Oral Answers to Questions

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

This is the Government who have introduced additional charges for long-staying non-doms; Labour had 13 years in which to do that, but they did not. This is the Government who have concluded a tax treaty with Switzerland; the previous Government had an opportunity to do that—[Interruption.] Well, this is what a Europe Minister in the last Government said:

“Swiss…deal offered to HMG…more than decade ago but GB turned it down thus losing billions in revenue”.

They had 13 years to deal with tax avoidance and evasion. We are dealing with it now, while they must account for their new general election strategist.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

4. What assessment he has made of the effects of the 2011 Budget on unemployment amongst women.

[The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Miss Chloe Smith)]

The Office for Budget Responsibility published its unemployment forecasts in March 2011, taking full account of announcements at Budget 2011, but it does not publish forecasts by gender. The Government are committed to tackling unemployment and helping support women into work. The hon. Lady will be aware that female employment has remained broadly steady since the start of 2008. Employment among women aged 25 to 64 is up more than 100,000 since the start of 2008, and has risen by 15,000 in the last three months.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

But with both women’s unemployment and the retail prices index at a higher level than at any time since the Chancellor left university—which was probably when the hon. Lady left primary school— [Interruption.] I do not—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. All this noise slows down progress. Let’s get on.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

I was welcoming a young woman to the Front Bench, and I am glad to see young people representing people in this Parliament, but I do think it is shocking that we currently have the highest level of unemployment in more than 20 years—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I just say to the hon. Lady that what I want is a question with a question mark.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Is it not time that this Government delivered for women on employment, and may I suggest that support for women entrepreneurs and delivering promises that they made before the election for 3,000 more midwives and 4,000 extra—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We have got the point.

Air Passenger Duty

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Thursday 20th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ms Abbott]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who makes his point very well. He raised the question of the avowed environmental intent of the duty. I remember that when passenger duties were put forward under a Labour Government, Ministers said that they were there largely in order to help the environment and discourage unnecessary airline travel. This Government have stated that the rises in air passenger duty are partly intended to help achieve environmental goals.

Far be it for me to accuse any Government—whether it be my own or the present Government—of glossing over the reality, but the truth is that if APD were really about achieving environmental goals, it would be calculated differently. For instance, APD is calculated according to only one element of a given flight—the distance travelled, not according to whether the plane is full or half-empty. A whole range of other factors are relevant to environmental impacts, including the type and age of the aircraft, the time it spends in the air and how heavy it is, but the Government choose not to take those factors into account in calculating aviation tax rates.

As I have said, if this is really about the environment, why is no duty charged on private aircraft? The failure to establish a way of calculating the duty that would actually minimise the effect on the environment gives people the impression that, although Ministers may indeed believe in the environmental benefit, it may be no more than a pretext on the part of their officials.

If we want to persuade people to abandon planes for other forms of transport, it is surely logical for APD to bear more heavily on short-haul flights, to which there are genuine alternatives in the form of trains and boats. What, though, is the alternative for the retired nurse living in Hackney who wants to return to Jamaica every couple of years to see her friends and family? There is no such alternative, but we are imposing these big APD rates on her flight, or that of her family.

Having raised the issue under the last Government, I have taken the earliest possible opportunity to raise it again now.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

I joined my hon. Friend in some of her representations to the last Government. My impression was always that Ministers found the issue too difficult to deal with, and that civil servants thought it a nice tidy way of arranging things to impose air passenger duty in accordance with the locations of the capitals of the countries to which people were travelling. However, would it not be possible to devise an equally simple APD system based on, for example, time zones? Surely a determined Minister who wished the duty to reflect the real distance involved would be able to corner his or her civil servants into achieving such an end.

Cabinet Office

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Tuesday 21st December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

The Christmas Adjournment debate is a good opportunity for the Government, 2010 years after a botched census led to a baby being born in a stable, to get the 2011 census right. Slough has for a long time been a victim of the failures of the previous census, and as a result we have been underfunded for a significant period. I am concerned that worse problems might occur in the 2011 census, and they will arise from a combination of inadequate resourcing and flawed methodology.

