Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between Graham Stuart and Jim Dickson

Wednesday 28th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Jim Dickson (Dartford) (Lab)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart). He is always very entertaining, and I am always intrigued by how there seems to be an inverse ratio between the number of interventions he makes and the number he takes. I reassure him that on the lousy predecessor test, this Government were truly blessed in 2024 by the former right hon. Member for South West Norfolk and the right hon. Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak).

[Graham Stuart]

Touché.

[Jim Dickson]

I welcome the Budget, and it is a pleasure to follow distinguished members of the Treasury Committee from across the Chamber. As others have noted, when the IMF published its most recent forecast, it highlighted how despite the consequences of US military action in Iran, our economy is proving more resilient than expected, with 1.3% growth for this year and similar for next. That is largely underscored by the OBR forecast. I back our Government to exceed those forecasts, as they have done this year, and we wish them well in doing so. We should not underplay the damage done by the conflict, with price rises in important commodities such as oil and fertilisers pushing up inflation, but it is positive that the IMF has upgraded our growth prospects. That, I believe, is a testament to the work of the current and previous Chancellors, and it is welcome that we remain towards the top end of the G7 for growth, even though—as always—Members of the House would want growth to be higher, and we hope very much that it is.

In my view, it remains essential to reassure the markets that we will stick to the fiscal rules, and I welcome the Chancellor’s pledge today to keep doing so. We must ensure that we continue to keep sufficient headroom against those rules, and again the Chancellor has done that.That was recognised by the IMF, which singled out the UK among the G7 for the way that we are managing our debts. As shown in chart 3.4 in the Red Book, which sets out the distributional impact of the Budget, we are doing that while ensuring that those at the bottom end of the income scale do better proportionally than those higher up the income scale. I believe that means this is a proper Budget for working people.

This careful and fair economic management will allow us to ramp up defence spending to meet the spending target of 3% by 2030, after our armed forces, frankly, languished under the previous Government.

Finance Bill

Debate between Graham Stuart and Jim Dickson

Report stage & 3rd reading
Monday 3rd March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jim Dickson (Dartford) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to contribute once again to a debate on this important piece of legislation. A number of amendments have been tabled by hon. Members from across the House and, while I do not have time to cover them all, I will address the key ones.

As I said in Committee of the whole House, this is a crucial Bill that underpins the new Government’s aim of fixing a tax system that has become less fair and less sustainable over the last 14 years of Conservative government. I am conscious of the need to confine my remarks to the amendments rather than speaking to the Bill itself, but I remind everyone that the Bill was necessary because of the dire economic inheritance that the Government found on entering office last year.

[Graham Stuart]

The hon. Gentleman said that the tax system had become less fair over those 14 years. Does he oppose the increase in the tax burden paid by the higher paid? That is what happened over those 14 years. Does he not see it as fair that those on lower and average earnings saw their share of the tax take go down? Is he opposed to that? In what way precisely, from his deep understanding of the tax system, has he concluded that it has become less fair over the last 14 years?

[Jim Dickson]

When the last Government left office, taxes were at their highest level for 70 years. Thresholds have been frozen, bringing more workers into higher tax rates than was fair on them. The Labour Government are dedicated to trying to ensure that taxes are paid by those with the broadest shoulders and those best able to pay them.

[Graham Stuart]

rose—

[Jim Dickson]

If I might make a little progress before the right hon. Gentleman intervenes once more, that would be lovely.

Opposition Front-Benchers have tabled new clauses 1 to 8, which would require the Government to undertake a number of reviews of the impact of measures in the Bill, ranging from a requirement for the Chancellor to commission and publish an assessment of the expected impact of changes to energy, oil and gas profits levy on domestic energy production, the UK’s energy security, energy prices and the UK economy to a requirement on the Chancellor to publish an assessment of the impact of the changes in the Bill on the finances of households at a range of income levels. I gently remind Opposition Members that much of the information requested is already available. Details on tax liabilities are published by HMRC, the Department for Work and Pensions and the Office for Budget Responsibility, and the impacts of the changes set out in the autumn Budget are published in documents including the tax information and impact notes and the “Impact on households” report.

National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill

Debate between Graham Stuart and Jim Dickson

Committee of the whole House & 3rd reading
Tuesday 17th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jim Dickson (Dartford) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak once more on this critically important Bill, after an excellent debate on Second Reading several weeks ago. I do not wish to rehearse the entire debate on these national insurance changes, but I will raise a few points about the Bill and why it is necessary.

As we have discussed at some length, this Government inherited public finances that were in a parlous state and public services that were not delivering what residents in Dartford and across the UK need. Yet, from their contributions today and on Second Reading, I do not think that Conservative Members have really accepted that legacy. In the five stages of grief, they are still in denial.

When the previous Government left office—it is painful to repeat these statistics—NHS waiting lists were at 7.6 million, with 300,000 people waiting longer than a year for treatment. Those waiting lists were already growing before the pandemic, with the number of people referred but waiting for treatment doubling between 2010 and 2019.

On crime and community safety, neighbourhood policing was decimated and PCSO numbers were halved, and the number of arrests has halved since 2010, including sharp drops for theft. Perhaps most concerningly, we face a real crisis in our prisons. The National Audit Office recently confirmed:

“The current crisis in the prison estate is a consequence of”—

the previous Government’s—

“failure to align criminal justice policies with funding for the prison estate, leading to reactive solutions which represent poor value for money.”

That is as close as the National Audit Office ever gets to saying, “You wasted money.”

The previous Government also spent a whopping £715 million on their Rwanda gimmick over two years, in exchange for a sum total of four voluntary departures. That is the legacy of the Conservative party, yet Conservative Members still refuse to acknowledge their mistakes. They vote against every measure, including the national insurance changes to raise crucial funding to fix the problems they left behind, without ever saying which investments in public services they would scrap.

In a long and, at times, entertaining speech, the right hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) rehearsed the greatest hits of the previous Government, in which the omnishambles Budget seemed to feature very strongly, but his speech was fatally holed below the waterline by his inability to answer one simple question from the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin): “What would you do instead?” We heard a lot of flannel about train drivers, but that was basically it.

[Graham Stuart]

I talked about the need for fiscal discipline, one element of which is taking at least £12 billion of savings out of the benefits system, because we cannot continue with more and more of us out of work and out of the workforce. Most importantly, I also said that we have to grow the economy first, because that is the only way to sustain it. This Budget had the opposite effect, as the OBR has laid out.

Finance Bill

Debate between Graham Stuart and Jim Dickson

2nd reading
Wednesday 27th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Nesil Caliskan]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jim Dickson]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Graham Stuart]

It would be entirely wrong of me, given how few Labour Members there are in the Chamber prepared to defend the Budget, if I did not now give way to one of them.