Jeremy Hunt
Main Page: Jeremy Hunt (Conservative - Godalming and Ash)Department Debates - View all Jeremy Hunt's debates with the HM Treasury
(8 months, 1 week ago)
Commons ChamberMerry Christmas, Mr Speaker. Today is the funeral of former Chancellor Lord Darling, and if I may, I will make some comments about that in my topicals statement. Anglesey freeport will be a national and international hub for trade, innovation and commerce, regenerating communities by attracting new business, and spreading jobs, investment and opportunity.
Nadolig llawen pawb. I was delighted that the Chancellor extended freeport tax reliefs in England in his autumn statement. Does he agree that if those extensions are realised in Wales, it will give companies the confidence to invest and help deliver the £1 billion investment, and thousands of jobs forecast for our Anglesey freeport? Will he join me in thanking all those at the Isle of Anglesey County Council and Stena Line who worked so hard recently to submit the outline business case?
I am happy to join my hon. Friend in thanking all those involved in promoting the Anglesey freeport, which we think may create 5,500 jobs. We are working closely with the Welsh Government to agree on how the 10-year window to claim reliefs can be extended across freeports in Wales. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who has done more than anyone to put Ynys Môn on the map.
Thank you very much for doing the funnies, Mr Speaker.
Freeports can certainly be a catalyst of economic growth and prosperity in north Wales and the east midlands, but they must be in the right place. Putting a freeport in North West Leicestershire, which already enjoys some of the highest economic growth in the country, has low unemployment, and is capable of filling its industrial sites without incentives, makes little sense. Will the Chancellor agree to meet me to discuss better alternatives for the east midlands than the Diseworth freeport site?
I would be happy to ask one of my colleagues to meet the hon. Gentleman to discuss why freeports are not appropriate in his part of Leicestershire.
Thanks to the difficult decisions the Government have taken on inflation and debt, the autumn statement this year was able to deliver the biggest package of tax cuts to be scored since 1988.
I very much welcome the tax cuts recently announced by the Chancellor and hope to see more announced soon, especially a rise in the higher rate threshold. As the Conservatives look to reduce the tax burden on working people, does the Chancellor share my concern that £28 billion-a-year unfunded spending commitments would likely see taxes rise and lead to higher interest rates if Labour were ever in government?
It is not just me but Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies who, when talking about Labour’s plan, has said that
“additional borrowing…drives up interest rates”,
which is, of course, a back-door tax rise on families with mortgages. But as it is Christmas, perhaps I could explain it this way: if Santa borrowed £28 billion, he might have more toys to give out this year, but he would also have debt interest to pay and fewer toys to give out next year.
Record funding is going in to support the cost of childcare, to allow more parents to stay in the workforce. This is very welcome, but the tax burden on single-earner households puts the choice to be a stay-at-home parent beyond the reach of too many. Raising the youngest generation must count as a top investment, so may I ask my right hon. Friend the Chancellor what recent analysis has been undertaken on the transferable allowance? At up to £252 per annum, it is currently not designed to facilitate that choice.
I thank my hon. Friend for her question. As she knows, the marriage allowance is currently £1,260 per year, and it has been fixed at 10% of the personal allowance since it was introduced in 2015. On this side of the House, we believe it should be a woman’s choice, and we want to make that choice as real as possible for every family. For that reason, we think the best thing we can do is to bring down the taxes paid by working people to put more money into the family budget, and we were happy to make a start on that in the autumn statement.
Like many of us in this place, I am a big supporter of Small Business Saturday, and it is important to remember that small businesses are the backbone of local communities all year round. Many are unlikely to be able to take advantage of the Chancellor’s very generous and welcome expensing package, so what additional measures will he continue to consider to support all businesses great and small, including perhaps even corporation tax reductions?
I thank my right hon. Friend for her question. She will know that 70% of trading businesses only pay the lower corporation tax rate of 19%. That covers the vast majority of small businesses. I used to run my own business; I ran it for 14 years before I came into Parliament. I could not agree with her more: small businesses are the backbone of the British economy, which is why we are tackling the scourge of low payments and we rolled over the 75% discount on retail, hospitality and leisure business rates in the autumn statement.
Will the Chancellor confirm how much higher the tax burden is forecast to be at the end, compared with at the start, of this Parliament?
What I can confirm is that, as a result of the measures I took in the autumn statement, it will be lower at the end of the scorecard period than it would otherwise have been, and a lot lower than it would be under any Labour Government.
May I ask the Chancellor how many middle-income taxpayers have been paying the higher rate of tax since 2019?
I am happy to write to the hon. Gentleman with the exact numbers, but for people on low incomes—people being paid the lowest legally payable wage—their post-tax real income has gone up by 30% since 2010, because the Conservative party believes in making work pay.
Why is the fiscal situation strong enough to cut national insurance, but not strong enough to return the overseas aid budget to 0.7% of GNI?
Because the way we return the overseas aid budget to 0.7% is to grow the economy. By cutting national insurance, we put nearly 100,000 more people into the national workforce, filling nearly one in 10 vacancies in companies up and down the country.
Today is the funeral of Lord Darling, who will be greatly missed by many in this House, as well as by Maggie and his family. Civil servants are known for being good at concealing their private feelings about more challenging Ministers, but that was never necessary with Alistair Darling. He was Chief Secretary to the Treasury and then Chancellor during the global financial crisis, and despite the many stresses and strains of that period, he was uniformly admired and much loved for his kindness, decency and dry sense of humour. He took decisions in that period that have stood the test of time and put him on the small list of Chancellors whom history will remember for wise decision making in an unprecedented crisis. We will always remember him.
