Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Christopher Pincher Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I have given way twice to the right hon. Lady so I will now make progress and explain what we have done to clear up the mess she left. We took more decisions last week in the Budget, but we will also implement these decisions today to ensure that the work of reducing our deficit is done fairly, and that we ask more from the well-off. Look through the measures. They include provisions on dividends, lifetime pension allowances, stamp duty on second properties, banks and hedge funds, and a host of measures to tackle evasion and avoidance. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has been quoted a lot over the past four days in the Budget debates, and its head stated that

“the very highest earners have seen significant tax increases”.

I think that has been a reasonable thing to ask of the most well-off when faced with such a budget deficit, because we are all in this together.

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

On personal economic security, during the Chancellor’s Budget statement, my constituent Dan Ball, who is aged 19 and from Amington, tweeted to say, “This lifetime ISA—where can I get one?” Does that not demonstrate that young people up and down the country see in this Budget an opportunity for their generation to save?

[Mr Osborne]

My hon. Friend is right to raise his constituent’s concerns about where he can get hold of the new lifetime ISA. It will be coming in from April next year, but his constituent can open a Help to Buy ISA now, roll it into the new lifetime ISA when it becomes available, keep the Government bonus, choose to save for a home or a pension, and not have to face the agonising choice that so many people have faced in the past. It is part of a Budget that backs savers.

--- Later in debate ---

[John McDonnell]

The proposals that came forward did not just shock those on our side of the House; they shocked many Members from across the whole of the House with their brutality.

[Christopher Pincher]

Will the shadow Chancellor give way?

[John McDonnell]

No, I have given way enough—I will come back to the hon. Gentleman.

There is scheduled to be a 6% real-terms decline in spending on disability benefits between 2015 and 2020. After that Friday, when we reached the Wednesday of the Budget, we discovered that these cuts to disabled people were being made to pay for capital gains tax cuts benefiting the richest 5% in our society and for corporation tax cuts. Of course, a deep feeling of unfairness was felt in this House, among Members in all parts of it. I welcome the expression of concern by the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) during that period and his conversion to our cause of opposing these benefit cuts. But the first person to call attention to the scandalous targeting of people with disabilities was my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams). She rightly said, in response to the announcement:

“In coming to this decision, the Tories are yet again ignoring the views of disabled people, carers and experts in the field, trying to press ahead with changes, just two years since the introduction of the system.”

After it became clear that the cuts to PIP were planned as a way to fund tax cuts for the wealthy, my right hon. Friend the leader of the Labour party made this issue a key part of his excellent response to the Budget last week, and he was not alone in doing so. My hon. Friends the Members for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) and for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) were among several Opposition Members who pressed the Chancellor on the issue, as I did when opening the Budget debate last Thursday. I want to give thanks to everyone on our Benches and across the House who has helped to force this rethink and helped end the worry that thousands of disabled people have been experiencing in the past week.