Asked by: Chris Bloore (Labour - Redditch)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether his Department plans to integrate a distributional analysis of essential household expenditure into the formal Autumn Budget Tax Impact Assessments.
Answered by Torsten Bell - Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury)
The Government has no current plans to integrate a distributional analysis of essential household expenditure into the formal Autumn Budget Tax Impact Assessments.
HM Treasury routinely publishes distributional analysis of the impact of government policy across the household income distribution alongside fiscal events. The most recent published analysis, accompanying Budget 2025, set out estimates of the impact of tax, welfare and public service spending decisions on household incomes across the household income distribution. The focus is on policy choices, including those made in fiscal events.
The analysis showed that, on average, households in the lowest income deciles will benefit the most from policy decisions as a percentage of net income and that increases in tax will be concentrated on the highest income households. On average, all but the richest 10 per cent of households in 2028-29 will benefit from policy decisions.
Asked by: Chris Bloore (Labour - Redditch)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of Company Share Option Plans in incentivising workforce retention in the manufacturing sector.
Answered by James Murray - Financial Secretary to the Treasury and Paymaster General
The Government offers four tax-advantaged employee share schemes. These support business growth by aligning employee and shareholder interests, incentivising employee productivity and supporting recruitment and retention.
HMRC publishes annual statistics on the uptake and use of tax-advantaged employee share schemes, including the Company Share Option Plan (CSOP) scheme.
In addition, qualitative research into three of the tax-advantaged share schemes was published in 2023, which included consideration of CSOP uptake with different sectors. This is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/share-schemes-evaluation
Asked by: Chris Bloore (Labour - Redditch)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what recent assessment he has made of the potential impact of the £100,000 adjusted net income threshold for childcare support on Effective Marginal Tax Rates.
Answered by James Murray - Financial Secretary to the Treasury and Paymaster General
The Government recognises that childcare is a significant expense for many families, and we remain committed to ensuring that parents can access affordable, high‑quality provision that supports them to work and provide for their children.
At Autumn Budget 2025, the Government announced that the Department for Education will lead a review of childcare provision. The aim of this review is to simplify the system for both providers and families, making it easier to access support and enhancing the overall impact of the Government’s childcare offer.
Asked by: Chris Bloore (Labour - Redditch)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment his Department has made of the potential impact of common bond geographic restrictions on the asset scaling capability of credit unions.
Answered by Lucy Rigby - Economic Secretary (HM Treasury)
The Government is committed to supporting the growth of credit unions, recognising the important role they play in promoting financial inclusion, providing affordable credit and supporting regional economic growth.
To support this, the Government has committed to increasing the cap on the maximum potential size of credit unions with a locality based common bond from 3 million to 10 million people. This change will be delivered through secondary legislation, alongside further changes being made through the Financial Services and Markets Bill to modernise the common bond framework and support credit union growth.
Asked by: Chris Bloore (Labour - Redditch)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if his Department will make an assessment of the feasibility of publishing an annual report on the net fiscal contribution of migration.
Answered by Torsten Bell - Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury)
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) is the Government's official forecaster responsible for assessing the UK economic and fiscal outlook.
In producing their economic and fiscal forecasts they consider migration levels amongst a wide range of factors.
Asked by: Chris Bloore (Labour - Redditch)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment his Department has made of the potential long-term fiscal impact of social housing construction on Universal Credit housing element expenditure.
Answered by Emma Reynolds - Chief Secretary to the Treasury
The Government is providing the biggest boost to social and affordable housing investment in a generation through a £39 billion successor to the Social and Affordable Homes Programme. On 25 August, the Government confirmed initial allocations of £9.58 billion to support the delivery of more than 73,000 social and affordable homes across England, with nearly two-thirds of those homes for Social Rent.
Asked by: Chris Bloore (Labour - Redditch)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many small boat arrivals were recorded in each year between 2016 and 2024.
Answered by Anna Turley - Minister of State (Home Office)
Small boat arrival figures are published on .GOV.UK. The following table details small boat arrivals between 2018 – 2024.
Method of entry | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 |
Small boat arrivals | 299 | 1,843 | 8,466 | 28,526 | 45,774 | 29,437 | 36,816 |
In relation to pre-2018 figures, the Home Office does not hold sufficiently complete or quality-assured data on small boat crossings. Small boat crossings were not recorded as a significant route of entry before this point, and recording arrangements were not designed to support the reporting and analysis undertaken today. Published small boat arrivals data therefore begins in 2018.
Asked by: Chris Bloore (Labour - Redditch)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment her Department has made of the trends in the operational costs of processing small boat arrivals since July 2024.
Answered by Anna Turley - Minister of State (Home Office)
We are committed to making irregular migration to the UK via small boats untenable, and arrivals are 43% lower this year. Since the election we have reduced ongoing operational costs of processing small boat arrivals through delivering efficiencies in our capabilities, including through delivering better value for money contracts supporting day to day operations.
Asked by: Chris Bloore (Labour - Redditch)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the expenditure on asylum accommodation contracts was between the 2016–17 and 2023–24 financial years.
Answered by Anna Turley - Minister of State (Home Office)
Expenditure on asylum accommodation contracts is not published separately within the Home Office’s accounts. However, asylum accommodation contract costs are included within the published asylum costs in the Home Office Annual Report and Accounts, set out below.
Asked by: Chris Bloore (Labour - Redditch)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent estimate her Department has made of the number of hotels used for contingency asylum accommodation since July 2024.
Answered by Anna Turley - Minister of State (Home Office)
This government committed to end the use of asylum hotels this parliament and we are on track to deliver just that. We have brought the number of hotels down from 213 in July 2024 to fewer than 160 today, meaning almost 1 in 3 hotels open at the election are closed now.
The Asylum Hotel population peaked courtesy of the actions from the previous Government. As we started to grip the crisis, this has led to the population in asylum hotels falling by 50% in the last year and by 71% since the peak under the previous government.