Oral Answers to Questions
Dominic Raab Excerpts(4 years, 7 months ago)
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Mike Hill (Hartlepool) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and First Secretary of State (Dominic Raab)
We estimate that over 1.3 million people have now returned to the UK from abroad on commercial routes. I can also tell the House that on the charter flights—the special arrangements—that we set up, over 30,000 British nationals have now returned on 141 flights chartered from 27 countries and territories.
Imran Hussain [V]
Many of my constituents who had their flights cancelled are facing considerable financial hardship as they are yet to see any refund for these flights or for hastily arranged alternative flights that were also cancelled. So will the Secretary of State guarantee that those whose flights have been cancelled will be refunded and that the Government will step in to make sure that this is the case?
Dominic Raab
We certainly share the concern expressed by the hon. Gentleman about flights that are cancelled. There is an onus on the operators to make sure that they can be reimbursed. Insurance can also kick in. In the last resort, there is also financial assistance that can be made available in the form of a loan, but of course that would have to be repaid on return.
Richard Drax [V]
Many of my constituents have said, “We’ve all been locked down but people have still been allowed to come into our country.” Why is the quarantine about to be launched at airports being done now, and will it include arrivals by port and the channel tunnel?
Dominic Raab
The reason the measure is being introduced now is that the advice that we have always had is that there was little point, if any, in introducing quarantine at the border with the R level—the level of the prevalence of the virus—at a high level, particularly above R1. Now that it has come down, and is still coming down even further, it makes sense, as we reduce the level of coronavirus in the UK, to introduce the measure to stop reinfection coming in from people carrying it from abroad, particularly those who would not necessarily be showing symptoms. There will be some flexibility in the detailed arrangements set out, but this will cover, in principle, all people coming in, whether it is to ports or to airports.
Mike Wood [V]
A number of my constituents were overseas when this pandemic struck and are now unable to get together the money they need to pay for new flights home. What action is my right hon. Friend’s Department taking to financially support British nationals who are unable to get home and have no access to funds?
Dominic Raab
We have, in the first instance, worked with insurance companies to make sure that they extend travel policies by 60 days when emergency support is needed. I can also tell the House that the Foreign Office has introduced a special package to make sure that those who are stranded and cannot get back can receive support with food, accommodation and other essentials of up to £3,000 for individuals, £4,000 for a couple, and £5,000 for families. That is a last-resort option, but we are making sure that those who are hunkered down or stranded and cannot get back have the support that they need.
Nigel Mills [V]
I commend my right hon. Friend’s Department for the efforts made to get people home, but can he update the House on progress in getting passengers and crew stranded on cruise ships home?
Dominic Raab
My hon. Friend raises an important point. In March, when the Foreign Office changed its travel advice to advise against people travelling on cruises, we had more than 19,000 British passengers aboard 60 cruise ships. I can tell him that they have all now been brought home safely. There is still an outstanding issue with a number of UK crew on cruise ships around the world, but we are working with operators such as Royal Caribbean and Costa Atlantica to make sure they can get back as soon as possible.
Mrs Sheryll Murray [V]
I have a couple of constituents who were last heard of in the Philippines. They told me that they were struggling to afford the cost of repatriation flights to get home. What additional help can my right hon. Friend now offer them?
Dominic Raab
The Philippines has been a challenge, but I can reassure my hon. Friend that we managed to secure the return of over 600 British nationals on UK charter flights in April. I spoke to Foreign Minister Locsin at the end of March to secure those April flights. My hon. Friend will know that the Government of the Philippines suspended commercial flights earlier this month. They have resumed today. On the financial support that she referred to, in exceptional circumstances, as a last resort, there are loans available to enable UK nationals to return home on flights.
Dan Carden [V]
It is now clear that other European countries used emergency repatriation flights in parallel with commercial options to much greater success. The German Government chartered 30 times more of these flights by April than the UK Government, so it was the Foreign Secretary’s decision early on to rely almost solely on commercial options to get people home that left so many British citizens stranded abroad for so long. So will he publish the official advice that he received on his decision, which led to so many British citizens being stranded abroad for so long?
