Oral Answers to Questions
Jeremy Hunt Excerpts(3 weeks, 2 days ago)
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Mr Speaker
As this is his farewell question time, let us now come to the shadow Chancellor.
Jeremy Hunt (Godalming and Ash) (Con)
This are indeed our final exchanges in the House, so before tomorrow’s fireworks I wish the Chancellor well for the future in her role. There has been a lot of common ground between us. For example, before the election she said that raising employers’ national insurance was a jobs tax that would take money out of people’s pockets. I very much agree with her on that; does she agree with herself?
Rachel Reeves
The right hon. Gentleman knows better than almost anyone else that there a was £22 billion black hole in the public finances. That will require difficult decisions, but even in those circumstances we will do everything in our power to protect the incomes of ordinary working people, so we are committed to ensuring that no working people will see higher taxes in their payslips after the Budget.
Jeremy Hunt
We all know why the Chancellor is inventing this fictitious black hole. Thirty times this year, before the election, she promised not to raise tax, and now she is planning to present the biggest tax-raising Budget in history. More consensually, however, as this is our final exchange, I welcome her announcement last week of a £2.3 billion loan for Ukraine. Does she agree that the strongest signal of resolve that we can send to Putin is a commitment to spending 2.5% of GDP on defence, and does she understand why so many people are worried by the fact that she has yet to do so?
Rachel Reeves
I have always respected the right hon. Gentleman, but I think it is important for us not to deny the seriousness of the situation that we face with the black hole in the public finances. Combined with the lashing out at independent economic institutions, it suggests that he has more in common with Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng than perhaps we thought. I watched my party lurch towards an ideological extreme and deny reality, and we spent years in opposition as a result. The shadow Chancellor risks taking his party down the same path.
Oral Answers to Questions
Jeremy Hunt Excerpts(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Jeremy Hunt (Godalming and Ash) (Con)
When the Chancellor was sitting on the Opposition Benches she repeatedly attacked cronyism, so will she tell the House whether she told the Treasury permanent secretary that Ian Corfield had made a donation to her before she got him appointed as a director in the Treasury—yes or no?
Rachel Reeves
All Governments appoint people to the civil service. The donation from Ian Corfield was declared over a year ago in the proper way, and we answered all the questions in the right way that the civil service asked when we made that appointment. Ian Corfield is supporting this Government in hosting the international investment summit, which will bring hundreds of global investors to the UK next month.
Jeremy Hunt
I think that means the answer is no. The ministerial code states:
“Ministers must ensure that no conflict arises, or could reasonably be perceived to arise, between their public duties and their private interests, financial or otherwise”.
That did not happen. Will the right hon. Lady tell the House why cronyism is wrong under the Conservatives but acceptable under Labour?
Rachel Reeves
The right hon. Gentleman has a bit of a brass neck criticising this Government, after the appointments and the partying at Downing Street that we saw under the last Conservative Government, and the billions of pounds’ worth of contracts handed out to friends and donors of the Conservative party. That is why this Government are appointing a covid corruption commissioner to get that money back for taxpayers; because unlike the last Government, we are determined that taxpayers’ money is treated with respect, and not handed out to donors of the party.
Public Spending: Inheritance
Jeremy Hunt Excerpts(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Jeremy Hunt (Godalming and Ash) (Con)
I thank the Chancellor for advance sight of her statement, and I echo her thoughts for the people and emergency services of Southport.
Today, she will fool absolutely no one with a shameless attempt to lay the grounds for tax rises that she did not have the courage to tell us about—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I want the Cabinet to act like a Cabinet, not like a rabble that is trying to shout at the shadow Chancellor.
Jeremy Hunt
The Chancellor says that the information is new, but she told the Financial Times:
“You don’t need to win an election to find”
out the state of public finances, as
“We’ve got the OBR now.”
Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said:
“The state of public finances were apparent pre-election to anyone who cared to look”
which is why he and other independent figures say that her argument is not credible and will not wash.
Those public finances were audited by the OBR just 10 weeks before the election was called. We are now expected to believe that, in that short period, a £20 billion black hole has magically emerged, but for every single day in that period—in fact, since January, in line with constitutional convention—the right hon. Lady had privileged access to the Treasury permanent secretary. She could have found out absolutely anything she needed. Will she confirm to the House that she did have meetings with the permanent secretary of the Treasury before the election? Will she tell the House whether they discussed public finances? Will she tell the House whether they discussed any of the pressures that she is talking about today? If so, why are we only hearing today what she wants to do about them? That is why today’s exercise is not economic—it is political.
The Chancellor wants to blame the last Conservative Government for tax rises and project cancellations that she has been planning all along. The trouble is, even her own published numbers expose the fiction behind today’s announcement. Just four days ago, she presented to the House the Government’s estimates of spending plans for the year. Those estimates are a legal requirement. The official guidance manual is clear that Departments are responsible for ensuring that estimates are consistent with their “best forecast of requirements”. They are signed off by the most senior civil servants—the accounting officers—in every Department. Yet, four days on, she is saying that those estimates are wrong. Who is right: politically neutral civil servants or a political Chancellor? If she is right, will she ask the cabinet secretary to investigate those civil servants and apologise to the House for laying misleading estimates? Of course not, because she knows that those civil servants are right and today’s black hole is spurious, just like when she says that she inherited the
“worst set of economic circumstances”
since the second world war. When BBC Verify asked a professor at the London School of Economics about that claim, he responded:
“I struggle to find a metric that would make that statement correct.”
The metrics speak for themselves. Inflation is 2% today —nearly half what it was in 2010 when we had to clear up the mess inherited from a Labour Government. Unemployment is nearly half what it was then, with more new jobs than nearly anywhere else in Europe. So far this year, we are the fastest growing G7 economy. Over the next six years, the IMF says that we will grow faster than France, Italy, Germany and Japan.
Just two days before the election was called, the managing director of the IMF praised the previous Government’s handling of the economy, and said it was in a good place. This week, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said that it was
“not a bad situation to take charge of”
and certainly not comparable to the 1940s or 1970s. If the right hon. Lady is in charge of the economy, it is time to stop trash talking it. What is the point of going to New York or Brazil to bang the drum for more investment if she comes home with a cock and bull story about how bad everything is? She should stop playing politics with Britain’s reputation and get on with running the economy.
When it comes to public finances, will the Chancellor confirm to the House that, far from being broke and broken, as Downing Street briefed the media, the forecast deficit today is 4.4%, compared with 10.3% when Labour left office in 2010? In other words, when Labour was last in office, we were borrowing double the current levels. Will she confirm another difference between today and 2010? The Conservatives came to office then, honest about our plans and saying straightforwardly that we needed to cut the deficit. She has just won an election telling us repeatedly that taxes will not go up. How many seats were won on the back of commitments not to raise tax, while she is quietly planning to do the exact opposite?
On the details that the Chancellor has announced today, will she confirm that around half of today’s fictitious black hole comes from discretionary public sector pay awards—in other words, not something that she has to do, but something where she has a choice? Will she confirm to the House that, apart from the teachers recommendation, none of the other pay review body recommendations was seen by the last Government, as they arrived after the election was called? Today she has chosen to accept those recommendations, but before doing so, was she advised by officials to ask unions for productivity enhancements before accepting above-inflation pay awards, to help to pay for those awards, as the last Government did? If she was advised to do that, why did she reject that advice and simply tell the unions, “Here’s your money, thanks for your support”? Will she confirm—[Interruption.] I know Labour Members do not like the truth, but here it is. Will she confirm that one of the reasons for her funding gap is that she has chosen to backdate a 22% pay award to junior doctors, to cover the time when they were striking?
We are just three months into the financial year, so why did the Chancellor not mention today that, at the start of the year, the Treasury had a reserve of £14 billion for unexpected revenue costs, and £4 billion for unexpected capital costs? Additionally, why has she not accounted for the Treasury’s ability to manage down in-year pressures on the reserve—last year alone by £9 billion? Why has she apparently not accounted for underspends—typically £12 billion a year? Has she totally abandoned the £12 billion of welfare savings planned by the last Government? If so, will she confirm that to the House? Has she also abandoned £20 billion of annual productivity savings planned by the last Government? If not, why are they not in her numbers? Finally, for someone who claims continuously the mantle of fiscal rectitude, will she confirm that in order to pay for her public spending plans, she will not change her fiscal rules to target a different debt measure, so she can increase borrowing and debt by the back door?
Every Chancellor faces pressures on public finances. After a pandemic and an energy crisis, those pressures are particularly challenging, which is why in autumn 2022, the previous Government took painful but necessary decisions on tax and spend. But we knew that, if we continued to take difficult decisions on pay, productivity and welfare reform, we could live within our means and start to bring taxes down. She, on the other hand, knew perfectly well that a Labour Government would duck those difficult decisions. She has caved in to the unions on pay, left welfare reform out of the King’s Speech and soft-pedalled on our productivity programme. That is a choice, not a necessity.
That choice means that taxes will have to go up and the right hon. Lady chose not to tell us before the election. Instead, in 24 days—just 24 days—she has announced £7.3 billion for GB Energy, £8.3 billion for the national wealth fund and around £10 billion for public sector pay awards. That is £24 billion in 24 days: around £1 billion for every day she has been in office, leaving taxpayers to pick up the tab for her profligacy.
Doing it this way, she makes the first major misstep of her time as Chancellor, because that great office of state depends more than any on trust—[Interruption.] In her first big moment, she breaks that trust with an utterly bogus attempt to hoodwink the public about the choices she has. Over 50 times in the election, Labour told us it had no plans to raise taxes. Now, in a U-turn that will forever shame this Labour Government, she is laying the ground to break her word. When she does, her first Budget will become the biggest betrayal in history by a new Chancellor. Working families will never forgive her.
Rachel Reeves
The shadow Chancellor had an opportunity this afternoon to admit what he had done, the legacy he had left. Instead, he takes no responsibility. The word the country was looking for today was sorry. He could not find those words; no wonder the Conservative party so definitively lost the trust of the British people at the election three and a half weeks ago. We say never again. [Interruption.] Never again should a party that plays fast and loose with the public finances be in charge of the public finances—[Interruption.]
Economy, Welfare and Public Services
Jeremy Hunt Excerpts(4 months ago)
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Jeremy Hunt (Godalming and Ash) (Con)
I beg to move an amendment, at the end of the Question to add:
“but humbly regret that there is no mention in the Gracious Speech of the improved economic conditions the Government is inheriting, with the fastest recorded growth in the G7, inflation at the Bank of England’s target for the second month in a row, and unemployment at half the rate that it was in 2010; further regret that there is no mention of how to make necessary savings on welfare; urge the Government to meet the commitment set out in the Labour Party’s manifesto not to raise taxes on working people; regret that the Gracious Speech fails to make a commitment not to use changes to reliefs to raise taxes; and call on the Government to increase income tax thresholds to prevent income tax from being charged on the State Pension.”
It is an important and rather painful part of our democracy that today I am a shadow Chancellor, responding to the King’s Speech in exactly the same way that the new Chancellor responded to me just a few months ago, so I start by congratulating her, as well as Mr and Mrs Reeves. As the father of two girls, one of whom has her 10th birthday today, I warmly welcome the smashing of a glass ceiling by Britain’s first female Chancellor. As I said on election night, she has led the Labour party on a difficult journey, which has changed it for the better. Her stated commitment to fiscal responsibility, stability and economic growth has been consistent and, I am sure, not always easy. Unfortunately for us, her success in holding the line means that we face rather a lot of Labour MPs on the Government Benches, but I wish her well in her new role.
I also commend to the right hon. Lady the superb Treasury officials she now inherits, and put on record my gratitude to them the excellent work they did for me, staying up in the middle of the night ahead of fiscal events, engaging in tense negotiations with spending Departments—and occasionally, it has to be said, with No. 10—bringing me endless flat whites and Pret lunches to keep me going and, most of all, making my family feel welcome in the goldfish bowl that is Downing Street. It is part of the magic of democracy that those same officials have seamlessly transferred their allegiance from me to her, and I know that they will serve her extremely well.
In opposition, we will not oppose for its own sake, and there are a number of Bills in the King’s Speech that we welcome. The right hon. Lady is right to focus on growth, and the improvements on planning will build on many reforms introduced by the last Government, including the 110 growth measures I introduced in last year’s autumn statement. Any boost to house building is also welcome. We delivered 1 million homes in the last Parliament, and she will soon find out that if she is to deliver 1.5 million, she will not be able to duck reforming environmental regulations—a change that Labour blocked in the last Parliament but will deliver an extra 100,000 homes. I caution her not to over-rely on bringing back top-down targets. In the end, we will build more houses only if we change attitudes to new housing, and that is unlikely to happen if unpopular targets are steamrollered through local communities.
