Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between Luciana Berger and Charlie Elphicke

Wednesday 19th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Luciana Berger]

Oh, goodness! As my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) said, I was very generous in giving way. I come back to the point that one in three councils do not have enough places to deliver the Government’s promised child care for disadvantaged two-year-olds. Today’s announcement will not come into effect until next year. I reiterate that parents need help now, because child care costs are putting parents off going back into work. I am very disappointed as a result of what we did not hear from the Chancellor today.

I listened closely to the Chancellor’s announcements on energy bills, but the best deal in a broken market is not a good deal. Energy bills have gone up by about £300 since 2010. As I said before, my constituents are facing the choice between heating their homes and eating. The Liverpool Echo, my local newspaper, carried out a special investigation last week that highlighted the experience of Merseyside pensioners, who are being plunged into fuel poverty by rocketing energy bills. Under the Government’s new definition of fuel poverty, my constituency is among the top three in the country for that challenge. Where was the help for those people with their energy bills in the Chancellor’s Budget? There was none.

We need proper reform of the energy market. We need to freeze bills so that we can do what needs to be done to ensure that we know the cost of the energy that is generated by the six companies that generate 70% of the energy in the UK. At the moment, we have no idea of the true cost of that energy. We need to create a transparent pool, so that we are all fully aware of what the companies are generating and the cost of that energy. We also need a regulator with teeth, which we do not have at the moment. There needs to be a means by which people can properly compare and contrast prices, as they can for mobile phone bills. That is not possible at the moment because we do not have single standing charges and unit prices that can be compared. Again, there was nothing from the Chancellor to help not only households and individuals but businesses that are struggling to pay their energy bills.

On the day of the Budget, we have also heard the unemployment figures. The hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) just talked about the statistics, but when we talk about long-term youth unemployment, we are talking about young people in my constituency who do not have employment, which will have long-term effects—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman gesticulates that the number has come down. In my constituency, the number of long-term unemployed young people—those who have been out of work for more than a year—has gone up by more than 60% since 2010. That is a waste of the talent of our young people and has long-term implications not only for them but for the wider economy. The young people who are not employed at the moment bring a cost to our economy of £3.2 billion over their lifetime. In my constituency, 835 young people are out of work, and I wanted more from the Chancellor to address that situation properly. We know that the current schemes are not working, and that less than 20% of young people locally are getting into work. We need to do everything we can.

[Charlie Elphicke]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Luciana Berger]

I will not, because I have less than a minute left.

Labour’s policy is to provide a jobs guarantee by repeating the bankers’ bonus tax. I listened to the Chancellor to hear whether he might do that, but there was nothing on that front, even though Barclays alone has increased bankers’ bonuses by 10% to more than £2.5 billion. Would not some of that money be well invested in the young people of our country, to ensure that they are in work and have a chance throughout their lifetime? We need to get the long-term unemployed, including the young long-term unemployed, off benefits and back into work. A jobs guarantee through repeating the bankers’ bonus tax would have achieved just that.

My constituents will be dismayed by the Chancellor’s Budget. I am sad that he could not find it in himself to acknowledge the cost of living crisis that millions of people are experiencing every day, including in my constituency. The Government are so out of touch, and today’s Budget has reinforced that.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between Luciana Berger and Charlie Elphicke

Wednesday 20th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Luciana Berger]

I have spoken on a number of occasions on the issue of youth apprenticeships, particularly those for people under the age of 19. We have seen a decrease in the number of such apprenticeships. As my hon. Friend says, there is also the issue of the rebadging of different types of jobs. The House will have heard many a representation from the Labour Benches about the Government’s consistent claim to have created 1 million jobs in the private sector, but we know that many of those jobs are simply public sector jobs that have been rebadged.

There has also been a shift in the kind of jobs available. The number of people working in full-time jobs fell in the last quarter. It is now down 378,000 since the beginning of the 2008 recession, while the number of people in part-time work has risen by 572,000 in that period. Since the general election, people have taken an average £1,200 pay cut because jobs are so hard to come by.

