Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation
Iain Stewart Excerpts(1 year, 9 months ago)
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Rachel Reeves
I know that in my hon. Friend’s constituency, there are huge opportunities for the jobs and industries of the future—for example, in carbon capture and storage and in green hydrogen.
I will not be churlish: I must admit that there were some good ideas in the Budget yesterday—the ones that my colleagues and I have announced in the last few months, which we are happy to support. There was a fairer deal for people on prepayment meters who are paying a premium—we called for this last August. There was also preventing a fuel duty increase, a plan to help the over-50s back into work and better childcare provision for working parents. They were all called for by Labour and are now backed by the Tories. The truth is, however, that after 13 years of Tory Government, people will rightly ask, “Is that it? Is that really all they think it takes to reverse 13 years of low growth, falling living standards and crumbling public services?”
Of course, we welcome the freeze in energy prices—after all, we proposed it—but politics is about priorities. Labour first called for a windfall tax to help people with their bills 14 months ago. We were clear that keeping energy prices down was our top priority, and that it was wrong for oil and gas giants to profit from the windfalls of war at everyone else’s expense. Yet again, however, the Chancellor chose yesterday to leave billions of pounds of windfall profits on the table, which could be supporting families and businesses during this cost of living crisis. It is a question of who pays, and the Government are turning to the public and saying, “You.”
There seems to be a disconnect between what I heard from the Chancellor yesterday and the experiences of my constituents and many people across the country. The Tories claim that their plan is working, but the Resolution Foundation says that the typical household will be £1,100 worse off as a result of the Government’s policies over the period of just this Parliament. Is that really what success looks like to them?
The reality is that people are still weighed down by a prolonged cost of living crisis that is taking its toll. Debt advice organisations have faced a tidal wave of demand from people, but incredibly, the jobs of thousands of debt advisers are at risk. Let me be clear: more people are struggling not because they have forgotten how to budget, but because Tory Budgets are simply not working for them.
One of the biggest costs people face is their monthly mortgage or rent. The Chancellor said yesterday that the impact of the mini-Budget had disappeared—seriously? He should tell that to the family facing a £2,000 hike in their mortgage payment, as confirmed by the Office for Budget Responsibility yesterday. That means less money to spend on the local high street, meals out with the family or an annual holiday. That is the lasting damage that the Conservatives have done to the living standards of working people. The last thing that the country needed in the middle of a cost of living crisis was a Tory mortgage penalty.
Despite all the damage that the Tories have done, I am optimistic about the future for our country. I have had the privilege of seeing great innovation across Britain, from the development of battery operated trains at Hitachi in County Durham to hydrogen-powered engines at JCB in Staffordshire and pioneering research at Rolls-Royce into carbon neutral aviation. I know the potential that we have as a country. That is what Labour’s green prosperity plan is all about. It is a plan to decarbonise our economy, drive down bills and let British businesses and workers compete in the global race for the jobs and industries of the future.
Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)
The right hon. Lady rightly points to the great innovation, research and development that is happening in British companies. Does she not agree that the measures that the Chancellor announced to help to discount research and development will be a major boost to such industries?
Rachel Reeves
The problem is that last autumn, the Chancellor announced a scrapping of the R&D schemes, but then brought back something this week that we are supposed to cheer about. The plan that Labour has set out will rely on Government and business working and investing together.
As President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act galvanises green energy in the United States and Governments from Europe to Asia and Australia respond, it is not enough here in Britain to cling to old ideas and old methods while other countries steal ahead in the global race. Our growth plans will be alongside a modern industrial strategy, reform of business rates, changes to the apprenticeship levy and measures to fix the broken Brexit deal in order to increase the order books for British industry. There is so much more that the Government could be doing to boost growth, create good jobs and get Britain’s economy firing on all cylinders, but I heard so little of that in the Chancellor’s Budget yesterday.
The verdict is in. The Federation of Small Businesses says that the Budget leaves “many feeling short-changed” and that
“the Government’s lack of support for small firms in critical areas is glaring.”
It says that
“trickledown economics here simply does not work.”
The British Chambers of Commerce highlights that, yet again, the Government
“failed to reform business rates”,
and the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders says:
“There is little that enables the UK to compete with massive packages of support to power a green transition that are available elsewhere.”
The Institute for Fiscal Studies describes capital expensing as “temporary tweaks”, concluding that:
“There’s no stability, no certainty, and no sense of a wider plan.”
