how we get on this afternoon.

Hon. Members have added to the debate positively by setting out where we are on prepaid meters and a number of issues relating to their present operation, as well as where we need to go for the future. About 15% of UK households are on smart meters for electricity and 14% are on prepaid meters for gas. That may well have gone up since those figures were last calculated. As hon. Members have mentioned, about half a million warrants to place people on to prepaid meters have been successfully passed through the courts since the beginning of the covid pandemic in 2021, so the figure is likely to be higher.

The situation is, frankly, a snapshot of the way in which the have-nots in our society are treated, as opposed to the haves. We need to keep that centrally in mind, because overwhelmingly, a substantial number of people in vulnerable circumstances, on lower incomes and in poorer housing are on prepaid meters, whereas people who are not in those circumstances have accounts. As the hon. Member set out, that means that there is a two-tier arrangement on energy debt. On one side, those with accounts can manage and work their way through very large amounts of debt. On the other side, those on prepaid meters simply cannot do that, for the simple reason that as soon as they go over the credit limit, they are out—their meter has, effectively, been switched off—and they have no more energy. Let us be clear: from the point of view of energy supply companies, that is the most efficient way to get rid of the problem that they might face, under other circumstances, of having to pursue customers for debt. Companies can simply put people on prepaid meters and they then self-disconnect, ending the problem for the energy supply companies.

As my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) and other hon. Members said, in a recent court case in the north of England, about 496 warrants were agreed in a very short period for people to go on to a prepaid meter despite what they wanted to happen. Some people like the way that prepaid meters operate, in terms of balancing the family budget, but I would suggest that they are in a minority. Most people are on prepaid meters because they have to be and their circumstances do not allow them to do otherwise. However, it is not really the case that the courts can just rubber stamp warrants. It would be very difficult to rubber-stamp 496 warrants in three minutes—that was the speed at which the warrants were recently dealt with in that particular court case. A conveyor belt of warrants for prepaid meters is currently going through the courts, adding up to the enormous figure that I mentioned.

As hon. Members have said, there is already a differential with prepaid meters. The have-nots pay more and the haves pay less on tariffs, standing charges and so on. That is remarkable because, prepaid meters are a very good thing for the cash flow of energy companies and for getting money in up front, which I would have thought would lead to lower rather than higher charges for prepaid meters.

[Catherine West]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this is yet another example of rip-off Britain?

[Dr Whitehead]

That is right. We are allowing a group of customers to be ripped off much more easily than other people in the energy sphere. It is good that we have shone a light on that this afternoon, because this needs urgent action. For the short term, I hope that the Government will say that there should be a moratorium on further warrants to put people on to prepaid meters, at least for duration of the energy crisis. That would at least mean that, as hon. Members have already said, we would not be putting more people into a situation in which they face impossible choices in their household management. In a number of instances, people literally cannot reactivate their systems when they have been disconnected, or have self-disconnected. They simply do not have the wherewithal to get back on the prepaid meter horse, as it were, because—among other things—the standing charges continue to ratchet up.

People are also paying grossly inflated prices when they are not the direct bill payer. I am thinking of people in park homes and in various other circumstances where the landlord has a meter-charge arrangement that bears no relation to what that should be, were the money to go into the meter. So, given the energy crisis, there are a great many areas in which the Government must take action in the near future in recognition of the fact that people with prepayment meters are at the coalface when it comes to energy poverty.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Kevin Hollinrake)]

Let me begin by thanking the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin) for the positive way in which she introduced this important and sensitive debate. Like her, I have always adopted the principle that we get more with sugar than we do with salt, so I do whatever I can to protect the customers about whom she is concerned, particularly those with prepayment meters. As she said, the problems among that cohort will become worse during the winter, notably the cost of living crisis and the cold weather—nowhere more than in Scotland, she said, although north Yorkshire also gets fairly cold at this time of year, as, indeed, do other parts of the country: my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) mentioned parts of his own constituency where people are being affected.

The Government entirely share the hon. Lady’s concerns. It is of course important to bear in mind suggestions, such as those made in today’s debate, of ways in which to keep our rules and regulations and processes under review to ensure that these vulnerable people are protected. However, we are able to provide robust protections and financial support for people in those circumstances, and I shall say more about that shortly.

The problems of debt create great anxiety, and that is another element that requires consideration. At times in the past I have been in debt, both personally and in my business life, and I know how anxious it can make people and their families. For some years I co-chaired the all-party parliamentary group on poverty, whose aim was to reduce the impacts of poverty and which considered matters such as the poverty premium, which is relevant to the issue of prepayment meters.

Ours is not the only country that has these meters; they are used around the world, with the purpose of managing debt. The one thing that people in circumstances such as this need to be able to do is budget properly. I think it was acknowledged by the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) that prepayment meters have a role in helping people to budget, and can reduce the chances of their getting into debt or their debt increasing, making their position even worse.

[Catherine West]

I think the whole House would accept that advice on debt and debt management is crucial, but when a student household is spending £12 for 20 minutes of hot water, which, extrapolated over 12 months, is £4,300—and that is not even a dual fuel bill; it is a single bill—there is a problem, and it has nothing to do with debt management.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

That is definitely an issue. We need to ensure that people have access to fair deals, and I shall say more about that in a moment.

As was acknowledged by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead), one of the difficulties involved in not using a prepayment meter is the fact that the only alternative would be court action, which could potentially increase the debt and affect someone’s credit rating, which is the least desirable outcome.

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[Kevin Hollinrake]

That is a very good point. We are happy to listen to evidence from right across the House on different things that might be done, but clearly the most important thing is to ensure that support is targeted at those most in need. If there are better ways to do that, then we should certainly be listening. I would be very happy to talk to my hon. Friend at any point about any suggestions he might have. I know these issues are very important to him, so I am very keen to continue that conversation.

[Catherine West]

Will the Minister give way?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I am sorry, but I am already past my time. I will have to conclude.

As Members will know, the Government have stepped in through various different mechanisms, including the energy price guarantee, energy bills support scheme and the energy bill relief scheme for businesses, with about £75 billion of taxpayer support for those areas.

The hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green talked about inherited debt, which is a very interesting point. We have not had evidence of that. If she has evidence of that and could write to me, I would be very interested in taking that up for her.

Before I conclude, I want to touch on standing charges, which is a very important point. We want to ensure that the market is as competitive as possible, so that people can access fair deals and we do not get the poverty premium that I mentioned earlier. Under Ofgem rules, charges must reflect the cost of delivering the service. It can be the case that there is a higher cost to suppliers for operating supplies for those on prepayment meters. It is important that we continue to look at that to see whether there might be better ways to ensure those customers are treated more fairly.

To conclude, the Government are listening to consumers and industry. We are providing a substantive support package via the energy bills support scheme and the energy price guarantee. Ofgem, the regulator, has set robust regulatory protections for consumers on prepayment meters. We are committed to providing the support and protections necessary to ensure that consumers and industry will thrive in the decades to come. [Interruption.]

I will conclude by talking about the vouchers. There is a problem in terms of vouchers. About 60% of people have managed to gain support through vouchers. We have written to suppliers on this particular matter. We need to improve the communication between suppliers and customers to ensure that take-up is higher. We believe that the take-up will improve over future weeks, but we are definitely keeping that under review and are keen to ensure all that support reaches households where it is intended to do so.

Employment and the High Street

Catherine West Excerpts

Wednesday 7th December 2022 Westminster Hall

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered employment and the high street.

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Cummins, and it is fantastic to see so many Members here. Members will be pleased to hear that I will not make too long an introductory speech, so that we can squeeze everybody’s constituencies in.

