National Insurance Contributions (Increase of Thresholds) Bill

Debate between Jacob Young and Matt Western

2nd reading
Thursday 24th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak today, having been unable to get in yesterday.

Clearly, as we have heard from across the Chamber, a lot of people are hurting right now. Some might suggest that Warwick and Leamington would be deemed a relatively prosperous community, but there is real deprivation in all our communities. It is those who are on the lowest incomes, the pensioners and those on welfare, who will be—who are being—hit hardest.

While I can see the Chancellor is an ambitious individual, what was most disappointing about his statement yesterday was that, with the exception of the removal of VAT on solar panels and renewable heat systems and the 5p reduction in fuel duty, there was very little in it. That is particularly disappointing because we are in the middle of a cost of living crisis, and he could have been seen to be more obviously looking to support others. It must be difficult, being a relatively wealthy individual, to be able to see what is going on in the households of ordinary working people and the hardship that they are currently facing.

I was really surprised about the windfall tax because, to me, it seems like an open goal—an obvious thing to do. I have heard the comments of Conservative Members about the windfall tax and the need for large oil and gas companies to reinvest profits—of course, and those businesses will be doing that. Their profit forecasts were looking fairly good this past 12 months anyway, but they have risen significantly because of the dramatic rise in the international price of a barrel of oil. That is terrific for the businesses in that sector. It is fortunate for them to be there at this time, but it has significant consequences for the households of our constituents— our hard-working families who are trying to make ends meet.

We have heard the comments about those businesses having to reinvest profits, and of course they would be doing that. I sincerely want them to look at new hydrogen facilities and electric vehicle charging infrastructure, and they are, but we need to rapidly upgrade those plans, and I am sure the Government will be looking at that and talking about it in the coming days. That needs to be done, and I hope the companies and the Government will be much more ambitious than they have been to date. The upsurge in profits from the increase in the price of oil has essentially equated, as the chief exec of BP said, to a cash machine for those businesses that they have then used to increase dividends, understandably, but also to go on to a very aggressive plan of share buy-backs. That is what a lot of corporates do—I get that—but, as my Front Benchers and I have been saying, that money could have been put back in and used to alleviate the very real, very immediate pressures on households up and down the country.

The IFS says that yesterday’s announcements were really like the Chancellor giving with one hand yet taking away with the other. Paul Johnson said that the decision to raise national insurance contributions and cut income tax drives a

“further wedge between taxation of unearned income and earned income.”

That relates to my point about the dividend increases that we have seen in other parts of the economy.

[Jacob Young]

I assume that the hon. Gentleman is supporting the Bill; I think his Front Benchers have indicated that they are. He talked about lowering income tax driving a wedge and so on. Does that mean that when it comes to lowering income tax, which my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has said he wants to do in a couple of years’ time, Labour will oppose that?

[Matt Western]

Of course Chancellors want to do all sorts of things. The prospect of this Chancellor actually being able to do anything in six months, 12 months or two years is entirely down to the economic winds of that period. Let us recall that the Chancellor said just a year ago that he would allow an increase in nurses’ pay of 1%. At that time he would have been getting very regular briefings from the Bank of England forecasters, with its economists looking at what was going to happen to the economy and the rate of inflation. It was pretty clear then that inflation was already ticking up way beyond 1%, so even at the time of the announcement nurses would be getting a real-terms cut, and he then increased it to 3% in the autumn. I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point, but who knows what the economic situation will be like in two years’ time, given that the UK had the biggest hit of all G20 countries in the pandemic? These things would not have been forecasted at the end of 2019, so quite where the Chancellor will be in two years’ time, goodness only knows.

The Resolution Foundation has said that one third of the cost of living crisis has come from the increase in taxes. That is a really telling statistic. Torsten Bell said that

“it makes no sense to raise National Insurance while cutting Income Tax”.

He is quite right. There seems to be no logic to doing that. As has been said elsewhere, the increase in national insurance contributions is viewed by businesses as a tax on jobs. The Government’s determination to pursue this increase in national insurance contributions will hit hard those businesses that are already hurting as a result of the pandemic and now the war in Ukraine, as well as the consequences of the Brexit changes in certain sectors.

We have a Chancellor who has, to use the analogy of a supermarket, put up prices by six quid one month and then offered a promotion of £1 off this month—for now. I am afraid the public will see through that, particularly the poorest and most deprived in our society, including pensioners. My right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) mentioned the removal of the triple lock, regardless of whether that will be permanent. There was nothing for the poorest and the pensioners in our society. When I went to a food bank in north Leamington a couple of weeks ago, I came across two women in their 60s—WASPI women who were queuing up, for the first time ever in their lives, to get food from a food bank. That is the reality of what is happening out there in our society.

I am afraid that there was a paucity of ambition in the measures that the Chancellor announced yesterday. He could have gone much further and done so much more for those who are hurting in our society. Sadly, I fear that that is the measure of this Chancellor.