Better Jobs and a Fair Deal at Work
Karin Smyth Excerpts(2 years, 11 months ago)
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Rishi Sunak
Well, my right hon. Friend and I strongly agree on the role of the private sector in driving our recovery. What is important, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said, is businesses having the confidence to invest, which is why the Government have provided support for businesses not just to get through the crisis, but, through tax cuts such as the super deduction, to help them invest and drive our recovery forward. Both my right hon. Friend and I know that the prosperity that we all want can only be created by those private sector companies. I hope that gives him the reassurance that he is looking for. I should make some progress.
Talking of those businesses, I do believe that they are also now beginning to feel more confident. Although many firms have been hit hard by the pandemic, the latest data shows that the number of businesses becoming insolvent actually fell by nearly a quarter last year compared to the year before, and in aggregate firms have been able to build up an extra £100 billion of corporate deposits since the start of the pandemic. Since we announced our super deduction tax cut, businesses now have a virtually unprecedented incentive to invest and create jobs. Bank of England surveys show that businesses expect to invest around 7% more than they would have done over the next two years, and Deloitte’s recent survey of business leaders shows that their intention to invest is stronger than it has been at any point since 2015.
It is, of course, going to take this country and the whole world a long time to recover fully from the shock that saw the largest fall in output in 300 years, but although our recovery will be long and difficult, it is beyond doubt now that our plan is working. We will, however, never be complacent. Eight hundred thousand people have lost their jobs through this crisis, and no Chancellor could guarantee that there will not be more jobs lost. People losing their jobs is the thing that weighs most heavily on me. Work is the best route out of poverty. It brings people financial independence. It improves long-term outcomes for families and children. Work is not just another economic variable—it provides us all with purpose and fulfilment. That is why every job lost is a tragedy. That is why jobs are our highest economic priority. That is why we have a plan for jobs, and that plan is working.
Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)
The right hon. Gentleman may have noticed that we recently elected a new Mayor of the West of England region who has pledged to commit to jobs, green jobs and bringing people together across the west of England. Will the right hon. Gentleman commit to working with the new West of England Mayor to deliver that promise, because no one from the Government has currently been in touch to ensure that that promise is delivered on?
Rishi Sunak
The Government believe in devolution and have worked successfully with Mayors across the country. I have a very productive relationship with Mayors. I commend all Mayors who have recently been re-elected, particularly Andy Street in the west midlands and Ben Houchen in the Tees Valley. I believe that all leaders want to drive jobs and growth in their areas. I look forward to working with anybody who shares that goal, and I look forward to working with that new Mayor.
When it comes to supporting work, what also matters is that we reaffirm our commitment to ending low pay by increasing the national living wage to £8.91, an annual pay rise for someone working full time of almost £350. We are providing targeted support to young people, who, as has rightly been identified, have been hardest hit in the pandemic. The £2 billion kickstart scheme will create hundreds of thousands of jobs for 16 to 24-year-olds who would otherwise be at risk of long-term unemployment.
Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)
This Queen’s Speech was most notable for what it lacked. It was the thinnest of gruel for a nation hungry for ambition and a plan to get back on track, but there was no plan for our economy, nothing of substance on jobs or opportunities for young people, and—perhaps most troubling of all—no plan for social care. Normally a Government wait until after the speech has concluded to start breaking their promises, but this Government’s refusal to confront the ticking time bomb of social care, despite the Prime Minister’s repeated assurances, shows that they are willing to break new ground on broken promises. There was no need for the Prime Minister to bring his ID to the Chamber yesterday; this speech had his fingerprints all over it.
In Bristol, 6,000 people are supported by adult social care, most of them at home. This accounts for around 40% of council expenditure, but that is the tip of the iceberg because most of us are trying to support our older relatives and give them the dignity they have earned through their lives. We are frustrated, we are tired, but we are resolute in supporting our old people and we need help.
