Spring Statement

Lord Clarke of Nottingham Excerpts

Tuesday 13th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

The right hon. Gentleman supported the switch to a single fiscal event, and now he is complaining that I have not delivered a mini Budget today. I am not surprised that he cannot quite understand anybody passing up the opportunity to introduce some new taxes, because that is what a Labour Government would be doing, not once a year or twice a year but every other week.

I heard the right hon. Gentleman referring to some of my hon. Friends as “Tory bully boys”. I remind the House that this is the man who still refuses to apologise to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, so I do not want to hear anything about bullying from the Labour Benches. The public will draw their own conclusions.

The right hon. Gentleman knows his Lenin, of course. The task is to win power, and that is why we see from him the smooth reassuring mien of the bank manager, but every now and again, the mask slips, and we get a glimpse of the sinister ideology that lies beneath—an ideology that would wreck our economy if he ever gets anywhere near the controls, threatening confiscation, dismissing property rights, undermining the cornerstones of our economy and the basis of our freedom and prosperity.

The right hon. Gentleman talks about political choices. Let me tell him the political choices we have made. We have closed the tax gap to one of the lowest in the developed world. We have raised £175 billion by 100 measures against tax evasion and avoidance. We are collecting 28% of all income tax from the richest 1% in our country—a higher percentage than in any year under Labour. He says that real wages are falling. I have good news for him: the OBR expects real wages to rise from quarter one 2018, which, in case he has not worked out, starts in two weeks’ time.

The right hon. Gentleman talks about spending on the disabled. Well, I have good news for him again: spending on the disabled will be higher in every year of this Parliament. He talks about research and development to support our economy. Research and development spending is at a record high.

The right hon. Gentleman reels out the same old bogus statistics on regional distribution; I think he has got the briefing from Russia Today. Let me tell him this: the Infrastructure and Projects Authority has published figures that clearly show that the highest per capita spending on transport infrastructure investment is in the north-west region, not, the last time I checked, one of the southern regions. All regions have benefited from the boom in employment. All regions will end this Parliament with lower unemployment and higher employment.

The right hon. Gentleman talks about £700 billion of increased national debt. We have had to deal with the legacy of Labour’s meltdown in 2009 because they did not fix the roof while the sun was shining. Our historical function is to clean up Labour’s mess, and my report today shows that we are doing it once again.

The right hon. Gentleman talks about funding for the NHS. I have put £9 billion into the NHS since autumn statement 2016. He talks about school budgets. School budgets are increasing per pupil in real terms. On children’s services, he must know that Department for Education research shows that spending on the most vulnerable children has increased by around half a billion pounds in real terms since 2010. We have committed £1 billion to tackling rough sleeping and homelessness and made a manifesto pledge to eliminate rough sleeping by 2027 and halve it by 2022.

No one watching our exchanges today can be in any doubt that Britain faces a choice. We have a plan to get our economy growing. The shadow Chancellor says it does not matter whether GDP grows or not. We have a plan to get people on the housing ladder, while the shadow Chancellor does not want “to get bogged down in property rights”. We have a plan to deal with our debts. The shadow Chancellor wants to send debts soaring because he fantasises that he can borrow for free.

The choice is clear: our vision of a dynamic, modern economy, or the Labour party’s vision of an inward-looking, narrow-minded country. We have to win this argument, because if we do not, it will be ordinary people—not the rich and the powerful and not the globally mobile—who pay the price, as they always do for Labour’s failings.

[Mr Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his very forceful statement based on competent government and grown-up politics, which are worlds that the shadow Chancellor will never enter. When my right hon. Friend comes to prepare his Budget for November, I am sure he will be looking for any new source of taxation that may be needed to put even more money than he already has into the NHS and social care, which are facing vast increases in demand.

May I suggest that my right hon. Friend looks at some of the extraordinary anomalies he has inherited in the tax treatment of older prosperous people in full-time work in this country? [Laughter.] Well, I think I am perfectly well placed to make my point and cannot be accused of personal bias. It is absurd that older employees pay less tax on their income than their younger colleagues because they do not pay national insurance. It cannot be right that people in large houses enjoying capital gains from the housing market have those disregarded for means test purposes if they ever need certain types of social care. As the early Budgets in a Parliament are a time for tough and difficult decisions, will my right hon. Friend let me know that he will be looking at those much overdue anomalies, which need to be addressed? Some justice between the generations, I think, is being demanded by our constituents.

[Mr Hammond]

I am a great fan of the concept of intergenerational fairness. My right hon. and learned Friend will know, as a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, that all Chancellors look at all options in the run-up to every Budget. I can undertake that I will do so in the run-up to Budget 2018. In the meantime, I can tell him that there is a mechanism for voluntary donations to Her Majesty’s Treasury, and in case he has mislaid it, I will send him a copy of our bank details.