Budget Resolutions

Lola McEvoy Excerpts

Wednesday 26th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dr Spencer]

Go for it.

[Lola McEvoy (Darlington) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Member therefore agree on the point in this Budget around investing £16 million in a cutting-edge science, technology, engineering and maths centre in my constituency to enable us to repair the post-Conservative scarring that we felt as a community, as we saw the hollowing out of our manufacturing sector?

[Dr Spencer]

If the hon. Lady will forgive me, I do not know the specific details regarding her constituency, but what I can say on the broader, macroeconomic details is that the reduction in employment as a consequence of national insurance contributions changes means that there are more children with parents who do not have jobs.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Spencer]

Who knew, indeed.

Energy costs are a big chunk of everybody’s outgoings, and we are still waiting for them to come down. Property costs also are a big chunk of people’s outgoings, and this is reducing and putting more pressure on the private rented sector, particularly landlords. The measures in the Budget today around the increased taxation on property revenue will be passed on to the consumer—that is, people who are renting—adding yet another cost pressure. I wish Labour Members would think through what happens not just in step one of a Budget intervention but in steps two, three and four in relation to the impact on their constituents.

One way to deal with child poverty is to look at the cliff edges of the taxation system, including the wrapping down of universal credit when someone works for 28 hours. When the Work and Pensions Committee looked at in-work poverty costs—the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms), who is in his place, was the Chair at the time—one of the things that really came out, through and through, was that lots of the families in difficulty were single-parent families and they struggled with the 28 hours’ provision because of childcare costs and the marginal benefit. We also need to look at cliff edges in relation to housing allowance and council tax. We need to get rid of the cliff edges to ensure that work always truly pays.

Also really important in helping child poverty is making sure that the child maintenance system works. There are plenty of families with a parent who should be supporting their child but is not doing so. That is absolutely scandalous and it needs to be fixed.

[Lola McEvoy]

I wholeheartedly agree with the hon. Member that the child maintenance system needs reforming. Does he agree that, in 2010, it was wrong of the Conservative and Lib Dem coalition to introduce a £50 access fee for people who were trying to get the money that the absent parent of their child was refusing to pay? Was that a bad decision by his Government at the time?

[Dr Spencer]

I invite the hon. Member to look at the report that Parliament released on the reform of child maintenance, particularly on the barriers that were set up in the system, both in terms of direct and indirect payments. I think all of us across the House would agree that the child maintenance system needs reform.

The issue with the two-child benefit cap is that most, if not all, parents love their children and would like to have more children, should money, time and other things—[Interruption.] Okay, I stand corrected, but people make decisions when planning their families based on the resources they have, whether those are personal resources, time or money. It is fundamentally unfair to say to one group of people who are making difficult budgetary decisions in relation to having more children, “You’re going to be taxed more so that you can pay for other people who are not subject to those difficult budgetary decisions because they are not employed at the moment.” That is fundamentally not fair.