A care home manager wrote to me yesterday. I do not have time to go through her whole heartbreaking letter, but at the end she said: “It is a travesty that such a skilled role, involving caring for people and ensuring that medical and all care needs are met, is often paid less than a supermarket worker.” I agree with every word. Let us be honest about the cost of social care. We need a cap on care costs. We need to increase tax or national insurance contributions as an insurance against future costs. We need to learn from the low transaction and bureaucracy costs in the NHS, make the same provision for social care and end the artificial divide.
We now have a Labour metro Mayor in the west of England, so I hope that we make progress on training and educating local people for the jobs that come from a green recovery. We have been left behind in recent years. The Tories have been good at scrapping green initiatives, but putting nothing in their place.
I would like to make two further points. First, I am co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on choice at the end of life. I would like to see this country have a compassionate law on assisted dying, rather than only people who have £12,000 being able to make the choice for themselves. The statistics that have now been commissioned by the Secretary of State on the number of dying people who end their own lives by suicide alone would be really helpful for that debate.
Secondly, I welcome the inquest findings into the events in Ballymurphy in 1971 and the vindication of those families who tried to clear their loved ones’ names. The Prime Minister must now apologise, after 50 years, and accept the failings of successive UK Governments under successive Prime Ministers that have caused such untold damage.
There is something deeply unsavoury about a Queen’s Speech that ignores issues such as social care—happy to allow millions of citizens to face the uncertainty of those end-of-life years—and younger adults, but that is instead far more concerned with denying millions of people their democratic rights. It tells us everything we need to know about this Government, and their priorities and values.
Covid-19: Government Transparency and Accountability
Karin Smyth Excerpts(3 years ago)
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Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg). I thank him for the fair and inclusive way in which he has chaired the Committee.
The sense of shock, uncertainty and genuine confusion that the public at large felt as this crisis began was in truth mirrored by the Government. That is at least in part understandable, and I will return to the issues of preparedness later, but the nature, scale and speed of that first wave was unlike anything our Government have ever faced before. It would have tested the boldest of leaders, the best prepared institutions and the most resilient of communities.
My father-in-law died in those early few weeks. I was grateful to be able to attend his funeral, but my children could not. Since last April, tens of thousands of families have faced this trauma, and the loss of life and destruction of our economy is not understandable, nor was it inevitable. The truth is that our leadership was woeful, our institutions already cut to the bone by funding cuts, our communities fractured and frayed, health inequalities widening, and it is no surprise that the poorest have faced the greatest burden.
In a democracy as old as ours, the Government rightly have less power to control us and force compliance than many others across the world, but that means that transparency and accountability are more fundamental to securing our agreement for the common good, and when the very Government who had previously eroded accountability and shirked transparency asked us to make those sacrifices, there were bound to be tensions. The starting point of distrust and dysfunction was made much worse by the unpreparedness with which we entered this emergency.
Emergency preparedness, resilience and response is a term that we use to make sure that we are safe before, during and after an emergency and national disaster. At our Committee session on 29 April the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster appeared to talk about the work of the Cabinet Office, and we looked at preparedness. The pre-2020 timeline to our report is really important. Public Health England’s pandemic flu strategic framework in 2014 had as a key principle preparing for the worst. That 2014 document built on work in 2011, which followed work in 2009 regarding the previous flu crisis. In 2016 Operation Cygnus, the exercise conducted to understand our preparedness and test our resilience in response, was shrouded in mystery, and it was only released in October 2020, as even The Daily Telegraph reported, following legal action and the threat of the Information Commissioner. That document really exposed how poorly prepared we were.
In addition, in our meeting with the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in April we discussed the national risk register, which had not been published since 2017; it is supposed to be published every two years. I asked him whether the Cabinet Office monitored whether various Departments and agencies had completed the mitigations in previous risk registers. He answered that it was the Cabinet Office’s responsibility to do so. He wrote to us later, on 21 May, with less clarity on the Cabinet Office’s role, simply stating that work on the risk register for 2019—for 2019—was advanced, but would need to be recalibrated in light of the current pandemic.
