Liam Fox
Main Page: Liam Fox (Conservative - North Somerset)Department Debates - View all Liam Fox's debates with the HM Treasury
(5 months, 2 weeks ago)
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James Murray
As always, my right hon. Friend makes an important point. The Government are trying to have it both ways. When inflation goes up, it is someone else’s fault. When it comes down, they claim the credit. I think that we can trust the British people to see through whatever way they try to distort the truth.
James Murray
No, I will make some progress.
The truth is that the Conservatives’ fingerprints are all over the cost of living crisis, and it would be ludicrous for anyone to expect the prime suspect to be asked to solve the crime. It is clear that we cannot trust the Government with the cost of living crisis. It is also clear that we cannot trust them with our money. No wonder they want to run from their record in office when they have wasted taxpayers’ money so badly. The levels of fraud and waste on their watch make the 25 tax rises over this Parliament all the more galling, and even harder for hard-pressed families to stomach. From the £7.2 billion of public money that was lost on fraud during the pandemic to the £50 million spent on a new helicopter for the Prime Minister to make the short trips that he is so fond of, it is clear that the Conservatives are incapable of spending public money wisely.
Labour will set up an office of value for money as part of our pledge to put fiscal and economic responsibility at the heart of our approach if we win the next election. On that foundation, we will get the economy growing after 13 years of stagnation, as we know that economic growth is the key to making people across Britain better off. Had the UK economy grown since 2010 at the same rate that it did under Labour in the years before, it would be £150 billion bigger today—£5,000 more for every household, every year. That is why Labour’s plan to provide the stability, certainty and critical infrastructure improvements that businesses value so greatly is so important.
Our new fiscal lock, which the Conservatives voted against last week, will strengthen the Office for Budget Responsibility, helping to ensure that the disastrous mini-Budget of this time last year could never happen again. Our new road map for business taxation will give businesses from the UK and around the world the certainty and predictability that they need to invest in Britain. That need for certainty has been behind our calls to make full expensing permanent, which the Government have finally announced—though with this Government, businesses may well be left wondering how long their latest position will last. While small businesses and the retail, hospitality and leisure industries will no doubt welcome any further help with business rates, again the Government have failed to provide the fundamental reform promised at the general election.
Where the Conservatives have failed, Labour will deliver. Our proposals to overhaul the planning system will fast-track the decisions that we need to deliver clean energy, critical infrastructure, and the factories and workplaces of the future. Our national wealth fund will provide catalytic public investment to leverage three times as much private sector investment into jobs and industries across our country. Our approach will be one of a pro-business, pro-worker Government, ready to grow Britain’s economy and make working people better off. Governments in other countries around the world know that businesses want their support in growing new industries and making the transition to a low-carbon economy. As the chief executive of the UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association said just yesterday, the Chancellor needs to
“urgently set out the UK’s overdue response to the”
US approach
“and similar measures in other jurisdictions, such as the EU, Canada and Japan”.
The truth is that through their lack of ideas, lack of ambition, and lack of the industrial strategy that we need, the Government are holding British businesses back. Ministers are making Britain the outlier, while the Governments of similar nations around the world are supporting their national industries to attract jobs and investment. The Conservatives cannot deliver what our economy needs, and people and businesses across Britain know that it is time for a change. Even the Prime Minister has conceded that our country needs change. Maybe that is why he still has misplaced confidence in the Conservatives: he thinks that because they have changed their Cabinet so much and so often, they must be on to a good thing. It is true that their record on changing who is sat around the Cabinet table is remarkable. To have had five Prime Ministers, seven Chancellors, and an astonishing 16 Housing Ministers is noteworthy—but not, of course, for the right reasons.
The problem for the Conservatives is that whatever they try to do now, they know, and the British people know, that they cannot be the change that we need. Nothing can compensate for the damage that they have already done. What on earth will they put on their election leaflets, I wonder? Will they say, “We may have increased taxes 25 times, but things will be different now—honest!” or will they say, “Don’t worry—0% growth is actually better than what it could have been.”? Maybe they will play it straight with something like: “We may have failed for 13 years, but we’d like another chance.”
We all know that that simply will not wash. The Conservatives are out of touch and, increasingly, out of time. After 13 years, working people have had enough of paying higher taxes, enough of seeing their wages stagnate, enough of their public services falling apart, and enough of Britain’s economy falling behind. The change that our country needs can only come from our changed Labour party—one that is ready to serve, ready to get the economy growing, and ready to make people across Britain better off. The truth is that people in our country should be given the chance to get Britain its future back. That is why a general election cannot come soon enough.
