Mary Creagh
Main Page: Mary Creagh (Labour - Wakefield)Department Debates - View all Mary Creagh's debates with the HM Treasury
(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)
I want to look at three areas of this Finance Bill. The first is the economic impact of the fiscal conservatism contained therein, and particularly how, in tandem with the fiscal consolidation taking place across Europe, it threatens a double-dip recession not just here but Europe-wide. Secondly, I want to look at the social and labour market consequences of the double whammy of the VAT bombshell and the deep spending cuts. Thirdly, I shall focus on the political implications of the Liberal Democrats making the wrong choices by voting in favour of this Bill this evening.
On the economic impact of the Bill, we see the pursuit of the Goldilocks economy—one in which neither too much nor too little is spent, but the spending is somehow just right. We all know that fairy tales are fine for little children, but it is a dangerous metaphor because it over-simplifies a complex economy still in a fragile state of recovery. How do we know that it is dangerous? Well, because the Office for Budget Responsibility tells us that growth will be lower and unemployment higher in future years, with 1.3 million jobs set to be lost over the next four years as a result of the measures in this Finance Bill.
I tabled a parliamentary question a week or so ago about the contact between the Office for Budget Responsibility and the Treasury on 29 and 30 June and 1 July—and in the aftermath of those sticky Prime Minister’s questions debates. So far, I have had no reply from the Economic Secretary. I would have thought that it was a fairly simple thing to look into officials’ diaries, ministerial diaries and phone records and to give the House a reply on the important question of whether pressure was put on the Office for Budget Responsibility.
The pre-eminent question raised by this Finance Bill, but left unanswered by those on the Treasury Bench, is: how does taking money out of the economy increase confidence, boost growth and secure the recovery? The answer is, quite simply, that it does not.
There seems to be an insistence that Government spending is somehow crowding out private sector investment. That is ludicrous. The United Kingdom’s output gap—the gap between what it produces and what it has the potential to produce—is somewhere between 4% and 6%, depending on whose estimate we accept. The Chancellor expects the private sector to take over demand from a shrinking public sector, but is silent on where that private demand will come from. It is clear from what has been said in the debate that there are no real answers to that question.
The Government say that 2. 5 million jobs will be created—
Mary Creagh
I will not, because we have only one hour left, and eight Members wish to speak. The Front-Bench spokesmen took their time, and I intend to take my time.
The labour economist David Blanchflower, a former member of the Monetary Policy Committee, has said that the Government’s prediction on jobs is wildly over-optimistic, given that the Labour Government created only 1.6 million jobs between 2000 and 2008, when the economy was, by consensus, booming.
The VAT increase for which the House voted will raise £12.1 billion in 2011-12, but will reduce the amount of goods and services that people can buy. It will depress demand and delay the recovery. It will increase prices permanently by 1%, thereby permanently reducing the value of future earnings and—one of the hot topics in the Bill—future pensions. It will also disadvantage the poorest, who spend the biggest proportion of their income.
Let me say something about the social impact of the Bill. It was difficult to hear the details of that as the Minister raced through his speech. We have heard from the Prime Minister that children need warmth, not wealth, and they will certainly miss out on the wealth part as a result of this Bill. Poor families in Wakefield will lose up to £1,200 as a result of changes in working families tax credit. From April 2011 the Sure Start maternity grant will be available only for the first child in a family. That means a £500 cut for low-income pregnant mothers who already have a child.
Mary Creagh
No. I am going to take my time. As I have said, I am not going to take interventions.
Nappies, prams, babygros, bottles, dummies and high chairs will all be more expensive for families in our constituencies as a result of the VAT increase, but the grants to help the poorest women in our society to afford them will be cut. When I asked the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how he expected families to cope, he said that he wanted them to recycle prams, but if someone has a child one year younger than another child, where is the second baby supposed to sleep? In the same cot? The parent of a second child will still need to buy a new car seat and a double buggy. It will be more difficult for low-income families to buy all those items. We are losing the baby element of child tax credit, and we are losing Labour’s proposed toddler tax credit, which would have meant another £208—
Matthew Hancock
Will the hon. Lady give way to an intervention on the increase in tax credit?
Mary Creagh
I know that there is to be an increase of £150. I will come to that if the hon. Gentleman will show a little patience and allow me to make progress with my speech. He spoke for 13 minutes, and I hope to take less time than that.
As I was saying, the toddler tax credit would have provided an extra £208 a year for families with children aged one or two. Moreover, child benefit has been frozen for three years, which means a real-terms cut.
Mary Creagh
I have already said that I am not going to give way to Opposition Members. It is true that child tax credit will rise by £150 above inflation for one year—
Mary Creagh
I am dealing with the hon. Gentleman’s point. Perhaps he would acknowledge that. Families on low incomes, however, will see their costs rise as a result of the VAT increase—
Mary Creagh
I know what the hon. Gentleman wants to ask, and I am happy to answer his question without his having to spend a minute asking it.
Matthew Hancock
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am new to the House. Could you possibly advise me whether it is appropriate for a Member to make an entire speech having stated in advance that he or she will take no interventions whatever?
