Income Tax (Charge)

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Thursday 28th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

That is a very good intervention. Labour Front Benchers were urging that £170 million from the UK taxpayer be given to a business that we now know has been recapitalised, has money from private creditors and is still operating. It would have been a disaster to sign away £170 million directly in the way they urged.

In conclusion, the Budget is a blueprint for a stronger Britain: a country where those with innovative ideas will get the support they need to turn them from dream to reality; a country where those whose talent is nurtured and whose skills are honed will get support, ongoing interest and strong engagement from the Government; a country where those who do an honest day’s work will receive a decent wage. We have every right to be confident about our future. We have listened to the litany of woe and despair for too long and, as my right hon. Friend the Chancellor said yesterday, we are optimistic and excited about the future of our country. Only a week ago at the global investment summit, people from across the world were desperate to invest in the UK; they believe in their bones that the UK is a great place to do business.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) and I hope to have a meeting with you shortly on hydrogen and how it can be used to advance this great United Kingdom. Can you confirm exactly how it will benefit every part of Great Britain and Northern Ireland?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I remind the hon. Gentleman that he cannot address the Minister as “Minister”; he has to address him as “the right hon. Gentleman” or say “would the Minister?”, because when he says “Minister” that is second person, vocative case. He cannot say “Minister.” Other Members might know that the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and I have been having this conversation now for several years and it is my ambition that he will get it right, and one day he will.

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[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) on a powerful and excellent speech. As a representative of a coalfield area myself, in County Durham, I express my solidarity with colleagues from Wales who have raised the issue of unsafe coal tips and the need for funding. It is poignant that my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd mentioned the terrible disaster at Aberfan. I know that it touched many hearts throughout the nation, including that of our sovereign. It was the most appalling tragedy. We must never, ever forget the debt of honour that the nation owes the coalminers and their families and communities. Although it is not the focus of my speech, I am also disappointed by the failure of the Chancellor to address the historic injustice of the mineworkers’ pension scheme. It is not a case of demanding more public money, as the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Dr Mullan), who is no longer in his place, claimed. This is the miners’ own money. That this historical injustice has not been addressed cuts to the quick those of us with mining connections.

The broad theme of this debate is people in businesses. I will confine my remarks essentially to cancer, which is the most dreadful business. I know that the Treasury Bench is populated by Ministers with a background in science, innovation and workforce skills, and I hope they will relay my comments to their colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care. I declare an interest as vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary groups on cancer and on radiotherapy. Access to cancer services is an issue that has touched me personally and about which I care passionately. About 50% of us will suffer and battle against cancer at some point in our lives.

A week ago, I joined my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi), my right hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami), and, from the other place, Baron Fox of Leominster, and representatives from national cancer charities, cancer survivors and the cancer workforce, to deliver a petition and a letter to No. 10 Downing Street. The petition was signed by over 53,000 people. The letter, sent on behalf of a coalition of national cancer charities, patient advocacy groups, 64 MPs of all parties, peers and APPG chairs, called on the Government to invest urgently in our vital cancer workforce ahead of the Budget. A few months earlier, just before the recess, I presented to Downing Street a petition set up by Catchup With Cancer which was signed by over 370,000 people. That campaign was launched in conjunction with Craig and Mandy Russell, to whom I pay tribute. Tragically, they lost their daughter to bowel cancer at the age of just 31. Her life expectancy was drastically cut short after her cancer treatment was stopped as a direct result of the covid-19 response.

Even before the pandemic, at 62 days, we had the worst cancer waiting times on record and worrying variations in cancer services across the United Kingdom. The pandemic has not just laid bare the terrible strain on the cancer workforce, which has been happening for a number of years, but has driven cancer services to crisis point. It is reported that significant numbers of nurses are leaving or planning to leave our NHS following the pandemic. One in four NHS staff in England say they are now more likely to leave their job than was the case one year ago. In addition, long-standing unfilled vacancies and high staff absence and sickness levels continue to constrain cancer services. I am a great admirer of Professor Patricia Price, who appeared before the Health Committee earlier this week and spoke of

“the biggest cancer crisis in living memory”.

