Autumn Statement Resolutions

Darren Jones Excerpts

Monday 27th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to close this debate, and the debate on the autumn statement as a whole, on behalf of the Opposition. I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the new Member for Tamworth (Sarah Edwards) for her excellent maiden speech and welcome her to the House, and to the shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), for her comprehensive and damning opening on the Government’s record.

I also pay a particular tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) and express my condolences for the loss of his constituent. It is a tragedy that he did not see justice from the Post Office Horizon scandal before he died, but I know that he and his family will be proud of the work that my right hon. Friend has done over many, many years to bring justice to those who have been affected.

More broadly, we have heard a range of excellent speeches, including from my hon. Friends the Members for Halton (Derek Twigg), for West Ham (Ms Brown), for Bootle (Peter Dowd), for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma), for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi) and for Blaydon (Liz Twist), to name just a few who set out from their constituencies how, even though the Conservatives tell us things are doing alright, the lived reality for families across the country is anything but. We also heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) about the amount of money the Government have wasted over many, many years, and what that could do to support people in constituencies across the country, including Blaydon, Lewisham East, Newport West, Liverpool, West Derby, Cynon Valley, Coventry South, and Rutherglen and Hamilton West. Lastly, we heard from my hon. Friends the Members for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald), for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe), for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) and for Selby and Ainsty (Keir Mather) about 13 years of Conservative failure on the economy and the consequences for their constituents.

Over the course of the past few days of the debate—and noting, if I may say so, how few Conservative Members contributed to the debate today to defend the Government’s record—it has been clear that we on the Labour Benches have the ideas and the energy to turn the economy around, while on the Conservative Benches, after 13 years of Conservative failure on the economy, it seems the Tory bandwagon has run out of fuel, leaving its Back Benchers arguing on the side of the road about who should be given the keys next while the real world moves on, leaving our country and the British people behind.

Let me now turn to the autumn statement itself. Well, what can I say, Madam Deputy Speaker? A fiction, a fantasy, a fallacy, an all-round F grade for an autumn statement that failed to deliver the change that our country needs. Even the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies has pointed out, with some surprise, that

“a lot of these numbers… are sort of made up.”

But it is worse than that, because the Conservatives want the public to believe in their financial folklore. When he announced his autumn statement last week, the Chancellor said:

“we are sticking to a plan that is working.”—[Official Report, 22 November 2023; Vol. 741, c. 337.]

The plan is working? Really? We all know that, irrespective of which side of the House we sit on, if we asked our constituents, “What in this country is working right now?”, they would say “Absolutely nothing at all.” How strange, therefore, that this Conservative Government, who appear to be so lacking in vision for our country, can be so good at playing make-believe.

The Conservatives keep telling us that we have never had it so good—that everything is fine—but here in the real world, people have real problems: unaffordable food bills, unaffordable mortgage bills, unaffordable energy bills. Many Conservative Members seem to think those are not problems for working people across the country, but, remarkably, this is the first Parliament on record—the first Conservative Parliament—in which, by the end of the Conservatives’ time in office, people and their living standards will have fallen, not improved. Those are the hard realities that people are facing.

We know why people are facing these financial pressures, and why living standards in the UK are falling. Irrespective of what we are told by Conservative Ministers, economic growth has been downgraded, not upgraded. The tax burden weighs heavier than ever, not lighter, and high inflation is lingering, not fleeting. On every measure on the dashboard of the UK economy, the red lights are flashing. The Conservatives would have us believe that tax is down when it is up, that the cost of living crisis has ended when energy bills are going up once again, and that this autumn statement will somehow stimulate economic growth when even the Governor of the Bank of England has said of growth that

“there’s no doubt it’s lower than it has been in much of my working life.”