Dominic Raab
I share the hon. Gentleman’s concern about any British nationals stranded abroad—Brits are a nation of travellers—but his comparison with Germany is not correct, because he is not including, as far as I understand it, all those who came back on commercial flights. We worked very hard with airlines, airports and foreign jurisdictions to enable that to happen. We have secured and helped to facilitate the return of 1.3 million British nationals on those commercial flights—50,000 from Australia, 15,000 from Pakistan, 7,000 from Indonesia and close to 4,000 from New Zealand.
Mike Hill [V]
I have constituents stuck in many countries, including Nigeria and Australia. The one in Nigeria says that he is No. 3,233 on the repatriation list, and only one of the Australian cases has reached home, at substantial personal cost. How can the Minister say that this is an adequate response?
Dominic Raab
In terms of Nigeria, we are concerned. It has been a challenge, but I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that over 1,700 British nationals have been repatriated to date, on seven charter flights, in addition to which a further flight came home on 8 May, and we will continue to do everything we can. Of course, he will know that all airports in Nigeria are currently closed to all international commercial flights until east of 4 June. That is the challenge we face, but we are doing everything we can.
Mr Speaker
I welcome the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) to the Dispatch Box.
Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)
Thank you very much, Mr Speaker; I think that is the last time Chorley will be nice to Wigan in this place.
I thank the Minister for the weekly briefings that he has arranged for me and for his kind words on me taking office. It has enabled us to work together to bring many more Britons home. However, he will know that this is the sixth time that I have had to raise the lack of quarantine measures and the fact that the UK is one of the few countries with no specific policies in place for returning citizens. Thousands will be flying into the UK in the next few days from parts of the world where infection rates are rising and healthcare and testing are limited, on packed planes with no social distancing measures, and as of Wednesday many of them will be asked to go straight back to work. This really is absurd; so will he personally intervene to get a grip on this situation, not in a month, but now?
Dominic Raab
I thank the hon. Lady for her comments and welcome her to her position. I know that she has huge tenacity and will scrutinise everything that the Government are doing, but that she also looks forward to and enjoys engaging on a constructive basis; that will certainly be reciprocated on our side.
The crucial thing about the quarantine and self-isolation that the Prime Minister announced last night is that all the scientific evidence we received said there was little point in introducing it until we got the prevalence of the coronavirus and the level of transmission down. At that point, it does make sense to introduce it because of the risk of reinfection—or re-seeding, as it is sometimes referred to by the scientists—in the UK. I can reassure the hon. Lady that we have followed the scientific and medical advice at every step along the way.
Mr Speaker
I think that the Foreign Secretary has got a grip of the question.
Dominic Raab
And the Foreign Office has got a grip of the problem as well. I take the hon. Gentleman’s point. We have been stretched, and I think that that is the case for countries around the world. I talk to Foreign Ministers every day and every week, and we have had a shared challenge—but particularly with a great travelling nation like the United Kingdom. At the same time, working with those countries and with the airlines, we have returned 1.3 million Brits from abroad on commercial flights. We have now returned over 30,000 people on the charter flights that we have arranged. We have also got all those who were travelling on cruise ships back. The consular team at the Foreign Office and our networks around the world deserve great praise, but we take nothing for granted and are not complacent for a moment. We will keep up those efforts, with all the other scheduled flights and charter flights that we are looking into in order to return other stranded nationals.
Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)
Chris Green (Bolton West) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and First Secretary of State (Dominic Raab)
The UK is playing a leading role in supporting global research and development efforts to find a vaccine, with vaccine trials commenced in this country, and the UK leading internationally to find and distribute vaccines abroad.
Aaron Bell [V]
The Prime Minister acknowledged that, although there is an international race to find a vaccine, it is not a competition, and a breakthrough could come anywhere around the world, although one of the first likely candidates is the Oxford project. If the project is successful, that vaccine will be manufactured by a consortium including Cobra Biologics in my constituency of Newcastle-under-Lyme, but I know that it is keen to produce enough not just for the UK, but to send around the world, especially to the many countries with no manufacturing capacity of their own. Could my right hon. Friend reassure me that we are coming to reciprocal understandings with other nations around the world to ensure that any vaccine, wherever it is produced, both reaches the UK swiftly and is made available on an international basis as soon as possible?
