Covid-19: Financial Support

Esther McVey Excerpts

Thursday 15th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Manuela Perteghella) for securing the debate and the Backbench Business Committee for granting it.

There is no doubt that the hardship affecting families, businesses and communities as a result of covid-19 policies is ongoing. The depth of suffering is hard to read about. People have been pushed to their limits, mentally and financially, and have had to endure indignity and injustice through no fault of their own. I hope that we can now all agree that it should never have happened. It is something that we never want to see happen again.

The various Government financial support schemes that were set up helped many people, but for the forgotten businesses and individuals who, for one bureaucratic reason or another, were deemed ineligible, the situation was patently unfair and unjust. Some 3.8 million UK taxpayers were excluded from support, while the rest of the working population were paid to stay at home. Why were they excluded? The reasons were arbitrary. Financial support was not forthcoming if a person was newly self-employed, a PAYE freelancer, a director paid in dividends, starting a new job—the list goes on. The rules were random and confusing, and they pushed so many people into desperate situations.

Sadly, we should not have been surprised that that happened. Although some marvelled at the speedy roll-out of the Government’s schemes, the reality was that they were patchy, poorly thought out and full of gaps—of course they were. How could we ever expect to shut down our society and economy and be able to cover the gigantic financial cost of doing so while ensuring that every person was properly looked after? It was unrealistic —an unprecedented state intervention that was doomed to fail.

I totally agree with Members present who are pushing for assurances that that will never happen again, but if we cannot look back with honesty and clarity about what was done, we are doomed to make the same mistakes again. Lockdown was the mistake from which all that injustice and suffering flowed. It was an unknown and unevidenced imposition that should never have been inflicted upon the British people. Many experts predicted from the start that it would cause misery and, horrifically, cost hundreds of thousands of lives through unintended but very real collateral damage.

[Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)]

I thank the right hon. Member for her powerful speech. Our opinions on lockdown may differ, but does she agree that, had we not gone into lockdown, many more thousands of people would have lost their lives?

[Esther McVey]

I do not believe the evidence proves that. We can look to other parts of the world where that was not the case.

This policy had unwavering and enthusiastic support from across the House, with just a few of us in this House —too few—raising valid concerns, but we were shut down. It should be obvious that some people cannot be damaged in the name of protecting others with interventions such as lockdowns that we do not even know will work. The moral mathematics never added up.

And now we must live with the consequences of what we did. We spent in the region of £400 billion on the covid-19 response—a vast sum that will be clawed back through increased taxation and hardship for generations to come. Of course, the Conservative party had to put up taxes to pay for that £400 billion, and it was voted for by pretty much every Member in the House. For me, such a statist, socialist intervention would never work, and that is proving to be the case.

Those businesses that did manage to survive after everything that was thrown at them in the name of covid are now having to face more gloom and doom from this socialist Government in charge of our country, with their two tax-rising Budgets and their removal of business rates relief without understanding it—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. The subject of the debate is financial support specifically during the covid pandemic. The right hon. Lady might want to make sure she stays within scope of that.

[Esther McVey]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I added on that sentence because I felt it was very relevant that those who did manage to survive the pandemic are now not surviving, because of the extra taxes that are being put upon them and the removal of business rates relief that was introduced during covid, and it seems that the Chancellor does not even know how that works. Those businesses are suffering twofold, because some of that covid benefit is now being removed. It is no wonder Labour MPs are being banned from pubs, as we see mass closures of pubs.

I simply ask that we examine the bigger picture. Those 3.8 million people who were excluded from financial support suffered a terrible injustice, but so too did those who received support, because lockdown took from everyone: children denied education; mothers forced to give birth alone; people suffering heart attacks, strokes and sepsis but too frightened to burden the NHS; bereaved families unable to mourn the dead—the list of injustices goes on and on. None of it should ever have happened. The costs were always going to be too high, and worse, there appears to be no evidence that lockdown prevented covid infections.

The covid inquiry recently made two incredible assertions. One was that lockdowns were harmful but should have started earlier, and the other was that the modelling should not have been used to justify major policy but simultaneously proved that 23,000 lives could have been saved. Finally, lockdown was, as Professor Sunetra Gupta from the University of Oxford said—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. The debate is not about lockdown; it is about financial support. I hope the right hon. Lady is concluding her remarks.

[Esther McVey]

I am concluding my remarks. I am pleased to have been able to speak today as one of a handful of 650 MPs who stood by “the Forgotten Ltd” and by many of our constituents whose businesses went out of business. I was one of the few in the House who stood up for them.

Finally, as Professor Sunetra Gupta said, this was like taking a hammer to a fly on a pane of glass: you might or might not kill the fly, but you definitely shatter the window. It will take us a long time to pick up the pieces. Next time we face a similar crisis, let us not panic and reach for the hammer.

