Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation
Debate between David Anderson and Lord Jackson of Peterborough(8 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Jackson
I will not at the moment.
I welcome the lifetime ISA. I welcome the tax crackdown on offshore property developers and transfer pricing. It was good to see the changes in the personal allowance, which will take many of my constituents out of tax.
Indeed, my constituency is in a very fortunate position, and I pay tribute to the Chancellor for delivering nothing short of a jobs miracle. We have seen the largest reduction in youth unemployment in the history of my seat—and probably in England as a whole—at over 70%, and there has been a more than 60% reduction in adult unemployment. We also have record numbers of apprenticeships. That is taking people out of poverty. That is the great record of this Government.
The decision to resile from the commitment on PIP was absolutely right. There is a moral, social equity issue—[Hon. Members: “A U-turn.”] It is a U-turn—that was well spotted by Labour Members. However, it was absolutely right to make that decision. It was right for my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) to point up the juxtaposition of tax reductions for well-off people and the change in PIP. However, it ill behoves Labour Members to lecture the Government, when they voted against every welfare change in the last Parliament. What would they have done, and what would they do now? It is incumbent on the Opposition to come through with a coherent, comprehensive alternative on fiscal policy, public expenditure and tax.
Let me raise two issues that have caused me some concern with the Budget. The problem the Government have encountered, which we have discussed over the last few days, has given rise to a proper debate about intergenerational fairness. We need to look again at pensioner benefits. We cannot discuss welfare without looking at things such as the triple lock and pensioners benefits. I rarely agree with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), but he is absolutely right that we cannot see these things in a vacuum, and it is important that we look again at means-testing and pensioner benefits. It is morally wrong to make large transfers of wealth from the young to the old. There has to be a consensus on this issue.
One suggestion I would make is that, if we are going to means-test pensioner benefits, we should perhaps link that to the most acute societal issue we have at the moment, which is adult social care. We should have co-ordination and integration between acute district hospitals and the provision of care and housing for older people. I think there are older pensioners who would understand that, and it is something the Treasury needs to go forward with and look at very seriously.
The second concern is that, as we speak, Cambridgeshire County Council—it is not my local authority, because Peterborough City Council is a unitary authority—is looking at the devolution plans for East Anglia. At the moment, those do not stack up. We have not had enough information—in some senses, I am reprising the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (Sir Henry Bellingham) yesterday—and we need more. The proposal has been rushed to get it in the Budget statement. It needs to be finessed. We need to carry businesses with us. Neither local enterprise partnership agrees with it. The majority of councils are, at best, ambivalent, and that includes Cambridge City Council, which has rejected it. We need to look at this proposal again.
Mr Jackson
I will not at the moment.
It may be that there are synergies between Lowestoft and Peterborough, or between Norwich and Ipswich, but I have yet to see them. Let us have more information about funding, governance, infrastructure spending, the role of an executive mayor and what will happen to the existing local government structure. I am not against this in principle, but we cannot promise £30 billion of spending over the next 30 years without more facts. We need to see those, and that is the challenge I give to those on the Treasury Front Bench.
Capital Gains Tax (Rates)
Debate between David Anderson and Lord Jackson of Peterborough(14 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Jackson
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to draw the House’s attention to that statistic. Likewise, the number of children who go from care into higher education is also a shameful figure. I therefore strongly endorse the ambition of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to tackle the deep-rooted causes of poverty in this country, and to tackle the twin aims of lessening the scale of social breakdown and improving the quality of life of the poorest in our society. If our Government achieve nothing less, they will have served our country in achieving that.
In my constituency, where we have recently suffered job losses, and where we also have low skill levels, lower-than-average pay and high welfare dependency, the problems are real and they are about people, not statistics. Hundreds of children in Peterborough live in dysfunctional families, their parents on welfare benefits. Those children lack ambition, a focus and, often, a moral framework, going without anything other than peremptory familial love and experiencing, through no fault of their own, an inevitable poverty of imagination, as well as, too often, material poverty. Dedicated teachers, nursery staff, health professionals and members of the extended family, such as grandparents, are often forced to assume a role in loco parentis. I believe that we have a moral duty to those children to do something about the situation, even if not to their often indolent and feckless parents.