[Charlie Elphicke]

If jobs are so hard to come by, why does the hon. Lady think that the Office for Budget Responsibility is predicting that 600,000 more jobs will be created next year, and why have we seen 1 million more private sector jobs since the election?

[Luciana Berger]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but I refer him to the comments that I have just made about the rebadging of public sector jobs. Many fact checks have been done to determine what those jobs actually are, as the intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) highlighted. Many of them are now apprenticeships. We also know that many of the assessments by the OBR have had to be downgraded because its estimates have often been too optimistic.

It is in the context of this maelstrom of frozen wages, rising prices and reduced opportunity that the Government are making some of the most draconian cuts to our public services and welfare, despite the fact that the OBR has said that those cuts are reducing growth in our economy. The cumulative impact of the cuts has been to widen the gap between the richest and the poorest, and to ask the most vulnerable and disadvantaged in our society to pick up the bill for the Chancellor’s mismanagement of the economy.

Today should not have been about more of the same; it should have been about changing course. If this had been a Labour Budget, we would have acted to boost confidence, create jobs and support struggling businesses. We need to bring forward long-term infrastructure investment in schools and transport, and we need to use the money raised from the 4G mobile spectrum auction to build thousands of affordable homes—getting builders back to work, creating the homes we need and strengthening our economy for the future. Alongside that, we would have cut VAT temporarily, including to 5% on home repairs, maintenance and improvement, which would have helped the energy efficiency side of our economy. The result would have been a plan for a steadier and more balanced pace of deficit reduction with measures that support our economy and create jobs now.

Government Members say that we cannot do that because it would mean more borrowing. They neglect to mention that it is their policies that are already leading to much higher borrowing. The Government and this Chancellor are already borrowing £212 billion more than they said they would to plug the holes in our public finances caused by a flatlining economy and a higher unemployment bill. The Government argument seems to be, “We will not borrow to grow the economy, but we will borrow to shrink it”. Instead, the real question is not whether we should borrow or not, but what we are borrowing for. Are we going to continue to borrow to pay the cost of the Tory Government’s economic failure and to keep people at home out of work or are we going to act to support those small businesses that want to invest in new equipment, to kick-start house building, to support research and development and investment in low-carbon energy and high-tech manufacturing with a proper plan to get people into work? In other words, we need a real plan for jobs and growth, which would be fairer, more successful in getting the deficit down and make Britain better off for the future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Charlie Elphicke]

The hon. Gentleman is right about the 3G licences, but the taps were then turned on and public spending rose. We had a structural deficit and we were seriously exposed when the crisis struck in 2008. We can see that from the statistics relating to the previous Parliament. We inherited a structural deficit of 11.2%—an enormous level of borrowing. We inherited a massive rise in unemployment, as measured by the claimant count—it went up by 80%. Youth unemployment went up by 78% under the jobseeker’s allowance claimant count. Those were staggering rises and real concerns. It is all very well for the Labour party to say that there is a continual problem with unemployment. It is, of course, a concern to us all in our constituencies, but youth unemployment has been coming down. Unemployment has stabilised and we have not seen the rise that we saw under the previous Government.

Let us look at what this Government have achieved: 1.25 million new private sector jobs and 1 million new apprenticeships. The deficit is now down by a third. Rather than the structural deficit of 11.2% that we inherited, it is down to 7.4% of GDP today and moving in the right direction. We have had record low borrowing costs. The Opposition’s idea that we should borrow more to borrow less will take us one way and one way only—to higher interest rates. The hard-won fiscal credibility that this Chancellor and this Government have achieved is greatly valued by every mortgage holder in this country.

[Luciana Berger]

Will the hon. Gentleman remind the House how many more billions the Chancellor is borrowing on top of what he said he would?

[Charlie Elphicke]

I thank the hon. Lady for reminding me to point out that the Institute for Fiscal Studies said that the Labour party, under its plans, would be spending £200 billion more, so she should be careful before indulging in fantasy economics.