We will also look carefully at the right hon. Lady’s Budget Responsibility Bill. We are proud that a Conservative Government set up the Office for Budget Responsibility, and I commend the work of Richard Hughes and his team. We did not always agree, but in the end, that is the point of an independent watchdog. We all understand the politics of a Bill that allows the Government to make endless references to the mini Budget, but if the right hon. Lady is really committed to fiscal responsibility alongside growth, I hope that she will today confirm that she will not fiddle with the five-year debt rule to allow increased debt through the back door. We—and, it has to be said, markets—will be monitoring the overall level of debt very carefully to make sure that that does not happen. I also hope that she will commission the OBR to do 10-year forecasts of our long-term growth rate rather than five-year forecasts, as at present, in order to bake long-term decision making into Treasury thinking.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
The shadow Chancellor was talking just now about fiscal responsibility. During the election campaign, he committed to a series of tax cuts, but I noticed that yesterday on Laura Kuenssberg’s show he said that it would not have been possible for him to proceed with those tax cuts. What has changed, and why did he make that commitment during the election campaign, knowing full well that he could not afford to carry it out?
Jeremy Hunt
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, because it allows me to explain why he is completely mistaken in what he is saying. We offered a set of carefully and fully funded tax cuts—unlike the £38.5 billion of unfunded spending commitments that came from the Labour party—but we always said that they would be brought in over time over the next Parliament. We did not make a commitment that they would come in immediately, and indeed they would not have. We would have done it in a responsible way.
When it comes to dubious claims, the new Chancellor herself has been making some that do not withstand scrutiny. She said, for example, that the economy would have been £140 billion bigger if we had matched the average OECD growth rate, but she knows that the OECD is a diverse group of 38 countries, including many with economies very different from our own, such as Turkey, Mexico or Luxembourg. A much more meaningful comparison is with other similar G7 economies, which shows that since 2010 we have grown faster than France, Italy, Germany and Japan. Indeed, the International Monetary Fund says that thanks to difficult measures taken by the last Conservative Government, we will grow faster than any of those four countries, not just in the short term but over the next six years. One reason for that is our record on attracting investment.
Since 2010, greenfield foreign direct investment has been higher in the UK than anywhere in the world except the United States and China. In the last year alone, Nissan, Jaguar Land Rover, Tata, BMW Mini, Google and Microsoft have all voted for the UK with their dollars, not least because of cuts in business taxation, such as full expensing, introduced by the last Government. If the Chancellor now looks for back-door ways to increase business taxation, as many fear, she will risk the UK’s attractiveness to foreign investors, of which she is now the beneficiary.
Chris McDonald (Stockton North) (Lab)
That investment is very important to my constituents in Stockton North, where many companies are poised to make billions of pounds of industrial investment. They tell me that they prize economic stability above all else, so will the right hon. Gentleman now commit to supporting the Budget Responsibility Bill to give those investors the security they need?
Jeremy Hunt
Yes, we are minded to support the Bill, subject to having had a close look at it, because we think it is perfectly sensible. Whether it is completely necessary is a different question, but it is perfectly sensible.
We have grave concerns about some elements of the King’s Speech, with a Times editorial this week describing some of its Bills as
“a dose of traditional socialist dogma”.
Tony Blair came to office having removed the old clause IV of the Labour party constitution, because he knew that state-run businesses are rarely successful and usually end up being bailed out by the taxpayer. Last week, with their railway and energy plans, the Government brought forward more nationalisation than Blair ever did—indeed, more than any Government in modern times.
If the Chancellor really cares about fiscal responsibility, she should beware. The reason why unions like publicly owned utilities is that they give them more leverage on pay and more ability to demand bail-outs. Unlearning the lessons of history will mean more strikes and bigger bills for the taxpayer.
An even bigger concern for business is the impact on jobs of Labour’s new deal for workers. We have seen the creation of almost 4 million jobs since 2010, which is nearly 800 jobs for every single day that Conservative Governments were in office. The president of the Confederation of British Industry described the UK as a “job-creation factory” but, like many others, he expressed concern that the Deputy Prime Minister’s new labour laws could put that at risk.
Day one rights sound attractive, but employers fear they will mean a flood of tribunal claims, meaning it is safer not to offer a job at all. That is why the Federation of Small Businesses responded to the King’s Speech by saying that companies are worried about increased costs and risks. In the end, French-style labour laws will lead to French levels of unemployment, which are nearly double our own—indeed, they are close to what they were when the last Labour Government were in office. By contrast, the Conservatives nearly halved unemployment over the last 14 years, and it would be a tragedy for working families up and down the country if the new Government turned the clock back.
Finally, the most dubious claim of all is this nonsense about the Government having the worst economic inheritance since the second world war, which everybody knows is just a pretext for long-planned tax rises. People can see what nonsense this is by simply comparing it with the last time we had a change of Government in 2010. Inflation was 3.4%, compared with 2% today. Unemployment was 8%, compared with 4.4% today. Growth was forecast then to be among the slowest in the G7, compared with the fastest today. Instead of an economy in which markets and the pound were facing meltdown, the Chancellor has inherited an economy in which the Office for National Statistics has said that growth is “going gangbusters.”
That has been backed up by even more data since the election. May’s GDP figures show that Britain’s growth was double the rate predicted by economists, and the fastest in more than two years. New figures from S&P show that, in February, British businesses were among the most optimistic in the world—top of the league again, according to the ONS. Inflation has remained at its 2% target level.
In her BBC interview yesterday, the Chancellor glossed over those figures, putting on the most shocked expression she could muster, to pretend that public finances are worse than she expected. But the root cause of the pressure on public finances—£400 billion in pandemic support and £94 billion in cost of living support—was never a secret. Indeed, the Labour party supported those measures and, in some cases, called for us to go further. Nor were the difficult decisions we had to take to pay for them a secret either. When we had to increase borrowing, increase tax and reduce spending plans in the autumn statement of 2022, Labour did not oppose us.
Like all Chancellors, she faces fiscal challenges: welcome to the job. But that job is a whole lot easier because, faced with an economic crisis two years ago, Conservatives took decisions that her predecessor Labour Government ducked completely after the financial crisis. That is why she has a deficit of 4.4% this year compared with 10.3% left behind for the Conservatives in 2010. She did not just compare her inheritance to 2010; she claimed to have the worst inheritance since the second world war. Is she really saying that she faces conditions worse than Geoffrey Howe in 1979, with a winter of discontent, stagflation, an 83% top rate of tax and a Labour Government who went with a begging bowl to be bailed out by the IMF? The Chancellor knows perfectly well that that claim is nonsense, otherwise why, in her first week, would she announce £7.3 billion of spending on her national wealth fund, without a spending review, a budget or any external validation from the OBR? As Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies says, thanks to the OBR the nation’s books are “wide open” and “fully transparent”, so pretending things are worse than expected “really won’t wash.” As she establishes her reputation, it is surely unwise to base her big central argument on a claim so patently ridiculous.
But we all know exactly why the Chancellor is doing it. She wants to lay the ground for tax rises she has been planning all along, which leads to two major concerns. First, she says her No. 1 mission is growth, but all around the world, evidence suggests countries with higher taxes tend to grow more slowly. Lower taxes, when funded properly, boost growth, as we saw with full expensing and the national insurance cuts last year, both of which the OBR confirmed add to our GDP. However, keeping taxes down is hard work.
I saw the numbers the Chancellor has seen just a few weeks ago, and the official advice was clear: with public sector pay restraint, productivity plans such as those we announced in the Budget, and welfare reform, it is perfectly possible to balance the books without tax rises. It is not easy—government never is—but not impossible. Yet all those three things—pay restraint, productivity improvements and welfare reform—were glaringly omitted from the King’s Speech. Instead, she has chosen an easier path: what Labour party sources told The Guardian was a “doctor’s mandate” to raise taxes.
The Chancellor has ruled out raising income tax, national insurance and VAT, but she should not think for one second that other tax rises will not impact working people. Capital gains tax destroys the pensions people build up over their lifetimes; business tax rises are passed on to customers, leading to higher bills; and taxes on banks and energy companies lead to fewer companies operating in the UK, a lower tax take and less money for public services such as the NHS.
That is the biggest contradiction in the new programme —a Government who say they want the fastest growth in the G7 but, in the very same breath, plan tax rises that will make that growth harder, if not impossible, to achieve. Even if such an approach were misconceived, it is none the less a legitimate choice for a governing party. What is not acceptable is, just 18 days after the election, to be laying the ground for tax rises after the Chancellor promised us 50 times in the election campaign that she had no plans to raise them. Every Labour Government in history have raised taxes and raised spending. If she wanted to do the same, she should have had the courage to make the case for that before the election. Instead, she is softening us up for a colossal U-turn that will lead to lower growth, less money for public services and massive public anger, which is why I commend to the House the amendment in the Opposition’s name.
Oral Answers to Questions
Jeremy Hunt Excerpts(6 months, 2 weeks ago)
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The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Jeremy Hunt)
Improving public sector productivity is a major focus for this Government, which is why I announced £4.2 billion of funding to make our public services more efficient in the Budget.
John Penrose
As a former Health Secretary, my right hon. Friend will know that evidence-based medicine transformed health productivity, systematically cutting out ineffectual treatments and replacing them with ones that worked better. Using the evaluation task force and the What Works centres to do the same for other public services, including back to work programmes, prisoner rehabilitation and early interventions for supported families, could be the productivity-improving silver bullet that he needs, so can I urge him to beat a path to their door?
Jeremy Hunt
My hon. Friend is right to talk about the What Works programme, which has delivered more than 500 trials and is recognised internationally. There are some very good example in the NHS of what is working, including the NHS app. That is now used by 75% of NHS patients—including 17,000 over-90s, so let no one assume that older people are not internet savvy.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
Some £8.7 billion was wasted on defective personal protective equipment during the covid crisis, much of it paid to people associated with the Conservative party. People did not have to be Conservative party members to benefit from the fast track, but it did not half help. What is the Chancellor doing to get public money back from those people who sold that defective equipment to the NHS, and does it not just show that we cannot trust the Tories with public money?
Jeremy Hunt
What it shows is that we took very difficult decisions in the pandemic to speed up access to PPE for frontline workers, who were literally dying at the time—but there should be no hiding place whatsoever for anyone who commits fraud on taxpayers, which is why there have been over 100 arrests.
Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)
The only productivity improvement we have seen from this Government is the awarding of wasteful contracts. On top of all the PPE waste that my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) referred to, there are still £1 billion-worth of unresolved PPE contracts that this Government awarded, but that have not been delivered on. Only one company, PPE Medpro, is facing legal action. Why are the Government not taking legal action against the other companies that have not delivered on their contract with members of the public?
Jeremy Hunt
Let me be clear: there is absolutely no hiding place for anyone, whether they are connected to the Conservative party, the Labour Party or any other party. If they have defrauded the taxpayer, we will go after them.
Darren Jones
The Chancellor says that he is making progress, and that there is no hiding place, but that money belongs to our public services. The Government know that the contracts have not been delivered on, but they will not reveal the names of the companies and the contracts that have not been delivered on. If there is no hiding place, why would the Chancellor not name them today?
Jeremy Hunt
Because we are taking legal action, and as the hon. Gentleman knows full well, when we take legal action, that information belongs to the police.
Maggie Throup (Erewash) (Con)
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Jeremy Hunt)
The spring Budget delivered personal tax cuts, including cuts to national insurance, for 29 million workers. That means that someone on the average salary has the lowest effective personal tax rate since 1975, and that is the lowest effective tax rate of any G7 country.
Maggie Throup
While responsible tax cuts, such as the £900 cut to national insurance contributions, are welcome, can my right hon. Friend update the House on when we can expect VAT to be abolished on high-factor sunscreen? That would not only help to protect more people from one of the leading causes of preventable cancer, but could save the NHS approximately £55 billion.
Jeremy Hunt
My hon. Friend and I have talked about this issue on many occasions. She will know that high-factor sunscreen is on NHS prescription for certain conditions and is VAT-free when dispensed by a chemist. With my Chancellor hat on, I should say that we have had £50 billion of requests for VAT relief since Brexit. It is great to have the freedom to make those changes, but we have to be honest about the trade-offs. In particular, we must ensure that if we do apply reliefs, the benefits are fed through to consumers.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
This weekend, I spoke to a constituent who has invested heavily in a restaurant in my constituency over the last 15 years. He was in desperation because his business, like two other businesses that have already closed in the town, is being crushed by VAT, business rates and increases in corporate taxes. He finds that he can no longer sustain a business that has become the love of his life. Does the Chancellor realise that the tax burden he is imposing on small and medium-sized businesses is crushing this economy?