The Tories want to spin a tale that the latest Conservative Prime Minister is the hero of the story, a real-life Robin Hood bringing tax cuts to help working people, but there are a few serious holes in that story. First, the Prime Minister is not new to the scene, but has played a prominent role in this Conservative Government for many years—a Conservative Government who have introduced 25 tax rises in this Parliament alone, and a further 12 Tory stealth taxes just in the autumn statement. Secondly, it is this Conservative Government who decided to put income tax and national insurance thresholds on ice, which means that millions of people are being dragged into paying more tax. Thirdly, as a consequence, the tax cuts are not cuts in real terms at all. The Conservatives’ 25 tax rises have seen working people hand over an extra 10p in every pound they earn. So while I welcome the last week’s announcement of a 2p cut in national insurance, I do so with a very slow clap.

Everyone at home knows that the Conservatives may be giving out a few hundred quid in the autumn statement with one hand, but they have already taken thousands of pounds more from us, each and every year, with the other. In real terms, low and middle-income earners will still be worse off than they were before the Conservatives came to power, and that is a shameful record of failure. The Prime Minister is not Robin Hood; rather he is the Sheriff of Nottingham, because never have we paid so much in taxes and had so little in return. People at home will rightly be asking, “What on earth am I paying for? I cannot get an appointment with the GP, and I cannot find a dentist. Why is my pay not keeping up with the cost of living? Why is my rent”—or mortgage—“so much more expensive than it was before the Conservatives crashed the economy, and why will my energy bills, I am told, start to go up again?”

The Chancellor may have announced 101 policies for growth, but after 13 years of Conservative failure it is just too little, too late. That is why we in the Labour Party are focused on economic growth. Only by getting the economy back on track will we make the British people better off again. While it is obvious that Labour is the party of good work for working people, we are now the party of business too—working in partnership to deliver the investment that the country needs, co-investing alongside business to deliver a more secure, cheaper energy system, and unblocking the bottlenecks that prevent businesses from creating the good jobs that people want in the industries of the future.

The Prime Minister is hosting his global investment summit today, but we hear from investors and businesses week in, week out that it is all too late. Even IFM Investors, the Australian infrastructure investor which has pledged investment today, has said that

“government dysfunction and inefficient planning processes”

have meant that there are not many “attractive opportunities” left in the UK. The message could not be clearer.

The UK is at risk of relegation, and change is required. That is why my Friend the shadow Chancellor and I launched the British Infrastructure Council last week, and it is why my review on how we deliver major projects and infrastructure better in this country will set out how a Labour Government will get Britain building again. Alongside that laser focus on economic growth, built on the Labour party’s bedrock of fiscal responsibility —[Interruption.] There is chuntering from the Conservative Benches, but people at home will remember one year ago when the Government crashed the economy and interest rates and mortgage rates went through the roof, and those people are still suffering with the cost of living crisis today. Let people at home look at Ministers on the Government Benches laughing when those people cannot afford to pay their bills. Let them look at Conservative Members and decide whether they want even more after 13 years of Conservative failure or whether, quite frankly, it is time for change.

Public services are one of those things that need to change. My work in what I hope will be a future Labour Government will also be focused on reforming our public services, which have been left on their knees after 13 years of the Conservatives. In his autumn statement, the Chancellor has shown that he would rather just throw what money he has left at a problem than roll up his sleeves. With the interest on our national debt costing the British public more than £112 billion this year alone, he clearly has a different idea to me of what it means to be fiscally responsible with our money. Last week, the Chancellor demanded that public services should be 0.5 % more productive each year for the next 10 years, but he did not say how.

Instead, I stand here with my colleagues in the Labour party ready to modernise our public services. If we win the next election, we will improve outcomes for people who rely on those public services, we will improve the quality of work for our public servants and we will get the public sector budget back under control, because the British people deserve better. In contrast, the Conservatives seem happy to ignore the waste and inefficiencies of their spending over these past 13 years. Why? Because the hard work of reforming our public services and our economy requires strong and accountable leadership, not fleeting changes between 13 Ministers in one Department, five Prime Ministers and so many more. This Conservative Government are not strong and accountable for delivering our public services. They are weak, weak, weak. The only answer to fixing the last 13 years of this Conservative Government is to close the book on their failure, to say goodbye to those last 13 years and to have a Labour Government who will unleash a decade of national renewal, so I ask the latest Conservative Prime Minister to do this country a favour and call an election.

