Finance (No. 2) Bill

Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 2nd February 2022 Commons Chamber

The tax rise threatens the financial security of families across the country, and our country’s economic security is being left exposed by this Government. Their shocking failure, apparently driven by self-interest, to put in place a public register of overseas owners of UK property leaves us unable to use the full force of economic sanctions against Putin and his allies. This Government will not protect people from the cost of living crisis, and they will not protect our country from Russian dirty money; the only thing they want to protect is the Prime Minister’s job. I know Tory Back Benchers have not yet summoned the courage to change their leader, but I urge them to do the right thing, at least today, and join us in voting to change this Bill.

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to address the House on the subject of new clause 2, which I am happy to sponsor with the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris), with the support of the RMT. I recognise that the Government are reviewing the tonnage tax regime with exactly the right attitude, but I encourage them to think more widely about how we genuinely get a post-Brexit bonus for the entirety of this industry—not just the shipowners, but the workers. I make my comments from my position as chairman of the all-party group for maritime and ports. I am very proud of our maritime sector and I am very proud to represent the ports in Thurrock, particularly in Tilbury and Purfleet, and, of course, the Thames freeport.

The great thing about this Finance Bill is that it shows that the Government are taking advantage of the new freedoms that we have now that we have left the European Union. We now have more tax freedoms, which will encourage more business investment. I am greatly looking forward to watching the Thames freeport grow and grow. There has been a fantastic partnership between Forth Ports, which is based in Scotland, DP World, which invests in London Gateway, and of course Ford at Dagenham. It will bring a whole new lease of life to economic opportunities on the Thames. But I am very keen that workers get a better chance to share in our post-Brexit freedom. It is with that in mind that I have been very happy to engage with the RMT and with the hon. Gentleman to give my support to this sector.

If we are genuinely a maritime nation, which is one of those platitudes that we often trot out in this Chamber, we should have our own maritime workforce, whether it be through ports, or those engaged in shipbuilding—I am very pleased that the Prime Minister has given his personal backing to expanding our shipbuilding sector and getting back to making ships here. But this is also for our seafarers. On a day when we are celebrating levelling up, we should remember that our coastal communities are among those in most need of levelling up. For the workers in those areas, the opportunity to have access to more opportunities for skilled jobs surely should be grasped. With that in mind, I support new clause 2 and the amendment sponsored by the hon. Member for Easington.

Let me tell Members a story about my constituency. I have many retired seafarers in my constituency, as I would, representing what I call the ports capital of the UK—they tell me these great stories of the romantic adventures that they had as young men travelling the world—but I have no seafarers among the current generation. Although the current tonnage tax regime encourages the shipping companies to invest in training opportunities for officers and cadets—all fine and good—I would like to see that extended to encourage more training opportunities for ratings, too. I cannot think of a better way for a young person to enter the world of work than to travel and to see the world while they are learning new skills. Many skills required on a ship can be migrated into employment later in life. To me, it seems like a no brainer if we really want to open up horizons and opportunities for all our young people. It feels a bit elitist to me if, with entirely the right attitude, we use this tax regime and the concessions around it to encourage investment and training and restrict that to the officer class.

We know what has happened in the shipping industry. We are training people to fill senior positions, while shipping companies are recruiting cheaper labour from elsewhere in the world, and we all know where those countries are. At a time when we are encouraging companies to be more virtuous about their supply chains and tackling the issue of modern slavery, it seems slightly hypocritical to me that we turn the other way when we know of companies that are taking advantage of cheap labour in the maritime sector.

To be fair, the Government have done an awful lot of work on this. I congratulate them on making changes to minimum wage legislation, for example, which has improved conditions in our waters, but we are nothing if not leaders by example. I encourage the Government to go further. I am grateful for the conversation I have had with my right hon. and learned Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury and my hon. Friend the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury about this. As they go through the review, I encourage them to think imaginatively about what more we can do to properly use this important measure to encourage more employment in that industry.

--- Later in debate ---

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

I appreciate the opportunity to speak to new clause 2 and amendment 34. I thank all Members who have co-sponsored or signed the new clause. It indicates extensive support not just from Labour Members, but from Members from across the House and a variety of parties. I must declare my interest as a member of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers parliamentary group, and I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

New clause 2 is very important to UK-based employment in the maritime sector. The issue has been raised with the current shipping Minister, the hon. Member for Witney (Robert Courts), who is sympathetic to the arguments we are making, and previously with his predecessors, most notably the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), who was enthusiastic about what we propose.

Clause 25 of the Bill makes tonnage tax more flexible for ship owners but no corresponding adjustments for seafarer jobs and skills based in the UK, as eloquently pointed out by the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price). The tonnage tax’s original purpose—it was introduced by a Labour Government, by Gordon Brown—was to arrest the decline in training and employment opportunities for British seafarers in an increasingly deregulated labour market. We have seen the increasing dominance of flags of convenience.

I remind those on the Treasury Bench that at the time of the Falklands war—unbelievably, 40 years ago—there were 45,000 British-based ratings and officers in the UK. Today, that number is below 23,000. About a quarter of all seafarer jobs in the UK industry are UK-based. The Bill does not seek to improve the mandatory link to train officer cadets or to create a separate mandatory link for the training of ratings.

The comprehensive spending review Red Book commits the Government to

“explore how best to make use of existing powers regarding the training commitment”.

However, I understand from discussions with the maritime unions that the process, which I inform the Treasury Bench is being taken forward by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, is not considering any specific measures to train British ratings or to employ British seafarers, including those who were trained on the tonnage tax vessels. This is a real wasted opportunity. If there is to be a Brexit dividend, we really must address that.

Perhaps it is a case of the Government, without taking action, inadvertently damaging the UK maritime sector, but there is an opportunity to put it right. New clause 2 would require the Government to review the impact of clause 25—tonnage tax—on employment and training for British officers and ratings, including the effect of changes to flagging arrangements on qualifying ships.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

The hon. Member is making the case persuasively. Does he agree that one of the difficulties is that Government policy is siloed in this area? Perhaps that is why the Government are missing the opportunity. He is right that the maritime Minister—the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Robert Courts)—gets it completely and is sympathetic, but the decision-making capability rests with the Treasury. Does he think that we need to get the Government together to see the right outcome for everyone involved in the shipping industry?