Dr Liam Fox (North Somerset) (Con)
I warmly welcome the Chancellor’s statement as a move back towards some sound Conservative principles that have been somewhat lacking in recent years. I would have liked his language to have been even more explicit, because the No. 1 principle that underpinned what the Chancellor was saying—if not expressed so explicitly—was that there is no such thing as public money, or Government money: there is only taxpayers’ money, whether they are personal taxpayers or business taxpayers. We are beginning to get away from the sterile tax and spend debate that has bedevilled our country and, I would argue, our party for too long, and to get back to the territory of how to create wealth.
It was right of the Chancellor to remind us of Nigel Lawson’s maxim that borrowing is just the deferred taxation of the next generation. No one would think it was reasonable behaviour to max out their credit card and then give the bills to their offspring, but that is exactly what overspending and over-borrowing leads to, and it is exactly the same recipe that the Labour party is putting to the British public all over again. Like the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Ealing North (James Murray), I very much look forward to a general election: we will be able to expose the fact that the Labour party cannot even tell us as a matter of fact—as a matter of its credibility—what proportion of current inflation it thinks is due to, for example, the commodity price shock that resulted from the invasion of Ukraine. Labour Members absolutely refuse to accept that anything is responsible for inflation other than UK domestic pressures and domestic policy. If they believe that that gives their party credibility in the markets, they have got another think coming. We will want to make sure that the electorate understand that analysis very well.
Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Catherine West
The right hon. Gentleman talks about which questions will be asked during a general election campaign. Since last year, my constituent has had to move with her husband and children back into her parents’ home: she cannot afford a mortgage, because when she went to renew hers, the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) had crashed the economy. My constituent and a lot of other people who live in Crouch End and Muswell Hill cannot afford their mortgages because this Government crashed the economy. Can the right hon. Gentleman tell the House what the Government will say to my constituents at a general election?
Dr Fox
Unsurprisingly, the hon. Lady was both incapable of answering the question and unable to do so. The question was, “What was the cause of inflation?” It was inflation that drove up interest rates. I reiterate the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) made: the Fed rate is 5.5%, while the Bank of England rate is 5.25%. I presume the hon. Lady thinks that—in her words—my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) crashed the American economy too. It is complete nonsense; it is a bogus economic analysis.
We all know the impact that inflation has. We know that it hits the poorest people in our society hardest, which is why the Government, along with the Bank of England, were willing to see the pain of higher interest rates applied. Inflation does not help anyone. What I wanted to know, which I did not get from the hon. Lady or from her Front Benchers—surprise, surprise—was what they thought was the external responsibility for that inflation. We do not have an answer from Labour, and therefore we have an Opposition who have no credibility on one of the most basic questions: what causes inflation? If they do not know the answer, they cannot possibly be trusted to be in charge of this country’s finances.
One of the other things that I welcomed today is that we are moving slowly—still a little too slowly, I would argue—towards a lower-tax economy. The Chancellor set out the reasons why a lower-tax economy is a good thing. It is not just an abstract economic argument; it fits with Conservative ideas of individual responsibility, reducing the size of government, giving individuals greater choice, and providing incentives for those who will generate the wealth on which our future public services will depend. By emphasising the importance of creating prosperity, rather than the sterile debate about whether we should spend less or tax more, we are getting back into the right territory for a Conservative Government.
I was especially pleased to hear the measures for small businesses. My hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott) recently had to endure my previous speech on this subject recently, in which I pointed out that, unlike what you would believe if you listened to the Labour party, public sector and private sector jobs in our economy are not in balance. The public sector produces only about 17% of the jobs in our economy; it is the small businesses and the private sector that produce the jobs and prosperity on which our country depends. We have had too high a tax burden on small businesses as they have come out of the pandemic, so I welcome the measures today.
I still have trouble with this term “growth” that goes around. I do not believe that growth as measured by the standard definitions is appropriate for a UK economy so highly geared towards services compared with goods. I know that it is the accepted norm, but I think we need to find better ways of describing it.
I welcome some of the moves towards improving capital availability, because if our businesses face one real problem, it is the lack of capital available for growth in our economy compared, for example, with the United States. That is because our economy is still too heavily geared towards the banks, and not enough towards private equity. We need to look at the breadth and depth of the private equity or venture capital industry in the United States and find out how we can replicate that in the United Kingdom if we are to give even more help to our small businesses.
