Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between George Osborne and Kate Green

Tuesday 4th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

My hon. Friend is a champion for the hard-working people in her constituency. Not only have our personal tax cuts helped many thousands of those people, but if we go ahead with our plans to raise the personal allowance to £12,500, more than 5,500 people in Thurrock would be lifted out of income tax altogether and 58,000 of the people she represents would benefit.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

Raising tax thresholds disproportionately benefits men, because many women earn so little that they do not even reach the lowest threshold. On the other hand, consumption taxes have a disproportionate effect on women who are responsible for managing the family budget. Will the Chancellor rule out any increase in VAT, in order to ensure that our tax system can be fair to both genders?

[Mr Osborne]

We do not need to raise VAT, because our plans are paid for by the Government living within their means. Does the hon. Lady speak for the Labour party, because she seems to be opposing the increase in the personal income tax threshold? That is a policy that has lifted many low-paid women out of income tax altogether, and I find it surprising that once again the Labour party is against the interests of hard-working people.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between George Osborne and Kate Green

Tuesday 24th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I am certainly aware of the importance to local people of this project, and I know that my hon. Friend has been speaking to the Department for Transport. I am of course happy to arrange for him to meet the Commercial Secretary, and I know there is also a bid in to the single local growth fund, on which we will be making an announcement in the coming weeks. May I also say that my hon. Friend has been a doughty champion of his constituents and of businesses in his constituency?

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

T3. The rate of employment of disabled people is approximately 30% lower than that of non-disabled people, and 650,000 more disabled people are required to look for work as a result of welfare reforms since 2008. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has spoken of his ambition of achieving full employment. Is he confident that the Government have a strategy sufficient to close this gap, as that will be essential to achieving that goal?

Autumn Statement

Debate between George Osborne and Kate Green

Thursday 5th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

We are increasing yield by £40 billion over the current Parliament. It is not just a question of the specific measures that we take to deal with tax avoidance; it is also a question of the resources that we provide for the fraud and tax avoidance units of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. Let me take this opportunity to praise HMRC for the incredible job that it has done.

We must ensure that we collect the revenues that are due. Of course we want to live in a society in which people pay lower taxes, which is why we raised the personal allowance in order to cut income tax, and why I have announced measures to cut business rates for shops and the like. However, people must pay the taxes that are due because they cheat the rest of the country when they do not, and that is why we have taken action to deal with tax avoidance.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

One in four families with children is headed by a lone parent, and those are the children who are likely to face the greatest risk of poverty. They do not choose their own family circumstances, and, of course, they will not benefit at all from the Chancellor’s married couples tax break. Will he consider again whether there might be better and fairer ways of spending that £700 million on families?

[Mr Osborne]

We are helping lone parents in particular by offering them more help to obtain work, or to obtain the skills and training that they need in order to find work. All the evidence—and I know that the hon. Lady has spent a great deal of her life examining it—suggests that if children of lone parents can be in working households, that will really assist their life chances. Lone parents often have the least skills and have received the least help, and we are doing a huge amount to change that.

Economic Policy

Debate between George Osborne and Kate Green

Monday 25th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

Of course we want to help people who are not currently working the hours that they want to work; we want to help them by helping businesses to expand to take on more people. As well as jobs going up by 888,000 in total and private sector jobs going up by 1 million or more, the number of hours worked in our economy has also gone up. Labour argues that it is all to do with under-employment, but that is not the case. Of course we want to help people who are working part time but want to go full time and people who want to work more hours. The best way to do that is to create an environment in which businesses want to expand and take people on.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

Does the Chancellor not accept that the reason why gilts have not really moved in the wake of the downgrading is not a tribute to the Government’s economic policy, but is symptomatic of a deep pessimism about the long-term growth prospects for our economy?

[Mr Osborne]

If that were the case, why would German rates be lower than ours?

The Economy

Debate between George Osborne and Kate Green

Wednesday 22nd June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

So it is a Tory plot, is it, and the Bank of England is part of it? What about the IMF; is it part of this Tory plot? The right hon. Gentleman probably thinks the CBI is part of it.

What about PIMCO, the world’s largest bond fund: is it part of the Tory plot? It is based in Los Angeles, so it must represent the international branch of the Tory plot. It said this:

“We think the UK is implementing what is probably the best combination of fiscal and monetary policies”

in the western world. These groups—the serious commentators—have all come to the same conclusion as the coalition Government: that we need a credible deficit reduction plan to get our market interest rates right—to make sure that, even though we inherited a budget deficit higher than Portugal’s, our market interest rates are similar to those of Germany.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

Who is paying the price for this approach to reducing the deficit? The Institute for Fiscal Studies recently pointed out that the inflation rate being experienced by the poorest families is 60% higher than that being experienced by the highest-earning families.