[Grahame Morris]

I am grateful for that intervention, and of course the hon. Member is right. The new clause’s proposal is not revolutionary; it is common sense. It is joined-up Government and application of the principle of trying to ensure benefits for British-based seafarers from the growth predicted for the maritime sector, particularly in relation to zero-carbon and offshore. That is particularly important, given that the Government could seek to use clause 25 to attract more flags of convenience into the tonnage tax scheme. Tonnage tax is a tax break that has already provided £2.165 billion in relief from corporation tax for UK and international ship owners.

In truth, the new clause would be a modest change. The real measure required to boost seafarer jobs and training, including in some of our most deprived coastal communities—including mine—would be a new mandatory link to ratings training, as well as officer cadet training, as advocated by the ratings’ union, the RMT. I do not propose that, however, because that is beyond the scope of the Bill.

Amendment 34, which is linked to new clause 2, seeks to provide the Secretary of State with the power to consult maritime trade unions over compliance with environmental safety and working conditions on non-UK flagships in the tonnage tax scheme. That would be consistent with the minimum standards on seafarer safety that everyone in the House would seek to support and which are part of the maritime labour convention to which the UK Government are a signatory along with all other maritime nations. I could say a little more but time is short, so, in the interests of progress, I shall leave it at that.

Government Response to Covid-19: Public Inquiry

Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House notes the Fifth Report of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee of Session 2019-21, A Public Inquiry into the Government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, HC 541; and calls on the Government to provide an updated response to that set out in the Committee’s Fourth Special Report of Session 2019-21, A Public Inquiry into the Government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic: Government’s response to the Committee’s Fifth Report, HC 995, setting out how the Government intends to implement the Committee’s recommendations, to ensure that the administrative arrangements necessary to set up the public inquiry committed to by the Prime Minister to the House on 11 May 2021, in particular the appointment of an inquiry chair, take place in a timely manner and no later than the end of this year, and to agree: that the Government’s preferred candidate to chair the inquiry should be subject to a pre-appointment hearing by the relevant select committee for the sponsoring Government department.

It is a privilege to move the motion, in the name of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, into the very important subject of the Government’s response to the covid-19 pandemic and the promised public inquiry.

We, as a Committee, have taken evidence from some very well informed help, if I may put it that way, and we have brought our deliberations forward in the reports under discussion today. We thank our witnesses who gave evidence—Emma Norris from the Institute for Government, Dr Alastair Stark from the University of Queensland, Jason Beer, QC, Lord Butler of Brockwell, Sir Robert Francis, QC, Dame Una O’Brien and Baroness Prashar of Runnymede—and all those who submitted written evidence to the inquiry. I also thank fellow Committee members for their well-informed deliberation on these matters.

We are all used now, I think, to public inquiries as a routine part of the UK political landscape, and it is clear that the issues with which we have been grappling over the past 18 months, and the very difficult measures that the Government have taken to combat the pandemic, are very much the right subject for a public inquiry. However, although we are used to public inquiries, there is very little guidance about how public inquiries should be established, Chairs appointed and terms of reference agreed, so, in the absence of such guidance, our Committee has happily stepped into that void with a view to taking discussions forward.

The Prime Minister has committed in principle to establishing a public inquiry, and in May 2021 he suggested that it should be established in spring 2022. The first message that the Committee would like to give is that that timetable really ought to be brought forward, for the simple reason that it takes a number of months before an inquiry can get under way in terms of establishing its secretariat and so on. I guess one issue that we were keen to grapple with is that the farther away from events an inquiry is established, the less we can learn in a timely fashion. So we would strongly encourage the Government to think about how they can be setting up that inquiry from now. It really should not get in the way of the fight against the pandemic, especially given where we are with regard to vaccination.

Obviously, we need to be very sure about the purpose of the inquiry. As a Committee, we were very keen to ensure that the inquiry should be about learning lessons, not apportioning blame. The facts of the matter are that the Government, and all our public services, were dealing with unprecedented challenges, and there can be no right or wrong answers when the evidence on which you seek to make decisions is changing before your very eyes from day to day. Ultimately, it will come down to a matter of judgment exercised at the time.

I really hope that we can enter the inquiry very much in that spirit, because although I have not agreed with every aspect of the Government’s decision making on this matter, I absolutely recognise that everyone involved in that process was doing so honourably, with the best of intentions. We are not going to be honest about lessons learned unless we can approach the inquiry on that basis. We in this place need to give some very clear messages that we are doing so in the spirit of learning.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

I commend the Committee for its thoughtful and thorough report.

I listened carefully to what the hon. Lady just said about one of the recommendations, and I understand about learning lessons; that is often what Committees do. I would challenge any Member, particularly Members who have been in this House for a long time, to remember the lessons learned and recommendations from the mad cow disease inquiry; my guess is that nobody will.

We already know that there have been heroes and villains over the last 18 months, and I would hope that any inquiry would identify those heroes and villains. Mistakes have been made in some cases because mistakes were bound to be made, but some mistakes have been made wilfully and we need to know who was responsible for them.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. Clearly, where there is wilful bad behaviour it should be exposed, but we need to set the tone: this inquiry is about how the Government and society have dealt with a very difficult set of issues. The heroes and villains to whom he refers will find a way of being outed, if I can put it in such a way, without it being the entire focus or ethos of the inquiry.

We obviously need to be very clear about the inquiry’s terms of reference, to inform what the focus will be, and about how the various themes that could be looked at will be examined. The chair will obviously be a very important appointment. This is by tradition the choice of the relevant Minister, but, again, respect for and the authority of the inquiry will be very much set by who the chair is. The Committee was very attracted to the idea of a chairman and panel approach, recognising that some of the issues that will be considered by the inquiry are broad ranging so it would be right for the chairman to have access to appropriate expertise in various areas. The Committee also felt that the appointment should be subject to a pre-commencement hearing with the relevant Select Committee, given the very high level of parliamentary interest in this inquiry. That would be an unprecedented step, but, again, in terms of setting the tone of how the inquiry will be progressed, it could be a very important innovation, and I hope the Government will consider that.

One of the issues that needs to be considered by the inquiry is of course the response by the Department of Health and Social Care in terms of management of risk of transmission and so on, but we need to consider in the round the tools adopted by the Government to deal with that, including the impact on liberties and the impact on our economy. There will be obvious consequences in the longer term for the nation’s wellbeing in the round. We also need to consider the wider behaviour of public services in that regard.

There also needs to be a way of considering the impacts in the devolved nations, including whether this should be a UK-wide inquiry or there should be separate inquiries; quite possibly there should be a combination of both.

[Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)]

Will the Committee also be considering whether the ministerial code has been broken, either by deliberately misleading the House or other actions?

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

I would clearly expect any inquiry to consider such matters, but there are other ways of bringing complaints forward about breaches of the ministerial code, and any action taken on that is of course a matter for the Prime Minister.

As I have mentioned, in taking forward the public inquiry we must work on the basis that everyone did their best, making decisions based on information known at the time. I would expect an inquiry to consider whether the impacts of policy interventions on individual liberties were proportionate and whether they were effective. We need an examination of the tools employed and whether they were effective in delivering the outcome intended. For example, we had a whole programme of local lockdowns, as you will be well aware, Madam Deputy Speaker, but was it a legitimate tool to close down legitimate business activity when the areas of mass infection had high housing density and multigenerational households, and was that the right tool? Again, we need to consider that to ensure that the Government properly assessed the balance between economic harm, liberty and health.

I imagine that any inquiry will find that the development and deployment of vaccines has been an unqualified triumph. In terms of lessons learned, we need to learn from the good things as well as from things that did not go quite as well as they should have. We need a proper examination of how test, track and trace took so long to get off the ground, because that really was not an unqualified success, and we need to consider whether the balance was right between the centre and local government. We also need to consider the issues around the supply of personal protective equipment. Having reacted to the suggestion that there were huge shortages, the fact of the matter is that we now have massive stockpiles and there are considerable costs to the taxpayer of maintaining those stockpiles. Again, we need to properly consider how those decisions came to be made.

I invite the House and the Government to consider the reflections of Bishop James Jones following his distinguished chairmanship of the Hillsborough inquiry. He talked about:

“The patronising disposition of unaccountable power”.

I think that phrase is a very convenient way of expressing how institutions of the state can often operate to protect their own reputations at the expense of the public, whom they are meant to serve. This is a really important principle to consider, given that the inquiry will judge not just lives lost, but the impact on business and jobs, as well as the wider impact on health and the harm that has been caused by the decisions taken over the last year, even though they were perhaps the best decisions that could have been made. It is a behaviour that public institutions can fall into unless we in Parliament give them proper challenge.

Perhaps another of the lessons we need to learn about the last year is that quite often Parliament has not played its full role in scrutinising decisions made by the Government. We have often been asked to give retrospective authority to decisions, and I hope that we all share the view that parliamentary scrutiny actually makes for better decision making.

I will leave hon. Members with a final thought. Our liberties are not in the gift of Government—they are ours. It really is down to consent given by Parliament on behalf of the public to ensure that those liberties, when we do surrender them, as we have in the last year, are not taken for granted by Government. In that regard, considering the behaviour of all our state institutions over this year is a very important job of scrutiny that the new inquiry would have to do to make sure that the shift towards state power that we have witnessed over the last year is not one that becomes permanent.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

I thank everyone who has contributed to this debate. There is a great degree of consensus: we all want this inquiry to be very much focused on learning lessons. I guess the real issue of contention is timing, more than anything else. That reflects the tension between doing the job properly and thoroughly, and potentially making timely reflections so that we can act quickly. I want to associate myself with the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin). We need to focus on the outcome of the inquiry to get it right, and that outcome must be confidence—confidence from the public that we have learned those lessons and confidence across the system that we have taken steps to ensure that we deal with such issues more effectively in future. In that regard, I welcome the tone with which my right hon. Friend the Minister addressed the issues we considered today. I hope that that reflects how the Government take this issue forward.

It will take time for the inquiry to get up and running, so the sooner we can get on with making the appointments and setting the approach the better. It will be some considerable time before the inquiry starts to impact on those parts of the Government that are dealing with the pandemic now. I hope that we will be able to reflect on that again in due course.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House notes the Fifth Report of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee of Session 2019-21, A Public Inquiry into the Government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, HC 541; and calls on the Government to provide an updated response to that set out in the Committee’s Fourth Special Report of Session 2019-21, A Public Inquiry into the Government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic: Government’s response to the Committee’s Fifth Report, HC 995, setting out how the Government intends to implement the Committee’s recommendations, to ensure that the administrative arrangements necessary to set up the public inquiry committed to by the Prime Minister to the House on 11 May 2021, in particular the appointment of an inquiry chair, take place in a timely manner and no later than the end of this year, and to agree: that the Government’s preferred candidate to chair the inquiry should be subject to a pre-appointment hearing by the relevant select committee for the sponsoring Government department.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I shall now suspend the House to enable the necessary arrangements for the next business to be made.

Covid-19: Government Transparency and Accountability

Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts

Thursday 22nd April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

Without a shadow of a doubt, the nation has lived through a quite unprecedented period that would have tested all Governments of any colour. It is also the case that, for a long time, we did not know exactly what we were dealing with. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg) outlined, from a standing start, the Government had to move in a fleet-of-foot manner without being entirely certain and in that respect the leadership and speed with which the Government acted deserves commendation.

The Committee heard from a number of witnesses who acknowledged that, from a standing start, the speed with which the Government compiled a bigger picture of data that enabled us to understand what was happening was impressive. The way in which the Government illustrated how the data informed their decision-making process was equally impressive. What has been lacking, as our inquiry shows, is transparent data that illustrates the efficacy of the measures taken and whether they were delivering their stated outcomes, which were of course to save lives and protect our NHS. There has been rather less of that.

The Government have taken incredible freedoms and liberties away from the public. We in this House are the guardians of the liberties of the people in this country and it is our job to satisfy ourselves that the sacrifices we are asking people to make are proportionate and delivering those outcomes. However, I genuinely fear that over the last year we have come to a situation in which, far from the Government asking us to sacrifice liberties for the greater good, we now have a culture where the Government feel that those liberties are in their gift to give back to us. Nothing is more clear about that than the road map, because having heard the rhetoric from Ministers that we will be driven by data, not dates, we are sticking to the timetable. I got the figures from my borough this morning, where we have 9.2 cases per 100,000. My reaction to that is: let the blooming restaurants open, for heaven’s sake. We are doing unparalleled economic harm by not being so fleet of foot to enable our economy to reawaken. From the perspective of doing the best for the citizens of our country, we really should be doing that, because, with every day that goes by without us letting businesses reopen, we are making their long-term sustainability even more difficult.

