Employer National Insurance Contributions

Josh Simons Excerpts

Wednesday 4th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Josh Simons (Makerfield) (Lab)]

The economic arguments in this debate will be well covered by other Members, so I would like to make a brief point about choices and political leadership—about having arguments, rather than ducking them. For a decade, as low growth placed an ever-greater burden on the public finances, Conservative Members fiddled and fudged, choosing stealth taxes such as fiscal drag that they hoped nobody would notice. Between 2010 and 2021, Conservative Governments introduced 1,651 tax changes. They changed vehicle excise duty 258 times and alcohol duty 125 times. The last Parliament saw the largest set of tax rises since the second world war, leaving the tax burden at a third of national income. When a Government are frightened of their own shadow, as well as their own divided Back Benches, it is easier to fudge and fiddle than to face up to hard choices.

Conservative Members lacked the courage and unity to tackle the great problem this great nation faced, but not us—not this Government. When we see something fundamental that requires courage and leadership to address, we square up to it and confront it. That is why we immediately undid the fiddles and fudges, ending the freeze on income tax that has burdened working people in this country. It is why we ended the hidden theft of money from working people and fixed the injustice of the mineworkers’ pension scheme, and it is why we boosted HMRC compliance, because there is no point in creating a tax behemoth that cannot be enforced. It is also why we made a big, clear choice to close the gaping hole in the public finances left by Conservative Members.

Britain’s economy has run a tight labour market alongside stagnant productivity growth for decades. In that context, national insurance rises are a sensible, balanced and transparent way to incentivise business investment that will boost productivity while filling the £22 billion black hole. That is what courage looks like: squaring up to the challenges our country faces, instead of running scared and leaving working people to pay the price. We have fronted up to set this great country back on a secure path.

If the Opposition wish to show the nation that they are a responsible party ready to govern this great country, they must have the courage to tell us whether they would scrap this measure, and if not, which of the challenges we face they wish to ignore. Do they want to cut off the electrification of the Wigan-Bolton train line? Do they want to get rid of the experts working with the Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh NHS trust in my constituency to bring down waiting lists? Perhaps they want to cut back once again on the neighbourhood police officers who we are getting back on our streets, or perhaps they want to cut the £150 million investment in Border Security Command. I do not think so.