Last weekend, we celebrated the 10th anniversary of Small Business Saturday, and I know that many colleagues will have spent the day visiting small businesses. In my constituency of Hornsey and Wood Green, we have Muswell Hill, Crouch End, Myddleton Road, Stroud Green and a number of other wonderful high streets bustling with activity. However, traders tell me that times are tough: changing technology, changes in consumer behaviour, and soaring energy costs and business rates are just some of the issues facing retailers. As part of my planning for the debate, the excellent House of Commons Chamber Engagement Team asked high street customers and small business owners about their town centres. I thank the 344 contributors, whose voices I hope to amplify today.

High streets are not just a place to shop for things we need; they are at the heart of our communities, and the small businesses on them are the lifeblood. They provide space for people to socialise, work and share ideas, and to catch up with old friends and make new ones. The pandemic taught us many painful lessons about what we value, one of which is undoubtedly how bereft our communities become when our town centres are no longer available to us.

[Virginia Crosbie (Ynys Môn) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Lady for securing this important debate and for allowing me to intervene. The sudden closure of the Menai bridge by the Welsh Labour Government has decimated high streets in Porthaethwy and Beaumaris, and businesses in surrounding areas on Ynys Môn, during one of their most lucrative retailing seasons. Does the hon. Lady agree that the Welsh Labour Government should have invested in that bridge so that this catastrophe did not happen, and that they need to do much more than just offer free parking to help employers protect vital jobs on the high street at this vital time?

[Catherine West]

I believe that the free parking that is on offer from the Welsh Government is not necessarily replicated in England, so there are swings and roundabouts with different regions. I am sure the Minister will know every detail about where free parking is available and where it is not, but that may well be something that my constituents now ask me for, because parking is quite a contentious issue in my local authority area.

Going back to the essay question—that of high streets—2.8 million people are employed in retail across the UK, and in London, our high streets are home to 41% of all businesses in the city. Small businesses employ 16 million people in the UK and account for two thirds of UK private sector employment, yet so many high streets are on their knees after 12 years of staggeringly low growth, and independent and small businesses have been hit very hard. The BBC reported this week that there were 9,300 fewer retail outlets in March 2022 than in March 2020, and a recent London Business 1000 survey showed that three quarters of London businesses are feeling less confident about the UK economy over the next 12 months. That is why today’s debate is so important. We need to act now if we want to secure the future of our town centres and the 5.6 million small businesses across the country that are vital to our economy.

Developments in digital technology and the growth in online retail have completely transformed how people shop. Between 2006 and 2019, as we are all aware, online retail increased from around 7% to 19% of the market, while physical shops lost 13% of their market. The pandemic rapidly accelerated that trend and, sadly, many high streets have never recovered. In the week to 2 July 2022, overall retail footfall in the UK was 19% lower than the equivalent week in 2019. We saw how agile and innovative the retail sector can be when many shops moved online; however, that has not been enough to keep stores open, and businesses are begging for more support.

In 2014, the Centre for Retail Research predicted that the growth in online retailing and change in consumer demand would result in one in five UK stores closing within five years. Sadly, its predictions were correct, yet nearly a decade after they were made, the Government have failed to undertake any meaningful action to keep our high streets alive. One respondent, Trevor, described his local high street as follows:

“Depressing beyond belief. The life and vibrancy have completely disappeared”.

Shops are not the only businesses leaving the high street. Post offices, such as the branch inside WHSmith on Wood Green High Road, and bank branches have also been closing at an alarming rate over the past decade. We must consider the damaging effect of losing these other high street services on small businesses and the welfare of our senior citizens.

At least 50 bank branches have closed each month in the UK since 2015. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about that; he used to mention it quite a lot when he was on the Back Benches, so I hope he will have some solutions now he is in that powerful position. As colleagues will be aware, HSBC announced another raft of closures this week. Some 8 million adults struggle to cope in a cashless society, with 1.9 million reliant on cash for nearly every transaction they make. Small businesses dependent on local bank branches to safely deposit cash will be forced to go cashless if more branches close, further isolating those who only use cash.

Banks are closing disproportionately in lower-income areas, taking their ATMs with them, shutting off free access to cash and quality financial services from those who need them most. At Prime Minister’s questions today, I was pleased to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) ask eloquently what the Prime Minister would do about the closure of banks and the lack of access to cash. I hope the Minister will address that burning question.

Shop closures are also costing jobs. Some 1,001 shops closed between January and July this year, resulting in more than 13,000 job losses. Those closures will be among the 43% increase in insolvencies in the last 12 months alone. Retail employees are facing huge instability at a time when so many people are struggling to pay their bills and put food on the table.

As the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers —USDAW—has pointed out, retail is one of the few sectors that offers employees the flexibility to balance their work alongside caring commitments, yet many small businesses report that they cannot afford to pay their staff a wage that reflects the increasing cost of living. That is true for one small hair care business in my constituency, Afrocenchix, which told me that, although it would like to pay its staff more, that would mean increasing the cost of its products at a time when customers are tightening their belts. Many small business owners told me that although they struggle to pay themselves, they would go out of business if they put their prices up.

Another matter of acute concern for small businesses is the effect of soaring energy costs. The Government claim to have recognised that, but they have failed to offer a sustainable long-term solution to provide businesses with the assurance they need. For food-producing businesses, which use a lot of energy, skyrocketing energy bills are extremely worrying. The chair of the Crouch End traders group, who owns a bakery in my constituency, told me that increases in product prices are a likely outcome of soaring energy bills. At a time when customers are tightening their purse strings, he believes that this is a perfect storm threatening many traders. The owner of the oldest family-run artisan bakery in Manchester replied to the House of Commons survey to say that their biggest fear was the totally unsustainable increase in energy costs. I hope that the Minister will address this issue when he speaks.

Where is the sustainable support for businesses terrified about their energy bills? Where is the support for businesses to become more energy efficient, to reduce bills and help the planet? One trader told me that

“offering grants for solar panels would help a lot of businesses,”

adding that

“a lot of us want to be greener but can’t afford the initial capital outlay.”

Labour would keep energy bills down by establishing a publicly owned generator, GB Energy, to guarantee energy security and a stable supply of affordable power. We would make Britain a clean energy superpower by 2030, making sky-high energy bills under the Conservatives a thing of the past. There would be an exciting role for small businesses to play, with so many of them wanting to be part of the solution.

The most pressing issue threatening disaster for our high street shops, which was mentioned by every trader I spoke to, is the major burden of business rates. I am sure that the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra), will outline Labour’s position on business rates, which I think is quite an exciting offer that would even out the disproportionate impact on small businesses compared with huge online retailers.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Kevin Hollinrake)]

Will the hon. Lady set out what Labour’s policy is? So far, I have heard only that it will scrap business rates; I have not heard what it will put in their place to raise the £22.5 billion a year that we raise in England.

--- Later in debate ---

[Catherine West]

I thank the Minister for his unusual intervention on the opening speaker. I am confident that Labour’s plan to even up the balance between basic high street stores and the huge digital giants will bring the solution that so many of us are desperate to see. Labour is committed to rectifying that imbalance. I know that the Minister is concerned to help business, yet many respondents to the House of Commons survey reported that the planned revaluation of business rates from next April will do the opposite. Labour is putting forward a plan for a root-and-branch replacement of the business rates system, and I hope that the Minister can be equally ambitious.

To help small businesses that are struggling now, Labour would look again at the value of properties, assessing the impact of the burdens on them and what we can do about that. As the Stroud Green traders group in my constituency pointed out, in London it is rare for a high street property to be eligible for business rates relief. We look forward to a reassessment of the threshold for relief. If it were, say, £25,000 rather than £12,000, that would help very small businesses in London and other cities that pay such a high level of income on their rateable value.

There is scope to reinvigorate our town centres, and I welcome the work of local authorities, including the work that my own Haringey Council does under the leadership of Councillor Ahmet and cabinet business lead Councillor Jogee. I also pay tribute to Diane Southam, our departing head of economic development, to Ian Cruise, the town centre manager, and to the business improvement district. We are lucky to have a BID, which I am sure many others in the House will know about, that combines the “cleaner, greener, safer” theme and makes the high street much more appealing and attractive to shop in.