Dominic Raab
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We want to spearhead the pursuit of a vaccine through the research that has been conducted in this country—and, if possible, manufacture it at the kind of scale that would deal not just with UK needs, but with those more broadly. Through the contributions that we are making to the Coronavirus Global Response Initiative, to CEPI and to the Gavi funding calls, we are the leading donor in the latest call for donations to ensure not only that we can provide vaccines for UK nationals here at home, but that those vaccines can be expanded, particularly to the most vulnerable countries abroad.
David Morris [V]
May I thank my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary for his personal intervention, after a text to the Moroccan authorities at 11 o’clock at night led one of my constituents to return home to Morecambe? Does he agree that keeping commercial routes into the UK open is critical to ensuring that British nationals can continue to return home? These routes have been a vital connection for many of my constituents who were stuck abroad.
Dominic Raab
I thank my hon. Friend for his tenacity and for raising the case of his constituents so swiftly. I am delighted and relieved that they have been able to get home. On his broader point, he is absolutely right. Yes, the charter flights are important—we have got more than 30,000 British nationals back on those flights—but we have had to work very hard to keep the airports and particularly the transit hubs open. As a result, we have managed to secure the return, safe and sound, of more than 1.3 million UK nationals on vital commercial flights.
Dominic Raab
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We are proud to be pioneering trials in this country to crack the issue of finding a vaccine. Of course, we need to leverage the manufacturing base we have here and our incredible pharmaceutical sector. We are proud that we co-hosted the coronavirus global response initiative on 4 May, and we will host the global vaccine summit on 4 June. On CEPI and Gavi, as I said, we are the largest donor to the recent calls for funding, and we will continue that international collaboration, which is so vital.
Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)
The UK’s participation in the international pledging conference was extremely welcome, but it is deeply concerning that the USA was notable by its absence. Without US participation, the search for a vaccine will undeniably be slower and more lives will be lost, so can the Foreign Secretary reassure us that he or the Prime Minister asked the United States to attend? What was its reason for turning us down? What realistically does he think the UK can do to turn this situation around before not just the Gavi summit that he mentioned but the crunch G7 leaders summit in June?
Dominic Raab
The shadow Foreign Secretary raises an excellent point. This is a moment when we need to try to reduce political tensions and work collaboratively right across the world. On returns, I work with my Cuban opposite number, my Chinese opposite number and Foreign Ministers from around the world, and when it comes to finding the vaccine there is an even stronger impetus. We will keep making the case in the G7 and bilaterally, with the Americans and all the major countries, to try to get really strong international leadership, and of course we will continue to try to ensure that the coalition is as broad and deep as possible.
Mr Speaker
We are unable to connect Tom Tugendhat, so I call Minister James Duddridge to answer the substantive question tabled by Ruth Jones.
Oral Answers to Questions
Dominic Raab Excerpts(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)
The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Penny Mordaunt)
We have been seeking views on this through the “Work, Health and Disability” Green Paper. We are also investing £100 million in trialling voluntary employment initiatives to consider what works for this group, including embedding employment advisers within the NHS talking therapy services.
Penny Mordaunt
I agree that voluntary organisations have huge insight and expertise that we can tap into, and I commend the work of Talk It Out in my hon. Friend’s constituency. We are recruiting 200 community partners throughout the Jobcentre Plus network so that we can ensure we reach all those organisations and benefit from their huge experience and wisdom.
Penny Mordaunt
My hon. Friend has hit on a theme of the Green Paper. Much work is going on in this area, not only for those with mental illness but for those with a learning disability. One health trial is currently looking at discounting business rates for employers with good mental health practice.
UK Poverty
Dominic Raab Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Spencer
Zero-hours contracts are not something that happened under this Government; they existed before we came to power. The Labour Government did nothing about them when they were in power.
I have met individuals in my constituency who have been offered a zero-hours contract. They took it up, went to work and became very successful. They were then offered a full-time career; they progressed through the management structure; and they are now earning a substantial salary. Zero-hours contracts can therefore sometimes be a gateway to a career.