The first flaw in the methodology is the emphasis, as my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) pointed out, on using the post. That is a deterrent to people in my constituency, many of whom have poor literacy skills. Moving as a primary school teacher from Peckham to Slough, I was shocked by the poor literacy in the constituency that I now have the privilege to represent.

Slough’s “hard-to-count” score is assessed as a three, which puts it in the top 20%, but that is another error. It should be assessed as a four, and in the top 10%, to account for our transient and diverse population. One indication of the rapid change in Slough between 2008-09 and 2009-10 is that schools in my small borough recorded 531 recently arrived pupils from 53 different countries.

The score also does not take proper account of the impact of houses in multiple occupation. Slough can provide the Office for National Statistics with information about 1,500 HMOs of which the authorities are aware. For the remaining 2,000 HMOs, which are implied by census and survey data, only one questionnaire will be posted, however. If the questionnaire is posted back or completed online, no follow-up visit by a census collector will take place. Only if a questionnaire is not posted back or not completed online will there be any opportunity for accurate counting through a follow-up visit, and those houses in multiple occupation are just ordinary terraced houses.

Additionally in Slough, a number of people live in sheds and other hidden households for which we have no address, so there will be serious problems in dealing with that. I should like to suggest five remedies to which I hope the Minister will respond.

First, the Minister should ensure that the people responsible for collecting census forms have the requisite language skills. Slough borough council is concerned that none of the census posts being advertised has language as an essential requirement. The recruitment and selection process that Capita is delivering on behalf of the ONS means that there are no face-to-face interviews, and that selection decisions are based on performance in online testing and questioning. Although language skills are listed as desirable for all roles, they are not part of the recruitment and selection process, but they should be.

Secondly, will the Minister ensure that the operational elements of the 2011 census include dedicated and adequately resourced events at which people can complete census questionnaires? Currently, the planned completion centres will not have sufficient personnel who are able to re-issue household questionnaires. Only ONS staff can do that, and in my borough only seven and a quarter people will be able to do so.

As a result, in a very verbal town, the events in the centres, which could be a good way of ensuring that people are able to complete their questionnaire, will not take place frequently enough or in enough places. Are the ONS staff trained in questionnaire filling? Will they have the language skills that my constituents require? The ONS says that local authorities can set up alternative completion centres, but local authority staff cannot issue new forms; only the ONS staff can do that.

Thirdly, a national marketing campaign must take place. It has been deferred because of the Government moratorium on advertising, and that is pretty stupid, frankly. Will the Minister ensure that materials are available and clear? Slough has volunteered to translate certain materials, but the ONS has not agreed, so may I have an assurance that the publicity campaign will be agreed to?

Fourthly, we must improve the arrangements for large households. Currently, the head of household will have to request an additional form if there are more than six residents in their household. They will have to do so using a phone line, and in Slough the head of household is likely to be someone for whom English is not their first language, so such requests will be hard to make. May we therefore have better arrangements for people who need supplementary forms?

Fifthly, Slough is under-represented. I am familiar with the London borough of Wandsworth, which is about twice as big as Slough.

[Mr Bone]

The hon. Lady is making a powerful speech. Has she considered whether a sampling technique would be better than an actual census?

[Fiona Mactaggart]

The hon. Gentleman is right to make that point, and sampling will take place after the 2011 census, because that will be the last one. Sampling techniques are theoretically great, but I spent 10 years trying to persuade the ONS that its sampling techniques and statistical methods were inadequate, so I know that they are not perfect.

To return to resources, the London borough of Wandsworth is about twice the size of Slough and has a similar ethnic mix, yet Wandsworth has two area managers, whereas Slough has one quarter of an area manager. Wandsworth has two community advisers, the same number as Slough, and 23 co-ordinators compared with Slough’s five. I do not begrudge Wandsworth that; indeed I live in Wandsworth as well as in Slough, but the ONS has shown since 2001 that it does not get Slough and continues not to get Slough. Unless it gets Slough and puts the resources in we will—once again—be under-counted in the 2011 census.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Crabb]

I think there was a compliment in there somewhere. I remind my hon. Friend that it is not an entirely novel experience. In the previous Parliament and in this Parliament, Whips have been deployed in a variety of ways, including at the Dispatch Box.

My hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) raised the “knotty” issue of the West Lothian question. The Government have announced that they will establish a commission to consider that issue as part of their wider political reform. She referred to the answer to a question asked last week by my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Simon Kirby) from the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), who has responsibility for political and constitutional reform, in which he said that the Government will make an announcement on the commission in the new year. I am happy to confirm that we do indeed mean 2011. That is very much part of our programme for next year. The issue has been around for at least 150 years, so I encourage my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire to bear with us and show patience, because it is important that we get the right solution to some difficult issues.

We are continuing to give careful consideration to the timing, composition, scope and remit of the commission. Its work will need to take account of our proposals to reform the House of Lords to create a wholly or mainly elected second Chamber. There are changes being made to how this House does its business and there are developments in devolution, not least through the Scotland Bill before the House. As I have said, we will be making an announcement on that in the new year.

Two hon. Members addressed the issue of the 2011 census. We had powerful speeches from the hon. Members for Westminster North (Ms Buck) and for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart). All hon. Members will be aware that the census takes place on 27 March. Accuracy of the census is very important, because it is used to allocate billions of pounds of public spending every year. The Office for National Statistics takes the census extremely seriously and is working very hard to ensure that the problems of undercounting experienced in 15 local authority areas in 2011, including in Westminster, are not repeated. The ONS is actively engaging with every authority to ensure that there is a successful census next year, and it has a partnership plan in place with each local authority. A plan for London as a whole has also been developed with the Greater London authority and the London boroughs.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

There is a partnership plan, but the problem is that it is a bit one-way. If it were a genuine partnership, local authorities that are trying to help improve the accuracy of the census would have more ability to contribute to the partnership. If the hon. Gentleman would tell the ONS that, we might have a better partnership.

[Stephen Crabb]

I assure the hon. Lady that the ONS will receive a full transcript of this debate. I am surprised by her remarks, because only last week, I think, the chief executive of Slough met the ONS to discuss the census. The leader of Westminster city council has also had meetings this year with the ONS on the topic.

On specific improvements to the census process, 35,000 field staff are allocated to areas where it has been hard to obtain responses in the past, particularly inner-city areas and areas of high migration and population change. There will also be a three-times greater effort by field staff to collect outstanding questionnaires than in 2001 and a four-times greater effort in London and some other urban areas, including Slough. Some 200 staff are working within their local communities to engage local residents and community groups, promote the census, encourage local people to apply for census jobs and arrange support and assistance for census completion where needed. Collecting details of second addresses in the census will improve the population counts in local authority areas, such as Westminster. Additional questions about national identity, the intention of migrants to stay and citizenship will support a more detailed understanding of migration and population in areas including Slough and Westminster.

Oral Answers to Questions

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Tuesday 21st December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

11. What recent representations he has received on the overview of the impact of the spending review 2010 on equalities; and if he will make a statement.

[The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Danny Alexander)]

Throughout the spending review process, the Treasury looked closely at the impact that decisions might have on different groups. We published “Overview of the impact of Spending Review 2010 on equalities” on 20 October, alongside the spending review document. Departments will consider the impact on equalities of decisions that are made as a result of the spending review, in the light of their legal obligations. On the day of the spending review, the decision to publish that document was welcomed by, among others, the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

The Chief Secretary will recall that the document said that it

“would not…be meaningful to assess the impact”

on gender of the reductions in employment “at this stage”. Given that women’s unemployment exceeds 1 million and is at its highest level since 1988, when will the Government apologise to women for making them bear the brunt of their economic policies?

[Danny Alexander]

I do not accept that analysis. For the sake of completeness, the hon. Lady should recognise that the Government are cleaning up a mess left by the previous Government. If she is interested in the impact on women, she should consider the pay freeze that we have imposed in the public sector, which will protect jobs, and women’s jobs in particular. It is also of benefit to women that we are allowing pay rises for people earning less than £21,000, a disproportionate number of whom are female. For the sake of completeness, she should consider those facts.