Horse and Rider Road Safety

Esther McVey Excerpts

Wednesday 14th January 2026 Westminster Hall

[Aphra Brandreth (Chester South and Eddisbury) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd.

Just last week, I had the pleasure of visiting Harry Zimman, a constituent who is a keen rider. He highlighted two significant issues. The first is access to bridleways. Even in areas with excellent riding routes, such as Cheshire, riders must often travel along narrow and winding lanes to reach them. Consequently, they can quickly find themselves in dangerous situations, because even the best-trained horses and most attentive riders cannot eliminate the fact that horses are living, thinking animals that may react suddenly to perceived danger.

Bridleways are too often overlooked in planning and infrastructure decisions. For example, in my constituency the Tarvin bypass cut across a bridleway and was replaced only by signage, effectively cutting off riders.

[Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour for giving way. I am getting an increasing amount of correspondence from Tatton constituents concerned about careless drivers on country roads and the dangers they pose to horses and riders. Does she share my concern about the changes to planning rules by this Labour Government—a Government who show so little regard for the countryside, as we saw with the family farm tax—under which green belt will disappear and cities will bleed into the countryside, making the roads even more dangerous, city dwellers not understanding the etiquette of country roads?

[Aphra Brandreth]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that really important intervention. We need to understand what the removal of our countryside and green belt will mean for people using rural roads, and the real impact that some of these developments will have.

For riders and their horses—I should add carriage drivers, who are also often overlooked—the most obvious dangers on the road are fast-moving vehicles, but less obvious hazards can be just as serious. A plastic bag in a ditch, or a cyclist passing too closely, might startle a horse. Harry described a cyclist squeezing between a rider and a car, badly startling the horse. Cyclists might not be aware of their impact, but such incidents can pose a danger to all road users.

As we have heard, many drivers remain unaware that the highway code requires them to pass a horse at no more than 10 mph and with at least 2 metres’ clearance. We must do more to improve education and ensure that horse riders are properly reflected in road safety policy.

Oral Answers to Questions

Esther McVey Excerpts

Tuesday 9th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves]

My hon. Friend may know that about 4,000 children in his constituency will benefit from the removal of the two-child benefit limit. That means 4,000 more children being able to go to bed in houses that are not cold and damp and waking up in the morning and being able to have breakfast, and parents being able to afford things that they cannot currently afford. This Government are also providing funds for free school meals in England and delivering free breakfast clubs in every state-funded primary school in England, and extending the warm home discount to 3 million more children. I am proud to be the Chancellor whose actions have led to the largest expected reduction in child poverty over a Parliament since records began.

[Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)]

The biggest issue for those on low incomes is losing their jobs. Does the Chancellor believe that there is any link at all between her increase in employer national insurance contributions —her job tax—and employment levels slumping to a 14-year low?

Oral Answers to Questions

Esther McVey Excerpts

Tuesday 4th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dan Tomlinson]

My hon. Friend is a very strong advocate for Telford, both for jobs in the private sector and for those in the public sector that we are able to support in his community. I am glad to hear that he, like me, is proud of HMRC’s Telford campus and wants to see it play a key role in improving customer experience through innovation, AI and digital technology. I will be very happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss those issues.

[Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)]

The Chancellor has justified her lack of a licence for renting out her house as an “inadvertent error”, but HMRC is never prepared to accept that people make inadvertent errors. Will this now change, or does the Chancellor expect to be treated differently from everyone else who makes an inadvertent error?

[Dan Tomlinson]

I am not sure that the matter that the right hon. Member just raised has much to do with HMRC.

Government Performance against Fiscal Rules

Esther McVey Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Darren Jones]

Because of the Chancellor’s decision to update the definition of debt—[Interruption.] We have been able to unlock billions of pounds of investment into houses and schools and hospitals and GP surgeries across the country. Opposition Members may laugh but, as my hon. Friend points out, they have no plan to share with anyone at all.

[Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)]

In November last year the Chancellor told the CBI conference that she was

“not coming back with more borrowing or more taxes.”

Will the Minister, as the Chancellor is not in the Chamber, reiterate that promise today, or has the Chancellor mishandled the economy so badly that she is now going to have to add this to the Government’s growing list of U-turns?

[Darren Jones]

The Chancellor was very clear that the last Budget was a once-in-a-generation Budget because it had to deal with the sheer scale of negligence and mess that we had inherited from the party opposite. I am very grateful now that we are one year into a Labour Government we do not have to keep clearing up their mess year after year.

Oral Answers to Questions

Esther McVey Excerpts

Tuesday 1st July 2025 Commons Chamber

[James Murray]

I thank my hon. Friend very much for her question. I can reassure her that, alongside the loan charge review, the Government have published a consultation on a comprehensive package of measures to close in on the promoters of marketed tax avoidance schemes. As we know, these contrived schemes both deprive public services of funding and leave their clients with unexpected tax bills.

[Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)]

Does the Chancellor believe that the changes she has made to employer’s national insurance contributions will lead to higher levels of employment, or will they lead to higher levels of unemployment?

[Rachel Reeves]

Let us look at the record so far. There are 385,000 more jobs in the UK economy today than there were when Labour came to office a year ago, which is more than 1,000 jobs a day. So businesses are voting with their feet and taking on more workers, because of the policies of this Labour Government compared with the Tory policies that took our economy down.

Spending Review 2025

Esther McVey Excerpts

Wednesday 11th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves]

In the spending review today, we have set out: investment in defence to support jobs in Scotland; investment in Acorn to support jobs in Scotland; investment in nuclear, which will benefit the people of Scotland through lower bills; and a record settlement for the Scottish Government. It is up to them now to use that money wisely. I would not hold out much hope, under the SNP.

[Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)]

I know the Chancellor considers herself to be a world-leading economist, so can she tell me how it is that everyone in the country knew that hiking taxes on employers’ national insurance contributions—making it more expensive to employ people—would destroy jobs, destroy businesses and destroy the economy, and the only people who did not know that were her and her socialist boss?

[Rachel Reeves]

I am sorry to disappoint the right hon. Lady, but there are 500,000 more jobs in Britain since the last general election. Business confidence is going up.

Bank Closures and Banking Hubs

Esther McVey Excerpts

Thursday 5th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for Blyth and Ashington (Ian Lavery) for his persistence, for securing this debate and for the work he has done and is doing to get banks back on the high street. Perhaps we should be grateful to the bankers, because, by their actions, they are the only group of people less popular than politicians. Unfortunately, in their endeavour to become the most unpopular people in the country, they are doing huge damage to our local communities. To put that in context, since 2010 more than 10,000 banks have closed across the country, and there are now only 3,000 bank branches left open in this country. In fact, we have more chance of finding a Labour voter on a farm than we have of seeing a bank in a rural community.

The hon. Member for Blyth and Ashington rightly pointed out that the loss of banking facilities has left vulnerable groups, such as the elderly and the disabled, particularly affected and financially excluded. So too are residents in rural areas, where internet access is poor and unreliable. People struggle to get on to the internet to do transactions or for any customer assistance, yet banks continue to withdraw physical services from their customers. When we walk down most high streets, we see that banks have become cafés, bars and pubs.

I will focus my attention on Tatton and my local high streets, because the scale of the closures there is stark. In Knutsford, we have lost Santander, Barclays, NatWest, Lloyds and HSBC since 2018, and only Nationwide building society remains. Knutsford is a prosperous town with more than 1,000 businesses operating locally; there is high demand for banking services, yet they have closed their doors. In Wilmslow, the Royal Bank of Scotland and TSB have closed, with only Halifax and NatWest remaining, which are also going to close. That means that only Santander and Nationwide will remain. In Alderley Edge and Handforth, there are no branches at all, forcing residents to travel long distances.

[Dr Neil Hudson (Epping Forest) (Con)]

Like the constituencies of Members across the House, Epping Forest has seen a series of bank closures over the years. Tragically, Lloyds bank has said that later this year it will close its branch in Debden in my constituency. Like the banks in my right hon. Friend’s community, that branch is a lifeline; many people rely on it for face-to-face banking and will struggle to get to other branches. Does she agree that banks such as Lloyds need to rethink and stop those closures, and that the Government and Link need to step in and support high street banking?

[Esther McVey]

I agree—the lack of banks is a disgrace. Where do people go for their banking needs? The reality is that the banks that are closing have entered into an agreement with businesses and individuals; when they opened their bank account, they opened it with the bank on the high street. The business was there because it expected a certain amount of customer service—that is why they went there in the first place. Face-to-face banking offers confidence, security and efficiency, especially for businesses handing over cash and making significant financial decisions. Without those services, it just will not work.

In 2022, the Federation of Small Businesses found that four in 10 small businesses still relied on cash as a primary payment, and six in 10 needed to make regular cash deposits. I regularly hear from businesses in Tatton that they simply cannot deposit cash or access the basic services needed. Why? Well, that is because 64% of bank branches have closed in the last decade and 65% of cashpoints have gone. That is reducing the ability of businesses to deposit cash in the local area. The shift to online poses risks from technical failures and cyber-attacks. We have heard that through this monopoly and lack of access, there is a squeeze, and commission is being charged for the transactions of these businesses.

Our high streets are at the heart of our communities, but without access to banking services, our high streets, which are already under pressure, have become even harder places to trade, grow and thrive. If we are serious about supporting small businesses and seeing investment on our local high streets and in our town centres, we must stop the decline in banking infrastructure.