I went out for dinner on Saturday night—it was so exciting. I was sitting outside my local restaurant. It was six o’clock in the evening, so the sun was going down, and it started to get very cold. I spoke to the owner who, bless him, was very pleased to see us. How can it be sustainable to expect people to eat outside in the current climate? It is not July. I have the utmost respect for everybody who is trying really hard at this moment to sustain a living—we will be dependent on the taxes they will pay to get us out of this—but, for heaven’s sake, I cannot believe how out-of-touch I feel we have got with us taking it for granted that these businesses can resurrect themselves on an arbitrary date.

We know that these restrictions have not demonstrated any positive benefit in respect of covid. My local area went into the November lockdown with one of the lowest case rates in the country and came out with the highest. There is a simple reason for that: we restricted legitimate businesses from being able to engage in economic activity while keeping the schools open, so there was social transmission. Lockdowns are effective only if everything is locked down, yet we seem to have locked down the most productive areas of our economy, which, frankly, for a Conservative Government, I find utterly bizarre.

My final point—recognising your strictures on time, Madam Deputy Speaker—is that we need to ensure that when we are asking the public to restrict their freedoms, it must deliver a positive outcome in saving lives and reducing pressure on our hospitals. So why is it that in palliative care wards, people are allowed only one visitor? What risk is there to the people in those wards of dying from covid when they are already dying? What we are doing is being very cruel to people at the end of their lives, because they cannot get comfort from their loved ones. Equally, what positive outcome is there right now when residents in our care homes, who have all been vaccinated—and, as my hon. Friend said, are protected from this disease—still cannot see their loved ones? My grandmother is 95 years old, with dementia. She is in permanent distress because she thinks no one cares about her. She has been vaccinated. I would love to be able to go and see her. She thinks I do not care. I think what we are doing is cruel and delivers no positive benefit to public health.

Finance (No. 2) Bill

Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee of the Whole House (Day 1)
Monday 19th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Long Bailey [V]]

I will limit my brief comments to freeports. Detailed Government assessments on the operation and impact of freeports are sadly not yet available. As we have heard tonight, the OBR has stated that the announcements made in the Budget came too late to be incorporated into its forecast. If the Government recognise this, they must understand that they have a duty to provide such evidence and legislative reassurance in response to legitimate and wide-ranging concerns on the operation and impact of freeports.

There are concerns that, rather than complementing a local economy by stimulating the growth of new business, existing businesses may simply opt to relocate to freeports. Certainly, the Government have not made it clear how they will mitigate against the significant geographic movement of jobs away from one area and into a freeport—how they will avoid a wild-west scenario of pitting regions against each other, nor the prospect of lost revenue for local authorities from business rates, for example, if businesses opt to relocate to such a zone.

The job creation numbers are equally sketchy. The Chancellor argued back in 2016 that if the UK’s approach performs as well as that in the USA, freeports would create more than 86,000 jobs, but as the Centre for Progressive Policy found, this figure was a cut-and-paste job, being simply the number of people employed in the US free zones adjusted for the relative size of the UK population. There was no data on the labour market impact on specific regional economies or industries, nor any mention of the need for bespoke local skill strategies to feed into this.

On workers’ rights, the TUC has repeatedly warned about the gradual erosion of workers’ protections in these zones. It stated:

“Free ports are a Trojan Horse to water down employment protections”—

in a “race to the bottom”.

Finally, as we have heard tonight, there are real concerns that freeports could create a bonanza for money launderers and tax evaders. Indeed, the EU reported in 2018 that freeports were

“conducive to secrecy. With their preferential treatment, they resemble offshore financial centres, offering both high security and discretion and allowing transactions to be made without attracting the attention of regulators or direct tax authorities.”

The Government must address these concerns before pressing ahead. To that end, new clauses 5 and 25 would allow the Government to create an evidence base for freeports, which the House can then examine, and new clause 4 would impose standards and protections. If the Government are serious about addressing these concerns and building in clear legal protections, they will support these new clauses tonight.

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

I commend the Government on the ambitious agenda running through this Finance Bill. It needs to be ambitious because the last year has been a very painful one for us economically. We must do everything we can to foster renewed growth, renewed job creation and, indeed, renewed wealth creation.

I have listened to the speeches from Labour Members. They raise some important things, but if I seriously believed that this freeport policy was going to undermine workers’ rights and lead to massive non-compliance with health and safety and tax legislation, I would not support it. I am supporting it because I have real ambition for my local community and my area, and I am very proud and pleased that the Thames freeport has been chosen as one of the eight. I assure the House that this is going to be the transformation of Thurrock after a very long time.

My hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) referred to the fact that people often see levelling up in terms of north versus south and we have heard that a lot, but nothing could be further from the truth; in fact some of the most deprived areas in our nation are our coastal communities, so it is absolutely right that freeports should be one of the headline levelling-up policies.

Ministerial and other Maternity Allowances Bill

Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Thursday 11th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

It is a great privilege to follow the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), who has blazed a trail on so many of these issues in the time that she has been a Member of the House. It is also a reminder that although she has been such a powerful advocate for women, we still have so many outstanding injustices to tackle, with the Bill tackling one of the most outstanding ones.

It seems staggering that in the 21st century we are still having to legislate for fair treatment and equality for women. We should not demur from grappling with these challenges as soon as they materialise. All of us here who are women Members of Parliament continue to encounter discrimination, whether on our own part or when fighting for constituents. Those challenges are reflected in our having a Minister for Women and Equalities, and indeed a Women and Equalities Committee. Of course, we must tackle the fact that not all unfairnesses and injustices can be dealt with by legislation; most today are behavioural and practical in their nature. However, by holding this debate, shining a light and taking action ourselves, we can give the best possible leadership to all employers in the country—and all women in the country, to show that we are on their side.

I very much welcome the Bill as an advance in women’s rights, but I felt moved to table amendments because of representations that I have had from women about its language. I fully understand the challenges that the Government faced in bringing forward this legislation. Clearly, the need to amend existing legislation made the job more difficult, and the use of language was not especially easy. None the less, I felt it important that we reflect on that.

The fact that we are holding this debate today explains why women are anxious about protecting their rights, and why they become very sensitive about language used. We see more and more how our sex is being dehumanised by non-gender-specific terms. A lot of women do not mind. Particularly for younger women, who perhaps have not gone through the fights that some of us who are a bit older have, it does not really matter, but for a lot of women it genuinely does cause distress. It is important that we in this place at least reflect on that, challenge ourselves and ensure that we do use the most sensitive language that we possibly can in tackling these issues.

