National Insurance Contributions (Increase of Thresholds) Bill

James Daly Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 24th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[James Murray]

I do not recall whether the hon. Gentleman was present in the debate on the health and social care levy, but if he was, he would have heard us set out that any increase in taxation should fall on those with the broadest shoulders, not directly on working people. This Government are laying the worst possible tax rise at the worst possible time on the shoulders of working people. In the long run, the way to fund public services sustainably is through growth, but this Government have become a low-growth Government, and therefore a high-tax Government. That is the truth of their economic model, and that is what we would seek to change.

Since September, when the Health and Social Care Levy Bill was pushed through Parliament, our arguments against April’s national insurance hike have only got stronger. The difficulties that people face in making ends meet have been mounting by the day. Inflation jumped again yesterday from 5.5% to 6.2%, with the OBR now forecasting it to hit 7.4% this year—the highest rate in 30 years. Energy bills that have been rising rapidly are set to soar next month, and the crisis in Ukraine will put even greater pressure on the cost of energy, petrol, and food. The pressure on the Chancellor to change course has been rapidly growing, yet he has backed himself into a corner. He has nailed his colours to the mast, stubbornly refusing to reconsider his deeply unfair national insurance hike, and that seems to be how we have ended up where we are today.

We have a Chancellor who has found himself politically unable to cancel his national insurance hike, yet also unable to ignore the fact that this is the worst possible tax rise at the worst possible time. That is why he has tried to respond by making these changes to national insurance thresholds, with promises of further tax cuts at some point in the future. Whatever the merits of the individual measures, that approach is driven not by what may be the right thing to help people now, but by the Chancellor’s desperate ambition to portray himself as a tax cutter, despite all evidence to the contrary.

[James Daly (Bury North) (Con)]

In light of the hon. Gentleman’s commitment to reducing the tax burden on hard-working people, will he join me in calling for the scrapping of Andy Burnham’s clean air zone tax in Greater Manchester. That is a tax on business and jobs, so does he agree that it needs to be scrapped now?

[James Murray]

We have had a number of comments about what is within the scope of this debate, and I suspect that issue is rather out of scope. I will focus on national insurance and the Chancellor’s spring statement yesterday, and matters related directly to that.

Following the spring statement and the package announced by the Chancellor yesterday, Torsten Bell, chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, stated:

“This package only makes sense if:

- your only test for policy choices was can you prove you’re a tax cutter

- you’ve already announced a rise in National Insurance.”

Overnight analysis by the Resolution Foundation has set out the stark truth that considering all income tax changes to thresholds and rates announced by the Chancellor, seven in eight workers will pay more in income tax and national insurance in 2024-25.

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[Richard Thomson]

I presume that the hon. Member is a supporter of the present constitutional set-up. I know that he sought election in Scotland before finding his present constituency, and in view of that he ought to be aware that only some powers are devolved, and the Scottish Government have limited fiscal powers. Those powers that they do have, however, they have used effectively. They have reduced taxes for about 54% of workers, and have also introduced benefits such as the Scottish child payment, which is doubling. They have used the limited powers at their disposal judiciously. If the hon. Member is patient, I may accept a further intervention from him when I come to other aspects of the deficiencies in that fiscal settlement.

[James Daly]

The hon. Gentleman has made some points about the record of the Scottish National party Government. I hope he will correct me if I am wrong, but according to the Scottish Parliament Information Centre, over the three years up to 2021 Scots paid £900 million more in taxes than those in the rest of the UK, and would have paid exactly the same as those in the rest of the UK had their rates mirrored those of the UK. As a result of decisions by the Scottish Government over the last three years, Scots have been clobbered with £900 million worth of extra taxes. Is that correct?

