Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between Ed Balls and Nick Gibb

Thursday 21st March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Ed Balls]

The economy has flatlined and the national debt is rising year on year, and the hon. Gentleman does not want to know the truth.

Not only is the Chancellor pressing ahead with a tax cut for millionaires; it now seems that his mortgage scheme announced yesterday will help people, no matter how high their income, to buy a subsidised second home worth up to £600,000. From what I have seen so far, the Government are basically saying, “If you’ve got a spare room in a social home you’ll pay the bedroom tax, but if you want a spare home and you can afford it, we’ll help you to buy one.” Are the Government really going to allow millionaires, who will get a tax cut averaging £100,000 in two weeks’ time, to get a taxpayer guarantee if they use that money as a deposit on a house, a second home, or even a buy-to-let house? That is not just tax cuts for millionaires; it is subsidised mortgages for millionaires—or should I say a spare homes subsidy? I will take an intervention if the Chancellor wants to clear up the absolute confusion and chaos over this policy. Surely people struggling to get a mortgage—those who want to get their first home—should be the priority for help, not the small number who can potentially afford to buy a second home or a buy-to-let home. We will solve the housing crisis and help first-time buyers only if we finally build the new affordable homes that we said should be built but which he ignored in this Budget.

This is more of the same from a Chancellor who does not even understand the Budget he has announced, as we saw a year ago. I ask him again—is the taxpayer subsidy available for second homes to people with incomes over £100,000 or for buy-to-let properties? Yes or no? If he does not clear it up, the confusion and chaos will continue. Does he want clarify it? Pasties, caravans, churches, skips—and now subsidised second homes for millionaires. It is not “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?”; it is “Who Wants To Help A Millionaire?” It is not “phone a friend”; it is “cut taxes for your friends.” As for “ask the audience”, he must be hoping that he does not have to ask the electorate any time soon—certainly not after the past 12 months.

What a 12 months it has been for this Chancellor! The omnishambles Budget, the double-dip recession, booed at the Paralympics, forced to upgrade on the train, downgraded by Moody’s, his fascinating biography—and now his colleagues are even speculating that he might have to be replaced by the Foreign Secretary, the Defence Secretary, or even the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood). A year ago they feted him as the next leader of the Tory party; now, according to the Tories, they are touting him as our next man in Brussels. It used to be Calamity Clegg they were sending off to the Commission; now it is Calamity George. Well, we do know he likes a bit of “Whip crack-away, whip crack-away, whip crack-away.” [Interruption.] Are you suggesting that I do not sing it, Mr Deputy Speaker?

A few weeks ago, the Chancellor reportedly told his colleagues at a Cabinet meeting that if they did not make a decision that day they would have to do so after 2015, sitting round the shadow Cabinet table. That is going to be the one forecast that he actually gets right.

[Mr Nick Gibb (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton) (Con)]

This is all very amusing, but not very serious. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in his own constituency over the past 12 months unemployment has fallen by 2.5% and youth unemployment has fallen by 12.5%? Why is he complaining about higher borrowing and at the same time advocating higher borrowing? Is it not right that the Chancellor is letting the automatic stabilisers kick in?

[Ed Balls]

The problem with what the Chancellor is doing this year—cutting in-year spending—is that it is the opposite of the automatic stabilisers. He is cutting spending and the OBR says that it is having a direct impact on economic growth. I sympathise with everybody who loses their job, including the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb). In my constituency unemployment has come down, but working families are worse off because of cuts to tax credits, the bedroom tax and cuts to child care. The £700 million-a-year tax break for new child care is no compensation for the £7 billion a year cut in support for families.

Academies Bill [Lords]

Debate between Ed Balls and Nick Gibb

Monday 26th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Ed Balls]

The fact is that our academies were disproportionately set up in disadvantaged communities. They disproportionately took in more children on free school meals than the catchment area required, and they achieved faster-rising results than the average. That was social justice in action; what we are seeing with this Bill is the opposite. The freedoms and the extra resources in the Bill are going to outstanding schools, not schools that need extra help. They are going to schools that have more children from more affluent areas, fewer children with free school meals, and fewer children with special needs and disabilities, even though they will get pro rata funding. That is not social justice being put into action; it is social injustice. That is why the Bill is deeply offensive to people on the Opposition Benches and, I think, probably to many on the Government Benches as well.

[Mr Gibb]

But why is the legacy of the right hon. Gentleman’s Government the fact that outstanding schools are disproportionately in areas of affluence?

[Ed Balls]

If the hon. Gentleman looks at the facts over the past decade, he will see that of the 20 local authorities that had the biggest increase in results, half were in the poorest 10% of boroughs in the country, all of which were in London. The London Challenge programme and our academies focused on tackling disadvantage. Of course there is a long legacy of social division and inequality in our education system. We were addressing it; the Government are going to re-entrench it. That is the difference.

Let us look at the amendments that—[Interruption.] The Secretary of State, who chose not to participate in this Third Reading debate—[Interruption.]