Some may argue that closures would be reasonable if banks were losing money and needed to take cost-cutting measures, but that is simply not the case. Banks are not struggling institutions. Last year, HSBC reported nearly $25 billion in post-tax profits. Barclays made $6.4 billion. Lloyds made $4.5 billion. NatWest made $4.8 billion. Those are all eye-watering profits—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order.

Oral Answers to Questions

Esther McVey Excerpts

Tuesday 20th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Emma Reynolds]

As we announced in the spring statement, we are looking for options for ISA reform to ensure that we get the balance right between cash and equities. I can reassure my hon. Friend that we understand that cash savings are a vital tool for people and act as a financial buffer for a rainy day.

[Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)]

I am sure that the Chancellor subscribes to the basic principle that if the cost of something is put up, we will see less of it. That is why Governments have, over many years, put taxes on things like smoking. Does she accept that the principle also applies to employing people—that the more expensive the Government make employing people, with their jobs tax increasing NICs for employers, the less we will see of that?

[Rachel Reeves]

The Conservative party is a good example of that. The cost of the Conservative party went up, and its number of MPs shrank.

Family Businesses

Esther McVey Excerpts

Wednesday 26th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)]

I must say, I am disappointed—as will be business owners up and down the country—that the Chancellor could not find her way into the Chamber today. If she had done, she might have learned a thing or two.

In Tatton, there are family businesses that go back four or five generations. Before the Budget, some were planning to get ready for the next generation—but not now. Some, founded in the 1800s, have told me that their businesses survived two world wars, the Spanish flu, the high tax and economic lunacy of the 1970s, and even the recent covid lockdowns, but the Chancellor’s Budget will be the death of them. They have told me that on their family business gravestone will be written: “RIP. 1830-2026. Reeves’ budget the fatal blow.” Here we have a Chancellor who wanted her legacy to be that she was the first female Chancellor; in fact, her legacy will be as the grim Reeves reaper who fatally killed off family businesses and destroyed enterprise in the UK.

The Labour Government show no sign of understanding business, let alone family businesses that employ 14 million people and add £575 billion to the economy. The family business is a living entity; it needs to be nurtured, and if it is, it will grow and last hundreds of years, to be passed on to the next generation. It has a unique place in the business ecosystem—it serves a special purpose. Even previous Labour Governments knew that. That is why they introduced the business property relief; they knew that it was required. But not this Labour Government—oh no! Now, the death of a family member could spell the death of the family business, too.

The CBI and Family Business UK have warned that the changes to property business relief alone could lead to 125,000 job losses and reduce economic output by £9.4 billion. Businesses must think about how much money they will put aside for those tax changes. With every £1 put into tax, they can invest £1 less in their business, which will stifle the growth of the company. This Labour Government talk about growth, but these measures will only kill it off. The impact is not just from inheritance tax: we have the family farm tax, the increase to employer national insurance contributions and the minimum wage changes. Every single one of those will add a final nail in the coffins of many of our businesses.

[Rebecca Smith]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the myriad Labour attacks on family businesses will have a huge impact on businesses like Vospers vehicle franchise in my constituency? Founded in 1946, it employs 600 people but faces a £1.4 million increase in national insurance contributions and a future business property relief levy on the next generation, in an industry that has seen a 20% reduction in sales in January alone, following the Government’s so-called growth Budget.

[Esther McVey]

My hon. Friend speaks knowledgably and passionately about the business in her constituency, and she is right. A family business I spoke to said, “We are already working on small profit margins. We do not know how we will cope. The enormity of the changes will change the way we look at our business. What are we going to do? We might have to carve up the business or cut it down. We might end up selling up or we might look for foreign investment, whether we seek that out or they seek us out”. They say that their business will not survive and thrive, and there is no doubt that it will shrink or end.

Another essential point, which other hon. Members have mentioned, is that family businesses are the breeding ground of entrepreneurs. Family members will work of a weekend, be trained up and go into the family business. People talk about love and passion—all those things—but it is that entrepreneurial spirit that this Government will kill, along with jobs in local communities, because family businesses have a special place in the heart of communities.

This Chancellor said that the changes would only impact the wealthiest of businesses—have we not heard that before? The Government said that the farm tax would impact only the wealthiest of farms, that the removal of the winter fuel payment would impact only the wealthiest of pensioners, and that VAT on schools would impact only the wealthiest of people: that is utter nonsense. The Labour party is removed from reality, ideologically driven and blinded by jealousy.

Labour’s raid on family businesses, worth about £500 million by 2030—that is the Treasury’s forecast—will actually lose billions of pounds more. These tax changes are ideologically driven and the Chancellor is killing the geese that lay the golden eggs. There is a vacuum of business know-how and business knowledge among those on the Government Benches. What they are doing to our country is an utter disgrace.