[Richard Thomson]

As I have said, 54% of Scots are paying lower rates of tax than they would be paying if they lived elsewhere in the UK. Overall, the tax system has been reshaped to make it more progressive and, I would argue, more equitable. According to the Resolution Foundation, about 1.3 million people across the UK will be pushed into absolute poverty as a result of tax decisions made by this Government. I have to say that it is a bit rich to argue, as some Conservative Members wish to do, that the Scottish Government, on a budget that is determined in great part by political decisions taken in this place, should be dipping into the revenues that it has earmarked for essential public services in order to mitigate the impacts of poor choices made here.

The Scottish National party has been sharply critical of the national insurance rise since it was first announced, for straightforward reasons. We believed that it was a regressive tax. It hit the lowest earners the hardest. It was a tax on jobs, and therefore a tax on growth. It was rebranded as a “health and social care levy”, although the Government had no clear idea of how the money was to be spent within the NHS, and could not clarify the question of how any of it would be passported through to social care services in England. Moreover, as a result of its impact on people’s incomes, it would bake in inequality—both generational and geographical—for decades, mitigating social care costs for some but not for all.

The Bill removes some lower earners from the liability that the Chancellor has created, and we welcome that partial retreat. Realigning national insurance and income tax thresholds is broadly sensible, but I believe—I am happy to be corrected on this point—that it only takes us back to the status quo ante of 2010, when the Conservative Government first came to office. Paul Johnson, the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, posed an important question in The Times this morning:

“Why promise to spend billions cutting the basic rate of income tax whilst going ahead with an increase in NI rates? That will make the tax system both less equitable and less efficient. It will increase the wedge between higher taxes on earnings and lower taxes on pensions and unearned incomes. And wouldn’t that money have been better spent sooner helping those most in need?”

I certainly cannot quibble with that.

Let us not be fooled: even though the thresholds are moving, this is still a tax increase. There has been no shortage of informed opinion telling the Chancellor that this was the wrong thing to do, but from a political point of view I am bound to say that he has made mugs of his Conservative colleagues—not just those who had to swallow the indignity of betraying a manifesto pledge at the last election, but those who have gone all out to stoutly defend the policy over the last few months.

The manner in which the Bill has come before us exposes the nonsense that this tax rise was ever in any way “hypothecated”. If the right way to fund the health and social care levy was through a hike in national insurance—and I do not believe it was—it cannot also be right to backtrack on the extent of that rise. It is also impossible to argue that it is hypothecated when we see no corresponding increase in the health budget in England.

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[Gareth Davies]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[James Daly]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Rachel Hopkins]

I am going to make some progress.

The household support fund is simply a short-term solution. I declare an interest as a vice president of the Local Government Association, which warns that we need an “effective long-term solution” to support the most vulnerable. The Chair of the Select Committee on Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), raised a number of points on that issue earlier; I add that 60p in every £1 has been taken away from local authorities over 10 years of Tory austerity. We need to see much more stability and certainty for local authorities before we will see an impact.

Ultimately, Luton South deserves a Government that will help them through the cost of living crisis, with a plan to drive growth and living standards. That is not what the Conservative party’s spring statement offers, but it is what a Labour Government will.

[James Daly (Bury North) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins), who made a passionate speech. This has been an incredibly important debate, but the framing of the debate by the Opposition Front Bench was somewhat curious. The hon. Member for Ealing North (James Murray) did not want to answer any questions from Members, including myself, on taxation issues that impact the cost of living for my constituents. Thankfully, the debate has been wide-ranging. If we are to discuss the impact of tax, we must look at it in every part of the country.

I listened to the hon. Member for Gordon (Richard Thomson). I often have to restrain myself from intervening on Members of the SNP, but today, I had to listen to the spokesperson for a party who has actually found a way of taxing the people of Scotland, their own citizens, to the sum of £900 million in extra taxes over the last three years for a net benefit of £170 million.

[Richard Thomson]

I think the hon. Gentleman is confusing cause and effect with the complicated system for forecasting tax revenues and then balancing payments between the Treasury and the Scottish Government. Would he like to add that clarification to his remarks?