State Pension Age: Women

Darren Jones Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

I thank my hon. Friend for her contribution. As parliamentarians, we are all extremely frustrated. I believe that these issues need to be clearly and comprehensively addressed by the Government, which was why I asked the Leader of the House a couple of weeks ago for clarification on the ambiguity. Given the legal challenge in the High Court, I asked how parliamentarians could continue to discuss and make representations in this House on behalf of their constituents and, more importantly, whether the Government would respond on this very important issue.

[Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that our constituents look to us and to this place to get action, and that the Government’s leaving this situation to be dealt with in the courts shows a failure of the political process? The WASPI women—the Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign—should not have to go to court to have their voices heard.

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

That is exactly the situation we are in, and it is really sad—it upsets me, and it is frustrating. My constituents ask me what is being done, where we are and what we are doing, and this debate is an opportunity for the Government to respond to those questions.

Financial Guidance and Claims Bill [Lords]

Darren Jones Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 22nd January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)]

I rise to speak specifically in favour of the amendments tabled in the other place in respect of the debt respite, or breathing space, scheme for those struggling with personal debt.

However, before I do, I wonder whether, in summing up, the Minister can clarify the to and fro we have had on whether consumer debt is increasing in this country. When I say “clarify”, I do not mean giving us a statistic that supports the Government’s answer, as against the statistic given by Opposition Members; I mean giving us a simple answer on whether consumer debt is higher or lower. My understanding from Bank of England and Office for Budget Responsibility data is that consumer credit—unsecured loans—is up by 19% since 2010. Car financing—a huge new area of secured personal debt—has added £30 billion in the same timeframe. Student debt under this Government has doubled to nearly £100 billion. In real terms, there has been a 7% increase since 2010 in consumer personal debt—the second highest figure in the G8 economies after that in Canada. Some clarification on that point would be welcome.

It is estimated that over 8 million adults in the UK struggle with problem personal debt—the issue we are debating today—resulting in bankruptcy or individual voluntary arrangements. Many people are in that situation because of unexpected life events, be that a job loss, an illness or a breakdown in relationships. The debt charity StepChange, which has been mentioned on multiple occasions in the debate, estimates that 60% of its clients were able to stabilise their financial position after a voluntary freezing of interest charges and enforcement action by their creditors, so it is clear that a breathing space scheme can make a real difference to the lives of people struggling with problem personal debt.

We must be honest: we have a problem with personal debt in this country. Although I welcome the Bill and the technical measures to try to solve some of the symptoms of personal debt, I want to take this opportunity to speak about some of its causes. We must remember why we are in this situation in the first place. Quite frankly, it is because we have seen the lowest level of wage payments as a percentage of GDP for decades. The flatlining of wages for many years—and, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility, potentially for the next 17 years—when compared with the increasing cost of living, pushes many hard-working people into the red.

That is not new in Britain, but it does show the difference that Government policy can make. I remember all too well when, in the 1980s, as a child growing up in Lawrence Weston—in what is now my constituency—I had to hide behind the curtains with my mum when the debt collector came to the door because we could not afford to repay the then high cost of personal debts provided by Provident, the Wonga of its day. That was a regular occurrence in my childhood. My parents were both in work. They were hard-working, law-abiding citizens who just wanted to do the best for our family. However, in the days before the introduction of the national minimum wage, the only source of support for a working-class family earning a mere couple of pounds per hour and with no one to call upon for financial help in times of trouble could be high-interest loan providers.

I remember asking myself then—as, sadly, I do now—why my mum and dad went to work every day, but did not have enough money to feed themselves as well as me. Why could we not afford my school uniform, or the school trip on which my friends were going? Most important, I remember seeing and feeling the stress that poverty induces. When there is a bailiff at the door, and red-ink printed letters in the letter box bearing more and more charges leading to spiralling debt repayments, it causes a type of anxiety and stress that I find hard to describe in words alone. As we discuss the Bill, let us not forget the additional harm caused to the British people when we do not solve the issue of personal debt in the first place, but merely provide technical measures to deal with the outcomes.

