Budget Resolutions

John Hayes Excerpts

Thursday 27th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir Mel Stride]

The Minister says from a sedentary position that inflation is coming down. The International Monetary Fund says that inflation will be the highest in the G7 this year and next year.

We know that with high inflation, interest rates are higher for longer. That means businesses’ borrowing costs are higher. It means that consumer sentiment is dampened. It means that the servicing cost alone on the burgeoning debt that this Government are constantly adding to is currently £100 billion a year—twice what we spend on defence. In fact, if debt servicing were a Government Department, it would be the third largest in Whitehall—not spending money on better public services, as we are often told by the Labour party, but simply paying for the profligacy of the Labour party when it comes to borrowing.

The run-up to this Budget was a farce. We have seen weeks and weeks of uncertainty generated by the Treasury, which has leaked every possible combination of tax increases and then U-turned on some of them. It has flown so many kites that it has blotted out the sun, and a huge shadow has been cast across businesses, which have pressed pause on investment and hiring. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury should speak to Andy Haldane, who concludes that what I am saying is absolutely right. It has also weighed down on consumer sentiment. All this hokey-cokey around what is in the Budget has done real damage to our economy on this Government’s watch.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend did a service to the House a week or two ago when he drew what he is describing now to the attention of this Chamber. He told the Government that these leaks were not only doing damage to the economy, in the way he has just described, but were a discourtesy to this House. Many times, Madam Deputy Speaker, you and Mr Speaker have said that announcements should be made to this House first. It is fundamental to this place that what the Government announce is brought here for scrutiny, not the public realm.

[Sir Mel Stride]

My right hon. and gallant Friend is entirely right, as usual, and something else has also been going on. I have written to the OBR to ask Richard Hughes exactly what happened with the information that the Treasury appears to have leaked out about the forecasts during the run-up to the Budget. I say that in the knowledge that the OBR’s own guidance says that information exchanged with the Treasury during the build-up to a Budget is provided to Ministers in confidence. Why is it then that the Chancellor herself was on the airwaves before the Budget, opining on the apparent coming downgrade to productivity? I have written to the OBR to ask whether it feels that that was appropriate.

I have also written to the permanent secretary to the Treasury to ask if he is implementing an investigation into the leaks coming from the Treasury. Interestingly, he has written back to me simply to say that in the event that there are suspected leaks, of course there is an investigation. He has not quite answered my question as to whether there is an investigation being undertaken at the moment, but I will be following up with him on that matter.

What has happened in this Budget? The OBR forecasts tell a sorry story: unemployment is higher in every single year of the forecast than it was forecast to be back in the spring. Inflation is up—we have seen the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics. Labour is the party that talks about resolving poverty; it is a disgrace that food inflation in the last set of figures went up way above the headline rate, from 4.5% to 4.9%. That rise is being borne by some of the most vulnerable and some of the poorest in our society.

On growth, of course the Chancellor tells a good story. She says that the growth forecast is up compared with spring this year, but, as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury will know, it is down compared with the autumn of last year, when the OBR said that growth would be 2% in this year; it is now forecast to be 1.5%. In in every subsequent year, growth is forecast to be lower than was forecast back at the time of the spring statement. That is the simple fact.

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[Pat McFadden]

The hon. Gentleman should be supporting our changes because they have done two things: they are removing a number of luxury brands from the system and they are ensuring that more British-made cars are part of the scheme, and that will continue going forward.

By the end of the decade, we will have provided an additional £1 billion for employment support for the long-term sick and disabled through the pathways to work programme, so that people are not just signed off and written off—more reform that we are carrying out that the Conservative party did not. We are fixing the long-running injustice to carers that they ignored for years, which is more reform that we are carrying out that the Conservatives did not. There is more reform in this Budget than the shadow Chancellor implemented in his 20 months as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

But I know that we have to go further, because the greatest crisis is among the young. We inherited a situation with close to a million people not in employment, education or training. That is terrible in human terms, expensive in financial terms and deeply unequal, because the numbers are often highest in the most deprived parts of the country. Those are often places where there are already multiple problems and where the loss of hope seems the deepest. Addressing this problem is a cause around which we should rally. That is why in this Budget we offer a youth guarantee, with £820 million of investment, that will offer the young unemployed a training place, work experience or ultimately a job, giving hope and opportunity where previously there was none—more reform that we are carrying out that the Conservative party did not.

[Sir John Hayes]

I am very interested in that part of the Budget and I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for setting it out in more detail. One part of the youth guarantee is the boost for apprenticeships, particularly in small and medium-sized enterprises, but looking at the fine print, is that not already supplied by the apprenticeship levy? What small and medium-sized enterprises need, as I learned when I was the apprenticeships Minister, is some grant funding to get them started in the process. Does the Government have that in mind or is this simply a rehash of the apprenticeship levy?

[Pat McFadden]

I note the right hon. Gentleman’s request for more public expenditure and I am coming on to the growth and skills levy in a moment. What we will do with that is tilt it more towards young people and towards more short courses, and this Budget puts a further £725 million into that, which will enable the full funding of apprenticeships for the under 25s for small businesses. That is good for young people and good for employers. It is important, because no matter where they are from, what their background is or who their parents are, every young person should have the chance to make the most of their life. I want the country’s young people to know that through our youth guarantee, the apprenticeship support and the other measures outlined in the Budget and outside it, we will support them, we believe in them and we want them to succeed.

Even after that, I know that we need to go further, and that is why I have asked former Health Secretary Alan Milburn to report in the new year on the issues of young people, work and inactivity, looking across departmental boundaries and recommending policy responses that will offer young people more opportunity and a better chance in life.

After the Conservatives either neglected all that or opposed that which they did not neglect, what have they got left? Arguing that instead of our approach, people’s wages should be lower. We saw where that led during the last Parliament. The shadow Chancellor talked about living standards—during the last Parliament, living standards declined more than at any time in living memory. Now living standards are rising in this Parliament and wages have risen more in a matter of months than they did in 10 years when the shadow Chancellor’s party was in office.

As people sometimes remind me, I have been around for quite a while. I am proud to have served in the last Labour Government, which lifted 600,000 children out of poverty—and almost all the measures delivered were opposed by the Conservative party. In fact, the Conservatives’ record was a rise in child poverty of 900,000. Their argument was that the two-child limit would force people to make different choices about the number of children that they would have, but that is not what happened; it simply forced more children into poverty.

The real indictment goes deeper, because, as the right hon. Member for Central Devon knows, the two-child limit was not really a welfare policy at all. In the end, it was not even about saving the money. The truth is that it was about political dividing lines. It was a device used by the Conservative Government, in which children were the weapon of choice. That is what it was about, but not any more. Tackling child poverty is an investment in the future of those children and in the country, because children who do not grow up living in poverty will have a better life. This policy is not just about the distribution of money; it is an investment in opportunity. That is why the Chancellor announced the abolition of the two-child limit in the Budget. As my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley (Josh Fenton-Glynn) said, the clear majority of households that will gain from this measure already have someone in work. The policy will lift 450,000 children out of poverty, and that number will rise, thanks to other measures, such as the expansion of free school meals, help with energy bills, and the expansion of free childcare so that more parents can take up work.

This will be the largest reduction in child poverty over a Parliament since records began. As the Chancellor spelled out, it can be funded by a combination of tackling fraud and error in the system, the Motability and other changes, and the changes to online gambling taxation that she announced yesterday.

We understand that the health and welfare systems are deeply connected, so we will continue to get waiting lists down, and to treat more patients. We announced 250 new neighbourhood health centres in the Budget. Waiting lists and waiting times rocketed when the Conservatives were in office, and that was not just a health issue; it was an economic and benefits issue. A system that treats people more quickly, rather than having them wait in pain, is good for the economy, too. Through the reforms that we are making on incentives and support in the system, and on opportunity and tackling poverty, we are beginning to change the welfare state from a passive distributor of benefits to a platform of opportunities to get people back into work. However, we need to go further, and we will.

No one on the Labour Benches underestimates the scale of the challenges we face. There is no escaping the fact that the OBR’s decision to downgrade its assessment of productivity is the official verdict on the Conservatives’ years in office. They left this Chancellor with a £16 billion hole to fill. That hole is not because of the decisions she took, but because of the scarring effects of the Conservatives’ time in power. A botched Brexit deal, austerity that impoverished the public realm, and cuts to capital investment—the OBR is clear that they all caused long-term damage to the UK’s productivity and economic growth. That has to be owned by the Conservatives.

The shadow Chancellor attacked the Budget in the strongest terms, and he is right that it is a contrast with the Conservatives’ record, because they took the country to the very precipice of economic disaster. They used the British public as a test bed for a giant ideological experiment that saw mortgages go through the roof. The Bank of England had to launch an emergency rescue package for the country’s pension system. The Conservatives shook international confidence in the UK economy and destroyed whatever economic credibility they had by their own hand. There is a difference in our approaches—a very welcome one.

We have trade agreements with the world’s biggest economic powers—agreements that eluded the Conservatives. We have a reformed planning system, which will get the country building. Public investment is at its highest level for four decades, and inflation is coming down faster, as a result of the measures that we are taking. It will come down by a full 0.4 percentage points next year, according to the OBR. Borrowing is down in every year of the forecast. We are keeping corporation tax at the lowest level of any G7 country. We have help for high streets, and permanently lower tax rates for 750,000 businesses. We are doubling eligibility for our enterprise tax incentives, so that new businesses can not only be created, but can grow and scale up here in the United Kingdom.

We are cutting energy costs for 7,000 businesses to make manufacturing more competitive. We are providing help with the cost of living through the first rail fare freeze for 30 years. We are freezing prescription charges. Energy bills are being cut by £150 per year. We are raising the national minimum wage for millions of workers, as recommended by the independent Low Pay Commission. We are expanding free breakfast clubs, and there are free school meals for all children in families on universal credit.

This is a Budget for the whole country. It helps with living standards and helps people to meet their monthly bills. It fixes some of the problems of the past, and gives the country strong foundations for the future. It is a Budget that believes in maintaining the public square, and it continues the progress that we have made on the NHS. That progress is, for us, not just a social goal, but an economic goal. It is a Budget that protects the state pension and raises its value by £575 next year. It is a Budget that continues with welfare reforms, reduces child poverty and offers hope to young people for the future. That is the difference, and that is why we should support the Budget today.

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[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

G. K. Chesterton said:

“It is human to err; and the only final and deadly error, among all our errors, is denying that we have ever erred.”

Yesterday’s Budget brought into stark relief the fact that the Chancellor and this Government have erred and, worse, are in denial about their error.

The UK faces a twin-pronged fiscal crisis. Public debt is at around 100% of GDP and rising, with debt interest making up about three quarters of the deficit. Public spending, at close to 45% of GDP, is near to a high in the post-war years. Much of that failure is systemic—Governments of all colours have failed to address some fundamental macroeconomic challenges—but yesterday’s Budget not only failed to fix that entrenched mess, but did not even acknowledge that it is happening.

As the global liberal order decays, we face global economic challenges on a scale we have not seen for 100 years. Artificial intelligence risks transforming the jobs market. A recent study by the National Foundation for Educational Research forecast that up to 3 million jobs could disappear by 2035. Employment in sales and customer service occupations has fallen by more than 10% since 2021, and around 12 million people in England currently work in occupations deemed to be in decline. That requires Government to play a role.

Government can be a force for good. This House took far too long to recognise the damage that would be done by the internet, and finally, when those horrors were obvious, it legislated. We need to restrict AI where it does similar damage, rather than indulging this naive faith in technological change at all costs.