[James Daly]

Absolutely not. The SNP has found a way of raising taxes that penalises their own citizens and raises less income.

I come back to Greater Manchester. I am proud to be the MP for Bury North. My constituents face a wide range of taxation issues. They will support the Government position and the policy announced yesterday on the increase in the national insurance threshold. Every single person in this debate has supported it. Indeed, the hon. Member for Gordon said, very curiously, that it was an indictment but he was going to support it. It is a good policy that will put more money in people’s pockets. It is a tax cut, especially for those on the lowest incomes, which is to be welcomed.

I want to consider this policy in the context of the largest self-employed sector in my constituency—taxi drivers. Taxi drivers will be hit completely by the taxes proposed for Andy Burnham’s clean air charging zone—at 493 square miles, it will be the world’s largest such zone. That tax—£10 for small vans and £60 for lorries—will hit all those who rely on certain types of motor transport to earn their living. How can that be right? I stand up here on a regular basis and ask Opposition Members to support me in asking for that charge—a cost that hard-working taxi drivers and others in my constituency face—to be removed, but there is silence. We have to look at the whole of the country, and at the policies put in place by politicians at different levels.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Alexander Stafford) talked about his experience of a local Labour authority. In Greater Manchester, we have council tax rises linked to incompetence. We have precepts that the Greater Manchester Mayor is levying on taxpayers in my area, even though he, as police and crime commissioner for Greater Manchester, has wasted millions on millions of pounds on a failed computer system. The decisions of politicians impact my constituents every day. I hope at some point Opposition politicians will join Conservatives in Greater Manchester in calling for the reduction of taxes on our constituents, for the benefit of those constituents.

We see a contrast. The Government are investing in my constituents and in hard-working people.

[Alexander Stafford]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend’s point about clean air. Does he agree that there will be the same impact in the nearest big city to my constituency, Sheffield, where at the end of this year heavy goods vehicle drivers will be charged up to £50 a day? With the huge increases in petrol costs, there is a double whammy for hauliers; the charges should be scrapped.

[James Daly]

I completely agree. We should be looking at ways to support our hauliers and others who are reliant on motor transport for their businesses and livelihoods.

The contrast is with a high-tax Labour and the SNP policies I have touched on. We have a Conservative Government who, through the pandemic, have invested £400 billion in supporting people and businesses. In my area, more than £100 million has supported businesses through the pandemic. As a result, in the last quarter of last year, as has already been mentioned, employment levels were back to pre-pandemic levels and there is a record number of vacancies—1.25 million—in the market. That is what we must also consider when looking at how the Government are performing. We have a Government who are creating well-paid, highly skilled jobs in all parts of the country as part of the levelling-up agenda. That is to be welcomed. The policy we are debating today is that of a tax-cutting Government; the national insurance policy is a tax cut of £6 billion. Such policies must be welcomed.

We have a Government who invest in their people, in training, in supporting the most vulnerable, and in supporting hard-working, self-employed people in my constituency, and who look at every possible way to link policy to economic growth and employment growth. We have a Government who see that the best way to address the many challenges our constituents face is to make sure that the financial and other support is in place while ensuring that they have the tools and the training to get a well-paid and well-supported job in their local area. That is what this Government are about —the creation of jobs, tax cuts and actions for the many and not the few.

The debate is not just about this place and one policy. In the real world, people are creating wealth. The debate is about how people can use the tools that the Government are giving them to create jobs and opportunities. That is what is happening. I welcome the measure, which clearly has support across the House.

Pensioners were mentioned and they face challenges with the rising cost of living, as do many others. Since 2011, when the triple lock was put in place, the state pension has increased by 35% or £2,050 and is now at the highest level relative to earnings in 34 years.

I am absolutely certain—knowing my right hon. Friends the Chancellor and the Financial Secretary to the Treasury—that this measure is not the end of our fiscal policies and our tools to ensure that people will continue to have job opportunities and to be able to take advantage of the economic conditions that have been created.

