UK Economy

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 19th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Bim Afolami]

I thank my hon. Friend for pointing out once again what a brilliant champion he is for his constituency. I am sure his constituents have heard that comment, and that he will continue to make that point.

[Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Lordy, lordy! It is like listening to the Red Queen in “Alice Through the Looking Glass”, who invented six impossible things before breakfast! How on earth can we have confidence in what the Minister says when the UK Statistics Authority had to tell off the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott), for making false claims about tax cuts; when Evan Davis had to school her at length and she refused even to understand how wrong she was about debt falling as a percentage of GDP, when it is going up; and when the Minister himself actually said that the NHS accounts for 42% to 43% of everything the Government spend, when it is only 15%? Can he confirm one fact: these two years will see the biggest fall in living standards since records began? That is why people are going to vote the Government out, isn’t it?

[Bim Afolami]

I have already explained the Chief Secretary’s comments. In relation to my own, I was referring to current spending and not overall spending. I clarified that as well. Look, there have been difficulties for so many millions of people across the country and, as the hon. Gentleman knows, I have never sought to minimise that from this position or from any other position in the House. We have faced once-in-a-hundred-years challenges. The Government have faced them and taken the right action to deal with them. The cost of living support package is worth over £100 billion, to the tune of more than £3,700 per person. We have dealt with those challenges and we have a plan now to grow the economy to grow our way out of them. I am afraid that Labour Members and the Labour Front Bench do not have that sort of plan, which is why I would not make the assumption that he makes about the election.

Mortgage and Rental Costs

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I do not want to comment on whether there is an appropriate sanction, because I am the Chair of the Committee on Standards, but the tweet that the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) referred to says that several Conservative Members

“voted against the motion and in support of the grooming and mutilation of children”.

I suggest that that is incitement of violence against those Conservative Members and Opposition Members who voted against the motion. It is probably also actionable, and if any Conservative Members want to pursue that course of action, I will stand with them.

I wonder how we ensure that we protect the privileges of this House, namely freedom of speech. I would protect the freedom of speech for the Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) to be able to say what he did in debate, though I thought it was absolutely abhorrent and despicable. It also chills my bones, as I suspect it does yours, Mr Deputy Speaker, because it feels as if a new section 28 is being introduced by the back door for trans people, just as we used to have for lesbian and gay people. How do we ensure that freedom of speech is guaranteed for the whole House and that we are not abused for doing our job properly?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I thank the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) for her point of order and the forward notice of it and Sir Chris Bryant for the further point of order. While we do have privilege to speak as we wish in this House and rules to ensure that that freedom is used responsibly, what a Member says or retweets outside the House is not a matter for the Chair. Nevertheless, Members should remember that moderation is desirable outside the Chamber as well as within it, especially when criticising Members for their conduct in parliamentary proceedings. I am sure that this is not the last we will hear of this particular matter.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 20th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

For the first time in my 20 years as an MP we have a real housing crisis in the Rhondda. Two thirds of people own their own homes, but lots of people who have relied on the commercial rented sector are finding that landlords are selling their properties because of decisions made about taxation and, because there is a cap on housing benefit, they do not want to continue in that market. Dozens of people are being evicted week in, week out. Will the Government look closely at what is happening to protect people in constituencies such as mine, so that they can keep their own homes?

[John Glen]

I am happy to meet the hon. Gentleman to discuss what is happening in his constituency. Obviously, there have been a series of changes since the section 24 change in the Finance Act 2015 and there are particular pressures in the housing economy at the moment, but I am happy to meet him to discuss that further.

Financial Statement and Budget Report

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Wednesday 15th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Hunt]

Today I am providing a £63 million fund to keep our public leisure centres and pools afloat. I have also heard from the charities Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew), and his Secretary of State, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer), about the brilliant work that third sector organisations are doing to help people struggling in tough times. They can often reach people in need that central or local government cannot, so I will give his Department £100 million to support thousands of local charities and community organisations to do their fantastic work.

I also note the personal courage of one of my predecessors, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid), in talking about the tragedy of suicide and the importance of preventing it. We already invest a lot in this area, but I will assign an extra £10 million over the next two years—nearly a million pounds for every year that he has been in Parliament—to help the voluntary sector play an even bigger role in stopping more families experiencing that intolerable heartache.

My penultimate cost of living measure concerns one of our other most treasured community institutions, the great British pub. In December, I extended the alcohol duty freeze until 1 August, after which duties will go up in line with inflation in the usual way. But today I will do something that was not possible when we were in the EU and significantly increase the generosity of draught relief, so that from 1 August the duty on draught products in pubs will be up to 11p lower than the duty in supermarkets. It is a differential a Conservative Government will maintain as part of a new Brexit pubs guarantee. [Hon. Members: “More.”] British ale is warm, but the duty on a pint is frozen. And even better, thanks to the Windsor framework negotiated by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, that change will now apply to every pub in Northern Ireland.

Finally, I have heard the representations from my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis), my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel), my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Craig Mackinlay) and The Sun newspaper about the impact on motorists of the planned 11p rise in fuel duty. I notice the party opposite called for a freeze on this duty. Somehow they forgot to tell the British people they have voted against every single fuel duty freeze for the last 12 years. Because inflation remains high, I have decided now is not the right time to uprate fuel duty with inflation or increase the duty, so here is what I am going to do: for a further 12 months I am going to maintain the 5p cut and I am going to freeze fuel duty too. That saves the average driver £100 next year and around £200 since the 5p cut was introduced.