The old, comforting bourgeois assumptions about the benign nature of globalisation and the faith in technological change risk endangering many of the jobs I have described, and the purpose and pride they fuel. The US President was right to impose tariffs on cheap goods that were destroying vital US industries. In response, China is dumping surplus goods in Europe, and it has been estimated that 3 million industrial jobs in the EU are at risk from that surge of subsidised imported goods.

In response to these existential threats, the Government seem frozen in time. Too much of the establishment remains wedded to dysfunctional orthodoxies. We are playing by the rules of the game when the important players have left the table. We cannot continue to proselytise for unbridled free trade when the two biggest economies in the world, China and America, have given up on it. We have to protect those industries that are critical to our national economic interests, building greater economic resilience by reindustrialising and by manufacturing again, so ensuring that more of what we consume is made here in Britain, with the jobs, skills and reassurance that provides. An economy can nourish communal health, but it cannot do so in a world that is wedded to globalised, multinational, corporate companies that are careless of the difference they make to communities such as mine in Lincolnshire and those across the country.

Here in Britain, and across the western world, living standards are stagnating, productivity growth has all but disappeared, and the state grows ever bigger in the face of rising poverty and worklessness. Why, then, does the political class continue to profess a blind faith in an economic model that has delivered record levels of state dependency? The assumption that little can be done to reverse the inevitable process of industrial decline is simply wrong, as the experience of the United States suggests. Once we tune out the noise surrounding President Trump’s on-and-off tariffs, we can hear the faint stirrings of industrial revival. A detailed study of the impact of tariffs during the President’s first term found that once the pre-existing decline in manufacturing employment was accounted for, tariffs contributed to rising employment in areas with a large presence of protected industries. Neither did consumer prices surge in the United States, despite the predictions of liberal economists. Just imagine the potential benefits of a consistent and coherent trade policy that puts the needs of British industry first.

[Bradley Thomas (Bromsgrove) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that in a world where capital and labour are highly mobile, and one that is increasingly pressured as a result of energy costs, the best thing the Government could do is pare back the regulation that inhibits manufacturers’ ability to compete competitively and prevents the UK from being a very attractive destination for that capital and labour?

[Sir John Hayes]

My hon. Friend makes a valuable point. Both Governments and these big corporates welcome a regulatory system that disadvantages small and innovative companies. Big organisations quite like regulation, for they can cope with it because of their scale; small organisations struggle with it, because they simply do not have the resources to deal with it.

In 1979, manufacturing accounted for 30% of GDP in Britain; today that figure is just 8.5%. Manufacturing employed 21% of the workforce in 1982; by 2023 it employed just 8%. By some measure this is the greatest deindustrialisation of any major nation. We can and should build a different economic model—a new order.

We need a fundamental rethink of our economic model, breaking from the failed orthodoxy that currently prevails and moving towards what Hilaire Belloc and GK Chesterton called “distributism”, where local economies —introspective, feeding communal health, with shorter supply chains—mean that we can make more of what we need here in the UK, fuelling skills and nourishing communities. What Chesterton and Belloc intuitively understood was that the excessive concentration of economic power harms society and fuels the discontent that many people in Britain feel today. Real wages have stagnated, while those at the top—large corporations in particular, often based overseas—accumulate huge wealth and power.

We can build that new order. Small family businesses enrich the places in which we all live. Mutuals and co-operatives sustain communal and economic health in localities. We can do this, but it requires a radical rethink of the economic orthodoxy. The Budget does not suggest that rethink. All parties must step up to the mark and understand that we live in a post-liberal age where a new order is possible. Let us together build that new order, to deliver the common good by sustaining our national interest.

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[Bradley Thomas (Bromsgrove) (Con)]

Yesterday the Chancellor attempted to present the Budget as a bold plan to rebuild Britain, but when we strip away the rhetoric, we see a Budget that is unsustainable, unfair and damaging to the very foundations of our economy. Most importantly, it is bad for all our constituents. Last year, the Chancellor raised taxes by £40 billion and promised that she would not be coming back for more. Yet here we are, one year on, with another £26 billion tax raid.

Credibility matters. When promises are broken so quickly, trust evaporates, and my constituents feel that betrayal directly. Families who believed the Chancellor’s assurances will now find themselves paying more tax, with less money left at the end of each month. The first duty of any Budget is to foster growth, yet the indicators all point in the wrong direction. Inflation is up, with food inflation at nearly 5%, so families in my constituency are paying more for their weekly shop. Taxes are up, and the OBR has confirmed that the UK’s tax burden is at a record high. It is projected to reach 38.3% of GDP by 2030. Our constituents are working longer hours, only to see more of their pay taken away.

[Sir John Hayes]

Food production in this country is critical to my constituency, my hon. Friend’s and others’, yet public procurement still does not prioritise British goods. Might he invite the Government to look at that again? It is absolutely right that this House, the Government and the public sector should support British-made goods, and British-made food in particular.

[Bradley Thomas]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely correct. The Government have a duty, in every single thing that they do and in their entire approach, to ensure that they promote the interests of the UK and of the businesses and farms that strive to keep us fed and prosperous.

Unemployment is up and redundancies are rising. In my constituency, local employers are cutting jobs, leaving families anxious about their future. Spending is up, and borrowing overshot forecasts by £9.9 billion this year. My constituents know that every pound borrowed today is a pound that they will repay tomorrow. Confidence is down, with business surveys showing stagnation, and local shopkeepers tell me that they are holding back investment because they see no stability. Growth is also down, with GDP growing by just 0.1% in Q3 of this year. My constituents see stagnation in wages, stagnation in opportunity and stagnation in hope.

This is Labour’s economic scoreboard: inflation is up, taxes are up, unemployment is up, spending is up, borrowing is up, confidence is down and growth is down. That is not rebuilding Britain; it is dismantling Britain’s prosperity, and all our constituents are paying the price. Two thirds of the British public now say that they want to see spending cuts. My constituents are tightening their belts, and cutting back on holidays and meals out. Some are even cutting back on heating. They expect the Government to do the same and to live within their means, yet Labour’s Budget expands spending recklessly.

Businesses in my constituency are being hit hard. Last year, employer national insurance contributions were increased and business rates relief was cut, and businesses are struggling to survive. For savers, ISA allowances have been reduced, which undermines savings. Retail has lost over 100,000 jobs in the last year. With our high streets feeling the pain, shops are closing and livelihoods are being destroyed. The Budget offers no relief for small businesses in my constituency; it only offers more burdens.

Labour claims that fairness is at the heart of the Budget, but fairness is not what families in my constituency are feeling. Income tax thresholds have been frozen, dragging more workers into higher tax bands, and savers have seen their allowances cut. Even electric car owners, who have been encouraged to go green and to do the right thing, are now being penalised. This punishes aspiration.

Farmers in my constituency are among the hardest hit, and the family farm tax remains largely intact. The changes to inheritance tax threaten the survival of the family farm, and rising input costs and inflation are compounding the pressure. Farming is not just an industry; it is the backbone of our food security, as my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) pointed out, and the backbone of rural life, yet Labour continues to undermine it.

We are seeing an exodus of capital and labour in a world that is highly mobile. Over the last year, we have seen an exodus of high-net-worth individuals. While Labour Members may scowl at and casually dismiss that, the reality is that the displacement of those individuals would require another half a million average earners paying tax to plug the gap of tax revenue lost. That is the scale of the hole that the Government have created. Who will fill that? All of our constituents will—ordinary families, ordinary workers and ordinary savers.

Ambition without discipline is not a plan; it is a gamble. Labour’s Budget is a gamble with Britain’s future. Every £1 spent servicing debt is £1 not spent on public services, every broken promise erodes trust and every squeeze on families and businesses undermines the engine of our economy. Let us be clear: Labour spends until it runs out of other people’s money, and when the money runs out, our constituents pay the price. All of our constituents deserve better than what we have seen in this Budget. They deserve a Government who will restore fiscal discipline, encourage enterprise and deliver fairness for everyone.

Yesterday’s Budget is not a plan for the future, but a blueprint for decline. It ignores the public’s demand for spending cuts and for the Government to live within their means. It presides over the loss of further jobs, and it drives away wealth creation, leaving ordinary taxpayers to pick up the bill. It squeezes families, undermines businesses and will devastate farmers. This is not rebuilding Britain; this is dismantling Britain’s prosperity. Labour spends until it runs out of other people’s money, and my constituents cannot afford that any longer.

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[Oliver Ryan (Burnley) (Lab/Co-op)]

This Budget sets out a serious and responsible direction for our country’s future and speaks directly to the needs of people in Burnley, Padiham and Brierfield. It supports families and workers, puts the public finances back on stable ground and backs the businesses that are the backbone of towns like ours.

Crucially, we are already seeing real, measurable progress for Britain after 14 years of incompetence, failure, stagnation and rampant inflation. Growth has been upgraded to 1.5% this year and wages have risen faster in our first year than during the last decade the Conservatives were in power. For people in towns like ours, those are not abstract statistics; they are the difference between treading water—constant struggle—and finally feeling as though we are moving forward again as a community and as a country.

Families in my area have felt the squeeze more than most. I hear weekly about parents monitoring the thermostat hour by hour, commuters worried about every fare rise and households whose disposable income has simply evaporated with the cost of living. I welcome our plan, which gives people real relief right now: £150 off energy bills next year, rising to £300 for those who need it most; more support; more homes insulated and more homes built in towns in our constituencies; a freeze on rail fares, petrol duty and prescription charges; and, for our NHS, the largest reduction in waiting lists in almost 20 years, in addition to 250 new neighbourhood health centres, 5.2 million more NHS appointments and care brought closer to home, with more doctors and nurses.

However, it is not just short-term support that matters; it is long-term renewal. We are maintaining the highest levels of public investment in 40 years, because our constituencies cannot rebuild on the foundations left behind after austerity and the chaos of 14 years of Tory Britain. Better transport connections, stronger and better-funded local services, investment in skills and young people, and higher-paid, quality jobs—these remain the building blocks of renewal in Burnley, Padiham and Brierfield.

[Sir John Hayes]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Oliver Ryan]

I will not, because of time.

We are doing all that while paying down the national debt and getting into surplus—something promised several times by the Tories but, as far as I am aware, never done. We are doubling the fiscal headroom, which is a momentous achievement—something we are probably not shouting about enough—and taking responsibility for the public finances after the rank mismanagement of the previous Government.

For too long, the welfare system that we inherited left working families too poor to eat and wrote off hundreds of thousands of people as too sick to work without offering them proper support. Indeed, when the shadow Chancellor was Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the welfare bill soared by £33 billion, and he put an extra 229,000 people into the welfare system. The welfare bill doubled during the Conservatives’ time in office, which is bad for our budget, our communities and the people they wrote off. We are finally putting that right.

We are addressing poverty at the same time by scrapping the two-child limit, which is lifting 450,000 children out of poverty nationally, including a huge 5,170 children in Burnley, Padiham and Brierfield. We are guaranteeing jobs for people under the age of 25, ending long-term youth unemployment and ensuring that no young person is abandoned.

I am conscious of time, Madam Deputy Speaker. I just want to make a point about support for businesses. We have not only maintained Government capital investment plans, but made sure that we will lower permanently business rates for local employers and multipliers for our high street. We are doing this to create a stable and long-term approach for businesses.