I am reminded of why I am so deeply committed and thankful to the Labour Government. They introduced the national minimum wage and invested in public services, and we should be proud of the number of children lifted out of poverty, including me. That has meant that I can stand here today to try to improve the lives of my constituents. It saddens me greatly, however, that—although I benefited from the policies of a Labour Government, which made such a difference to my family and to my prospects in life—we are here once again talking about the same issues. The sad truth is that, after a new lost generation of misguided austerity, we are now going backwards. On the day that Oxfam has revealed that 42 people have the same wealth as the 3.7 billion poorest in the world, we must take this opportunity to pause and ask why that is, and why we let it happen.

I am a centre-ground politician. I do not want to smash capitalism, but I do wish to fix it. If we are to do that, however, we must remember that it is for us—elected representatives of the British people in this democratic Parliament—to set the rules of the game. It is no excuse to talk of globalisation, multinational companies, tax jurisdictions outside the United Kingdom, and the accumulation of wealth in assets while wages become lower and lower. It is no excuse to stand here and say that those problems are too hard for us to fix as a nation—to say, “I would rather we were a member of the European Union, trying to fix them as part of a bloc of countries.”

I should like to see much more radical reform of the economy, but this is a good first step, and I welcome the Government’s commitment to it. In a digital world, the Provident man is no longer on the doorstep writing down in his grey book how much people have borrowed, how much they have paid back, and, when he comes back next week, how much they need to repay. An app on the phone can deliver the funds to someone’s bank account within hours. Access to such services and support is very important.

I thank the Economic Secretary for his detailed response to my letter about this issue. Like other Members who have spoken, I hope he now understands—notwithstanding clause 8(2), which says that the Secretary of State may merely consider whether a breathing space is necessary—that it is indeed necessary, and that the Government should work speedily to introduce it. In response to my letter, the Government made it clear that they were willing to listen to stakeholders in designing the “breathing space” scheme, and I welcome that. I hope that they will include all personal debts, not just some. I hope that they will take account of what has been said by Members such as my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue), who, on this issue, is a learned Member, and who suggested a minimum period of six months rather than six weeks.

I took issue with something that was said earlier by the Secretary of State, who is no longer in the Chamber. In her opening speech, she said that people needed access to mentoring, support and education about budgeting. I agree with that, but let me make this point: to suggest that people who find themselves in very stressful, and sometimes devastating, situations of personal debt because of their ineptitude is both patronising and offensive. [Hon. Members: “She did not say that.”] She did indeed.

I am reminded of an occasion when, during my election campaign, I visited a food bank in my constituency. I asked some people why they had ended up there. One of my constituents said that she had broken up with her partner and found herself in financial difficulties, and that that had driven her to come to the food bank. I will not name names, but she then told me that a Conservative Member of Parliament who had been in my constituency in the run-up to the election had written in an article for ConservativeHome that food bank users needed financial budget management skills. She broke down in tears as she told me that story, in front of her neighbours and her children in the food bank where she had wished never to find herself, because she had been told that she was there because of her lack of intelligence or ability.

The Secretary of State said that it was a core principle of this Conservative Government that the Bill empowered individuals by giving them the information that they needed. Let me make it clear that it is a core principle of the Labour party—and it will continue to be a core principle when we are in government—to empower individuals by paying them a decent wage for a decent day’s work, so that they can live as they wish to live.

I commend the Government on this technical Bill, which provides some good solutions to some of the problems that we face. I look forward to seeing the regulations that will bring a breathing space scheme into law as soon as possible. However, let us not forget what causes people to find themselves in this situation. Let us try to create an economy that works not just for the few, but for the many. Let us remind people like my constituents who become stuck, often through no fault of their own, that they are not alone, and that there are people in this place who are fighting for them and their future.