Economy Update

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Rishi Sunak

Thursday 26th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

Seventy per cent. of those in work will pay less tax this year than they did last year because of the changes that we have made. As I have said, now is the time to act because we have more certainty over what the price cap in the autumn will be. We are two thirds of the way through the observation window. Ofgem has given us a sense, which means that we can scale the support appropriately.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. The shadow Chancellor made a very fair point: how are we going to fund this £15 billion? Is it not also fair to ask, on the basis that the windfall tax would raise about £3 billion by Labour’s calculations: how will Labour fund all the spending plans that it has announced today and on previous occasions, and the tax reductions that it has announced today and on previous occasions?

[Rishi Sunak]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. On the last count, we have had, I think, £100 billion of spending commitments or tax reductions from the Labour party. Less than a tenth of that has been funded, despite the shadow Chancellor saying that she is committed to fiscal responsibility. It is the same old story with Labour. Ultimately, they always run out of other people’s money.

Financial Statement

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Rishi Sunak

Wednesday 23rd March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

We have already created the holiday activity and food programme, which provides both food and enriching activities for children outside term time. There is also the household support fund, and Barnett consequentials will enable the Scottish Government to provide the same support for vulnerable families in their communities.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I warmly welcome the Chancellor’s statement and, in particular, the rise in the national insurance threshold. It will not only help low earners, which is important, but bring a welcome simplicity to the system. I also welcome the reform of the apprenticeship levy, but will the Chancellor look at the amount that can be transferred through the annual levy transfer? It is currently capped for larger organisations, and that restricts the amount that they can give to smaller organisations. A reform would see much better use of the apprenticeship levy, which would help small and medium-sized enterprises, local authorities and others.

[Rishi Sunak]

I thank my hon. Friend for his support. He is right to point out that the significant increase in personal tax thresholds is particularly well targeted at those on lower and middle incomes, and I look forward to discussing with him, over the coming months, potential reforms in the way in which we tax training and apprenticeships.

Economic Update

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Rishi Sunak

Thursday 3rd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

In contrast, this Government have announced measures to share the burden with consumers and help manage the global price rise. Despite the faux outrage from the Opposition Benches, I am sure that even they would admit privately that the support just announced is both generous and comprehensive.

Let me take some of the hon. Lady’s points in turn. First, on VAT, may I say how very welcome it is that the Opposition are recognising the benefits of Brexit? I hope they will join me in celebrating the fact that we have been able to change mass migration to this country after decades, that we can create new freeports in places such as Teesside, that we can sign new free trade deals, and that we can deregulate our economy to drive faster growth. She talked about VAT. VAT will, on average, be worth £90 to every household. We are providing £150 to those households that really need it and delivering that support quicker.

Secondly, the hon. Lady tried to claim that it was the Government’s responsibility to manage global gas prices. I outlined in my statement that it is very clear, as any person looking at this sensibly will acknowledge, that global factors are causing the increase in gas prices. No British Government or Chancellor can change what is happening in Asia or, indeed, stop a nuclear power plant going offline in Germany, and the hon. Lady should acknowledge that. Even in places such as Norway, electricity bills are rising because global factors are in play. She would do well to acknowledge that—and the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), sitting next to her, will know that, having spent a lot of time on this.

Thirdly, I want to address the point about our support for the most vulnerable, because I am proud of this Government’s record in supporting those who need our help. The policies we have announced today are progressive in their nature. A flat rate will, of course, mean far more to those on lower incomes or with lower energy bills. It is worth five times as much as a percentage of income for those in the lowest incomes as for those on the highest incomes. The hon. Lady talked about insulation. Over this Parliament, we are spending £3 billion to improve energy efficiency and insulation for over half a million households in fuel poverty. That is the right thing to do and it will save those vulnerable families, on average, £300 a year, not just this year but every year going forward. We have already announced those plans.

Lastly, to address the hon. Lady’s point on a windfall tax, of course that sounds superficially appealing, but we on the Government Benches deal with complex problems in a responsible way. The obvious impact of a windfall tax would be to deter investment—it is as simple as that. At this moment I want to see more investment in the North sea, not less. Last year we saw the lowest amount of investment on record in the North sea, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy pointed out just the other day. There are £11 billion of projects lined up to go. I want to unlock that investment because that is good for this country, good for British jobs and good for our energy security.