Jeremy Hunt
We are doing everything we can to support small businesses. Businesses like the one that the right hon. Gentleman mentions have received, for two years in a row, a 75% discount on their business rates. That is a massive leg up for businesses recovering from the pandemic. We have also made sure that any increases in corporation tax apply only to larger businesses. There is only one major party in British politics that wants to bring down the tax burden for businesses, and it is the Conservative party.
Chris Loder (West Dorset) (Con)
Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Jeremy Hunt)
Over the last two years, cost of living support has totalled £96 billion, or an average of £3,400 per household. As a result, living standards, which were predicted to fall 2% last year, rose by nearly 1%, and we are on track to reach pre-pandemic living standards two years early.
Mrs Drummond
I welcome the support that the Government have provided throughout covid and the recent energy crisis for my constituents in Meon Valley—I thank the Government. It has made a huge difference to people’s domestic budgets, but now inflation is falling and the economy is improving, can we look forward to the Government’s continued support with a range of fiscal steps, including cutting taxes?
Jeremy Hunt
We can absolutely do that. I thank my hon. Friend for pointing out that the biggest single thing we can do to help people with cost of living pressures is to bring down inflation. That seems to be something that escaped the shadow Chancellor this morning, when she said it was not a big deal to get inflation down to its target. It is a very big deal for families facing a cost of living crisis, and she needs to know that inflation falls by design, not by accident.
Nadia Whittome
The Chancellor can talk all he wants about inflation falling, but this is little comfort to my constituents who are still struggling to make ends meet. Even with the national insurance cut, annual post-tax earnings for the average family remain on course to be £380 lower at the start of 2025 than they were in 2021—a gap not predicted to close until 2029. This means yet more years of lost wage growth, so when will the Government get serious about tackling the low-wage, insecure work that they have allowed to become the norm in this country?
Jeremy Hunt
Could I suggest, if the hon. Member really thinks that inflation falling from 11% to 3.2% is little comfort to her constituents, that she might want to talk to a few more of them, because actually it is the biggest single thing that we can do to deal with cost of living pressures. If she says, “What are we doing to tackle the scourge of low pay?” we have abolished it by raising the national living wage to £11.44 this year alone. For someone working full-time, that will mean an increase in their pay of £1,800.
Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Jeremy Hunt)
The shadow Chancellor often likes to ask what has improved over the past 14 years, so I thought I would update the House on some of the latest statistics about the British economy. According to UN conference data, we have now overtaken France, the Netherlands and Japan to become the world’s fourth largest exporter. The International Monetary Fund says that we will grow faster over the next six years than France, Italy, Germany or Japan, and there are 200,000 more people in work compared with a year ago, which means that, for every single day Conservative Governments have been in office since 2010, there are 800 more people in work, many of whom will be very pleased that we are sticking to our plan.
Debbie Abrahams
We should add to the Chancellor’s statistics that we have the widest economic inequalities in Europe. Last week, Professor Sir Michael Marmot published new analysis showing significant increases in health inequalities—how long we live, and how long we live in good health—and that is particularly the case between the north and south-east England. That is of course driven by the economic inequalities that I have just referred to. What assessment has the Chancellor undertaken on the loss in productivity directly as a result of that increase in health inequalities?
Jeremy Hunt
If the hon. Lady is concerned about economic inequalities, she will be horrified to know that they were even worse under the last Labour Government. They have been reduced under this Government. When it comes to health inequalities, it is this Government who are phasing out smoking for everyone under the age of 14—one of the biggest single things in a generation that will reduce health inequalities and mean that poorer people live longer.
John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
Jeremy Hunt
I can confirm that we are very alive to cost of living pressures caused by fuel duty. In fact, we spent £6.4 billion freezing the duties on fuel, which will save the average motorist £50 over the coming year.
Rachel Reeves (Leeds West) (Lab)
At the Budget, the Chancellor set out his intention to abolish national insurance—a £46 billion annual commitment with no clear plan as to how it would be paid for. One way to do it would be to merge income tax and national insurance. Does the Chancellor agree with analysis from the House of Commons Library that shows that merging those two would increase income tax by 8p in the pound?
Rachel Reeves
That is strange, because the day after the Budget, the Chancellor told Sky News that
“you can end that unfairness of taxing work: you can merge income tax and national insurance.”
The late Chancellor, Nigel Lawson—the Prime Minister’s hero—warned that merging them would
“destroy the contributory principle and create many losers, especially among the elderly.”
In fact, a retired pensioner with an average occupational pension income of £198 a week would pay an additional £738 a year in tax. Is the reason that the Conservatives will not come clean not that they are planning to pick pensioners’ pockets to fund the abolition of national insurance?
Jeremy Hunt
If the right hon. Lady listened to my comments carefully, and I do not always give her credit for that, she would know that our policy is to abolish employees’ national insurance, and that means we want to bring it down to zero. If Labour’s strategy is to win the election by frightening pensioners with fake news stories, I would just say that Britain deserves better.
Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
Jeremy Hunt
What I would say to those families is that the most damaging thing of all is to have inflation at 11%. Now we have reduced it to 3.2%, and indeed we expect it to go lower. Interest rates are also starting to fall. If the hon. Member is worried about families in her constituency, she might be extremely worried by the shadow Chancellor saying that if interest rates fall, it is somehow not a big deal. It really is.
David Mundell (Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale) (Con)
May I encourage my right hon. Friend the Chancellor to revisit his decision to change the tax arrangements of furnished holiday lets in rural constituencies such as my own? Those businesses make an important contribution to the local economy, provide jobs and enhance the tourism offering. Indeed, they stop depopulation rather than adding to it. His decision is creating much concern among those who operate such businesses.
Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)
May I place on record my thanks to the Chancellor, who in his Budget devoted funds to Bournemouth for a police violence reduction unit? Does he agree that these units have a track record up and down the country of tackling knife crime by not just seeing extra police on the frontline, but engaging with schools to ensure that youths and students understand the folly of carrying a knife in the first place?
Jeremy Hunt
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right: violence reduction units reduce crime and save lives. I want to thank him, because he was one of the first colleagues who, ahead of the Budget, brought to my attention how impressive the results are. As a result, I was able to make it a national policy in the Budget.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
Jeremy Hunt
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that the Government are taking this issue very seriously, and we completely understand that speed is of the essence. It is now only a matter of days before the report will be published; we have always said that we want to publish our response very quickly after that and I assure the hon. Gentleman that we will not hang around.
Nick Fletcher (Don Valley) (Con)
The best way for a business to thrive and for customers to receive a great service is for companies to employ individuals on merit. Does the Chancellor agree that the recent overreach by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority regarding their equality, diversity and inclusion policies is a step too far, and that it is inevitable that those policies will have a negative effect on us all?
Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)
Jeremy Hunt
The hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that he has taken my comments out of context. I will tell him what is really out of touch: the shadow Chancellor saying it is not a big deal if inflation falls.
Ian Levy (Blyth Valley) (Con)
Cramlington has a world-leading pharmaceutical company, Organon, which employs 700 people and produces medicine for the UK market as well as abroad, with a particular focus on women’s health. Will my right hon. Friend the Chancellor please meet me to discuss the impact on pharmaceutical investment?
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
Soaring rent costs are the biggest reason why my constituents in Bath are struggling. The average monthly rent in Bath and north-east Somerset has risen by more than £200 in the past three years. What support will the Government give to people who rent in the private sector?
Jeremy Hunt
That is why we need to build more houses. The hon. Lady will be reassured to know that we are building record numbers of houses—in fact, more in the last year than in any single year under the previous Labour Government.
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
I would like the Chancellor of the Exchequer to know that high business rates are having a devastating effect on small and medium-sized businesses in historic market towns, such as Romford, that are large retail centres. As the Government are business friendly, will he please look at ways to reduce the burden of business rates on local businesses in constituencies like mine?
Jeremy Hunt
May I say what a pleasure it is to be asked a question by my hon. Friend? I think this is the first time it has happened since he has been back. There is no more formidable a champion for Romford. He speaks about business rates, and we have indeed been doing what we can to bring them down at every fiscal event.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
What steps have been taken to support pensioners to know what benefits they are possibly entitled to? I understand that 1.4 million people access pension credit, but a great many more are entitled to it.
Jeremy Hunt
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. The hon. Lady may have misunderstood me. What I said was that economic inequality had fallen since the last Labour Government.
Notification of Contingent Liability
Jeremy Hunt Excerpts(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Jeremy Hunt)
The independent Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England decided at its meeting ending on 3 February 2022 to reduce the stocks of UK Government bonds and sterling non-financial investment-grade corporate bonds held in the Asset Purchase Facility by ceasing to reinvest maturing securities. The Bank ceased reinvestment of assets in this portfolio in February 2022 and commenced sales of corporate bonds on 28 September 2022, and sales of gilts acquired for monetary policy purposes on 1 November 2022. The sales of corporate bonds ceased on 6 June 2023, with the majority of the portfolio sold. A small number of remaining short maturity corporate bonds were held through to maturity and these have since all fully matured on 5 April 2024. Therefore, the APF is now comprised solely of gilts.
The Chancellor at the time agreed a joint approach with the Governor of the Bank of England in an exchange of letters on 3 February 2022 to reduce the maximum authorised size of the APF for asset purchases every six months, as the size of APF holdings reduces.
Since 3 November 2023 when I last reduced the maximum authorised size of the APF, the total stock of assets held by the APF for monetary policy purposes has fallen further from £750.9 billion to £704.2 billion. In line with the approach agreed with the Governor, the authorised maximum total size of the APF has therefore been reduced to £704.2 billion, which is now comprised entirely of gilts.
The risk control framework previously agreed with the Bank will remain in place, and HM Treasury will continue to monitor risks to public funds from the APF through regular risk oversight meetings and enhanced information sharing with the Bank.
There will continue to be an opportunity for HM Treasury to provide views to the MPC on the design of the schemes within the APF, as they affect the Government’s broader economic objectives and may pose risks to the Exchequer.
The Government will continue to indemnify the Bank, the APF and its directors from any losses arising out of, or in connection with, the facility. Provision for any payment due under the liability will continue to be sought through the normal supply procedure.
A full departmental minute has been laid in Parliament providing more detail on this contingent liability.
[HCWS435]
Oral Answers to Questions
Jeremy Hunt Excerpts(8 months, 1 week ago)
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Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Jeremy Hunt)
At the spring Budget, the Government announced a package of tax reliefs for our world-leading creative industries worth £1 billion over the next five years, including a 40% relief on business rates for eligible film studios in England and enhanced tax reliefs for visual effects.
Giles Watling
As we know, the UK’s cultural offer is world-beating and, particularly through the performing arts, the UK projects soft power across the globe. While welcoming the progressive tax breaks for our incredible film industry, it would appear that our far-reaching, high-end television offer has been left behind in the recent Budget. Does my right hon. Friend have plans to redress this deficit to ensure that the UK remains first on screens around the world?
Jeremy Hunt
No one knows more about high-end TV than my hon. Friend. Whoever said that politics is showbusiness for ugly people was absolutely wrong in his case. I will take away what he says and consider high-end television as a potential future Budget measure.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
The Chancellor will be aware of the award-winning film “The Windermere Children”, which talks about the legacy of those Jewish children who survived the death camps in central Europe and made a new life for themselves on the banks of Lake Windermere at Troutbeck Bridge. For the last several years, there has been an ongoing exhibition on their legacy at Windermere library, and now we look to build a lasting memorial alongside a rebuilt Lakes School at Troutbeck Bridge.
Will the Chancellor be interested in meeting the families of the Windermere children, and those behind the new build and the provision of a new lasting memorial to their legacy, at Windermere at some point in the foreseeable future?
Jeremy Hunt
That is a very tempting offer, and I will see whether my diary permits me to visit the hon. Gentleman in his constituency. I have not seen the film, but I have seen a film on a holocaust theme called “The Zone of Interest”, which is a remarkable British-led film that I thoroughly recommend to him.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Jeremy Hunt)
The economy is beginning to turn a corner after a series of unprecedented shocks. Inflation has more than halved, GDP grew in January and the economy is on a path to long-term growth.