This is the right policy at the right time, and I congratulate the Government for it. The Government know that all our citizens face challenges, but the route out of the difficulty is good, skilled, high-wage, high-quality employment in all parts of the country and I welcome the Government’s commitment to that.

[Rachel Hopkins]

rose—

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[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I remind my hon. Friend the Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) that she has just made a brilliant speech, but if she wants to repeat it she is perfectly welcome to do so!

The hon. Member for Rother Valley (Alexander Stafford), who has just left the Chamber, made a valid point about the nature of today’s debate. We as a House need to look again at how we deal with financial statements. It is all well and good having a statement followed by questions, but these statements are becoming increasingly significant—they are, in effect, mini-Budgets—and we need to look again at how we try to cram a debate about the whole statement into just one piece of the legislative proposals stemming from it. In future it would be better, just as we do with the Budget, to timetable specific debates on the statement and then we would have the legislative flow from that.

I put on the record my apologies to the Pendle constituency Labour party. I was meant to be doing the Sydney Silverman annual lecture this evening, but I have postponed it. I apologise to the CLP for any inconvenience caused. The annual lecture is a significant event, because Sydney Silverman was the man who abolished capital punishment and he had a fantastic record as a Labour MP up there. They have been very good about it and we will choose another date. I have postponed it because, as I raised with the Chancellor yesterday, there is nothing in this spring statement—and for me this is the most significant thing about it—for the poorest in our society, including those forced to live on benefits and pensioners, and I am really worried about what will happen to them over the next six months. My reason for being here is to say that we need to have a proper debate in these coming weeks and months about the nature of poverty in our society, the nature of low incomes, and the options available to us to tackle those issues. I have tabled an amendment, but it looks as though the whole debate is going to run into one.

Last Friday I met a group of unpaid carers who are looking after family relatives. I remind Members that the carers allowance is £67.60. I just do not know how people can live off that. In fact, they cannot live off it. They now face the energy price increases that we have discussed today, and they are being hit by the inflation rate going up. The fact is that, although both benefits and pensions are to increase by 3.1%, the predictions for the increase in the rate of inflation are anything between 7% and 10%. That is a startling cut in people’s living standards, and I do not know how they are going to cope.

I want to wage a cross-party campaign to get the Chancellor to come back sooner, with more measures to assist the poorest in our society. As I said yesterday, I predict that when we get to November there will be large numbers of pensioners and others sitting in their homes freezing. We have gone through a period where, year after year, we have highlighted the number of excess deaths in this country, particularly of older people during winter, and I think that that number will increase again.

Much has been said about the Government’s record on pensions, but I have to remind them that the reason the triple lock had to be introduced is that Mrs Thatcher broke the link between pensions and earnings, and the pension became undermined. When the Government proposed the triple lock, I wholeheartedly supported it. That is why all our manifestos at the last election committed to supporting and abiding by the triple lock, so I found it truly shocking when the Government tore that up and suspended it last year. I thought that we had embedded it into the political thinking of this country that, whatever happens, pensioners should share in the wealth growth of this country, including wage growth, or at least be protected against an inflation hit, but we seem to be going backwards. I know that the Government have said that it has been suspended possibly for only a year, but I fear that it might become the norm. That is why Members from across the House should try to secure from the Chancellor a commitment that something should be done to inflation-proof at least the benefits and pensions of the poorest in our society.

Another issue that I think is going to come at us rapidly in these coming months—I think it will become an important part of the political debate and we should wake up to it now—is that of wages. Unless we inflation-proof wages, I predict that we will see a flaring up of industrial strife in our country. I will give the example of what has happened to council workers in the latest pay settlement. With inflation possibly between 8% and 10% by the end of the year, their wage settlement is 1.75%. That means, in effect, a wage cut of up to 8%. I invite the Government to consider the issue of wages in the public sector, because they obviously set the terms of those in the private sector as well. Unless we inflation-proof wage settlements, our lowest-paid workers will be hit hard by the erosion of their wages as a result of inflation. I think that the Government should be saying to the pay review bodies that, in negotiations, they should start with inflation-proofing settlements.

