Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Patrick Grady

Tuesday 19th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[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.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Patrick Grady

Tuesday 14th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

20. What recent assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of trends in the level of food inflation.

[The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Jeremy Hunt)]

UK food inflation has been driven largely by global factors and has already fallen from 19.6% to 12.3%, and external forecasts expect it to continue to fall.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Hunt]

The lesson I have learned is straightforward: if we had not reduced the deficit by 80% between 2010 and the start of the pandemic, we would not have been able to help families across the United Kingdom with payments of more than £3,000, on average, including 700,000 households in Scotland and more than 1 million pensioners.

[Patrick Grady]

Even if the inflation rate is falling, food prices are still going up considerably. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation reckons that they have gone up at least twice as fast as the value of benefits since September 2021. At the very least, can the Chancellor commit to ensuring that the Department for Work and Pensions has enough resource to raise benefits at least in line with September’s inflation rate?

[Jeremy Hunt]

The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is doing his review at the moment to decide the correct amount by which to uprate benefits. If the hon. Gentleman looks at this Government’s record, he will see that we took the decision a year ago to uprate benefits by inflation, and we committed to £94 billion of measures to help families get through the cost of living crisis.

Autumn Statement

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Patrick Grady

Thursday 17th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Hunt]

We are reducing the bank surcharge because we are increasing corporation tax from 19% to 25%, so banks are contributing to our having more money for the NHS and schools in the hon. Lady’s constituency.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (Ind)]

Where in the Chancellor’s statement is support for low-paid freelance and self-employed people, particularly those in the arts and creative sectors? Do not difficult times call for innovative solutions, such as the basic income guarantee for artists that is currently being piloted by the Republic of Ireland—which, incidentally, is a small independent member of the European Union?

[Jeremy Hunt]

We have announced a lot of measures to help people on low incomes. Anyone in receipt of means- tested benefits will receive £900 to help them with the cost of living, along with the inflation-linked uplift in universal credit, which is about £600, and about £500 to help them with their heating costs next year, at today’s prices. So there is a lot of help. However, if the hon. Gentleman is saying we should do more to support the creative industries which are so important to this country, I absolutely agree. I used to be the Culture Secretary, and I will do everything I can as Chancellor.

Economic Update

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Patrick Grady

Monday 17th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Hunt]

I do accept that, and I think compassion and fairness are two sides of the same coin. I have told the right hon. Gentleman that while I cannot give the answers to any of these decisions, it will be through those prisms that we make those very difficult choices.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (Ind)]

How will the concerns and experiences of the nations and regions of the United Kingdom be represented on the Chancellor’s new advisory panel? What, if any, are the Barnett consequentials of today’s announcement for the devolved Administrations’ budgets?

NHS Funding Bill

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Patrick Grady

Legislative Grand Committee & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Legislative Grand Committee: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & 3rd reading & Programme motion
Tuesday 4th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

The third final point.

[Jeremy Hunt]

It was always the final point, and it is very much the final point.

The other area that is essential for capacity is the social care system. My hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds) talked about how money can be wasted. One of the biggest wastes of money is that we pay for people to be in hospital beds, which cost three times as much as care home beds, because we do not have the capacity in the social care system. It is very important that we encourage people to save for the future and protect people against losing their homes, but if we want to see a change in the NHS in the next five years it is fundamental that we increase the ability of local authorities to deliver adult social care to people who cannot afford it. At the moment, they do not have enough to do that, and we must put that right.

[Patrick Grady]

Finally, here we are, in the English Parliament after all these years. Isn’t it great? The Mace is down, the signs are up, and the dream of David Cameron has finally been realised. For the first time since 1707, English Members of Parliament will get to vote on English legislation to the active exclusion of the rest of us. I wonder if the Minister could have even dreamed, when he and I were but lowly Back-Bench members of the Procedure Committee back in 2015 and scrutinising the EVEL processes, that this is where we would end up today.

On 19 September 2014 David Cameron promised, in response to the independence referendum in Scotland, that we would have English votes for English laws. Three general elections, two Prime Ministers and countless Leaders of the House later, here it is in all its glory. I wonder, given the responses and speeches that we have heard today, whether anyone on the Government Benches really understands what is going on. We are debating clauses and amendments to a Bill that has been certified as being only relevant to England, but as the amendment themselves demonstrate, and as we have heard in speeches, it will have implications for health spending policy across the whole of the United Kingdom—and very serious issues, too—for mental health, for the construction of hospitals, and for the difference between capital and revenue spending on the NHS.