Chi Onwurah
The economy has grown at a snail’s pace under the Tories, but that snail is still 30% faster nationally than in the north-east, despite our strengths in clean energy, manufacturing, science and health. On average, my constituents are £11,500 worse off that they would have been had the economy grown at the same rate that it grew under Labour. Is it any wonder that the Public Accounts Committee found no compelling evidence of levelling up? Is a vote for the Tories not a vote for continued economic failure?
Jeremy Hunt
It is not, because we have grown faster than Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Germany and multiple other countries since 2010. With respect to the north-east in particular, the hon. Lady is absolutely right to say that our vision is to spread growth into every corner of the country. That is why, in the last three months alone, both the Prime Minister and I have been to the Nissan factory in Sunderland to mark its decision to make two electric car models in the UK. Just last week, we announced the opening of a massive new film studio in Sunderland that will bring more than 8,000 jobs to the north-east.
Clive Lewis
According to the LSE’s Grantham Research Institute, the Government’s current programme for investment to mitigate the worst effects of climate change will still see climate change damage to the UK increase from 1.1% of GDP to 3.3% by 2050 and 7.4% by the end of the century. To put it into context, that is the United Kingdom’s entire social care budget of around £25 billion. The Climate Change Committee has said that the current approach to adaptation
“falls far short of what is required.”
Has the Treasury made any attempt to assess the cost to GDP, the public finances and jobs of failing to invest for climate adaptation?
Jeremy Hunt
We listen very carefully to what the Climate Change Committee says, and we are absolutely committed to net zero. In fact, a Conservative Government passed the law requiring Governments to commit to net zero. The hon. Gentleman will know that we have just become the first major industrialised country to decarbonise by more than 50% since 1990. As well as the costs, we are also mindful of the economic opportunities, which is why we are investing billions of pounds in our clean energy transformation.
Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)
My right hon. Friend will be aware that my constituency, which has Cambridge to the north, has fantastic new industries such as Johnson Matthey in Royston, which is at the forefront of hydrogen. We have pharma companies to the south and some of the best film studios in the world in Hertfordshire. Is he consciously trying to back those successful industries of the future so that our children and grandchildren have fantastic opportunities for the future?
Jeremy Hunt
That is absolutely what we are trying to do. Film and TV is a good example here, as it has now become an offshoot of the technology industry. Films such as “Barbie” have been filmed in Hertfordshire but have the look of the Californian sunshine; they can withstand the British rain because of the use of high-tech devices that simulate Californian sunshine, even in my right hon. and learned Friend’s constituency. What he sets out is our absolutely our plan and we will stick with it.
Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)
In response to covid, this Government introduced the furlough scheme, and delivered and funded the world’s first vaccine. In response to the energy price spike, this Government introduced comprehensive support for families. The Office for Budget Responsibility, so beloved of the shadow Chancellor, had its long-range forecast for 2025 to 2028 showing GDP increasing every year, GDP per capita increasing every year, average earnings increasing every year in real terms and productivity increasing in real terms. So does the Chancellor agree that when the shadow Chancellor says that we face a 1979 moment, she is right: a choice between a Labour party still in hock to its union bosses and a Conservative party committed to growth?
Jeremy Hunt
I have nothing to add to my hon. Friend’s brilliant list of statistics, except to cite another independent organisation, the International Monetary Fund, which says that in the next five years this country, under Conservative leadership, will grow faster than France, Germany, Italy and Japan.
James Murray (Ealing North) (Lab/Co-op)
The British people are paying the price for 14 years of Conservative economic failure, with lower wages, higher taxes and public services on their knees. Time and again, the Conservatives hide behind international factors and take no responsibility for their failures. Yet figures from the OECD confirm that the UK is the only G7 advanced economy now in recession and, according to the IMF, our economy is forecast to have the second slowest growth in the G7 this year. So can the Chancellor tell us: why is the UK so far behind other major economies under the Conservatives?
Jeremy Hunt
Well, it is not, because it is actually growing faster than France, Germany and a bunch of other countries. However, I am glad that the hon. Gentleman mentioned 14 years, because we can look at what has happened under 14 years of Labour in Wales, where unemployment is higher, NHS waiting lists are longer, school standards are worse and growth is lower. What is Labour’s reaction to that terrible record? It has just promoted the Economy Minister to First Minister.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Ind)
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Jeremy Hunt)
With your permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to update the House on living standards in the UK. The most recent data suggest that despite a tough couple of years caused by the pandemic and the energy crisis, living standards will return to their pre-covid peak next year: a full two years earlier than originally predicted by the OBR. They have risen by £1,700 a household in real terms since 2010, and this year’s cut in national insurance will increase living standards by 1%. In other words, to coin a phrase, now is not the time to go back to square one.
Andrew Bridgen
Given that the Prime Minister has been forced to abandon his plans for an election on 2 May and could soon be facing a leadership challenge, does the Chancellor of the Exchequer believe that his Budget landed well with the public or even his colleagues on the Government Benches?
Jeremy Hunt
I say very simply to the hon. Gentleman, who used to be an hon. Friend, that the Budget will mean that the UK economy will grow faster than that of France, Germany, Italy or Japan in the next five years. That is doing the right thing for the country.
Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)
Rachel Reeves (Leeds West) (Lab)
After the Budget, the Chancellor wrote to Conservative party members telling them that the Government planned to abolish national insurance. The Economic Secretary said that “national insurance will vanish”, and the Prime Minister said it was his “ambition” to abolish it. Will the Chancellor confirm whether he asked the Office for Budget Responsibility to cost the Government’s unfunded plan to abolish national insurance contributions?
Jeremy Hunt
I am very glad that the right hon. Lady asks about national insurance cuts, because first she supported them, then she abstained in the Lobby, and now she appears to be against them—like the bankers’ bonus tax, which she was strongly in favour of and then strongly against; like £28 billion of borrowing, which she was strongly in favour of and then strongly against. Is not the actual truth that, where Labour should have an economic policy, there is just a black hole filled with platitudes?
Rachel Reeves
The Chancellor did not even attempt to answer the question. The chair of the OBR told the Treasury Committee the week after the Budget:
“It was not a measure given to us to cost”.
Even the Chancellor’s predecessor, the right hon. Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng), who was sacked for his own kamikaze Budget, said, “If you’re going to reduce taxes, you have to show at least partially where the money’s going to come from.” So I ask the Chancellor: where will the money come from? Will it come from cuts to the NHS, the state pension and public services? Will it come from increasing taxes, including for pensioners? Or will it come from increasing borrowing? Which one, Chancellor?
Jeremy Hunt
Even Torsten Bell from the left-leaning Resolution Foundation said that the right hon. Lady’s argument that this was a mini Budget-style black hole was nonsense, because we specifically said that we would not fund national insurance cuts from increasing borrowing or cutting spending on public services. I gently ask her, if she wants to put on the mantle of fiscal rectitude, where is Labour going to find literally billions of pounds to fund unfunded spending pledges, from grid decarbon-isation to NHS waiting lists? We all know what that will lead to: higher taxes, like under every Labour Government in history.
Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
Jill Mortimer (Hartlepool) (Con)
Jeremy Hunt
I would be delighted to do that. The independent Resolution Foundation said that, because of measures that this Government have taken, pensioners are £1,000 better off in real terms than in 2010. We did two things specifically in the Budget: we put £6 billion into the NHS, which is used more by pensioners than anyone else; and we backed workers’ tax cuts to support growth in the economy, which means that we can continue to fund the triple lock for many years to come.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
Mr Speaker
Order. These are topical questions, and I want to get to the Members who have not yet been called.
Jeremy Hunt
I thank my hon. Friend for her excellent question. She is right that it is not just the lowest effective tax rate for someone on average earnings since 1975, but the lowest headline tax rate and the lowest tax rate in the G7. That is the fundamental divide in British politics: taxes have gone up, and on the Government Benches we do not think that we have to accept the status quo; on the Opposition Benches they do. Why is that? Because lower taxes mean higher growth.
Dame Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
Jeremy Hunt
May I gently correct the hon. Lady? As I said, living standards have risen by £1,700 per household since 2010, and the number of people in absolute poverty is down by 1.7 million. She is right to talk about the debt pressures that people face, which is why in the Budget we abolished the £90 fee for debt relief orders, having talked to Citizens Advice.
Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)
The proposed changes to wine duty will add huge costs and complexity to business. Further to my Westminster Hall debate, will my hon. Friend meet me and representatives of wine businesses to hear their concerns, and make permanent the easement that is due to end on 1 February next year?
Sarah Owen (Luton North) (Lab)
Jeremy Hunt
Let me say to the hon. Lady, who I very much enjoyed working with on the Select Committee, that our record is 800 more people in work for every single day of Conservative government since 2010. What will wreck that is Labour’s new deal for workers, which the president of the CBI says will destroy the job-creating machine that the UK has become.
James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)
I commend the Treasury for good fiscal policies that have resulted in inflation falling significantly since the pandemic. When might we see a commensurate fall in interest rates?
Jeremy Hunt
I am very sorry to disappoint my hon. Friend, but Chancellors never comment on decisions made by the Bank of England on interest rates. What I can say is that the Office for Budget Responsibility predicted at the Budget that inflation would fall to around target in the next few months. That gives the best possible prospect of interest rates starting to fall.
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (Ind)
Last night on BBC’s “Newsnight”, it was clear that the needs of Wales, in particular on health, are not met in the UK. When has the UK Government ever given England Barnett consequentials based on needs in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland? Surely the model of spending under which the Government in England decides for England, and everyone else gets a consequential of that, must end. Nordic countries do not calculate spend as a percentage of their neighbours’ spend. Why is the spending of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland dependent on what England decides to spend?
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
Does the Chancellor accept that he has caused a great deal of anxiety and further distrust among those who have been infected and affected by the contaminated blood scandal by not making any provision in his Budget for compensation, although the recommendations for compensation were made to the Government last April?
Jeremy Hunt
I gently say to the right hon. Lady that I stand by every word I said when I gave evidence, twice, to the infected blood inquiry. The Government have an absolute moral responsibility, not just to pay the compensation owed, but to pay it as speedily as possible.
Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
I would like to join the Economic Secretary to the Treasury and my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Anna Firth) in discussing the closure of banks. Barclays bank, in particular, is both shameful and shameless in this regard. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need full transparency on the decisions made by Link and the Financial Conduct Authority? Something we learned yesterday that may be of interest to those in Chorley, Mr Speaker, is that the criteria take into consideration only the town plus areas within a 1 km circumference. That is not how the rural economy works. Will the Economic Secretary work with me to ensure that the criteria take into account the wider economy?
Financial Statement and Budget Report
Jeremy Hunt Excerpts(8 months, 2 weeks ago)
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The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Jeremy Hunt)
As we mourn the tragic loss of life in Israel and Gaza, the Prime Minister reminded us last week of the need to fight extremism and heal divisions, so I start today by remembering the Muslims who died in two world wars in the service of freedom and democracy. We need a memorial to honour them, so following representations from my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Sir Sajid Javid) and others, I have decided to allocate £1 million towards the cost of building one. Whatever your faith, colour or class, this country will never forget the sacrifices made for our future.
In recent times, the UK—and the UK economy—has dealt with a financial crisis, a pandemic and an energy shock caused by war in Europe, yet despite the most challenging economic headwinds in modern history, under Conservative Governments since 2010 growth has been higher than in every large European economy, unemployment has halved, absolute poverty has gone down, and there are 800 more people in jobs for every single day that we have been in office. [Interruption.] Of course, interest rates remain high as we bring down inflation, but because of the progress we have made, because we are delivering the Prime Minister’s economic priorities, we can now help families not just with temporary cost of living support, but with permanent cuts in taxation. We do that to give much needed help in challenging times, and because Conservatives know that lower tax means higher growth, and higher growth means more opportunity, more prosperity and more funding for our precious public services. [Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. The Chancellor has hardly said anything—[Interruption.] Order. You cannot get excited yet. Other people want to hear what the Chancellor has to say. It matters, so we will have a bit of good behaviour, please.
Jeremy Hunt
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
If we want that growth to lead to higher wages and higher living standards for every family in every corner of the country, it cannot come from unlimited migration; it can only come by building a high-wage, high-skill economy—not just higher GDP, but higher GDP per head.
That is the difference. The Labour party’s plans would destroy jobs, reduce opportunities and risk family finances with spending that pushes up taxes. Instead of going back to square one, the policies I announce today mean more investment, more jobs, better public services and lower taxes in a Budget for long-term growth.
