Amendment of the Law

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Friday 23rd March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

I am not sure that the hon. Gentleman’s intervention made much sense. I agree that infrastructure is critical. The key part of the OBR report, which he ought to focus on, states that we are on course to meet our fiscal mandate and to get our public finances back in order. I am sure that he welcomes the OBR’s assessment that we will see the net creation of 1 million jobs in this country over the coming year.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

To explain further the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Tom Blenkinsop), if the Secretary of State turns to table D.1 in the Red Book, which shows the detailed summary of the OBR’s central forecast, and looks along the line for “Fixed investment” by “General government”, she will see that it falls in 2011, falls in 2012 and falls in 2013. That is the point that my hon. Friend was making. The right hon. Lady clearly has not looked at the Red Book.

[Justine Greening]

This Government are investing more money in capital spend than was planned by the previous Government. If the hon. Lady is complaining about those numbers, she would be complaining even more if we had the misfortune of having her party in office. This Government are investing in infrastructure and putting unprecedented levels of investment into the railways, as I am sure she is well aware, even though she prefers to score a political point.

The Government are rightly taking action to make it easier for people and businesses to go about their daily business. We are cutting commuting times and speeding up journeys; getting people and products moving faster and more reliably; and ensuring that Britain is plugged into the global marketplace. Of course, the easy choice, faced with Labour’s debt and deficit, would have been to cut capital spending and major infrastructure projects. We are not doing that. Instead, we have taken a deliberate decision to invest in our transport infrastructure, from relatively small interventions that make a big difference such as hard-shoulder running on motorways, to huge projects such as Thameslink and Crossrail.

I am delighted that we have a London Mayor who is committed, alongside the Government, to driving forward projects such as Crossrail, which are vital to our capital’s future prosperity. It is vital that we continue to have a Mayor who is passionate and successful in campaigning on London’s behalf at the heart of the Government; a Mayor who refuses, unlike his opponent, to make empty spending promises based on imaginary pots of money; and a Mayor who will be the best possible advocate for London’s economic success when he welcomes the Olympic tourists and athletes in the summer.

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[John Woodcock]

I am not aware of any, but my hon. Friend might make proposals as a result of that excellent tax cut.

Yes, there are tough choices to be made, and the Opposition have set out the choices that we would have made. Of the £9 billion of cuts and efficiencies being made by the Department for Transport, we have accepted more than £6 billion.

[Helen Goodman]

I am sorry to take my hon. Friend back to the issue of cable transport, but I have a cable lift in my constituency on Mickle fell. I wonder whether people who use it will benefit from the Chancellor’s generosity.

[John Woodcock]

I am sure that businesses will now see a great opportunity to set up offices at the top of Mickle fell as a result of this great tax cut.

Ministers are making decisions that will make our economy more fragile and that expose where their true priorities lie.

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[Mark Garnier]

If I may, I shall develop my point. I am not entirely unsympathetic to the hon. Lady’s point, but the important point is that private sector pay is not set on a national basis—

[Helen Goodman]

Some of it is.

[Mark Garnier]

Not all of it. Small businesses do not set their pay on a national basis. It makes complete sense that public sector pay should be treated likewise, and in the broadest sense I welcome the freeze on regional public sector pay awards, but I have one caveat. Moving public sector jobs around the country—especially in Government Departments such as vehicle licensing, which went to Swansea—brings cash to a local economy. That cash can provide economic activity and liquidity that supports jobs in the local private sector that might otherwise struggle. While the public sector regional pay adjustment is going on, I urge the Government to take careful note of what is going on locally, to ensure that the proper efforts to reduce the crowding-out of the private sector by the public sector do not unwittingly starve the private sector of much-needed local liquidity.