The Government have to find a way to create such gateways, so that individuals can aspire to make their way through the system. One way of doing that is to create apprenticeships, and 2 million have been created under this Government. That is a way to give the next generation the skills they require to take up a career in the future.
Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)
I missed all the heat about part-time working. Does my hon. Friend recognise the official statistics showing that 74% of the new jobs created under this Government have been full time? The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has shown that job satisfaction among those who are on zero-hours contracts is the same as for any other employee.
Mr Spencer
Absolutely. Those statistics stand on their own.
The second way to help people, once they have succeeded in getting a job, is to cut taxes for those at the bottom of the pay structure, so that they pay no tax at all. The Government have been very successful in lifting those people completely out of the tax system.
The hon. Member for Wigan mentioned the friction between wages and inflation. Following the enormous crash under the previous Government, it is fair to say there were some severe challenges in terms of how inflation was moving forward and the ability of the economy to recover. We are now in a position where, of course, inflation is below the rate of increase in wages, so we have turned that corner and we are going in the right direction.
Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)
I will be as quick as I can, Mr Crausby, and try to stick to your time limit. First, I welcome the debate, even though the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) made a number of political points—
Mr Raab
Not at the moment—I said on a point of substance.
The key point is the systemic challenges that our economy faces. The fact is that our economy sank to 13th place from fourth place on the global competitiveness rankings, and has now climbed steadily but surely back up to 10th. That is the reason why we have job creation at a record high. If we really care about not just the economy but the most socially disfranchised, we have to care about the unemployed—the most vulnerable in our society.
Mr Raab
I am not going to; I will make some progress. The hon. Lady spoke for a considerable amount of time and we are very pressed for time. Unemployment has fallen from 8% to 5.8%. Youth unemployment is down. Overall, there are 1.7 million more people in work. If we care about the most vulnerable in our society, that is the critical section of society.
Lisa Nandy
I was simply about to say to the hon. Gentleman that had he been here for my speech and not been 45 minutes late, he would have heard that many of the families whose stories I recounted for those who were present are actually in work, or were in work when those problems arose. A story that he missed was about one of my constituents who was sanctioned for three months for being four minutes late for an appointment. The hon. Gentleman was 45 minutes late for the debate, and he does not seem to have suffered any adverse repercussions at all.
Mr Raab
I was following the debate, but unfortunately I was in a Committee, and I did give advance warning to Mr Crausby.
The key point that the hon. Lady needs to address is that all the policies that the Labour party is coming up with will stifle job creation. I gently point out to her that in her constituency, according to the House of Commons Library, unemployment doubled between 2005 and 2010, but has fallen by 63% between 2010 and the present day. Frankly, those facts tell us everything we need to know. When it comes to income tax—[Interruption.] She might want to listen as well as speak, because this is a debate, and I have listened very carefully to what she was saying—[Interruption.]
Mr Raab
If someone is earning between £10,000 and £15,000 under this Government, they are paying 54% less tax than they were under the last Government. If someone is a millionaire—we get lots of jibes on the Government side of the House about that—they are paying 14% more. When do we ever hear that referred to?
A lot of people have talked about poverty. If we look at the inequality Gini coefficient, we see that on elderly poverty, fuel poverty, the number of people not in education, employment or training, and child poverty—on every single statistical benchmark—the level of poverty or inequality is lower now than what the last Government left behind. Where is a little bit of honesty about that?
When it comes to affordable homes, the average annual rate of the creation of affordable homes is 50% higher under this Government than the last Government. The hon. Lady might have mentioned that in her speech. What about inflation, which eats away at incomes?
Mr David Crausby (in the Chair)
Order. Mr Raab did give notice that he would be late. If I am going to call Mr Lavery as well, Members are going to have to give Mr Raab the opportunity to speak.
Mr Raab
Thank you, Mr Crausby, I appreciate that.