Also, we were running the NHS at over 90% of capacity, when the Royal College of Emergency Medicine and many other royal colleges had been warning that 85% was more in line with patient safety requirements. That, plus the additional year-on-year Government cuts, including to public health, all meant that we were not prepared when we could have been, and any look back at this dreadful time in our history needs to expose that failure.
But fundamentally and unforgivably, we were hamstrung by this Government’s ideological opposition to the very things that could have helped save lives—an ideological opposition to experts, an ideological opposition to local government and local expertise, an ideological opposition to the principles of good public health. And what was it replaced with? The absurd reliance on mates and acquaintances—approaching a pandemic in much the same way as most of us would look for someone to plaster our bathroom. Underpinning it, the idolatry of the private sector, trumping every time the institutions and people who actually understood the communities we were looking to protect.
Crucially, the Government were bereft of a strategy, with no accountability, and that includes the legislation and our role as Members of Parliament who were presented with that rushed legislation and reliance on ancient public health Acts, rather than the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 and the scrutiny that had happened in this place before—a problem that we are still trying to extricate ourselves from.
The key part of that Civil Contingencies Act was the reliance on local resilience forums. None of us live in Whitehall; we live in our communities. That is why local forums are so critical, and any response should have been driven bottom-up and then supported by the national effort—and that is where so much damage has been done, in that local response.
For everything we have learned in our Committee, the transcripts are really quite shocking. As a previous emergency planner and someone who has worked closely with public health, I expected certain things to happen, and they did not. The test and trace debacle is the most obvious case in point—so many lives lost, so much time lost. Why would the Government not trust local leaders, and our colleagues in councils of all political colours, to get the job done that they were trained to do? Over the border from me only 20 miles, in Wales, the Welsh Test, Trace, Protect system is run as a public service and has delivered, by any measure, better outcomes for vastly less public money.
Things have got a bit better in terms of the local-national interface and response, but there are still some real issues that are hampering the public health response now and for the future. First, we must not reorganise the organisation that is doing this at national level in the middle of a pandemic and make people fearful of losing their jobs when they are trying to save our lives. Secondly, the consequence of the Lansley Act is that public health expertise in local government does not have the same access to NHS data that previously occurred. That has hampered the public health effort locally. Public health officials in local government need to be able to access data for public benefit and recognise the difference between identifiable personal data and non-identifiable data. That is something the Government can do something about.
We have to use this excellent report to look to the future. Does anyone here think that everything will be normal after 21 June? Again, after everything we have been through, the Government are still not on the front foot. They are still too late, as demonstrated by the decision about India going on the red list this week. I do not think everything returns to normal after 21 June, and the Prime Minister has now started hinting about a third wave. That means he has to take some actions. We are all so very weary. We are desperate to see our loved ones. We are desperate for everyone to get back to work, to go on holiday, to start planning our lives now. Our young people need radical change in our education system to be prepared for the future. Decisions need to be made now. We all want to be able to visit care homes and have people able to leave those care homes. It is an absolute disgrace, but the urgency is missing.
In conclusion, I am very proud to be a part of this Committee. I commend our Chair for the fair and inclusive way he has conducted it. Our Clerks and advisers have been superb in their support and responsiveness to allow us to do some great work in difficult conditions. I thank them for report they produced, and I thank our great witnesses. The Government, however, have not learned the lessons. I am not confident that they have taken on board these recommendations. If we are to secure compliance for the next stage, that really needs to happen: we need honesty and transparency about the data; honesty about the political choices that face us; honesty about the balance of risk; and, frankly, more respect for Parliament and the people we represent.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I reiterate that we need to keep to five minutes, otherwise I will put on a time limit.
Penny Mordaunt
I am fairly confident that I can flatten any suggestion of shenanigans in that regard. These are not only very distinct issues, but conditional on very distinct things. What we do on international travel, over and above our own border controls, is clearly contingent on work with international partners. The World Health Organisation will be developing and thinking about schemes that it might put in place for a covid equivalent of the yellow fever card. Those are clearly very different from the domestic issues that my right hon. Friend refers to; I know that people would not want to conflate them and that it would be unhelpful to do so. I think that I can confidently say that.