I urge the Government to look at creative ways to help our town centres by introducing community, arts and cultural events to attract people to the area. Last week I had the pleasure of meeting the founder of the RecordShop, a community interest company based in Wood Green mall. It is run by a youngster, Mary, who set up the RecordShop to help young people in Haringey and surrounding boroughs to gain skills and experience. It hosts open-mic nights, events and markets. Her vision for the RecordShop shows us that there is room for a renewed relationship with our high streets, and I hope that the Minister will consider this proposal positively.

The warning from small businesses could not be more stark: failing to act now to reduce the onerous costs that they face will result in thousands more closures and job losses, even between now and next April. Supporting high street businesses must be an integral and immediate part of any Government strategy to promote economic growth, as it is in London, where the Local Government Association recognises the importance of thriving high streets in its economic framework for growth. Labour has an urgent recovery plan, underpinned by a hardcore industrial strategy for retail, ready to go. I urge the Minister, once he has heard the pearls of wisdom from the shadow Minister, to take immediate action to work collaboratively to improve our local high streets.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mrs Cummins, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) for securing the debate.

If we were in York today, we would see that it is buzzing, which is no accident, because York BID—the business improvement district—along with the York High Street Forum and Indie York, which represents 65% of businesses in York, have worked so hard. York is thriving, but they are worried about what will come in the new year, and they certainly do not feel comfortable about that, not least given the challenges ahead. Energy is still an issue, but we are also still working through this recovery, which will take some time.

Today, I will focus my comments on some of the innovation that is happening in the high streets of York. We have the StreetLife project on Coney Street, which is looking at the future and considering what York’s high streets are going to be like, including the opening up of a new high street on the riverside that will be a new opportunity for businesses to invest. Currently, a centre is open that people can come into, and it is wonderful seeing children playing in what used to be a high street shop. People can come and just take in what our city is about.

I want to focus in particular on the Guildhall project. We are looking at new skills, businesses and opportunities in the city. The University of York has made a significant investment, as a university for public good, working to take a 30-year lease. Already, we are looking at 160 jobs coming into the city centre, giving it a new life. The university says:

“A crucial part of the University’s civic mission as an institution for public good is to support local business and community networks, and as we rebuild and recover from the pandemic the Guildhall will enable us to provide more expertise and training to help our regional businesses and charities to recover, innovate and grow.”

The Guildhall project is really exciting. The 15^th-century Guildhall now has offices around it, and Eagle Labs and the University of York have come along to support new entrepreneurs in our city to accelerate their businesses and grow them, bringing new businesses into our city centre with office space, conferencing facilities, a café and co-working. There is a great opportunity there, with training and networking for existing businesses, and business leaders coming into the heart of our city. This is how we are revitalising our high streets: with the businesses for the future and the new communities for the future.

[Catherine West]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on her positive tone. Combined with her ideas on housing, which she has talked about in the House, what she describes could be a really fantastic way forward for York, with the university, the housing and the vibrant high street.

[Rachael Maskell]

I thank my hon. Friend for her comments. Of course, we are building that vision for the future of our city and it is coming to life.

There is not only the Guildhall project. Spark is a community interest company in our city centre that has now set up in old shipping containers, no less. It is a real community space where there are start-ups, support, events, a food bank, a kids’ cinema kids—you name it, it happens at Spark. It is an exciting place.

We need to ensure that the kinds of initiatives I have mentioned get the support that they need to be able to grow and create the next generation of our high streets. That is why I look to the Minister, while he has the pen in his hand, to think about how we invest in the future of our high streets. In particular, we should look at the investment funding pots that can be applied to, to ensure that we really give energy to these opportunities and see the businesses, growth and entrepreneurs flourish in the future, while ensuring that we build stability in our towns and cities for the years ahead.

--- Later in debate ---

[Catherine West]

I thank all the Members who have participated. There is a spot of light in the amendment to the Financial Services and Markets Bill around access to cash. However, the bigger picture does not offer an encouraging outlook: a 16% increase in business insolvencies compared with this month a year ago, and 11% more than in pre-pandemic times. These are troubling times, particularly for small businesses. The loss of jobs is likely to come through the closure of shops, banks and post offices, and the general lack of strategy from the Government. I hope we can have a further debate with a bit more substance to it, perhaps with a strategy from the Minister, not just an amendment to a Bill. I look forward to you being in the Chair for that, Mrs Cummins.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered employment and the high street.

Oral Answers to Questions

Catherine West Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[George Freeman]

The hon. Member raises an important point. We are committed to using our Brexit freedoms both on procurement and regulation to support UK industries. I will raise that issue with the Minister for Industry and Investment Security, who sadly cannot be here this morning, and make sure that she picks that up with the hon. Member directly. However, the answer is that we are totally committed to the UK steel sector and to getting the balance right between ensuring that we have open procurement and that we use Government procurement muscle to back our industries. They are not easy decisions to make, but we are very sighted on them to try to get that balance right.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

8. What steps his Department is taking to support small business growth.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Kevin Hollinrake)]

It is a delight to be part of a ministerial team of whom many members actually have a business background. We are for business because we are from business, and we know what it is like to lie awake at night worrying about how to pay the bills.

The reversal of the national insurance rise will save small businesses an average of approximately £4,200 a year, alongside the cut to fuel duty for 12 months and the energy bill relief scheme. The British Business Bank supports small and medium-sized enterprises to access growth finance.

[Catherine West]

From Muswell Hill to Myddleton Road, from Turnpike Lane to Hornsey High Street, we are celebrating Small Business Saturday in my constituency this weekend. There are two major concerns on the mind of small businesses. The first is the business rates expense. When will the Minister consider reforming it to help small business? The second is a wider question for business and trade unions about retained EU legislation, which is providing a lot of uncertainty in the business community and a drag on growth. When will the Government come out with a decision on that crucial issue?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s question, especially the part about Small Business Saturday. As hon. Members can imagine, I will be spending much of the day visiting small businesses across my constituency. I will also shortly be attending a House of Lords reception to celebrate the 100 small businesses recognised in the programme.

As the hon. Lady knows, in the autumn statement my right hon. Friend the Chancellor announced £13.6 billion of support for businesses over the next five years, reducing the burden of business rates for SMEs. Of course we all want to see reform, but simply announcing the scrapping of business rates without announcing any replacement cannot be the right thing, because it does not give business the certainty that it needs. That is the sensible reform that I think the hon. Lady should be grateful for.

Shale Gas Extraction

Catherine West Excerpts

Thursday 22nd September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

What we do with renewables is still going to leave us dependent, when the wind is not blowing and when there is a surge in demand, on gas. That is an important part of the strategy; we are building up our wind and nuclear supplies, and we have plans for more nuclear to come on, but for the transition we still need gas, which is what this announcement is about.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

Is the truth not more fundamental: when a party stands on a manifesto promise, regardless of what it is, it should stick by that? Can the right hon. Gentleman rule out today any link between the proposal that has been announced and any donations made during the leadership election?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Balderdash.

Edmonton EcoPark: Proposed Expansion

Catherine West Excerpts

Wednesday 9th February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to contribute to this debate under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) on securing the debate and on his outspokenness on this matter, as well as the work he has done on trying to achieve a solution with the Treasury. It is a pleasure to hear from my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), who has a record going back to the 1970s as a local councillor in Haringey; he is known for his work in the areas of recycling, cycling and generally standing up for a more sustainable planet.

It is also a pleasure to hear from the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on air pollution, my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies), who has talked about his outstanding work in Swansea West and beyond, responding to the challenges presented by COP26 and calling for us to be a bit more ambitious and a bit braver on incinerators. This feels like old technology, and that is why I am pleased that Haringey was the only borough that voted to pause and review when it came to the vote on the bid for the scheme.

