Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Christopher Pincher Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

The problem, as the hon. Gentleman will acknowledge, is housing supply. Because of the failure to build homes under this Budget, I fear that the interventions that the Government may make, which I often welcome, may force up prices, rather than allowing access to homes. The hon. Gentleman shares with me the desire that young people should be able to afford a home, and with me he should campaign now for more housing construction. That means investment, and sometimes you have to borrow to invest.

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

Will the shadow Chancellor give way?

[John McDonnell]

I will come back to the hon. Gentleman.

On disability, I am appealing to the Chancellor to think again. We will support him in reversing the cuts in personal independence payments for disabled people. If he can fund capital gains tax giveaways for the richest 5%, he can find the money to reverse this cruel and unnecessary cut.

--- Later in debate ---

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) and his typically thoughtful contribution. Both he and I will know that the great disadvantage of speaking late in a debate is that everything that can be said has been said, although of course not everybody who can say it has said it. I will try not to be too repetitious, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I commend both Front Benchers for taking so many interventions during their speeches. That set a very good tone for the debate. I trust that that will continue. Perhaps the shadow Chancellor will even extend me the generosity of allowing me to intervene on him next time.

When I was listening to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor make his eighth Budget speech yesterday, I was thinking about how different the world was six years ago when he made his first Budget speech. At that time, unemployment in Tamworth was rampant. Businesses and jobs were going to the wall. Walking down Glascote high street, one would see notices of repossession in the windows of people’s houses. When Gordon Brown left office not only were people losing their jobs, but their homes too.

After eight Budgets, the situation has been transformed. Unemployment in Tamworth is now at fewer than 300. Just about everybody who can work in Tamworth is working in Tamworth. The Jobcentre has turned into a recruitment agency, going out looking for people to do better-paid, better-skilled jobs. House prices are going up and people are better off. Having continually raised the income tax threshold, my average constituent is now £1,000 better off than he or she was in 2010.

I heard Opposition Members, in particular my otherwise good friend the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen), criticise the lifetime ISA. This savings initiative sends a very good message to young people about the importance of the savings culture. As the Chancellor was making his speech, I got a message from a young constituent of mine called Dan Ball, aged 19 from Amington. He said, “How can I get one of these ISAs?” I will be writing back to him before the end of this week to tell him just what he can do to save and invest in his future.

The support that the Chancellor has given to businesses—for big businesses, in the form of corporation tax; and for small businesses by reforming and changing the business rate—will help businesses in my constituency, from small newsagents in the high street to companies such as Tame Plastics and Invotec. That will help jobs and growth, so I commend what the Budget has to offer.

If I could make two pleas in the time I have left, they would be these. Given that we want to create a Budget for the next generation, part of it must be about infrastructure investment. The Chancellor made great play—rightly so—of the midlands engine. One of the overlooked pieces of infrastructure in the midlands is the A5 corridor running through Leicestershire, Warwickshire and Staffordshire. Much of the A5 is single carriageway. It would benefit from being dualled, so that we could open up developments and house building along the corridor. There are plans for such development and house building. I hope the Exchequer Secretary will make a note of that and use all is artistry and eloquence to prevail on the Transport Secretary to put the dualling of the A5 in the next road investment strategy.

May I also encourage more house building? Hon. Members on all sides of the Chamber have mentioned the need for more house building. Some 88,000 new houses are needed in the west midlands. We are building, and are planning to build, more houses in Tamworth, but one of the challenges—even though we have reformed planning, introduced Help to Buy and are selling public land to private developers—is the number of small and medium-sized enterprises in the development supply chain. Many were wiped out during the crash, and we need to get them back in. I would like the Government to encourage big developers, such as Bovis, Persimmon and Redrow, to franchise some of their land bank to smaller developers so that they can build houses on that land. It would de-risk the big developers, because they would not have to take the risk of building the houses, and help smaller developers, because the planning activity would already have been undertaken and so would not cost them so much. That would get more SMEs into the supply chain and help us build those homes for the future in the midlands and beyond.

I listened attentively to the Budget, and I was not carried away by the doom-mongers on the Opposition Benches, and I listened attentively to the Leader of the Opposition, who I thought began rather well but then, like the rest of us, lost interest in his own speech halfway through. He can do better next time by listening to and learning from the Chancellor and by supporting our plans for a Budget for the future.