Income Tax (Charge)

Debate between Catherine West and Ed Miliband

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.

Environment and Climate Change

Debate between Catherine West and Ed Miliband

Wednesday 1st May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton). Her eloquent words on climate change show that the Front Bench’s loss is the Back Benches’ gain and this House’s gain.

The tone of this debate has been largely good-natured and about shared objectives, and that is important. This debate matters, and the emergency matters, because, contrary to what the Secretary of State implied, we are not doing nearly enough as a country. It is true that we have made a lot of progress in relation to the power sector, but 75% of the gains we have made overall since 2012 have been in that sector alone. The latest report of the Committee on Climate Change in 2018 says that emissions in the building sector, the agriculture sector, the waste sector and the fluorinated gases sector have been flat for a decade.

The emergency matters because it says to not only the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs or other Departments—the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is also on the Front Bench—but the whole Government that this matters to everyone and that this is not just another issue we have to deal with, alongside all the other issues we face. Every issue has to go through climate change and what we do about it. It is the whole basis of our politics for generations to come. I hope that the Secretary of State will support the emergency, because it will focus minds in the Government.

I do not want to speak for long, but I do want to talk about political persuasion and in particular about how we carry the public with us on this journey. Nice words were said about me, and I am grateful to both Front Benchers for that, but the truth is that I feel a sense of guilt. I feel a sense of guilt that I have not done more on this issue and that I did not do more when I was leader of my party. I talked about the issue, but I did not do more.

It is bad thing that in the 2015 TV debate, which I do not like to recall too much, not one question was asked about climate change, and that tells us something about the fact that Brexit—it is bad enough, given how it sucks the political oxygen out of all the other issues—is not the only reason why this issue has not been more salient, or rather that it goes through peaks and troughs. I think that the reason is that this is the ultimate challenge for politics, because the decisions we make now will have impacts in generations’ time, but less so today. The electoral cycle, if we are honest about it—and we respond to our voters—is five years, or perhaps less, not 20, 30 or 40 years.

[Catherine West]

I make a very quick intervention just to say that my right hon. Friend does not need to apologise, because he did write the emissions trading scheme when he was very much part of a Labour Government beforehand.