I want to put on the record our memory of seven-year-old Ella Kissi-Debrah, who tragically died from air pollution poisoning, as was found subsequently. Her mother, Rosamund, who spoke in this House on health and safety day, has spoken powerfully about how she took Ella’s case to the coroner to have the way that she passed away looked at. Ella was the first person to be formally found to have passed away from air pollution in the UK, and that was put on her death certificate posthumously.

I also want to put on the record that we in this House are all aware that air pollution does not affect us all equally. Pregnant women, babies and children, older people, people with lung conditions and those living in the poorest areas and in ethnically diverse communities are particularly at risk. I want to mention my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor), who worked as a health professional before coming into this House, and also my Haringey colleague, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), who has led on a number of issues to do with ethnically diverse communities and their exposure to pollution, as well as the high numbers of our constituents who suffer from lung conditions. We know that 88% of people with a lung condition are affected by air pollution, and 58% of people with asthma have their condition triggered by air pollution. That is the context of today’s debate.

When the plans were first signed off, when the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) was the Mayor of London, the solution might have been okay, but that was a long time ago and things have moved on. It feels as though the project has not had the COP26 test applied to it, and now would be a good time for the Government to look again and challenge whether there is more that can be done. In particular, with the introduction of the green bonds, this might be a good time to explain exactly how they work—there does not seem to be a proper explanation of that—and to see how the project could introduce some best practice around the green agenda.

We are in a climate emergency, and our constituents want change. They want to recycle more and they want our polluted air to be cleaner. They are anxious that the size of the incinerator will mean there is an incentive to produce more waste in order to feed the associated district energy network. They are concerned about the environmental impact of incineration and the emissions that that process creates. They want 21st-century solutions to the management of waste that do not harm the health of residents or our environment.

Our constituents know that it is the poorest areas that pay the heaviest price, and there is real disappointment about the fact that the request for a pause and review was unsuccessful and the contract has now been awarded. It is vital that the design properly recognises the advances that we all expect to see in carbon capture and storage so that it is ready and equipped to take full advantage of them. Haringey’s council leader has urged the North London Waste Authority to bring forward the carbon capture and storage element of the plant so that it is operational as soon as possible to reduce CO₂ emissions, and I fully support her in that goal.

It is important to say that it is very difficult for local authorities to be innovative when they have had cuts of up to 50% to their budgets. Collectively, the eight local authorities’ budgets have been cut back enormously since 2010. The Government have failed to fund local authorities properly for the past 11 years and failed to be ambitious in their approach to waste. I urge the Government to work with the North London Waste Authority and our communities to radically increase recycling levels and to meet and beat the Mayor of London’s target of 50% by 2030.

The other measures that the Mayor of London has introduced around expanding the congestion charge and the ULEZ are painful for many of London’s motorists. It seems that the project that we are debating could make a very big difference with one installation, so it is a pity that we have not looked at its impact on making our air cleaner, as we desire to do.

It is vital to recognise the environmental and health impacts of incineration, but also to make sure that we do not simply push the problem out of London by transporting the capital’s waste to other parts of the UK or overseas. As other Members have mentioned, it would be unenviable to see waste from other parts of London coming back to London because there is capacity in this incinerator. Not only would that be bad for the environment, but it would be socially unjust.

I will conclude with this: all of us in this House care deeply about cleaner air, and about the new information we have regarding the impact of air pollution on asthma sufferers and others with lung conditions. I hope that the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead), and the Minister will work to ensure that we belatedly get the best possible outcome for our north London constituents.

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Chingford and Wood Green—

[Catherine West]

Woodford Green.

[Dr Whitehead]

Sorry, the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith). My office companion is my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West), so that is on my mind all the time, as it should be. I need to get my nomenclature absolutely straight.

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green on having secured today’s debate. The debate appears to be about a specific incinerator in a specific place with specific proposals for its extension, but it encapsulates much wider questions: how do we deal with our waste in modern times, and what are the best ways of dealing with it and, indeed, the energy that might come from it? By examining those wider questions, we loop back to the best thing to do with the North London Waste Authority, and the Edmonton incinerator in particular.

The first thing that is important in addressing this modern debate is to recognise—as my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) has correctly pointed out—that although we have been talking about waste this afternoon, we should not be talking about it in this way, because the vast majority of waste is actually a resource. In the context of the modern circular economy, the idea that we place a material that we have used into a stream, and then it is gone out of the system one way or another—it used to be buried; now it is incinerated—is clearly not appropriate if we regard that waste primarily as a resource. The duty of authorities dealing with waste should be to make sure that as much of that resource as possible can be recovered for use elsewhere, one way or another.

Economic Crime

Catherine West Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dame Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House recognises the devastating impact economic crime has on individuals, businesses, families and society; considers it unacceptable that the cost of money laundering alone exceeds £100 billion a year according to the National Crime Agency; is concerned that in the wake of the Pandora Papers leak there is inadequate transparency, regulation and resources in place to effectively tackle this severe problem; and calls on the Government to bring forward legislative proposals to tackle economic crime as a matter of priority, integral to which are provisions to introduce a criminal offence for failure to prevent economic crime, reform Companies House and introduce a beneficial ownership register for the overseas owners of UK property.

I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for selecting the motion for debate. I am also grateful to all those who supported the application, and I particularly thank the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) for working with me on it. The reason why we have secured such wide support for our debate is the growing recognition, concern and understanding of the enormous problems we are facing as a result of economic crime.

The Government produced an economic crime plan in 2019, but as the period it covers comes to an end next year, I think we should all reflect that that plan has not resulted in a successful crackdown on economic crime, but instead we have witnessed frightening and real growth in such crime. Far from bearing down on such wrongdoing, we have seen it mushroom across our economy, infecting our society, our security and our public sphere.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

I put on record my tribute to my right hon. Friend for her work yesterday on the Finance (No. 2) Bill, dealing not just with the bigger subject, but with the detail of the Bill’s clauses. Does she agree with that, although it is our economy, in a globalised environment we should worry about economies abroad, including the Russian influence? I refer specifically to the recommendations of the Russia report, which deal with a number of financial instruments.

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

One of my growing concerns is that economic crime and the laundering of money into the country—particularly, one suspects, of a lot of Russian money that has probably been stolen from the Russian people—is having an influence right through society, and I will reflect on that later in my contribution.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

Again, I am pleased to see such unity across the Chamber today. I completely agree that if it is not made a criminal offence and there is no direct liability on the individuals concerned, it simply becomes a business cost and will not change the behaviour or conduct of those big corporations. I concur with the hon. Gentleman.

I was going to use the example, although I probably do not need to, of the Serious Fraud Office’s failure to successfully prosecute the Barclays bank case. As many observed at the time, that case showed that under our existing law the bank could not be held accountable for the actions of its employees, and the chief executive could not be held to account for the actions of the bank. Nobody could be held to account. These reforms would change that by introducing a vicarious liability condition and bringing in a “failure to prevent” clause. The Americans do it; they have much tougher laws that hit the corporations with criminal, civil and regulatory penalties, and they secure many more resources.

Our second ask is about starting the work to strengthen our enforcement by reforming Companies House. Creating a public register of beneficial ownership was an important move when David Cameron was our Prime Minister, and a huge step forward. In one year, the register was accessed more than 2 billion times, but the data, as we all know, is often inaccurate or incomplete. Global Witness did an analysis in 2018 that showed that 10,000 companies declare a foreign company—mostly linked to a secrecy jurisdiction—as the owner of the company, 335,000 companies had no beneficial owner and 9,000 companies were controlled by beneficial owners who each controlled more than 100 companies, so they were nominee beneficial owners.

It takes £12 to set up a company—it is ridiculous. That is why so many UK companies keep appearing in all the leaks we get of wrongdoing. Our lax enforcement leads to tragedies worldwide, and we need to do something about that. That is why these reforms could be funded by raising the fee. If we quadrupled the fee and charged 50 quid to start a company, we would raise a huge amount of money that we could put into reforming Companies House and ensuring that it had unique identifiers for the beneficial owners, and powers to investigate and interrogate.