Mr Deputy Speaker
Funnily enough, I was waiting for that point of order to be made earlier. The Order Paper is always correct, and this debate could indeed go on until any time.
Mary Creagh
In that case, Mr Deputy Speaker, I am happy to take all interventions, even though I have spent three minutes clarifying those points.
Andrea Leadsom
That is the sisterhood.
I want to make a point about pushchairs, prams, car seats and cots. To my certain knowledge, from having been involved for a long time with a charity that works closely with families and their babies, there is a surplus of those items in charity shops. People refuse to purchase or even to accept them, and I was interested to learn that the hon. Lady believes that part of the definition of poverty is if someone cannot have all those items new.
Mary Creagh
I am not saying people should buy everything new, but I am certainly not telling families in my constituency that when they have a second baby they should trawl around to the local hospice shop or British Heart Foundation shop in a desperate quest to get a car seat so as to take their child home from hospital without breaking the law. The hon. Lady says that those goods are in abundant supply. One of the important things about car seats is that if we buy them second hand, we have absolutely no idea whether they have been involved in a car accident. I am certain that no Member of this House has bought a car seat for their child—for their new baby—from a charity shop. What we ask for ourselves we should also stand up for in this House, and ask for our constituents.
Chris Leslie
When listening to interventions from the Government Benches, it comes as a shocking revelation to hear the notion expressed that those who are in financial difficulties can go round the charity shops looking for cots and prams. I do not quite see how they can do that for sanitary products or teething equipment, for instance: perhaps the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) would suggest buying recycled baby bottles and so forth, too. All such products attract the higher rate of VAT at 17.5%, which will go up to 20% as a result of the Bill. Does not all this show a degree of condescension in the Conservative party’s attitude to those in the greatest need?
Mary Creagh
I think it does, and I also think it is indicative of the idea that the poor are no better than they should be, and that they should aspire to nothing better than charity shop purchases.
Mary Creagh
No, I want to finish my point. There is an important point to make about cots. No matter where people get their cot from, they should never put a baby to sleep on another child’s mattress, because they do not know what has happened to that mattress—whether it has been vomited or urinated on, for instance.
We talk about putting babies “back to sleep”, and about cutting the rate of sudden infant death—which predominantly happens in lower income households. There are issues here to do with families living in overcrowded housing and babies sharing beds with their parents, yet the hon. Lady is saying that new mums and expectant mums are supposed to go round hauling cots home in their eighth and ninth month of pregnancy and then putting them up. Frankly, she ought to think a little more about what she wishes for her constituents.
Alun Cairns
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I seek your guidance on what cots have to do with the Finance Bill, and on the relevance of the points that have just been made.
Mr Deputy Speaker
The relevance is the subject of VAT, which is addressed in the Bill, but I would reiterate the guidance given before I took the Chair, which is that people must, please, keep to the contents of the Bill and show some restraint, as many Members wish to speak.
Mary Creagh
We have had a debate on the higher-rated goods, which will be permanently more expensive following the votes that we will have this evening, but I also want to talk about the cuts to Labour’s child trust fund.
Andrew George
I agree with many of the points that the hon. Lady has made on child care issues, but I wish to put something on the record for her. I understand that on children’s car seats, which have been mentioned, the VAT rate is limited to 5%.
Mary Creagh
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that clarification.
I now want to discuss the child trust fund, which is also being cut. When I visited Greenhill school in my constituency to talk about financial education, I asked 10 and 11-year-olds how much money they had saved up in their bank accounts and the answers given by those little 10-year-olds ranged from £50 to £80; that was their life savings. But those children knew that their little brothers and sisters had got £250, and in some cases £500, from the Government through the child trust fund.
Mary Creagh
I will make my point first. I bet that there is not a single Member sitting on those green Government Benches whose children’s life savings amount to £50. I shall happily give way to any hon. Member for whom that is the case.
Andrea Leadsom
Will the hon. Lady explain whether those children also knew that they had about £23,000 of debt each?
Mary Creagh
That is one of the figures put about by the Conservatives during the election as a way of frightening people about the level of debt. Labour Front Benchers have comprehensively set out that the best way to reduce the debt is by growth, and not by frightening people. Most people who have a mortgage understand that they have tens of thousands of pounds of debt—but the point is that when someone is paying off their mortgage they do not stop feeding their children, and they do not stop running their car. In effect, the Government are paying off the mortgage much more quickly than they need, and the consequences of the political choices that they are making will have huge impacts on every constituency.
For Members on the Government Benches, £500—the amount of the Sure Start maternity grant—may be what they spend on a good meal at the Fat Duck in Bray. We debated that before in the House in relation to one newspaper columnist, Stephen Pollard, when the matter was raised by a Conservative Member—I believe it was the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone). For children on the Eastmoor estate in Wakefield, however, that £500 is a life-changing sum, and will change some of the life choices that they make.
Charlie Elphicke
I just point out to the hon. Lady that child poverty has risen by 300,000 since 2004, whereas under this Budget it will be frozen for two years. Does she not welcome that very positive fact?