Finally, Mr Speaker, may I wish you and all the staff in the House a merry and peaceful Christmas?
I, too, send my full sympathy. I also wish everyone across the House a merry Christmas.
Industry has fully supported the Prime Minister’s vision of the UK becoming a cryptocurrency hub, but many licensed companies are still finding it difficult to open bank accounts here. So will the Chancellor meet the all-party group on crypto and digital assets to discuss what progress can be made on digital Britain?
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for asking that question, because the UK, and London in particular, has become the global crypto hub. To make sure that the market can really take off in the way that was intended—in a responsible way—we need to regulate it, which is why we have introduced regulations on stablecoins and on the promotion of crypto services. My hon. Friend the Economic Secretary to the Treasury would be more than happy to meet her.
Merry Christmas to you and to the House, Mr Speaker. Let me start by thanking the Chancellor for his kind words about the late Lord Darling, which I think show the gratitude of Members from across the House for his lifetime of public service.
The public have a right to know why so many billions of pounds of their taxes have been wasted by this Government. Baroness Mone has claimed today that Conservative Ministers knew about her personal connections to the company PPE Medpro from the very beginning. So why did the Government not correct the record when a misleading picture was being painted in the media about Baroness Mone’s personal connection to PPE Medpro in the first place?
I am not going to comment on allegations by Baroness Mone or, indeed, on the individual case, but let me say this: we put together a taskforce of more than 1,000 people that opened 46,000 investigations and so far has made more 80 arrests, so we will stop at nothing to tackle fraud and bring to justice anyone who was responsible for wrongdoing. But what we did in a moment of extreme crisis was to make sure that we got personal protective equipment to the frontline as quickly as we could, and had we not done so many more lives would have been lost.
We all know that Baroness Mone’s enrichment via PPE Medpro is subject to an investigation, but that does not allow Ministers to refuse to answer questions here in the House today. So let me ask another: Baroness Mone’s husband, Doug Barrowman, alleged that in November 2022 he was approached by a Government official asking if they would
“pay more for the other matter to go away.”
Is that specific and incredibly serious claim now being investigated and, if so, by whom?
If the hon. Gentleman has any evidence of people behaving improperly or illegally, he should tell the police, and he will get the full support of this Government and the whole House in bringing the matter to justice. But let me just say to him that any responsible Opposition should understand that in a crisis there is a trade-off between speed and taking longer to prevent fraud, and we took the right decision to save as many lives as possible.
I recognise the important role the household support fund has played. As my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury said earlier, no decisions have been made about what will happen going forward. There were a lot of anti-poverty measures in the autumn statement, including increasing benefits next year by double the rate of inflation, increasing the full-time national living wage by £1,800 a year and increasing the local housing allowance, providing an average of an extra £800 to 1.6 million households.
I do not know the details of the issue raised by the hon. Lady, but I assure her that the Treasury is ferocious in its determination to ensure that every penny of the public’s money is spent wisely.
As I go to carol services over the festive period, I will make sure that I am suitably inspired by what the three wise men brought to the crib. I can tell my hon. Friend that I am actually visiting our gold reserves this week, so I will see at first hand just how important they are.
Right now, council leaders up and down the country are having to make very difficult decisions on cutting vital services—not because of profligacy, but because of Government cuts to their funding. What steps is the Chancellor taking to ensure that local authorities—such as that in York, which is the lowest-funded area—are adequately funded?
Order. We had this last time with you. I’m sorry, but I am trying to be generous because it is Christmas. Do not take advantage of other Members; I still have others to get in. It is just not fair, and it is very selfish to carry on when I have asked you not to. I do not find it acceptable. I look forward to the apology shortly. Would someone like to answer that question, briefly?
I thank my right hon. Friend for his question and for his campaigning on these issues. I just note that on electric vehicle manufacturing alone, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders says that in the past year we have had more investment pledged for UK electric vehicles than in the previous seven years combined.
The life sciences sector is worth £2.4 billion to the Northern Ireland economy. What steps have been taken, with counterparts in the Northern Ireland Assembly, to increase funding for employment within this worthy sector?
Our economy continues to be impacted by the war in Ukraine and denial across the Black sea, and we now must brace ourselves for further economic shocks as global shipping avoids the Red sea. Does the Minister agree that we should be protecting these shipping lanes? Our Navy is now too small by half to protect our maritime interests, so will he now look at investing in our surface fleet to protect our economy?
As my right hon. Friend knows, I have long believed in the importance of investing in our armed forces, but that ultimately depends on a strong economy that will pay for sustained investment, and that is what is happening under this Government.
Will the Chancellor update the House on how he plans to move forward with some of the key recommendations from Lord Harrington’s review into foreign direct investment in the UK?
I am happy to do that. In fact, I hosted a reception for Lord Harrington and the people responsible for that review last week. We will start by increasing the budget of the Office for Investment so that it can give a more bespoke service to potential overseas investors.
We are all mindful of the need to control public finances and slim the civil service, but can my right hon. Friend reassure my constituents that the Darlington Economic Campus will receive the jobs that were promised, and will he give consideration to my proposal to name their permanent home of DEC William McMullen House, in recognition of the sacrifice William made for people of Darlington?
My right hon. Friend is well aware of the threat to thousands of jobs at Scunthorpe steelworks and many more in the supply chain that supports it, all of which would have a devastating effect on the economy of northern Lincolnshire. Can he and his colleagues in the Department for Business and Trade bring a speedy conclusion to the negotiations and lift the cloud over Scunthorpe?
I thank my hon. Friend for his campaigning on that issue and reassure him that we in the Treasury completely understand how vital steel is to the future of his area and to his constituents. We will continue to do everything we can to resolve the situation as quickly as possible.