Many Members touched on the complex balance between fighting the virus and trying to mitigate its impact on people’s livelihoods, mental and physical health, and freedoms. That is why this is obviously such a complex situation.
The hon. Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth) raised many issues, but two in particular. On preparedness, she will know that I published the latest iteration of the national risk register on 18 December last year. External bodies welcomed that and said it was an improvement on its predecessors. On local information, she will remember from my evidence to the Committee that I was very robust in agreeing with her that people who have been in the frontline of this response are the local resilience forums, the local authorities, and our local health and care services. Giving them the data they need to make decisions is absolutely critical. As the crisis has gone on, we have got better and better about giving them information and sharing information, because this is obviously a two-way process.
It is also vital that members of the public can go on the public health website and look up in their area, right down to ward level, the number of positive cases, virus tests conducted, hospitalisations, death rates, and admission figures for both ordinary bed occupancy and mechanical ventilator bed occupancy. They can see all that data. That is not just good for transparency’s sake; it is a hugely motivating factor in getting people to follow the advice of the chief medical officer. Our actions are not just helping the nation; they are helping their neighbours and the nurses who are looking after people in their local hospital. They are helping their friends and neighbours.
Karin Smyth
I am really grateful for the Minister’s comments, but may I write to her on the issue I raised with regard to public health clinicians in local authorities being able to access to NHS data? Will she liaise with her colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care on that important issue? If she can give me an assurance that she will look at that if I write to her, I would be grateful.
Penny Mordaunt
Certainly. I hope that some of the questions I have already raised with colleagues may pre-empt that. I know there are requests from local authorities on issues such as encouraging people to take up the vaccine, when they want to ensure they are able to get good data and are able to work together to encourage people who have yet to come forward to do that. These issues are very important, and I will be very happy to take up the hon. Lady’s suggestions.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd West (Mr Jones), the hon. Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) and my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely)—I thank him for his kind words—raised issues about quality control and how we present data, which I agree with. I think people have learnt all sorts of things about how to present data and slides in a way that is suitable for television, and a whole raft of other issues. My right hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd West reminds us that our audience is sophisticated—they can accept that there will be gaps and that we will learn things as we go through the pandemic—and that we should bear that in mind as well.
A couple of hon. Members raised the issue of lagging data. There will be pieces of information that, by their very nature, have a lag, for example between people being infected and being admitted to hospital. Again, we have to set the context and ensure that we explain what particular information is demonstrating, that we make the best judgments on that, and that Ministers are informed when they are given data.
My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight framed an argument about covid being a cause of death versus other causes of death. I am very conscious of that. Before this debate I was reading an incredibly sad story of a double suicide. A young woman without access to the post-natal care she needed took her own life. Her mother then took her own life. We are all aware of the incredibly sad stories and the devastating things that have happened to families during this time. Also, the actions we have taken to control the virus are about keeping health services going, as well as covid being a cause of death; I think sometimes we lose sight of that.
I want to turn to some of the issues that my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) raised. The impact on businesses is absolutely at the forefront of our mind, and as well as the data we are looking at what more we can do to help businesses to keep going. Just this week, I have been asked to support Ministers in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy on the issue of the wedding sector as we go into this critical period, in order to keep that sector strong and ensure that it has a good summer season. This is not just about the guidance and the rules that we put together; it is also about the lead-in times that people need to make their decisions. Those issues are not lost on us.
Leaving the EU: Impact on the UK
Karin Smyth Excerpts(3 years, 1 month ago)
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Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab) [V]
This time three years ago in the Chamber I made a speech about St Patrick and Brexit, noting that wherever he was from, St Patrick was not from Ireland, but he freely wandered our shores as thousands did before him and after him. I said then that the Good Friday-Belfast agreement was not just about Northern Ireland, Ireland or a border, but the freedom of movement of people across these islands and the deep roots we have. I ended by saying that the great people of these islands expect to be able to move and trade freely, and that any dilution of that would not be acceptable to any of us. I stand by my words. I love my country. I love my heritage and the country of my birth. But things got worse, not better, after 2018 and this Tory Government, blinded by a singular narrow English nationalism, have divided us further. England is better than that. It is better than they are.