We will pursue policies that are good for the interests of this country not just today but in the future. My right hon. Friend the Energy Secretary is working very hard to make sure we have an energy market that is fit for the future. We have made investments in nuclear, which, as he rightly pointed out, were ignored by the Labour party when it was in power, but which we are now fixing.

In conclusion, I am not blind to the challenges we face. I have to say to the hon. Lady and her colleagues, however, that we on this side of the House did not have the luxury of sitting on the sidelines and throwing stones. Faced with the gravest of crises, this Government chose to protect millions of jobs. We chose to support millions of businesses, we chose to invest in a world-leading vaccination programme, and we chose a balanced approach to covid so we could open up faster than anywhere else in Europe. We did those things at record speed and at a time of great uncertainty, and we will always strive to learn from mistakes. Nothing is ever perfect when responding to a crisis, but I say to the Labour party that there is a fine line between reasonable criticism and political opportunism, and in my experience the British people can always tell the difference.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s announcement today. Does he agree that a cut in VAT to solve this crisis is a completely flawed policy, as evidenced by the three economists who spoke to the Treasury Committee this week, including Torsten Bell from the Resolution Foundation, who wanted something far more targeted, such as what my right hon. Friend has announced today? It is clear that one factor in this crisis is Russia’s willingness to weaponise its gas supplies. Will he confirm that if there is any incursion into Ukraine, this country, with our international allies, will look at weaponising our banking system, which would be economically catastrophic for Russia?

[Rishi Sunak]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. On VAT, I have nothing further to add. He is right; what we are doing is more targeted, faster and more generous to those who need our help. With regard to sanctions on Russia, I can assure him that absolutely nothing is off the table. We are working closely with our international partners, as the Foreign Secretary has outlined, to prepare a very robust package of sanctions.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Rishi Sunak

Tuesday 1st February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

Anyone who has questions about my values can just look at my track record over the last year or two. I am proud of this Government’s achievements in supporting those who most needed our help at a time of anxiety for our country. I respectfully disagree wholeheartedly with the hon. Gentleman: I do believe that work is a route out of poverty. All the evidence shows that children who grow up in workless households are five times more likely to be in poverty than those who do not, which is why I am proud that there are almost a million fewer workless households today as a result of the actions of this Conservative Government.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

The most effective sanctions that we could impose on Russia would be to block Russian banks’ access to UK and international markets. Will my right hon. Friend consider that and consider cushioning the inevitable blow to our banks, businesses and households from the financial impacts, including to the cost of living?

[Rishi Sunak]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. With regard to sanctions, absolutely nothing is off the table. We are working extremely closely with our international allies to make sure that we can send a robust signal to deter Russian aggression, and we continue to explore diplomatic solutions at the same time. He should rest assured that nothing is off the table.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Rishi Sunak

Tuesday 7th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

Forgive me, Mr Speaker; I should have welcomed the right hon. Gentleman to his new position. I look forward to working with him in his new role.

With regard to the winter and energy prices, of course many people are anxious about inflation. It is something that we are grappling with. What I will say to people is that we have put in place multiple interventions to help with those costs, notably the household support fund—half a billion pounds to help millions of our most vulnerable. That comes on top of our existing support, whether it is for pensioners or for those on lower incomes, to help with energy bills that were already in place. This Government remain committed to helping people with the cost of living. I assure the right hon. Gentleman that we will continue to look at the situation carefully.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

Regional mutual banks are a feature of all the other G7 economies, which have much lower levels of regional inequality. They are key to the provision of small and medium-sized enterprise finance. We have a number around the UK that are ready to go, led by experienced professionals; all they need is some pump-prime funding. Will my right hon. Friend agree to meet me to discuss this very exciting policy area?

[Rishi Sunak]

I am always delighted to meet my hon. Friend and neighbour, and if we could do that in north Yorkshire, it would be fantastic. He is right—as he always is—to champion the need for small and medium-sized enterprises to have access to the finance that they need, and if he has come up with yet another idea to ensure that that happens, I should be delighted to learn more.

Better Jobs and a Fair Deal at Work

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Rishi Sunak

Wednesday 12th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

The kickstart scheme has now created almost 200,000 job placements for young people in record time, given that the scheme was only announced in July last year and operational in autumn. Its ramp-up compares very favourably with the future jobs fund, which preceded it, and with which the hon. Member will be familiar. Now that the economy is reopening, many more young people can start those placements over the coming months. I commend all people both at the Department for Work and Pensions and at the thousands of companies involved for their participation in a scheme that will transform the opportunities of young people up and down the country.

