James Murray
Main Page: James Murray (Labour (Co-op) - Ealing North)Department Debates - View all James Murray's debates with the HM Treasury
(1 day, 17 hours ago)
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The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (James Murray)
I thank the shadow Chancellor for opening today’s debate with characteristic theatricality. I know that Opposition Members are desperate to forget their time in office. They are desperate for us all to forget the damage that they caused to the economy and to public services on their watch. Surely, however, they cannot have forgotten how the Budget process works, so they will know that no Treasury Minister, particularly in the weeks immediately before a Budget, will speculate on tax changes. Any decisions on tax will be taken at the Budget by the Chancellor in the usual way—[Interruption.] I see surprised faces among Opposition Members, but I remind them that that is how the Budget process works. They will know that the OBR produces a forecast, and the Chancellor will take decisions in the round based on that forecast when she presents the Budget to this House on 26 November.
Notwithstanding those limitations on what I, and indeed any Minister, can say, I will seek to address some of the ideas that the Opposition have tried to raise with this motion. First, let us be honest: stamp duty is hardly a popular tax. Moving house and buying a home is a complex and often stressful process, and stamp duty must be paid at a point when most people probably feel they have enough to worry about already. If there was a cost-free way to get rid of stamp duty, I would not expect long queues of people lining up to keep it. But there is, of course, no cost-free way of doing so. Figures show that the tax raised £13.9 billion in 2024-25.
At this Government’s first Budget, we made changes to stamp duty to help to give first-time buyers, and other people who are buying a home to live in, an advantage over those who are buying second, third or further homes. If an Opposition party proposes getting rid of a tax that raises nearly £14 billion a year, it needs a plan for doing so. Being a credible Opposition means proposing things that could actually work. Frankly, the motion exposes the current Conservative party’s total lack of seriousness, and its complete failure to learn any of the lessons of its time in office.
Wendy Morton
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury indicated that if there was a plan to fund the proposal, he would back it. The shadow Chancellor has clearly set out that we do have a plan to fund it, so will the Chief Secretary back it?
James Murray
The right hon. Lady is attempting to bring some humour to the Chamber by pretending that the Opposition have some kind of a plan for their proposal. To call their motion half-baked would be not to go far enough. In fact, it shows the recklessness in their approach to the economy. It may be Halloween on Friday, but the ghost of Liz Truss is here today, because the economic recklessness that the former Prime Minister embodied is back in front of us in this Chamber. We have a half-baked motion from the Opposition, built on the wholly unworkable premise of more unfunded tax cuts. Three years on from their disastrous mini-Budget, they have learned precisely nothing.
Dr Murrison
I will be interested to hear what the Minister intends to do to un-gum the housing market. I think he will accept that it is an important part of our economy and he says that he is very keen on growth, so what will he do to un-gum it? And what does he say to those legions of tradespeople—electricians, plumbers and kitchen fitters—who are all looking to the Government to provide them with some relief in the months ahead?
James Murray
I would say to everyone who works in building homes that Labour is the party that is getting on with building: we are making changes to the planning system to get those homes build. Despite his attempt to make a link to my previous comment, I notice that the right hon. Gentleman did not address that fact that this motion is entirely half-baked. It is a genuine shame for British politics that we have an Opposition who think that they can put forward a motion like this for serious debate in the House of Commons. To be fair, the Conservative party is steeped in centuries of being in Opposition and in Government, but it has become deeply unserious by putting forward motions such as the one today. The motion simply says that the Conservatives’ plan to abolish stamp duty is “to reduce public expenditure”; that it is—that is the sum of their plan.
Connor Naismith (Crewe and Nantwich) (Lab)
The Minister is right to say that the Opposition have not been clear about how they would fund this tax cut, but there are some clues. The shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the hon. Member for North Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller), told a fringe event at the Tory party conference that we should look at the Australian system of state pensions and “essentially” a means-tested state pension. Does my right hon. Friend share my concerns that under the Tories the state pension would be under threat?
James Murray
My hon. Friend is right to point out that the state pension would be under threat were the Conservatives to win the next general election. He is also right to draw the House’s attention to comments made by Conservative Members at their party conference. They may think that people are not listening to what they say at those conference fringe meetings, but we get the reports so we know exactly what they said.
From their recent conference, we know that they think that they can find some £47 billion through cuts to public spending, as the shadow Chancellor said, but let us look at the detail. At least half of those fantasy savings come from a welfare plan that amounts to a menu with no prices: a list of measures that the Conservatives say will raise £23 billion in total, but with no breakdown whatsoever of how. In June last year, just as they were on their way out of Downing Street, they said that they could cut £12 billion from the welfare bill. Now they have doubled that without explanation. Frankly, if the shadow Chancellor thinks that he has any credibility on this matter, he is sadly mistaken. He is far from the best person to make this argument, given that he personally oversaw the biggest increase in benefits spending in decades during his time as the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.
Bradley Thomas (Bromsgrove) (Con)
The Minister is in no position to lecture on reducing the size of the state, given that when Labour attempted to reduce the welfare bill, it marched all of its MPs up the hill, only to march them down again, when it buckled under the pressure from its own Back Benchers.
James Murray
As Members from both sides of the House know, we are determined to get people back into work, because that is the way to bring the welfare and benefits bills down, and to make people better off. What is not the right thing to do for this country is to follow the Conservatives’ plan for £47 billion of cuts, for which they have no plans and that would represent nothing less than a return to austerity. If their £47 billion were to come from cuts to public services, that would mean 85,700 fewer nurses, cutting every police officer in the country twice and cutting the entire armed forces. Funnily enough, none of that detail is in their motion today.