I believe that nationalism is a scourge. It supports one’s own to the exclusion of others and people in Scotland rightly rejected it, but what this Prime Minister’s Brexit has done is exclude others. It has created division where we thought we were moving forward, and it has given succour to nationalism, separatism and fear. But I remain an optimist, because whatever empire, monarch or constitutional settlement has been in place across these islands, we have continued to trade and migrate. We have married, enjoyed our sports, our arts and our culture. We get on with our lives too often despite, and not because of, political leadership. But we here are political leaders and it is our job to lead, and to defend and advance the interests of our constituents. It is my view that that is never done by excluding others or dividing; it is always done by understanding, including and respecting others. We have mutual interests.
Thirty years ago, politicians in Ireland and Britain did not understand or respect each other. We did not talk or meet, but far-sighted parliamentarians did lead and established forums for us to come together and start to understand each other. I am very proud to have been the British vice-chair of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly for the past few years. In those years, I have had the privilege to sit in the chairs of others in the Senedd, Holyrood, Stormont and the Dáil. I have shared committees with, debated with and had the occasional drink with parliamentarians from all jurisdictions and all parties, some of whom I profoundly disagree with but who have taught me so much about their motivations, their fears and ambitions for themselves, their families and their constituents.
The British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly offers us a way to heal and map the future as parliamentarians. I hope we can bring more informed debate, reflection and respect for difference to the next three years than the last, and I hope other parliamentarians will join us in doing that.
The Economy
Karin Smyth Excerpts(3 years, 9 months ago)
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Steve Barclay
Again, we have taken measures with specific support, as my right hon. Friend the Chancellor set out. That is why we are cutting VAT for campsites and the tourism sector from 20% to 5%. That is part of it, but as the Chancellor also said, if we extended as the hon. Lady suggests, others would say, “Another month, another month, another month”, and people would be away from the labour market for a long period, which would not be in their interests.
Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)
Bailey of Bristol in my constituency is a world-class manufacturer, and I totally echo the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) that these businesses are not talking about forever. They are clearly talking about getting through to the spring. That is not that long, and it is a big investment. Please will the right hon. Gentleman reconsider?
Steve Barclay
Again, this was covered extensively in the earlier debate. First, the furlough is already in place for an extremely long period, until October. That is eight months, and we are only halfway through it. Secondly, other measures are being put in place, including measures to incentivise employers to bring those on furlough back. It is not right that people should stay on furlough for an extended period of time—[Interruption.] Nor have the Opposition set out exactly which sectors they want it extended for, or how that would apply in areas such as the supply chain. We would simply get an indefinite period in which that scheme would be —[Interruption.]
Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)
I was in the Chamber when my hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor spoke earlier and it was obvious that the Prime Minister was visibly irritated by her comments, particularly those on public health and test and trace. However, as was echoed by my hon. Friends the Members for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) and for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood), we cannot separate the public health crisis, and the way in which the Government responded to it, from the response needed to the economic crisis. I am not an economist, but I have spent a lot of time in the health service and I know that we cannot rebuild the economy unless we build that public confidence. We saw last weekend that people start going back to places only when they know it is safe to do so.
At the beginning of this crisis, with my experience working in emergency planning in the health service, I thought the Government would revert to the usual tried and tested processes that were in place and that they would trust local government public health officials to trace people properly, as they know how to do. I have been totally shocked—I will admit, perhaps naïvely—at how incompetent the Government have been with their national imposition around the entire system, which has failed us so badly and led to so many excess deaths. Only belatedly are they turning to local government and that local public health expertise that does exist. Local government needs proper funding to continue to do that work to get a proper system in place so that people have the confidence to go back and support the economy. We cannot separate the two.
