(4 days, 10 hours ago)
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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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I agree wholeheartedly with the hon. Member. We have yet to talk about military and diplomatic families, who need boarding schools to provide a stable education while parents are deployed overseas; 4,700 children are funded by the Government under the continuity of education allowance, which assists service personnel and diplomatic families in educating their children at boarding school.
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. The Government say that they are pursuing economic growth. In his excellent speech I hope that my hon. Friend will highlight the value of export earnings to the United Kingdom from the fantastic independent school sector, which is a key part of growth. No other western economy taxes education.
My right hon. Friend echoes the point that I made earlier that this is about not just a service that is provided but a key segment of the UK economy that bolsters the value of UK plc and UK GDP.
(4 days, 10 hours ago)
Commons ChamberMy hon. Friend is right. That comes from the rushed nature of the legislation. The sloppy drafting means that children who are not of school age get dragged into this tax if they happen to be in the same room as children who are, and there are concerns about what might follow in other borderline cases.
The Government claim that the policy is about revenue, not politics, but having read the Secretary of State’s twitterings, I think hon. Members could be forgiven for mistaking the motivation. It is entirely spurious, for multiple reasons, to link this tax to 6,500 teachers, mental health support or anything else. The money will go into general Exchequer receipts, and anyway, 6,500 teachers is not that many in the scheme of things, given the 468,000 there are now. That is a compound growth rate of 0.3% over five years—and, by the way, a lot fewer teachers than we recruited in the last five years. Mental health support teams are already being rolled out, and they cover primary schools as well as secondary schools. It is not clear what the difference is in the new Government’s policy on mental health support, other than that it will not include primary schools.
To the extent that the VAT revenue could be hypothecated, it looks a lot more like that revenue would reduce cuts to education resourcing, rather than increasing it. If the policy is about revenue, not politics, the Government could easily commit to one simple thing today. They are confident, they tell us, that the policy will raise a large sum of money and not create large costs. Will they commit to measuring and reporting back on that, and if it turns out, against expectations, that they were wrong, will they reverse it?
I thank my right hon. Friend, who is giving an excellent introduction to the debate. Is it his understanding that our military personnel, and those serving in our diplomatic service, will also be hit by this tax?
(1 month ago)
Commons ChamberThis is a serious topic and we know from the debate earlier this afternoon that it is one on which Members across this House and people across this country have strong feelings. We understand that. This is a difficult decision to have to take. By means-testing winter fuel payments, we know that we will be ending future payments to most pensioners while maintaining our steadfast commitment to protecting those in greatest need. But although they do not like to be reminded of it, Conservative Members know exactly why we need to take this step. Because it was Conservative Members—and, indeed, former Members of this House who have now been voted out by the British public—who did such damage to our country’s economy and the public finances. The legacy of the last—
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. This is the second Government Minister we have heard from the Dispatch Box today, yet only moments ago we saw the Chancellor sitting on the Front Bench. It was the Chancellor who chose to spend billions on setting up Great British Energy. It was the Chancellor who chose to spend billions giving pay rises to their union paymasters. It was the Chancellor—
Order. I thank the hon. Lady, but she will be aware that that is not a point of order; it is more of a speech that she is seeking to make. Perhaps she will find an opportunity to contribute in the debate.
(1 month, 1 week ago)
Commons ChamberI welcome my hon. Friend to her place. She is absolutely right to highlight just how much damage the Conservatives’ recklessness in 2022 caused to families in North Warwickshire and beyond. The decisions of Conservative Ministers unleashed economic turbulence that pushed up people’s mortgages and made people across Britain worse off. Our new Government will hardwire Budget responsibility into Government with our new fiscal lock in the Budget Responsibility Bill, which will make sure that the disaster we saw nearly two years ago can never happen again.
The living standards of nearly 50,000 pensioners in Malvern Hills district and Wychavon district are going to deteriorate very sharply this winter in the face of a 10% increase in their energy bills and no winter fuel allowance. Many of those pensioners have incomes just above the pension credit threshold, and many are too frail and too old to work. Yet within the first few days of coming into office, the Chancellor managed to spend over £22 billion very quickly by setting up Great British Energy and a national wealth fund, and by giving in to the pay demands of her party’s union paymasters. Is it not the case that this Chancellor has made the chilling political choice to balance the books of this country on the very frailest shoulders?
