Taxes

Dan Tomlinson Excerpts

Wednesday 12th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Dan Tomlinson)]

I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions today, as well as my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury for his opening remarks, and the hon. Member for Grantham and Bourne (Gareth Davies) for summing up for the Opposition. He was Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury for a time under the last Government, and he will know just how busy the period two weeks before a Budget can be for a junior Minister in His Majesty’s Treasury. I imagine that when he was in my position, 14 days out from a Budget or autumn statement, with officials rushing in and out of his office with advice on various measures, and a day full of meetings trying to get the details right, there was nothing more he would have wanted in the world than be called to the House for an Opposition day debate. I thank him and the shadow Chancellor for calling this debate at such a crucial time in the Budget-setting process.

I expect some interventions during my remarks over the next 10 to 15 minutes, and I encourage Members across the House to play what I will call Treasury Minister bingo. If I am asked questions about the upcoming Budget, I intend to respond with, “The Chancellor will make all decisions on tax and spend at the Budget, and I will not comment on speculation.” We can see how many interventions we get, and how many times we get to play Treasury Minister bingo. That is just to forewarn those who, like me, perhaps enjoy a game of bingo—

[Joe Robertson]

rose—

[Dan Tomlinson]

We already have an intervention, so here we go.

[Joe Robertson]

I appreciate that this is the end of a debate and the Minister is trying to be funny, but a lot of constituents I speak to do not find this period particularly funny, and would like the Minister to confirm that his Government will stick to their manifesto pledge. Please can the Minister not respond with the word “bingo”? This is a really serious matter.

[Dan Tomlinson]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. The Chancellor will make all decisions on tax and spend at the Budget, and I will not be commenting on speculation. I have said that is what I will say if people continue to intervene. We are two weeks out from a Budget, and I will not be commenting on speculation from the Dispatch Box today.

[Jerome Mayhew]

I have heard what the Minister says and I do not ask him to comment on the Budget, but can he confirm whether he thinks that manifesto pledges are important?

[Dan Tomlinson]

If the hon. Gentleman wants to ask questions about the manifesto, I am glad that he is interested in the change that this Government are bringing through their manifesto. We have invested in our NHS and introduced new taxes on non-doms. We have introduced free breakfast clubs, and invested in HMRC to reduce tax avoidance—we will come on to talk about that, after the contribution from my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Chris Vince). We have set up Great British Energy, and we are implementing the National Wealth Fund.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Dan Tomlinson]

Let me make a bit of progress if I may—I will happily take a further intervention in good time. It is a sorry fact, but it is true that Conservative Members squandered their time in power, just as they squandered much taxpayer money. After 14 years of failure they left people paying more for less, and enforced a policy of austerity for too long, which my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Northfield (Laurence Turner) spoke about in his contribution. That policy brought public services to their knees—something we needed to fix—and saddled us with so much debt that we now pay £1 in every £10 of public money in debt interest payments alone. I agree with the contribution from a Conservative Member who said that that is not a morally acceptable situation, but that is the situation we inherited, and one that we intend to change. Over the course of this Parliament the international comparisons bear out, and we are on track to reduce the deficit that we inherited faster than any other G7 economy. That is the stability that the Chancellor is returning to the public finances.

[Laurence Turner]

The Minister has just spoken about public services and touched on productivity. At the start of the debate, the shadow Chancellor talked about the importance of timely public sector pay settlements to productivity increases. Having been a union official in the aftermath of the strikes by ambulance workers, I have some insight into this issue. Ministers in the previous Government said that they wanted productivity increases, but negotiators for the Government had nothing to suggest on productivity links and they were asking the trade union for ideas.

[Dan Tomlinson]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments and for his years of work and experience supporting public sector workers and our proud trade unionists.

Conservative Members have mentioned the statistics that have been published of late. There is much that we need to do to ensure that the investment that we make in the NHS comes with improvements in productivity and output. The Health Secretary was talking about that today in reference to our reforms to NHS England, and about ensuring that we are not duplicating spending in both the Department for Health and Social Care and NHS England. I thought that Conservative Members were against quangos, but it turns out that they are against that reform.

[Jerome Mayhew]

I am encouraged to hear that the Minister wants to link increased funding with productivity increases. In that spirit, why was the resident doctors’ pay rise not linked to any productivity increases?

[Dan Tomlinson]

In the end, in order to sort out the strikes we needed to give public sector workers a fair deal. The situation that they were left in was not fair, with their wages going up significantly less than prices over the 14 years that the Conservatives were in power. The Health Secretary has been clear about not wanting to go as far the pay settlement demanded, but the situation that we reached last year is right and proportionate, and we hope that we can continue to invest in reform of our NHS.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Dan Tomlinson]

Let me make a bit more progress—I am only on page 2 of a six page speech—[Interruption.] I am taking many interventions, but I will take fewer.

The previous Government saddled us with much debt, as we have talked about, with £1 in every £10 of public money going towards debt interest payments, perpetuating a stop-start cycle of public investments that left us with roads full of potholes, train lines that cannot even make it between London and the north of England, and an unpredictable business environment, with business taxation going up and down all the time. All that gave us an incredibly narrow base for regional growth, with few parts of the country forging ahead, while too many in the rest of the country fell behind.