Our energy price guarantee, fuel duty and duty on a pint, all frozen in today’s Budget. That does not just help families: it helps the economy too, because their combined impact reduces CPI inflation by nearly three quarters of a per cent. this year, lowering inflation when it is particularly high.

I now turn to the Prime Minister’s second priority, which is to reduce debt. Here too our plan is on track. Underlying debt is forecast to be 92.4% of GDP next year, then 97.3%, 94.6%, 94.8%, before falling to 94.6% in 2027-28. We are meeting the debt priority. And with a buffer of £6.5 billion, it means we are meeting our fiscal rule to have debt falling as a percentage of GDP by the fifth year of the forecast.

As a proportion of GDP, our debt remains lower than the USA, Canada, France, Italy and Japan and, because of the decisions I take today and the improved outlook for public finances, underlying debt in five years’ time is now forecast to be nearly 3 percentage points of GDP lower than it was in the autumn. That means more money for our public services and a lower burden for future generations—deeply held Conservative values which we put into practice today.

At the autumn statement, I also announced that public sector net borrowing must be below 3% of GDP over the same period. The OBR confirmed today that we are meeting that rule, with a buffer of £39.2 billion. In fact our deficit falls in every single year of the forecast, with borrowing falling from 5.1% of GDP in ’23-24, to 3.2%, to 2.8%, to 2.2% and 1.7% in ’27-28.

Even better, in the final two years of the forecast, our current budget is in surplus, meaning we only borrow for investment and not for day-to-day spending. Day-to-day departmental spending will grow at 1% a year on average in real terms after ’24-25 until the end of the forecast period. Capital plans are maintained at the same level set at the autumn statement. We will uprate tobacco duty and we will freeze the gross gaming duty yield bands. We are also maintaining the starting rate for savings and ISA subscription limits, and we will bring forward a range of measures to tackle promoters of tax avoidance schemes. Taken together, today’s measures lead to a slightly lower overall tax burden for the rest of the Parliament compared with the OBR’s autumn forecast. Other parties run out of money, but a Conservative Government are reducing borrowing and improving our public finances. By doing so, we are on track to halve inflation, get debt falling and grow our economy, which I turn to next.

Growth is the Prime Minister’s third priority and the focus of today’s Budget. Thirteen years ago, we inherited an economy that had crashed—[Interruption.] Opposition Members might want to listen to this, because since 2010, we have grown more than major countries like France, Italy or Japan, and about the same as Europe’s largest economy, Germany. We have halved unemployment, we have cut inequality and we have reduced the number of workless households by 1 million.

For the first time ever, because of rises in tax thresholds made by successive Conservative Chancellors, people in our country can earn £1,000 a month without paying a penny of tax or national insurance. The Labour party opposed those tax reductions, but they have helped lift 2 million people out of absolute poverty, after housing costs, including 400,000 pensioners and 500,000 children. That averages 80 pensioners and 100 children lifted out of poverty for every single day we have been in office.

Today, we face the future with extraordinary potential. The World Bank said that of all big European countries, we are the best place to do business. Global chief executives say that apart from America and China, we are the best country to invest in. We became the second country in the world to have a stock of foreign direct investment worth $2 trillion, and London has just pipped New York and 53 other global cities to be the best place in the world for female entrepreneurs.

Declinists are wrong about our country for another reason, which is our strength in new industries that will shape this century. Over the last 13 years, under Conservative leadership, we have become the world’s third trillion-dollar tech economy after the US and China. We have built the largest life sciences sector in Europe, producing a covid vaccine that saved 6 million lives and a treatment that saved 1 million more.

Our film and TV industry has become Europe’s largest, with our creative industries growing at twice the rate of the economy; our advanced manufacturing industries produce around half the world’s large civil aircraft wings; and thanks to a clean energy miracle, we have become a world leader in offshore wind. Other parties talk about a green energy revolution, so I gently remind them that nearly 90% of our solar power was installed in the last 13 years—showing it is the Conservatives who fix the roof when the sun is shining.

Let us turn now to what the OBR says about our growth prospects. In November, it expected that the UK economy would enter recession in 2022 and contract by 1.4% in 2023. That left many families feeling concerned about the future. But today, the OBR forecasts we will not enter a recession at all this year, with a contraction of just 0.2%. After this year, the UK economy will grow in every single year of the forecast period, by 1.8% in 2024, then 2.5%, 2.1%, and 1.9% in 2027. It also expects the unemployment rate to rise by less than one percentage point to 4.4%, with 170,000 fewer people out of work compared with its autumn forecast.

That return to growth has direct consequences for our role on the global stage. I am proud that we are giving the brave people of Ukraine more military support than anyone else in Europe. On Monday, we were able to go even further, with my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister announcing a £5 billion package of funding for the Ministry of Defence—an additional £2 billion next year and £3 billion the year after. Today, following representations from our persuasive Defence Secretary, I confirm that we will add a total of £11 billion to our defence budget over the next five years, and it will be nearly 2.25% of GDP by 2025.We were the first large European country to commit to 2% of GDP for defence, and we will now raise that to 2.5% as soon as fiscal and economic circumstances allow.

Following representations from the equally persuasive Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, I am today also increasing support for our brave ex-servicemen and women. We will provide a package worth over £30 million to increase the capacity of the Office for Veterans’ Affairs, support veterans with injuries returning from their service and increase the availability of veteran housing.