We shall discuss my amendments in Committee in due course, but I must say that I find it difficult to be challenging my right hon. Friend the Paymaster General on this, because there has been no greater champion of equality than she. I was reassured by her opening comments that, whatever the language in the Bill, it does not reflect any more long-term view. However, the Government need to be sensitive about these issues, because in making a big leap forward in advancing rights, we do not want to alienate anyone with discomfort about the language used.

Ministerial and other Maternal Allowances Bill

Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts

Committee stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Committee: 1st sitting & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 11th February 2021 Commons Chamber

Overall, the Bill has served two functions thus far. First, it has brought provision for maternity arrangements for Ministers and others up to date and to where it needs to be in some ways, but it seems to be widely appreciated that that can be only a stopgap measure because of the restrictions that still exist. I am pleased that the Minister seems to be committing to bringing back something further before the summer; I would like to hear that commitment loudly and clearly. Secondly, we must acknowledge that the Bill has shone a light on how many issues need to be addressed broadly in this subject area in this House and across the workforce in all our communities. That is perhaps the most useful thing that it has done.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

I shall not detain the Committee unduly, given that I made many of my points on Second Reading. However, I would like to highlight how the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) illustrated beautifully how all our maternity rights legislation refers to “women” or “she” and reflects the female sex, which again makes the Bill something of a vagary.

I thank my right hon. Friend the Minister for her references to my amendments and for engaging constructively to try to work through to a solution, notwithstanding the constraints of the legislation with which she is working. My amendments would replace the word “person”, which is causing so much anxiety to women outside this place, with a word that reflects the position in employment law—in this case, “minister”. That would be consistent with the rest of the Bill, because for the Opposition positions the Bill refers to office holders. I am really grateful to my right hon. Friend for seeing whether that might be a solution. It is not ideal—I would much prefer to see “woman” placed in the Bill—but needs must, and we must pass the legislation so that we can send the Attorney General, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Fareham (Suella Braverman), Godspeed on her way to enjoy her pregnancy and her childbirth.

I am not minded to press the amendment if it is not a suitable way to deal with this issue. It was tabled in a constructive spirit, to try to take the heat out of something causing distress to women. However, we must ensure that this is not repeated in future legislation regarding maternity rights. If there were an opportunity to vote on replacing the word “person” with “woman”, I would be in full support of it.

[Stella Creasy]

I rise to speak to a number of amendments. Before I do so, I will acknowledge some Members across the House who have done such amazing work in raising issues of equality when it comes to pregnancy and maternity in this place. I believe there is a high degree of cross-party consensus that we need to act.

I also put on the record my support for the many men who have spoken today about the importance of fathers. Let me be clear: there will be no equality for pregnant women and new mums until fathers are able to step up and equally do their bit. It is not a zero-sum game; it is about parents being able to support each other, and the importance to women’s equality of not being left literally holding the baby.

Let me put on the record my thanks for the work of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman); my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier), who was a trailblazer in her time and continues to fight for women’s rights; my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper); and, indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North (Feryal Clark), who spoke bravely and set out her own fears for what would happen. That is one of the tests we must face in this place.

I take the point that the Paymaster General is making when she says that this is not a perk, but I think it is quite difficult to make that argument when faced with another Member of the House who is in exactly the same position as the Attorney General but will be unable to access the maternity leave that we have all agreed it is important that new mums should be able to access.

I want to put on the record my support for the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves). If Members have not read her books, trying to correct the record of the absence of our understanding of what women parliamentarians have done, they really should.

I also want to mention the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller). I said in my earlier contribution that one of the things I thought was missing from the debate was a recognition of the legislation that she has proposed to try to help women facing redundancy in pregnancy, and to make real the promise, which I think we all expect for our constituents, that we will not make someone who is pregnant redundant. As we know, even before the pandemic, 50,000 women a year were facing that situation. I think about the narrow scope of this Bill and contrast it with what her Bill could do for thousands of women in this country. If she is able to bring it forward, she will have my support.

I also want to thank the current Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), who is doing an amazing job. She spoke today about the importance of equalities impact assessments. New clause 1 is about exactly why that matters. Obviously, we usually expect those assessments to be done for any form of Government legislation, because we recognise that we cannot be blind to the consequences of legislation for different sections of our society.

We have an Equality Act in this country and we protect certain characteristics for a reason, because we know that not everyone in our society faces a level playing field. Pregnancy is a protected characteristic for just that reason—to enable us to say, “Actually, in our society in 2021, women who are pregnant in our communities face discrimination.” We recognise that if we address the challenges that they face and remove those barriers, we shall all benefit. This legislation seeks to do that, and I recognise that. That is why I will support it, and why I think it is the right thing to do.

However, as the Paymaster General herself said, this legislation does that for a maximum of 115 women. In a society of 70 million people, that cannot be enough. That cannot be the message that we send from Parliament. That is why it is important that we have an equalities impact assessment of this legislation, and that we recognise that it does not take place in a vacuum, but in an unequal society where women who are pregnant face discrimination. We see that in our public life. We have already talked about this place briefly, and I do want to return to that, because I think it is important.

I acknowledge that the Paymaster General has recognised the timetable that I am setting her. I want to put that on the record, because I think that should be part of an equalities impact assessment where I believe the discrimination is against those of us who are pregnant, and there are human rights elements of this. But we cannot be blind, either, to the message that this legislation, in the way it is crafted, will send to our sisters in local government and regional Assemblies, or indeed to our sisters who are employees of this House.

Low-Cost housing

Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts

Wednesday 8th February 2017 Westminster Hall

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Gillan. It is a great pleasure to respond to the debate introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose). He has been fortuitous in securing this debate on low-cost housing the day after the White Paper was published, but he is rather disadvantaged by the fact that the Minister responsible is so busy selling the White Paper that he has to put up with a reply from me, but I will endeavour to answer the points he has raised.

The tone of the debate has frankly been a bit miserable, in truth. My hon. Friend has come forward with a proposal to expand the supply of housing. We all know that supply is the biggest challenge in delivering low-cost housing. Houses have become less and less affordable because we have not been building enough houses, period. We need to look at what we can do to unlock a bigger supply of houses, and that is what the White Paper is all about. I could happily trade statistics with Opposition Members, but the reality is that we have not been building enough housing in this country for decades. There are many reasons for that. Some of them are to do with planning, public opinion, finance and land prices, but what is clear is that our housing market is broken, and I do not think we should be ruling anything out in fixing it, because we have a real problem in terms of fairness for everyone in society being able to live in a decent home that they can afford. We in Government and as politicians should be seeking to deliver that.

