Budget Resolutions
Debate between Emma Reynolds and Graham Stuart(1 day, 6 hours ago)
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Emma Reynolds
The last Parliament was the worst Parliament on record for living standards. Since the last election, living standards have increased by 1.8%. I urge the right hon. Gentleman to read the executive summary from the OBR, which stated:
“As a net importer of energy, the rise in energy prices constitutes a negative terms-of-trade shock for the UK, which pushes up on inflation and lowers real household disposable incomes.”
Those are the global headwinds we are facing.
Graham Stuart
Following on from my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), the Minister will be aware that the Joseph Rowntree Foundation suggests that constituents of mine—families—will be at least £440 worse off in this Parliament. It will be the worst Parliament ever. There is no covid and no new Ukraine impacting on energy prices. Can she answer my right hon. Friend’s question? Is the Joseph Rowntree Foundation wrong or right?
Emma Reynolds
What I say to the right hon. Gentleman is that wages have risen faster in the first two years of this Government than they did in the first 10 years of his Government, so we will take no lectures from him or his party.
Against this backdrop, the Chancellor is providing immediate breathing space for families and businesses. Our £100 household energy payment will support 20 million households in England. That is 80% of households, and it will be paid for by a time-limited 3% increase to the bank surcharge, which the Conservatives will oppose in the Lobby.
We are going further on bills, by extending the removal of VAT on electricity until July and extending the 5p cut on fuel duty, and next year we will abolish gas standing charges. I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon) and for Bracknell (Peter Swallow), and many others, for welcoming this energy support package. Overall, in 2026-27, households in England are estimated to benefit by about £160 on average from the support that we are providing on energy, according to new analysis published this morning. Households on the lowest incomes are expected to benefit the most, with the bottom 20% benefiting by about £230 on average, almost four times as much as the top 20%. Because we know that higher energy costs are a challenge for business too, we are reducing bills by up to 25% for more than 10,000 eligible businesses from next April through the British industrial competitiveness scheme, as was mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Business Secretary earlier. That will help to support the British firms at the heart of the future of Britain’s reindustrialisation.
Beyond energy, we are supporting families by giving self-employed dads paid paternity leave, and I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Reading West and Mid Berkshire (Olivia Bailey) and for Dagenham and Rainham (Margaret Mullane) for welcoming that measure. We are backing British businesses and high streets, and here I would like to correct the record. Of course the brilliant men and women across the country who run small businesses are working people, and I thank them for their contribution to our local economies and our local high streets—the bakeries, the cafés, the restaurants, the beauticians, the hairdressers, the local pubs, and so much more. In the first week of this new Government in July 2024, we cut an extra 20% from business rates for pubs, social clubs and live music venues from April next year. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Sarah Smith) for her invitation to the pub in her constituency, and I look forward to going there to eat the goulash.
In this Budget, the Chancellor has gone further by taking 70,000 more small retail, hospitality and leisure properties out of paying business rates altogether. For all other businesses in those sectors, we are freezing their business rates in real terms. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Laura Kyrke-Smith)—my constituency neighbour—for what she said about that change in business rates, and the 2,000 small high street businesses across Buckinghamshire, including Aylesbury and indeed High Wycombe, that will be taken out of business rates altogether. To pay for this—as was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton North (Mrs Blundell)—we are increasing machine games duty for higher-stakes machines, and we are carving out adult gaming centres and vape shops from business rate reliefs. We are also ensuring that online marketplaces collect and pay VAT, which they should be doing already.
Many Members have mentioned young people during the debate. We want young people to have the chance to earn, learn and get on. As the Chancellor has rightly said, we have a moral duty to the next generation. We are raising pay for low-paid workers, while being careful not to price young people out of that crucial first job. We have also expanded access to work experience, and provided record funding for apprenticeships. We have introduced a scheme for first-time buyers, and have capped student loan interest rates at 6%.
My hon. Friends the Members for Lichfield (Dave Robertson) and for Merthyr Tydfil and Aberdare (Gerald Jones) mentioned the mineworkers pension scheme. It is this Labour Government who returned the investment fund to the members of the scheme in a previous Budget, and in this Budget the Chancellor has rightly introduced a measure to ensure that not a penny of the surpluses will come back to the Government. Instead, 100% of surpluses will go to the scheme members. As for the outstanding issue of the guarantor’s fund, the Chancellor has made it clear that we will go on to ensure that the full transfer takes place.
As well as making decisions to provide breathing space now, the Chancellor took action for the long term to kick-start growth throughout the country, which is the only way to keep Britain’s families and Britain’s finances secure for the long term. That begins with, first, delivering the most ambitious devolution package in a generation. We are putting power in the hands of local leaders because they know the right levers to pull to drive growth and job creation in their local areas.
Secondly, this Budget delivers radical reform of our energy system, because our priority is to bring energy costs down to help British business to compete and British households to cope. We will only buy and build new projects where they lower bills and can connect to the grid. We will further break the grip of international gas prices on our bills by moving more of our old renewables on to fixed-price contracts, and we will build cheaper, faster grid connections through GB Grid.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Emma Reynolds and Graham Stuart(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Emma Reynolds
I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising this important issue. I discuss mortgages with lenders and, indeed, with the Financial Conduct Authority on a weekly basis, and I will ensure that I pass on his comments.
Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
Winter Fuel Payment
Debate between Emma Reynolds and Graham Stuart(2 years, 1 month ago)
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Emma Reynolds
I honestly think that Conservative Members have some brass neck. During their time in power, we lost an average of 3 million working days a year to strikes because of their failure to deal with industrial action, and we lost 1.4 million NHS appointments which were cancelled, which meant that pensioners and others were in pain for longer than they needed to be. We will not take lectures from the Conservatives. We have had to take this difficult decision to means-test the winter fuel payment because of the £22 billion black hole in year, this year. [Interruption.] They may not want to hear it, but they should apologise for leaving that black hole. It was created by repeated and reckless unfunded spending—