To have proposed the motion is a shame for British politics, because with the Conservatives’ long history, they really should know better. Were it to be the Greens, Plaid Cymru or Reform proposing policies with little regard for the consequences, I would not be surprised because they have never had a chance to implement them, but to see the party that was in charge for 14 years acting this recklessly shows just how far it has fallen.
Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
The Minister is always generous with his time and always has a smile, which is a welcome thing in this Chamber. Government spending this year is approaching £1,300 billion, but Ministers could not save £5 billion because of their own Back Benchers. Is it his complete failure to make even the smallest savings on that monumental budget that makes him find it impossible to believe that others would have the will to do so?
James Murray
What I find it impossible to believe from the Conservatives is that they now have a shadow Chancellor who claims to have a plan for £23 billion of welfare cuts, when he himself presided over the biggest increase in welfare spending in decades when he was the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. That is the record that gives him no credibility whatsoever in this debate.
In their motion, the Conservatives also claim that they want
“to get Britain working, to grow the economy and to give people a stronger stake in their communities”.
Yet they spend their whole time trying to claim that Britain is broken. They have joined the ranks of those who are trying to co-opt our flag for their own ends by claiming that it is in tatters. I cannot believe that so many who claim to be proud of our country are so willing to talk it down. Our country is not broken; we are a great country, filled with great people and great businesses. We are willing to roll up our sleeves and work together for a greater future. However, it is clear that many people across our country feel stuck. Under the last Government, our economy stalled, our public services were starved and opportunities dried up.
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister is always generous with his time—I thank him for giving way—and I am always smiling in the Chamber, as the right hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) will know. Conservative Members seem to be suffering from collective amnesia. Will my right hon. Friend remind me if the national debt went up or down under the last Government? [Interruption.]
James Murray
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to draw attention to the Conservatives’ record. [Interruption.] In 2010, I think the national debt was about 67% of GDP, but it was about 100% by the time that they left office.
Mr Speaker
Order. Members on both sides of the Chamber are having their own conversations on the side. I cannot hear the Minister—and everybody wants to hear the Minister.
James Murray
Thank you, Mr Speaker. I was confirming what I think everyone in the Chamber knows about how bad the previous Government’s record on the economy was. We know why that record was so bad. It was because previous Ministers failed to invest, and we know that investment is the fuel for our economic engine. That is why we are taking a different approach.
Saqib Bhatti
On helping Ministers with amnesia, does the right hon. Gentleman acknowledge that there was a pandemic that required a huge amount of intervention, or is he claiming that he would not have supported so many people during that period?
James Murray
Speaking of amnesia, a lot of Conservatives have forgotten Liz Truss and are not prepared to talk about the impact she had.
Sir Mel Stride
Speaking of amnesia, would the right hon. Gentleman like to remind the House what the deficit was in 2010, when we first formed a Government?
James Murray
I had definitely been born by that time, Mr Speaker. I was doing my maths very rapidly, but I can be confident in saying that. I seem to have quite lost my way after your intervention, Mr Speaker, but let me return to the main thrust of the argument that I was making a few moments ago.
We are a serious Government who are a serious partner for the private sector, which is why we are investing in things that will get our country moving again. It is early days; the damage that the Tories did will take time to unpick and there will be more difficult decisions ahead, but since we came to power, this Government have announced £250 billion of new investment commitments, creating tens of thousands of jobs. The Bank of England has cut interest rates five times, meaning that someone on a tracker mortgage of just over £200,000 is already around £100 a month better off.
We have cut red tape and changed planning regulations so that we can deliver 1.5 million new homes over the course of this Parliament. We have acted to accelerate the construction of nearly 100,000 new homes, which were previously stuck. We were the fastest-growing G7 economy in the first half of this year. Most telling of all, since the general election real wages have risen by more than they did in the first 10 years of the Conservative Government.
The Conservatives’ answer to the nation’s challenges is always the same: austerity. They want to cut spending, increase debt and accept decline. In contrast, we will never accept austerity and we will never gamble with the public finances.
Dr Luke Evans
Another term for austerity is “living within your means”. That is what the British public understand, and that is the point we are trying to make in this debate. When the Government have needed to make difficult decisions, they have fallen short. Can the Minister explain why the Government are not living within their means?
James Murray
As the hon. Gentleman will know, the Chancellor’s fiscal rules say that day-to-day spending must be paid for through tax receipts. That is the definition of living within our means. Those fiscal rules were met at the first Budget last year and at the spring statement this year. They are an iron-clad commitment, and we will continue to meet those fiscal rules next month at the autumn Budget.
Those fiscal rules underpin our approach to the economy and to stronger public finances. We know that fiscal responsibility, which the previous Government abandoned, underpins a stable economy, and we need to secure our country’s renewal through public and private investment. We want to secure rising wages, support for businesses, more jobs, more homes and more opportunities in every corner of our country.
The motion before this House today simply is not serious. It is an admission from Conservative Members that after years in power and countless opportunities to reflect and learn from their mistakes, all they can come up with is the same failed solution: more unfunded tax cuts, more cuts to public services, more failure to invest, more austerity and more pain for the British people. That is what will keep them on the Opposition Benches for a very long time. We reject their recklessness, we reject their lack of ambition for our country and we reject this motion.