What we have had today is not a strategy for the future; it is not ambitious. I want the Government to succeed in putting the economy back together. I have three young people at home. I am desperately worried about the future for young people. Bristol South was devastated by the recession in the 1980s and people still bear the scars of that loss of jobs and loss of security, as well as the impact on people’s physical and mental health. I want the Government to do much better.
Most businesses in Bristol South are small and medium-sized enterprises and there are many freelancers. They are not getting the support that they need. Women are more likely to be in shut-down sectors, particularly in retail and hospitality. Women—in fact, all families—cannot work unless there is decent child care and social care in place. The Women’s Budget Group—
Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)
My hon. Friend may have been about to make the point that analysis from the Women’s Budget Group shows that over 2 million jobs could be created in the care sector, which is more than are being created by any of the Chancellor’s schemes today. Does she agree that the Government should meet with the Women’s Budget Group to address this clear oversight in their policy making?
Karin Smyth
I am grateful for that intervention. That is exactly the point that I was going to make—more than 2 million well-paid jobs in this sector. In Bristol, social care makes up 13% of employment and it desperately needs supporting. The Minister has left the Chamber, but he commented in relation to another question that women’s income is quite important to families. It is not the 1950s. It is not pin money that women are earning. They are supporting their families and the gentlemen in the Treasury need a bit of help on the real economy as it affects women, which we are ready and willing to offer.
I want to focus my final comments on the further education sector and adult skills and training. They seem to be a bit hidden with respect to what we have seen today, and I am still trying to understand the detail, particularly as it affects apprenticeships. I am co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on apprenticeships and I have long supported the Government’s work in this area, working very closely with Ministers. Again, I want to see the apprenticeship system succeed. It is a ladder of opportunity for my constituents who are the least likely in the country to go to university. Please do better.
I have written to the Education Secretary suggesting an approach by Bristol City Council to retain some levy funds so as to be able to support public sector recruitment for apprenticeships. I would like an answer quite soon. Also, I would like to understand from the Government today whether we can clarify what impact the kick-start programme, which we do welcome, will have on businesses if they take on apprenticeships. If that could be addressed later, I would be very grateful.
It looks like colleges are getting some money, but it is a long way short of what they have been losing. City of Bristol College is hugely skilled in blended learning, supporting the most vulnerable and the least skilled youngsters, as well as those with greater skills, in our economy. We want further education colleges to succeed. They are ready to help with catch-up, training and adult skills, but they need to be properly funded to do that.
I would also like to know what the Government have estimated the regional economy of the west of England to be. We have been a net contributor to the Treasury in the past; we seem to be falling behind. When will we understand what these proposals mean for the west of England? At the start of this crisis, the Government said they would support local government. Bristol City Council is £76 million in debt. We need the Government to do better. Please support Bristol.
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (John Glen)
It is a privilege to close this debate on behalf of the Government and I thank hon. Members from across the House for their varied and considered contributions, which I will reflect on in a few moments.
At the outset of this crisis, the Government introduced a £160 billion package of measures to protect jobs, incomes and businesses from the harm and disruption caused by covid-19. Thanks to the action that we took, millions of jobs and livelihoods have been safeguarded through the worst months of the pandemic. Most importantly, our frontline services have received the money that they need to tackle this virus head-on and to support the most vulnerable in our society, but we have always been clear, as the Chancellor reiterated today, that we are ready to take further action as the circumstances developed.
Throughout this crisis, we have listened to hon. Members across the House, just as we have listened to businesses and those working in public services. That is why we announced the bounce back loan scheme in response to some of the challenges with the CBIL scheme to help the very smallest firms and sole traders who might not otherwise be able to access the finance that they needed. It is why we announced that both the coronavirus jobs retention scheme and the self-employment income support scheme would be extended into the autumn. It is worth remembering that we still have three and a half months to go on those schemes. It is why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport came to this House on Monday to announce a bespoke package of support for theatres, museums and our hard-hit creative industries. As a former Arts Minister, it is great to see the National Gallery leading the way by opening today.