Inflation is the other key indicator. It was at 3.4% in May 2010, but it is now down to 0.5%. That is not unalloyed good news—it is tough for savers—but it is incredibly relevant to dealing with cost of living issues, which I believe the hon. Member for Wigan cares strongly about. There is still much to do, but if we care about things such as energy prices, we should not be backing reckless interventions in the energy market that will just create spikes in retail prices. We should be investing in nuclear and shale—but was it five or six nuclear plants that were closed down under the last Government? Labour is going slow on fracking as well. Again, if we are serious about long-term issues relating to poverty in this country, those are the things we should be dealing with. If we care about food prices, we should welcome the competitive supermarket price wars that we have been seeing recently. We should be concerned about the £400 that the common agricultural policy adds to the average annual family food bill, but when do we ever hear from Labour MPs about that? We should be looking for freer trade and reform of the EU.
In conclusion, I welcome the debate, but it is important to shed some light, not merely some heat, on this contentious issue, which afflicts the most vulnerable in our society. The hon. Lady can shake her head all she likes, but the fact is that on almost every official indicator and almost every policy lever, this Government have done better than the previous Government. Not only is the economy doing better, but life is fairer for most people in terms of the things that Government can reasonably control. Those are the facts, like them or not.
Mr David Crausby (in the Chair)
I did say that I would call the Front Benchers at 3.40 pm. It has now turned 3.40 pm, but I am going to give Ian Lavery one minute. If he goes past it, I will interrupt him.
Oral Answers to Questions
Dominic Raab Excerpts(10 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Speaker
I am sure that the House is aware—but if not, I can inform Members—that the House of Commons is itself an accredited living wage employer.
Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)
Today, I welcome the tougher action my Department has taken to recoup debt and safeguard taxpayers’ money. Now, where overpayments result from benefit fraud, the Department will always recover the maximum amount in legislation, ending concessions that previously meant that people paid back less, and making exceptions only where children will be affected.
Mr Raab
Will the Secretary of State confirm that, on the latest official data, child poverty, elderly poverty, fuel poverty, inequality—using the Gini coefficient—the numbers of people not in education, employment or training, and the gender pay gap are all, every single one, lower under this Government than when Labour was in office?
Mr Duncan Smith
This Government have dealt with huge problems that were left to us. First, we had a collapsed economy. We are now putting that right, and we are also getting more people back to work. The best way to get people out of poverty is to get their families into work. Under this Government, there is now the lowest number of households in poverty.
amendment of the law
Dominic Raab Excerpts(10 years, 8 months ago)
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Rachel Reeves (Leeds West) (Lab)
Wednesday’s Budget was certainly dressed to impress, but at its very heart there was an admission of failure. Let us remember what the Chancellor told us in 2010: that the Government would clear the deficit during this Parliament. They laughed at Labour’s plan to halve the deficit by the end of the Parliament, yet last Wednesday the Chancellor had to admit that he will not meet his targets until 2018—fully four years late.
The Chancellor comes from a wealthy family of wallpaper manufacturers, and this really was the ultimate Osborne and Little wallpaper Budget: paper over the cracks, use a stunning design to mask the underlying structural faults, and repeat patterns from last year’s range. But the truth is that for all the patterns and effects, people are worse off by £1,600 per year under this Government. Energy bills are up by £300, and however he dresses it up, people will be worse off in 2015 than they were in 2010.
This Budget was an opportunity to tackle the cost of living crisis faced by hard-working people across this country, but, again, the Government have failed to do so. They failed to do anything for families struggling with the costs of child care this side of an election. They failed to do anything to address youth unemployment and long-term unemployment with a jobs guarantee. They failed to help those working two or three jobs but still struggling with not enough to live on. They failed to help older people struggling to pay their energy bills, and they failed to help the disabled people so unfairly penalised by their bedroom tax.
Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)
Before the hon. Lady gets into full flow, will she at least recognise that on elderly poverty, fuel poverty, child poverty and overall inequality, the situation under this Government is better than that left by Labour?
Rachel Reeves
The Government’s own figures show that the number of pensioners in poverty is set to rise, not fall, under this Government; that is the Chancellor’s legacy.
