Spring Forecast

Debbie Abrahams Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves]

May I be the first to congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on his new role? I know that it was not the first job that he wanted, or indeed the second, but he makes a spirited intervention none the less. I am not sure whether he shared that one with George Osborne. I can offer one piece of advice: the thing about betraying your party is that you have to stop asking your old friends for advice. Perhaps, given that the right hon. Gentleman called his new colleague “Zia Useless” a couple of months ago, he needs all the friends he can get. It might have been a couple of weeks ago, but he used to be in a party that, just three months after losing office, was going to get rid of the fuel duty support. That was in the plans that we inherited, and we scrapped them. [Interruption.] Conservatives Members say that is rubbish, but it was in their last Budget. Indeed, it was in the right hon. Gentleman’s Budget and manifesto.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement, and I absolutely agree that this year the British public will start to feel the difference that it makes to have a Labour Government. Will she expand on what she is doing to ensure that all dimensions of inequality—inequality of income, wealth, power and health—are tackled, and that the benefits are felt in all communities across the country?

[Rachel Reeves]

The OBR confirmed today that, by the end of this Parliament, people will be £1,000 a year better off. That is compared with the fall in living standards under the previous Government. My hon. Friend’s constituency benefits from Pride in Place funding, through which we are investing in the places that were forgotten about and left behind during 14 years of Conservative government.

Spring Statement

Debbie Abrahams Excerpts

Wednesday 26th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

I recognise the difficulties that my right hon. Friend is facing, with the fiscal challenges and so on that she inherited. I also support the reforms that my right hon. Friend the Work and Pensions Secretary has set out. However, all the evidence points to the fact that the cuts to health and disability benefits will lead to increased poverty, including severe poverty, and worsened health conditions. How will making people sicker and poorer help to drive our economy up and get people into jobs?

[Rachel Reeves]

As my hon. Friend knows, we set out in the Green Paper that we are consulting on a premium payment for the most severely sick and disabled, because, as a Government, we believe that those who need support should get it. Like my hon. Friend, I recognise that there are many people who are sick and disabled. However, there are also many young people who could be working, but were written off by the previous Government, and that is why we are putting record investment into helping those people to get back into work with guaranteed personalised, targeted support. Someone is half as likely to be in poverty if they move from welfare into work. We are determined to lift people out of poverty by ensuring that there are good jobs that pay decent wages and with security guaranteed through the Employment Rights Bill.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debbie Abrahams Excerpts

Tuesday 21st January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves]

We are in discussions with the new Administration in the United States around the future of Diego Garcia. We will set out details in the spending review, as the right hon. Gentleman would expect.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

It is estimated that 148,000 people had their lives cut short between 2010 and 2020 as a result of austerity measures; on top of that, poor health led to more than £13 billion in lost productivity under the previous Government. What are my right hon. Friend’s estimates of the different choices, and the impact that they will have on the health of the nation and economic growth?

[Rachel Reeves]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. I know she studies closely the work of Professor Michael Marmot on life expectancy and the impact of health inequalities on our country. At the Budget, we increased the minimum wage. In addition, we extended the household support fund and reduced the amount that could be taken in deductions from universal credit, all to try to put more money in the pockets of ordinary working people, to reduce some of those inequalities and tackle the cost of living crisis.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debbie Abrahams Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd December 2024 Commons Chamber

[James Murray]

As the hon. Member will know, we announced in the Budget an increase in local government funding of 3.2% next year, and the Chancellor announced extra funding for early years providers to deliver Government-funded childcare places, meaning that total funding will be over £8 billion in 2025-26. I look forward to the hon. Member’s support for all that extra funding.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

Today is International Day of Persons with Disabilities. With a disability employment gap of nearly 30% and a disability pay gap of nearly 14%, how is the Chancellor helping to address those inequalities?

[Rachel Reeves]

Just today, the Government launched the disability finance code for entrepreneurship—something championed by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business and Trade—to ensure that people from all types of backgrounds, including those with disabilities, can start and grow their own businesses.

Public Spending: Inheritance

Debbie Abrahams Excerpts

Monday 29th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves]

First, there is a £9 billion reserve for departmental expenditure, and it was spent three times over before I arrived in the Treasury. That is why we face these problems today.

Secondly, yes, we fully intend to set longer-term budgets for capital expenditure, but we will have three-year spending reviews every two years for day-to-day departmental expenditure, which is really important for giving certainty, so that Government Departments can plan for the future. Today, no Department or local authority knows its budget beyond next March. That is no position to put Departments in, including the Ministry of Defence.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement, and particularly what she said about the public sector pay award. Could she share a little more about how, given the appalling economic conditions that we now face, she will incorporate equity in her decisions on how to address the in-year deficit?