We are taking important steps such as relieving stamp duty on the first three years of new UK-listed companies for larger entities, which is our invitation to the world to do business here. That will have a direct effect on our competitiveness. We are putting in place more support for manufacturers in places such as my constituency, where energy bills have swelled over the last 10 years. We are extending capital allowances for business assets and leasing, and we are extending tariff suspension and support likewise. This will help some of my area’s largest employers to grow. In addition, we are extending NICs relief for those who hire veterans. Our measures include ISA reform to encourage investment into quite sizeable businesses. I am also interested in the call for evidence on firms with scale-up potential, which will end next year.

All these steps will create growth for the economy and help my constituents, and I greatly welcome this Budget.

[Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)]

Tax increases of £26 billion and the tax burden rising to an all-time high of 38% of national income—this is a traditional, good old-fashioned high-tax, high-spend Labour Budget. It is a Budget that locks in a debt ratio of 100% and an economy with little or no growth. It effectively ends Labour’s pledge to grow the economy and raise living standards. The growth in real disposable incomes over this Parliament is now expected to be the second worst since records began in the 1950s. This is a Budget to appease the left of the parliamentary Labour party rather than the general public. It is a Budget to shore up the Chancellor’s weak position and that of the Prime Minister. We will see how successful that has been come May.

Since Labour came to power, the Chancellor has raised taxes by £66 billion, which is more than any Government in the last 50 years. When the Chancellor proudly announced that growth had increased by 0.5%, there were cheers from the Government Benches, but she did not mention that that figure was a downgrade from the 1.9% forecast earlier in the year, nor did she make reference to the downgraded projections for the rest of the decade. The Office for Budget Responsibility has downgraded its growth forecasts for real household disposable income per person over the next five years. The OBR’s “Economic financial outlook” report states that growth will slump to an average of 0.25% a year over the forecast,

“well below the last decade’s average growth of 1% a year”.

The average household will be £850 poorer at the end of this Parliament than when Labour took office.

The Chancellor said:

“today £1 in every £10 the Government spend is on debt interest—not on paying down that debt, but just on paying the interest”.—[Official Report, 26 November 2025; Vol. 776, c. 389.]

Some £113.7 billion is currently being spent on servicing that debt, and by the end of this Parliament that figure will reach £140 billion.

For a working person on average earnings, the tax threshold is frozen and will be for the rest of the decade. Pensioners will be dragged into the basic rate of income tax for the first time; 780,000 people are going to be dragged into being a basic rate taxpayer, and nearly a million will become higher rate taxpayers. For people on benefits, those benefits are not frozen; they are index- linked to inflation.

The OBR has forecast that over the next five years, welfare spending will rise by £73.2 billion to £406.2 billion. The U-turn on lifting the two-child benefit cap beggars belief. For it to go from a policy that saw seven Labour MPs lose the Whip, and that was effectively the catalyst for the creation of an entirely new political party on the left, to a totemic Labour policy is transparently a move to both appease the Labour Benches and shut the door on the surge in support for a Zack Polanski-inspired resurgent Green party and the stuttering Your party. By the end of this Parliament, lifting the cap will cost £3 billion a year. That is more than the total spend on fire and rescue services in England.

The heavily trailed high value council tax surcharge is lacking crucial detail on how it will be implemented. Doing it properly will require a revaluation of every property in the country by the valuation office by April 2028 in order to understand which houses are in scope. What will the criteria for that be? How will the value of the house be decided if it has not been sold in recent years? Moreover, the revenue will go to central Government, not the local authority. It will disappear into general taxation, and those paying the tax will likely never see any local benefit from it.

The decision to raise the minimum wage looks good at first glance.

[Sir John Hayes]

I support the minimum wage. It is important that working people, particularly less well-off working people, are adequately rewarded. Does my hon. Friend agree that the real impact will be on small and medium-sized businesses? Those businesses are already dealing with increasing cost burdens. When the Minister sums up, he might want to reflect on the effect that that may have on the creation of employment in those kind of businesses.

[Ben Obese-Jecty]

I wholeheartedly agree. I have spent the last year talking to small businesses in my constituency that have been crippled by the measures in the last Budget. When this year’s measures come in as well, some of those businesses will struggle desperately to keep on lower earners, particularly young people.

My first job as a 16-year-old was working in a supermarket, and I am sure many Members had a similar experience. Those opportunities are going to disappear for young people as a result of these measures. What this Labour Government have not taken into account is that every above-inflation wage increase leads to higher business costs, lower investment and fewer opportunities for those we represent. Many businesses that want to employ people will now find themselves unable to take on staff or to take the risks that the Chancellor mentioned, meaning that businesses cannot grow.

We are very likely to see the wage compression effect, whereby the gap between those on the minimum wage and those in more skilled or experienced roles becomes smaller. That, yet again, leads to a lack of incentive to develop skills and opportunities for those with them. The Government must address that, as it will curtail opportunities for young people and lower earners. Unemployment is now set to peak at 5% and the number of economically inactive people will also rise.

The pay-per-mile tax on electric vehicles will surely disincentivise the switch to EVs before the ban on new petrol and diesel vehicles kicks in, and the OBR estimates that there will be 440,000 fewer EV sales over the next five years because of the tax. How much tax revenue will be lost because those sales never happen? Then there is the plethora of other taxes that are part of the smorgasbord: the tourism tax, the NI raid on pension contributions, the reduction in the tax-free cash ISA allowance and even a milkshake tax.

We have not even touched on the absence of the commitment to 3% of GDP on defence anywhere in the Budget. There is not a single reference to it and I do not understand how. We saw today that the service chiefs will write to the Defence Secretary to tell him that it will not be possible to deliver the strategic defence review. I would love to hear from the Minister how Labour will facilitate defence in this day and age.

The OBR has stated that not a single measure contained in the Budget will improve growth, which has, in fact, been downgraded from the figure forecast in the summer. Taxes on working people have been increased by stealth to pay for welfare. That will be Rachel Reeves’s legacy, and this is quite possibly her last Budget—

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Torsten Bell)]

It is a pleasure to close today’s debate, and I thank all Members for their contributions, including my hon. Friends the Members for North Warwickshire and Bedworth (Rachel Taylor), for Exeter (Steve Race), for South East Cornwall (Anna Gelderd), for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi), for Norwich North (Alice Macdonald), for Newcastle upon Tyne East and Wallsend (Mary Glindon), for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee), for Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West (Dame Chi Onwurah), for Dunfermline and Dollar (Graeme Downie), for North Northumberland (David Smith), for Glasgow North (Martin Rhodes), for Mid Cheshire (Andrew Cooper), for Glenrothes and Mid Fife (Richard Baker), for Earley and Woodley (Yuan Yang), for Congleton (Sarah Russell) and for Calder Valley (Josh Fenton-Glynn), who all made strong cases for this Budget.

I listened carefully as Opposition MP after Opposition MP talked down the British economy, as the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty) did, talking down British workers and talking down British entrepreneurs. I have been trying to remember what it reminded me of. I was racking my brains, but then it came to me: they are just reading out exactly the same script that they had at exactly this time last year. The shadow Business Secretary, the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith), frothing with his usual excitement, claimed that Britain would spend 2025 in recession. He said:

“‘Could we be in recession?’ Yes we could.”

That was his forecast.

The actual figures are in, and the truth is that Britain in 2025 did not just avoid recession, but beat the forecast. The OBR has revised up growth this year from 1% to 1.5%. Let us look at wages. As my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Adam Thompson) said, wages are up in the forecast and, far more importantly, in people’s pay packets. Wages have gone up more in the first year of this Government than in the entire first decade of the last Conservative Government, and there is much more to do.

Changing Britain was always going to be hard, and we now know that the damage from the last decade of austerity and Brexit was worse than previously thought. That lies behind the productivity downgrade that the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Dame Harriett Baldwin) rightly raised, but the question is how we respond to that news.

[Sir John Hayes]

I notice that the Minister is wearing a William Morris—or William Morris-esque—tie, and what Morris understood was the importance of craft and skills. The Government addressed apprenticeships in the Budget in a minor way, but does the Minister know that simultaneously the skills White Paper envisages downgrading apprenticeships by diluting the competencies they confer, thereby undermining their reputation with learners and employers?

Welfare Spending

John Hayes Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately]

My hon. Friend makes an important and thoughtful point. Many families, whether they are living off benefits or in work, would like to have more children but have to make these difficult choices about what they can afford. This is a point about fairness.

I know that many Labour Members passionately believe that the limit should go, and they will make arguments today about child poverty as if they were the only ones who care about it—[Interruption.] For the avoidance of doubt, that is not true. Our difference of opinion is about what to do about it. I think all of us are at a loss to know what the Prime Minister believes in. By contrast, we know what we believe in and we know why we are here. That is why we have brought forward this debate on the two-child limit, because somebody has to make the case for fiscal responsibility, for living within our means, for fairness, for ensuring that work pays and for keeping the two-child cap.

I want to be clear that all of us—including those of us on the Opposition Benches—want children to have the best possible start in life. Let us also be clear about what the two-child limit actually is, because I note that some Members from other parties are confused. The two-child limit restricts the amount of additional universal credit that families receive for having children to the first two children only, with some sensible exceptions, such as for twins or non-consensual conception. The cap does not apply to child benefit, which is available to all families with incomes of up to £80,000 for every child, regardless of the number of children in a family.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

I am proud to be a member of the party of Wilberforce, Shaftesbury and Disraeli, who all understood that it is essential to free people from need, and that in that effort the state can be a force for good. But in freeing people from need we should not limit them to a life of dependency. It is entirely possible to believe that although welfare can be a force for good, so too can personal responsibility, and responsibility means making the kinds of choices that my hon. Friend has set out.

[Helen Whately]

I could not put it better than my right hon. Friend.

We know that bringing up children is expensive and important. When working couples have to make tough decisions about whether they can afford to start a family in the first place, they should not be made to pay more in taxes to fund their neighbour to have a third, fourth or fifth child. Someone in a job does not get paid more just because they have another child. If we are worried about people getting caught in a benefits trap where it pays more to be on welfare than in work, how much worse would it be with neither the two-child benefit nor the benefits cap? It would mean benefits increased by thousands. When I say thousands, the House of Commons Library has told me that a family with five children would get more than £10,000 extra a year and a family with eight children would get more than £20,000 extra a year. That is more than the after-tax income of someone working full time on the minimum wage.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison McGovern]

As my hon. Friend rightly points out, in the speech by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately), we heard yet again from a Tory party that wants only to ignore the facts in favour of dividing people in this country, as it did for the many years it was in government. That is not what people want. People want this country to move forward together.

[Sir John Hayes]

rose—

[Stephen Flynn (Aberdeen South) (SNP)]

rose—

[Alison McGovern]

I will mention a few contributions by the Children’s Commissioner for England, and then I will give way further.

We heard from the commissioner that children think that free breakfast clubs and school meals are important. That is why we have begun the roll-out of free breakfast clubs in all primary schools and last month announced the expansion of free school meals to all on universal credit, lifting 100,000 children out of poverty by the end of this Parliament.

Young people told the commissioner about how they absorb their parents’ money worries. One 16-year-old girl said:

“I worry about money quite a lot. I see myself as quite approachable to my mum so my mum will tell me absolutely everything.”

Children need to grow up without that stress, so we have introduced the fair repayment rate for universal credit households, so that a debt to the Government does not keep families poor, which will help 700,000 households with children.

[Sir John Hayes]

I am mindful of two of her predecessors in Birkenhead. The first is F. E. Smith, the great Tory, who talked about “all must have prizes”. Sometimes, in our modern Britain, it feels that all must have state support. The second is the late Frank Field, who is much regarded and revered in this House for his honesty about welfare reform. The Minister is right that successive Governments have failed to grasp this nettle. The truth is that the relationship between the state and the individual has changed over time. We need a welfare system that focuses support on those in the greatest need. She surely believes that, and that requires bold welfare reform. Is she up for that or not?

