Oral Answers to Questions

Keir Starmer Excerpts

Wednesday 24th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise flooding, and she is right about short and long-term solutions. That is why I am proud, among other things, to have helped to instigate the Thames Tideway Tunnel, with the biggest super-sewer in the history of this country, which will help to deal with what happens in London when the Bazalgette interceptors overflow and to deal with flooding throughout the city.

[Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

At the last election, the Prime Minister promised that nobody would have to sell their home to pay for care. That is another broken promise, isn’t it?

[The Prime Minister]

No, because if the right hon. and learned Gentleman looked at what we are proposing and if he supported what we are proposing—it is fixing something that Labour never fixed in all its years in office. We are saying to the people of this country that we will disregard their home as part of their assets if they and their spouse are living in it. No. 2, you can have a deferred payments agreement if you move out and are living in residential care. Most important of all, by putting the huge investment we are making now in health and social care, we are allowing, for the first time, the people of this country to insure themselves against the otherwise potentially catastrophic costs of dementia or Alzheimer’s. Even if you are not one of those people who suffer from those afflictions, we are taking away the anxiety from millions of people up and down the land about their homes.

[Keir Starmer]

I think the Prime Minister just described the broken system he said he was fixing. It is certainly not a straight answer. Let us have another go. He used to say—[Interruption.] I see they’ve turned up this week, Prime Minister. [Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I do not think we need any further shouting. Yesterday, we had a very good example of the House at its best, in the cathedral. Please, let us show some respect. I want to be able to hear not only the Prime Minister, but the Leader of the Opposition. Shouting each other down does not do you or your constituents any good. We need to hear the questions and I certainly need to hear the answers. And if anybody does not like it, please leave now.

[Keir Starmer]

It is not a complicated question, so let us have another go. The Prime Minister used to say that nobody would have to sell their home to pay for their care—it is in his manifesto, right here. On the basis of that promise, he then put up tax on every working person in the country. Has he done what he promised and ensured that nobody will have to sell their home to pay for care, yes or no? It is not complicated.

[The Prime Minister]

No, it is not complicated, because what we are doing is disregarding your home as part of the assets that we calculate. If you go down to £100,000, that is the beginning of where we will ask you to contribute, but your home is not included in that. Labour has absolutely no plan. It has spent decades failing to address this. Only a few weeks ago, Labour Members failed to vote for the £36 billion that will enable us to fix this and to help people up and down the country—not just to fix the social care problem, but to pay for people to live in their own homes and receive the care they need in their homes. That is what this one nation Conservative Government are doing. Why will the right hon. and learned Gentleman not support it?

[Keir Starmer]

The Prime Minister has had two opportunities to stand by his manifesto commitment and he has not taken them. [Interruption.] He says he just has, so let us test this in the real world. Under the Prime Minister’s plans, a person with assets worth about £100,000, most of it tied up in their home, would have to pay £80,000. They would lose almost everything. How on earth does the Prime Minister think that they can get their hands on that kind of money without selling their home?

[The Prime Minister]

I am going to have a third go at trying to clear this up in the befuddled mind of the right hon. and learned Gentleman, because it is important. The fact is that the Labour party has totally failed to address this. It has not had the guts to fix this in all its time in office. It is something left over from the Attlee Government and we are fixing it. Let me repeat for the third time: your home is disregarded. No. 2, even if you have a second—if you are in residential care, you have a deferred payments agreement. No. 3, we are allowing you to insure yourself for the first time against catastrophic consequences by capping it at £86,000. He stood on a manifesto to put the cap where? At £100,000!

[Keir Starmer]

The question was really simple, and it is the question that all his Back Benchers are asking. If you have a house worth about £120,000 to £140,000, how do you find £80,000-plus without selling your home? It is common sense.

Strip away the bluster, strip away the deflection and strip away the refusal to answer the question and there is the simple truth—and this is why the Prime Minister will not address it: people will still be forced to sell their home to pay for care. Why do they—[Interruption.] Look at the vote the other day to see the answer to that question. People will still be forced to sell their home.

It is another broken promise, just like the Prime Minister promised that he would not put up tax; just like he promised 40 new hospitals; just like he promised a rail revolution in the north. Who knows if he will make it to the next election, but if he does, how does he expect anyone to take him and his promises seriously?

[The Prime Minister]

Yet again, the right hon. and learned Gentleman raises the rail revolution in the north: three new high-speed lines and £96 billion—[Interruption.] Again, nothing like it for a century. Just for the advantage of hon. Members, I did not even know this—I was in a state of complete innocence about this last week—but it turns out that he actually campaigned against HS2 altogether. He said it would be “devastating” and that it should be cancelled. I can tell you, Mr Speaker, that HS2 runs through my constituency as well, and even though it has been very tough for my constituents, I took a decision that it was the right thing to do for the long-term interests of the whole country. How can they possibly trust that man?

[Keir Starmer]

I think the Prime Minister has lost his place in his notes again. The only thing he is delivering is high taxes, high prices and low growth. I am not sure that he should be shouting about that.

It is not just broken promises; it is also about fairness. Everyone needs protection against massive health and care costs, but under the Prime Minister’s plans, someone with assets worth about £100,000 will lose almost everything; yet somebody with assets of about £1 million will keep almost everything. It is just like the Conservatives’ 2017 manifesto all over again, only this time something has changed: he has picked the pockets of working people to protect the estates of the wealthiest. How could he possibly have managed to devise a working-class dementia tax?

[The Prime Minister]

I think I have answered that question three times already. This does more for working people up and down the country than Labour ever did, because we are actually solving the problem that Labour failed to address. We are disregarding your housing asset altogether while you are in it.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman talks about jobs and working people. Let me remind him of one key statistic that people should bear in mind. He talks about the economy, and now, almost a month after furlough ended, there are more people in work than there were before the pandemic began. That is because of the policies that the Government have pursued.

[Keir Starmer]

There is no getting away from it: working people are being asked to pay twice. During their working lives, they will pay much more tax in national insurance, while those living off wealth are protected. When they retire, they face having to sell their home, when the wealthiest will not have to do so. It is a classic con game—a Covent Garden pickpocketing operation. The Prime Minister is the front man, distracting people with wild promises and panto speeches, while his Chancellor dips his hand in their pocket.

But now the Prime Minister’s routine is falling flat. His Chancellor is worried that people are getting wise. His Back Benchers say that it is “embarrassing”—their word. Senior people in Downing Street tell the BBC, “It’s just not working.” Is everything okay, Prime Minister?

[The Prime Minister]

I will tell you what is not working, Mr Speaker: that line of attack. I just want to repeat the crucial point: we are delivering for the working people of this country. We are delivering for the people of this country, we are fixing the problems that they thought could never be fixed, and we are doing things that they thought were impossible. Let me repeat: there are now more people in work in this country—jobs up, with their wages going up—than there were before the pandemic began. That is because of the policies that this Government have followed. Whether it is on rolling out the vaccine, which the House will remember the right hon. and learned Gentleman opposed; whether it is on investment, which he opposed—[Interruption] He did; he did not want to invest in the vaccine taskforce, I seem to remember. Or whether it is making the strategic investments that we have made, if we had listened to Captain Hindsight, we would have no HS2 at all. That was what he stood for. If we had listened to him, we would all still be in lockdown.