But to be Europe’s biggest defender of democracy, we must build Europe’s most dynamic economy. That means tackling our long-standing productivity issues, including two in particular which I address today: lower business investment and higher economic inactivity than other countries. Too often companies struggle to recruit, and even when they do, output per employee is lower. So today I set out the four pillars of our industrial strategy to address these issues. As colleagues will know from my Bloomberg speech, they all conveniently start with the letter E: enterprise, employment, education and everywhere. I start with everywhere—[Interruption.] Well, Opposition Members may not want to level up growth across the United Kingdom, but we do.

This Government were elected on a mandate to level up. We have already allocated nearly £4 billion to over 200 projects across the country through the first two rounds of the levelling-up fund. A third round will follow. Since we started focusing on levelling up, 70% of the growth in salaried jobs has come from outside London and the south-east, and today we take further steps. Canary Wharf and the Liverpool docks were two outstanding regeneration projects that happened under a previous Conservative Government. I pay tribute to Lord Heseltine for making them happen, because they transformed the lives of thousands of people. They showed what is possible when entrepreneurs, Government and local communities come together.

So today I announce that we will deliver 12 new investment zones—12 potential Canary Wharfs. In England, we have identified the following areas as having the potential to host one: west midlands, Greater Manchester, the north-east, South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, east midlands, Teesside and, once again, Liverpool. There will also be at least one in each of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. To be chosen, each area must identify a location where it can offer a bold and imaginative partnership between local government and a university or research institute in a way that catalyses new innovation clusters. If the application is successful, it will have access to £80 million of support for a range of interventions, including skills, infrastructure, tax reliefs and business rates retention.

Working together with our formidable Levelling Up Secretary, I also want to give some further support to levelling up areas under the E of everywhere. First, I will invest over £200 million in high-quality local regeneration projects across England, including the regeneration of Tipton town centre and the Marsden New Mills redevelopment scheme. I am also announcing a further £161 million for regeneration projects in mayoral combined authorities and the Greater London Authority, and I will make over £400 million available for new levelling-up partnerships in areas that include Redcar and Cleveland, Blackburn, Oldham, Rochdale, Mansfield, south Tyneside and Bassetlaw.

Having listened to the case for better local transport infrastructure from many hon. Members, I can announce a second round of the city region sustainable transport settlements, allocating £8.8 billion over the next five-year funding period. Following a wet then cold winter, I have also received particularly strong representations from my hon. Friends the Members for North Devon (Selaine Saxby), for South West Devon (Sir Gary Streeter) and for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris), as well as Councillor Peter Martin from my own constituency, about the curse of potholes. The spending review allocated £500 million every year to the potholes fund, but today I have decided to increase that fund by a further £200 million next year to help local communities tackle this problem.

For Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, this Budget delivers not only a new investment zone but an additional £320 million for the Scottish Government, £180 million for the Welsh Government and £130 million for the Northern Ireland Executive as a result of Barnett consequentials. On top of that, in Scotland I can announce up to £8.6 million of targeted funding for the Edinburgh festivals as well as £1.5 million funding to repair the Cloddach bridge. I will provide £20 million of funding for the Welsh Government to restore the Holyhead breakwater, and in Northern Ireland I am allocating up to £3 million to extend the tackling paramilitarism programme and up to £40 million to extend further and higher education participation.

But for levelling up to truly succeed, we need to unleash the civic entrepreneurship that is only possible when elected local leaders are able to fund and deliver solutions to their own challenges. That means giving them responsibility for local economic growth and the benefit from the upside when it happens. So this Government will consult on transferring responsibilities for local economic development from local enterprise partnerships to local authorities from April 2024.

I will also boost Mayors’ financial autonomy by agreeing multi-year single settlements for the west midlands and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority in the next spending review, something I intend to roll out for all mayoral areas over time. I have also agreed a new long-term commitment so that they can retain 100% of their business rates, something I also hope to expand to other areas. Investment zones, regeneration projects, levelling-up partnerships, local transport infrastructure and business rates retention—more control for local communities over their economic destiny, so we will level up wealth and opportunity everywhere.

Today’s priority is the Prime Minister’s promise to grow the economy. We have talked about making that growth happen everywhere, so I now move on to my second E—enterprise. We need to be—[Interruption.] Well, this has never been something of interest to the Labour party, but the Conservatives will not rest until we are Europe’s most dynamic enterprise economy, and under a Conservative Government that is exactly what has been happening. Since 2010, we have 1 million more businesses in the UK—a bigger increase than Germany, France or Italy—but I want another million and another million after that. So today I bring forward enterprise measures in these three areas: to lower business taxes, to reduce energy costs and to support our growth industries.

Let us start with business taxation. Conservatives know the importance of a competitive tax regime. We already have lower levels of business taxation than France, Germany, Italy or Japan, but I want us to have the most pro-business, pro-enterprise tax regime anywhere. Even after the corporation tax rise this April, we will have the lowest headline rate in the G7—lower than any period under the last Labour Government. Only 10% of companies will pay the full 25% rate, but even at 19% our corporation tax did not incentivise investment as effectively as countries with higher headline rates. The result is less capital investment and lower productivity than countries like France and Germany.

