Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Julia Lopez and Torsten Bell(2 weeks, 2 days ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Torsten Bell)
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight both the progress that has been made and the hard work of the voluntary sector, including citizens advice bureaux across the country. We must continue recent progress, and we shall certainly do so. I would like to highlight that our support for pensioners goes far wider, including the 4.1% increase to the state pension and to the level of pension credit, as my hon. Friend mentioned, in just a few weeks’ time.
Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)
At a constituency meeting last week, I was told that small businesses are starting to ask employees to go self-employed as they cannot otherwise keep roles open because of forthcoming national insurance contribution rises and extra employment laws. Will the Department watch out for this trend in its data, in case it was not the Government’s intention to make workers less secure with these new taxes and more regulations?