[Rachel Reeves]

I have to be honest that the decisions I have made today are tough decisions. They are not the decisions that I wanted to make, or that I expected to make. Given the seriousness of the inheritance that I face, they are the right decisions, the responsible decisions, and the fairest decisions that I could make in the circumstances.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debbie Abrahams Excerpts

Tuesday 7th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Huddleston]

I thank my hon. Friend for her comments and continual interest in this area. The changes to the high income child benefit charge mean that almost half a million hard-working families will gain an average of £1,260 towards the cost of raising their children in 2024-25. She will recognise that that is a meaningful difference for her constituents, and for those across the country.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

T1.   If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Jeremy Hunt)]

The shadow Chancellor often likes to ask what has improved over the past 14 years, so I thought I would update the House on some of the latest statistics about the British economy. According to UN conference data, we have now overtaken France, the Netherlands and Japan to become the world’s fourth largest exporter. The International Monetary Fund says that we will grow faster over the next six years than France, Italy, Germany or Japan, and there are 200,000 more people in work compared with a year ago, which means that, for every single day Conservative Governments have been in office since 2010, there are 800 more people in work, many of whom will be very pleased that we are sticking to our plan.

[Debbie Abrahams]

We should add to the Chancellor’s statistics that we have the widest economic inequalities in Europe. Last week, Professor Sir Michael Marmot published new analysis showing significant increases in health inequalities—how long we live, and how long we live in good health—and that is particularly the case between the north and south-east England. That is of course driven by the economic inequalities that I have just referred to. What assessment has the Chancellor undertaken on the loss in productivity directly as a result of that increase in health inequalities?

[Jeremy Hunt]

If the hon. Lady is concerned about economic inequalities, she will be horrified to know that they were even worse under the last Labour Government. They have been reduced under this Government. When it comes to health inequalities, it is this Government who are phasing out smoking for everyone under the age of 14—one of the biggest single things in a generation that will reduce health inequalities and mean that poorer people live longer.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

Obviously, we cannot continue the debate. The hon. Lady has certainly put her point on the record. I do not think this will be the end of it; she knows how to carry it on through the usual channels, which I expect she will use, no doubt starting with the Table Office.

[Debbie Abrahams]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Chancellor, in answer to my question, said that economic inequalities actually increased under the previous Labour Administration. A House of Commons Library publication released last month shows that that is categorically not the case. Would he like to take this opportunity to correct the record?

[Mr Speaker]

I believe the Chancellor would.

UK Economy

Debbie Abrahams Excerpts

Monday 19th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Bim Afolami]

I will take away the hon. Gentleman’s specific point and ensure that the Treasury gets back to him, but his broader point about offshore oil and gas in the North sea is very important. It is critical that we support the oil and gas sector, not just for the tax revenues but for the livelihoods and prosperity of the United Kingdom, and this Government stand four-square behind it.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

There is overwhelming evidence that the lower the economic inequalities, the higher economic growth will be. We know from the Office for National Statistics that between 2021 and 2022 the disposable incomes of the poorest fifth of households shrank by 3.4% while those of the richest fifth increased by 3.3%, and that reflected the position in the preceding 10 years. What assessment has the Minister, or the Chancellor, undertaken to estimate the impacts of these increasing inequalities on our shrinking growth?

[Bim Afolami]

When we are talking about people at the bottom end of the income scale, it is important to note that those on the full-time national living wage—which we will be increasing by the largest ever amount in April this year—will be 30% better off than they were in 2010.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debbie Abrahams Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Huddleston]

Of course, Labour left us in pretty terrible financial circumstances back in 2010. Instead its figure is up £28 billion in real terms at the start of the next Parliament, an increase of 40% in real terms or 7% annually—the biggest ever published.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

Small businesses are the backbone of our economy, but they have a constant problem with late payments, which increased by 7% last year, and that is driving many of them into insolvency. Given that the Government are a major contractor, what are they doing through project bank accounts to reduce the impact of late payments?

[Nigel Huddleston]

The hon. Lady makes an important point, and I know there is agreement on this issue across the Chamber. We made statements last year along those lines, putting particular pressure on the public sector. I am sure there will be continuing pressure on the private sector, too.

Finance Bill

Debbie Abrahams Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 5th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

May I ask colleagues in all parts of the House for some indulgence? Unfortunately, I was missed out on Report, but I very much wanted to speak about new clause 4, which I tabled. It is very close to my heart, and it is the reason why I became an MP. Specifically, it is about asking the Government to make an assessment of the public health effects of the Bill, particularly in terms of regional inequalities, the impacts on protected characteristics and the impact on the NHS.

