Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between John Healey and Esther McVey

Tuesday 3rd November 2026 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

I will indeed. We will keep an eye on that, and no doubt we will return to it. However, I say to my hon. Friend, as I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson), that the Budget provides for immediate action to help with the cost of living pressures and give people a bit of breathing space over the winter, but also for action to make deep reforms to our energy system that will bring prices down for business and for households in the long term. That means an end to the standing charges on gas bills, an end to Government policy costs simply loaded on to consumer bills through levies, and an end to buying and building new generation that does not bring cheaper as well as cleaner energy and cannot be connected to the grid. This is a Budget with immediate action to deal with the cost of living pressures, and action for the long-term changes that are necessary to bring British energy bills down in line with those in Europe.

[Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)]

At the weekend the Chancellor said that the Budget would provide breathing space for families and working people, so will he tell the House today whether he agrees with his Minister, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who thinks that employers are not working people?

[John Healey]

Of course they are. That is why, in the Budget, I protected income that is earned. I protected income that is earned through dividends which are reinvested in business. I promised a “breathing space” Budget, and that is what I have delivered: help with the cost of living pressures and help with the cost of business pressures, with 70,000 high street businesses taken out of business rates altogether to lift our local areas, including the right hon. Lady’s constituency. Just as I am asking banks to assist with the cost of this help for households through the winter, I am asking gambling operators, big online sellers and vape shops to pay a bit more to help our high streets, and I hope the right hon. Lady will back that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between John Healey and Esther McVey

Monday 8th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Esther McVey]

Youth unemployment is falling right across the country. There might well be a tiny difference in a single constituency, but from 2010 it has come down across every region and area. What we are doing is right. We are giving the right support to the right people, because we have had the biggest fall in youth unemployment since records began.

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

9. What legal costs his Department has incurred in legal proceedings involving disabled people relating to the under-occupancy penalty and the closure of the independent living fund.

Housing Benefit

Debate between John Healey and Esther McVey

Wednesday 26th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Esther McVey]

Not just yet. I will finish what I am saying.

Why would that group have been exempted? Why would preferential treatment have been given to a set of people who had been on benefits for 17 years? When we have put protection in place, we have sought easement for four sets of people. Foster carers are eligible for an additional bedroom. Parents who have adult children in the armed forces who usually live with them and who could be away deployed on operations but come back to their room would be exempted. Disabled claimants or their partners who require a visiting overnight carer are eligible for an extra room. Severely disabled children who would ordinarily be expected to share a room but who could not would be exempted. We have therefore set out who would require easement. That should not be provided, through some loophole, for people who were never meant to be exempted. It was never intended that people who had been on benefits for 17 years should be exempted.

[John Healey]

The Minister has used the words “misguided” and “loophole”. She told me in answer to a parliamentary question in January that

“we estimate the numbers affected are likely to be fewer than 5,000”.—[Official Report, 14 January 2014; Vol. 573, c. 522W.]

In Rotherham and Barnsley, however, one in 14 of all housing benefit claimants has been wrongly hit by the bedroom tax. That suggests that there are nearly 50,000 such claimants across the country. Will she now admit that Ministers have massively underestimated the numbers who have been hit and massively underplayed the difficulties and distress that have been caused?

[Esther McVey]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving me the opportunity to answer that question. I looked into the freedom of information request and the numbers that had been obtained, and I was assured categorically that there was no way the Opposition’s figures could add up regarding claimants who were continuously on benefits while remaining in the same accommodation. When I spoke to various housing associations and local authorities, they were somewhat surprised, because they had given the numbers of people who might be affected and the numbers of cases they were still investigating, but the Opposition had added them together to try to multiply the numbers. When we answered the question on the numbers, the figure we gave at that time—5,000—was the best we could do. It is incorrect to say that the Opposition have those numbers; that is not the case.