That is where my hon. Friend has it in a nutshell, in coming forward with a proposal that could unlock substantially more housing. Listening to him and the reaction to his remarks from Members highlighted a massive cultural prejudice against building up, rather than building out, and there is a reason for that, which he alluded to in his remarks. We were very badly let down in the ’60s. That was the zenith of building up, not out, but we built buildings that were ugly and unpleasant, and they became unpleasant places to live. That is in people’s minds when they start thinking about high-rise housing and development. I have it in my constituency. We are on the border of London, so we have a substantial need for new houses. We have a substantial amount of brownfield land and green belt. Members will not be surprised to hear that we get a lot more planning applications for housing on green-belt sites, because we all know that it is cheaper to build there. We are also on the river, and if there is one place where high-rise developments would work, it is on the river.

My hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles)—I think we were all impressed by his courage in turning up for the vote yesterday—came to my constituency when he was housing Minister. He did me no favours because he described one of my riverfront housing developments as pig ugly. It was a four-storey housing development on the river, and people want to live on the river, but his point was that if the planners had been a little more adventurous, we could have built something higher and more beautiful. When one visits places such as Greenwich in south-east London, one can see that they have shown imagination. They have opened up the river and created nice places to live, so I very much welcome my hon. Friend’s interest in this.

To give my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare some comfort, the White Paper sets out clearly the importance of high-density brownfield development, which is a part of his proposal. We propose changes to national policy to make it clear that local plans and individual development proposals should encourage building up where acceptable. We also propose to make better use of public land. The Department would welcome my hon. Friend’s response to the White Paper so that we can take this forward. It is incumbent on all of us, and it is very easy. We all react to our postbags—Mr Grumpy always complains about the planning application that is proposed—but we have a role now, because this is such an important issue, to sell what will really deliver more housing, so I encourage my hon. Friend to make his submission as robust and as forthright as he wishes.

The Government welcome the opportunity to discuss low-cost housing in its wider sense. The hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) made some excellent points, but we need to recognise that the problem has been in the making for decades and the issues are complex. We do not say that the White Paper has all the answers or all the solutions. There is no silver bullet. If there was, the previous Labour Government would have delivered it, as would we in the last Parliament. Let us get real here. This is a serious problem, and unless we have a grown-up discussion about it, we will not solve it and we will let down future generations.

[Dr Huq]

There is some stuff in the White Paper that was nicked out of the Ed Miliband playbook—we are pleased to see that there will be a ban on letting fees—but it could have been a little more aggressive on the “Use it or lose it” idea. I apologise, Mrs Gillan; I should have said my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband). In Ealing we have a site, which my 12-year-old remembers as a building site for most of his life—it was a cinema—that is going to be rebuilt for residential use, but it has been land-banked for the best part of a decade. What does the White Paper say about that, and how can we be more aggressive with developers who simply sit on land while the value goes up?

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

The hon. Lady has hit on a major structural problem that is inhibiting the ability to supply. There are many examples of what she talks about. Some developers are bringing forward a supply of housing and others are sitting on the land.

The White Paper on housing that we published yesterday advocates shortening timescales for the implementation of planning permissions where appropriate. That is very much on our agenda. We are considering legislative changes to simplify and speed up completion notices, which will encourage developers to build out or face losing the site. I am a big fan of naming and shaming. Transparency is an effective tool. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Where we have developers clearly engaging in predatory behaviour and exploiting the marketplace, we should be prepared to name and shame them. Every one of us in this room has a voice. Where we see bad behaviour by developers, let us shout out about it, because we have to deliver more houses. It is that simple.

I trust that hon. Members have had the opportunity to digest some of the housing White Paper, if not all of it, and I hope that they will engage with the debate. I want to make it incredibly clear how committed the Government are to grappling with this problem. We want to make sure that all hard-working families have the housing that they need at a price they can afford. The root cause of the problem is that demand outstrips supply. Only by increasing supply substantially will we stop the increasing spiralling of house prices and rents.

[Alan Brown]

If all options are on the table in the White Paper, will the Government reconsider the right to buy and extended the discount? Have the Government put a cost against how much money has been paid out in the extended right-to-buy scheme and how many properties might have been delivered had the money gone directly to house building?

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

The hon. Gentleman will not be surprised to hear that I disagree with his point about right to buy. We are firmly committed to it. We want to encourage the aspiration for everyone to own their own home. We want to enable that, and right to buy is very much a part of it. He made very thoughtful remarks in his earlier contribution, and we have answers. We are firmly committed to making sure that, for every additional home sold, another social home will be provided—nationally. There is a rolling three-year deadline for councils to deliver the affordable homes to replace right to buy. We must also remember that when someone exercises their right to buy, the house is not removed from the stock. They still have a housing need. Again, the issue comes back to making sure that we increase the supply of houses.

Perhaps I can give the hon. Gentleman a little more comfort. It was said by the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth that councils were not building more homes. Actually, they are. Some councils are showing considerable imagination in unlocking new homes. They are establishing local housing companies and we are encouraging them to do that. We see local councils as part of the partnership to help to increase supply.

[Ruth Cadbury]

I am sorry if the hon. Lady feels that I said councils are not building new homes. They are building new homes, but they are having to use other resources now that there is no Government funding. They could build an awful lot more if they could be released from the borrowing cap. My own council is building about 400 new council homes. The problem is that councils are losing their own stock at a faster rate through the right to buy than they can build new council homes. They are building them using capital funds that could also be used for other infrastructure such as schools and so on.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

I am not sure I entirely accept that. Certainly local authorities have the powers to borrow using their general power of competence, and they have established local housing companies to do that. There is an obligation to replace one for one, following the right to buy being exercised. Ultimately, we see local authorities as a partner in delivering more housing. That is the message I want to press home today.

Our broken housing market is one of the greatest barriers to progress in Britain today. If we are really serious about building a fairer society for everyone, we need to tackle that. We need to fix this to make sure that housing is more affordable. As has been mentioned, many people spend significant amounts of their income on rent or mortgage payments. Building more homes will slow the rise in housing costs so that many more families will be able to afford to buy a home or enjoy the benefits of lower rents.

