Autumn Statement

Debate between George Osborne and Teresa Pearce

Wednesday 3rd December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I certainly give my hon. Friend that assurance. He is a doughty champion for Cleethorpes and its strong road and rail links. He has raised train services with me and I am looking at that, as is the Transport Secretary. We are determined to provide a great service to the people he represents, and ensure that they travel in comfort. Today’s announcement about replacing outdated Pacer trains with new, modern trains will be welcomed across the north of England.

[Teresa Pearce (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)]

The Chancellor spoke about fiscal discipline and welfare reduction, yet it seems that the Office for Budget Responsibility might not agree. Its “Blue Book” shows that the bill for housing benefit for people not on jobseeker’s alliance will rise year on year. More worryingly, despite repeated assurances from the Work and Pensions Secretary in this House that universal credit is on time and on budget, the OBR has reviewed all the evidence and states that there remains “considerable uncertainty” around its delivery, and “broader uncertainties” over the eventual cost. In whom does the Chancellor have more faith: the OBR or the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions?

[Mr Osborne]

Universal credit is a change to our welfare system that makes sure that it always pays to work. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Work and Pensions Secretary because he is pioneering what I think are important far-reaching changes to the incentives in our country that encourage work and support people in work. We have introduced a welfare cap. That is a brand new mechanism for controlling welfare spending, including identifying pressures such as rising housing benefit bills that were completely ignored in the past by the Labour Government. If a Government are not prepared to address increases in one benefit with reductions or measures on other benefits, they are required to come before the House and ask for a vote because they have reached the cap. We have not done that because we are within the cap, as the OBR report confirms.

Autumn Statement

Debate between George Osborne and Teresa Pearce

Thursday 5th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

Plymouth council absolutely should freeze council tax. I commend my hon. Friend and his constituents for their campaign to make that happen. We have not included local government in the additional savings we have asked Whitehall for today, precisely so that councils can deliver a council tax freeze. If his council does not deliver a council tax freeze, he can ask Labour why it is putting up the cost of living for his constituents.

[Teresa Pearce (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)]

There is a housing crisis in London at the moment. The autumn statement says that house prices grew by 9.4% in the first nine months of this year—and that is before Help to Buy comes in, which nearly all forecasters believe will increase prices further. Does the Chancellor believe that spiralling house prices are good for the economy?

[Mr Osborne]

I made a point in my statement of saying that we want stable house prices and that we need more homes to be built. I know that that is what the Mayor of London also believes. We have taken steps to give the Bank of England powers to deal with asset bubbles as they develop. That, of course, did not happen five or six years ago, much to our cost. Specifically on the cost of London housing, the early Help to Buy statistics suggest that most of the families who have taken it up are from outside London and the south-east, and are buying properties worth on average £160,000. Help to Buy is therefore helping exactly those we want it to help: aspirational families who can afford a mortgage but cannot currently afford the very large deposit that the problems in our banking system have demanded of them.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between George Osborne and Teresa Pearce

Tuesday 11th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

Mr Speaker, 152,000 customers have been affected. These are people with loans of less than £25,000. The cost to UK Asset Resolution is estimated at £270 million. UK Asset Resolution has ordered a full inquiry into what happened in 2008, and we will come to the House with more information when we have it. I wanted to bring this news to the House at the very first opportunity, and I find it pretty extraordinary that the Opposition do not want the public to hear it.

[Teresa Pearce (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)]

T7. New research from Which?—[Interruption.]

Comprehensive Spending Review

Debate between George Osborne and Teresa Pearce

Wednesday 20th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

My hon. Friend is right. This country is spending £120 million a day on debt interest. So all the pet projects that Labour has suddenly discovered—[Interruption.] Well, the truth is that the previous Labour Government inherited a golden economic legacy from the Conservatives, but we have been left the worst economic inheritance that any peacetime Government in this country have ever faced. Unfortunately, we have to deal with it, but we are doing that as two parties working together to clean up the mess that one party created. The goal that I have in sight is a more prosperous, sustainable economy and a public finance situation that is deliverable and affordable for the people of Harlow.

[Teresa Pearce (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)]

The Chancellor has told us that we can expect 490,000 public sector jobs to go in the next five years, while PricewaterhouseCoopers has made an expert estimate that another 500,000 private sector jobs will go. How does putting out of work 1 million people, who will no longer pay tax and will add to the jobseeker’s allowance and housing benefit budgets, cut the deficit and add to growth?

[Mr Osborne]

I shall make a couple of observations. First, the independent Office for Budget Responsibility—the hon. Lady is, after all, quoting its forecast, so I presume that she would accept its whole forecast—has predicted that unemployment will fall and that more private sector jobs will be created. Secondly, she must accept—even the deficit deniers in the Labour party must accept it, and they admitted it during the general election—that there would have been a reduction in the public sector head count if there had been a Labour Government. I do not know whether the hon. Lady agrees with that—she can shake her head, nod or whatever—but that is the truth. We have had to make some decisions, but there is a high turnover in the public sector anyway, so we hope that much of this can be accommodated by posts not being filled. There will be redundancies—I think the Labour party has accepted that there would have been redundancies under its plan—but we are going to do everything we can to deal with that situation and help those people to find work. In the end, however, the current size of the budget deficit means that we have to deal with this situation, or many, many more jobs would be at risk. Let us remember that this Government came into office with unemployment rising, and that is what we have had to deal with.