As for working people, the TUC points out that:
“Real wages will not return to 2008 levels until 2026”
and that
“workers across the economy will have looked at this Budget and thought ‘was that it?’”.
This is a Government who are struggling to paper over the cracks after their 13 years of neglect and shoddy workmanship. The roof is leaking, the windows are rotten and the foundations are suffering from subsidence. The Tories are totally incapable of building the country and economy that we need.
Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)
May I start by warmly congratulating the hon. Member for West Lancashire (Ashley Dalton) on a fine maiden speech? Many issues divide us in this House, but one that unites us is the utter apprehension that we feel before making our maiden speech, and the enormous relief we feel afterwards. She did her family and her constituency proud. I echo her comments about her predecessor Rosie Cooper, who I enjoyed working with on many issues. I hope, similarly, to have a collegiate working relationship with her successor. Let me give the hon. Lady a little friendly advice: after a Budget, she should take time to read through the detail of the Red Book, because sometimes we find unpleasant surprises but sometimes we find very welcome announcements. That is what happened to me yesterday afternoon.
As Chair of the Transport Committee, it will probably not surprise colleagues that I will start by talking about transport matters. A very welcome announcement in the Red Book was the Government recommitment to the next stage of East West Rail, which goes through my constituency. When fully opened, it will create a really important rail transport link connecting Oxford, Milton Keynes, Bedford and Cambridge. It is not just a transport link; it will help unlock enormous economic developments in the area and create the jobs of the future in many of the high-value clusters that we have along there. As well as the announcement that details will be coming out soon, there is the additional investment for local authorities to plan for developments around the new stations. That is an important part of putting in new transport infrastructure. It is not just about the line itself, important though that is in aiding modal shift, but how it helps much wider economic growth.
On a local basis, I welcome the excess of £1 million to fix potholes in Milton Keynes—I can tell those on the Front Bench that we sorely need it. Also on the transport front, but looking more widely across the country, it is a positive step that additional powers and funding are going to the mayoral combined authorities to develop integrated transport solutions for those cities and towns across the country. In particular, I welcome the ability to develop cross-modal ticketing options. Access to good transport underpins the economy and people being able to attain new jobs, and I very much welcome those announcements.
Looking longer term at transport, the Budget included some significant measures to help underpin future investment, looking not just at what the Government are spending, but how that can work in tandem with the private sector and institutional investors to help give us the assets we need in the longer term. In particular, there were the measures to extend the remit of the UK Infrastructure Bank.
Many Members have commented on the changes to pension funds. I add this point: the ability of institutional investment funds to help support the development of our infrastructure is an enormous opportunity. On the insurance side, the Association of British Insurers has identified that the post-Solvency II changes could unlock an additional £100 billion of investment for our infra- structure over the next 10 years. Similarly, there is great opportunity with pension funds. Encouraging people to save more into their pension funds does not just help retain people in the workforce; it helps create those institutional funds that can be invested to all our advantage.
The other welcome development that I will touch on is the creation of the new investment zones, which is another step in the right direction along with measures such as freeports, innovation accelerators and the various levelling-up funds. It will help stimulate partnership working between the public sector, the private sector and academic research and development. The principal of Strathclyde University, Sir Jim McDonald, has a great phrase—“the triple helix”—about combining those three and unlocking their potential to develop new technologies and how that then spreads out into the wider economy.
The one bit of advice I give to my hon. and right hon. Friends is that these schemes are great in themselves, but more can be done. When I was a Minister in the Scotland Office, my portfolio of responsibilities included growth deals in Scotland, which have proved to create effective partnership working among the public, private and academic sectors. Some of those deals are coming to their planned end and some of the levelling-up funds will conclude in the next year or two, so there is an opportunity to look at what comes next and to combine these different types of Government investments, institutional investments and working with the private sector to let local areas develop their economies to thrive in the future. I should declare a little interest: I am writing a paper on this for the think-tank Onward. It is still in production, and I doubt it will ever hit the bestseller shelf at Waterstones, but I hope it will contain some useful ideas, and I think it will probably command cross-party support because there is a growing consensus that the right way forward is to unlock and help realise locally generated ambitions. Central Government do not always have the answers; I am not breaching any confidences in saying that, and it applies to Governments of all political stripes.
The steps the Government have taken thus far with the investment zones, accelerators and so forth are good in themselves, but there is an opportunity to blend them so that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. I look forward to contributing to the debate on that, but this is a Budget to be welcomed for the measures I have outlined and many others as well.