Comprehensive Spending Review

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Thursday 28th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Danny Alexander]

So today’s debate also offers a challenge for Labour Members. I will be listening carefully to what they have to say, and I hope that the British public will receive a long-overdue apology for the mess that one party caused and which two parties have come together to clean up.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way—at last. He says that in order to be taken seriously, we need a plan. In order for him to be taken seriously, he needs to be truthful with people. I do not understand how he can claim that fairness is a principle of this comprehensive spending review when women have been hit twice as hard as men.

Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Bill

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Tuesday 26th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

The hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) talked about judging Governments based on what they do. The previous Labour Government left unemployment around 400,000 higher when they left office than when they came in. I do not know what the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) has to say to those people who were unemployed when the previous Government left office, but those people must be very pleased that the Labour Government are no longer in office taking bad decisions.

Today Labour Members have discussed fairness, but there is nothing fair about failing to tackle the deficit. They have discussed it being unfair to end eligibility for the child trust fund, but there is nothing fair about asking future generations to pay our debts, which is simply unacceptable. It was the ultimate irony to spend the afternoon listening to Labour Members discussing the value of saving, when the Labour Government left office with our savings ratio at an all-time low, as we have heard. A savings culture was nowhere to be seen in the Labour Government. If they had demonstrated a little bit more of that culture themselves, the rest of the country might have followed suit.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

On savings, the previous Conservative Government presided over five years of double-digit inflation and double-digit interest rates.

[Justine Greening]

I am sure that it suits Labour Members to talk about the past, but we want to talk about sorting out the future. The hon. Lady has mentioned interest rates, but surely she accepts that the biggest risk to interest rates is not tackling our fiscal deficit, and this Bill is part of our plan to do that. The former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne), said, “There’s no money left.” For once, he was right.

The changes that we are making to child trust funds, the decision not to introduce the saving gateway and the abolition of the health in pregnancy grant will save us £370 million in this financial year, around £700 million next year and around £800 million each year from then on. That money can be used to reduce the deficit or to fund our country’s priorities today. We could not afford to spend £500 million of that money on the child trust fund, where it would have been locked up for 18 years. We want to help disadvantaged children now, which is when they need our help, and it was simply wrong to defer that help for 18 years.

We could not afford to introduce the saving gateway in July this year, at the point when we needed to start reducing the deficit, and we could not afford to continue spending £150 million on the health in pregnancy grant to every pregnant woman, whatever their income, whatever their need and however they wanted to spend it. Those policies were simply unaffordable given the fiscal challenge that we face, so we needed to take action.

I want to address some of the issues that hon. Members have raised, but let me first touch on child trust funds. A number of Opposition Members seem to be under the impression that people will no longer be able to pay into their children’s trust funds, but that is not correct: people will be able to continue saving on behalf of their children. As my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary said earlier, we will introduce a new account allowing parents a clear and simple option to save for their children, while saving more than half a billion pounds from child trust funds. In the same way, we will not continue to pay the untargeted, unfocused health in pregnancy grant, but we will continue the Healthy Start scheme, which is targeted at those who need it most and which ensures that people spend their vouchers on milk, fresh fruit, vegetables and vitamins.

Let me briefly cover some of the points that have been made. The hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) talked about the need to maintain policies to ensure that parents can still save on behalf of their children and pass an asset to them when they reach the age of 18. First, child trust funds that are already open will still be a vehicle that parents can use to save. Only today, my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary launched details of a new tax-free savings account for children. The hon. Lady mentioned the Children’s Mutual society, which very much welcomes the announcement that we have made today. It says:

“we absolutely welcome any product that promotes”

the idea of saving efficiently on behalf of children. I hope that she will welcome what it says about our plans. So we will continue to help parents and children to save and I simply do not accept the accusation that the new accounts will be of no use to people on lower incomes. The aim of the accounts is to provide people with a clear, simple way of saving for their children and we want to ensure that they will be accessible to people on lower incomes. The accounts will also allow savings to be locked up until children reach adulthood, so this is not about giving wealthy families a tax break.