To summarise and put what the housing White Paper proposes in context, first, we will insist that every area has an up-to-date plan, because development is about far more than just building homes. This is where the challenge is for local authorities. The planning process and building a vision of where new homes will be built and what the future will be for a local economy is so important. It is about getting community buy-in. It will help to tackle some of the cultural prejudices that we discussed earlier in the debate. If communities have ownership of a local plan for their local area, they will get the attractive homes that they want and need. My challenge is for local authorities to step up and deliver. We are all aware that there are far too many local authorities that have not risen to the challenge of identifying where houses are needed. There are still too many councils that do not have a local plan, and they need to show leadership and deliver.

Secondly, and as the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) noted, we need to ensure that homes are built quickly once planning permission is granted. We will make sure that the planning system is much more open and accessible. We will improve the co-ordination of public investment infrastructure to encourage that, and we will support timely connections to utilities to tackle unnecessary delays, but the real issue is developers. We will give councils and developers the tools they need to build more swiftly and we will expect them to use them. I suspect that this is an issue that we will look at as reactions to the White Paper unfold and we consider whether there is a need for further legislative change.

We will also diversify the market. We want to bring new players in to the supply of housing. We need to give support to small and medium-sized builders and custom builders and to champion modern methods of construction to support new investment to build to rent. Those measures could be transformational. The idea of institutional investment that builds property estates or residential blocks that are specifically for rent, which people can rent for a long time, could transform the housing market and make renting much more affordable.

The White Paper also sets out how we will support housing associations to build more and explores options to encourage local authorities to build again. As I have said, we will also encourage further institutional investment in the private rented sector. Finally, because we recognise that building the homes we need takes time, we will also take more steps now to improve safeguards in the private rented sector. Hon. Members who represent constituencies in London will be particularly concerned about that.

We have seen the need to do more to prevent homelessness. I am very pleased that the Government have committed to fully funding the Homelessness Reduction Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman). We will provide £61 million to local government to meet the costs of the new burdens associated with that Bill over the course of the spending review period.

We could easily trade statistics, but I do not think there is any value in playing the blame game about where we are now. We need to look at how we fix it. Everybody has a role to play in that—including the former Leader of the Opposition, the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), who the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton mentioned. The Government are very clear that fixing the problem is a real priority.

We have already delivered 313,000 affordable homes in England since 2010. The affordable homes programme alone delivered 193,000 affordable homes, exceeding expectations by 23,000. At the autumn statement, the Chancellor announced the expansion of the affordable homes programme with an additional £1.4 billion, which increased the overall budget to £7.1 billion. That is a significant investment from the Government in tackling the problem. The expanded programme also allows a wider range of products to help people on the pathway to home ownership and to continue to provide support for those who need it. Those products include shared ownership, rent to buy and affordable rent.

Opening up the programme in that way will help to meet the housing needs of a wider range of people in different circumstances and at different stages in their lives. We have to recognise that there are different problems in different areas of the country, but also different problems hitting people at different stages of their lives. We need to make sure that we have a solution for all of those.

Affordable rent was a policy introduced to get more bang for our buck in providing social rent models. It allows rent to be set at 80% of market rents so that we can unlock more supply. Those tenants will still benefit from a sub-market rent. This is a particular issue in London, where the affordable rent can be set even lower.

Home ownership, however, continues to be the aspiration for most people, which is why we have looked at the Help to Buy products, right to buy and shared ownership. Shared ownership offers a route through the part-buy/part-rent model to enable people to get on the housing ladder sooner than if they were saving for a deposit. Purchasers buy a minimum 20% share in the new-build property at market value, pay a controlled rent on the remainder and may continue to buy further shares until the property is owned outright. We will continue to use that tool to expand home ownership. Since 2010, around 45,000 new shared ownership schemes have been delivered and we will continue to deliver more.

Help to Buy has already helped more than 200,000 households to buy a home, including through the equity loan scheme, which has benefited 100,000 households—81% of whom were first-time buyers. We have also committed £8.6 billion for the Help to Buy equity loan scheme to 2021, to ensure that it continues to support homebuyers and stimulate supply. We recognise the need to create certainty for prospective homeowners so we will work with the sector to deliver that.

I come back to the issue of the planning regime and how we can speed up its ability to help to deliver the volume of supply. My hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare is quite right to look at tools for how we can do that. He highlighted the importance of increasing brownfield development and building to higher densities to deliver more homes. If widely adopted, that could reduce the need for green-belt development. What excites me about the idea is the ability to regenerate our high streets. I am sure I am not alone, given the way that retail is moving today, in seeing some of my high streets really struggling. The idea that we could create a new, mixed-use high street, rather than a retail-dependent one—one where people can live above the shops or behind the shops in new high-rise developments and be able to go downstairs and visit cafes and restaurants—is quite an exciting concept, which would particularly appeal to the younger generations coming through. There is massive potential, and I encourage my hon. Friend to carry on trying to open people’s eyes to the potential of this initiative.

The Department has been engaging with my hon. Friend on his work and has taken up his proposals. We consulted last February on proposals to allow limited upward extensions in London, no higher than the height of an adjoining roofline. Following that consultation, we recognise that there is potential to deliver more homes nationally, not just in London, through a change to national planning policy to support upward extensions in suitable locations. As set out in the housing White Paper, we propose to amend the national planning policy framework to make it clear that local plans and individual development proposals should address the particular scope for higher-density housing in urban locations where buildings can be extended upwards by using the airspace above them.

In the White Paper, we have committed to reviewing the nationally described space standards, because of feedback from the sector that in certain places, space standards make it hard to use land efficiently and stop cheaper houses being built, which more people now want to rent or buy, such as Pocket Homes. We have to recognise the limitations. When we write planning law, we write it at a given time, in a given set of circumstances. When the world changes, we need to be prepared to be fleet of foot in dealing with new opportunities to address the issues we face. However, this is not a race to the bottom, and Government are clear that in assessing the options we will be looking for a solution that combines greater local housing choice with good quality and with decent places to live.

As I have set out, in the past few years we have seen over 300,000 affordable homes built in England. We now need to go much, much further and meet our obligation to build many more houses, of the type people want to live in, in the places they want to live and at a price they can afford. Doing that will give those growing up in society today more chance to enjoy the same opportunities as their parents and grandparents. I am struck by the fact that this is the first time that the future generation will be less well-off than their parents, when for many decades we have been used to high living standards. It is firmly my view that the price of housing is central to that.