I start with the updated forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility, for which I thank Richard Hughes and his team. First, inflation. When the Prime Minister and I came into office, it was 11%. The latest figures show—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. This is not amusing any more. We need to hear what the Chancellor has to say. I can tell who is making the noise, and you simply will not get a chance to speak later. That is the end of it.
Jeremy Hunt
When the Prime Minister and I came into office, inflation was 11%, but the latest figures show it is now 4%—more than meeting our pledge last year to halve it. Today’s forecasts from the OBR show it falling below the 2% target in just a few months’ time, nearly a whole year earlier than forecast in the autumn statement.
That did not happen by accident. Whatever the pressures, and whatever the politics, a Conservative Government, working with the Bank of England, will always put sound money first. We also understand that tackling inflation, while necessary, is painful. It means higher interest rates and a period of lower growth, so we have given the average household £3,400 in cost of living support over the past two years. Doing so makes economic as well as moral sense. The OBR predicted real household disposable income per person would fall by 2% in the past year; instead, after that support, it is on track to rise by 0.8%.
Today, I take further steps to help families with cost of living pressures, starting with measures to help the poorest families. We have already abolished higher charges for electricity paid by those on prepayment meters, increased the local housing allowance and raised benefits by double the expected inflation. Today, I focus on those falling into debt. Nearly 1 million households on universal credit take out budgeting advance loans to pay for more expensive emergencies such as boiler repairs or help getting a job. To help make such loans more affordable, I have decided to increase the repayment period for new loans from 12 months to 24 months.
For some people—[Interruption.] I thought Labour Members cared about people on the lowest incomes, but trust them not to want to hear about debt. For some people the best way to resolve debt is through a debt relief order, but getting one costs £90, which can deter the very people who need them most, so, having listened carefully to representations from Citizens Advice, I today relieve pressure on around 40,000 families every year by abolishing that £90 charge completely.
Next, the household support fund. It was set up on a temporary basis and due to conclude at the end of this month. Having listened carefully to representations from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the Trussell Trust, the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms), my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) and my hon. Friends the Members for Colchester (Will Quince) and for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds) among others, I have decided that, with the battle against inflation still not over, now is not the time to stop the targeted help that it offers. We will therefore continue it at current levels for another six months.
Next, I turn to a measure that will help businesses and households more broadly. In the autumn statement I froze alcohol duty until August of this year. Without any action today, it would have been due to rise by 3%. However, I have listened carefully to my right hon. Friends for Altrincham and Sale West (Sir Graham Brady) and for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns), and to my hon. Friend the Member for Moray (Douglas Ross), who is a formidable champion of the Scottish whisky industry. I also listened to Councillor John Tonks from Ash—a strong supporter of the wonderful Admiral pub—who pointed out the pressures facing the industry. Today, I have decided to extend the alcohol duty freeze until February 2025. That will benefit 38,000 pubs across the UK, on top of the £13,000 saving that a typical pub will get from the 75% business rates discount that I announced in the autumn. We value our hospitality industry. We are backing the great British pub.
Another cost that families and businesses worry about is fuel. The shadow Chancellor complained about the freeze on fuel duty. Labour has opposed it at every opportunity. The Labour Mayor of London wants to punish motorists even more with his ultra low emission zone plans. However, lots of families and sole traders depend on their car. If I did nothing, fuel duty would increase by 13% this month, so instead I have listened to my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel), my hon. Friends the Members for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) and for Dudley North (Marco Longhi) and others, as well as to The Sun newspaper’s “Keep it Down” campaign. I have as a result decided to maintain the 5p cut and freeze fuel duty for another 12 months. That will save the average car driver £50 next year and bring total savings since the 5p cut was introduced to around £250. Taken together with the alcohol duty freeze, that decision also reduces headline inflation by 0.2 percentage points in 2024-25, allowing us to make faster progress towards the Bank of England’s 2% target.
There can be no solid growth without solid finances. An economy based on sound money does not pass its bills to the next generation. When it comes to borrowing, some believe that there is a trade-off between compassion and fiscal responsibility. They are wrong. It is only because we responsibly reduced the deficit by 80% between 2010 and 2019 that we could provide £370 billion to help businesses and families in the pandemic. Labour opposed our plans to reduce the deficit every single step of the way, but, to be fair, they were consistent. In coalition, the Lib Dems supported controlling spending, but now they say that they would prop up a party that will turn on the spending taps. It is the difference between no plan and no principles—and I am delighted that, for once, the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey) is here to hear that.
Today, we say something different: there is nothing compassionate about running out of money. With the pandemic behind us, we must once again be responsible and build up our resilience to future shocks. That means bringing down borrowing so we can start to reduce our debt, and today’s figures confirm that is happening. Ahead of my first autumn statement in 2022, the OBR forecast that headline debt would rise to above 100% of GDP. Today, it says that it will fall in every year, to just 94% by 2028-29. According to the OBR, underlying debt—which excludes Bank of England debt—will be 91.7% in 2024-25, then 92.8%, 93.2% and 93.2%, before falling to 92.9% in 2028-29, with final year headroom against debt falling of £8.9 billion. Our underlying debt is therefore on track to fall as a share of GDP, meeting our fiscal rule, and we continue to have the second lowest level of Government debt in the G7, lower than that of Japan, France or the United States.
We also meet our second fiscal rule—for public sector borrowing to be below 3% of GDP—three years early. Borrowing falls from 4.2% of GDP in 2023-24 to 3.1%, then 2.7%, 2.3%, 1.6%, and 1.2% in 2028-29. By the end of the forecast, borrowing is at its lowest level of GDP since 2001. None of that, of course, would be possible if Labour implemented its pledge to decarbonise the grid five years early, by 2030; by its own calculations, that costs £28 billion a year to do. Last month, after flip-flopping for months, Labour said that it is not going to spend the £28 billion after all, but will somehow meet its pledge. “Somehow” can only mean one thing: tax rises on working families. Same old Labour!
Today, in contrast, a Conservative Government bring down taxes with borrowing broadly unchanged—in fact, borrowing is slightly lower than in the autumn statement. The fact that we are bringing borrowing down is of particular importance to one very special person: Sir Robert Stheeman is the outgoing chief executive of the Government’s Debt Management Office, and after 20 years of exceptional public service, he is in the Gallery. Thank you, Sir Robert.
I now turn to growth. Just after I became Chancellor, the OBR expected GDP to fall by 1.4% in the following year; in fact it grew, albeit slowly. Now the OBR expects the economy to grow by 0.8% this year and 1.9% next year, which is 0.5% higher than its autumn forecast. After that, growth rises to 2.2%, 1.8%, and 1.7% in 2028. [Interruption.] Opposition Members do not want to hear this, but these are the facts. Since 2010, we have grown faster than Germany, France or Italy—the three largest European economies—and according to the International Monetary Fund, we will continue to grow faster than all three of them in the five years ahead. Surveys by Lloyds and Deloitte show that business confidence is returning. In other words, because we have turned the corner on inflation, we will soon turn the corner on growth.
Today’s OBR forecasts also show that we have made good progress on the Prime Minister’s three economic priorities. Compared to when the three pledges were made, inflation has halved, debt is falling in line with our fiscal rules, and growth is fully 1.5 percentage points higher than predicted. [Interruption.] Labour Members do not have a growth plan, so they might as well listen to ours. As growth returns, our plan is for economic growth, not growth sustained through migration, but growth that raises wages and living standards for families—not just higher GDP, but higher GDP per head. That means sticking to our plan, with a Budget for long-term growth: more investment, more jobs, better public services and lower taxes.
I start with investment. Economists say that stimulating investment is the most effective way to raise productivity, and therefore wages and living standards. Since 2010, we have been doing just that. Business—[Interruption.] Labour Members might want to listen to what I am about to say, because business investment has risen from an average of 9.3% of GDP under Labour to 9.9% under the Conservatives. This year, it will be 10.6% of GDP. That is £30 billion more business investment than if it had continued at Labour levels, and it is still going up.
In the short period since the autumn statement, Nissan has announced that it will build two new electric car models in the UK. Microsoft and Google have announced data centres worth over £3 billion. Thanks to my right hon. Friend the Business Secretary, the global investment summit unlocked £30 billion of investment. In fact, since 2010, greenfield foreign direct investment has been higher here than anywhere else in Europe, and for the last three years the UK has had the third highest levels in the world after the United States and China—and we are not stopping there.
In the autumn statement, I announced that we would introduce permanent full expensing, a £10 billion tax cut for businesses that gives the UK the most attractive investment tax regime of any large European or G7 country. It was welcomed by over 200 business leaders, with the CBI saying it was a game changer and the single most transformational thing we could do to fire up the British economy. Today, I take further steps to boost investment. Having listened to calls from the CBI, Make UK and the British Chambers of Commerce, we will shortly publish draft legislation for full expensing to apply to leased assets, a change I intend to bring in as soon as it is affordable.
We will also help small businesses, which is something close to my heart. As well as the business rates support, and the work on prompt payments that I announced in the autumn, I will provide £200 million of funding to extend the recovery loan scheme as it transitions to the growth guarantee scheme, helping 11,000 small and medium-sized enterprises access the finance they need. Following representations from the Federation of Small Businesses, as well as my hon. Friends the Members for Loughborough (Jane Hunt), for Southend West (Anna Firth), and for Rother Valley (Alexander Stafford), I will reduce the administrative and financial impact of VAT by increasing the VAT registration threshold from £85,000 to £90,000 from 1 April—the first increase in seven years. That will bring tens of thousands of businesses out of paying VAT altogether, and encourage many more to invest and grow.
I now move to measures to address historical under-investment in our nations and regions. Since we started levelling up in 2019, two thirds of all new salaried jobs created have been outside London and the south-east. We have announced 13 investment zones and 12 freeports, which continue to attract investment—including recently, thanks to the efforts of Mayor Ben Houchen, from the Pneuma Group, which is investing £15 million into the Tees Valley investment zone.
Today, working with the Levelling-Up Secretary, I devolve further power to local leaders, who are best placed to promote growth in their areas. I can announce the north-east trailblazer devolution deal, which provides a package of support for the region potentially worth over £100 million. I will devolve powers to Buckinghamshire, Warwickshire and the most beautiful county in England, Surrey. I see the Leader of the Opposition smiling because, like me, he is a Surrey boy. I know he has been taking advice from Lord Mandelson, who yesterday rather uncharitably said he needed to “shed a few pounds”. Ordinary families will shed more than a few pounds if that lot get in. If he wants to join me on my marathon training, he is most welcome.
Today, we continue to spread opportunity throughout the country by allocating £100 million of levelling-up funding to areas including High Peak, Dundee, Conwy, Erewash, Redditch and Coventry to support cultural projects in these communities. That is alongside support for capital projects across the country, including in Bingley. We are expanding the long-term plan for towns to 20 new places, including Darlington—home of the Treasury’s fantastic Darlington economic campus—Coleraine, Peterhead, Runcorn, Harlow, Eastbourne, Arbroath and Rhyl, providing each with £20 million of funding to invest in community regeneration over the next decade. We will provide £15 million in new funding to the West Midlands Combined Authority to support culture, heritage and investment projects, on the recommendation of our go-getting Mayor, Andy Street, and we will allocate £5 million to renovate hundreds of local village halls across England, so that they can remain at the heart of their communities.
Because this is a Conservative and Unionist Government, we will also set aside funding to support the SaxaVord spaceport in Shetland and an agrifood launchpad in mid-Wales, and funding to support Northern Ireland’s businesses in expanding their global trade and investment opportunities. As a result of the decisions we take today, the Scottish Government will receive nearly £300 million in Barnett consequentials; there will be nearly £170 million for the Welsh Government and £100 million for the Northern Ireland Executive. [Interruption.] I do appreciate that a tax-cutting Budget is very uncomfortable for the biggest tax-raisers in the United Kingdom. We also want to level up opportunity across the generations, including by building more houses for young people, and we are on track to deliver over 1 million homes in this Parliament.
Last week, the Levelling-Up Secretary allocated £188 million to supporting projects in Sheffield, Blackpool and Liverpool. Today I go further, allocating £242 million of investment to Barking Riverside and Canary Wharf, which together will build nearly 8,000 houses; Canary Wharf will also be transformed into a new hub for life science companies. We are launching a new £20 million community-led housing scheme that will support local communities in delivering the developments that they want and need. I am pleased to announce the next steps for Cambridge to reach its potential as the world’s leading scientific powerhouse. I confirm that there will be a long-term funding settlement for the future development corporation in Cambridge at the next spending review; there will be over £10 million invested in the coming year to unlock delivery of crucial local transport and health infrastructure.