The Chancellor called this a Budget for the makers, the doers and the savers. The reality is that for the makers, over the past three years, manufacturing is down by 1.3%, infrastructure investment is down by 11%, and exports are falling, not rising. For the doers, real wages are down by 6% in this Parliament, energy prices are up by £300, and long-term youth unemployment has doubled. As for the savers, what has he done for them? According to the Pensions Minister, the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb), he is allowing them to cash in their pensions and buy a Lamborghini. How incredibly out of touch is that? The average pension pot is about £30,000. I checked on the internet this morning, never having looked at this before, and found that the Lamborghini Aventador costs £263,000. The Cabinet might be lucky enough to be able to afford to buy a Lamborghini with their savings, but ordinary people would be lucky to be able to afford the door of a Lamborghini.
David Wright
No, I will not.
For many people in Telford £15,000 will be an annual income on a part-time job. People will struggle to be able to invest the kind of money the Conservative party clearly thinks they have got swilling around in their coffers, but never mind; they can go and enjoy themselves at the bingo.
Immediately after the Budget, I took part in a Federation of Small Businesses event—a phone-in debate and panel discussion at a hotel in Telford. I have to say that the small business community, and certainly the people I spoke to in the phone-in, were quite disappointed. They were concerned that there had not been more movement on business rates and that a lot of the initiatives the Chancellor was talking about were targeted at larger businesses. They felt they were getting a bit of a raw deal and they were being ignored. My view has always been that in our modern economy the strength of our future economy and of our nation will depend very much on the success of small and medium-sized enterprises. We must, therefore, think much more about support for small businesses.
There were two glaring omissions from the Budget, the first of which relates to young people. Unemployment rates among young people in Telford and Wrekin remain stubbornly high and hundreds more young people are underemployed. The Chancellor spent little time in his speech talking about young people, but it should have been his top priority. It is for us in Telford. The local authority is investing £1.3 million specifically to target youth unemployment, and the job junction initiative is helping people in towns across the borough, providing support for them to get back into work. We also have other partners, such as Telford college of arts and technology, which have programmes targeted at getting young people who have found formal education difficult back into education and into securing skills and training. I recently had the pleasure of opening a campus facility for the college in Dawley.
The other omission from the Budget was any discussion of the need for a significant increase in the provision of social sector housing units for rent. Understandably, we all want to talk about affordable housing for sale in this country, but we face a real dilemma in that we do not have enough properties for rent in the social housing sector. The next Labour Government must have an enormous drive to build more social housing, to ensure that we deal with what is one of the biggest issues for my constituents.
Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds). He will not be surprised to hear that I disagree with almost every point he made, but he did at least try to present his argument in a reasoned way, which is more than some of his colleagues did.
I welcome three things above all in the Budget. First, there are the measures to strengthen British competitiveness, creating more jobs and boosting exports, and particularly cutting national insurance for under-21s and increasing the business investment allowance and financial support for exporters. These are things that are important for jobs, a sustainable recovery and dealing with the productivity puzzle that still afflicts the British economy. Let us not forget that growth is what produces the revenue to pay for our precious public services.
The second thing that I welcome is the great honesty from the Chancellor about the need to go further in tightening our grip on our debts. Further cuts in Whitehall spending will be necessary, as has been said, as will a long-term limit on welfare spending. These are critical. The idea that the spending restraint we have been under is now at an end is not credible or financially sustainable. We will have to keep on making difficult decisions, and I welcome the Chancellor’s honesty.
We talk a lot about Government debt but not so much about household debt. Household debt has in fact come down by £187 billion since 2009 when it was at its peak under the previous Government, and that is important because if interest rates go up, which they will at some point, small businesses with tight loans and mortgages will need to be vigilant to make sure that they can cope. It is important that we get household debt down. The further measures in the Budget on savings were welcome as well.
Thirdly, we have provided support for working families with the cost of living, in particular the tax break for child care up to £2,000 per child. We know that for low or middle-income families across the country the cost of child care is incredibly important. We inherited the second highest child care cost in the OECD from the previous Government, and it is right that the Government take measures to ease that burden.