I am disappointed that the hon. Member is talking down essential investments that we have made in our country’s future. She also seems to be confused: there is a £22 billion black hole because of the unfunded spending commitments made by the Conservative party when it was in government. But she makes an important point about protecting pensioners, which is why it is so important to ensure that all those pensioners who are eligible for pension credit take it up, and I look forward to her support in making sure that they do so.
(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberI thank my hon. Friend for her question. She speaks from her experience as Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, and I agree with her entirely. The charter for budget responsibility will be published. We have already introduced legislation for the new fiscal lock that we set out in our manifesto, so that we can ensure that a Government can never again do what the previous Government did, which was to overspend by £22 billion within one year.
What a chilling political choice, to choose to take away the winter fuel allowance from a 90-year-old on an income of £10,000 a year. And that was a political choice. I want to ask the Chancellor more about productivity. She used the word once during her speech. What discussions has she had about improving productivity, which according to the Office for Budget Responsibility is still 5% lower in the public sector and has not recovered since the levels we enjoyed before the pandemic?
The challenge of productivity sits across both the public and private sectors. In the last 14 years, productivity has flatlined in the public and private sectors and we need to boost both. We need to boost productivity in the public sector to ensure that we get better value for money for our public services, but we also need to improve productivity in our private sector so that we can improve living standards and have the money for our public services.
(2 months, 3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberMay I start by adding my congratulations to the Chancellor on being the first woman to hold that office in the history of our country? At this rate, the Labour party might even have a female Prime Minister some time this century. I also thank the shadow Chancellor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash (Jeremy Hunt) for everything he did while in office. In particular, I thank the voters of West Worcestershire for returning me here for the fifth time.
I was one of those who was here in 2010. It is ironic that I should be following the right hon. Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North (Liam Byrne), because he was the one who left that famous note, “I’m sorry: there is no money left.” If people want to know what a bad economic legacy looks like, I was here in 2010 when we received one from the Labour party. The deficit was over 10% and rising and unemployment was over 8%. Inflation was nearly twice its target, and the banking system had just collapsed and had to be bailed out by taxpayers. We can contrast that with the economic legacy of 2024 that the new Government inherit.
Despite the economic costs of the pandemic and the energy crisis, the UK is enjoying the fastest growth in the G7. Unemployment is now half the rate it was in 2010. Inflation is back on target. We have a well-capitalised banking system, almost completely out of taxpayers’ hands. Wages are now rising faster than inflation. We are the fourth-largest exporter in the world. Members do not have to take my word for it; they can take the words of the International Monetary Fund, which in a recently published report said that
“the UK economy is approaching a soft landing”,
with
“growth recovering faster than expected…inflation has fallen faster than was envisaged…The banking system remains healthy”.
So I approach the economic measures in the King’s Speech with a degree of trepidation, because they come at a time when the economy was back on track. While I agree that “securing economic growth” is a fundamental mission of government, I would add the word “non-inflationary”. I have looked and looked through this King’s Speech, and I cannot see any measures that magic up economic growth. Growth does not just happen because it is written into the King’s Speech.
In my time as Chair of the Treasury Committee, we had the opportunity to have a private session with the IMF. It is interesting to observe that many of the measures put forward by the Government in the King’s Speech were in the IMF’s prescription for the UK economy. Reforming planning and building on our beloved green belt were from the IMF, as was strengthening the role of the Office for Budget Responsibility and crowding in private capital on net zero projects via a national wealth fund.
What else does the IMF want? Well, colleagues may not be surprised to learn that it also wants to see more taxes. It does not quite say it like that—it calls it “closing tax loopholes” or “mobilising additional revenues”. Some of the measures we heard about in our private session with the IMF were as follows. The first was setting capital gains tax rates in line with income tax rates. I hope that Ministers will rule that one out. The second was subjecting the sale of primary residences to capital gains tax. I hope that Ministers will rule that one out. The third was ending inheritance tax loopholes for pensions, family businesses and farms. I hope that Ministers will rule that one out. The fourth was revaluing all of England’s homes for council tax, and especially those over £320,000 in value. I hope that Ministers will rule that one out. The IMF also liked the idea of road pricing; I hope that Ministers will rule that one out. It also wants to bring forward considerably the date at which the state pension age increases.
Given that those are all tax measures that the IMF recommends, I am sure that the Chancellor is beginning to contemplate them. When the Government respond to today’s debate, I hope that they will specifically rule those things out, because the tax rises that the Government admit to already—the pensioner tax, the tax on education, and regulatory costs galore—are bad enough. Let us hear some specific denials on those other taxes.
I call Georgia Gould for her maiden speech.