[Mr Osborne]

The truth is that the whole country has paid the price for the disastrous economic policies of the previous Government. There is no easy way to reduce the largest deficit in our history, but the Opposition oppose every single measure we introduce. That is incredible and it is precisely why they have been rumbled—rumbled by the serious economic press and by everyone else.

Banking

Debate between George Osborne and Kate Green

Wednesday 9th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I do welcome that research. We need to ensure that we get the tax revenues up. We have introduced the permanent bank levy, which was opposed by the Labour party. We have forced the banks to sign up to the code of practice, which Labour announced in a fanfare from this Dispatch Box, but managed to get only two banks to sign up to—we have got all the banks to sign up. We are looking at the tax avoidance measures that have been used, such as disguised remuneration, which the previous Government had 13 years to address, but failed to do.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

Not every worker in a bank is on a multi-million pound salary. Clerical, back office and counter staff frequently earn well under £20,000 a year. Is the Chancellor confident that these measures will begin to reduce pay inequality in the banking sector, and will he have discussions with senior bankers about worker representation on remuneration committees?

[Mr Osborne]

I am certainly happy to raise the issue about representation that the hon. Lady mentions, but—[Interruption.] These people seem to forget that they were running the country for 13 years and had every chance to do the things that they complain about now, and they completely failed.

To return to what the hon. Lady said, I will raise the specific issue of the representation of workers within the banks. As I have said, most people, including myself, find some of the levels of pay in the financial services sector extraordinary. We are seeking to start to constrain them, although we obviously have greater control over the semi-nationalised banks. I hope that we are also ensuring that we get the tax revenues required to help pay off the nation’s credit card, the budget deficit.

Autumn Forecast

Debate between George Osborne and Kate Green

Monday 29th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

It is not a bad test of the policy offered to the Government from the Opposition to consider what would happen if we actually did it tomorrow. If the shadow Chancellor stood up tomorrow, or if I adopted his plan, and announced that the UK was backing off its fiscal consolidation plan and that it would take much longer, where do we actually think the UK would be within about 30 minutes of that statement?

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I am naturally pleased that the number of job losses in the public sector has been revised downwards, but I am very concerned that it seems that the £18 billion of welfare cuts, which will affect the poorest, will be picking up the price tag. Was that the Chancellor’s explicit decision and policy, and if so does he think it was fair?

[Mr Osborne]

I do of course think the spending review was fair, but as I said at the time—[Interruption.] If the Opposition would actually produce a spending review, perhaps we could compare the two—but they do not want to do that.

The point I was making to the hon. Lady is that I said at the time of the Budget and the spending review that I was making a conscious decision to seek further welfare reform to try to reduce the rapidly escalating costs of the welfare state. That was a challenge that anyone doing my job would face, and I said that if we were able to find further welfare reforms, we would be able to reduce the cuts in Departments, and that is exactly what we were able to do.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between George Osborne and Kate Green

Tuesday 16th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

We will remove the requirement to purchase an annuity by the age of 75. Draft legislation will be published in December, and we want the new rules in place by 2011, although we have also introduced transitional arrangements to help those who have reached the age of 75 since I made the announcement in the Budget. We think that people who have been responsible enough to save through their working lives are responsible enough to handle their savings in retirement.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

Will the Chancellor commit to working closely with the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb) to introduce the universal, flat-rate, minimum pension for all citizens as quickly as possible?

[Mr Osborne]

Yes, absolutely. The Treasury is working with the Department for Work and Pensions on potential pension reform that could simplify pensions and provide a boost to pensioners for many years to come.

Proposed Public Expenditure Cuts

Debate between George Osborne and Kate Green

Monday 13th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

First, let me say to my hon. Friend that the previous Government never published any distributional impacts as part of their Budgets. We have begun that work in the Red Book. We said that we wanted to receive comments about how we could improve the work. There is a real challenge, of which my hon. Friend is well aware, given all his experience, to do with the modelling of some of the impacts. The Treasury model, which, of course, we inherited—we did not create a new Treasury model—has made it very difficult to model certain expenditure changes.

We will continue to try to provide Parliament with the best information that we can, but I do not want to promise to deliver something that I cannot actually deliver.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I welcome the Chancellor’s repeated commitment to supporting people back into work. Can he confirm that benefits savings that may be achieved will be prioritised for DWP back-to-work programmes and, in particular, that the funding needed to meet the objectives of dynamic benefits will be provided to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions as a first call on any savings on the benefits bill?

[Mr Osborne]

We have a dual task. We have a welfare bill that represents a third of all Government spending; and, given that at least half the Labour party—I think—still believes in trying to reduce the deficit, we have to find savings from the welfare bill. At the same time, we are seeking a fundamental reform of welfare to encourage people into work. Bringing those two objectives together is precisely what I am working on with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.