[Alison McGovern]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention and for reminding me of two of my predecessors. I cannot claim to have known the former, but I did know Frank Field very well. Frank and I talked many times, particularly with regard to Birkenhead, about his belief in the value of work. He wanted to see our shipyard thrive and young people in Birkenhead grow up with the pride of employment. I like to think that when the Prime Minister came to Cammell Laird shipyard recently to talk about the value of good work in Birkenhead, Frank would have felt very proud.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Mullan]

I agree. I find it hard to believe that Labour Members would allow and support a system where someone could have five, six, seven, eight, or nine children—all being paid for by somebody else—and think that that is fair.

[Sir John Hayes]

I spoke earlier about F. E. Smith, who spoke about all having prizes who had

“stout hearts and sharp swords”.

The stout hearts drive us to do the best for those in the greatest need, but our sharp swords should make us brave enough to recognise that there are those who are absorbing welfare expenditure that should be spent on those needy people. That is what the Government ought to do, but I heard none of that from the Minister.

[Dr Mullan]

It is the inability to have difficult conversations and make difficult points that puts Labour Members on the wrong side of these issues and on the wrong side of British taxpayers, who understand the complexity of these things.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Ashley Fox]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for making that point. It is essential that we put Britain’s finances on a sustainable path. All benefits are funded by taxpayers or borrowing, so every time the cost of benefits rises, so does the burden on taxpayers, or the debt we place on future generations.

[Sir John Hayes]

My hon. Friend is right about the cost of benefits, but he is also right to suggest that they need to be directed to those in the greatest need—the most deserving. That is what we all want across this House. Sadly, because of family breakdown and the fragmentation of communities, the state has stepped in to do what was once done, in my early life, by families, individuals and communities. It is really important that this welfare reform is seen in that broader context, and that we direct the money to those with the greatest need.

[Sir Ashley Fox]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for making that point. I know that he, like all Conservatives, believes in personal responsibility, living within our means and fairness to the taxpayer.

Women’s State Pension Age: Financial Redress

John Hayes Excerpts

Thursday 3rd July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Long Bailey]

The hon. Lady has been a formidable campaigner for these women. In answer to her question, no, I have not had any joyous information from the Government as of yet, which is why we are here today. I will outline why I think the Government’s statement and response to the ombudsman’s report was misinformed. While I understand the financial difficulties the Government face, options are available, and cost should never be a barrier to addressing injustice.

Many of the campaign groups are clear that the statistics used by Government to justify no redress are misquoted and misinformed, painting a picture that is completely at odds with the experiences of thousands of impacted women, as the hon. Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) has outlined, the ombudsman’s findings and the results of independent research. Research by the Department for Work and Pensions in 2003 showed that only 43% of all women affected by the changes knew that their state pension age was changing. The research itself even comments that:

“This low figure provides cause for concern and shows that information about the increase in SPA is not reaching the group of individuals who arguably have the greatest need to be informed.”

Independent research, including a focus group study by Age UK from as late as 2011, has also found that many women believed that they were still going to retire with a state pension at 60.

Further, the ombudsman’s report also focused on the continued failure of the DWP to recognise and respond to this research and feedback. Indeed, this point was flagged by the Work and Pensions Committee in 2013 and the National Audit Office in 2016, but the DWP still failed to take any meaningful action.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

I pay tribute to the hon. Lady for her leadership of this campaign. The situation is worse still than she paints it to be, for the ombudsman made clear that the

“DWP has clearly indicated that it will refuse to comply”

with the ombudsman’s recommendations, inviting Parliament to step in to resolve the matter. This is officialdom closing ranks, is it not?

[Rebecca Long Bailey]

The right hon. Gentleman has been a formidable campaigner for the women affected and an ally in the campaign in this House. He is correct. I will explain in a moment how unprecedented it is for a Government to reject the ombudsman’s recommendations in this way, and how dangerous it is, in fact, for our democracy and for citizens’ ability to hold their Governments to account.

I will turn back to the statistics that the Government relied on in their response to the ombudsman’s report. Instead of the clear findings that I have outlined, the Government relied on abstract figures from research carried out in 2004 and 2006 by the Department for Work and Pensions, which suggested that 73% and 90%, respectively, of women born in the 1950s knew that their own state pension age was increasing, but that is not correct. I must flag this with the Minister for clarity: the question asked in the surveys was crucial. It was, “Do you know that the broad state pension age is due to increase at some point in the future?”. It was not, “Do you know that your own state pension age is going to increase?”. It is wrong, in my view, to make the assertion that 73% and 90% of women knew that their state pension age was changing, because the facts prove that they simply did not.

Next, when an ombudsman makes recommendations to Government, as the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) has alluded to, the usual course of action is for the Government to accept them. Further, on this occasion, the ombudsman made the incredibly rare decision to lodge its report before Parliament, not before the Department for Work and Pensions, which it did because, based on its dealings with the DWP, it already feared and knew that the report would be ignored. It is clear that the ombudsman realised this was an important issue, and that it wanted Government to listen.

There have been only eight other occasions where the ombudsman has felt the need to put down a special report in this way, the first being in 1978. All resulted in the full implementation of the recommendations save one, the Earl report. In that case, the Environment Agency still complied with three out of the four recommendations, and on the fourth implemented an alternative compensation offer.

I cannot stress enough that the decision to reject the ombudsman’s recommendations in full is unprecedented, and is, in fact, dangerous, as it sets a precedent that regardless of what an independent adjudicator recommends concerning state-level injustice, the Government can now ignore them. It strips away one of the only levers that citizens have to hold the Government of the time to account.

All the amazing campaign groups that we in this House work with are clear: this has been a state injustice. It has caused significant harm to these women, and while welcome, a limited Government apology is, without any material redress, not acceptable for a grave injustice that has driven so many into debt or poverty.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

The purpose of this place is, of course, to make laws, to amend them and sometimes, if we are in opposition, to stop laws being made. But it has another purpose: to hold those with power to account. We do that as individual constituency MPs all the time, taking up cases on behalf of constituents, but this case not only affects the WASPI women in my constituency; I take it up for all the WASPI women, inspired by the leadership of my friend, the hon. Member for Salford (Rebecca Long Bailey), and others across the House.

It is unusual in this place for Government Members of Parliament and the official Opposition—Labour MPs and Conservatives—the Liberal Democrats, the SNP, the DUP and Plaid Cymru to all come together in common cause. That speaks volumes. It says that we recognise that these women were unjustly treated. But it is not just our recognition that counts; the ombudsman too recognised exactly that. When an ombudsman states that maladministration in DWP’s communication about the Pensions Act 1995 resulted in the complainants losing

“opportunities to make informed decisions about some things and to do some things differently”,

and that that diminished their “sense of personal autonomy” and financial control—and that is just one of its findings; maladministration, inappropriate communications and the failure to deal with complaints punctuate the ombudsman’s findings—for a Government not to respond to the ombudsman is frankly unacceptable.

[Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that taking this step to ignore the findings of an ombudsman sets a really dangerous precedent that could be exploited by private companies and by Departments?

[Sir John Hayes]

I do agree with that. It was a case powerfully made by the hon. Member for Salford that this case is very much about the relationship between the ombudsman and Government, and between this House and Government. That connection between independent scrutiny by the ombudsman and our ability as a House to hold the Government to account lies at the heart of this issue, and that is exactly what I was about to say.

This question is about the WASPI women, but it is also about something still more profound. I hope the Minister will recognise that, in the decisions he takes, he will set an important precedent—a precedent that will affect exactly those kinds of relationships.

I will reveal to the House what the Minister already knows: when this matter was considered by Ministers, a submission would have come forward from officials. I have no doubt at all that it would have offered several options. Option A might have been to satisfy the WASPI women in full; option B might have been to come to a partial settlement, which they perhaps would have accepted; option C would have been to do nothing. The Government chose—despite all the pledges in opposition by the Deputy Prime Minister, the Work and Pensions Secretary and the Prime Minister himself—to take that final option of doing nothing.

I find that very surprising. Knowing how reasonable the campaigners are, I suspect that, had a partial settlement been offered, they might well have met the Government halfway. They might have understood that the cost was substantial and that they had to compromise to some degree—although let us just explode one myth: that all these women are privileged and advantaged. Many were not. Many, when they faced a longer period before they could retire, were in ill health. Many had caring responsibilities. Many were hard up. In campaigning for those women, mindful of those disadvantages, we are speaking for people who otherwise would be powerless. Minister, it is not too late to get this right. For the WASPI women have a just cause, and surely, in the name of decency as well as in the name of good democracy, justice must be done.

--- Later in debate ---

[Torsten Bell]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. I know, without having met her, that his mum will not be disappointed in him. Obviously, the point he makes is absolutely right; it is the point that I was just making. I think we are all aware of the experiences that this generation of women have had to face, not just in the labour market but much more broadly. He makes a powerful case, as always.

Now, there is broad political consensus that it is right to equalise the state pension age for men and women, but the acceleration of the state pension age increases by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition was more politically controversial. I was not going to mention it, but I will gently remind Liberal Democrat Members who have spoken today—the hon. Members for Eastleigh (Liz Jarvis) and for Lewes (James MacCleary) used particularly strong language on this point—that it was the choice made by their party. Not to mention that acceleration at all—[Interruption.] If Members are going to use strong language about difficult choices, then they need to reflect on the choices that led to that point. My party opposed those choices at the time.

However, neither the acceleration nor the longer planned increases to the SPA legislated for since 1995 were matters the ombudsman investigated. This matters, given that it is the desirability of the original policy decisions made by previous Governments that is most frequently referred to by campaigners and by hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) today, who focus on the increases to the state pension age. In contrast, the ombudsman’s focus was on how those changes were communicated by the Department for Work and Pensions, as the hon. Member for Mid Dunbartonshire very clearly pointed out.

As all hon. Members know, we carefully considered the ombudsman’s findings. We always will, given its important role, which was set out by the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) today and in several debates that I have taken part in with him in recent months.

[Sir John Hayes]

The Minister is right to say that no party—indeed, no previous Government—can be excused in this respect, because this matter covers the time in office of several Governments. The difference is that members of his party, in opposition, said,

“This injustice can’t go on. I have been a longstanding supporter of the WASPI campaign”,

and that Labour “will compensate” the WASPI women, as it is “their money”. That was said by the current Work and Pensions Secretary and the current Deputy Prime Minister.

[Torsten Bell]

The right hon. Gentleman has been a Member of this House for much longer than me, so he knows how this works. Parties set out their manifestos, and I am sure that if he looks at the Labour party’s 2024 manifesto, he will find there different words from the ones he has just shared with the House.

The Government agree that letters should have been sent sooner. We have apologised, and we will learn the lessons from that. However, as hon. Members and campaigners on this issue are well aware, we do not agree with the ombudsman’s approach to injustice or to remedy—and neither, reading carefully between the lines of the speech from the hon. Member for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger), do the Opposition. The hon. Gentleman spoke very eloquently, as always.

Let us look at what the ombudsman said when it made its decision to lay the report before Parliament. It was not looking ahead to what a future Government might do; it knew that the then Conservative Government would have come to a similar conclusion. Hon. Members should remember that the long debate over those years between the Government and the ombudsman was held in private, so the ombudsman was aware of the approach of the Government, to whom it was talking in a way that those of us outside Government at the time could not have known.

The hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Tom Gordon) and the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) asked about the decision not to accept an ombudsman’s findings. They are right to say that it is unusual, but it is definitely not unprecedented. I should spell out that the Government have accepted other ombudsman findings since, so it is not right to say that this is some kind of fundamental break in the approach by Government.

Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill

John Hayes Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 1st July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Badenoch]

We would cut unemployment.

As I was saying, health and disability benefits are forecast to rise to £100 billion, meaning that one in every four pounds raised in income tax will pay for those benefits. That is not sustainable. Until the pandemic, we in the Conservative party had spent years bringing down the benefits bill and getting people back into work, including millions of disabled people. Talent, energy and ingenuity are not confined to those in perfect health. If we want to afford public services, improve people’s lives and compete globally, we cannot consign so many people to a life out of work—we have to get them into work. I believe that the whole House agrees that the system needs change. We may disagree on what exactly that change looks like, but what we have in front of us today is just a big mess.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

The Secretary of State was right: welfare reform is tough, and Governments tend to duck the issue, with notable exceptions such as my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith). However, if a Government are going to change welfare radically, they should surely review the options and then decide which ones to take. By contrast, this Government have decided on their option, and are then going to review what they might have done. Surely that is not the right way to run welfare, or any part of Government.

[Mrs Badenoch]

My right hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I have nothing further to add—he said it as well as it could possibly be said.

The whole House agrees that the system needs to change in one way or another, but what we have in front of us today is a big mess; it is neither fish nor fowl. Because of the Government’s hasty concessions, we now have a two-tier benefits system under which people who are already on benefits will be incentivised to keep them.

There are other issues. Why, for instance, should someone diagnosed with Parkinson’s after November 2026 receive a lower payment than someone diagnosed a month prior? We need to fix a whole load of problems. For instance, we need to filter out people who are gaming the system, we need to redesign the system so that genuinely disabled people do not find it so Kafkaesque, and we need a fundamental rethink of who we can afford to support and why. One in four people in this country now self-report as disabled—that is an extraordinary state of affairs. We clearly cannot afford to support all of them; rather, we should focus that support on those with the greatest need.

Many people with disabilities live full and independent lives, contributing to society. Research published by the Centre for Social Justice last week shows that we could save up to £9 billion by restricting benefits for lower-level mental health challenges such as anxiety. Labour Members ask what we would change—that is one of the things we would change. Findings published by the TaxPayers’ Alliance today show that people with conditions including acne and food intolerance are getting benefits and entitlements such as Motability. The impact assessments for the Bill—not my impact assessments, but the Government’s—show that it will get no one into work, so the Government should think again. We will support them to do so.

We support replacing remote or online assessments for claimants with face-to-face assessments—that simple change alone could dramatically reduce the number of new claimants. Before the last election, we outlined reforms that the new Government rejected out of hand, so will the Secretary of State return to them? The changes we are discussing today are rushed and confused. Rather than the fundamental reforms we so badly need, we have been presented with a botched package of changes that have been watered down and carved apart in the face of Back-Bench pressure. There is no way we can back this, so instead of allowing her Back Benchers to dictate her policy, the Secretary of State should go back to the drawing board. She should cut the overall welfare bill, get people into work, and eliminate the need for new tax rises. That is a programme that we would support in the national interest.

Winter Fuel Payment

John Hayes Excerpts

Wednesday 19th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Joy Morrissey]

My right hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and one that I was going to make. This is about choices, and it is about the most vulnerable—the disabled pensioners who we did not have a way to test for. There was no mechanism to protect them, and I am very glad that my right hon. Friend chose to protect the most vulnerable disabled pensioners. By protecting everyone, we ensured that the most vulnerable were protected, and that was a tough choice that we made when in government. To be honest, I expected a Labour Government to make the same kind of choice, to protect the most vulnerable disabled pensioners, who have been negatively impacted by this choice. I would have expected better from a Labour Government.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

Those of us who have been in government know that when new Ministers come to power—perhaps as innocent and heartfelt as the hon. Member for Swansea West (Torsten Bell)—often ideas that have been rejected by their predecessors are put before them. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) described, officials float proposals previously rejected in the hope that new Ministers, in their naive urgency, will embrace them. I feel a little sorry for the hon. Member for Swansea West, actually: I suspect that it was his innocence, his naivety and his lack of wit and wisdom that got the better of him—and I say that kindly—for it allowed his officials to float a policy as hopeless as this one, which was rejected by those with wiser heads, such as my right hon. Friend.

Women’s Changed State Pension Age: Compensation

John Hayes Excerpts

Monday 17th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

Our greatest Conservative Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, said that

“power has only one duty—to secure the social welfare of the people.”

Being held to account cements the legitimacy that Governments derive from their democratic mandate. Beyond parliamentary accountability, over time other checks and balances have emerged. With due respect to the excellent Petitions Committee, and the Intelligence and Security Committee on which I serve, the ombudsmen, with their genesis in the late 1960s, perhaps in public terms best represent that kind of independence, accountability and scrutiny.

References to the ombudsmen for their considered deliberation are more than an ornament to our polity; they have become an essential component of it. Members of Parliament from across the political spectrum, represented in this debate, appreciate that just as things are not lightly sent to the ombudsman, neither should their judgments be taken lightly. In particular, a Government who attempt to brush under the carpet the fallacies, faults and frailties identified by the ombudsman are guilty not just of bad housekeeping but of concealing systemic failure.

Yet that is exactly what has befallen the WASPI women: those wives, mothers and grandmothers who toiled hard for Britain only to be told that their fair expectations of life after work were to be blighted, not just by the consequence of Government policy—the principles of which, by the way, they do not contest—but by its wholly inadequate implementation by a Government Department.

In the words of the ombudsman,

“maladministration in DWP’s communication about the 1995 Pensions Act resulted in complainants losing opportunities to make informed decisions about some things and to do some things differently, and diminished their sense of personal autonomy and financial control.”

The ombudsman’s remedy is to recompense on a scale—a series of levels from 1 to 6. The ombudsman recommended a level 4 response, which relates to

“a significant and…lasting injustice that has, to some extent, affected someone’s ability to live a relatively normal life.”

Few, if anyone, anticipated the current Government’s careless disregard of this just cause or of the ombudsman’s recommendations. It was surprising, because the Prime Minister himself had made it clear that he believed in “fair and fast” compensation. The Work and Pensions Secretary said:

“This injustice can’t go on. I have been a longstanding supporter of the WASPI campaign”.

The Home Secretary said:

“I’m backing the WASPI women…I’ll keep up our fight for a better deal for WASPI women.”

Even the Deputy Prime Minister said categorically that Labour “will compensate” the WASPI women as it is “their money”.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

I have had about 100 emails from WASPI women in my constituency. The ombudsman found that there was a case to answer, and recommended five options for compensation, leaning towards option 4. Does my right hon. Friend agree that even if the Government will not grant option 4, they should at least give the WASPI women something?

[Sir John Hayes]

In working alongside the hon. Member for Salford (Rebecca Long Bailey) and the hon. Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) for today’s debate, I met many WASPI women, and have since. They are not unreasonable, and they do not expect every line of their most ambitious desire to be met, but they did expect the Government to make some proper reference back to the ombudsman’s report and, consequently, to approach them with a proposal to settle their demands. I find it extraordinary that the Government did not do that. I am genuinely really surprised. The WASPI women are reasonable people, and they understand the constraints the Government are working within, but they expected greater respect for and greater reference to the independent scrutiny from the ombudsman.

Members might have thought, from all that I have read out about what Ministers said when they were shadow Ministers, that the Government’s position was clear, but it appears not. I say again, as I have before to the new Minister: change course. Few of those with power readily welcome criticism. Fewer still enjoy being chastised. But some—just some, and I hope that includes the Minister—correct mistakes, right wrongs and do what is just willingly. In so doing, they grace the very concept of political privilege by nurturing popular faith in the rightful exercise of power.

The challenge of meeting the reasonable demands of the WASPI women by simply implementing what the independent ombudsman recommended is an opportunity for those in the Government with responsibility to step up and dignify their office by doing what is right. The way the WASPI women have been treated is just not fair. When public faith in fairness is lost, to draw on the words of the great poet W. B. Yeats,

“The ceremony of innocence is drowned”

as it becomes clear that

“The best lack all conviction”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir John Hayes]

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making a powerful and eloquent case. He is absolutely right that the issue goes beyond even the just case of the WASPI women to something more fundamental: how Governments are held to account and how they willingly deal with that—this is not something that should be extracted with pain and anguish. The Government should step forward, change their heart and their tune, and deliver.

[Ben Lake]

I thank the right hon. Member for his intervention, and I very much agree. We have an opportunity to right this wrong now. That would not only deliver justice to the 1950s-born women who suffered as a consequence of the changes—or the failure to communicate them—to the state pension age, but provide an important contribution to restoring faith in MPs, Parliament and the whole democratic process. I hope that the Government will reconsider the matter.

However, I have to say—perhaps this is the cynic or the pessimist in me—that when we consider everything we have asked 1950’s-born women to do in recent years, such as jumping through all the various hoops and processes, coming up to London, which is quite the journey to make from west Wales, petitioning, demonstrating and organising, it is quite outrageous to ignore the ombudsman after it has proven, acceded to and accepted their case. On top of that, the Government are now, I understand, refusing to even engage with representatives of 1950s-born women in alternative forms of mediation. Perhaps worst of all, they are not giving Parliament the opportunity in Government time to vote on the matter. That is my one call and request of the Minister.

We have already heard this afternoon about the four options offered by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman. Give us that chance to express and voice the will of Parliament. I am confident that there is consensus in Parliament to see justice done for a generation of inspiring women, whom I feel incredibly honoured to represent.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I thank the hon. Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) for her passionate speech. My friend, the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), made a very pertinent point earlier: the fundamental issue here is Government accountability—the ability of this place and citizens to hold the Government to account when they get something wrong. What we are seeing today is that accountability mechanism—that framework —being demolished before our very eyes. If the mechanisms that have been developed to hold Government to account are rendered impotent, which is what has happened to the ombudsman, that damages the very heart of democracy itself. That is how important this issue is.

The ombudsman was clear: these women suffered injustice, and compensation was owed to them. It was also clear that the Government should act on that, and it made the very rare decision to place its report, not before the Department for Work and Pensions, but before this place. It did that because it felt that the Department—under all Governments, not just this Government—was not capable of delivering justice for the women affected. And it was right, because what we have seen is a complete dismissal of the injustice that these women have suffered. Now, I do not believe that that is the intention of the Minister or of the Government, but they have the opportunity now to change course.

There is a very real prospect of a High Court judicial review. That will result in significant legal costs on the part of the Government—legal costs that they will have to justify to the taxpayer, given that the ombudsman’s report was very clear that compensation was owed. So will the Minister now look again at the case for compensation?

[Graham Stringer in the Chair]

[Sir John Hayes]

I rise for two purposes. The first is to put it on the record that the hon. Lady, alongside others, has made an outstanding contribution to this campaign; she has been a notable figure in this process. The second is to make a suggestion that she might put to the Government: why do the Government not meet a small delegation of MPs from all parties with a group of WASPI women? Let us see if we can thrash this out in a way that allows the Government to get off the hook and allows the WASPI women to receive the satisfaction they so richly deserve.

[Rebecca Long Bailey]

I completely agree with the right hon. Member. The all-party parliamentary group on this issue has extended an invitation to the Minister. We will of course widen the invitation to include women’s groups in accordance with the right hon. Member’s suggestion. The invitation is there. That would be a very good starting place because ultimately the only justice that can be secured is justice that involves the women themselves. To listen to what they want to propose to the Government would be a good starting place.