My third proposal, which I will deal with very quickly, concerns the introduction of a property register. Buying a property through a shell company registered in the British Virgin Islands is the easiest way to launder money into the UK. There are very few good reasons for maintaining anonymity, but plenty of bad ones: not just money laundering, but avoiding stamp duty, inheritance tax and other taxes.

It is difficult to put a number on that, although many people have tried, but I will share one fact with the House. All London boroughs have had an increase in their electoral register over recent times; the only borough that has not is the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, the reason being that such a large number of properties there are bought through shell companies by foreign owners that there are fewer residents there today than there were 10 years ago.

[Catherine West]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that that distortion of the London housing market is to the detriment of all our constituents? I note there are other hon. Members present who represent London seats. Across the UK, but particularly in London, where we see such extreme homelessness and overcrowding of children, that really needs to be addressed.

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

Absolutely. That is another really important point; hiking up the prices at the top of the market obviously has an impact right through the housing market here in London. Some terrible instances have been uncovered in the various leaks. The Crown Estate, for example, sold 120 of its properties to companies registered in 14 different tax jurisdictions, demonstrating again the way in which the system is abused. Those are people such as Vladimir Chernukhin, who owns a residence in Regent’s Park through a company registered in the British Virgin Islands, or James Ibori, a Nigerian governor who was prosecuted here for fraud and money laundering, and who had property in Hampstead and Dorset. In the recent Pandora Papers, the Crown Estate bought a £67 million property from the Aliyev family, who are the well-documented abusers of their rule in Azerbaijan.

In 2015 we were promised a register of beneficial ownership for properties owned abroad. There was a consultation in 2016 and a draft Bill in 2018. It was mentioned in the Queen’s Speech in 2019, and again in the G7 meeting in Cornwall in 2021, but we still have not got a Bill, although it is my understanding that such a Bill has been written and is literally gathering dust on the shelf. The problem is enormous, and if we fail to act robustly it will overwhelm us. Economic crime is costing us our international reputation as a trusted and respected jurisdiction. If that trust goes, our ability to develop and grow our economy will be fatally curtailed.

Bulb Energy: Administration

Catherine West Excerpts

Wednesday 24th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

One word that the hon. Lady did not mention was covid. As a consequence of covid, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has put £400 billion into the economy to support the very businesses that she refers to. Many, many of the businesses in Scotland have been supported by that.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

Just since the Budget, several companies have gone under. Will the Secretary of State inject some urgency into this matter and look again at the suggestion, now that the Treasury has the freedom to do so, to lift the VAT burden both on households and on small businesses, so that we could have an immediate lift that will happen in this country regardless of what is happening to global prices?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

The hon. Lady will appreciate that matters to do with taxation, VAT and all those things are subject to the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s departmental policy. She will also know that there is urgency about this. I speak to Ofgem every day. We monitor the market extremely closely. We are looking at how the supplier of last resort process is working—it is working reasonably well. As I have said, we are looking at the special administration regime with regard to Bulb.

Income Tax (Charge)

Catherine West Excerpts

Thursday 28th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)]

I will begin, if I may, by congratulating the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, as it is the first time that we have faced each other across the Dispatch Box since the birth of his new baby. Many congratulations to him. If he needs some representation to make sure that he gets his paternity leave, I am available to help.

I will begin this debate on a point of consensus. We have a Government who have been in power for 11 years. They have been 11 years of low growth, stagnant wages and falling living standards. I am old enough to remember when this characterisation of our economy was seen as controversial, but at his party conference, the Prime Minister said:

“We have had…10 years of flatlining wages”.

The question at the heart of this debate is whether the Government truly recognise the error of their ways. Does the Budget help to tackle the deep inequalities we face, including the immediate cost of living crisis? Does it support our businesses so that they can deliver the good jobs and decent wages that we need? And does it create the long-term partnership between the public and private sectors to create the jobs of the future, in particular in zero carbon? I am afraid that the answer on all three counts is no.

Let me start with the immediate cost of living crisis facing so many families. Less than 24 hours since the Budget was delivered, it is unravelling because of the chasm between the claims of Ministers and the reality faced by working people. Listening to the Chancellor yesterday, it was clear that he is living on a totally different planet. He told us that he would deliver an age of optimism, but when we take off the Instagram filter, all he offers is an age of stagnation: low wages, low growth, high taxes—more lost Tory years. These are the facts that the Chancellor did not tell us yesterday, but they have emerged this morning.

This morning, the Resolution Foundation said:

“Real wages are set to fall again next year”.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies tells us that, over the next year, a median earner will find their take-home pay falling by £180 a year in real terms. Paul Johnson, the director of the IFS, says that the outlook for living standards is

“awful… High inflation, rising taxes, poor growth keeping living standards virtually stagnant for another half a decade.”

In fact, the IFS estimates that, on the numbers published yesterday, real wages in 2026 will still be lower than they were in 2008. For all the boasts of the Chancellor, the Prime Minister and others, all that the British people are facing under their Government is squeezed wages and living standards, as far as the eye can see.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does he agree that, on top of the trend of low wages, it is doubly hurtful that working families will be faced with increasing electricity and gas bills, with no relief on that, rising food prices, and potentially a difficult Christmas, with possible supply shortages and a lack of supply of Christmas presents?

[Edward Miliband]

My hon. Friend is completely right and I will come to that point in a moment. The Government will no doubt have all kinds of excuses, but this is a sin of commission, not just omission, in the sense that the Government are actually doing things to make the problem worse.

The problem is that the Chancellor could not bring himself to admit any of this yesterday. Here is the issue: it is not just that he did not say any of this, but it is like the Government actually believe their own rhetoric, and the Budget is the result. Yesterday we saw raid upon raid on the living standards of working people: council tax hikes, hidden in the Budget document—not announced by the Chancellor; a stealth raid on the self-employed worth £1.7 billion over the coming five years—not announced by the Chancellor; and of course the national insurance hike on ordinary families confirmed.

Maybe I am a bit old fashioned in this respect, but let us remember that this is a direct breach of the promise that every Conservative Member made to their constituents at the general election. What did they call it in their manifesto? Alongside a picture of the Prime Minister—drawing on his long and unblemished record of truth telling and candour—it said:

“My Guarantee… We will not raise the rate of income tax, VAT or National Insurance.”

I look forward to them all explaining at the next general election why they have broken that promise. The hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) is nodding. Perhaps he would like to explain why they have broken their promise.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Kwasi Kwarteng)]

It is great to see you in the Chair again, Madam Deputy Speaker. I thank the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) for his congratulations on my becoming a father for the first time at the youthful age of—well, I will not say what my age is. I am pleased that that has happened.

I am also pleased to see the right hon. Member, in his usual way, give a comprehensive speech that lasted for nearly half an hour. The downside was that I had heard it all before. I was particularly gratified to see him at Prime Minister’s questions. It was great: a trip down memory lane. I remember being a humble Back Bencher, as he put it, when he did that same thing at PMQs. There was that same litany of doom and gloom, and it will prove no more effectual in 2021 than it did in 2015, when many of my hon. Friends were returned with enhanced majorities.

The Budget was an extremely successful occasion. It demonstrated clearly that there is continuing support for the economy. It demonstrated the immense, unusual and unprecedented interventions in the economy because of the dangers we faced from the global pandemic. The right hon. Member will remember that only a year ago people were prophesising that we would have record unemployment or early-1980s levels of unemployment. What happened? Because of the Chancellor’s interventions, well-crafted policy and the plan for growth, there was no employment disaster. Unemployment is very low by historical standards. The economy is growing faster than it has done for decades, and none other than the OECD says that the UK will be the fastest growing country among the G20 next year.