We have already taken measures to address this. For larger businesses, we had the super deduction, introduced by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, which ends this month. For smaller businesses, we increased the annual investment allowance to £1 million, meaning 99% of all businesses can deduct the full value of all their investment from that year’s taxable profits. If the super deduction was allowed to end without a replacement, we would have fallen down the international league tables on tax competitiveness and damaged growth. As a Conservative, I could not allow that to happen.

Today, I can announce that we will introduce a new policy of full capital expensing for the next three years, with an intention to make it permanent as soon as we can responsibly do so. That means that every single pound a company invests in IT equipment, plant or machinery can be deducted in full and immediately from taxable profits. It is a corporation tax cut worth an average of £9 billion a year for every year that it is in place, and its impact on the economy will be huge. The OBR says that it will increase business investment by 3% for every year that it is in place. This decision makes us the only major European country with full expensing and gives us the joint most generous capital allowance regime of any advanced economy.

I understand that the Labour party is reviewing business taxes. Let me save it the bother. It puts them up, and we cut them.

I also want to make our taxes more competitive in our life science and creative industry sectors. In the autumn, I said I would return with a more robust research and development tax credit scheme for smaller research-intensive companies. Today, I am introducing an enhanced credit which means that if a qualifying small or medium-sized business spends 40% or more of its total expenditure on R&D, it will be able to claim a credit worth £27 for every £100 that it spends. That means an eligible cancer drug company spending £2 million on R&D will receive over £500,000 to help it to develop breakthrough treatments. That is a £1.8 billion package of support helping 20,000 cutting-edge companies who, day by day, are turning Britain into a science superpower.

The Government’s audio-visual tax reliefs have helped to make our film and TV industry the biggest in Europe. Only last month, Pinewood announced an expansion which will bring another 8,000 jobs to the UK. To give even more momentum to this critical sector, I will introduce an expenditure credit with a rate of 34% for film, high-end television and video games, and 39% for the animation and children’s TV sectors. I will maintain the qualifying threshold for high-end television at £1 million. Because our theatres, orchestras and museums do such a brilliant job at attracting tourists to London and the UK, I will extend for another two years their current 45% and 50% reliefs.

An enterprise economy needs low taxes, but it also needs cheap and reliable energy. We have already announced billions of support to help businesses reduce their energy bills through the energy bills relief scheme and the energy bills discount scheme. We have appointed Dame Alison Rose, chief executive of NatWest, to co-chair our national energy efficiency taskforce and help deliver our national ambition to reduce energy use by 15%. To support her efforts, I will extend the climate change agreement scheme for two years to allow eligible businesses £600 million of tax relief on energy efficiency measures. But the long-term solution is not subsidy, but security. That means investing in domestic sources of energy that fall outside Putin’s or any autocrat’s control. We are world leaders in renewable energy, so today I want to develop another plank of our green economy: carbon capture usage and storage. I am allocating up to £20 billion of support for the early development of CCUS, starting with projects from our east coast to Merseyside to north Wales, paving the way for CCUS everywhere across the UK as we approach 2050. That will support up to 50,000 jobs, attract private sector investment and help capture 20 to 30 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year by 2030.

We have increased the proportion of electricity generated from renewables from under 10% when we came into office to nearly 40%, but because the wind does not always blow and the sun does not always shine—even under the Conservatives—we will need another critical source of cheap and reliable energy, and that is nuclear. There have been no more powerful advocates for this than my hon. Friends the Members for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie), for Copeland (Trudy Harrison), for Hartlepool (Jill Mortimer) and for Workington (Mark Jenkinson). They rightly say that increasing nuclear capacity is vital to meet our net zero obligations. To encourage private sector investment into our nuclear programme, I today confirm that, subject to consultation, nuclear power will be classed as environmentally sustainable in our green taxonomy, giving it access to the same investment incentives as renewable energy.

Alongside that will come more public investment. In the autumn statement, I announced the first state-financed investment in nuclear for a generation, a £700 million investment in Sizewell C. Today, I can announce two further commitments to deliver our nuclear ambitions. First, following representations from our energetic Energy Security Secretary, I am announcing the launch of Great British Nuclear, which will bring down costs and provide opportunities across the nuclear supply chain to help provide one quarter of our electricity by 2050. [Interruption.] It is so good to hear that the Labour party is in favour of nuclear energy. [Interruption.] It is just a shame that it never did any. Secondly, I am launching the first competition for small modular reactors. It will be completed by the end of this year and if demonstrated as viable we will co-fund this exciting new technology.

Finally, under the E of enterprise, I come to our innovation economy: a central area of national competitive advantage for the United Kingdom. Over the weekend, I worked night and day with the Prime Minister and the Governor of the Bank of England to protect the deposits of thousands of our most cutting-edge companies. We successfully secured the sale of the UK arm of Silicon Valley Bank to HSBC, so the future of those companies is now safe in the hands of Europe’s biggest and one of its most creditworthy banks. But those events show that we need to build a larger, more diverse financing system, where the benefits of investment in high-growth firms are available to more investors. I will return in the autumn statement with a plan to deliver that. It will include measures to unlock productive investment from defined contribution pension funds and other sources, make the London Stock Exchange a more attractive place to list, and complete our response to the challenges created by the US Inflation Reduction Act.