I want to ask the Minister a few questions. Given the prospect of a High Court judicial review, presumably when issuing the decision not to compensate, the Government must have carried out, if they were acting diligently, a legal risk assessment of the prospect of the success of potential future legal action. If that is the case, will the Minister place before the House a copy of that legal advice so that we can see what the Government considered at the time? Does he accept the ombudsman’s proposal that Ministers and MPs intervene to ensure justice is delivered, and does he agree that it would be prudent for the Government to make time for a parliamentary debate so that MPs across this House can have a vote on the issue on a non-partisan basis, as was intimated by the ombudsman?

Finally, will the Minister look again at the case for compensation? As I have stressed, I do not believe it is his intention to undermine democracy; nor is that the intention of the Government. Given the prospect of legal action, now would be an opportune time for the Minister to meet the groups that are campaigning on behalf of women and look at the different compensation mechanisms and mediation proposals that have been suggested.

Women’s Changed State Pension Age: Compensation

John Hayes Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Dr Andrew Murrison (in the Chair)]

We are massively oversubscribed. It is plain that we are not going to get everybody in. I remind those who wish to speak that they should bob. I also ask that, voluntarily, Members restrain themselves to two minutes. If we do that, we will get most people in, but not everybody.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered compensation for women affected by changes to the State Pension age.

It is a pleasure to be able to speak in this Chamber and, as I often do, to draw a very substantial crowd. The genesis of betrayal is trust—the kind of trust that underpins the democratic legitimacy of Parliament and on which the authority of the Executive is founded, and the kind of trust that our constituents, when they send us to this place to exercise our judgment on their behalf, rely upon. Their faith in us is that we will honour what we say we will do and that when we make pledges, they are not empty pledges but are meaningful. When trust is breached and broken, the whole of that legitimacy is undermined.

That is precisely what has happened in the case of the so-called WASPI women—the Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign. I will use the acronym, because it has become a familiar one to any of us who have taken an interest in this matter, as I have over some time, and as have the public. This campaign is a campaign for no less than justice, to restore trust.

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

The right hon. Member is speaking eloquently about trust. Does he agree that it is really important for the Government to help us to have trust in institutions such as the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman by adhering to decisions made by it?

[Sir John Hayes]

Although that intervention was not orchestrated by me or choreographed by either of us, it leads me neatly to my next point, because there is an ethical case to be made of the kind the hon. Lady describes, there is a constitutional case to be made, and there is a practical case to be made. In the short time available to me—I know that many others want to contribute to the debate—I will try to make all three.

First, the ethical case is, exactly as the hon. Lady said, about honouring the pledges that were made and fulfilling rightful expectations. Not all expectations and hopes are well founded, but when people have worked all their lives and been told that at the end of their working life, they will be paid a pension at a particular time, it is not unreasonable for them to believe that that will come to pass.

[Seamus Logan (Aberdeenshire North and Moray East) (SNP)]

Given that the Government response to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman report said that a compensation scheme would be “impractical”, with “significant challenges” and the potential for “unjustified payments”, and that there were significant concerns about the robustness of the Department for Work and Pensions research in 2006, does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the Government’s position is untenable, given the stark contrast with the way that sub-postmasters were treated?

[Sir John Hayes]

I do agree, and the hon. Gentleman will not be surprised to know that I shall be speaking later in my remarks about the ombudsman’s report and findings, which will bring me to the constitutional matter I raised about the nature of accountability and scrutiny and how Governments are held to account, and whether ombudsmen are meaningful at all if their conclusions are entirely disregarded. He is right to raise that issue.

I want briefly to describe the events that provoked me to challenge the previous Government on this issue when my party held the reins of power. I am not a recent convert to this cause; I made the same argument then—that we needed to recognise the justice of this campaign and act accordingly—but I did so knowing the events that have occurred.

I will not go over things laboriously—because you would not want me to, Dr Murrison, given the number of Members who want to speak in this debate—but essentially, when pension ages were equalised, which was the result of two Acts of Parliament, the notice given to the people affected was inadequate.

I am not an unbridled advocate of the case that every woman who thought that they were going to retire at 60, and then found that they would have to retire at 65, should be compensated. If a woman was young or middle-aged when that happened, there is a fair case that they had time to adjust—they could re-prepare; they could make different plans.

However, if a woman was born in the 1950s and had anticipated retiring in two, three or four years’ time but then had to work up to five years’ longer, it is a very different matter, because many of those women, anticipating their retirement, had prepared for exactly that eventuality. Many of those women, of course, were no longer working. They had ended work to look after elderly parents; they were playing a caring role; or their skills were no longer relevant to the workplace, because they had taken time out of work, first to have children and then, as I have said, to embark on other social responsibilities. These were women who worked hard and had done the right thing, and they are not all, as they are sometimes characterised by their critics, drawn from the liberal bourgeoisie—who, as you know, Dr Murrison, I generally speaking despise.

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

rose—

[Sir John Hayes]

Having said that, I am happy to give way to the hon. Gentleman. [Laughter.]

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

The words “liberal bourgeoisie” made me think. I represent the mainland constituency that is furthest away from Westminster, and I will just point out that this issue affects women from all over the UK, be they “liberal bourgeoisie” or not. In my constituency—that far away—370 people have signed the petition. This issue is huge all over the UK.

[Sir John Hayes]

I meant no slight on the hon. Gentleman. He is right: it does affect women across the whole of the kingdom—and of course, he is much posher than bourgeois, so he could not be slighted by my remark.

[Susan Murray (Mid Dunbartonshire) (LD)]

I rise to speak as a WASPI woman myself, and I am very proud to associate myself with this campaign. I know that many people feel that perhaps we should perhaps not be entitled to compensation, because we were able to get mortgages and buy our own homes, we were able to generate more capital wealth, and many of us have private pensions. However, I personally had to stop work because my husband became ill, and I was looking forward to a retirement where my only income would have been the state pension. I am very thankful for my health; I knew that the retirement age had gone up, and when the right hon. Gentleman talks about skills and abilities—

[Susan Murray]

I am sorry, Dr Murrison.

I was able to use my skills and abilities to become a councillor in 2022, and I am now looking forward to a much better retirement. However, does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the Government should do a U-turn and implement the ombudsman’s recommendation?

[Sir John Hayes]

The hon. Lady’s intervention, though not pithy, was pertinent, because she is one of the 3.8 million women, of all kinds and types, who were affected. Many were not well-off; many did all kinds of jobs that could not be described as highly paid; and many found themselves in a position of financial hardship. That is why I stand here today—because this injustice affects all kinds of women, and it has been mischaracterised by some who do not want to face that fact. That makes me angry and righteously indignant, as I always am in the cause of the disadvantaged.

[Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way; he is being very kind in doing so. In Upper Bann and indeed across Northern Ireland, thousands of women feel absolutely betrayed by this Government. Does he agree that those women are in financial hardship today because of that betrayal? It is morally indefensible that not a penny has been made available to these women.

[Sir John Hayes]

Yes, I agree. Some women were forced to carry on working, even when—as an earlier intervention suggested—they were not really in a position to do so, even when they had extra responsibilities, and even when they were not really fit to do so. That is just not acceptable. It is not right; it is not just.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)]

I note the right hon. Gentleman’s righteous indignation, but I question where it was in 2016, when the SNP tabled a motion in support of the WASPI women and he voted against it. Is he not really just a Johnny-come-lately, despite what he said earlier in his speech?

[Sir John Hayes]

I have been in this place a long time, as the hon. Lady knows, and she is here having first been endorsed by the electorate, then rejected, then re-endorsed. I have not had that difficulty myself; none the less, she will know that one learns and grows in this place. As I became more familiar with these arguments—I repeat this—I challenged the Conservative Government, my own party, on this issue, on the record, on the Floor of the House. It is not about this Minister; this is about any Minister who fails to recognise this matter.

[Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir John Hayes]

If I might make a little progress, then I will happily give way.

It is important to set out some of the detail. Some of the worst-affected women received just 18 months’ notice of a six-year increase in their state pension age. Just under 2 million women fall into that category. The WASPI campaigners acknowledge that some were going to retire only a matter of days, or perhaps weeks, later than expected, whereas those who were given very long notice were clearly in a rather different circumstance. The campaigners are not unrealistic about that. Having met them and discussed it, I know that they are very realistic about the difference between those two groups, and they therefore simultaneously recognise that the Government response needs to be tailored, and measured in the way it gauges the responsibility. The breach in trust is common, but the effect of that breach in trust is different in different cases.

I do not advocate a response to this problem in which every single case is dealt with individually, so that there are as many different settlements as individuals. That would be impractical and delayed, and I emphasise delay because one of these women dies every 12 minutes. There will be another WASPI woman lost during the course of my speech. That is the reality. These bald statistics mask lives—lives altered, lives damaged and lives restricted by this matter.

[Warinder Juss]

rose—

[Sir John Hayes]

That is what inspires me to speak today and, I am sure, inspires the hon. Gentleman, who is about to intervene to say just how much he supports me.

[Warinder Juss]

A lot of us have previously publicly supported the WASPI women, including by posting photographs on social media. The Government have acknowledged that there has been maladministration, but to have that acknowledgement without some kind of financial backing, even if minimal, not only undermines the process of the ombudsman, who so many of us rely on, but may undermine public confidence in politicians in general.

[Sir John Hayes]

The hon. Gentleman is right and he encourages me to turn to the ombudsman’s report, which I have before me. Members will be pleased to note that, although I have inserted many tags into my copy of this report and the previous one, I will not refer to all of them. That would take forever.

Suffice it to say that the ombudsman found

“maladministration in DWP’s communication about the 1995 Pensions Act resulted in complainants losing opportunities to make informed decisions about some things and to do some things differently, and diminished their sense of personal autonomy and financial control.”

The ombudsman’s remedy is set out at the end of the second report. Ombudsmen recommend recompense on a scale—a series of levels, from 1 to 6. The report is here for everyone who has not studied it in detail to see: the ombudsman recommended a level 4 response. That means

“a significant and/or lasting injustice that has, to some extent, affected someone’s ability to live a relatively normal life.”

It suggests that the recompense might be between £1,000 and £2,950.

[Manuela Perteghella (Stratford-on-Avon) (LD)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir John Hayes]

I will in a second.

That suggestion seems to me to be a pretty modest response. It is not extreme, extravagant, unrealistic or unreasonable. It is a modest, measured response borne of the fact that the ombudsman has found maladministration. I have read the two reports. Having been in this House for a long time, been on the Front Bench of my party for 19 years and been a Minister in many Departments, I have rarely seen an ombudsman’s report as clear as this one about maladministration by a Government Department. On that note, I give way.

[Manuela Perteghella]

I thank the right hon. Member for giving way. Does he agree that rejecting the ombudsman’s recommendations for the compensation of WASPI women undermines the role of independent bodies in holding the Government to account? If we cannot rely on the Government to implement such findings, what message does that send to the public about justice and fairness?

[Sir John Hayes]

That brings me to the constitutional point that I said I would make. I have established an ethical case, but there is a constitutional issue about the ombudsman. Over the years, we have developed a number of ways of holding the Executive to account. Parliament does that, of course, but there needs to be other means of doing so on particular and specific issues. That is why the Select Committee system emerged: as a way of studying what the Government were doing and making recommendations accordingly. That is also how ombudsmen began. They are an additional mechanism through which Government can be held to account, but for Select Committees and ombudsmen to have meaning, they must have teeth.

[David Mundell (Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is making a very powerful case. Does he agree that this also undermines our roles as Members of Parliament? As a Member of Parliament, I supported the referral of this case to the ombudsman. Does it undermine our roles if when the report comes back it is just dismissed?