The important issue of looked-after children has been raised. The details of any new tax-free account that is launched have yet to be agreed, and, as I said in the Westminster Hall debate last week, I am open to suggestions from hon. Members and others about how we can ensure that local authorities with parental responsibilities for looked-after children play their role in contributing in this area.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) on her imminent grandchild and I assure her that a child born today will still be eligible for the child trust fund. Her daughter will have got the health in pregnancy grant and if this is her first child she will be eligible for something that has not been mentioned today—the Sure Start maternity grant.

I hope that I have dealt with the specific points that have been raised and I conclude by returning to the wider point of the Bill. If we had carried on with these policies, our plans for reducing the deficit would have meant finding £3 billion of extra spending cuts elsewhere. Instead, these actions, alongside other difficult decisions, enable us to protect critical areas such as health, spending on schools, tackling the welfare state that currently traps people in poverty, laying the foundations for growth in our economy and creating more of the jobs that will ultimately help us to get the economy back on track. I commend the Bill to the House.

Question put, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

PAYE Contributions

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Wednesday 8th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

Will the Minister make sure that there are sufficient staff who are able to help vulnerable people unexpectedly facing big bills, with face-to-face discussions about how to deal with that? Last Sunday in my advice surgery, I spoke to a gentleman who is a courier earning £220 a week and has no bank account, but owes £18,000 in back tax because he has constantly had letters that he does not understand referring to extra charges, interest payments and so on. He has not been able to find anyone who can speak to him about the problem. Will the Minister ensure that there are enough staff to speak to people?

[Mr Gauke]

I am grateful for that question. It is absolutely right, particularly where those larger sums are involved, that HMRC deals with people sympathetically, and in order for it to do so there needs to be proper communication. That is a challenge for HMRC, but it is absolutely right that it focuses its resources on this matter.

Oral Answers to Questions

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Tuesday 13th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hoban]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Sir James Dyson made an important contribution to the debate on increasing the high-tech sector, and the Government are looking at the implementation of his findings. In the Budget, we announced a review of the taxation of intellectual property, including research and development, and we are committed to ensuring that the UK again becomes a centre for high-tech manufacturing.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

But does the Minister agree that, in the south-west and in the whole of the UK, growth in the economy depends on growth in employment and jobs? What is his estimate, and that of the OBR, of the effect of his decisions on employment?

[Mr Hoban]

The independent forecast published by the OBR at the time of the Budget demonstrated that employment would rise over the course of the next five years.

Office for Budget Responsibility

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Monday 14th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

Sir Alan will give evidence to the Treasury Committee when it is formed, but one of the things that the Office for Budget Responsibility will do is cost Budget measures, including the impact of tax and spending changes. That will revolutionise how Budgets are put together, as well as how the House can scrutinise them, because hon. Members will be able to see that the costings are independently verified, rather than being ones that the Chancellor has signed off.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

I, too, welcome the greater transparency that today’s report involves. It shows us that the recovery is genuinely fragile. When I spoke just last week to a company in my constituency in one of the sectors in which Britain leads the world—bio-pharmaceuticals—I was told that manufacturing investment had been moved to countries that were investing publicly in their companies, including from Britain, where it was not possible to secure such investments. How will the Chancellor’s Government ensure that such disinvestment, caused by a lack of public support, does not continue to create more unemployment and a weaker recovery for Britain?

[Mr Osborne]

First, let me thank the hon. Lady for welcoming the creation of the Office for Budget Responsibility—I should have thanked the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) for that as well. The change is a genuinely revolutionary step forward in the making of Budgets that fits with a wider agenda of trying to bring more transparency to the way that the Government do their business. On the point about investment, the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) is right to point out that there was a fairly dramatic fall in investment under the Government whom she supported, but I would say this: the sustainable answer to the problem is a strong private sector recovery, and that is what we all have to work towards.

Oral Answers to Questions

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Tuesday 8th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Danny Alexander]

I am happy to look at the report, but as I said in answer to earlier questions, we made it clear in the coalition programme for government that, although we recognise those concerns, the priority must be to address the budget deficit, and that is what we are going to do.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

Will unemployment and inequality increase or decrease in the coming year?

[Mr Osborne]

The ambition, of course, is to try to get unemployment falling, but it is rising at the moment. That is the situation that we inherited—as is inequality, which we inherited too.