The final levelling-up measures I announce today support north Wales, of which I have many happy childhood memories. In Mold, following representations from my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Dr Davies), we will help fund the renovation of Theatr Clywd. I can announce that this week, the Government have reached agreement on a £160 million deal with Hitachi to purchase the Wylfa site in Ynys Môn and the Oldbury site in south Gloucestershire. Ynys Môn has a vital role in delivering our nuclear ambitions, and no one should take more credit for today’s announcement than my tireless, tenacious and turbocharged hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie). More investment by large businesses, more support for small businesses, promoting investment in our nations and regions—all part of a Budget for long-term growth that sticks to our plan to deliver more jobs, better public services and lower taxes.
I turn to one of the most powerful ways to attract investment: supporting our most innovative industries. Outside the US, we have the most respected universities, the biggest financial services sector and the largest tech ecosystem in Europe. We have double the artificial intelligence start-ups of anywhere else in Europe, double the venture capital investment, and a tech economy now double the size of Germany’s and three times the size of France’s. We are on track to become the world’s next silicon valley.
In today’s Budget for long-term growth, I take further steps to attract investment to our technology-related industries. I want our brilliant tech entrepreneurs to not just start here, but stay here, including when the time comes for a stock market listing, so we will build on the Edinburgh and Mansion House reforms to unlock more pension fund capital. We will give new powers to the Pensions Regulator and the Financial Conduct Authority to ensure better value from defined contribution schemes by judging performance on overall returns, not cost.
We will make sure that there are vehicles to make it easier for pension funds to invest in UK growth opportunities, so I am today publishing the names of the winners of the LIFTS—long-term investment for technology and science—competition. But I remain concerned that other markets, such as Australia, generate better returns for pension savers, with more effective investment strategies and more investment in high-quality domestic growth stocks. So I will introduce new requirements for defined-contribution and local government pension funds to disclose publicly their level of international and UK equity investments. I will then consider what further action should be taken if we are not on a positive trajectory towards international best practice.
I also want to create opportunities for a new generation of retail investors to engage with public markets, so we will proceed with a retail sale for part of the Government’s remaining NatWest shares this summer, at the earliest opportunity, subject to supportive market conditions and value for money. We will continue to explore how savers could be allowed to take their pension pots with them when they change job. We will make it easier for people to save for the long term with a new British savings bond, delivered through National Savings and Investments, offering savers a guaranteed rate, fixed for three years.
Today, following calls from over 200 representatives of the City and our high-growth sectors, I will reform the ISA system to encourage more people to invest in UK assets. After a consultation on its implementation, I will introduce a brand-new British ISA, which will allow an additional £5,000 annual investment for investments in UK equity, with all the tax advantages of other ISAs. That will be on top of existing ISA allowances and will ensure that British savers can benefit from the growth of the most promising UK businesses, as well as supporting those businesses with the capital to expand.
I now turn to our other growth industries, starting with clean energy. We want nuclear to provide up to a quarter of our electricity by 2050. As part of that, I want the UK to lead the global race in developing cutting-edge nuclear technologies. I can therefore announce that Great British Nuclear will begin the next phase of the small modular reactor selection process, with companies now having until June to submit their initial tender responses. Our brilliant Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero will also allocate up to £120 million more to the green industries growth accelerator, to build supply chains for new technology, ranging from offshore wind to carbon capture and storage. By January next year, as promised in the autumn statement, we will have a new, faster connections process to the grid up and running. In advanced manufacturing we have announced a further £270 million of investment into innovative new automotive and aerospace research and development projects, building the UK’s capabilities in zero-emission vehicle and clean aviation technologies.
I now turn to our creative industries. We have become Europe’s largest film and TV production centre, with Idris Elba, Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom all filming their latest productions here. Studio space in the UK has doubled over the last three years and, at the current rate of expansion, next year we will be second only to Hollywood globally. In the autumn statement I committed to providing more tax relief for visual effects in film and high-end TV. I can today confirm that we will increase the rate of tax credit by 5%, and remove the 80% cap for visual effects costs in the audio-visual expenditure credit. Having worked closely with the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, and listened carefully to representations from companies such as Pinewood, Warner Bros. and Sky Studios, we will provide eligible film studios in England with a 40% relief on their gross business rates until 2034. Having heard representations from the British film industry, Pact, and indeed the Prime Minister, we will introduce a new tax credit for UK independent films with a budget of less than £15 million. For our creative industries more broadly, we will provide £26 million of funding to our pre-eminent theatre, the National Theatre, to upgrade its stages.
I particularly want to recognise the contribution of our creative industries and the tourism that comes from orchestras, museums, galleries and theatres. In the pandemic, we introduced higher 45% and 50% levels of tax relief, which were due to end in March 2025. They have been a lifeline for performing arts across the country. Today, in recognition of their vital importance to our national life, I can announce that I am making those tax reliefs permanent at 45% for touring and orchestral productions, and 40% for non-touring productions. Lord Lloyd Webber says that this will be a once-in-a-generation transformational change that will ensure Britain remains the global capital of creativity.
I suspect that the new theatre reliefs may be of particular interest to the shadow Chancellor, who seems to fancy her thespian skills when it comes to acting like a Tory. The trouble is that we all know how her show ends: higher taxes, like every Labour Government in history—[Interruption.] I am delighted that Labour Members are cheering the fact that Labour Governments always put up taxes. They are right!
I want to mention our life sciences sector, where we will support research by medical charities into diseases such as cancer, dementia and epilepsy with an additional £45 million, including £3 million for Cancer Research UK. But I have long believed that we should be manufacturing medicines as well as developing them, so I can today also announce a brand-new investment by one of our greatest life science companies, AstraZeneca, led by mon ami the irrepressible Sir Pascal Soriot. AstraZeneca made its covid vaccine available to developing countries at cost, as a result saving over 6 million lives. Today, because of the Government’s support for the life sciences sector, it has announced plans to invest £650 million in the UK to expand its footprint on the Cambridge biomedical campus, and fund the building of a vaccine manufacturing hub in Speke in Liverpool. That is more investment and better jobs in every corner of the country in a long-term Budget for growth from a Conservative Government.
One of the biggest barriers to investment is businesses not being able to hire the staff they need. The economy today has around 900,000 vacancies. It would be easy to fill them with higher migration, but with over 10 million adults of working age who are not in work, that would be economically and morally wrong. Those who can work should work, and I have tackled that issue in every Budget and autumn statement I have delivered. A year ago, I abolished the pensions lifetime allowance, which had pushed doctors and others to take early retirement. Ask any doctor what they think about Labour’s plans to bring it back and they will say, “Don’t go back to square one.” In the autumn, with the help of our superb Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, we announced the back to work plan, which will support 1 million adults with medical conditions and reduce the number of people assessed as not needing to work by two thirds.
A year ago, I also announced the biggest ever expansion of childcare—[Interruption.] Just listen. Extending the 30-hour free childcare offer to all children of working parents from nine months. [Interruption.] We have not had a childcare plan from Labour, so Opposition Members might want to listen to ours. Our plan will mean an extra 60,000 parents enter the workforce in the next four years—a tremendous achievement for the Education Secretary, who I think is doing an effing good job. Today, following representations from many people, including the CBI, I announce measures to support the childcare sector to make the new investments it now needs to make. I am guaranteeing the rates that will be paid to childcare providers to deliver our landmark offer for children over nine months old for the next two years. That is more people in work and more jobs, sticking to our plan in a long-term Budget for growth.
I now turn to public services. [Interruption.] I thought they were supposed to be interested in public services—[Interruption.] I can wait.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. A little bit of murmuring is normal, but I should not be able to hear what Members are saying over there. That is clearly out of order. Let us have some courtesy.
Jeremy Hunt
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Good public services need a strong economy to pay for them, but a strong economy also needs good public services. In 2010, schools in the UK were behind Germany, France and Sweden in the OECD’s PISA—programme for international student assessment—education rankings for reading and maths. Now, after Conservative reforms, we are ahead of them. Burglaries and violent crime have halved in the last 14 years after we invested in 20,000 more police officers. Our armed forces remain the most professional and best-funded in Europe, with defence spending already more than 2% of GDP. We are providing more military support to Ukraine than nearly any other country, and our spending will rise to 2.5% as soon as economic conditions allow. The NHS is still recovering from the pandemic but has 42,000 more doctors and 71,000 more nurses than it did under Labour—that is 250 more doctors and 400 more nurses for every single month that we have been in office.
Resources matter, of course, which is why, despite all the economic shocks we have faced, overall spending on public services has gone up since 2010—in the case of the NHS, by more than a third in real terms. Although spending has continued to rise every year, public sector productivity still remains below pre-pandemic levels by nearly 6%. This demonstrates that the way to improve public services is not always more money or more people; we also need to run them more efficiently. We need a more productive state, not a bigger state.
In autumn 2022, I set day-to-day spending to increase by 1% a year in real terms over the next Parliament. Some say that is not enough and we should raise spending by more, and others say it is too much and we should cut it to improve efficiency—neither are right. It is not fair to ask taxpayers to pay for more when public service productivity has fallen; nor would it be wise to reduce that funding, given the pressures that public services face. So I am keeping the planned growth in day-to-day spending at 1% in real terms, but we are going to spend it better. [Interruption.] The Opposition do not have a plan for public services, as with everything else, so why not listen to ours?
Today I am announcing a landmark public sector productivity plan that restarts public service reform and changes the Treasury’s traditional approach to public spending. I start with our biggest and most important public service: the NHS. One of my greatest privileges was to be Health Secretary. Thanks to the NHS, I have three gorgeous children, the oldest of whom has been patiently listening in the Gallery. The NHS is, rightly, the biggest reason most of us are proud to be British, but the systems that support its staff are often antiquated. Doctors, nurses and ward staff spend hours every day filling out forms when they could be looking after patients. [Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. I do not like to interrupt the Chancellor, but Mr Streeting, you are too close to me to be shouting that loudly. If you want to shout that loudly, you should go away and sit up there. I apologise for interrupting the Chancellor.
Jeremy Hunt
When patients do not show up or one member of a team is ill, operating theatres are left empty despite long waiting lists. When we published the NHS long-term workforce plan, I asked the NHS to put together a plan to transform its efficiency and productivity. I wanted better care for patients, more job satisfaction for staff and better value for taxpayers. Making changes on the scale we need is not cheap. The investment needed to modernise NHS IT systems so they are as good as the best in the world costs £3.4 billion, but it helps unlock £35 billion of savings—ten times that amount—so in today’s Budget for long-term growth, I have decided to fund the NHS productivity plan in full.
With that new investment, we will slash the 13 million hours lost by doctors and nurses every year to outdated IT systems. We will cut down and potentially halve form filling by doctors by using artificial intelligence. We will digitise operating theatre processes, allowing the same number of consultants to do an extra 200,000 operations a year. We will fund improvements to help doctors read MRI and CT scans more accurately and quickly, speeding up results for 130,000 patients every year and saving thousands of lives, something that I know would have delighted my brother Charlie, who I recently lost to cancer.
We will improve the NHS app so that it can be used to confirm and modify all appointments, reducing up to half a million missed appointments annually and improving patient choice. We will set up a new NHS staff app to make it easier to roster electronically and end the use of expensive off-framework agencies. As a result of this funding, all hospitals will use electronic patient records, making the NHS the largest digitally integrated healthcare system in the world. Today’s announcement doubles the amount the NHS is investing on digital transformation over three years.
On top of this longer-term transformation, we will also help the NHS meet pressures in the coming year with an additional £2.5 billion. That will allow the NHS to continue its focus on reducing waiting times and brings the total increase in NHS funding since the start of the Parliament to 13% in real terms. The NHS was there for us in the pandemic, and today with nearly £6 billion of additional funding, a Conservative Government are there for the NHS.
The head of the NHS, Amanda Pritchard today said that this investment shows that
“the government continues to back the NHS”.
She said that, as a result of the investment, the NHS can commit to delivering 1.9% annual productivity growth over the next Parliament, more than double the average productivity growth in public services between 2010 and 2019.
But today is not just about the NHS. I want this groundbreaking agreement with the NHS to be a model for all our public services. Across education, the police, the courts and local government, I want to see more efficient, better-value and higher-quality public services, so today I can announce that in the next spending review, the Treasury will do things differently. We will prioritise proposals that deliver annual savings within five years equivalent to the total cost of the investment required, and today we make a start with some excellent proposals.
