Spring Forecast

Florence Eshalomi Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves]

A year and a half ago, the right hon. Gentleman stood on a manifesto that had absolutely no explanation of how his party would increase defence spending. This Government have increased defence spending. I am surprised that he criticises that, rather than welcoming it.

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

I thank the Chancellor for outlining how we will finally turn the corner on the 14 years of suffering felt by many of my constituents and people across the country. Many people still complain about the cost of living, and they are impatient for change. I hope that, through what the Chancellor has set out this afternoon, we will start to see that turn. Rightly, we are seeing a change in business rates, but my constituent who owns Chocolate Dino has highlighted that central London rateable values are still high, while small business rates relief thresholds have remained static. That is having such a big impact on independent and small businesses. Can the Chancellor look into other areas to ensure that such businesses, which are the backbone of UK plc, can thrive?

[Rachel Reeves]

In my hon. Friend’s constituency, thousands of children will be lifted out of poverty from next month because this Labour Government have chosen to get rid of the two-child policy that was introduced by the Conservatives and supported by their Tory tribute act friends on the Reform Benches. On business rates, I am sure that the Secretary of State for Business and Trade or a relevant Minister would be happy to meet my hon. Friend. The changes that we have made mean that there is a permanently lower multiplier for smaller businesses and high street businesses.

Business Rates

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Tuesday 27th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dan Tomlinson]

There is a significant overlap between the pub sector and live music venues. Many pubs serve as grassroots live music venues, with the result that they are often valued in a similar way for business rates purposes. We did not think it would be right to draw the line so tightly that some music venues, which happened to be valued as pubs, received the relief and others did not. We think this is a fair and reasonable way forward that reflects the reality on the ground.

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

I thank the Minister for this statement—it is welcome news, and many of the pubs in my constituency will welcome it. I received an email from the general manager of the Hampton by Hilton London Waterloo, who outlined that its business rates bill would increase by £296,000 next year and rise to £399,000 by year four. They want additional support, not just for the hospitality sector but for hotels. As the Minister knows, hotels contribute a lot to the local economy—they employ local people, their supply chain is local, and they house many of the people who come to visit our pubs, restaurants and other venues. Many of the hotels in my constituency house many MPs as well. Would the Minister be happy to visit one of those hotels along the south bank and have a discussion with its staff?

[Dan Tomlinson]

As a London MP, I do not get the joy of staying in a hotel in my hon. Friend’s constituency—instead, I get the joy of the Northern line on the route home. She asks an important question about hotels, which are valued in a different way from some other sectors. Their methodology is well established, but as with pubs, specific concerns have been raised, and the Government think it is right to review how hotels are valued for business rates purposes to ensure their valuations accurately reflect the market for those sectors. I intend to engage with hotel businesses and their representative groups on this important issue. Any future changes to business rates for hotels or other businesses will be considered in the usual way as part of the usual Budget processes.

Spending Review 2025

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Wednesday 11th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves]

I did mention the SNP—I questioned why the SNP does not support defence investment in Scotland—but I can mention it again, if the hon. Gentleman would like me to. Why has the SNP let down the people of Scotland with rising hospital waiting lists? Why has the SNP let down people in Scotland with more drugs deaths? Why has the SNP let people down time and again? We are putting money into Acorn and into defence investment, and we are giving a record settlement to the SNP Government, but hopefully they will not be there for much longer.

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

I thank my right hon. Friend the Chancellor for prioritising affordable housing, which is overdue. That extra investment will go a long way towards addressing the spiralling, broken housing system that has pushed so many people into poverty. Last year, a record 126,000 households faced homelessness, an increase of over 17,000 in one year alone. We see so many families placed in what we call temporary accommodation, but it is not temporary—five years or more is far from temporary. Children are travelling for hours to get to school, families do not have a space in which to grow up, and we have lost a decade of building the social homes that we need. I join with the likes of Shelter and the National Housing Federation in welcoming the investment in affordable housing and the certainty of a 10-year rent settlement, but we need more of these measures, and we need to build truly social homes. Can the Chancellor confirm what proportion of social rent homes will form the backbone of the affordable homes programme, to get those families into a safe, secure and stable home?