When it comes to our innovation industries, however, I want to make progress on two areas today. Nigel Lawson made the City of London one of the world’s top financial centres by competitive deregulation. With our Brexit autonomy, we can do the same for our high-growth sectors. Today, I want to reform the regulations around medicines and medical technologies. We are lucky to have, in the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, one of the most respected drugs regulators in the world—indeed, the very first anywhere to license a covid vaccine. From 2024, it will move to a different model, which will allow rapid, often near-automatic sign-off for medicines and technologies already approved by trusted regulators in other parts of the world such as the United States, Europe and Japan. At the same time, it will set up a swift new approval process for the most cutting-edge medicines and devices to ensure that the UK becomes a global centre for their development. With an extra £10 million of funding over the next two years, they will put in place the quickest, simplest regulatory approval in the world for companies seeking rapid market access. We are proud of the life science sector, which received more inward investment than any in Europe last year. Today’s change will make the UK an even more exciting place to invest, using our Brexit freedoms and speeding up access for NHS patients to the very newest drugs.

Today, with our talented Science, Innovation and Technology Secretary, I also take measures to strengthen our position in artificial intelligence, where the UK hosts one third of all European companies. I am accepting all nine of the digital technology recommendations made by Sir Patrick Vallance in the review that I asked him to do in the autumn statement. I can report to the House that we will launch an AI sandbox to trial new, faster approaches to help innovators get cutting-edge products to market. We will work at pace with the Intellectual Property Office to provide clarity on IP rules so that generative AI companies can access the material they need. We will ask Sir Patrick’s successor, Dame Angela McLean, to report before the summer on options around the growth duty for regulators.

Because AI needs computing horsepower, I today commit around £900 million of funding to implement the recommendations of the independent “Future of Compute” review for an exascale computer. The power needed by AI’s complex algorithms can also be provided by quantum computing, so today we publish a quantum strategy, which will set out our vision to be a world-leading quantum-enabled economy by 2033, with a research and innovation programme totalling £2.5 billion.

I also want to encourage the best AI research to happen in the UK, so will award a prize of £1 million every year for the next 10 years to the person or team that does the most groundbreaking British AI research. The world’s first stored-program computer was built at the University of Manchester in 1948, and was known as the Manchester baby. Seventy-five years on, the baby has grown up, so I will call this new national AI award the Manchester prize in its honour. We want the UK to be the best place in Europe for companies to locate, invest and grow, so today’s enterprise measures strengthen our technology and life science sectors, invest in energy security and—for three years, but I hope permanently—cut corporation tax by £9 billion a year, to give us the best investment incentives of any advanced economy.

An enterprise economy can only grow if it can hire the people it needs, which brings me to my third pillar after everywhere and enterprise. [Interruption.] I said it was a growth budget. We are talking about the E of employment. I am going to talk about a difficult topic for the Labour party. Brexit was a decision by the British people to change our economic model. In that historic vote, our country decided to move from a model based on unlimited low-skill migration to one based on high wages and high skills. Today, we show how we will deliver that, with a major set of reforms. The OBR says that it is the biggest positive supply-side intervention that it has ever recognised in its forecast.

We have around 1 million vacancies in the economy but, excluding students, more than 7 million adults of working age are not in work. That is a potential pool of seven people for every vacancy. Conservatives believe that work is a virtue. We agree with the road haulage king Eddie Stobart, who said:

“The only place success comes before work is the dictionary.”

Today, I bring forward reforms to remove the barriers that stop people who want to work from doing so. I start with over 2 million people who are inactive due to a disability or long-term sickness. Thanks to the reforms courageously introduced by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), the number of disabled people in work has risen by 2 million since 2013. But even after that, we could fill half the vacancies in the economy with people who say that they would like to work, despite being inactive due to sickness or disability. With Zoom, Teams and new working models that make it easier to work from home, that is possible now more than ever.

For that reason, the ever-diligent Work and Pensions Secretary today takes the next step in his groundbreaking work on tackling economic inactivity. I thank him for that, and today we publish a White Paper on disability benefits reform. It is the biggest change to our welfare system in a decade. His plans will abolish the work capability assessment in Great Britain and will separate benefit entitlement from an individual’s ability to work. As a result, disabled benefit claimants will always be able to seek work without fear of losing financial support.

Today, I am going further by announcing that, after listening to representations from the Centre for Social Justice and others, in England and Wales we will fund a new programme called universal support. This is a new, voluntary employment scheme for disabled people, where the Government will spend up to £4,000 a person to help them find appropriate jobs and put in place the support that they need. It will fund 50,000 places every single year.

We also want to help those who are forced to leave work because of a health condition such as back pain or a mental health issue. We should give them support before they end up leaving their job, so working with our Health Secretary, I am also announcing a £400-million plan to increase the availability of mental health and musculoskeletal resources, and expand the individual placement and support scheme. Because occupational health provided by employers has a key role to play, I will also bring forward two new consultations on how to improve its availability and double the funding for the small company subsidy pilot.

Another group that deserves particular attention is children in care. They, too, should be given all possible help to make a normal working life possible when they reach adulthood. Often, they depend on foster families, who do a brilliant job, so today I am nearly doubling the qualifying care relief threshold to £18,140 which will give a tax cut to a qualifying carer worth an average of £450 a year. I will also increase the funding that we provide to the Staying Close programme by 50%, to help more care leavers into employment, and I will support young people with special educational needs and disabilities with a £3-million pilot expansion of the Department for Education’s supported internship programme, to help those people to transition from education into the workplace. No civilised society can ignore the contribution that can be made by those with challenging family circumstances, a long-term illness or a disability, so today we remove the barriers that we can, with reforms that strengthen our society as well as our economy.