With regard to apprenticeships, we already have an incentive for employers to take on apprentices. In the crisis, the Government introduced a £3,000 hiring subsidy for small and medium-sized businesses to take on a new apprentice—a significant 35% subsidy, I think, of an apprentice at the apprenticeship median wage. It also pays for 95% of all training costs for apprentices employed by SMEs, as well as improving the quality of those apprenticeships. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that apprenticeships are important, but we took action in July last year.

To help people of all ages to get back into work, we have doubled the number of work coaches in jobcentres and provided over £3.5 billion to help people to search for work or retrain, and we are launching the restart programme, with £2.9 billion to provide intensive support to over 1 million people who are long-term unemployed. This Queen’s Speech goes even further to turbocharge our economic recovery and get people into decent, well-paid jobs. The plan set out in the Queen’s Speech creates more jobs, and jobs where people live. The levelling up White Paper will set out bold new interventions to improve livelihoods and opportunities. We are strengthening the Union with record investment in new infrastructure, such as road, railways and broadband. We are turning Britain into a science superpower, with our plan for growth making this country the best place in the world for inventors, innovators and engineers.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

First, may I wish the Chancellor a very happy birthday? The scale of his ambition on levelling up is absolutely right, but the scale of the challenge is also huge. The economic gap between London and the south-east and the north-east, in relative terms, is as great as it was between East Germany and West Germany prior to reunification, and it took 30 years to narrow that gap. Does he agree that it will take more than one Parliament and more than the significant investment he has already committed to truly to level up this country?

[Rishi Sunak]

I thank my hon. Friend for his warm words, and I agree with him. This is the task that this Government will meet head-on, and it is right that it needs to be an ambitious goal that we set ourselves to meet. Like him, I share an eagerness to get on with it and keep going—and he will know, like me, that we are already doing it. Indeed, we are making the most of our new-found Brexit freedoms to launch freeports, for example, creating jobs and growth in innovative new industries in places such as Teesside, which both he and I know very well.

Spending Review 2020 and OBR Forecast

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Rishi Sunak

Wednesday 25th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the importance of youth services. I am not entirely sure exactly which bit he refers to, but I am happy to talk to him further about it. He will see in today’s spending review that the National Citizen Service is still there and we have provided more funding for capital projects for youth organisations, but I will happily pick up the specific case he mentioned separately.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement, particularly the levelling-up fund. May I make an immediate representation for dualling of the A64 in my constituency? I also welcome the changes to the Green Book. Will he take a similar look at the housing infrastructure fund, which also has a built-in bias towards spending in London and the south-east?

[Rishi Sunak]

I know that this is an area that my hon. Friend knows particularly well, so I am very happy to take him up on that suggestion and discuss his concerns with the Housing Secretary. I thank him for bringing it to my attention.

Covid-19: Economy Update

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Rishi Sunak

Thursday 22nd October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

I am happy to organise for a relevant Minister to meet the hon. Lady. I hope that those companies—she is right about the difficult time they are experiencing—will have been able to access, for example, the bounce back loans or the coronavirus business interruption loans to help them with cash flow, and ditto with the VAT deferral and time to pay. But I appreciate that it is a difficult time for them, and the best thing we can do is allow more economic activity so they can get their coaches full as quickly as possible.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I warmly welcome this package of support. Nevertheless, as the Chancellor has acknowledged, this will be a difficult winter for some businesses. When we move into what I hope will be a spring recovery, we will see the reintroduction of the full rates of VAT and business rates. Would my right hon. Friend consider phasing in the reintroduction of those at slightly lower levels to allow businesses to get back on their feet in these very important sectors?

[Rishi Sunak]

As ever, I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s advice and support. He is right: the business rates holiday we have put in place this year has provided over £10 billion of support to almost 1 million businesses. I know what a vital lifeline it is, so of course we keep all measures under review. Future fiscal policy is for Budgets, but I thank him for raising the point with me.

Covid-19 Economic Support Package

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Rishi Sunak

Wednesday 14th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

I know what a difficult time this is for the hon. Lady and her constituents. With regard to underspends—I will come on to this later—I think it is wrong to think of them in that way. That was the Government giving an advance to local authorities to make payments to businesses. That was done on the basis that every local authority will have a wildly different degree of overspend or underspend, which we true up at the end of the process. We could equally have asked local authorities to make payments themselves and reimbursed them afterwards. There is significant financial support both for her local authority and the businesses in her area that have closed down. That was announced by the Prime Minister and I will come on to address that in detail later. It is right that that support is there.

