Debate on the Address

Debate between Geoffrey Clifton-Brown and Nusrat Ghani

Wednesday 13th May 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sorcha Eastwood (Lagan Valley) (Alliance)]

I agree entirely with the hon. Member. To me, we have one of the most business-hostile environments. You made comments about young people not getting work. Do you agree that that is made worse by the national insurance hikes that have seen almost a generation being unable to get employment? Do you agree with me in that contention?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. Let us start the Session as we mean to go on, with no “you” or “your”, because the hon. Member is not talking about me.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I do not think I could design a tax increase that was a bigger tax on jobs than the hike in national insurance. I totally agree with the hon. Lady, and I think it is tragic in particular for our young people trying to get into the world of work today.

As Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, my focus is on value for money for the taxpayer and ensuring that no expenditure goes to waste. Figures published by the National Audit Office in its “Audit insights” report in January 2026 point to a deeply worrying picture. The Government now spend around £1.1 trillion of taxpayers’ money across 17 Departments. A Department’s accounts are qualified—sorry, this is getting a little technical, but I hope the House will bear with me a little in this section of my speech—when it does not spend its budget as Parliament intends. The Department for Work and Pensions has had its accounts qualified for 36 years because its fraud and error rate is 3.3%, costing the taxpayer a staggering £9 billion. Overall—this is even more staggering—the Government have written off close to £7 billion this year across Departments, including the Ministry of Defence writing off £1.5 billion purely on cancelled projects. I repeat: £7 billion has been written off this year from cancelled and wasted projects. That is staggering.

The PAC has consistently recommended that each Department improves its digital and AI efficiencies. We believe that should be implemented from the top down, and that a chief digital and information officer should be appointed at a senior level in every Department and on arm’s length bodies. That would lead to efficiencies and savings. After all, every efficiency and every saving that can be made is more money to spend somewhere else. The public sector is constantly behind the private sector digitally, and we need to do much better to ensure that our public services actually deliver for taxpayers, using the latest and best technology to do so. AI is a tsunami that the Government are nowhere near prepared to deal with. I do not mean this as a criticism of the civil service—it is just how it is—but only 5% of the civil service have specific IT qualifications. Some experts say that needs to rise to 10%, which would be a massive transformation.

The Government announced a Bill to reform the welfare system. This year alone, the Department for Work and Pensions budget is expected to reach a projected £333 billion, or around 23.7% of UK spending. That almost outweighs the income tax payments of £330 billion that we receive from hard-working people. Imagine that: the total amount of income tax from hard-working people almost does not pay for the bill for the Department of Work and Pensions. The pension and benefit budgets are ballooning, and that expenditure is only due to increase as we mercifully live longer and healthier lives. Somebody else mentioned that we are at risk of intergenerational unfairness. There is a risk that our children will be unable to pay off this increasing debt, yet this Government have failed to take back control of this skyrocketing budget. Instead, their Back Benchers refuse to support such changes, which would cost just £5 billion.

Another issue that the PAC will be examining closely is the cost of Government compensation schemes, which over their lifetime are expected to exceed £102 billion, or just under what we pay in debt interest in any one year. The Government, of course, have a moral obligation to compensate citizens when the state makes serious mistakes, but we must do so in a fair, proportionate and non-litigious way.

Finally, and most importantly, I want to turn to defence. The first absolute duty of any Government is to ensure that our nation is properly defended. The King’s Speech made a commitment to NATO and to a sustained increase in defence spending, yet the defence investment plan, promised from that Dispatch Box in June 2025 and in every month since then—alongside the strategic defence review—has still not been published. Until we have that plan, we cannot see how the Government propose to procure all the military equipment that is needed.

Strategic Defence Review

Debate between Geoffrey Clifton-Brown and Nusrat Ghani

Monday 2nd June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. The statement has been going on for well over an hour and we will have to conclude in the next 20 minutes, so questions will have to be short, as will the answers.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (North Cotswolds) (Con)]

The Secretary of State has set out an ambitious strategic defence review. As soon as possible after the spending review next week, will he set out a defence investment plan in some detail, so that the Public Accounts Committee can examine whether the funds match the equipment that he has talked about today, and whether the ambitious plan can be delivered and is affordable?

Income tax (charge)

Debate between Geoffrey Clifton-Brown and Nusrat Ghani

Thursday 31st October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I suggest gently to the hon. Gentleman that, whatever the number, if the change causes damage to the farming sector and the productivity of food production, it is not helpful, and nor does it raise much money. What we surely want is measures in the Budget and elsewhere to boost the productivity of our agricultural sector so that we can produce more of the food we eat ourselves, rather than importing it from the rest of the world. I encourage the Chancellor to release any impact assessment she has done on this measure. I hope that she will reconsider this proposal, although I doubt she will.

I now turn to a topic that I have mentioned many times, and one that I will continue to raise with the Treasury. The Chancellor has talked about the difficult decisions that she has had to make on tax and spending to promote growth. May I suggest one specific policy area, tax-free shopping, which has the potential to increase growth considerably? Since we left the EU, British people have been able to shop tax-free in European states. However, we have not given the same advantage to wealthy visitors visiting the UK to spend their money here and benefit our economy. That disincentive to visit the UK will be worse if visa costs are increased. I have talked to some of the bigger businesses involved in this area, and they are seeing that instead of visiting the UK people are going to Paris, Madrid or Milan to do their duty-free shopping. We are losing out as a result.

That whole new market, unique to the UK, is worth an estimated £10 billion annually in foreign spending and would generate more than £3 billion for the Exchequer, based on an Oxford economist’s report that said that for every £1 spent by visitors, 37p was generated for the Exchequer. The only thing stopping Ministers in the last Government looking again at this issue was the Treasury’s 2020 forecasts, which unjustifiably—in my opinion—predicted little or no impact on EU visitor numbers or spending levels. That led to the wrong conclusion that there would be costs to the Exchequer, even without all the other added benefits I have mentioned for hospitality, airports and luxury goods manufacturers, which would help the economy. All the data on actual spending supplied by real businesses proves the opposite.

My only ask of the Chancellor today is that she takes the cost-free decision to review the 2020 impact forecasts in the light of overwhelming real data and this time, unlike the last, ask the OBR to scrutinise the Treasury’s forecast impact of extending the scheme to EU visitors. I would welcome the opportunity to discuss this with Ministers, and I could bring experts with me to help the discussion.

As the new Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, I remind Treasury Ministers of the report produced in the last Parliament called “Lessons learned: a planning and spending framework that enables long-term value for money”, about how the Treasury should focus on getting the best value for every £1 of taxpayers’ money spent. The PAC will scrutinise the whole of the Government’s expenditure and help them to get better value for money.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

We have another maiden speech, from Margaret Mullane.