The next set of employment reforms affects those on universal credit without a health condition, who are looking for work or on low earnings. There are more than 2 million jobseekers in this group—more than enough to fill every vacancy in the economy. Independence is always better than dependence. [Interruption.] With some exceptions, Madam Deputy Speaker. That is why a Conservative Government believe that those who can work, should. Sanctions will be applied more rigorously to those who fail to meet strict work search requirements or choose not to take up a reasonable job offer. For those working low hours, we will increase the administrative earnings threshold from the equivalent of 15 hours to 18 hours at national living wage for an individual claimant, meaning that anyone working below that level will receive more work coach support, alongside a more intensive conditionality regime.

The next group of workers I want to support are those aged over 50. My younger officials have termed these people “older” workers, although as a 56-year-old I prefer the term “experienced”. Fully 3.5 million people of pre-retirement age over 50 are not part of the labour force—an increase of 320,000 since before the pandemic. We now have the 23rd highest inactivity rate for over 55s in the OECD. If we matched the rate of Sweden, we would add more than 1 million people to our national labour force.

Madam Deputy Speaker, I say this not to flatter you, but older people are the most skilled and experienced people we have. [Hon. Members: “Oh!”] No country can thrive if it turns its back on such a wealth of talent and ability. But for too many, turning 50 is a moment of anxiety about the cliff edge of retirement rather than a moment of anticipation about another two decades of fulfilment. I know this myself. After I turned 50, I was relegated to the Back Benches and planned for a quiet life, but instead I decided to set an example by embarking on a new career in finance.

[Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

How’s it going?

[Jeremy Hunt]

It’s going well, thank you. So today I take three steps to make it easier for those who wish to work longer to do so.

First, we will increase the number of people who get the best possible financial, health and career guidance ahead of retirement by enhancing the Department for Work and Pensions’ excellent mid-life MOT strategy. It will also increase by fivefold the number of 50-plus universal credit claimants who receive mid-life MOTs from 8,000 to 40,000 a year.

Secondly, with the Secretary of State for Education, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Gillian Keegan), who has a deep personal commitment to this area, we will introduce a new kind of apprenticeship, targeted at the over 50s who want to return to work. They will be called returnerships and operate alongside skills boot camps and sector-based work academies. They will bring together our existing skills programmes to make them more appealing for older workers, focusing on flexibility and previous experience to reduce training length.

Finally, I have listened to the concerns of many senior NHS clinicians, who say unpredictable pension tax charges are making them leave the NHS just when they are needed most. The NHS is our biggest employer, and we will shortly publish the long-term workforce plan I promised in the autumn statement. But ahead of that, I do not want any doctor to retire early because of the way pension taxes work. It is an issue I have discussed not just with the current Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay), but a former Health Secretary who kindly took a break from WhatsApping his colleagues to consider it.

As Chancellor, I have realised the issue goes wider than doctors. No one should be pushed out of the workforce for tax reasons. So today I will increase the pensions annual tax-free allowance by 50%, from £40,000 to £60,000. Some have also asked me to increase the lifetime allowance from its £1 million limit. But I have decided not to do that. Instead I will go further and abolish the lifetime allowance altogether. It is a pension tax reform that will stop over 80% of NHS doctors from receiving a tax charge, incentivise our most experienced and productive workers to stay in work for longer, and simplify our tax system, taking thousands of people out of the complexity of pension tax. [Interruption.]

Digital Pound

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Griffith]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point. To govern is to choose and we ask our regulators to make choices to prioritise. It is one reason why we are looking at reform of long-standing areas, such as the 40-year-old Consumer Credit Act 1974, to see if we can modernise it and make it more fit for purpose, deliver better customer outcomes, and potentially free up the regulatory environment so they can make choices to focus on the new and emerging threats and opportunities that this domain represents.

[Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Further to the question from the Chair of the Treasury Committee, the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin), can the Minister be a bit clearer? Will this be an interest-paying currency, yes or no?

[Andrew Griffith]

No.

Wagner Group: Sanctions Regime

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[James Cartlidge]

My hon. Friend speaks with huge passion about these matters. Only yesterday, as he said, he presented a ten-minute rule Bill relating to this issue. He will appreciate that there are issues relating to parliamentary time, and that this is above my pay grade. I feel very strongly that we have done as much as we can on SLAPPs, but we want to go further, because we need legislation. I said at the end of the Backbench Business debate—my hon. Friend, of course, spoke in it—that I had heard what was said, and that we would now act. The Ministry of Justice took that forward; we had the call for evidence, and we have responded to it. At present, however, our position is, I am afraid, that we will commit ourselves to primary legislation as soon as parliamentary time allows. I cannot say more than that at this moment, but I am aware of how strongly my hon. Friend feels about the issue.

[Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I am sorry, but this is so complacent, and the Government have been systematically complacent about the issue of sanctioning individuals for the last three years. The Foreign Office was not prepared: it did not have a proper sanctions regime in place. We are sectioning only 20% of the people who have been sanctioned by the United States of America, although I have no idea why. Then we allow people to sidestep sanctioning. What the Minister is saying today is basically endorsing what the Treasury did in relation to this particular case, which gives a green light to those people to do it again and again and again. Alisher Usmanov, for instance, is sidestepping sanctioning by a completely different process.