Today marks a new phase in our new economic response as we look to the future and to our recovery with a plan for jobs. It is a plan that will build on the success of our jobs retention scheme by rewarding and incentivising employers to keep previously furloughed staff in work through the autumn and into the new year by paying them a jobs retention bonus.
John Glen
I will not, given the time.
It is a plan that puts young people front and centre, with a kick-start scheme that will pay employers to create quality jobs for 16 to 24-year-olds at risk of long-term unemployment, alongside new funding for apprenticeships, traineeships and sector-based work academies. We shall be issuing guidance very shortly on how those schemes will interact with the extra support that we are putting into jobcentres. It also means that we shall invest in infrastructure, decarbonisation, and maintenance projects that will serve the needs of communities across the country, while creating jobs and apprenticeships here and now.
Through our collective efforts, coronavirus has been brought under control in this country, but it has not disappeared completely. Even as our economy reopens, many businesses and families will continue to face significant challenges. The Chancellor made it clear today that the Government are not driven by ideology; we are guided by the simple desire to do what is right. For that reason, we will continue to take significant steps to support the economy in the weeks ahead. We will, for example, inject new certainty and confidence into the housing market by increasing the stamp duty threshold to £500,000 for first-time buyers. That recognises the additional expenditure in the economy derived from a house purchase, and, we anticipate, will have a significant effect.
Few sectors have been harder-hit, though, than retail, hospitality and entertainment, so, from next Wednesday, VAT on food, accommodation and attractions will be cut from 20% to 5%. I welcome the positive comments from across the House for that measure. Through the month of August, everyone in the country will be entitled to a Government-funded discount of 50% in restaurants, pubs and cafés, Monday to Wednesday. The “eat out to help out” discount is the first of its kind in this country, and proof that the Government will leave no stone unturned in our efforts to protect people’s jobs and livelihoods.
I shall now mention some of the themes of this afternoon’s debate. My hon. Friends the Members for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton), for High Peak (Robert Largan) and for Keighley (Robbie Moore) emphasised the need for investment in local infrastructure and levelling up, and that means investing now to prevent long-term damage to the economy and support the private sector. That is why the Government have brought forward the shovel-ready projects.
On the theme of sustainable public finances and recapitalisation, my right hon. Friends the Members for Wokingham (John Redwood) and for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) and my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) recognised the challenges ahead with respect to the third phase that the Chancellor referred to today, and we shall be responding in the Budget later this year. My hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire raised a particularly important point about the need to encourage the private sector to generate the jobs ahead.
My neighbour, my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), made a passionate speech, referring to the need to address urgently the challenges faced by the beauty industry. She also mentioned the disproportionate impact on women, people from the BAME community and the disabled, and we shall be responding to the excellent report that her Committee, the Women and Equalities Committee, produced in the spring.
There was a moment of synergy between my hon. Friends the Members for Buckingham (Greg Smith) and for St Albans (Daisy Cooper) as they backed the “eat out to help out” campaign, and my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) emphasised his commitment to that in terms of support for pubs.
There were also references to the need for resilience with our local authorities, who have received £3.7 billion in new grant funding. We will work closely with local authorities as we move into the next stage.
Oral Answers to Questions
Karin Smyth Excerpts(3 years, 9 months ago)
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Rishi Sunak
I wholeheartedly agree with my right hon. Friend that we should put reaching our net zero commitments at the heart of our recovery. He will have heard our recent announcement about green homes grants, which shows our commitment in this area. I know that he has a lot of experience in hydrogen transportation, and I look forward to hearing his thoughts on that so that they can be incorporated into our future plan.
Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)
Rishi Sunak
I agree with the hon. Member about the importance of post-16 education and further education, which is why I was delighted to announce at the Budget a £400 million increase in post-16 education funding, a record increase in per-pupil funding compared to the last several years, and indeed the Prime Minister has talked about our commitment to upgrading the entire FE college estate across the United Kingdom.