Mary Creagh
Interestingly, when the Red Book refers to the effects on child poverty it talks about the next couple of years but does not mention 2013 and 2014. Thanks to the work being done by my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), the shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, we are finding that this Budget’s impact on women—in particular on poor women, low-paid women and public sector worker women, and therefore on their children—is likely to hit disproportionately hard. I leave the hon. Gentleman with that thought.
What is absent from the Budget and the Finance Bill is any mention of the poor. The changes to the disability living allowance gateway are to save £1 billion by 2014, but we need clarity about which groups of disabled people are going to be affected. The housing benefit move to the 30th percentile of average housing will have an impact on families across the country. Stringent changes are being made to the housing benefit rules to say that anyone who has been on jobseeker’s allowance for more than a year will automatically lose 10% of their housing benefit.
If that is done to people, there are three possible outcomes. The first is that the people involved find jobs—and good luck to them. I am sure that that is the stated aim of the Government’s policy. The second possible outcome is that those people cannot find jobs because a further 1.3 million people are on the dole as the public sector and private sector job losses kick in, so they are forced to borrow the money. However, we are talking about people with a low income or no income, so they will, in effect, be forced into the arms of loan sharks and will fall into debt. The third possible outcome is that these people will spend £10 a week less feeding their children, so their children will be pushed back into poverty. The arguments being made about child poverty will not wash with Labour Members, because both the second and the third possible outcomes will tip those families back into poverty.
George Freeman
The hon. Lady mentioned the child trust fund, and I think that all hon. Members would agree that establishing a culture of saving is a commendable thing. In principle, does she think it is better for children to learn to work and to save, or to learn that the way to acquire money is to be given it by the Government?
Mary Creagh
The beauty of the child trust fund is that both those things happened; this involved people who would never have thought of opening a trust fund. I count myself among them, because I had no idea what a trust fund was until I was “given it by the Government” when my son was born, but now that I understand what it is and I understand the secrets of how people save for their children in a tax-efficient way, it has enabled me to think carefully about how I plan for my children’s future. It enables families to do both those things.
Most families are using the child trust funds to put a little bit extra by. The parents who scrimp and save to put into the child trust fund will not let their children waste the money. The straw man that has been held up is that they will blow it all on their 18th birthday party, on buying fast cars and all the other things that 18-year-olds do—[Interruption.] That is certainly what has been stated by some Government Members as a reason for cutting the child trust fund; they have said, “You can’t give it to 18-year-olds because they won’t know what to do with it.” When their parents have paid into the fund they will make absolutely sure that that money, which for them is a life-changing sum, will be used wisely by their children.
Mary Creagh
I have taken one intervention from the hon. Gentleman, and I am aware that other hon. Members wish to speak.
The VAT rise in the Finance Bill will cost the NHS an extra £250 million each year, and it will be very bad for public health, too. Recent research by David Stuckler and his colleagues published in the British Medical Journal shows that social spending—housing benefit, disability living allowance and other such benefits—has more impact on tackling health inequalities than spending on the NHS. They studied 20 European countries over two decades, finding that mortality rates increased when social spending was cut. So the public health impact of cutting the housing, disability and incapacity benefit budgets will be felt by the poorest in our society in the reduction in their life expectancy.
In concluding, I wish to discuss what has happened in the past 10 weeks and the political impact that voting for this Budget will have on the Liberal Democrats. The past 10 weeks have been like a very dark episode of Doctor Who, with the Conservatives as the evil Cybermen. The Cybermen were originally a wholly organic species of humanoids that implanted more and more artificial parts into their bodies as a means of self-preservation. This led to the race becoming coldly logical and calculating, with every emotion all but deleted from their minds. They use human pawns and seek to further their number by conversion. The Liberal Democrats are the Conservatives’ hapless victims. The Cybermen have to assimilate their victims in order to drain their energy and live, but we all know that when the Cybermen have assimilated, they have only one further aim: they say to their victims, “You will be deleted.”
These are not progressive cuts. There is nothing progressive about slashing the extension of free school meals to the children of the working poor and thrusting 50,000 children back into poverty. There is nothing progressive about freezing the pay of dinner ladies, hospital cleaners and nursery workers. Why should low-paid women pay for the fiscal hysteria of markets and central banks, which presided over such colossal market failure? Why is corporation tax being cut by 1% a year for the banks when everyone in Wakefield is seeing their VAT increasing by 2.5%? Why is the annual exempt amount for capital gains tax rising each year with the retail prices index when housing benefit and occupational pensions in Wakefield will increase only by the consumer prices index?
Those are political choices. They are the wrong choices for my constituents and for those of other hon. Members. Economically, this is a deflationary Budget. It is wrong for Britain, wrong for families, wrong for pensioners and wrong for the poor. Politically, supporting this Budget will be the wrong thing for the Liberal Democrats. I urge all Liberal Democrat Members to think before they vote tonight, and before they throw away 120 years of Liberal tradition as the Tories’ new poodles. You are being assimilated. You will be deleted.