For those three reasons, the Budget has been widely endorsed by small businesses through the Federation of Small Businesses and the British Chamber of Commerce as well as by bigger businesses through the Institute of Directors, but also by consumer groups such as Which? and Saga. The Budget helped build on the economic record of the coalition, bearing in mind the horrendous deficit and debt that we inherited from the previous Government. We have the fastest growth in the G7, and 1.7 million private sector jobs have been created under the coalition. Let us remember that in less than four years that is double the rate of private sector jobs growth that Labour achieved in a decade, so it is a huge comparative achievement.
We have done all this fairly. How many times have we heard from Opposition Members that this was a Budget for millionaires and the lowest paid have suffered? Let us be clear about the facts from HMRC. This financial year, someone earning £10,000 to £15,000 is paying 47% less income tax than in the last tax year under Labour. A millionaire is paying 14% more tax. Opposition Members have gone on and on about tax fairness; in fact, it is this Government who are delivering.
Equally, on the current statistics, child poverty, elderly poverty and fuel poverty are all lower than under Labour. Those are the facts, independently verified by all government and other providers of those statistics. Tough decisions have had to be made, but they have been made in a fair way.
We have heard a lot about the cost of living, but the best way to help anyone out of the rut that we know exists is to create more jobs, and unemployment is down from 8% to 7.2%. Youth unemployment is down by 17,000 from the level that was left by the previous Government. I agree with impatient Members on both sides of the House that we have to do more for young people, but it is about job creation, and that will happen only with the dynamism of the private sector.
We have taken 2.4 million of the lowest paid out of tax. We are supporting working families, not just with child care tax breaks but with measures on fuel duty, the council tax and affordable homes. No one would like to see more done to build affordable homes than I would, but we have to look at the facts. The average rate of affordable home building over the 13 years of the previous Government was 31,000 per year, compared with 48,000 per year under this Government. We are doing 50% better than the previous Government. Those are the facts. For all the talk about the spare room subsidy and the problems of supply, we have built more homes on average in the tough times than the Labour Government did when the money was flowing easily and without restraint.
This has been a transformational Budget for savers, and that is absolutely critical. Auto-enrolment into pensions, the abolition of the 10p rate for low-income savers, the pensioner bond, the flexible pension limits and the increase in the ISA limit to £15,000 are incredibly important. Private saving is important so that people can cater for themselves into old age but also for our long-term competitiveness. Our low rate of private saving is one of the things that the World Economic Forum rankings have picked up. The measures introduced in this Budget are critical to correcting that. Opposition Members have ridiculed the increase in the ISA limit to £15,000 as if no one could afford it. I have to tell them that basic rate tax payers are a majority of those currently investing in ISAs, and it shows the contempt that the Labour party has for aspirational Britain that it mocks the increase in the ISA limit. Many people on low and middle incomes will want to take advantage of it.
This is a good Budget for business, for working families and for savers, and I commend the Treasury team.
Oral Answers to Questions
Dominic Raab Excerpts(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Esther McVey
I think that the hon. Gentleman does not really understand what happened with the whole set of Remploy factories. In 2008, the Labour party put in £555 million for a modernisation plan that failed. Those factories that can exist as viable businesses are doing so. We have helped them in that. We have supported them, and more than nine have reopened. Of those that could not, we have got some of the employees into work and others are opening up as social enterprises. The Opposition tried and failed. We are doing something about this and supporting those people.
Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)
11. What steps he is taking to get the long-term unemployed into work.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Esther McVey)
From next April, those hardest to help jobseekers returning from the Work programme will get the intensive support they need to get a job. A third will sign on every day; a third will go on community work placements for six months; and a third will receive intensive support from Jobcentre Plus.
Mr Raab
Research for the Institute for Fiscal Studies shows that since 2010, the Government’s welfare reforms have already increased tax incentives to work and cut welfare disincentives by 6%. Does my hon. Friend agree that we must continue this recalibration of the system to end the dependency culture that the last Government left behind and ensure that hard work pays?
Esther McVey
My hon. Friend is spot-on. That is exactly what we said we would do—a recalibration; a rebalancing of the economy—to get more people into private enterprise and to make fewer people state dependent. We have done that with 1.4 million jobs in the private sector. Opposition Members said that it was not possible. This is down to an environment that we have set and the great British businesses that have provided this employment.