I would first like to associate myself with the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North (James Murray) about His Majesty King Charles. I wish him a very speedy recovery, and send best wishes to his family.

I had hoped that I might convince the Minister just a little more than I did in Committee about what a difference the assessment in my new clause would make. I am going to extend the arguments just a little more, if he will bear with me. I appreciate that I cannot do anything about the issue in this Bill, but perhaps he could think about it for the one we will have after the Budget, because I will be returning to this issue again. The proposal is not about changing anything in the Finance Bill; it is about publishing the Government’s evaluation of the impact of their policies, as announced in the autumn statement, on the health of our constituents as mediated through, for example, changes in poverty and socioeconomic inequalities. Ideally, that would have been done during the planning of the autumn statement, but given that that did not happen, my new clause would have provided the opportunity to make decisions based on an evaluation of the impacts on our health, including our children’s health.

Many Members will have heard about and read the report of the Academy of Medical Sciences on child health, which came out earlier today. In it, the UK has been revealed to have a stalling infant mortality rate, which is worse than 60% of that in similar countries. This is after a century during which infant mortality has been decreasing. The academy has put to us, as decision makers, that we need to be doing a lot better. My new clause would have helped the Government in their quest for transparency, fulfilling the Prime Minister’s promise on that, and restoring confidence in the Government and in politics more widely. It would also have allowed the Government to monitor their commitment to levelling up our health across the country and to tackling the appalling north-south divide.

I was director of public health research at the University of Liverpool along with Professor Dame Margaret Whitehead, who in 1987 published her report revealing for the first time the north-south health divide. It came out a few years after the Black report and it showed the causal relationship between poverty and health. Margaret took it a step further, emphasising socioeconomic inequalities, not just poverty, as the key driver of these health inequalities.

We have been building on that evidence base for the past 40 years or so. Many will have read “The Spirit Level” by Professors Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett which showed the universal relationship between socioeconomic inequality and educational attainment, social mobility, trust between communities—where has trust gone within our communities?—reducing crime and much more. The narrower the gap in socioeconomic inequalities, the better almost all societies across the world do on a whole host of measures including health and wellbeing.

Professor Sir Michael Marmot’s 2010 totemic “Fair Society, Healthy Lives” report set out six objectives across our life course of what we as a country need to do to address these socioeconomic inequalities and reduce health inequalities. He warned us in 2017 when we started to see life expectancy in England as a whole flatlining, which was accompanied by declining healthy life expectancy. We heard many questions in today’s Department for Work and Pensions orals about what we can do to get a fit and healthy labour force, and our inequalities are partly why we are in our current position. Professor Marmot also revealed that life expectancy for the poorest women and in the poorest areas was declining, and that we were one of three advanced economies in the world where this had been happening, along with the USA and Iceland. This is not a question of our having reached peak life expectancy; we are falling behind most of our competitors. He also revealed that health inequalities had increased and that there was an even starker north-south health divide.

Then covid hit. The same pattern of infection, ill health and death was seen with covid as was seen before the pandemic with other conditions. The same groups of people and the same areas were affected by covid as were affected by, for example, heart disease.

Last month Michael provided another update in his latest report, “Health Inequalities, Lives Cut Short”. He said in The BMJ a couple of weeks ago something that I asked the Prime Minister about last week:

“if everyone had the good health of the least deprived 10% of the population, there would have been 1 million fewer deaths in England in the period 2012 to 2019. Of these, 148,000 can be linked to austerity. In 2020, the first year of the covid pandemic, there were a further 28,000 excess deaths.”

Today, I see no evidence that policymakers have learned from or even understand this injustice, or its economic consequences. I urge them to watch a short film, “The Unequal Pandemic”, which shows the human cost of this inaction. Our experience of covid and these inequalities is not inevitable.

Today’s Academy of Medical Sciences report estimates that a cost of £16.13 billion a year could have been avoided by early childhood intervention. The relationship between population health and productivity is also well established. In its 2018 “Health for Wealth” report, the Northern Health Science Alliance argued that in order to improve our productivity and growth we must improve our health. It calculated that improving the health of the north to the level of the rest of England would increase productivity by £13.2 billion a year. It is in the economy’s and the Chancellor’s interest to undertake this health assessment of his measures. I appreciate that that is not going to happen in this Bill, but I would be grateful if the Minister would consider it for the next one.

