National Insurance Contributions Increase

Florence Eshalomi Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op)]

Having listened to the debate this afternoon, I want to draw the few Members on the Conservative Benches back to what our motion is actually seeking. It is very clear: it is asking the Government to cancel the planned 1.2% rise in national insurance contributions that will cost families, on average, £500 per year from this April. The issues around funding for health and social care, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) outlined, are long-standing. This did not start during covid, and it has not been addressed by this Government for successive years. When 50% of Britons are saying that they cannot afford this additional increase in the cost of living, we are asking the Government to address this and cancel this rise now to support families.

Across my constituency of Vauxhall, the reality of a cost of living crisis is nothing new for many residents. They have been trying to make the pennies last for many years. The ill effects of the universal credit system, the erosion of workers’ rights and an utter failure to tackle the housing crisis have left so many Vauxhall residents—

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. I would like to ask her about the housing crisis. In my constituency, in Reading and Woodley, many residents suffer, as she says, from the rising cost of living, but they suffer particularly because of the great increases in mortgage and rental costs. Will she focus on that matter, and will the Minister also look into it?

[Florence Eshalomi]

My hon. Friend makes a really valid point. In London, the big issue of the cost of living is being pushed up by the cost of our housing crisis, and this is experienced right across the country. Household costs continue to go through the roof, including for many people in insecure tenancies and people in the private rented sector who are also hit hard.

The rise in national insurance will do nothing to alleviate the suffering felt by my constituents but will simply combine with booming fuel prices to push more and more of them into poverty. The effect of this cannot be overstated. More than 8,000 people in Vauxhall already live in fuel poverty. That means that they cannot afford to keep their home warm without dropping into poverty. How have we got to a state where thousands of people in the centre of one of the richest cities in the world, in one of the richest countries in the world, are having to make the impossible choice between living in poverty or living in a cold home? That is the reality for many of my constituents.

The Government can point as much as they want to extenuating circumstances, but they cannot hide from the failures on their own doorstep that have made the events of the past couple of years unnecessarily hard. Neither can it be said that the solutions they offer are sufficient, or progressive enough, in alleviating the costs of households. While the Government have proclaimed to be living with covid, the reality for many people in Vauxhall is that they are still reeling from insufficient support during the pandemic, and local industries face a long tail of this crisis. These include self-employed people who were unfairly excluded from Government support. Many of the people who have contacted me built up personal debt during the pandemic to stay afloat, only to be hit now with the double whammy of the national insurance and energy cost hikes.

In the lead-up to the 2015 general election, the then leader of the Conservative party talked about fixing the roof when the sun is shining. At the same time, the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition took a wrecking ball to the effective schemes introduced by Labour that were fixing a million roofs every year. The result is that, with the heavy rain of the fuel price crisis on the horizon, our housing stock still suffers from inefficiencies that will mean that more and more households face impossible choices in the next couple of months.

On this International Women’s Day, I pay tribute to the women across Vauxhall who are working around the clock behind the scenes to make ends meet: the women who are juggling insecure zero-hours contract jobs to pay their bills; the women who are forced to return to work early because of the crippling costs of childcare; the women who are at the forefront of working with our young people caught up in violence, running to the scene and reassuring the community when there has been a tragic incident; and the women who will continue to go without just to ensure that their extended family members or the people they are caring for are supported. They are the very same women who will be hit by this national insurance crisis.

The tangibility of many households in Vauxhall’s ability to cope is close to a tipping point. While there are things that the Government cannot control, they must use all the levers they have available to ensure that households stay afloat. Refusing to impose a national insurance rise now is one of those levers, and it is one that the Government must use if they have the interests of households up and down the country at heart. I ask Conservative Members to reassess their commitment to supporting working families and cancel this rise.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

We will now have a five-minute time limit so I can get everybody in.