[Catherine West]

May I congratulate the Secretary of State on the happy news in his family? How many businesses does he think will go out of business this autumn because they owe the Government money from covid loans, cannot pay their energy costs and are worried about the weight that the increase in wages from the national minimum wage and national insurance contributions will put on their 12-month forecasts?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I thank the hon. Lady for her congratulations. However, I am surprised that she should express concern about the increase in the national living wage. I never thought I would live to see a Labour MP denigrate and decry that. We want to see a higher-wage, higher-productivity-based economy, and we are working hard to ensure that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I have to make progress. I know that hon. Members are springing up and down because they wish to make interventions, but I am sure they will be making speeches later in the debate.

We on the Government Benches understand what has sadly eluded the grasp of Opposition Members: we must create competition. We must back business and incentivise innovation in a free-market economy, not go back to a state-run, Soviet-style command economy.

The Labour party manifesto has been mentioned. I remember reading it. Like the right hon. Member for Doncaster North, I am somewhat of an insomniac—more so now, I dare say—so sometimes I have to read lots of these things. It said that we should get to net zero by 2030. As my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Dr Mullan) observed, even the unions that Labour is supposed to represent and that bankrolled it, rejected that proposal as completely unrealistic and destructive to our economy. That manifesto said not only that we should get to net zero by 2030, which is completely unrealistic, but that the state would own 51% of offshore wind farms. Imagine that. The right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) said that, as Chancellor, he would nationalise 51% of offshore wind. I remember speaking to the industry, and it said, “Why on earth would we want to own 49% of what the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington owns 51%?” It was a completely absurd and unrealistic policy. On the green agenda and the net zero agenda, the Government have far more to offer the country than a souped-up, half-heated, Soviet-style approach to solving what is a fundamentally difficult problem.

For one year—so far—businesses in the retail, hospitality and leisure sectors will get a 50% discount on business rates. That is why my right hon. Friend the Chancellor decided that the business rates system should be more responsive and agile, with more frequent revaluations taking place every three years. That is a good, positive step that will give much more flexibility to the system.

I am also delighted to reflect on how the Budget told a great story about innovation. Innovation is a huge driver of productivity and progress, and unleashing innovation is a fundamental duty for my Department and for me as Secretary of State. We have launched Help to Grow, which will drive small and medium-sized enterprise productivity. We have also started a new co-investment venture capital fund that will be used to drive innovation and provide scale-up capital for businesses in need of that. The Budget confirms the eligibility criteria for our new scale-up visa, which all businesses I speak to, and small businesses in particular, say they need help in pursuing. We will unlock greater private sector innovation. We are reforming research and development tax reliefs to support modern research methods and to focus our minds specifically on the problem and challenge of innovation. Increasing R&D investment to £22 billion will confirm the UK as a science and technology superpower. We must make sure our small businesses, which after all are the heart of the British economy, have the support they need, which is why my right hon. Friend the Chancellor strengthened the British Business Bank in yesterday’s Budget, increasing its regional financing programmes to £1.6 billion and expanding its coverage, helping innovative businesses across the country get greater access to the finance that they need.

[Catherine West]

I welcome the British Business Bank and the fact that it has a regional focus, but what advice does the right hon. Gentleman have for businesses that are still in debt due to the covid loans they are struggling to pay back and therefore do not want to take on any more debt?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

The hon. Lady makes a sensitive point. Nobody engaged in business wants to take on unsustainable levels of debt, but she will appreciate that the credit was offered in totally unusual circumstances; my right hon. Friend the Chancellor had to make decisions very quickly and we used the BBB to distribute that credit. No one is suggesting—not even anyone in the hon. Lady’s party—that the interventions and credit that was provided on good terms should not have been offered to many businesspeople. I am fully aware of the nature of the debt overhang and I am engaged with trying to think of ways of softening that, but the intervention was absolutely the right thing at the time. I must remind the House that many predictions of doom and catastrophe were mercifully avoided thanks to the timely and wise interventions of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor.

As well as supporting businesses, the Budget will protect the health, wealth and livelihoods of the British public. Under this Government, the proportion of people in low-paid work has fallen to its lowest level in 30 years. That is why I was so surprised to hear the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) suggest that an increase in the national living wage was something to be regretted.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Mundell]

Madam Deputy Speaker, it will not surprise you to learn that, when a fixed link from Scotland to Northern Ireland was proposed, SNP Members opposed it. They were absolutely and completely opposed to it. Now that it is confirmed that it is not going ahead, they are demanding the money instead. That is just so typical of their approach.

I want to see some of this £4.6 billion coming to the south of Scotland. Many important projects that are within the responsibilities of the Scottish Government could be carried out there. We do not have levelling up in Scotland. Instead, we have areas that are deprived of resources, as the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) has pointed out, and that continues to be so.

In relation to levelling up, I want to make what I regard as an important point to the Treasury, and I hope that it and other parts of the Government will take it on board. I welcome the levelling up funding and the approach of the shared prosperity fund and the community regeneration fund, but we have to acknowledge that smaller and rural local authorities and organisations operating in those areas are not always fully resourced to put in bids of the calibre that the Treasury and others are looking for. It is important, if we are going to proceed on this basis and achieve levelling up, that we do not allow only those who are the most professional at putting in bids and ticking the boxes in central Government to succeed. If levelling up and the shared prosperity agenda are to achieve what is being sought for them, we have to support rural and smaller local authorities and others in putting forward those bids. In that regard, I hope that the system can be changed.

I raise my second point in my capacity as the co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on nutrition for growth. Along with Lord Collins, the co-chair, and Congressman Jim McGovern, the chair of the House hunger caucus in the House of Representatives in the United States, I am writing to the Prime Minister and the President ahead of the Tokyo summit on nutrition for growth to ask the United Kingdom and the United States to come together and demonstrate world leadership in taking forward the nutrition agenda.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

I commend the right hon. Gentleman’s speech, particularly in relation to nutrition and the way those issues affect the developing world. Lord Collins has worked on global health, and particularly on malaria and other neglected tropical diseases. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that these are the key issues that we need to keep on the agenda? We welcome the announcement that there will be more money for this in two or three years’ time, but we must not lose the momentum that has been gained as a result of the historic role that the UK has played in that arena.

[David Mundell]

On this occasion, I am able to agree fully with the hon. Lady. I particularly commend the work of Lord Collins, who has kept these issues on the agenda in the other place.

The covid pandemic has unfortunately led to an increase in malnutrition, and hundreds of thousands—indeed, millions—more children are being affected by that. There is an opportunity to do something about it at the summit, which will take place in Tokyo after a year’s delay. I hope that the United Kingdom will be there at the highest level and make it absolutely clear that, along with the United States, we are renewing our commitments to nutrition. The spending review, on my reading of it, would allow us to do so, and I hope that that opportunity will be taken.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

It has been quite painful to sit through some of the speeches today and hear how negative they have been about a Budget that has been put together in incredibly difficult circumstances. It is entirely wrong just to pour negativity on it and to say that it is pork barrel politics when there are so many examples of Opposition right hon. and hon. Members whose areas are benefiting from this funding. I was pleased to see a poll in which over 50% of the public approved of this Budget and 17% disapproved. Those are very positive numbers.

What is crucial here is economic credibility. One of the problems that Labour has is a lack of economic credibility. A lot of that goes back to the note that was left saying, “I’m sorry, there’s no money left.” That is still in the minds of millions of voters up and down the country. The thing about getting economic credibility is the need to be open and honest about the fact that there are difficult decisions that have to be made. If the Opposition pretend that there are no such difficult decisions, then it will be very difficult for them to gain any kind of credibility.

[Catherine West]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Tom Hunt]

The Opposition can agree to every kind of spending pledge under the sun, whether it is saying, “We don’t want to cut international aid from 0.7% to 0.5%”, or whatever else, but at no point actually prioritise and say, “We think this is particularly important, so we will make up the money in this way.”