It is time the Government decided as a whole that we are going to do this, and we are going to do it properly. I actually think that we should listen much more to our Back Benchers, because the whole House is united around this and the Government are too complacent.

[James Cartlidge]

The hon. Gentleman is wrong to say that I am endorsing any particular action. I have made it very clear that I am not commenting on a specific case. What I have said relates to the general regime that pertains, and is without prejudice in respect of any specific case. The hon. Gentleman also said that we were not prepared. He may not be aware of Operation Orbital, but we have been training Ukrainian soldiers since 2015: 22,000 Ukrainian soldiers.

[Sir Chris Bryant]

We are talking about sanctions.

[James Cartlidge]

Well, I am talking about Ukraine, because I think that that is the key issue here. It shows we were preparing for what happened, although, obviously, the situation was unprecedented when Ukraine was invaded. We are clear about the fact that our officials and Departments worked as fast as possible to bring forward an ambitious range of sanctions—which of course happened in March last year when the Prime Minister was Chancellor—and they are having a significant impact on Russia and its economy.

Russia: UK Companies

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Wednesday 7th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I am sorry, but this is just terribly complacent. It is 3,218 days since the annexation of Crimea, and there are still British companies that seem to be invested in Crimea, let alone British companies—including Infosys, from what I understand; the Minister did not refute that point earlier—that are still operating in Moscow and Russia with a staffed office. He says he will not comment on individual companies, but he does it all the time: that is what sanctions are. That is the whole point of sanctions. Some £778 million-worth of Russian oil has ended up coming into 10 British ports this year, having been transferred from one ship to another on the route here. This is complacency. We have to have a total effort from every Government Department to make sure that we stop funding Putin’s illegal war.

[James Cartlidge]

As ever, the hon. Gentleman makes his point with his usual passion. The point I was making was not to refute or in any way entertain points about individual companies; I am simply saying that it is long-standing Treasury policy not to comment on individual taxpayers or companies, or on their commercial activities, and I suspect that would be true of any Government.

The hon. Gentleman mentions oil. I remind him that on Monday, in alignment with coalition partners, we banned the import of Russian oil and oil products into our markets. In conjunction with partners, we have prohibited UK ships and services from the maritime transportation of Russian oil unless the price paid is at or below $60 a barrel.

Autumn Statement

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Goodness! Here is a surprise. I call Chris Bryant.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

That was a bit of a surprise, Madam Deputy Speaker. I do not think that you carried the House there.

This is really grim. The public finances are in a really difficult situation, and even more importantly the OBR figures show that disposable income for households will fall after what the Chancellor has done today by 7% over the next two years. Will he confirm that that is the biggest fall in our history? That means families not being able to afford things, and that is, in the end, at the doorstep of No. 10, is it not?

[Jeremy Hunt]

The first part of what the hon. Member said is broadly correct. There will be a very big fall—[Interruption.] Would Members like me to answer the question or not? There will be a big fall in disposable income, but the OBR says that the measures that I took today mitigate that, reducing the effect by around 25%. That is very important, but to say that somehow this has nothing to do with a global pandemic and a war in Ukraine—

[Chris Bryant]

Did I say that?

[Jeremy Hunt]

Yes. The hon. Member said it was at the doorstep of No. 10. I think that is to ignore the reality staring him in the face.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 15th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Hunt]

What the public know is that unemployment is the lowest for nearly half a century under a Conservative Government.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Energy inflation and food inflation are already making the finances of schools and local authorities almost unsustainable, with many in real fear of going bust in the next few months. May I urge the Chancellor, as he is thinking about Thursday, not to push this all down on to council tax, because many of the poorest areas of the country have the highest level of need and the fewest people who can afford to make additional contributions? So it would be entirely counterproductive to do that, and the ratchet effect could make local authorities even more unsustainable.

Public Sector Pay: Proposed Strike Action

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2022 Westminster Hall

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

It is always a delight to see you in the Chair, Sir Edward.

I should declare that I am a member of the GMB. When I was a priest in the Church of England, no union would take us, because if we did go on strike, it would not be very obvious what had not happened. MSF took us on for a while, and then we became members of Unite, but when Burberry was trying to close its factory in Treorchy, Rhondda, a few years ago, I worked so closely with the GMB that I thought it was right to join. I am a very proud member.

I start with the principle that it is a fundamental human right for people to be able to withdraw their labour, and any attempt to undermine that right is a contradiction of all our human rights. There may be many different reasons why someone needs to withdraw their labour, but it is worth reminding people that no trade unionist, trade union leader or member of a trade union ever takes the decision to go on strike lightly, for the very simple reason that, apart from anything else, it costs them and their family money—goodness gracious, the miners of the Rhondda knew that in spades back in the 1980s. Individual members of trade unions are proud of the work they do, so they do not want to not be in work—they want to be in work.

Many of the people we are talking about have been described as “key workers”. That phrase came into existence during the covid pandemic, when people suddenly discovered that bus drivers, train drivers, bus conductors and people who work in supermarkets or for a local council—many of whom suffered more than anybody during covid, because they were at daily risk—are all key workers because the whole of the rest of the economy simply cannot function without them. Those people know that they are essential to society, and they do not want to let down their customers, clients, passengers and patients or the people with whom they work. They are proud of their work, and they want to be in work, so it takes a lot to get a trade union or an individual member to vote for strike action.

My constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter)—not “Sinon Valley”, as Tony Blair always used to call it—is absolutely right about the cost of living crisis. Energy costs in our constituencies are often even higher because many homes are difficult to insulate and to keep warm and dry, as they are basically made out of stone and rubble. If someone is on very low wages, seeing their energy costs double in a year makes a dramatic difference, whatever the Government may have done this year, and people are anxious about what will happen after April. Inflation for the poorest is even higher than the 10.1% that has been mentioned, not least because poorer people spend more of their money on the essentials in life—food, energy and housing costs—and the cost of cheaper brands has risen the most. The cost of things that fill kids’ bellies more readily, such as pasta, have risen by 45%, 47% or 48%, while bread has gone up by 34%, so inflation is even worse for the poorest.

My constituency may be different from other poorer constituencies, because more than 70% of people in the Rhondda own their homes. Many have small mortgages, but some have substantial ones. They may not have taken a long fixed-rate mortgage, because they were not sure how things would work out and did not want to be in a difficult situation in five years’ time. If someone sees their monthly rate going from £300 to £500, they will be thinking about losing their home. The problems that many pensioners are having are intensified by the fact that, if they had a small pension pot of, say, £35,000 in July, it may now be worth only £25,000 after the mini-Budget, so the annuity they might get if they retire now will be lower.

Then, on top of all that, there is wage suppression, which we have seen for 12 years for nearly every key worker. Apart from anything else, that has been counterproductive. One reason we are not getting people back into work is that there is an enormous backlog in the NHS. I am not making a partisan point here, because we have the same problem in Wales—there is an NHS backlog across the whole UK. If wages are suppressed in the NHS, fewer and fewer people will choose to work in it, more and more people will retire, and more and more people will leave it entirely, which will exacerbate the problem.

I completely support the CWU’s strike at the Royal Mail. It seems utterly preposterous to make such a small offer to the workers when significant amounts have been awarded to senior managers and shareholders. That is completely wrong. In my patch, people are worried about Royal Mail deliveries, but I am not blaming the staff; I am blaming the managers, because quite often they simply have not employed enough people to get the work done. I should add that I also support the CWU in its dispute with Openreach, which suffers from exactly the same problems as the Royal Mail.

My final points are about the Government’s role. First, it is to ensure that the laws in this land are fair to the employer and the employee. I do not think we have laws that are fair to the employee at the moment—I think the law is unbalanced. The former Prime Minister—the one we have just lost—would not have been able to become Prime Minister if the rules that presently exist for a strike ballot had been exercised for her. That is an utter hypocrisy in the Government’s line.

Secondly, where the Government have a direct, indirect or even just tangential interest or role in a dispute, they should do everything in their power to keep both sides at the table. In my experience, trade union members and trade union officials are the best deal makers in the land. The Government should learn from them and not the other way round.

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Let us be fair to all our colleagues—five minutes, brothers, please.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Victoria Atkins)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I congratulate the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter) on securing the debate. I will try to do her the courtesy of sitting down a couple of minutes before the end of the debate so that she can sum up.

I thank all Members for their contributions. I agree with every single contribution that has emphasised how important and valued our public sector workers, such as nurses, police officers, prison officers and teachers, are to our country. They are a source of great pride to us all, as the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) so eloquently said. I also agree that they deserve to be paid fairly, especially at a time when the cost of living has been rising. We understand the importance of recruiting and retaining the very best people in our public services, but we have to take care to ensure that we are responsible with the finite resource of taxpayers’ money—our money, which we and tens of millions of other people throughout the country pay—and consider the consequences of decisions that are taken in Whitehall.

In his statement in Downing Street, the Prime Minister was clear that economic stability and confidence are at the heart of this Government’s agenda. That is why he is so focused on tackling inflation. We have already heard about the difficult impact that inflation has had on day-to-day essentials, such as the cost of food, heating our homes and getting to and from school and work. They have all become more expensive, which means our wages and our salaries do not go as far as they used to. Sadly, wage inflation, particularly in the tight labour market that we have here in the United Kingdom—by the way, we should be proud that we have such a high employment rate—adds to the cycle of rising prices. That is the conundrum that we face.

On help with the cost of living, I must emphasise, not least because our constituents are listening, that a great deal of help has already been announced, including the energy price guarantee and the energy bill relief scheme. Our most vulnerable households will receive £1,200 of support this year through those measures, the council tax rebate and a one-off payment of £650 in cash for those on means-tested benefits. There are also other measures, but I am conscious of the time and I want to get to the meat of the topic.

[Chris Bryant]

Does the Minister agree that one of the most shameful things we have seen over the last few years is nurses going to food banks run by their own hospitals because their pay is not enough for them to survive?

[Victoria Atkins]

In his speech, the hon. Gentleman spoke about the rising cost of food. The pressures of international events, such as the war in Ukraine and its impact on grain supplies, which we know about from the coverage on our televisions, and on pesticides and agricultural tools, including those that farmers in my constituency need to help to feed our country, all play a part in that. The help we have provided, including the measures regarding wages, which I hope to get to in a moment, is vital and we need to keep the situation under constant review.

The hon. Member for Cynon Valley raised many questions about tax. I reassure her that the top 5% of earners are projected to pay half of all income tax in the next financial year. Income tax provides the largest form of income that the Government have. The top 1% of earners are projected to pay more than 28% of that amount, which is right because those with the broadest shoulders should bear the most.