Oral Answers to Questions
Iain Stewart Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Esther McVey)
The principle behind the new guidelines is that we see and meet every individual and help them to overcome the barriers they face, and that is exactly what we will do.
Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)
T9. What impact does the Minister believe the payments-by-result Work programme has had in reducing unemployment in recent months?
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Mr Mark Hoban)
We are seeing that the flow from benefits is continuing at the same level as expected, but payment by results focuses providers’ minds on getting people into sustainable employment, and we will see the first results in November.
Oral Answers to Questions
Iain Stewart Excerpts(13 years ago)
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Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)
12. What plans he has to publish a strategy on disability.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Maria Miller)
I will publish a discussion document in December to support debate, and a new disability strategy next year. Our vision is to enable disabled people to fulfil their potential. We will co-produce the strategy with disabled people and their organisations, focusing on the themes of realising aspirations, individual control, and changing attitudes and behaviours.
Iain Stewart
Has my hon. Friend assessed how many disabled people the Department will be able to support back into work as a result of the Government’s reforms?
Maria Miller
I am sure that the strategy we develop will include an action plan and that work will form an important part of it. The Work programme is already providing important support for disabled people to get into work. The further work that is being done with the Sayce review suggests that an additional 35,000 disabled people could be supported into work if we use the money that is there to support specialist disability employment more effectively.
Oral Answers to Questions
Iain Stewart Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Duncan Smith
The right hon. Gentleman has written to me about this point and I have written back—but there is nothing like re-exercising the exchange—so he will know that the figures to which he refers were internal, not verified and out of date. Since then, as I have said to him, the DCLG and my Department agreed the impact assessment that the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) stood on at the time of the Welfare Reform Bill and which we still stand on today. We should bear in mind the fact that—I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman is aware of this—there are huge behavioural changes involved. The whole idea behind the cap—we still have no idea whether the Opposition support it or are against it—is that we believe that capping those benefits at gross £35,000 a year is reasonable. Instead of trying to dance on the head of a pin, perhaps he would like to give some leadership and tell us whether his side actually supports the cap.
Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)
T2. Following the decision by the Payments Council not to phase out personal cheques, may I ask my hon. Friend whether he intends to change his Department’s plan to phase out payments of benefits and pensions by cheques, which is causing concern to blind and visually impaired people?
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)
We believe that the current DWP cheque service does not well suit people with a visual impairment. For example, a cheque is sent by post with no distinguishing mark on the envelope and we ask blind people to sign for the payment. We are working with customer representatives, including the Royal National Institute of Blind People, to design a simple payment system that works better for people. However, I can assure my hon. Friend that there is no plan to require a personal identification number as part of that process.
Funeral Payments
Iain Stewart Excerpts(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)
I am grateful for the opportunity to bring to the attention of the House the issue of funeral payments and to seek some answers from the Minister.
I sought this debate following a direct request from a constituent of mine, Ms Teresa Evans, who contends that she was not given good advice following the tragic death of her 20-year-old son, Boyd Evans. I have raised the issues with the Minister via correspondence and written parliamentary questions, but they have not been dealt with to my constituent’s satisfaction, which is why I wish to raise them on the Floor of the House.
I should say at the outset that my constituent is not seeking personal recompense for her situation, but rather wishing to prevent similar problems being encountered by others. Newly bereaved people can be responsible and in control only when they are afforded sound information to make well-informed decisions.
Let me start by providing the background to the case. Teresa Evans’s son, Boyd, was killed as a result of passenger injuries sustained in a car crash in Staffordshire—some distance from his home in Milton Keynes—in 2006. Quite apart from having to deal with the emotional trauma of losing her son, my constituent also had to deal on her own with the practicalities of the funeral arrangements. She is a lady of very modest means. She had no money when she lost her son, so applied for a funeral payment and overdrew at the bank to provide a funeral. In her own words:
“It wasn’t a lavish funeral but a dignified one. In terms of distance and the cost per mile allowed from the social fund payment, I could not claim a total refund for the fee to return my son back to Milton Keynes from where he died in Staffordshire. The inescapable charge was £220, but despite an appeal to the DWP I was only paid £170. This left a shortfall of £50”.
However, she later found out that despite her son undergoing a post-mortem, she was within her legal rights to collect her son in her own vehicle and would have done so had she been aware of this at the time.