[Catherine West]

rose—

[Tom Hunt]

All we get when the Opposition vote against the increase in national insurance, say, is vague strategies about wealth taxes, so we do not get any detail about how much will be raised in what way. Yesterday, the shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer went on the attack against the independent schools sector as though that alone is going to start raising the billions of extra money we need to do. That is just typical Labour class warfare to no end whatsoever.

[Catherine West]

rose—

[Tom Hunt]

I am not going to take any interventions at the moment, okay, so stop trying.

In terms of the circumstances we face at the moment, the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) asked why we broke a manifesto pledge on tax. The key reason was the pandemic, and actually we spent £407 billion on dealing with the pandemic. That is why we had to do what we did. It was remarkable—the furlough scheme was absolutely the right thing to do, and it was incredibly impressive how quickly it was put together and it saved millions of people’s jobs. But when we were coming to end of that scheme, I was concerned myself about what it would do to unemployment. The suggestion that it could have been 12% was not unreasonable, and I feared that it could be around that level. The fact that it is 5% at the moment is a significant achievement. Regardless of our politics, every Member in this House should be really pleased about that and the fact that there are huge numbers of people in work, in a secure job, who we feared might not be. A lot of that is to do with the ingenuity of the Treasury, the Chancellor and his team. I thank them for that because it saved many of my constituents’ jobs.

On help with the cost of living, I very much welcome the decrease in the universal credit taper by eight points. The key thing about universal credit is that it was to try to ensure that it always pays to work—that work pays. Decreasing the universal credit taper by eight percentage points furthers that aim and saves some of the people on the lowest incomes a significant amount of money. That is to be welcomed. We should probably work to try to reduce it even more in future, but in a sustainable way that matches up with being responsible with our public finances.

Freezing fuel duty is also to be welcomed, as is increasing the national living wage. Apparently we are stealing Labour’s clothes—that is what I have heard—but I would like to think we are doing so in a responsible, sustainable way. It is absolutely right that as a party and as a Government we are single-minded about trying to do everything we can to support some of those on the lowest incomes in society. Many of those people are in my constituency. They are on lower incomes but want to work to get a higher income, and want the support to do so. There is a lot in this Budget that does that.

I am very passionate about the hospitality sector in Ipswich. We have some of the country’s best pubs, and we have some great breweries in Suffolk. The biggest cut in beer duty for 50 years is to be welcomed. I was one of the 100 Conservative Members of Parliament who wrote to the Treasury requesting that this happened. Only recently I was at the Belstead Arms, with its fantastic landlord Steve, who started the pub up in January 2010 and has got through a remarkably difficult period. He, for one, is very happy about this decision, as are the other 40 to 50-odd landlords in Ipswich, some of whom I will be visiting this weekend, but not too many.

The business rate reduction is also very welcome. It is one of the biggest reforms of business rates we have seen. It is not just tinkering; it goes much further than that.

Many right hon. and hon. Members will know that special educational needs are one of the things I feel most strongly about, partly because I myself had learning difficulties. I know I am a bit of a broken record in talking about that. I had dyslexia and dyspraxia. When I was 12, I had the reading and writing age of an eight-year-old. I was very lucky to get the support that I needed, so I am acutely conscious that a huge number of young people who are in the same position that I was do not get the support that they need. Not everything about special educational needs is about money, but a lot of it is, because most of the most powerful interventions we can make in special educational needs are resource-intensive. It is incredibly welcome that that has been recognised by increasing the special educational needs and disabilities budget by £2.6 billion over the next three years, with 30,000 extra special needs places. Yes, special schools are part of this, but better provision within a mainstream setting is part of it as well.

I see extra money for SEND as an investment, whether it is for prisons, where about a third of prisoners have some kind of learning disability—I reckon it is actually more like 50% if we diagnosed everyone who went in—or for children in care, over 50% of whom have learning disabilities. There is often pressure on families when their children’s needs are not met. Recognising that is incredibly important, and that is what the Government have done.

I want to finish by talking about levelling up and whether it is working for Ipswich. I think that in many respects levelling up is working for Ipswich. When some of my constituents heard about levelling up they feared that it was all about the north and the midlands. They were concerned that deprived parts of East Anglia would be forgotten—I actually mentioned that in my maiden speech. There are many examples of where the Government do recognise that it is not just about the north and the midlands. Ipswich has received £25 million from the town deals, and there are 11 discrete projects, many of them focused on skills. They are at the heart of levelling up and they make a massive difference to the lives of many of my constituents. We have had safer streets funding—in particular, for two parts of town with the worst problems of antisocial behaviour. We have a freeport just down the road in Felixstowe—one of just eight—which will hopefully bring forward 10,000 new jobs. We also have an opportunity area in Ipswich—one of only 12.

But there is one area where I would like to see the Government go a lot further. If we are going to sort out levelling up, we need to look at the way in which we fund our public services, and more specifically the funding formulas that lie behind the way in which those public services are funded, principally in two areas: education, particularly special educational needs; and police funding, where I do think Ipswich gets a raw deal. In Suffolk, police spending per head is £114.20 while in London it is £298, but we also compare very unfavourably with similar counties.

On SEND, there is a multi-academy trust with one school in Tower Hamlets and one school in Ipswich, and spend in Tower Hamlets is four times higher for children with mild to moderate learning difficulties, two and a half times higher for moderate to significant, and two times higher for significant to severe. It does not matter where it is—whether a child with a learning difficulty is in Ipswich, Birmingham or London, they are of the same inherent worth and value. There is no reason why random historical funding formula anomalies should mean that they get less funding and support per head than any other young person. That needs to be looked at.

I welcome this Budget. It is focused on the cost of living, focused on levelling up, and focused on allowing us to recover from an unprecedented pandemic.

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[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

It is a real pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), who made important points on the inequality that exists. Her constituency has similarities with mine. Indeed, as my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) said, an enormous number of people are still on benefit, yet, at the same time, the wealth tax list published by The Times shows that 23 more billionaires have made money just from the covid crisis.

We have not talked much about waste this afternoon. The debate has to be considered in the context of the cross-party investigation on the covid crisis led by my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier) and how much money was given out in a haphazard way. Had that money not been wasted, it would be available now to assist our constituents, who are feeling the pinch with autumn on its way and with inflation affecting food and fuel bills as well as clothing, shoes and everything that we purchase.

If my reading of documentation from the OBR and IFS is correct, there has been a 2% reduction in GDP as a result of the scarring from covid and a 4% reduction owing to Brexit. Trading with our European partners has gone down from about 63% to 60%. That may not sound like that much in percentage terms, but it actually represents quite a reduction in trade with our main trading partners. We face an autumn of many difficulties on many fronts—it makes one feel nostalgic for the last time we had a surplus Budget, which I believe was when Gordon Brown was Chancellor, which was quite some time ago. Since then, we have had deficit Budgets under Tory Administrations.

I want to highlight the increased tax burden on many people who do not earn very much money at all. The jobs tax increase of over 1% on employees and employers that will come in next April will lead to a sense of less money in the pocket. There is still much uncertainty at this time about covid and a question mark over whether we will need increased restrictions in the autumn. It feels like a bit of a gamble in terms of how much of a burden it is placing on working people to carry the can for Government mismanagement, waste and increased taxes.

Many hon. Members have mentioned the missed opportunity on climate ahead of COP26. We could have seen much more funding for basic measures: for example, we could have asked local authorities to retrofit homes and provide state-of-the-art new boilers. That could have provided the opportunity to train up the 180,000 workers we will need to install heat pumps. Our local authorities would have been grateful for the opportunity to do their bit; instead, they are still scrimping and saving, despite the small increase in local government funding. Much more could have been done.

We have the tax cut for flying between Manchester and Heathrow—should we be encouraging that in this day and age? When we look back at various green schemes—the green new deal introduced as a sort of payment on homes back in 2010 by Greg Barker, now in the other place, or the green homes plan, which ran out of steam—we see that time and again the Government have missed the opportunity to ask local authorities to deal with their own localities. Green schemes work best when operated at local level.