I also worry about the rising cost of fuel for our constituents. This is a huge burden on families and although the increase in tax-free allowances is welcome, the rising cost of fuel is an issue for rural and semi-rural constituencies such as mine. I welcome the help that the Government have given—we are 10p better off than we would otherwise have been—but there are two further issues to consider. The first is that fuel companies charge consumers what they can get away with locally. Prices in Kidderminster are around 5p dearer than they are in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid), for example. On writing to the chief executives of Tesco, Sainsbury and Texaco, I was told that prices were set locally. When I contacted the local managers, they told me that the prices were set regionally. Whatever the method of price setting, the fuel companies are ripping off my constituents in Wyre Forest and I want them to stop.

When we compare the price of oil to pre-tax profits over the years, we see that the oil companies are simply not passing on extra profits to consumers. Indeed, they are making extra profits from consumers. Of course duty and VAT are part of the price of oil, as is the dollar-sterling exchange rate, but the underlying commodity price at the pump is the key component, and any means by which the Government could persuade the oil companies to pass on their profits to consumers would be gratefully received.

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[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson), who has a particular perspective on things.

I want to focus on two themes: jobs and justice. The overall state of the economy is as follows: the Budget deficit is £121 billion; interest rates are 0.5%; and the Bank of England has undertaken £325 billion in quantitative easing. Yet the economy is in a depressed state, with GDP below its peak and its potential. The worst consequence of that is that 2.67 million people are unemployed, including 1,000 young people in my constituency.

What are the Government doing to tackle that? Given the fiscal squeeze on households, it is clear that what is needed is an increase in business investment and exports, but that is not what we are getting. According to the Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts, the increase in business investment has been pushed back from 2012 to 2013, and the unemployment peak has also been pushed back. In the north-east, the chamber of commerce says that investment is particularly weak. Shockingly, it has been negative since 2008, and the figure currently stands at minus 6.3. That means that, in contrast to what the hon. Member for Peterborough said, the capital stock is shrinking.

Why is investment so low, given that The Daily Telegraph tells us that corporate balance sheets are “brimming with cash” and the Bank of England reports that dividends are at record levels? It is because there is a lack of confidence. Have the Government done anything to strengthen business confidence? What little growth that is forecast will be fuelled by consumer borrowing. Although Government Members inveigh against household indebtedness, over the forecast period, that is predicted to rise from £1.5 trillion to £2 trillion.

[Richard Harrington (Watford) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is an expert in Treasury and economic matters, so I was surprised that she stressed that confidence was so important, because does she truly think that the Labour alternative policy of borrowing more money would give businesses more confidence to invest?

[Helen Goodman]

The fact of the matter is that Ministers have overshot on their borrowing. Their borrowing is £147 billion higher than they were planning a year ago, and the credit rating agencies have put a watch on our creditworthiness. Government Members should not be quite so confident about where their Ministers are taking the British economy.

Turning to growth in the enterprise sector, there is to be a measly £25 million for aerodynamics and another measly £25 million for science, which is crucial to modernising our manufacturing. Under the last Labour Government, science spending rose by £1 billion; a £25-million investment will not get us anywhere.

Let us discuss what the Government are doing on corporation tax. They have trumpeted a cut in the main rate, but the reductions in the allowances mean that the net support to industry overall is £200 million. No wonder investment at home is so flat. Government Members claim that GlaxoSmithKline took its investment decisions in response to the Budget, but that is patently ridiculous. GSK has been planning its investments for the past two years, in response to the patent box changes announced by the previous Government before the general election. Everything this Government have done this time has been swamped by the cuts to capital allowances that they made in their first Budget, which took £1.5 billion from the private sector.

[Tom Blenkinsop]

Government Members are keen to take the credit on GSK, but they do not want to take the credit for what has happened at Rio Tinto Alcan or the 3,000 job losses at BAE Systems. Does my hon. Friend find the juxtaposition interesting?

[Helen Goodman]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Government Members are completely unrealistic about what business needs and simply do not understand that what is needed is a co-operative approach between the public and the private sectors, and long-term investment. The North East Chamber of Commerce told us that its checklist for the Budget was an increase in capital allowances and the industrial buildings allowance; a reduction in employer national insurance contributions for young people; and more support for apprenticeships. None of that appeared in the Budget this week. The Government simply have no strategy for jobs or growth.

