Finance Bill

Jonathan Edwards Excerpts

Tuesday 12th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

My hon. and learned Friend is entirely right. As I have said, we are the party of bringing down corporation tax and small business tax, and we continue to bring those taxes down. The Labour party’s current policy is to raise corporation tax to 26%, which is going to do very little to encourage entrepreneurship in this country; it will in fact do the reverse. It must also be borne in mind that, on personal tax, it is Labour’s policy to start dragging more people into the higher tax rate, whereas it is this Government’s policy, through increasing the personal allowance, to take people out of tax and lower the tax burden entirely.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

Last week the Institute for Public Policy Research published an influential report on some of the major economic challenges facing the British state, not least chronic geographical wealth inequalities. What measures are there in this Bill to meet those challenges?

[Mel Stride]

The Government’s record on income equality is extremely strong. The hon. Gentleman may be aware that we have the lowest level of income inequality in this country for 30 years, as measured by the Gini coefficient. We are assisting the lower paid through the national living wage and national minimum wage and HMRC’s vigorous actions in making sure that that is complied with by businesses, and, as I have already stated, through the personal allowance changes we have made, which have taken many out of tax—3 million individuals, heading towards 4 million as we go up towards £12,500 as the new allowance.

[Jonathan Edwards]

I was asking about geographical inequalities.

[Mel Stride]

We are a party and Government who recognise that all parts of our economy are equally important in sharing the proceeds of growth. That is why we are investing through our national productivity fund—through the work we are doing on skills, the investment we are making in infrastructure and the northern powerhouse, and through all these approaches—to make sure that prosperity, living standards and household income are improved throughout the length and breadth of our country.