[Rachel Reeves]

I thank my hon. Friend for her campaigning on housing and homelessness, which is a big challenge in many of our constituencies, including hers in Vauxhall and Camberwell Green. We want to work closely with local councils and the Mayor of London to build the affordable homes that we desperately need in the capital city, where house prices and rents are still far too high for so many families. I look forward to working with my hon. Friend on just that.

Regional Growth

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Wednesday 4th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Darren Jones]

The funding announced today is in the spending review timeframe—it will be available from 2026-27 onwards—while the money that we allocated at the Budget last year for this fiscal year will continue to be spent.

We are all exasperated by announcements being made by politicians and spades never getting into the ground. I am sure the hon. Lady is now experiencing a difference. Compared with the false promises of the Conservative party, which were made in the past and never delivered, not only have we found the money and allocated it, because of the Chancellor’s decisions, but the hon. Lady will see spades going into the ground and transport in her community being improved for real.

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

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s announcement, making sure we see investment right across the country. Building on the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Brent East (Dawn Butler) about the support for London, I am sure that the Chief Secretary will recognise that London’s transport infrastructure is vital to our young people when they start a career and to our vulnerable communities when moving around. London has three big transport infrastructure projects: the Bakerloo line extension, the DLR to Thamesmead, and the west London orbital. Backed by London boroughs, the mayor, businesses and Transport for London, those projects need additional funding. Will the Chief Secretary highlight how what he said about a regional plan will be hardwired into the spending review going forward and that that will include London?

[Darren Jones]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question and for her excellent work on the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee looking at those and related issues. She is right to point to the London’s success and the potential for future success through investment in London. As the Chancellor said today, we are tilting investment to parts of the country that have missed out for many years. However, we know that by working with mayors such as Sadiq Khan in London and with private capital and other investors, we can also deliver for places as important as London, as our country’s capital city. We know that there is plenty of opportunity, and we can set out further details on that in due course.

Financial Services: Mansion House Speech

Florence Eshalomi Excerpts

Monday 18th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Tulip Siddiq]

The consultation is ongoing, but I repeat that each administering authority will retain control over impactful decisions by setting out investment objectives and strategic asset allocation, and they will have control over their pooled assets. The Minister for Pensions will be happy to meet the hon. Lady should she wish to discuss that further. As the hon. Lady said herself, the consultation is ongoing, so she may wish to wait until after it is complete.

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

I declare an interest as a proud Labour and Co-operative MP. It was great to see the Chancellor outline the ambition to grow the co-op and mutual sector and to see regulators come forward in that work. Is there a timeframe for that process? As the Minister said, to ensure the growth of the UK economy, we need rich and diverse growth in the mutual and co-operative sector as well.

[Tulip Siddiq]

As my hon. Friend said, she stood on a ticket as a Labour and Co-operative Member of Parliament, and she has done a lot of work in that area. Last week, the Chancellor set out multiple new measures to unlock the full potential of the mutual sector, as we outlined in our manifesto. That included publishing a call for evidence and reforming the credit union common bond, and asking the PRA and the FCA to report on the current mutual landscape by the end of 2025.

The Economy

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Wednesday 22nd May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Bim Afolami]

As my hon. Friend knows, it is for the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England to determine the policy on interest rates, but we hope that working in partnership with the Bank of England to cut inflation will mean that at some point later in the year interest rates will start to come down, as the IMF has suggested, as a result of inflation being at target.

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

In response to the Minister’s last reply, even if interest rates are cut later this year, that will not make an impact for a number of my constituents in Vauxhall. According to the Bank of England, people have seen their mortgage and rent go up by over £240 a month, as my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler) said. Over 10.1 million people are falling behind on their bills, according to research by Stop the Squeeze. The Resolution Foundation has found that annual bills in 2024 are now 67% higher in real terms than in 2021. This is not a time to celebrate. I know that, at my advice surgery in a week’s time, my constituents are going to come to me raising these issues. The fact is that they cannot afford to heat their home or keep up with their bills. Yes, these statistics may look good, but will the Minister accept that for real people this is another slap in the face?