Let me reiterate our plan. The House will be well aware of the gravity of our economic situation. The latest figures show that our economy grew by 6% in July and 2% in August, but it remains almost 10% smaller than it was before coronavirus hit. Business investment suffered a record fall in the second quarter of this year. Consumer sentiment remains well below its long-run average. Despite the significant support we have provided, the data is beginning to reveal the true extent of the damage that coronavirus has caused our labour market. The latest statistics published just yesterday show employment falling, unemployment rising and welfare claims rising. The revisions that the Office for National Statistics has made to its previous estimates show that unemployment was higher than it thought over the summer.

I have talked about facing up to the difficult truths clearly, and we are facing an economic emergency, but we are acting on a scale commensurate with this emergency as we address my single biggest priority: to protect people’s jobs and their livelihoods. We have put in place a comprehensive plan to protect, support and create jobs in every region and nation of the United Kingdom. Through more than £200 billion of support since March, we are: protecting more than 9.5 million jobs through the job retention schemes; strengthening our welfare safety net with an extra £9 billion for the lowest paid and most vulnerable; granting more than £13.5 billion to those who are self-employed, with further grants to come; and protecting over 1 million small and medium-sized businesses through £100 billion of tax cuts, tax deferrals, direct grants and Government-backed loans.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the best way to protect jobs is to keep the economy open wherever possible? Most other nations are using a local-restrictions approach to deal with this situation, including Germany, which is using lockdowns at a district level, not even at a state or county level. Does he agree that that is the best way forward?

[Rishi Sunak]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The only sustainable way to protect jobs in the long run is to have an economy that is open and functioning. No amount of support can make up for that.

There are other things we have done: eased repayment terms on those loans through pay as you grow; delivered on our promise to give the NHS what it needs; backed hundreds of thousands of young people to find good jobs through the kickstart scheme and new investment in training and apprenticeships; created green jobs through the £2 billion green grant programme; showed that we are here for our cultural sector, with the cultural recovery fund and a further support package for charities; and invested hundreds of billions of pounds in the largest, most sustained programme of infrastructure investment the UK has seen in decades. That is comprehensive action to protect the jobs and livelihoods of the British people. It undermines the credibility of the Labour party that, in the face of all that support, it continues to pretend that insufficient action is being taken.

The Economy

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Rishi Sunak

Monday 27th April 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

If I understood the hon. Lady’s question correctly, I can assure her that the coronavirus business interruption loans apply to meeting asset-related costs already, so it is perfectly possible to use that scheme for a finance arrangement like that. But if that was not her specific question, I would be happy to answer in writing.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

May I first declare my business interests, and, from a business perspective, thank the Chancellor for the excellent work that he is doing—a view shared widely across the business community? On the business interruption loans, I welcome the removal in the new micro loan scheme of the forward viability test, which is one of the complexities that slows down the current scheme. Will he commit to looking at removing that from the main scheme as well, which would help to get money out of the door much more quickly?

[Rishi Sunak]

My hon. Friend has been not, I would say, a thorn in my side but a doughty champion of those who would like to have access to these loans. He has made this point forcefully and repeatedly to the Economic Secretary and to me. I am pleased to tell my hon. Friend that we have been working with the banks over the past week or so and we have been able to make, on his recommendation, several changes to the scheme, including from the regulatory side through the Prudential Regulation Authority and the Financial Conduct Authority, to give banks the comfort they need, as well as reassurances from the Government. A statement will be issued shortly by UK Finance confirming that banks will not require from businesses the provision of forward-looking financial information or business plans. I hope that that gives him the reassurance he needs. It will give comfort to many businesses. I congratulate him on making this point so forcefully and effectively over the past week or two.

Economic Update

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Rishi Sunak

Tuesday 17th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

My right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary is talking to all Departments about the resources that they require to get through these challenging few months.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I warmly welcome this package of support for small businesses, which has been warmly welcomed by a number of businesspeople who have already contacted me. The business interruption loan scheme is a key part of this, but some lenders cannot access that scheme because they are not registered with the British Business Bank, and it would take months for them to do so. Will the Chancellor act now to ensure that all lenders can access that scheme?

[Rishi Sunak]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. He is right: we want this scheme to be available through as many branches and outlets as possible. We are urgently working with the Prudential Regulation Authority to see whether we can onboard new providers at pace. He will understand that there are regulatory requirements, but we are seeing what we can do to speed that up.