Violence reduction units and hotspot policing have prevented an estimated 136,000 knife crimes and other violent offences, as well as over 3,000 hospital admissions. Every crime costs money, so we will provide £75 million to roll that model out in England and Wales. Police officers waste around eight hours a week on unnecessary admin. With higher productivity, we could free the equivalent of 20,000 police officers over a year. We will spend £230 million rolling out time-saving and money-saving technology that speeds up police response times by allowing people to report crimes by video call and, where appropriate, use drones as first responders.
Too many legal cases, particularly in family law, should never go to court, and it would cost us less if they did not, so we will spend £170 million to fund non-court resolution, reduce reoffending and digitise the court process. Too many children in care end up being looked after by unregistered providers that are much more expensive, so we will invest £165 million over the next four years to reduce that cost by increasing the capacity of the children’s homes estate.
Special educational need provision can be excellent when outsourced to independent sector schools, but also expensive, so we will invest £105 million over the next four years to build 15 new special free schools to create additional high-quality places and increase choice for parents. We will also put in place a plan to realise the tens of billions of savings recommended in an excellent speech by the head of the National Audit Office.
The OBR says that a 5% increase in public sector productivity would be the equivalent of about £20 billion in extra funding. With these plans, we can deliver that and more. If we ensure that they are cash-releasing savings, as we are committed to doing, it will be possible to live with more constrained spending growth without cutting services valued by the public. So with the energy and drive of my talented Chief Secretary to the Treasury, we launch our public sector productivity plan in today’s Budget for long-term growth: more investment, more jobs, better public services and—one more thing—lower taxes.
Keeping taxes down matters to Conservatives in a way that it never can for Labour. We believe that in a free society the money people earn does not belong to the Government; it belongs to them, and if we want to encourage hard work, we should let people keep as much of their own money as possible. Conservatives look around the world at economies in North America and Asia and notice that countries with lower taxes generally have higher growth. Economists argue about cause and correlation, but we know that lower-taxed economies have more energy, more dynamism and more innovation. We know that is Britain’s future, too.
Before I explain how we will bring down taxes, I will start with some measures to make our system simpler and fairer. To discourage non-smokers from taking up vaping, we are today confirming the introduction of an excise duty on vaping products from October 2026 and publishing a consultation on its design. Because vapes can also play a positive role in helping people quit smoking, we will introduce a one-off increase in tobacco duty at the same time to maintain the financial incentive to choose vaping over smoking. I will make a one-off adjustment to rates of air passenger duty on non-economy flights only to account for high inflation in recent years, and I will provide HMRC with the resources it needs to ensure that everyone pays the tax they owe, leading to an increase in revenue collected of over £4.5 billion across the forecast period.
Next, I turn to property taxation. In recent months, following tenacious representation from my hon. Friends the Members for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double), for North Devon (Selaine Saxby), for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken), for Torbay (Kevin Foster) and for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory), I have been looking closely at our furnished holiday lettings tax regime. I am concerned that that regime is creating a distortion meaning that not enough properties are available for long-term rental by local people. So to make the tax system work better for local communities, I am going to abolish the furnished holiday lettings regime.
I have also been looking at the stamp duty relief for people who purchase more than one dwelling in a single transaction, known as multiple dwellings relief. I see the deputy leader of the Labour party, the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), paying close attention, given her multiple dwellings—[Interruption.] She—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. Too much excitement. We have not actually heard—because we cannot hear—what the Chancellor is trying to say. [Interruption.] Okay, I can hear who is shouting, and they will not get to speak later.
Jeremy Hunt
I am sorry to disappoint the right hon. Member, but multiple dwellings relief was not actually designed for her; it was intended—[Interruption.]. It was intended to support investment in the private rented sector, but an external evaluation found no strong evidence that it had done so, and that it was being regularly abused, so I am going to abolish it.
Finally, as part of our look at property taxation in this Budget, both the Treasury and the OBR have looked at the costs associated with our current levels of capital gains tax on property and concluded that if we reduced the higher 28% rate that exists for residential property, we would in fact increase revenues because there would be more transactions. For the first time in history, both the Treasury and the OBR have discovered their inner Laffer curve. So today I will reduce the higher rate of property capital gains tax from 28% to 24%—that really is for you, Angela. [Laughter.] I now—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. I have had enough from Opposition Members and I am definitely not having it from Government Members.
Jeremy Hunt
I now turn to oil and gas. Unlike the Labour party, we want to encourage investment in the North sea, so we will retain generous investment allowances for the sector. Following representations from my hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan (David Duguid), we will also legislate in the Finance Bill to abolish the energy profits levy should market prices fall to their historical norm for a sustained period of time. But because the increase in energy prices caused by the Ukraine war is expected to last longer, so too will the sector’s windfall profits, so I will extend the sunset on the energy profits levy for an additional year to 2029, raising £1.5 billion.
Next, I turn to the taxes paid by those who are resident in the UK but not domiciled here for tax purposes. [Hon. Members: “Ah!”] This is a category of people known as non-doms. Nigel Lawson wanted to end the non-dom regime in his great tax reforming Budget of 1988, which is where I suspect the Labour party got the idea from. I, too, have always believed that provided we protect the UK’s attractiveness to international investors, those with the broadest shoulders should pay their fair share. After looking at the issue over many months, I have concluded that we can indeed introduce a system that both is fairer and remains competitive with other countries, so the Government will abolish the current tax system for non-doms, get rid of the outdated concept of domicile—[Interruption.] I aim to please all parts of the House in all my Budgets. We will replace—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. This is impossible. [Interruption.] Order. Could you please shout more quietly? [Laughter.]
Jeremy Hunt
We will replace the non-dom regime with a modern, simpler and fairer residency-based system. From April 2025, new arrivals to the UK will not be required to pay any tax on foreign income and gains for their first four years of UK residency: a more generous regime than at present, and one of the most attractive offers in Europe. But, after four years, those who continue to live in the UK will pay the same tax as other UK residents. Recognising the contribution of many of these individuals to our economy, we will put in place transitional arrangements for those benefiting from the current regime. That will include a two-year period in which individuals will be encouraged to bring wealth earned overseas to the UK, so it can be spent and invested here—a measure that will attract onshore an additional £15 billion of foreign income and generate more than £1 billion of extra tax.
Overall, abolishing non-dom status will raise £2.7 billion a year by the end of the forecast period. The Opposition planned to use that money for spending increases, but today a Conservative Government make a different choice. We use that revenue to help cut taxes on working families. Many of those families depend on child benefit, but the way that we treat child benefit in the tax system is confusing and unfair. It is a lifeline for many parents because it helps with the additional costs associated with having children. When it works, it is good for children, good for parents, and good for the economy because it helps people into work.
We currently withdraw child benefit when one parent earns over £50,000 a year. That means that two parents earning £49,000 a year receive the benefit in full, but a household earning a lot less than that does not if just one parent earns over £50,000. Today I set out plans to end that unfairness. Doing so requires significant reform to the tax system, including allowing HMRC to collect household-level information. We will therefore consult on moving the high-income child benefit charge to a household-based system, to be introduced by April 2026. But because that is not a quick fix, I make two changes today to make the current system fairer.
Following representations from my hon. Friends the Members for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates), for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn), for Bassetlaw (Brendan Clarke-Smith) and for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin), along with many others, I confirm that from this April, the high-income child benefit charge threshold will be raised from £50,000 to £60,000. We will raise the top of the taper at which it is withdrawn to £80,000. That means that no one earning under £60,000 will pay the charge, taking 170,000 families out of paying it altogether. Because of the higher taper and threshold, nearly half a million families with children will save an average of £1,300 next year. According to the OBR, this change will see an increase in hours among those already working to the equivalent of 10,000 more people entering the workforce. More investment, more jobs, better public services and lower tax.
There is one further set of changes that I want to make today. The way we tax people’s income is particularly unfair. Those who get their income from having a job pay two types of tax: national insurance contributions and income tax. Those who get it from other sources pay only one. This double taxation of work is unfair. The result is a complicated system that penalises work instead of encouraging it. If we are to build a high-wage, high-skill economy not dependent on migration and to encourage people not in work to come back to work, we need a simpler, fairer tax system that makes work pay. That is why I cut national insurance contributions in the autumn. By reducing the penalty on work, the OBR said that that tax cut would lead to the equivalent of 94,000 more people in work. In other words, it would fill more than one in 10 vacancies throughout the economy. Lower taxes, more jobs and higher growth.
Today, because of the progress that we have made in bringing down inflation, because of the additional investment flowing into the economy, because we have a plan for better and more efficient public services, and because we have asked those with the broadest shoulders to pay a bit more—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. Mr Perkins—[Interruption.] I can manage, thank you very much. I have heard you five times. I have let you get away with it, but that is enough. One more strike and you’re out.
Jeremy Hunt
I know how hard it is for the Opposition to listen to arguments for lower taxes. That is the difference.
Because we have asked those with the broadest shoulders to pay a bit more, today I go further. From 6 April, employee national insurance will be cut by another 2p, from 10% to 8%, and self-employed national insurance will be cut from 8% to 6%. That means an additional £450 a year for the average employee, or £350 for someone who is self-employed. When combined with the autumn reductions, it means 27 million employees will get an average tax cut of £900 a year, and 2 million of the self-employed will get a tax cut averaging £650. Those changes will make our system simpler and fairer, and will grow our economy by rewarding work. The OBR says that, when combined with the autumn reduction, our national insurance cuts will mean the equivalent of 200,000 more people in work—filling one in five vacancies, and adding 0.4% to GDP and 0.4% to GDP per head.
This is the second fiscal event in which we have reduced employee and self-employed national insurance. We have cut it by one third in six months without increasing borrowing and without cutting spending on public services. That means that the average earner in the UK now has the lowest effective personal tax rate since 1975. Their effective taxes are now lower than in America, France, Germany or any G7 country. Because Conservatives believe that making work pay is of the most fundamental importance, and because we believe that the double taxation of work is unfair, our long-term ambition is to end this unfairness. When it is responsible, when it can be achieved without increasing borrowing and when it can be delivered without compromising high-quality public services, we will continue to cut national insurance as we have done today, so that we truly make work pay.
We stick to our plan with a Budget for long-term growth. It delivers more investment, more jobs, better public services and lower taxes. However, dynamism in an economy does not come from Ministers in Whitehall but from the grit and determination of people who take risks, work hard and innovate—not Government policies but people power. It is to unleash people power that today we put this country back on a path to lower taxes: a plan to grow the economy versus no plan; a plan for better public services versus no plan; a plan to make work pay versus no plan. Growth up, jobs up and taxes down. I commend this statement to the House.
Provisional Collection of Taxes
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 51(2)),
That, pursuant to section 5 of the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act 1968, provisional statutory effect shall be given to the following motions:—
(a) Stamp duty land tax (first-time buyers’ relief: new leases acquired on bare trust) (motion no. 8);
(b) Stamp duty land tax (registered providers of social housing) (motion no. 9);
(c) Stamp duty land tax (purchases by public bodies) (motion no. 10);
(d) Value added tax (late payment interest and repayment interest) (motion no. 22).—(Jeremy Hunt.)
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
As many as are of that opinion say Aye—[Hon. Members: “Aye!”] Of the contrary, No—[Hon. Members: “No!”] [Interruption.] Order. Let me explain, for the clarification of the House, that the Question on the provisional collection of taxes is asked at this stage. All Members will have the opportunity, having heard the debate in detail, to vote on each of the motions on Tuesday 12 March, at the end of the Budget debate. I would hesitate to call a Division at this point, when the House and the world is awaiting the response from the Leader of the Opposition. [Interruption.]
I will put the Question again, and if it is very clear to me that there are more Ayes than Noes, I will take the decision on the voices. The Question is—
Oral Answers to Questions
Jeremy Hunt Excerpts(9 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Mrs Flick Drummond (Meon Valley) (Con)
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Jeremy Hunt)
Mr Speaker, may I add my comments to yours yesterday about His Majesty the King? I wish him and his family well, as well as saluting his courage in being so open about his condition.
At the autumn statement last year, I announced an ambitious growth package, which will boost business investment by about £20 billion a year. We are making full expensing permanent, which the CBI welcomed as a game changer that will fire up the British economy.
Mrs Drummond
I also welcome those measures. Business rates are among the biggest issues for small businesses in Meon Valley, so I welcome the Chancellor’s £4.6 billion package of support in the autumn statement. However, following covid, there are a number of empty offices where landlords are still having to pay business rates. Does the Chancellor have any measures to support those who are struggling with a lack of income to pay business rates?