Levelling up was a Conservative slogan, not a solution. Instead, this Labour Government are growing the economy and lifting living standards in all parts of the country, investing in infrastructure to get Britain building again, and working with local leaders and Members of Parliament to build pride in place and revitalise communities. That is the change that we are bringing. The Conservatives had the opportunity to invest in our public services, to upgrade rail, roads and connectivity, and to protect our NHS, but instead they threw money around with little regard for its value.

A key factor in our stalled productivity is that, time and again, the Conservatives had the option to choose economic responsibility, but they chose political convenience instead. The austerity that they pursued after the financial crisis, when interest rates were at record lows, was a sledgehammer to our economy, gutting public services and cutting the essential flows of investment that would have aided a faster recovery. As the hon. Member for Witney (Charlie Maynard) said, and as Liberal Democrat Members are wont to mention, they then went ahead and implemented a rushed and ill-conceived Brexit deal that brought extra costs to businesses and extra disruption to trade. When the pandemic arrived, our country was not ready. Our public services and our economy have been severely weakened.

[Gregory Stafford]

As I told the hon. Member yesterday, he has the second worst job in Government, which I think he is feeling today. Even if what he has just said is true—I do not agree with him—after the Budget last year, the Chancellor said that the slate was wiped clean and that no more tax rises or borrowing would be needed. What has changed between then and now?

[Dan Tomlinson]

I was glad to attend the hon. Member’s Westminster Hall debate last night on wine producers across the UK. I am impressed by his close reading of all the words of members of the Cabinet; I hope one day to be as diligent as him in following the utterances of the Chancellor, the Prime Minister and all Ministers.

When it comes to the inheritance that this Government and the British people are dealing with, let me say that if wage growth since the financial crisis continued at the pace that it had before, it is not that families in my constituency, in the constituency of the hon. Member for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford) and across the country would be £1,000 or £2,000 a year better off; they would be £12,000 a year better off. Imagine the difference that that would make to the businesses and communities across our country if we had not had that productivity stagnation.

In the end, we will see at the Budget that the OBR is implementing its review of productivity. I will not pre-empt that review, but it is right and proper that we ensure our fiscal forecasts are based on accurate understandings of what has happened in the past to our productivity, because the past is a guide to the future. I hope that this Government will continue to beat the outcomes that happened under the previous Government, when productivity almost flatlined, and that is exactly what this Budget will be about.

[Jerome Mayhew]

Will the Minister give way?

[Dan Tomlinson]

I will happily give way—it might be the final time I do so.

[Jerome Mayhew]

My hon. Friend the Member for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford) asked the Minister a specific question. In October last year, the Chancellor said, “We are not coming back for more. We have wiped the slate clean. From now on, it is on us.” What has happened between then and now? What has changed?

[Dan Tomlinson]

One of the things that has changed is that Conservative Members seem to have found £47 billion down the back of the sofa and are coming forward with plans that are not deliverable, just like they did when they were in government. They have done the job of a losing Opposition—we have been there in the past—whereby numbers used in opposition are not serious or credible. We all know where that ends up.

The Conservatives said recently that they would slash taxes and pay for it with £47 billion of fairyland spending cuts. For context, that is the equivalent of firing every police officer in the country. Of course, I am not saying that they will do that or that they have joined the “defund the police” brigade, but what would they do? We do not really know, because all we have is a menu without a price list.

[Josh Fenton-Glynn]

One unexplored area we could look at to raise some of the money we need is selling the brass neck of the Conservatives on the commodities market. Having cheered when Liz Truss delivered her mini-Budget, they now have the gall to lecture us about fiscal responsibility.

[Dan Tomlinson]

And the Conservatives have the gall to lecture us about managing the public finances well. They say that they want to cut civil service numbers. Between 2016 and when the Conservatives left office, there were 130,000 more civil servants. The former Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip and former Prime Minister said that he would cut civil service numbers by 91,000; they then went up. In October ’23—when the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Grantham and Bourne (Gareth Davies), was in my role—the right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt) unveiled an immediate cap on civil service numbers and pledged to cut them by 66,000; they then went up. Between May 2022 and July 2024, the numbers went up in every single quarter. I am not sure that the public would leave the Conservatives’ restaurant at all satisfied if they bought the items on their menu, because everything they have promised does not seem to turn into reality.

I will conclude, Madam Deputy Speaker.

[Mark Garnier]

More!

[Dan Tomlinson]

Hon. Members want more! Okay.

If this debate has taught us anything, it is simply this: not only do the Conservatives need to stay in opposition for longer, but I am sure that they will do so. So far, they have learned nothing from their time on the Government Benches. There is no humility for their mini-Budget, no plan for giving Britain a brighter future, and no grasp of the realities that the country and the world face. They also have no will to face up to reality, to show leadership or to make choices that will support our public services, businesses and citizens.

Meanwhile, this Government have given the country the fastest growth in the G7 in the first half of the year. We have raised wages and living standards, and the Bank of England has cut interest rates five times because of the economic stability we have brought, which has reduced mortgage payments and lowered the cost of borrowing. This Government have increased public investment in capital spending by over £120 billion over the course of this Parliament, building for the future—something that the Conservative party failed to do. That is the difference that a Government with British values at their heart can make. At this month’s Budget, we will put those values into practice again, with fairness and opportunity for all so that we can secure our economy, strengthen our public services and lift living standards for the British people.

Question put.