[Bim Afolami]

What I will certainly accept is that there are millions of people in this country for whom the cost of living crisis is still real. That is why we are taking the action that we are taking. That is why working people—[Interruption.] As a result of cutting national insurance, a person on an average salary is £900 better off than they would have been a year ago. That is why we are focusing hard on making sure we bring down borrowing, rather than increase borrowing as planned by the Labour party. What I would say to the hon. Lady’s constituents if I were to speak to them at her surgery is that the economy is on the right track, that we are at the point where the economy is starting to turn the corner and that, if they go with Labour’s leadership, things are going to get a lot worse. That is why we need to keep on the plan that we have set out.

Cost of Living Increases

Florence Eshalomi Excerpts

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House condemns successive Conservative Governments for their mismanagement of the economy over 13 years; regrets that this has resulted in the UK being the only G7 economy that is still smaller than before the pandemic, with squeezed wages and higher mortgage rates that have increased costs by £500 a month for some households; further regrets that successive Chancellors have made working people pay for the Government’s economic failure with 24 tax rises since 2019, creating the highest tax burden in 70 years, while refusing to abolish the non-domicile tax loophole; is extremely concerned about the impact on household budgets of an inflation rate of more than 10 per cent with food prices rising at their fastest rate in 45 years; therefore calls on the Government to ease the cost of living crisis by freezing council tax this year, paid for by an extended windfall tax on oil and gas company profits; further calls on the Government to cut business rates for small businesses and support energy intensive industries including food manufacturers with their energy bills to help bring down the cost of everyday items; and finally calls on the Government to adopt Labour’s economic mission to secure the highest sustained growth in the G7 with good jobs in every part of the country.

It astonishes me that the Conservatives are acting like the cost of living crisis is over and their economic plan is working. The Chancellor is proudly boasting that Britain is back. He has even said:

“The declinists are wrong and the optimists are right. We stick to the plan because the plan is working.”—[Official Report, 15 March 2023; Vol. 729, c. 847.]

What planet does the Chancellor live on? Does he understand the reality on the ground for all of our constituents? Does he understand that on the Prime Minister’s watch, our economy is weaker, with the UK forecast to have the worst growth in the G7 this year? Real wages are lower than they were 15 years ago, with families in the UK going into the cost of living crisis significantly poorer than those in comparable European countries. The price of everyday essentials has risen by an eye-watering £3,000 since 2020, and never before have people in this country paid so much money for so little value from their public services.

The disconnect between this Conservative fantasy and the experiences of ordinary people could not be wider. Decent, hard-working people across the country are being forced to cut back on the things that underpin a good life. Mr Deputy Speaker, I will explain what I mean by a good life: a meal out once in a while with close friends, the special annual family holiday that you look forward to all year round, and a decent home to call your own. Those are increasingly things of the past; instead, people are left worrying about how they are going to pay their household bills at the end of the month and their rocketing mortgage costs.

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

I thank my hon. Friend for opening her speech in such a powerful way. Does she agree that it is really worrying that we hear tales of parents going without a meal, just to make sure that their children are able to eat?

--- Later in debate ---

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

In terms of maths, no matter how far a number of my constituents try to make the pennies stretch, they are just not stretching enough. Families’ incomes continue to go down and costs continue to go up. That is the reality of the Tory Government. The cost of living crisis has been going on for some time, and it is important that we do not talk about it as something normal and something we should accept. Every day I see that with my constituents, who are so desperate with nowhere to go. We see it in our casework and our advice surgeries. Household incomes are being squeezed. To put that in context, food prices are going up 50% faster than elsewhere in the G7, putting Britain’s food inflation rate at a staggering 19.2%. That is not some abstract maths figure from economists; that is felt in people’s weekly shop. When people go to the supermarket, they find that the price of sugar is up by 42%, milk is up by a third, and pasta by a quarter. Those are basic food items that families need to survive. That is the maths they are struggling with when they struggle to pay for this cost of living crisis.

I want to highlight the impact of this crisis on young people, which far too often we forget. We talk about young people being the future, but a number of them are struggling to live day to day. They are struggling with zero-hours contracts. We see the claims about youth unemployment going down, but these young people are in insecure jobs—Deliveroo jobs. That is not aspiration. That is not what I want for young people in Vauxhall. I want them to have long-term careers, not insecure jobs, yet that is the reality behind the figures that Conservative Members keep citing.