We also have to recognise that we have to play a role with regard to prices overall. The Government have accepted that there needs to be a continuation of some form of cap on energy prices. I think there should be a cap on profits. The Common Wealth think-tank published its analysis of the energy company profit rates, which were between 42% and 45%. That is absolutely staggering. If that is not profiteering, I do not know what is. We have to come back to this House within the next couple of months. We cannot leave it beyond the recess. Before the recess, we need to know the assessment of the Government, the OBR and others of what the energy price situation is going to be like in three months’ time, and we need measures in place to protect people. We know that the price of oil and so on will fluctuate, but we have to make predictions on the best information we have, before the recess at the end of July, so that we can start to protect people.

We also need to consider other measures on prices. Last week the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan proposed a 12-month rent freeze in London. I proposed a rent freeze last October because it was clear from talking to ACORN, the London Renters Union and others just what rent increases were coming through post covid. Unless we start protecting people with rent controls, particularly in high-rent city areas, a rush of evictions will start again, leading to an increase in homelessness and to those homeless families unfortunately having to rely on cash-strapped councils to support them.

Finally, in addition to the need to provide more support for the hardest hit, including those living in poverty and pensioners, and the need to control the implications of increased prices in both energy and rents, we need—and I hope this is coming next week—clear plans from the Government on where we go from here in tackling the energy crisis. I welcome the lifting yesterday of VAT on solar panels and so on, but, to be honest, that was a fairly small step in terms of what is needed. One of the most effective ways in which we can help people in this coming period is through investment in home insulation. A few years ago, we put forward a plan to insulate 27 million homes, the independent assessment of which was that it would create about 450,000 jobs and reduce energy bills significantly. What we can do now is make sure not only that we insulate people’s homes and bring down their energy bills, but that we create good jobs. We need the Government to come forward immediately with a programme that prioritises that action. Of course we need to go for green growth and investment in wave, wind and solar power, but the quickest gains can be made through home insulation. In that way, we might give some hope to people who, at the moment, are viewing the coming winter as a pretty bleak period.

I have listened to this debate from the start, and I have listened to all those who are quoting the IFS, the Resolution Foundation and so on, but what sticks in my mind is the fact that there are 2 million pensioners and 4 million children living in poverty. We can argue about the Government’s record over the past 10 years, but that is the stark reality of it. The Resolution Foundation analysis that 1.3 million more people will be forced into poverty is shocking and it should shock us all. We should treat it as an emergency that we need to address very quickly. That is why I say that this cannot be the last debate on it between now and the summer recess. We need to have the chance to consider clear proposals about how we deal with the plight of the poorest in our society, how we tackle the way that they are being hit by prices rises and rent increases, and how we can insulate their homes for the future.

I will finish on the point that I made yesterday. A 3.1% increase for those forced to live on benefits and for pensioners, with inflation at anything between 8% and 10%, will push so many people over the edge into real poverty, real stress and mental health problems, and unfortunately for some it will further existing distress. That is what we should be talking about today. We need to be considering measures to address the whole issue, otherwise we will be failing in our duty.

One final point. We are all on good wages and salaries and we do not suffer anything like the hardship of many of our constituents, so it behoves us to try to take into far greater account the most deprived people in our society. So far in these discussions, with all the point scoring and so on, I do not think that we have properly done so. In the coming months, how we tackle this matter must be the nature of our debate.

[James Daly]

The right hon. Gentleman is making a very thoughtful speech. Among his proposals is a cap on profits. I wonder whether he could expand on that. In my constituency, for example, we have many small businesses; we do not have multinationals or anything such as that. Does he advocate that all private sector businesses, whatever their size, should have a cap on profit?