We have heard a lot from Government Members about the benefits of cutting the 50p rate, but even the Chancellor of the Exchequer does not have the gall to put cutting the top rate of tax into the “enterprise and growth” section of his Budget. The distribution effects of this Budget are shocking. It is grotesque to give a millionaire an extra £40,000 while cutting the tax credits of those on the minimum wage who work 16 hours a week by £4,000. That is a complete disgrace. As the Leader of the Opposition pointed out on Wednesday afternoon, 300,000 people will benefit from the cut in the 50p rate, by an average of £10,000, whereas only 4,000 people will pay the higher stamp duty on properties worth more than £25 million. The Chancellor’s estimate that the loss in revenue from cutting the 50p rate is £100 million is risible. It is absurd to suggest that £2.9 billion more tax will be collected because of behavioural changes—that would be an unprecedented impact on people’s behaviour.

Before I leave the issue of tax avoidance, I wish to discuss the great contribution to the Budget made by the Liberal Democrats. They seem pleased with securing a crackdown on tax avoidance in return for succumbing to the Tory desire for a cut in the 50p rate. In fact, the Institute for Fiscal Studies says this morning that there is less action on tackling tax avoidance in this Budget than there has been in previous years.

[Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)]

rose—

[Helen Goodman]

I am sorry, but I will not give way, as I have used up my intervention time.

If the Liberal Democrats look at the measures in the Red Book to combat tax avoidance, they will see that six of them will be legislated for in the 2013 Finance Bill instead of the 2012 Finance Bill. If they look at table 2.1 in the Red Book, they will see that the forestalling of the additional rate reduction and the cap on unlimited tax reliefs—that is the new phraseology for the tycoon tax—adds up to £2.4 billion this year. In other words, this coalition Government have given their wealthy friends one last chance to avoid tax, and that avoidance will be worth £2.4 billion. That is equivalent to all the cuts imposed in the June 2010 Budget on lone parents, on working parents and on the disabled.

[Richard Harrington (Watford) (Con)]

I am conscious of the fact that our speeches are limited to seven minutes. I have so much to say in the Budget debate but, first, I shall just answer something that the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) said. One moment she was talking about the importance, in her experience, of confidence in business and among those who do business, and I perfectly understand that, but the next moment she was pouring scorn on attempts to reduce the taxation for those people. I must ask her something, which she does not need to answer now but perhaps she will consider: what gives people confidence? They need lower interest rates, which they have got because of the prudent things that this coalition Government have done to reduce debt; they need stability and the possibility of obtaining funds for investment, and the Government have done such a lot on that; and, above all, they need to know that if they work hard to set up a business, with all the hassle and aggravation that mortgaging their house and creating jobs involves, and they are successful, they will keep the majority of what they earn. We must not forget that that is what growth is about and what confidence is about. We cannot therefore pour scorn on reducing this top rate of tax, which does not work, as has been empirically proven in the figures that have come out. People in business do all this grafting and striving to do what they do, and nothing knocks their confidence more than the fear that the majority—more than 50%, if employers’ national insurance is included—of what they earn will be taken away.

[Helen Goodman]

I am interested in the hon. Gentleman’s description of setting up a business. When my husband set up a business, he took a salary cut. I do not believe that what motivates people is just what they are going to earn and how much money they are going to put in their back pocket; it is about being confident that they can sell whatever it is they are selling and that there is a long-term market for what they are doing. The cuts in domestic consumption are what is killing business confidence in this country.

[Richard Harrington]

I thank the hon. Lady for those comments. I remind her that I said that the rate of taxation was one of a package of things that gives confidence. I have started and owned a business, and I did not draw a salary for two or three years as a result. I drove minicabs and ran a market stall at weekends in order to pay my way, so I know what it is like, as I have experience in that field. I do not feel it is appropriate to take lectures from people who perhaps have not done that themselves. I am talking not about the hon. Lady, but about many other people who have mentioned these things.