I am proud to represent Vauxhall. On my visits to schools and youth centres I seebold and passionate-thinking young people, but a number of them feel that politics is not for them, does not speak to them, and that the economy is skewed against them. The sad reality is that they are right. Instead of the Government getting behind votes at 16, votes are being supressed next month with the introduction of voter ID. Why are the Government so scared of allowing young people to vote? Why?

Figures from Barnardo’s show that one in four young people now live in poverty, and sadly many more face going hungry. Yesterday, children from Stockwell Primary School visited Parliament, and they spoke to me about their worries and concerns. I recently co-chaired an event of the all-party group for London, with the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill). We hosted an event with a youth charity, London Youth, to hear directly from young people about what the cost of living crisis is doing to them. We heard how many of them are having to take on weekend jobs alongside their schoolwork, just to support their families who are struggling. We heard stories of young people stepping up to care for their younger siblings, because their parents are having to work more hours because childcare is extortionate. We heard about those young people’s abject lack of hope of being able to move and have secure roots because—guess what?—they cannot afford to buy.

I have spoken about the need for us to end section 20 notices, and the impact that the cost of living crisis is having on insecure housing. If we want our young people to have hope, be successful, and contribute to the economy, we need to support them by not abandoning them, and by not making them suffer through the cost of living crisis. We need to give those young people hope, and that will happen only with a Labour Government.

Economic Situation

Florence Eshalomi Excerpts

Wednesday 12th October 2022 Commons Chamber

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

Small businesses across my constituency are watching the news with utter dread. They have just about survived the pandemic, the Brexit uncertainty and the collapse of the tourist trade in London, which really affects my constituency—we normally have more than 3 million people going through Waterloo station alone. The spiralling costs, combined with the recession, will wipe out any existing benefits or support from the Government. These businesses simply do not have six months. The Chief Secretary has gone on and on about growth, but does he agree that growth will happen only if these businesses survive the winter?

[Chris Philp]

That is why we have offered the energy price guarantee to businesses as well as to consumers, and why we are keeping corporation tax low at 19% rather than putting it up. Of course, that helps businesses of all sizes: any business making £50,000 a year or more in profit will benefit from the freeze in corporation tax. We do not yet know, as far as I am aware, whether the Labour party supports that position. The shadow Chancellor is sitting impassively, not giving any indication whether she supports lower taxes; I think the House would love to hear at some point what her views are.

Those are the things that we are doing to help businesses. Last night, we voted—the Labour party voted for it as well—to reduce the national insurance burden on businesses. That is the plan that we have to help businesses, and I am very proud to stand behind it.

Oral Answers to Questions

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Tuesday 11th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Griffith]

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities will make a statement to the House in the coming weeks.

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

A constituent wrote to me and said, “What world do the Tories live in? I guess one where you protect the rich and wealthy. The suggestion that the Treasury thinks that a person on £30k a year can buy a home in London is frankly laughable and salt in the wound.” How does the Minister expect my constituents in Vauxhall who are already struggling to pay their rent to save to buy a new home on a salary of £30k?

[Andrew Griffith]

I will be very happy to write to the hon. Lady and to talk to her constituents about the unprecedented intervention that we have made to protect them this winter from their energy bills, putting valuable certainty and confidence not just into every household, but into every business and the economy. That is why the International Monetary Fund has today increased its growth forecast for the United Kingdom.

Financial Statement

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Wednesday 23rd March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

The White Paper from the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities was in fact warmly welcomed by many colleagues from across the House. More broadly, is backed up with tens, if not hundreds, of billions of pounds of extra funding. The results are seen in our employment growth, which has been strongest in those regions outside London and the south-east.

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

The Chancellor confirmed a business rate discount for businesses up and down the country, to a rateable value of £110,000. A number of businesses in my constituency do not qualify for that. A number of businesses across London did not get any benefit during the pandemic. One of the key ways that the Chancellor could help many businesses—not just those in Vauxhall—is through VAT cuts for tourism. People are not coming back to the tourism sector; we have seen record low numbers. Does the Chancellor agree that a permanent cut to 12.5% will help those businesses get back on their feet?

[Rishi Sunak]

All statistics show that the hospitality industry is recovering very well: cash balances are healthy, and business insolvencies are down. That is in part thanks to the support that we have put behind that industry. The uncapped business rate discount will provide support to hundreds of thousands of businesses. It is right that we target support at those who need our help most, whether they are businesses or families and individuals.