[John McDonnell]

I do not think the hon. Gentleman heard me properly. I was referring to the energy companies, specifically in regard to the profits that they have made. If he looks at the report of Common Wealth, the think-tank, he will see that it was looking at 42% to 45% rises for a number of those energy companies. That is where we need to cap profits. That would then give us the opportunity to redistribute some of that into supporting families and so on. It is about trying to be as targeted as possible so that we get the maximum benefit for the maximum number of people in our country. In his speech the hon. Gentleman used the slogan, “For the many, not the few”. It just shows what a good slogan it is when the opposing side starts stealing it.

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[Shaun Bailey]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right; it is the certainty in that plan that allows us to move forward. That is the point I want to drill down on, and he has articulated it much more eruditely than me—it is obviously the fantastic focus he has, being a Teessider. Publishing a plan that sets a clear roadmap, as our right hon. Friend the Chancellor did yesterday, is vital so that we know where we are going and the fiscal interventions we will have to make to help people. That is what people are looking for.

[James Daly]

One of the measures our right hon. Friend the Chancellor announced yesterday was an increase in the household support fund to £1 billion. How does my hon. Friend feel that councils such as his in Sandwell—I note his previous comments on that—will be able to deal with the bespoke needs of his constituents?

[Shaun Bailey]

My hon. Friend makes a strong point. It goes without saying that the funding is vital for my constituents in Sandwell. I know, from the interactions I have, how much impact that has on people on the ground. I cannot even articulate how important what our right hon. Friend the Chancellor did yesterday will be and how it will improve people’s lives. My hon. Friend refers to my contribution in the House earlier today, which brings me back to the running theme of my speech: delivery on the ground. Unfortunately, we now have commissioners in Sandwell because the Labour administration could not run the authority for 50 years.

We must ensure that that funding gets through to the people who really need it. That is key. Once again, it is absolutely right that we have put the funding in place, but we must ensure that there are robust systems in place to ensure that it gets through. We have learned throughout the past two years that, whether it is what we are doing today on national insurance or the unprecedented package of support this Government provided to keep businesses and the economy going, keep wages paid and keep people in employment and support, we must have the on-the-ground delivery.

I know, from my own experiences in my local area, that at times that delivery failed, and that meant businesses closing down and people not able to get the support they needed. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that that funding will change lives in my constituency—but, if it is to do so, those people who are delivering it must be able to deliver, and it is incumbent on central Government to step in where they need to and provide the guidance necessary to support delivery of those vital funds.

We are in unprecedented times, as we have heard today. We have just gone through a period of unprecedented spending—£400 billion to keep our economy afloat—and we did that to protect jobs and keep people employed. From my constituency and the communities I live in with my friends, neighbours and family, I know the impact that has had, by keeping people earning, and keeping small businesses and people’s dreams and aspirations going.

People will say that this is not the perfect solution. The difficulty with fiscal interventions is that there is never a panacea; there will never be one magic bullet that sorts the whole problem out. This Bill is part of a broader package, and the intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Jacob Young) helped to draw that point out. The Bill we are discussing forms an important part of a broader package, enabling us to address an anomaly that we have had for so long and leading to a tax cut for people, but it must come with additional measures and packages such as those announced by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor yesterday.

The one thing it is incumbent on those on the Treasury Benches to do is ensure that this money gets to real people. That means ensuring that we have processes in place that work. As I said at the start, I know my right hon. Friend the Chancellor is committed to doing that. He has set up his committee on value for money—my right hon. and learned Friend the Financial Secretary has heard me bang on about that four times in this speech now—to ensure that that delivery happens. However, we must ensure that the money gets through, because that is how we will benefit normal people such as those in the communities I represent, in Wednesbury, Oldbury and the heart of the Black Country, the great town of Tipton.