I very much welcome the incentives to work that the Chancellor announced. Again, getting people back into work is not just an economic exercise; it is what I would regard as a moral imperative. If the only value people know they have is what the state gives them to do nothing, how can they possibly know what value they could be to themselves, their families and their communities if they were allowed to realise their full potential? Getting 200,000 more people back into work is a socially progressive thing to do, and if we are able to get more disabled people back into the workplace, so much the better for them, not just for the economy. I welcome what the Government have announced, because the best way to tackle poverty is to get people into work, and it is not just financial poverty but poverty of aspiration and poverty of hope that we are addressing by making this important social change.
There were one or two other elements on which I would have liked to have had some more detail from the Chancellor. I hope my hon. Friend the Minister might be able to provide that in responding to the debate. One of the problems right across the economy, particularly for small businesses, as the Chancellor stated, is late payment. However, one of the most important culprits in late payment is local government. Local authorities are spending the taxes that we in this House have to raise, in addition to the taxes they raise themselves, and surely it is not acceptable to us that the taxes we raise are spent in a way that actually adds an extra burden to small businesses. It should be a requirement on local authorities that they pay all their bills to small businesses on time. I hope the Government will look at that, because I believe there would be widespread support across this House for measures that compelled local government to do so.
I very much welcome the additional £20 billion investment over the next decade. That will help to address the one problem that has bedevilled our economy more, I think, than any other factor: productivity falling behind that of our competitors. Improving the horizon for freeports by up to 10 years will give additional stability, and again I hope we can look at how we can have a deregulatory exercise in those areas. That could test exactly how much we would get were we to expand the concept of freeports. I hope we can look more at the experience of countries such as the United States, where freeports have greater freedoms than they have in the United Kingdom. The Government are moving in exactly the right direction, but let us move further and faster on that.
The Chancellor talked about other supply-side reforms to the economy, one of them being the speeding up of improvements to the grid so that we can take advantage of the investments that have been made, for example, in renewables. I do not expect a response to that in the wind-up today, but I introduced a private Member’s Bill exactly to ensure that individuals impacted by the speeding up of improvements to the grid would have access to an independent arbitration programme, and not have National Grid deciding whether they should get compensation and how much they should get. That was an unacceptable position. We have not yet seen the regulations that will produce that independent arbitration, and we need to see them quickly. If we are to see the roll-out of an improved grid, it will impact more people, and we have to see a fair, equitable and affordable system where individuals can seek redress if they feel they have been dealt with unfairly.
I will briefly mention the continuing whinging victimhood of the nationalists. When they were talking about the ridiculous position that they are put in by being part of the Union, they just forgot to mention—I am sure it was an omission—that the block grant has now risen to the highest level since devolution began, at £41 billion this year. For every £100 that the UK Government spend in England, the Scottish Government receive £126 per person in Scotland.
Dr Fox
The hon. Member gave his side of the case. I am just pointing to the fact that individuals in Scotland do extremely well out of their membership of the Union. If SNP Members want to see a crash, they know exactly which way to go about it, although I fear that the electors of Scotland at the general election will ensure that they do not get the opportunity to test their mad theories to destruction.
I was glad that we had a Conservative financial statement today that sets course for the spring Budget and the chance to set out genuine differences of ideology when we get to a general election. We believe that we should have a smaller state; we believe in lower taxes, public sector reform, and getting better value for money for the taxpayer. The Labour party will want to increase spending, increase borrowing and pass it on to the next generation. As with all things, the primal difference between socialists and Conservatives is that we believe in equality of opportunity; they believe in equality of outcome and equal mediocrity for all. What we want to see is the betterment of the United Kingdom for the sake of all its people.
Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
Listening to the Chancellor today, one would believe that the economy has turned a corner and the cost of living crisis is over. The truth is that after 13 years of economic failure, millions of people are struggling to make ends meet. Some of the comments we have heard from the Government Benches show just how completely divorced the Government are from the reality of working people’s lives.