We also need to look at the Government’s welfare reforms, which will do more to make work pay, and education reforms, which will help Britons get the skills they need to compete in the global race. The Government are right to help those who want to work hard, get on and do really well. We hear from Labour Members about the difficulties faced by, and the squeeze on, many hard-working families, but they forget to say that this is nothing new. According to the Office for National Statistics’ family spending survey, disposable income in real terms was £600 in 2000-01 and was £600 at the last general election—it has not moved in real terms for about a decade. The challenge is that families have been squeezed for quite some time. The Labour party forgets that the economy was shielded by the boom of borrowing and debt and that, as a result, those difficulties were glossed over for too long.

It is right that the Government are now getting the house in order and doing more to help hard-pressed families and households. For example, council tax in Kent has been frozen for three years, whereas under Labour it doubled; fuel duty is now 13p lower than Labour planned; and as a result of the £10,000 personal allowance to be introduced next year, many will pay £700 less tax than under Labour’s plan, which will help average families and take 2.7 million out of tax altogether. I also welcome the axing of the beer duty escalator and the 1% outright cut in beer duty. The Government have got the right priorities and are moving in the right direction. Their plans for child care will help families up and down the country who, with the rise of joint working over many years, have found things very difficult.

On business, we need to get the country growing as quickly as possible, but we get growth and jobs not from Government, but from the private sector, enterprise and businesses. The Government have done the right thing in giving an awful lot of help to small businesses, but I want us to go a bit further. We have had the new employment allowance and the seed investment allowance, but I would like us to consider a “get set and grow” scheme, under which somebody could set up a new business and have a two-year holiday from all company filings, corporation tax and employers’ national insurance, light or no employment law and other measures. That way, somebody setting up a business could focus on running it, rather than on ticking boxes, filling in forms and dealing with paperwork. That kind of change would provide real assistance to people who want to get going and do really well.

Studies by the OECD, particularly the “Fostering Entrepreneurship and Firm Creation as a Driver of Growth in a Global Economy” in 2004, show that enterprise formation, growth and entrepreneurship are strongly linked. I hope that the Chancellor and the Government will look more closely at measures to make it easier to set up a business to a certain turnover threshold or certain period of time. As I said, the new employment allowance and the massive national insurance reduction for many businesses are a big step in the right direction, but I would like us to go further.

I also welcome the measures to deal with tax avoidance. Too much corporation tax avoidance has gone on for too long. It grew up over many years. Tax law was not kept fit for purpose in the internet age, and the Government have taken the right action through their general anti-avoidance provisions and their work on the international tax system.

Personally, I would like us to go further and see whether we can reduce corporation tax still more by restricting tax reliefs, which would put our home businesses and multinational businesses from overseas on a much clearer, more level playing field. We should look at minimising deductions for interest and royalties, along with other deductions that are available in the tax system, and restricting transfer pricing. We should also look at the rules on tax presence and whether there is a branch or establishment in the UK, and say to companies such as Amazon, “You’re not really abroad; you’re trading in the UK and you should be taxed as such,” and the international rules should be changed accordingly. That would be the right direction of travel, because we would have an even lower rate of corporation tax than we do today or than we plan to have, and a level playing field for businesses at home and those from overseas.

The last thing I want to say—this will surprise Opposition Members—is how much I agreed with capital gains tax being at 10% for businesses. That was a real spur to entrepreneurs and perhaps the only policy of the former Prime Minister that I agreed with. I regret that the rate has become 28%. We ought to look at how we can foster entrepreneurship, so that entrepreneurs can not only set up businesses and get them going, but sell them and get new businesses going. It is the serial entrepreneurs who are the real wealth creators in this country—the people who drive small businesses, job creation and enterprise creation. The more we can get the tax system to be their friend—to be on their side and support them in what they do—the more we will drive the economy forward and create more jobs for the future.