[Sir John Hayes]

Yes. My right hon. Friend is a refined Member of this House. To make a more refined argument in tune with his, I should say that the ombudsman’s report is, as he suggests, to Parliament. It is for Parliament to discuss, debate and make a decision on. The ombudsman’s report is about Government, but it is, exactly as he describes, to Parliament. I am grateful to him for refining my argument in that way.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

I can confirm that my right hon. Friend has campaigned on this issue for a number of years, and not just today. He will know that in July 2022, the Prime Minister—then the Leader of the Opposition—responded to Carol, a WASPI woman who rang BBC Merseyside to raise this issue. The Prime Minister said:

“It’s a real injustice, and we need to do something about it”.

What does my right hon. Friend think he meant by that?

[Sir John Hayes]

Well, it is not for me to second-guess the sentiments of the Prime Minister, but my right hon. Friend is certainly right to say that a number of promises and comments were made. I will talk about them in a little more detail, provoked by his very helpful intervention.

I see in the Chamber today the former shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell). He will know that the Labour manifesto in 2019 was fulsome in its support for the WASPI women, promising a generous financial settlement. It is perfectly reasonable to say that parties move on; the new Leader of the Opposition, now the Prime Minister, may have taken a rather different view. He may have taken the opposite view.

[Dr Simon Opher (Stroud) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir John Hayes]

I will just make this point, and then I will happily give way.

But that was certainly not the impression given by the current Prime Minister’s remarks. He said:

“Justice to end historic injustice”—

that was specifically about WASPI women. The now Deputy Prime Minister said that the Government “stole” the pensions of WASPI women and that Labour would compensate them. Therefore, one can understand why the women, some of whom are represented here today—they are being incredibly diligent and quiet, Dr Murrison, you will be pleased to know—feel that this was indeed a “betrayal”, to use the word that I used at the beginning of my remarks. An expectation was established, and then it was blighted by the decision made since the general election.

[Dr Opher]

I thank the right hon. Member for giving way. Could I make an appeal to all of us? I do not think that either side of this debate has covered itself in glory. I agree that this is a very dangerous precedent about the ombudsman, but let us not make this party political, please. Let us make this about the WASPI women. Is there not a way, at least, of compensating the very worst off among the WASPI women? I would appeal for that.

[Sir John Hayes]

That is a measured intervention, and I thank the hon. Gentleman for it. It is true that a package could be put together and discussed with the campaign group and the women concerned; one would expect Government to do that. As a Minister, I would have had submissions. I have no doubt that this Minister has had them, and the Secretary of State must have had submissions that gave her options, before she said what she said when she let the WASPI women down. Those options would no doubt have included a series of ways through this. I know the Minister will be eager to explore those options with us when he sums up the debate. I have no doubt about that because he is a diligent and decent man; he will not want to betray those women again in what he says today because he is not that kind of character.

[Mike Wood (Kingswinford and South Staffordshire) (Con)]

The Government’s position appears to be that they accept that the failures between 2005 and 2007 constitute maladministration. All of us can see in our inboxes the number of women who, as result of decisions taken on the basis of that failure, suffered as a result. But the Government’s position seems to be that there should be no remedy because it would be too difficult to get it right. What kind of justice is that?

[Sir John Hayes]

There are several arguments used by those who do not want to get it right, to use my hon. Friend’s term. One is that the public do not care, although all the survey evidence suggests the opposite: that 75% of people think that WASPI women should be treated fairly. Another argument is that it will be too expensive. I could make all kinds of rather spiteful remarks about the Government’s decisions about public sector pay, but I will let them stand as a contradiction, without adding to them.

[Ayoub Khan (Birmingham Perry Barr) (Ind)]

I thank the right hon. Member for giving way. He makes a very eloquent and persuasive statement. The current Government use compensation as an excuse, saying it is too expensive, but we have seen, for example, train drivers being given an additional £600 a day. We have seen Government intervene on the Post Office scandal. Does the right hon. Member agree that the argument can be easily disabused by looking at the track record on assistance for those who have found themselves at the forefront of injustice?

[Sir John Hayes]

I had alluded a moment ago to the choices that Government make about how they spend money. Of course it is true that Government priorities will determine where money is spent. The issue is clearly not a priority for the Government. It is difficult, of course: Governments face all sorts of challenges that require investment, and this Government have chosen not to invest in this area. Frankly, it is as plain as that.

[Sorcha Eastwood (Lagan Valley) (Alliance)]

Will the right hon. Member give way?

[Sir John Hayes]

With respect, I am going to conclude because I know so many want to speak; I do apologise. [Interruption.] All right, I will briefly give way, but it is the last time.

[Sorcha Eastwood]

I am so grateful to the right hon. Member for giving way and indulging me. I simply want to add to his conclusion. These women have been part of a generation of women who have been discriminated against by statutory provisions over their lifetimes—whether by the reprehensible marriage bar, the gender pay gap or now this. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman would agree. [Applause.]

[Sir John Hayes]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady; I am slightly jealous that I have not managed to attract any kind of applause, but no doubt that will come at the end of my peroration. The hon. Lady is right: that generation of women, born after the war, did not have straightforward lives. That was a difficult time in this country, particularly for women. I talked earlier about their hard work and diligence, and their role as homemakers, mothers and grandmothers. They just deserve better; that is what has driven and inspired me to bring this debate.

I will end on this note. The Minister will not be surprised to hear that I am mindful of the words of Edmund Burke, who said:

“Your representative owes you not only his industry, but his judgement”.

In the end, this is a matter of judgment. Do we think the issue matters or do we not? Exercising judgment, I leave him with this further quote, from J.R.R. Tolkien:

“False hopes are more dangerous than fears”.

We gave these people false hope. I fear that we will not now put this matter right by realising the rightful hope that they had in thinking they were going to retire at a certain time but then ended up doing so at an entirely different time due to a change of Government policy. That was because of nothing they did, nothing they changed, nothing they chose; it was a change in the law.

I hope that when the Minister sums up he will recognise the strength of feeling across the House, and across this country: that this injustice must be put right, in the name of democratic legitimacy and the trust that I set out at the beginning of my peroration.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Torsten Bell)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you today, Dr Murrison.

I thank the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) for securing a debate on this important topic. I also thank him, if slightly less enthusiastically, for its timing, which is on my first day in office. That fact also explains the delay in answering the named day question put by the hon. Member for Torbay (Steve Darling), which he referred to in his contribution to the debate.

I am under no illusion that everyone in this Chamber, or almost everyone in this Chamber, will agree with everything that I am about to say. However, all of us who have listened to this debate and to the important points made by right hon. and hon. Members have benefited from it, and we all recognise the context of this debate, which is the squeeze on living standards that has affected women born in the 1950s just as it has the entire country.

The issues that we are discussing today are important to many women, including my aunt in west Wales, who was born in 1955 and who pays particularly close attention to these issues. I spoke to her last night as part of my preparation for this debate and she would agree with the points made by the hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sorcha Eastwood), and by my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy), that women of her generation have faced many difficulties and particular discrimination. People have spoken powerfully about that.

It is therefore right that this debate gives the long-held concerns of those women the consideration they deserve, just as it was right that the Government considered those concerns in making the decision that we are debating today. That is also why my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Tulip Siddiq), was the first Minister in eight years to meet WASPI Ltd, why the Government considered the ombudsman’s investigations and reports in detail, and why we look closely at what Parliament has said on this subject. Although I understand that the outcome was disappointing for many, the decision was based on the evidence.

Before I set out how we reached that decision, as the hon. Member for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger) requested, it is worth reiterating the point that several Members have made: the ombudsman’s report was not about the decision in 1995 to increase the state pension age for women, or the decision in 2011 to accelerate that increase. Those decisions were the focus of remarks by many Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck). They were taken by Parliament, including by many Members who are here today, and they were upheld by the Court of Appeal in 2020.

[Sir John Hayes]

I welcome the Minister to his place; I appreciate that this debate is his first outing and his comments about the timing are well made. However, the WASPI campaigners have never made that case; they have never said that they were against the equalisation. What they said, and rightly so, is that they were not properly informed and that is precisely what the then ombudsman confirmed in his report. Will the Minister just answer this simple question? The ombudsman said that he felt it was unlikely the DWP would respond to his report—it was sad that he should have to say that. The ombudsman proposed—unusually, in his words—that the matter be laid before Parliament. Will the Minister use his endeavours to ensure Parliament gets to vote on the ombudsman’s recommendations?

[Torsten Bell]

We have already had a long statement in the main Chamber. The point of debates like this one today is to make sure that the Government are held accountable for their decisions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Torsten Bell]

If my hon. Friend will allow me to make some progress, I will come to exactly that point shortly.

There was considerable awareness that the state pension age was increasing. I think everyone agrees on that even if they do not agree about the research itself. The research used by the ombudsman, from 2004, shows that 73% of people then aged 45 to 54 were aware that the state pension age was going up. Further research shows that, by 2006—when the ombudsman finds that the direct mailing should have begun—90% of women aged 45 to 54 were aware that the state pension age was increasing. We therefore cannot accept that, in the vast majority of cases—and I appreciate it is in the vast majority of cases—sending letters earlier would have affected whether women knew their state pension age was rising or increased their opportunities to make an informed decision. It would not be reasonable—

[Sir John Hayes]

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way to me for a second time. To be clear about this: there are two issues at stake here—how many women knew, and how communications would have affected that. The fact of the matter is that the ombudsman’s report—I have it in my hand—says

“Research reported in 2004 showed that only 43% of all women affected by the 1995 Pensions Act knew their State Pension age was 65, or between 60 and 65.”

That is a clear majority of women who did not know. Therefore the only debate is whether communicating with them would have been effective. As my hon. Friend the Member for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger) said, if it would not have been effective, what is the point in Government communicating at all?

[Torsten Bell]

I was not going to go into this detail, but the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings is inviting me to return to some of my past lives with the details of surveys. The 43% figure that he is referring to refers to all women. What the ombudsman did not do is look at the same survey and look at the women who were affected by this change, who were obviously slightly later in life and much more likely to know about their state pension age. That is where the higher figures I am quoting come from. It is from the same survey as used by the ombudsman, but it is focused on the women who are actually affected by the change.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir John Hayes]

I thank all hon. Members who have contributed to today’s debate. It has shown that the sense of injustice felt by the WASPI women is shared by Members on both sides of the House of Commons. Sadly, however—I am sorry to say this to the Minister—it is not shared by those in the driving seat who are making the decisions.

[Rachel Gilmour (Tiverton and Minehead) (LD)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way? I will be quick and nice.

[Sir John Hayes]

No—forgive me, but my time is very short.

I sincerely hope that we will get a parliamentary vote on this issue and I will use every endeavour to ensure that we do. The WASPI women deserve better than the explanation we heard today, which was essentially somewhere between, “We’re not sure that their case is justified, because we think that most of them did know,” and, “We can’t afford it even if their case is justified.” Frankly, neither of those arguments will wash. The Minister, who is, as I said earlier, a decent man, must know that, just as the Prime Minister certainly feigned to know it before the general election. The question must therefore be asked, did the Prime Minister not know or did he not care? Was he careless about the support that he offered the WASPI women or did he not know what the Minister has just said?

I end with Winston Churchill, because I can do no better. He said:

“There is no worse mistake in public leadership than to hold out false hopes soon to be swept away. The British people can face peril or misfortune with fortitude and buoyancy, but they bitterly resent being deceived”.

This is deceit—nothing less, nothing more.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered compensation for women affected by changes to the State Pension age.