We all of course think day in, day out about the productivity puzzle. We know that, unless we spend more on education, we are not going to see long-term improvements in our economy. I welcome the work and report on early years by the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom), but I do not think £500 million is going to do what Sure Start did. Many of us have had a number of Sure Start children’s centre closures over the years and this is reinventing the wheel and too little too late.

The Chancellor talked yesterday about tutoring. I am a big believer in tutoring, but it often implies that the hours a young person spends in school are not productive. How do we use the hours when children and young people are in school in a better way? My survey of schools shows the teaching staff to be exhausted and morale to be quite low, and I hope that, after the pay review body does its work, teachers will get a proper increase for their daily work. Why does this need to be a question of either tutoring or increasing the time young people can spend in school? We should be looking at both.

Further education spending has been cut by 50% since 2010. I am pleased that there are some bootcamps and there are new and different ways to spend the apprenticeship levy, but we need to think much more carefully about what works and increase investment in training, career development and the whole area from early years through to FE and adult education.

Sir Kevan Collins, who was the education tsar under the Government, has written in today’s Times. He thinks that the £5 billion is only a third of what is needed to bring our education system up to the required level. We all want our workforce to be more skilled and the productivity gain that would bring, but if Kevan Collins, the expert who was commissioned to look into this, says this falls far short, we need to believe that and do more about it.

I am very proud of my busy London high streets, but I was sad that the Chancellor did not even mention the word “London” yesterday; it seems to have gone out of vogue but, as those of us who are based in our wonderful capital will know, we need quite a lot of levelling up ourselves in London. The high street in Wood Green, where I am the MP, has a number of people walking up and down but businesses say that, although there is plenty of footfall—people are still there—the amount they are spending has dipped right down. Since 2010, the number of transactions and payments to small businesses and the chains in our mall have dropped considerably. That reflects Institute for Fiscal Studies analysis showing we have had negative growth, or tiny bits of growth in our local areas. A lot of that is down to these patches where we have high unemployment and not much at all in our pockets.

Our small businesses are very disappointed that, despite promising it for years now, there was not a proper review of business rates. The Labour proposal to take more as a digital tax from Amazon and to top up small business relief is a neat solution and I ask the Government to look at that again. They are letting down small businesses, which are the lifeblood of all our communities.

We are experiencing problems related to lack of occupancy of shops on our high streets. I am particularly cross with the banks. The week before last, I presented a petition about the closure of the NatWest branch in Crouch End, and then, lo and behold, as I sat down we learned that the Lloyds in Muswell Hill is closing. Not only is that a terrible waste of the lovely space that those banks were taking up on the high street, but often there is no guarantee that they will replace those branches with an ATM—a hole in the wall—which means that people will not even stop to buy a sandwich and get some cash out at the cashpoint. That is the least the Treasury could be doing.

I believe that there have been hundreds of bank closures since 2015. I would like the Treasury to show a bit of muscle and go back to the banks and say, “Okay, you’re closing a branch, so what are you giving us back?” Why do we not make them work for the tax cut—the £4 billion—that they got from the Treasury yesterday and say, “In return, every time a bank is closed on the high street, put in an ATM so that at least we can get cash out and our high streets are not deserts”?

We know that many of our small businesses really do it for the love. I am thinking of small shops such as the Pretty Shiny Shop in Stroud Green ward and Dunns bakery in Crouch End. They are fantastic local employers —that is the thing. They often have young people working after school, or women whose caring responsibilities work around the different shifts. They are doing their bit to keep our high streets going, and I would like to see the Treasury respond in kind to keep them going.

I want briefly to talk about the vibrant restaurant sector, which will benefit from some of the minor adjustments that the Chancellor announced yesterday. I am very grateful for that. I could not quite follow all the changes to alcohol, I am afraid—he lost me a bit—except that I think champagne is going to be cheaper, but I am sure you know that, Mr Deputy Speaker; I am sure you were taking notes, as somebody who likes a tipple.

However, some people do not drink—let us not forget that—and we could have spent that time talking about something that mattered more, such as fuel bills, how expensive childcare is, and the fact that people who are carers and do a job do not get any recognition for that in our taxation system. There are so many more things that we could have spent time talking about. Instead, I understand that yesterday’s announcement was followed by a very funny outing to a brewery, where the wrong prop—the wrong keg of beer—was used. I am sure that the shadow Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden), will refer to that in winding up.

This has been an excellent debate. There is a lot that we have in common, but we face a number of challenges. I would like us to be much more focused on how we can help our constituents through this very tough and uncertain period. Autumn will lead to a Christmas of shortages, of very high fuel bills, of expensive food, clothing and shoes, and of looking at a very modest increase to the minimum wage, which could really be a living wage if we tried harder and made it a real £10 an hour. I hope that the Treasury will look again at making some announcements this weekend when COP is in town, so that we can be even more pleased to be in a leadership role there, and that it will look specifically at the role of local government in day-to-day measures to improve our environment.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

We are now going to move to the final Back-Bench contribution, so will any Members who have contributed to the debate please start to make their way to the Chamber for the wind-ups? Those will follow Mr Jim Shannon.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lucy Frazer]

The hon. Member makes a valid point and I absolutely recognise that, but the way to solve that problem is not to give a tax benefit to a large group of people who simply do not need it, but to give discrete, directed support to those who do need it. That is what this Government have done: the hon. Member will know that six weeks ago we announced £500 milllion to support the most vulnerable families when they absolutely need it.

Members from all parties mentioned the support for families and for family hubs and welcomed the measures in the Budget. I was pleased to hear the support from my hon. Friends the Members for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) and for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris). My hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Lucy Allan) made a good speech about how important it is to support struggling families, and I was interested to hear what my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich said about the importance of not only supporting young families financially—we have heard how important it is to support recent mums and dads—but giving them emotional security as well.

I was disappointed to hear the shadow spokesperson, the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South-East, speak about our lack of support for education, because we have invested significantly in education, not only in this Budget but in previous ones. This Budget provides a wide variety of support through the education system. We are increasing the core funding for schools, with an additional £1,500 per pupil, and providing catch-up funding, with an additional £1.7 billion bringing the sum up to £5 billion, In addition, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich said, we are increasing the funding for SEND provision, with an extra 30,000 places for pupils with high needs. Through our new Multiply programme, we are helping school leavers who did not get the maths skills that they ought to have got at school.

[Catherine West]

There are some really good measures in the education package, but does the Minister not accept that returning us to 2010 expenditure on education when we have more children to educate, a bigger population and a need to look at the workforce as well, does not really help us in terms of the productivity puzzle, which is key to making the Brexit challenge work?

[Lucy Frazer]

The £4.7 billion investment in core school funding will be welcomed by schools and will enable them to support their students over the coming years. I would like to take this moment to thank all those teachers across the country who have committed so much over the course of the past 18 months in very difficult and challenging circumstances. I know that, although schools are back, students have lost time and there is a huge amount of work to do. Our one-to-one tuition and other such measures will help with that. The mark of a good Budget is one that makes a difference to people’s lives, in many different ways, and I hope that this Budget makes that difference.

Let me turn now to skills. Supporting people does not just mean cutting their tax bill. If we want to build a stronger economy and spread opportunity, we need to do more to boost people’s skills. I have talked about education, but, in addition, we are spending £3.8 billion over the Parliament, with more hours learning for 16 to 19-year-olds, expanded T-levels, more traineeships, more Institutes of Technology funding for the lifetime skills guarantee, and a large increase for apprenticeships by the end of the Parliament. I was very pleased to hear the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) welcoming our boot camps, which are increasing skills for people across the country.

Every Government should aspire to provide greater life chances for future generations, but this Government not only have the ambition, but have already shown through their plan for jobs that we can level up and we will continue to do so with this Budget.