To give credit where it is due, the emphasis on cancer diagnostic services in the Budget is welcome. It matches the ambitions set out in the NHS long-term plan of diagnosing 75% of cancers at stage 1 or 2 by 2028. The projections are that 55,000 people each year will survive for five years or more following their earlier cancer diagnosis. However—I must regretfully, with due respect, take issue again with points raised by Conservative Members—we need greater clarity on exactly how the money is to be spent. Unless the boost in cancer diagnosis is matched by an equal boost in treatment services and investment in the workforce to deliver those services, they will continue to fall far short of the Government’s stated ambition. The future of the workforce is now the most significant threat facing the NHS today. We need investment in equipment needed for treatments such as advanced precision radiotherapy, which I have benefited from and which plays a vital role in cancer care and has continued to be the stand-out cancer treatment during the pandemic.

Make no mistake, the cancer backlog is a huge issue. Without a fully funded plan to increase the number of skilled staff and train the future cancer workforce, more patients will see their treatments unnecessarily delayed. Investment in cancer treatment services and the cancer workforce needs to be expanded to match investment in cancer diagnosis. The two are hand in —two wings of the same bird.

[Jim Shannon]

You need both wings to fly.

[Grahame Morris]

Precisely. We must ensure that people living with cancer get the support they need and deserve now and in the future.

The specifics are that according to the cancer charity Macmillan, we are 2,500 specialist cancer nurses short in England. Macmillan is urging the Government to take action and create a nurse cancer training fund, which could be set up with a modest investment of £124 million. That would train 3,300 specialist cancer nurses. When we think about the many billions spent on the test, track and trace system, the investment of a fraction of that sum in cancer treatment—modest as far as the budgets are concerned— would command majority support, not just on the Opposition Benches, but in the whole House and the country.

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[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

May I first say a big thank you to the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the Government for all the help that they gave us—I say “us”; that is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland—during the covid crisis? The moneys that have been spent are enormous—we know that—and they are the reason why many of the businesses in my constituency are here today. Help was given at the time that it was needed. This Budget follows that, and every one of us has to recognise what has happened before and what happens now.

I was thinking beforehand about how I would refer to the Budget and I was reminded of a saying that I have probably used before in this Chamber. The Budget is a bit of a curate’s egg: good in parts. I am a person who eats two eggs in the morning and two eggs at night, so I know how to eat me eggs. You have to eat the yolk and you have to eat the white as well, because they are both part of the egg. Now, what is the best of the egg? It is the yolk. I am going to speak about the best parts of the egg, but there are also parts of the egg we may not enjoy as much and we should recognise that. [Interruption.] I hear from a sedentary position, “Don’t eat the shell.” [Laughter.]

I chair the all-party parliamentary group on respiratory health, so I want to talk about some of the good things in relation to respiratory health. I was delighted to hear the announcement in the Budget that money has been set aside for community diagnostic centres. The Government announced that 40 new community diagnostic centres are set to open across England in a range of settings, from local shopping centres to football stadiums, to offer new and early diagnostic tests closer to patients’ homes. To roll out the strategy, the new centres will be backed by a £350 million investment and provide around 2.8 million scans in their first full year of operation. They are designed to assist with earlier diagnosis through faster and easier access to diagnostic tests for symptoms, including breathlessness, cancer and ophthalmology. The Chancellor also announced, through the health budget, additional moneys to tackle the backlog of diagnostic tests to deliver more checks, scans and treatment.

Those are some of the good things that have happened. The Government set a target of 100 centres across the whole of the United Kingdom, so I put on record my thanks to the Chancellor for making that very welcome announcement through the Department of Health and Social Care. I understand that each of the centres will include a multi-disciplinary team of staff, including nurses and radiographers, and will be open seven days a week. If those commitments are delivered—I hope they will be and I trust the Government to do that—we will have something we can be very thankful for. The all-party group warmly welcomes the creation of the centres and the funding allocated to them. I hope they can help to address the covid-imposed inequalities that we have seen across the country in asthma and lung cancer care and treatment. They should provide additional confidence to patients, and relieve pressures on the secondary and tertiary care appointments system. We also welcome the inclusion of breathlessness diagnostics in the centres. We think it is essential that the centres will be equipped to diagnose any cause of breathlessness, whether it is cardiovascular, lung cancer, asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. We have sent some questions directly to the relevant Health Minister to follow up on that.