We will ensure that the housing market is as fair for those who do not own their own home as it is for those who do, and we will continue to look at what is happening in the private rented sector. All that is a vital part of our plan for a stronger, fairer Britain, and a critical step along the road to fulfilling the Government’s mission to make Britain a country that works for everyone.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts

Tuesday 9th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

The answer to increasing wage growth is not just to observe that it would be nice if wages went up but to have no policies to do that. If we want wage growth, we need investment in the UK, which we are getting. We want more people in jobs, and a record number of people are in jobs. We want to improve our training and education system, and record numbers of people are taking up apprenticeships. We want to improve our transport infrastructure, and the Government have committed to the biggest road building programme since the 1970s. If we want wage growth, we must stick to the long-term economic plan.

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

7. What recent estimate he has made of the level of employment.

[The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Danny Alexander)]

I am pleased to tell the House that employment is at its highest-ever level in this country with 30.8 million people in work. Since the coalition came to power, employment has increased by more than 1.7 million, meaning that on average an extra person has become employed every 80 seconds since the Government were formed in 2010. Last week the Office for Budget Responsibility published its latest forecast, estimating that an extra million people will be in work by 2019.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

The Government can be proud of creating on average 1,000 jobs a day. That is not just a number; it is more people with the security of a job and a regular pay packet. Will my right hon. Friend reassure my constituents in Thurrock that we will stick to the policies that are creating record numbers of people in work?

[Danny Alexander]

My hon. Friend is right. It is incredibly important that we create jobs in this country as that is providing opportunities and incomes for people who did not have one previously. The Government should be proud of that. Today the 2 millionth apprentice has been recruited under this Government, and the young lady, Paige McConville of Oxford, will meet the Business Secretary to highlight that achievement.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts

Tuesday 4th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

Not in England. In regard to playing catch-up, I would say to the hon. Lady that we have heard from Labour’s civic leaders in Greater Manchester that they want a directly elected mayor. We have heard from the Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer. What is the view of those on the Labour Front Bench on this proposal? Last week, the Labour leader was in Manchester saying that the Labour party would never sign up to such a deal, but four days later all his civic leaders did so. What is the policy of the Labour party?

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

2. What plans he has to bring forward legislative proposals to change income tax allowances and thresholds.

[The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr George Osborne)]

By next year, the personal allowance threshold will have reached £10,500. This will mean an £805 cut in income tax for the typical basic-rate taxpayer, and 3 million people being taken out of income tax altogether. Under a Conservative Government in the next Parliament, we would go further.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

Enabling people to keep more of what they earn is the best thing any Government can do for ordinary hard-working taxpayers. Can the Chancellor tell me how many of my constituents in Thurrock will be likely to benefit from these proposals?

[Mr Osborne]

My hon. Friend is a champion for the hard-working people in her constituency. Not only have our personal tax cuts helped many thousands of those people, but if we go ahead with our plans to raise the personal allowance to £12,500, more than 5,500 people in Thurrock would be lifted out of income tax altogether and 58,000 of the people she represents would benefit.

National Minimum Wage

Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Robert Halfon]

My hon. Friend is right; our party has a relentless focus on helping the lower paid. We should support the minimum wage because we are the party of aspiration and working people, and increasing the minimum wage eliminates the poverty trap, cuts the benefits bill and encourages more people to get back into work. If we do just one thing, it should be to increase the minimum wage at least to reflect the increase in inflation over the past few years.

I also urge the Government to institute a regional minimum wage—in addition to the national minimum wage, not as a substitute for it—because of the different costs of living in different parts of the country. I am talking about the differing costs not just from north to south, but within regions. That has been done in other countries, such as Canada and the United States, where individual states can set minimum wage rates above the federal minimum. We need to consider such an approach seriously.

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

My hon. Friend and I represent constituencies in Essex, where the cost of living is higher than it is in other parts of the country. Does he agree that we often see people trapped in a life on benefits because it does not pay to work as a result of the loss in housing benefit owing to higher property prices?

[Robert Halfon]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, and the Conservative party is the workers’ party. We are here to get people out of dependency and back into work, and the Labour party is the party of benefits.

Although it is important to support a fair wage, we must not hurt small businesses—the Secretary of State was exactly right on that. We should move towards a living wage, but there are ways of doing it. The important thing is to put the burden on government to achieve the living wage, not on businesses. I support the minimum wage and the living wage, but we have to make sure that they are not raised to unsustainable levels. Labour’s solution of offering companies tax breaks if they pay employees the living wage for a year is said with the best of intentions, but it has flaws because it does not fully offset the cost. Many companies would still be unable to meet the additional cost of paying their workers an extra £2 an hour. It would also only last a year, so many people would not benefit in the long term.

We should remember that 5 million low earners in Britain are earning less than £10,000 a year. To achieve the living wage, we need to look at two ends of the equation. First, we could reintroduce the 10p income tax band. That would halve the income tax bill for those on the minimum wage and significantly reduce the cash gap between the minimum wage and the living wage. It would also cost less than raising the personal allowance, and ensure that people continue to pay into the system while letting them keep more of their own money. Alternatively, we could continue raising the threshold of income tax. Those are the ways to get people up to a living wage, and I am happy with either solution.

National insurance is the one tax that is still taken directly out of lower earners’ pay packets. A worker who earns around £7,500, which is around half of what the Government say they need to live on, still pays national insurance. We should take a small step to help the lower paid by increasing the national insurance threshold, so that it is in line with income tax for employees. The 2020 Tax Commission found that nearly three-quarters of company bosses said that national insurance contributions curbed the rates they paid their staff.

A bigger step would be to remove altogether national insurance and income tax from the national minimum wage, which would mean that someone working 40 hours a week would be earning just £10 a week less than someone who is currently earning the living wage. If we did that, national insurance and income tax could be merged into just one tax.

Although some argue that we need to maintain national insurance because of the contributory principle, it effectively acts as a double income tax, and a contributory system could be transferred into any consolidated form. Such a system could have enormous benefits, such as a simplification of the tax system, greater transparency, fewer administration costs and it would leave workers with more money in their pockets. It would be costly, but there would be benefits, such as people spending more and being less reliant on the state for welfare and encouraging people back into work. It would benefit all low-paid workers, especially those who work just part time. It should be the long-stated aim of my party to try to introduce this over a number of years.

As Conservatives, we are on the side of hard-working people, which is why we capped taxes for 20 million-plus lower earners. It is right that the Government increased the personal allowance, but if the slogan “For hard-working people” is to mean something, we have not only to become the workers’ party but to shout from the roof tops our support for the minimum wage. A real-terms rise in the national minimum age, a regional top-up and raising the national insurance threshold would give us legitimacy as the party standing up for millions of workers.