I was grateful in the Finance Bill Committee for the Minister responding with a long list of data that the Government already collect on poverty, and so on. Unfortunately, he did not explain how these data were then analysed to assess the impact of his Government’s measures on, for instance, stricter social security sanctions, and how those would affect the current levels of children living in poverty, deep poverty and destitution, as described in the Joseph Rowntree Foundation “UK Poverty 2024” report. He did not explain if these data had been disaggregated to examine the impacts of these policies on different parts of the country, on disabled people or on people from ethnic minority communities, and he did not explain what scenario-modelling on poverty, deep poverty and destitution had been undertaken to understand whether more children will die before their first birthday because they had been born into a poor or destitute family. For each 1% increase in child poverty, an extra 5.8 babies per 100,000 livebirths will die before their first birthday.

Professor Sir Michael Marmot has asked us to provide hope—hope that we as politicians can recognise and understand that these inequalities must be addressed and that they are not inevitable, and I agree. I urge the Minister to really consider this, if not now, then in the next Finance Bill, and to come back with a set of proposals on how the Government are going to do it.

Question put, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

Finance Bill

Debbie Abrahams Excerpts

Committee of the whole House
Wednesday 10th January 2024 Commons Chamber

On fraud, which was raised by the hon. Member for Ealing North, over the last three years HMRC has significantly increased the number of people working on R&D compliance to over 500. We have also announced policy measures to counter non-compliance in R&D schemes and will follow-up with a more detailed compliance action plan outlining of how HMRC will reduce error and fraud. That will be released in due course.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

Following on from the comments of the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) about the impact of the schemes and given the Federation of Small Businesses’ request for some publication about the impact of these tax reliefs on R&D levels, will the Minister also publish a report on their impact on different regions and subregions?

[Nigel Huddleston]

All taxes are kept under review, as are their impacts, so some of the calls for further analysis are not necessary because we do that as a matter of course. It is important to stress that many external studies have found that when full expensing has been introduced in other countries, it has been very effective in supporting investment. Of course, the OBR forecasts predict a boost of £3 billion each year. The analysis of the impact of the super-deduction is already taking place, but companies have 12 months from the end of their accounting period to amend their tax returns, so HMRC will not have complete data on the impact of the super-deduction until 2024. However, we will provide further analysis in due course.

My hon. Friend the Member for Erewash mentioned a whole range of real-world impacts from these measures and the previous measures, including the super-deduction, as well as, importantly, the annual investment allowance of £1 million, which affects the 99% of smaller businesses that can effectively benefit from full expensing. In the autumn statement, we announced full expensing for larger businesses: the top 1%, who conduct about 80% of full investment.

I am aware of time, but will cover a couple of other key points that were raised. My hon. Friend the Member for Erewash raised subcontracting. Again, we engaged extensively with stakeholders on this issue over the summer, and the Government have developed an approach that will allow the person taking the decision to do R&D to claim that relief. That was the preferred result of the consultation. However, an exception will apply in the important area that she mentioned of companies doing R&D—such as in a clinical trial—in the UK for another company that is ineligible for relief because, for example, it is an overseas customer. That is to make sure that the impact is there for everyone to benefit from. The hon. Member for Ealing North also mentioned partnerships; a corporate partner is eligible for full expensing, but an unincorporated partner is not. Again, the annual investment allowance of £1 million covers the investment needs of almost all unincorporated partnerships.

The hon. Member keeps harping on about taxes rising. I strongly advise him to look at his December payslip and compare it to the one he will get shortly. Maybe he will have the decency to come to me and tell me whether his tax is lower or higher. Each fiscal event needs to be taken separately. At the last one, the autumn statement, we cut taxes—national insurance is down 2p. [Interruption.] If the hon. Member does not believe me, I pose this challenge to him: if his payslip shows that his taxes are lower, perhaps he will do me the courtesy of coming to me and apologising, or give the difference to a charity, to put his money where his mouth is.

We do not believe that new clause 1 is necessary because the information has already been published in the tax impact and information notes alongside each change, which give a clear explanation of the policy objectives, along with details of the implementation costs for both HMRC and businesses. Therefore, the new clause is not necessary. I urge the House to reject it, and I commend clauses 1 and 2 and schedule 1 to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 1 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 2 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Schedule 1 agreed to.

New Clause 1

Review of reliefs for research and development

“(1) The Chancellor of the Exchequer must, within three months of this Act being passed, publish a review of the implementation costs of the measures in section 2 incurred by—

(a) HMRC, and

(b) businesses.

(2) The review under subsection (1) must include details of the implementation costs of all measures related to credit or relief for research and development that have been introduced since December 2019.”—(James Murray)

Brought up and read the First time.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.