My constituent was also informed by the undertakers that the cheapest coffin available cost £680. Subsequently, she found that she could have bought the same coffin online for considerably less or buried her son in a shroud, which she had the legal right to do. In addition, had someone told her that she could still claim a funeral payment without using an undertaker, she would have done this, especially because she claims that the undertaker misled her with false information resulting in her not being able to return her son to his home to lie in wait for his burial. She would have done all these things had she been aware of her legal rights. This has led to her creating a campaign for the rights of newly bereaved people to be made known to them in sudden and unexpected circumstances.
Four years after her son was buried, my constituent discovered that no one had informed her that she could have recovered the fees for the burial rights to her son’s grave within three months of the funeral. If the system had worked properly, she would have received an additional £304 for the burial rights. Consequently, she was forced to surrender her life insurance policies to buy the burial rights, and she feels aggrieved that no one is held accountable for this action. She believes that the Department for Work and Pensions is overly reliant on the funeral industry to provide guidance to the relatives of a person who has died, specifically on what fees can be recovered. She claims to have evidence that proves that undertakers point applicants of a funeral payment to Jobcentre Plus for guidance. In addition, she claims that the National Association of Funeral Directors had no knowledge of the most technical information in existence—the DWP booklet SB16, which the Minister has stated is the most comprehensive guide. That this piece of literature is known only to some professionals would suggest that the bereaved may often not be aware of the full extent of their rights.
My constituent has also commented to me that a bereavement charity, the Alice Barker Trust, identified the same problem a long time ago. She is calling for much clearer guidance to be made available on the options open to relatives, particularly given that they will be in a highly emotional state. As the literature for the applicant may be understood only by those with technical knowledge, it needs to be written in plain language more readily intelligible to anyone. At present, the DWP relies upon undertakers to explain the rules to eligible claimants, resulting in the sort of problems experienced by my constituent. This generates unnecessary mystery and dependency, when we should be promoting education, self-help and self-reliance. A very simple and no-cost solution would be to amend the available literature in both print and online formats, making obvious what fees can be paid by the DWP in relation to the funeral, costs for opening the grave and burial rights for a fixed number of years.
I have already raised Teresa Evans’s case and her request for action with the Minister, but she has been dissatisfied with the response and with what she claims to be a lack of urgency in addressing the situation. She has therefore asked me to pose the following questions to the Minister. First, can he state, from records for the last financial year, how many claimants received payments for burials and what proportion of that number also received payments for what are technically known as burial rights, so they did not use what are known as pauper graves? Secondly, will the Minister consult the Alice Barker Trust to revise the wording of the advice that the DWP produces for printed, internet and other information? Thirdly, does the Minister agree that had the wording suggested by the charity been used before Boyd Evans was killed in 2006, his mother would have received her full entitlement to a funeral payment and would not have had to cash in her life insurance policies to cover the burial rights to her son’s grave? Fourthly, when it comes to the big society and developing strong communities, does the Minister agree that it is essential to empower all claimants in order to help them act independently and responsibly?
Nothing can bring Boyd Evans back, but his mother is hoping that her experience will result in the Department for Work and Pensions learning lessons, so that others do not encounter unnecessary emotional turmoil and financial hardship. Once again, Mr Speaker, I am grateful for the opportunity to raise this matter on the Floor of the House.
Work and Pensions
Iain Stewart Excerpts(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)
3. When he plans to respond to the review of employment support services for disabled people conducted by Liz Sayce.
Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)
10. When he plans to respond to the review of employment support services for disabled people conducted by Liz Sayce.
Oral Answers to Questions
Iain Stewart Excerpts(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Maria Miller
I thank the hon. Lady for giving me the opportunity to clarify the situation yet again, even though the Prime Minister did so last week in Prime Minister’s questions. The Government are not removing DLA mobility from care home residents from 2012. We made it clear that we have listened to concerns across the House and from disabled people. We will consider care home residents at the same time as all other recipients—both current and future claimants—as we develop the personal independence payment. What we have uncovered is an unacceptable way in which mobility is often dealt with in care homes, and we will look at that further.
Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)
3. When he plans to respond to the review of employment support services for disabled people conducted by Liz Sayce.
Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)
10. When he plans to respond to the review of employment support services for disabled people conducted by Liz Sayce. [Official Report, 1 April 2011, Vol. 526, c. 10MC.]
Iain Stewart
I very much welcome this review, but will my hon. Friend assure me that it will also specifically consider the potential power of new media and new technologies to unlock additional training and employment opportunities for disabled people?
Maria Miller
As I travel around and speak to disabled people in various types of employment, I hear from them directly how important new media are in helping people in that sector both to obtain jobs and to remain in employment. I am sure that new media opportunities will remain at the heart of the Government’s drive to get more people into work.