We hear heartbreaking stories every single day from our constituents about how they skip meals to pay higher bills, with the price of food up 30% in the past two years, electricity up 40% and gas prices up 60%. We hear how they are struggling with the highest tax burden this country has seen in 70 years. The freezing of current thresholds has confirmed an additional 4 million of the poorest in society will now pay income tax by 2029. We hear from constituents worrying about where to find the money to pay their mortgage, to avoid having to sell their family home due to the reckless actions of this Government. Millions continue to pay the price of the Tory mortgage penalty. Working families will see an average increase of £220 a month in mortgage costs because of Tory economic failure and 1.5 million households are also set to suffer as they re-mortgage their deals next year.
Tulip Siddiq
I think the right hon. Gentleman is trying to absolve himself of the fact that it was his former Prime Minister and Chancellor who crashed the economy of this country. He just needs to go to his constituents and, I tell you what, they will provide him with the answer at the next election.
The OBR revealed today that household incomes will still be 3.5% lower next year in real terms than before the pandemic hit. To put that in context, it is the biggest hit to living standards since records began, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) neatly summarised in his speech. My hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Dame Angela Eagle) brilliantly articulated, as she always does, the biggest insult to working people, which is that in return for their hard-earned contribution, their reward is crumbling public services. The Conservatives’ mismanagement of the economy has left our public services on their knees, with people unable to get hospital appointments and waiting lists 7.8 million people long.
According to the latest IMF forecast, if people have not seen it, the UK will have the slowest growth in the G7 next year. Today, we learnt that growth in the economy has been downgraded not only for next year, but for two years after that. As British people already know, the promises made today cannot compensate for the damage that has already been done. The measures announced today are equivalent to handing back £1 for every £8 of the Conservatives’ tax increases in 2019 alone. The freeze in the personal allowance threshold means that a couple on an average wage will still be £350 worse off per year, even after all of today’s announcements. After 13 years of economic failure, the Chancellor is asking people to be grateful and telling them that their lives will suddenly improve, despite the Government’s continuing to make them worse off. So the question is this: do people feel better off today than they did 13 years ago? I think our constituents know the answer.
Before I sum up the powerful contributions to the debate that we have heard from the Labour Benches, it would be remiss of me not to welcome the hon. Member for—[Interruption]—the hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami). Excuse me for forgetting, but he is the fourth Economic Secretary I have shadowed in two years. I know he is an ambitious young man, but he will have a very hard job trying to get the title of the most charismatic Economic Secretary I have shadowed so far. The right hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen) has earned that. I shall watch the new Economic Secretary to see how he performs in his job. If there are any words of wisdom he wants from me, he is welcome to contact me. I hope he lasts longer than his predecessors.
I am grateful to my Labour colleagues for their important contributions. My hon. Friends the Members for York Central (Rachael Maskell) and for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier) rightly talked about the huge demand for social housing. Private renters are paying the price of Tory failure, along with mortgage holders. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms) rightly argued that we need to go further on the consolidation of defined contribution pension funds and questioned whether the Government are rushing their reform of work capability assessments. My hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) gave an important speech on the complete failure of the Government to strengthen adult social care. My hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) powerfully raised the plight of rising child poverty and once again raised the need for a hospital in his local area.
A Labour Government will always prioritise supporting working people. We will deliver an ambitious plan for growth that meets the scale of the challenge that we face—to turn around the UK economy. Labour will get Britain building again. We will deliver a robust industrial strategy on a statutory footing that will in turn deliver high-skilled, high-paying jobs across the country. We will close unfair tax loopholes to ensure that we can support our schools and hospitals with the investment that our people are crying out for. We will scrap the non-dom tax status loophole, which costs the Exchequer £3 billion in revenue. That money will help us to reduce the NHS waiting list and provide free breakfast clubs for all children of primary school age.
Labour is leading the charge on unlocking investment in high-growth firms. Through our national wealth fund, a Labour Government will work in partnership with industry to deliver the investment that our businesses need to scale up and deliver growth across the economy. We will empower industry to invest, alongside our Labour Government, in the industries that are crucial to Britain’s success, such as hydrogen, electric battery factories, wind and nuclear, and we will do so in a way that meets our fiscal rules. We will set the fund a target to ensure that for every pound that Labour puts in, we leverage three times as much in private investment. That is because we believe in growing the economy. We want to raise living standards, and we will fund our public services better.
The Tories have claimed that they have a plan for growth, but forecasts are down. They claim to be reducing debt, but it remains at record levels. Despite their claim to be reducing taxes, the tax burden will be the highest since the war. After 13 years of failure, this Government cannot deliver a serious plan to address the fundamental challenges faced by our constituents and the country. All they can do now is take their record to the voters, and call a general election.