Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Gareth Davies and Christine Jardine(1 year, 7 months ago)
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Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Gareth Davies)
The energy bills discount scheme will provide all eligible businesses and other non-domestic energy users with a discount on high energy bills for 12 months from 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024. It will also provide businesses in sectors with particularly high levels of energy use and trade intensity with a high level of support. The scheme will help those locked into contracts signed before recent significant falls in the wholesale price manage their costs and provide others with reassurance against the risk of prices rising again.
Christine Jardine
Speaking to businesses in my constituency of Edinburgh West over the past week, I have been hearing that they are not finding the help that they need. The combination of the cost of living crisis, energy costs and business rates is pushing them towards a crisis. The Federation of Small Businesses estimates that 93,000 small businesses could go out of business this year because of high energy costs. Do the Government accept that more will have to be done, particularly to help small companies renegotiate tariffs, and will they tell me what they intend to do about that?
Gareth Davies
The hon. Lady raises an incredibly important point, and this Government are very alive to the issues that businesses face across the country. She will be aware that, last year, the energy bill relief scheme was unprecedented in its nature and scale, and that the Government were always clear that that would be time limited and intended as a bridge for businesses as wholesale gas prices come down. Those prices have now come down quite significantly, but we do have the energy bills discount scheme, which strikes the right balance between supporting businesses for another year, but also limiting the taxpayers’ exposure to volatile energy prices.
Universal Basic Income
Debate between Gareth Davies and Christine Jardine(2 years, 6 months ago)
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Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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Gareth Davies (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I congratulate the hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley) and every Member here. I welcome any debate about moving our economy forward and helping the most vulnerable in society. However, I am afraid, although it may come as a complete shock, that I disagree with the proposal of UBI. I want to set out four reasons why, in good humour and constructively.
First, there is a great deal of uncertainty about how much UBI would cost taxpayers and the British Exchequer. “Universal” means “everybody”; in our country, over 65 million people will receive some form of income under a universal basic income policy. If we provided just a basic income—even a modest income—it would result in hundreds of billions of pounds of extra money being spent. We would have to find that money from other Departments, or raise new money through higher taxes. That is a perfectly noble argument to make, but it is a fact of running a budget that the money has to be taken from somewhere else, or it has to be raised.
Gareth Davies
I am not sure what the argument of the Welsh Government or the Liberal Democrats is, but I am happy to hear it.
Christine Jardine
I also apologise for being a little late; I was caught unawares by the broken lifts in Portcullis House. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the universal basic income is still a concept—an idea? Those of us who earn much more than what it might offer should perhaps not look for any payment at all. We should accept that we already have that income. We can calculate how much it would cost to give it to everybody, but that might not be in line with the spirit of the universal basic income.
Gareth Davies
It is beyond the bounds of my intellect to debate what “universal” means. I take it to mean, “being received by everyone.” It could be up to people to give it back, but as we have seen in recent policies, that does not always happen.