The hon. Member for Ceredigion (Ben Lake) mentioned the need to retrofit homes. He is absolutely right. I am also the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for healthy homes and buildings. We need to address the efficiency of older homes, but every home across the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland will be targeted in this energy crisis. We need a better system of retrofitting homes, making them more efficient and addressing the energy crisis. I think we can do more. That is a part of the curate’s egg that has perhaps not been addressed and I hope the Minister, in summing up, can provide some kind of indication on that.

I very much welcome the Government’s innovation targets, which the Secretary of State referred to earlier. On green energy, I made a point about hydrogen. I will be meeting him shortly with my hon. Friend the Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley). We will put forward some ideas on hydrogen to create jobs and boost the economy, so we can look to the future. Again, those are some of the good things.

Many hon. Members mentioned air passenger duty and I have to say, with respect, that I do not agree with them. For those of us who live in Northern Ireland, I am very happy that the Chancellor announced a reduction in air passenger duty. I travel to work from Belfast to here, but it is not just me. On Monday, the plane was almost full, with very few seats left. Many of those people were also travelling to work. APD has been reduced, so there is an incentive for people in Belfast, Scotland and elsewhere in this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland—money in their pockets. The planes will fly anyway, whether there are 30 or 120 people on them.

The benefit from APD is for the regions of this United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and that is a method of levelling up that we can all take advantage of. We as a party have been asking, I believe, for three years for this APD measure to be brought in, so we are very pleased on behalf of our constituents and those who travel to work from Northern Ireland and to the United Kingdom. Here is something good for them.

I also welcome the £1.6 billion—my right hon. Friend the Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) referred to that yesterday—that has been set aside for Northern Ireland through the Barnett formula. These moneys will be vital for the Northern Ireland Assembly, for the working of the regional Administration and to help to address the issues, shortcomings and problems with health, education, roads, policing and so on. Again, the Government have been very generous and we are very pleased to be in receipt of that £1.6 billion; it is a real increase. There is also a real increase in expenditure, as my right hon. Friend said, and those are some of the things that we will wish to keep track of. I think there may be some other Barnett consequential money coming through the health budget that was announced, so we are very pleased.

The hon. Member for Ceredigion spoke about universal credit as well—it just so happens that he and I have similar thoughts on this matter—and I was disappointed that the £20 uplift has been removed. However, given what the Chancellor seemed to indicate yesterday—if I have read it right, and I have asked people in my constituency to look at the figures to see whether this is correct—if people can still be in receipt of universal credit and earn more, that will enable some, and I hope all, of my constituents to take advantage of universal credit and, at the same time, increase the hours that they are doing. The taper rate change seems to mean that people can earn more and still be in receipt of universal credit, if I have read that correctly. I will check it out, because that only became known yesterday, but I am, certainly initially, very pleased to see that in place.

On the curate’s egg, one thing that I am disappointed is missing, which is very important to my constituents, is an uplift in the child benefit cap for those working families who receive no Government help other than child benefit and whose children will receive no help for uniform, school meals, university fees or anything else. The fact is that they are living on less disposable income, with higher gas, car and electricity costs, and I am disappointed that the child benefit cap has remained for a further year. I say respectfully to the Ministers on the Front Bench—the Financial Secretary to the Treasury and the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith)—who I have the utmost respect for, that middle-class people will be squeezed. I have asked for an uplift in the child benefit cap. If that was part of the Budget, it would enable some middle-class people not to be squeezed as much, and if they were able to take advantage of that, it would definitely make a difference.

I have two grandchildren who were born during the covid lockdown, and five grandchildren in total. Many in this House have grandchildren and their own children. I believe that my covid lockdown grandchildren will be paying for this in their taxes until the end of their lives and probably until the end of their children’s lives, so I want to make sure that every penny is well spent. Although I welcome the large amount, I question the situation for middle-class families: I believe that more can and should be done to bring relief to working families who get no help other than child benefit. Their shopping costs have risen by 20% and their fuel costs have risen by 30%, yet they cannot take a pay rise of a couple of thousand pounds because they would lose a percentage of their child benefit. What they are given with one hand is taken away with the other. It would have been better to raise the child benefit cap to ensure that they, too, could get some advantage. They are no longer comfortable, but stretched: stretched in their precious time with their children, stretched in their finances, stretched in their energy. I fear that, at some stage, that stretch will lead to a break. I believe that we must do more to help them.

This is a curate’s egg Budget: good in parts. Let us enjoy the yolk and enjoy the white part; they are all good, but some parts are better than others.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

We will now start the wind-ups.