Employer National Insurance Contributions

James Murray Excerpts

Wednesday 4th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (James Murray)]

I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions during the course of the debate.

This Government were elected with an immediate and critical need to draw a line under the fiscal irresponsibility and economic mismanagement of the Conservatives. Since day one in office, we have been determined to deliver economic stability, and we have done so by fixing the public finances, introducing tough new fiscal rules, and getting the NHS and other public services back on their feet.

It is on those foundations that we will boost investment and drive long-term economic growth to make people better off. This is not an easy task, as the Chancellor has said, but fixing those foundations is what underpins all the difficult but necessary decisions we have taken. It is the goal of fixing the foundations of our public finances and the NHS that has driven our decision to make the changes to employer national insurance contributions that we have been discussing today.

In taking the difficult decisions at the Budget, the Chancellor has been determined to protect working people. That is why our Budget made no changes to income tax, rates of VAT or the amount of national insurance that working people pay. As a result of our Budget, people will not see a penny more on their payslips. However, a £22 billion black hole in the public finances cannot be fixed without taking any difficult decisions at all. The Conservatives in government hid their heads in the sand and ignored the fiscal realities. Now, both they and other Opposition parties are desperate to have it both ways. They say that they support extra money for the NHS, but they refuse to back the measures to fund it.

[Paul Holmes]

On that point, will the Minister give way?

[James Murray]

I have been very generous over the past 48 hours in giving way in this Chamber, but I will not. My time is very limited, although I would like to hear more about the plane the hon. Gentleman spoke about earlier.

We have made the tough but necessary choices that this set of circumstances requires, which is why we have decided to raise employer national insurance contributions. The changes broadly return national insurance revenues as a proportion of GDP to the levels they were at before the previous Government’s cuts to employee and self-employed NICs, but they do so in a way that does not result in higher taxes in people’s payslips.

They also do so in a way that increases protection for small businesses and charities, because we have decided to more than double the employment allowance to £10,500 and remove the business size threshold. That means that from April 2025, all eligible organisations will be able to employ up to four people on the national living wage without paying a penny of employer’s national insurance. Over half of all employers will pay the same or less national insurance than they did before, but we acknowledge that the decision will have an impact for other employers. Employers will have a choice about how they respond to the changes, and some of those choices will be hard.

I do not have enough time to respond to all the points raised by hon. Members directly, but I will briefly respond to the right hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart)—he has been intervening all afternoon but he is no longer in his place. He asked about table 3.2 in the OBR report. I am sorry to disappoint him, but my answer is nowhere near as interesting as I suspect he thought it might be; the table was simply published in error and has now been corrected. The Government provide support for Departments and other public sector employees with the additional employer national insurance contributions liability, and separately we have provided an additional 3.2% increase to local government spending power, including £600 million of new grant funding for social care.

I thank all the other hon. Members who made contributions: my hon. Friends the Members for Makerfield (Josh Simons), for Stevenage (Kevin Bonavia), for North East Derbyshire (Louise Jones), for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales) and for Rother Valley (Jake Richards), and the hon. Members for Hamble Valley (Paul Holmes), for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart), for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns), for Wokingham (Clive Jones) and for Hornchurch and Upminster (Julia Lopez).

I want to briefly respond to the point of order made earlier by the hon. Member for South Shropshire (Stuart Anderson) because I welcome the chance to repeat the fact that the OBR said in October that its March forecast would have been “materially different” had it known what the previous Government did not share with it at the time of the March forecast. I am confident that the Hansard record is correct. It specifically includes “materially different” in quotations and not the rest of my statement.

I am grateful to have had the chance to respond on behalf of the Government to the questions that have been raised today. The decision to make changes to employer national insurance was not taken lightly. It was a tough decision for us to take. I recognise that while half of businesses and organisations will pay the same or less than before, others will face difficult decisions of their own. We have asked employers to make a greater contribution, and while we do not expect those affected to welcome that, I hope the majority will understand why we have done it.

The simple fact of the matter is that our country needed a Government prepared to fix the public finances, get public services back on their feet and restore economic stability. It is only through an ambitious and fiscally responsible approach that we can boost investment in growth, laying the path towards the brighter days ahead. The previous Government had completely lost sight of that.

My office in the Treasury building used to be that of Nigel Lawson. He once said:

“To govern is to choose. To appear to be unable to choose is to appear to be unable to govern.”

That very neatly reflects where the Conservative party has ended up now. Before, as the Government, the Conservatives had given up on effective governing, and since then they have given up on effective opposition. This vote today comes down to a choice: between irresponsibility on the Opposition Benches and a Government prepared to do what is needed to build a better future. It is this Labour party in government that is taking the tough but necessary decisions, with a once-in-a-generation Budget to wipe the slate clean and put our country on a better path. It is this Government that have restored economic stability, fixed the public finances and hardwired fiscal responsibility into the Budget-making process. It is this Government that are putting the NHS back on its feet, raising the national living wage and protecting people’s payslips, and it is this Government that will invest in our country, create wealth in every nation and region and make people across Britain better off. That is the choice today and that is why we reject the Opposition’s motion.

Question put.