Income Tax (Charge)

John Hayes Excerpts

Monday 4th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

Aristotle said that the state exists to advance the wellbeing of its members; a state that fails to advance its people’s wellbeing is not merely a state that acts badly, but an institution that has failed to achieve its defining purpose. Such a positive vision of the state requires strong institutions that are able to act, with a Government accountable to the people but free to take actions driven by what Disraeli understood to be the social welfare of the people.

A Chancellor who hides behind the supposedly impartial pronouncements of the OBR is incapable of delivering real, meaningful change. Restoring accountability in practice requires two parallel processes: first, political control of decision making must be rebuilt; secondly and equally importantly, a greater sense that the public have a stake in society—and by implication the state that serves it—must be engendered.

Restoring political accountability means removing what the economist and writer Dan Davies has termed “accountability sinks”: the mechanisms that ensure that nobody is to blame when things go wrong. Accountability sinks are one of the greatest banes of modern life, from automated call centres to computers that say no to applications for loans or other financial services. They are a matter of design, not accident. In the private sector, they can shield organisations from legal liability, as happened in the Post Office scandal. A decision made by an individual is much more open to question than one that is the consequence of a general policy.

In the public sphere, accountability sinks often shield politicians and other public servants from genuine accountability for Government policy. Privatisation, contracting out and private finance initiatives have all been used as ways of shifting responsibility from Government to market forces. The establishment of an independent Bank of England with an arbitrary inflation target is a classic example of a generalised policy that has replaced specific individual decision making and responsibility. Similarly, the Office for Budget Responsibility was established explicitly to protect the Treasury from taking responsibility for Budget forecasting. As Davies notes, the role of the courts and international bodies is similar.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Is my right hon. Friend suggesting that we ought to replace those bodies and have the Government re-adopt responsibility for economic policy in the round, such as by setting targets for inflation, instead of saying, “It’s all down to an unelected body”?

[Sir John Hayes]

Absolutely. Restoring accountability means reversing many of the processes that have been taken as read in recent years. Democracy is dependent on clear lines of accountability, but in the past 40 years they have been either diluted or displaced. Is it any wonder that the public feel disillusioned with the exercise of power as a result?

The British economy has suffered more at the hands of neoliberal globalisation than those of most of our competitors. Foreign ownership of UK public firms has risen from just over 10% in 1990 to 55% in 2020. Ownership has become remote and unaccountable to workers, customers and even shareholders. Credit creation has facilitated the growth of private equity and leveraged buy-outs. Private equity firms have been able to take on vast amounts of debt in order to take over businesses.

Our economy is controlled by oligarchies careless of their customers and their employees. The result has been to make all other business objectives secondary to the imperative of having enough cash to survive. As Davies puts it, the debt burden “creates an ultimatum”: if companies do not put their efforts into making profits, they go bust. Our constituents can see the increasing power of unaccountable globalist enterprises and can see the Government’s inability to do anything about it, just as farmers can see that the Government’s policy on inheritance is completely belied by the fact that most asset-rich farms do not make a lot of money. It is not about assets; it is about income. Such disillusionment is socially corrosive, but it is justifiable when the most important economic decisions are taken by commercial entities with no regard for the needs and values of the people.

Turning the ship around requires radical concerted action, not just platitudes. We need a new economic model—one that harnesses the power of the state to break up the power of rentier capitalism and restore an economy that works for society, not against it. Fraternal economics is the means; popular wellbeing is the end.

--- Later in debate ---

[Blake Stephenson (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Let me start with some positives, because I do not want the Government to think that I do not recognise the challenges that they face. I welcome the efforts to tackle NHS maintenance backlogs, which will help constituents in Mid Bedfordshire who use Luton and Dunstable hospital and Bedford hospital. I welcome the Government’s commitment to improving rural broadband and funding for flood defences and nature restoration. As the MP for the Marston Vale line, I look forward to constructive engagement on East West Rail, making sure that communities in my constituency are heard through the consultation process later this year.

I welcome the fact that this Government acknowledge the importance of economic growth, but I am concerned that, beyond acknowledging it, there is nothing really in the Budget to deliver it. Despite the warm words and platitudes of the Labour party during the election campaign, this is a deeply socialist Budget, with an ever-increasing share of our economy moving into the ambit of Government, only to be distributed by Government into areas that are unproductive of economic growth.

[Sir John Hayes]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point about growth. The elephant in the room is productivity. He will know from the House of Commons Library figures that productivity fell in the past year, and we are lagging behind many competitive countries. In both public sector and private sector productivity, it is critical that we take further steps to develop skills to drive growth.

[Blake Stephenson]

I agree that productivity is essential, and everyone in the House needs to focus on it.

This is a dishonest and a damaging Budget. This Government promised that they would protect working people; instead, they have delivered a Budget that is tough on work and tough on the causes of work. This is a Budget that taxes employment, with 1 million employers now set to lose out. Combined with an estimated £5 billion cost of expansive employment rights, our economy will be less flexible and starved of risk capital, jobs and investment in our communities. This is a job-cutting Budget.

This is a Budget that attacks our farming families, our rural economy and our rural communities—men and women working hard day in, day out, in some of the most challenging economic circumstances, at considerable risk and with low margins, all to put food on our tables three times a day. We simply would not survive without our farmers—it is that simple. But this Government are choosing to hit those very people with a family farm tax, which will drive asset disposals, splitting up land farmed by the same families for generations. It will discourage the next generation from taking up the mantle, and tear apart the communities that these farms are integral to. Last year, the now Prime Minister said:

“Every day seems to bring a new existential risk to British farming.”

Today, the existential risk is this socialist Government.

This Budget fundamentally attacks the heart of economic growth. It crowds out private investment and reduces real business investment by £25 billion. The OBR notes:

“by the forecast horizon, government spending comprises a larger part of little-changed real GDP.”

When the Government promised growth, the British people might have hoped that it would be growth in the wealth of our country, not just the size of the state. Their own words sum that up best—the Budget says:

“Rewarding work with a fair wage is the best way to improve living standards”.

This Budget achieves none of that. Instead, it delivers lower real wages, lower real household disposable income, higher inflation and higher mortgage rates. After the Budget, the Chancellor told the British public that working people will not face higher taxes in their payslips, but she knows that is not true. More than 4 million extra taxpayers will be dragged into tax because she has kept the freeze on tax thresholds.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Emma Reynolds)]

I am proud that last week we saw the first Labour Budget in almost 15 years delivered for the first time by a woman, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor. This was recognised by my hon. Friends the Members for Monmouthshire (Catherine Fookes), for Basingstoke (Luke Murphy) and for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Johanna Baxter), and indeed by Members across the House including the hon. Members for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Mohindra) and for South Devon (Caroline Voaden).

This is a Budget for jobs, opportunities, investment and economic growth that drives down poverty and protects the payslips of working people. It is a Budget that invests in skills and our economic foundation and delivers the change that we promised during the election. Crucially, it is a Budget that restores economic stability and begins the vital work needed to rebuild our public services, which were left in a state of ruin by the Conservatives. The NHS, schools, roads, affordable housing: that is the difference that a Labour Government make.

This was a lively debate with many contributions from across the House and I want to congratulate all hon. Members, even if I did not agree with them all, on keeping to strict time limits of two or three minutes. I particularly welcome my three hon. Friends who gave excellent maiden speeches. My hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Harpreet Uppal) spoke movingly and proudly about her late mum’s role as a care worker, and spoke proudly about the industrial and sporting heritage of her constituency. My hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Sadik Al-Hassan) spoke proudly of his constituency being home to the first mass production of penicillin. His experience as a pharmacist will be very valuable to this House. My hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Andrew Ranger) explained that Wrexham association football club is the third oldest in the world. That was news to me, and I was glad to hear about that. He also said that his constituency is home to the world’s oldest lager brewery and to other thriving breweries and major manufacturing companies. I would like to thank my hon. Friends for those maiden speeches.

Many hon. Friends and Members across the House welcomed the Government’s allocation of funding to two vital compensation schemes: those for the contaminated blood scandal and the Horizon Post Office scandal. The previous Government talked about those schemes but did not allocate any money for them.

I know that many hon. and right hon. Members are concerned about the changes to agricultural property relief, so I want to say something about these changes and in particular to answer the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith), one of my neighbours. A couple who jointly own a farm will be able to pass on land and property valued up to £3 million to a child or a grandchild tax-free. That is made up of £1 million when they combine their standard £500,000 tax-free allowances and an additional £1 million tax-free allowance each for agricultural property inheritance. I hope that gives some comfort to hon. Members across the House. At least the former Chancellor but one, Kwasi Kwarteng, was honest about the track record of the previous Government when he said last week:

“We Tories have to be honest—Rachel Reeves is dealing with our mess”.

This is a once-in-a-generation Budget that turns the page on Tory austerity and economic chaos. In addition to the £20 billion black hole in our public finances, with the last Government spending Treasury reserves three times over, there is also a record number of people relying on food banks, 700,000 more children growing up poor, the biggest increase in economic inactivity in the UK for 40 years, millions on NHS waiting lists, crumbling schools and overflowing prisons. We are determined to fix these problems.

Many hon. Friends mentioned the increase to the national living wage that we have introduced, by 6.7% to £12.21 per hour, which will be a pay rise for 3.5 million people across the country. We are also moving towards a single national minimum wage for all eligible adults, starting with the biggest-ever increase to the rate of pay for 18 to 20-year-olds, which will help nearly 200,000 young people—that is a difference that a Labour Government will make. In addition, our youth guarantee will help young people to fulfil their potential and follow their dreams.

[Sir John Hayes]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way, as she does not have much time. As an economist, she knows that it is not what we spend but what we get for it—it is value for money that counts. What is she specifically doing about productivity, which is a perennial problem in many countries, including our own?

[Emma Reynolds]

First, we want to escape the doom loop of low growth and low productivity that we inherited from the previous Conservative Government. Each Department will have to meet a 2% productivity challenge. This is not a cut to departmental spending but a Treasury requirement to ensure better productivity across the civil service.

Our Get Britain Working White Paper, which we will announce in the coming weeks, will set out reforms to our jobcentres and will empower local leaders to tackle economic inactivity in their towns and cities. This is backed by £240 million of new funding for 16 trailblazer projects. It is because we recognise that many working people face extra barriers to taking up work or increasing their hours that the Chancellor announced the biggest-ever rise in the earnings limit for carer’s allowance to help carers balance work and caring responsibilities. That is a difference that a Labour Government will make.

We will also tackle poverty and help those most in need, which is why this Budget extends the household support fund in England and discretionary housing payments in England and Wales. After conversations with the Trussell Trust, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and many others, we are introducing our new fair repayment rate, which will reduce the cap on deductions from universal credit from 25% to 15% of the standard allowance. This will help 700,000 of the poorest households with children. And because people who have worked hard and saved all their lives deserve security and dignity, we are maintaining the triple lock, which will see state pension rises of around £1,700 over the course of this Parliament.

This is the first Labour Budget in almost 15 years. We shun the choices of the last Conservative Government. They chose low growth, low productivity and decline in our public services. We choose investment and growth, restoring economic stability, fixing the foundations, rebuilding the NHS and our other public services, pushing forward with a decade of national renewal, recruiting more teachers, bringing down NHS waiting times, building more affordable homes and, yes, filling more potholes.

This is a Budget that makes a choice about rebuilding our public services, rebuilding Britain and investing in vital infrastructure. This is a Budget that invests in the future of our country, and I commend it to the House.

Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.—(Anna Turley.)

Debate to be resumed tomorrow.