Finance Bill

Debate between Luciana Berger and Charlie Elphicke

Tuesday 6th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) and my hon. Friends the Members for North East Cambridgeshire (Stephen Barclay), for Ipswich (Ben Gummer), and for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans) on their excellent speeches. I also congratulate the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), who has just departed, who spoke with such eloquence about the need for parliamentary reform. His passion brings a tear to the eye of the Leader of the House; of that I have no doubt whatever.

I am saddened by the need for clause 3, on VAT, to be included in the Bill. It is a great shame that it is necessary to take difficult action in relation to taxes because of the extreme black hole left in the public finances. We now find ourselves in a position where debt is 62% of GDP this year—higher than the 54% in 1976, when the International Monetary Fund was last called in. That is the level of seriousness of the debt that we have. The ratio of debt to GDP is predicted to go to 70% in the next three years, even with the tough action taken by the Government.

I for one am relieved, however, particularly because taxes could have been a lot higher. The black hole could have been filled in other ways. We have taken the difficult decisions on public spending, but we on the Government Benches know that if there had not been a change in government, we would have seen not only a rise in VAT but a possible £20 billion tax increase, with income tax perhaps going to 25p in the pound. That is the size of the black hole that we have been looking at.

I congratulate my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench on taking the firm action required, because I worry about the least well-off. I worry that the rich-poor divide has widened since 1996-97. I worry that since 2004-05 households in child poverty has risen by 300,000. I welcome the fact that it will be frozen for the next two years. I am concerned that the number of children in overcrowded homes has risen from 980,000 in 2006 to 1,080,000 in 2008, according to Communities and Local Government figures. I am concerned that the housing waiting list has risen from 1 million in 2001 to 1.8 million in 2009, according to CLG figures. I am also concerned that disposable income rose by only 1% a year between 2004-05 and 2008—and that was before the current difficulties hit home.

I, for one, welcome the difficult decisions taken on capital gains tax in clause 2. Personally, I think that that is the right thing to do. I have always taken a more Lawsonian approach. A difficult decision has been made, but it is essential that everyone pays their fair share of tax. I regret that we are not keeping a more ameliorated position for those who own business assets, but I think that those who own country estates, oil paintings or buy-to-let empires should pay a fair share of tax.

We know that that is the right approach to take, because the figures from the past few years show that the level of private rented sector property rose from 10% of housing stock in 2000 to 14% in 2008. Meanwhile, the total social housing stock fell from 4.25 million properties to just 4 million in 2009, according to CLG figures. The level of owner occupation fell from 71% in 2003 to 68% in 2008, according to CLG figures. I regard that with concern, because where people need assistance we should have affordable housing there for them. The number of new affordable houses built also fell under the previous Government. Where people have the requisite funds to buy their own home they should be encouraged and helped to do so. So I commend this Budget to the House.

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

If the hon. Gentleman is so concerned about housing, how does he feel about his Government’s decision to cut the Homes and Communities Agency by £60 million? Some £4.5 million of that cut will have an impact on new homes that were supposed to be built in my constituency. How does he feel about the most recent announcements on housing allowance, which mean that people in my constituency are having to make up a shortfall of £50 a month?

[Charlie Elphicke]

I point out to the hon. Lady that the number of affordable houses built in 1995-96 was 74,530, whereas the average for the previous Government’s entire tenure was just 40,000 affordable homes built each year. Why was that? Last year’s figure was 20,000 below what was achieved under the outgoing Conservative Government. As I said, we built 74,000-odd a year, whereas last year the previous Government built 55,000, so I do not think that they have any record to stand on when it comes to affordable housing, except that of a roll of shame. Their record is an absolute disgrace.

What we need is for the UK to grow faster, because the best cure for deprivation is a job. Too many jobs were taken away by the previous Government’s galactic economic incompetence, and we need to have change, so I want to make the case for that. Will the UK grow faster with a larger public sector? Will the UK grow faster with even higher taxes, as were planned by the previous Government? Will the UK grow faster with ever more debt, or would that result only in ever-higher interest rates, a weaker currency, an increased country risk and our country’s credit rating at risk? I think that the right decisions have been taken, because the UK will grow faster with a lower jobs tax.