Jeremy Hunt
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight the pressures caused by business rates. That was why in the autumn statement we introduced the 75% discount for retail, hospitality and leisure. All I would say is that the reason we were able to introduce those large cuts in business rates was that we did not embark on a spending spree of £28 billion a year, which is Labour’s policy on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, but not apparently on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
I will try to be nice to the Chancellor, but he seems to be living in a parallel universe. If he came to Huddersfield and talked to my businesses and manufacturers, he would find them at the lowest ebb that I can ever remember. It is time that the stimulus was there to make people invest and create jobs. Get on with it, Chancellor!
Jeremy Hunt
If that was being nice, I am relieved that I have not seen the other type of questions that the hon. Member asks. I agree that manufacturing is central to our economic fortunes, which is why it was good news that last year we overtook France to become the eighth-largest manufacturer in the world. But we have gone even further: in the autumn statement, we announced a £4.5 billion manufacturing strategy to give further support to make our manufacturers the best in the world.
Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)
Yesterday, we had the pleasure of discussing the very many benefits from the autumn statement, including research and development grants and simplification of the tax code. However, I wonder whether the Chancellor might go a little further and see whether cutting VAT for the tourism and hospitality sector, perhaps by 10% over five years, would be advisable to help the economy across the United Kingdom.
Jeremy Hunt
My hon. Friend is an assiduous supporter of the many pubs, restaurants and shops in Devon, and I commend him for that support. We will, of course, keep all those measures under review ahead of the Budget.
Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)
Hair salons are a vital mainstay of our high streets, but many employers are worried about the sustainability of their businesses; a huge issue is their tax bills, with VAT a significant concern, making further business investment very difficult. Cutting VAT to 10% would make an important difference to local businesses, high streets and apprentice training. Will the Chancellor look at doing that to support all our local economies?
Jeremy Hunt
I will always look at anything that helps businesses to grow and expand. I set up and ran my own business for 14 years. Can I gently say to the hon. Lady that it is slightly incongruous to argue for lower taxes when the SNP has given Scotland the highest taxes in the United Kingdom?
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Jeremy Hunt)
We announced 110 growth measures in the autumn statement. Taken together with the measures in the spring Budget, the independent Office for Budget Responsibility says that they will have the biggest impact on output that it has ever measured in a fiscal event, increasing GDP by 0.5% by 2028-29.
Christine Jardine
The UK economy is set for slower growth than previously thought. The International Monetary Fund predicts that next year we will have the second worst growth in the G7. In Scotland, the SNP has increased taxes, which we have heard about already, and Scots now face six bands. Stagnation there is even worse, and businesses and households in my constituency need reassurance. Will the Chancellor tell us what he will do to give confidence to people up and down the country that we will soon see economic growth?
Jeremy Hunt
May I gently correct the hon. Lady on the IMF? It said that over the next four years, UK growth will be higher than in Germany, France, Italy and Japan. I agree about SNP tax rises, but I point out that the Liberal Democrats have some tax rises of their own. They want to increase capital gains tax, which would be incredibly damaging for Scotland’s financial services industry, which employs thousands of people.
Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)
Has the Chancellor had the opportunity to look at the New Conservatives’ budget proposal, a budget for families? It has a six-point plan, with two points to help unlock growth, particularly for the many small, family-run businesses in places such as Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke. Those plans to increase the VAT registration threshold to £250,000 and to abolish the IR35 reforms would surely help us unlock the growth of our great nation.
Jeremy Hunt
I have been talking with my hon. Friend about these issues recently. In fact, we were discussing increasing the VAT threshold only last night—such are the interesting evenings I have in this job! We will look seriously and carefully at any measures that help small businesses. They are the lifeblood of the country.
Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)
Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Jeremy Hunt)
Removing the bankers’ bonus cap was a decision made by the independent Prudential Regulation Authority, which has long said that the cap was completely ineffective; it did not limit pay or make banks safer.
Sam Tarry
The cap on bankers’ bonuses might have been a great newspaper headline, but it did little to tackle the City’s excesses. Financial institutions quickly changed remuneration packages and structures so that risk takers still receive substantial pay-offs, sometimes even taking them through offshore mechanisms. Does the Chancellor agree that what we need is enhanced regulation to mitigate excessive risk taking in the square mile? That could require, beyond merely capping bonuses, a move toward an alignment of interests focused on the form of bonus payments, share allocations and deferred amounts, and robust clawback mechanisms for those who have behaved maliciously, in order to deter misconduct in the square mile more effectively?
Jeremy Hunt
I suspect that when the hon. Gentleman tabled his question, he was not expecting that the biggest supporter of abolishing the bankers’ bonus cap was not the Chancellor but the shadow Chancellor. I hear what he says, and indeed those are some of the reasons we abolished it, because it was not working. If Labour is going to change its mind on that policy, may I ask—just to take a totally random example—when will it change its mind about the planned £28 billion of additional borrowing?
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Jeremy Hunt)
I would like to update the House on a couple of data releases published since our last oral questions. Total greenfield foreign direct investment since 2010 has not just been higher than that of France, Germany and Italy, but in the past two years has overtaken that of China to be the second highest in the world. Yesterday’s labour force survey said that unemployment fell to a quarterly average of 3.9%, meaning that unemployment has halved and Conservative Governments have overseen the creation of more than 800 jobs every day since 2010.
Theresa Villiers
Can the Treasury find funds for an increased pay offer for junior doctors? I completely agree that we must safeguard the public finances and have regard to affordability, but if ever a group deserved a pay rise, it is junior doctors, and we need to get the dispute settled.
Jeremy Hunt
As my right hon. Friend knows, as Health Secretary I campaigned for extra money for the NHS to make sure that we could pay NHS staff fairly, but I do believe that junior doctors have had a very fair offer—one that is higher than was recommended by the independent pay review body and is about double the rate of this year’s predicted inflation. I know that the Health Secretary is willing to talk about anything else that could help make their working conditions better.
Rachel Reeves (Leeds West) (Lab)
Last week, at Prime Minister’s questions, when asked about the Tory mortgage penalty, the Prime Minister boasted that someone coming off a fixed-rate mortgage
“will be able to save hundreds of pounds.”—[Official Report, 31 January 2024; Vol. 744, c. 857.]
But the small print was that they had to add many years to their mortgage. Three million people have been coming off fixed-rate mortgage deals this year and last, so does the Chancellor agree with the Prime Minister that British homeowners have never had it so good?
Jeremy Hunt
The way we are helping families with mortgages is not just through the mortgage charter, which is a lifeline to many families, but by bringing down inflation. We have been having a few pops about Labour’s confusion about its £28 billion policy, but the real reason we are against it is that going on a borrowing splurge pushes up inflation, pushes up interest rates and makes mortgages more expensive.
Rachel Reeves
It is under a Conservative Government that interest rates, inflation and mortgage costs have gone up. The Government need to take responsibility because, after 14 years, this out-of-touch Government are making it harder for ordinary people to get on. If the Chancellor decides to campaign in next week’s by-elections, what will he say to the 3,100 people in Wellingborough who are remortgaging and paying £210 more on their mortgages every month, and to the 2,800 people in Kingswood paying £270 more a month because of the Conservative mortgage penalty?
Jeremy Hunt
What I will say to them is that responsible, difficult decisions, the vast majority of which the shadow Chancellor opposed, have seen the inflation rate more than halve and interest rates likely to have peaked. Last year, we built more houses in one year than in any single year under the previous Labour Government. We are doing everything we can to help bring down mortgage rates, but a £28 billion borrowing spree will make them worse not better.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
Jeremy Hunt
I am sure the hon. Lady understands that I cannot talk about what will be in the Budget ahead of the Budget because no decisions have been made. I celebrate with her that the UK recently became the first major economy in the world to decarbonise by more than 50%, ahead of France, Germany, Japan and the United States.
Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
If the Chancellor had an ambition to spend an additional £28 billion a year on something, will he explain to the House what level of tax that would impose on ordinary households?
Jeremy Hunt
I thank my hon. Friend for asking that question. I am curious to know where that figure of £28 billion has come from, but as she has asked the question, I will tell her that, if we were to stick to the fiscal rules, as the Labour party claims it will do, to increase spending by £28 billion would mean increasing income tax by 4% or increasing corporation tax, which Labour says it will cap, by 8%.
Kenny MacAskill (East Lothian) (Alba)
Sir Sajid Javid (Bromsgrove) (Con)
The Chancellor will be aware of a proposal from the World War Muslim Memorial Trust to establish a memorial at the National Memorial Arboretum, honouring an estimated 750,000 Muslims who have fought for the British armed forces, with tens of thousands of them paying the ultimate sacrifice. Previous Budgets have supported memorials that honour those who have given us the freedoms that we enjoy. May I ask the Chancellor to personally consider this proposal and help make it a reality?
Jeremy Hunt
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right: we must remember and honour the sacrifices made by those of all nationalities and religions who fought for our freedom, including, I believe, nearly 150,000 Muslims who died in the second world war. My officials would be happy to engage with him to identify how best the Government can help make this vision a reality.
Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
My right hon. Friend and his colleagues will be aware of the challenges that businesses and households face in coastal communities. As the Budget approaches, may I urge him to be ever mindful of how we maintain the vitality of the economies in our coastal areas?
Jeremy Hunt
I absolutely will; that is a core part of the levelling-up agenda, and my hon. Friend will be pleased to know that, since we started on that agenda, two thirds of all new jobs created have been outside London and the south-east. We will continue to look at any proposals he may have in that respect.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)
Regardless of what the Chancellor tells us, the reality remains that people in Bradford are worse off after 14 years of this Government. Healthcare, GPs and dentists are less accessible, homes are more expensive, colder and riddled with mould, jobs are less secure and badly paid, with stagnating wages, and household savings have been wiped out by rising food, water, energy and fuel bills. Ahead of the last Budget he will deliver before the general election, will the Chancellor apologise for 14 years of disaster that have devastated our communities?
Jeremy Hunt
Let me tell the hon. Gentleman some positive messages he can take home to his constituents in Bradford: violent crime and burglaries have been halved, school standards are up, the NHS has more doctors and nurses than ever in history and real after-tax income for people on the minimum wage or national living wage is up by 30% if they are working full time.
Peter Gibson (Darlington) (Con)
Can my hon. Friend tell me how many staff are now employed across the eight Departments based at the Darlington Economic Campus? What progress is being made on naming the new building “William McMullen House”?
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
The Chancellor knows jolly well that in April 2023 Sir Brian Langstaff made his final recommendations on compensation for those infected and affected by the contaminated blood scandal. The Chancellor also gave evidence in July to Sir Brian and said that work was under way. In December, this House voted for a compensation body to be set up. I would like the Chancellor to answer my question, please, not a junior Minister, and explain exactly what is going on in the Treasury, what work is being undertaken and whether there will be an announcement in the Budget.
Jeremy Hunt
With great respect to the right hon. Lady, who has campaigned formidably on this issue, I do not think she is giving a fair representation of what the Government have done. I stand by every word I said as a Back Bencher, and as Chancellor I have tried to do everything I can to speed the process up. She has not mentioned that the Government have already given £100,000 to the families affected. We have accepted the moral importance of the duty to give compensation, and we will now work with colleagues in the other place to make her amendment workable.
Oral Answers to Questions
Jeremy Hunt Excerpts(11 months, 1 week ago)
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Virginia Crosbie (Ynys Môn) (Con)
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Jeremy Hunt)
Merry 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.
Virginia Crosbie
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?
Jeremy Hunt
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.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Reclaim)
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?
Jeremy Hunt
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.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Jeremy Hunt)
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.
Mr French
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?
Jeremy Hunt
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.
Caroline Ansell
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.
Jeremy Hunt
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.
Wendy Morton
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?
Jeremy Hunt
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.
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
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?
Jeremy Hunt
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.
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
May I ask the Chancellor how many middle-income taxpayers have been paying the higher rate of tax since 2019?
Jeremy Hunt
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.
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
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?
Jeremy Hunt
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.
Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)
Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (Con)
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Jeremy Hunt)
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?
Dr Cameron
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?
Jeremy Hunt
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.
Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)
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?
Jeremy Hunt
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.
Darren Jones
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?
Jeremy Hunt
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.
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
Sir Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
Jeremy Hunt
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.
Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)
Jeremy Hunt
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.
Mr Rob Roberts (Delyn) (Ind)
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
Jeremy Hunt
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.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
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?
Mr Speaker
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?
Jeremy Hunt
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.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
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?
Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)
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?
Jeremy Hunt
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.
Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)
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?
Jeremy Hunt
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.
Peter Gibson (Darlington) (Con)
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?
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
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?
Jeremy Hunt
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.