Income tax (charge)
Mary Glindon Excerpts(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
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Mary Glindon (Newcastle upon Tyne East and Wallsend) (Lab)
It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell), even though I fundamentally disagree with everything that he said. I know that he will take that in the right spirit. I congratulate all colleagues who made their maiden speeches. The speeches were fantastic and moving, and I wish them all a really wonderful time in this Parliament and, I hope, Parliaments to come.
Progressive Governments are judged on whether they deliver higher standards, and I welcome the direction of travel that our first woman Chancellor took yesterday. It is good to hear that for the first time, the cost of living will be taken into account when calculating the national minimum wage. I also welcome the step towards a single adult wage rate, with 18 to 20-year-olds receiving a 16.3% increase. I hope that those kinds of revisions will continue. Those are valuable examples of the change that a Labour Government will make to low-income households.
A key feature of this Budget is that it can safeguard existing jobs in the north-east and help to create new well-paid jobs for the people I represent. One of the biggest sectors in our north-east industrial base is the offshore energy sector—that is, oil and gas companies that work in the North sea, and the associated supply chain. We are proud to have those jobs in my constituency, and we must anchor them here in the UK and avoid their being attracted overseas. Last year, in Newcastle upon Tyne East and Wallsend, the offshore sector added £2 million in gross value added and supported thousands of jobs. That is just a snapshot from the region, where the sector contributed £416 million and more than 4,500 good jobs overall. I am pleased that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor recognises the reality: that oil and gas will be essential to our economy and for energy security for decades to come, especially given that if we misstep, we will simply have to rely on imports, which are more expensive, have a higher carbon footprint and do not deliver any tax yield.
This Government have committed to ensuring that the North sea is managed in a way that does not jeopardise jobs and continues to attract necessary investment, with the delivery of net zero and energy transition being an exciting prospect. A successful home-grown energy transition has the potential to deliver the economic growth that the country needs. I know that the oil and gas sector and its representative body, Offshore Energies UK, found yesterday’s Budget encouraging. They are grateful for the positive engagement from the Secretary of State, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Exchequer Secretary over the summer. They recognise that the energy profit levy served a purpose, but the commitment to looking at unwinding it, and to finding a new permanent regime, can give companies and investors the confidence that they need to invest in our UK.
I look forward to helping Ministers succeed, but I will of course also hold them to account. I will also hold the industry to account on its commitment to support workers, deliver a fair transition and provide retraining and working standards for all. The trade unions are keen and willing to play their part. Offshore Energies UK estimates that with the right investment environment, UK offshore energy companies could invest £200 billion in home-grown energy this decade alone, supporting the UK to reach 50 GW of wind and 10 GW of hydrogen, reducing reliance on oil and gas, and allowing us to scale up to at least four carbon capture and storage clusters by 2030—an exciting prospect indeed.
Moving away from the economy and on to local government, I welcome the 6% real-terms increase in spending on SEND and alternative provision. The SEND system is broken. In my constituency, children have been held back from flourishing and reaching their true potential. The £865 million to help plug deficits is a movement in the right direction. I urge the Chancellor to build on that moving into the spending review in the spring.
Today, Longbenton councillor Karen Clark has been selected as Labor’s candidate for the North Tyneside 2025 mayoral election. Karen welcomes the Chancellor’s historic Budget and looks forward to promoting its promised investment for local government during her forthcoming campaign.
On social security, the reduction in the deductions cap will help to minimise the financial impact of debt repayments, with those benefiting keeping an extra £420 a year. It is a smart, fiscally neutral way to help reduce negative household budgets and raise living standards. However, the commitment to deliver the Conservative plans to reform the work capability assessment and to deliver the inherited savings has worried many with limited capability for work and work-related activity. I hope the House will be given time to examine and debate that when the proposals are outlined in greater detail.
As the chair of the responsible vaping all-party parliamentary group, I have concerns about the announced tax on vaping liquid from 2026. There are still 6 million smokers who have yet to make the switch to vaping, and a tax on vaping will only serve to discourage those smokers to quit. The vaping tax proposed by the Chancellor is unsustainably high, at 22p per ml of vape liquid. It will make the UK’s tax one of the highest in Europe. The tax will also hurt working people throughout the north-east who rely on vaping to keep them off cigarettes. Currently, many stores sell vaping liquid for refillable devices for 99p. Under the Chancellor’s proposals, that will increase by 267% to £3.64. Access to vaping liquids is not driving youth vaping—the Government are already looking to address that through the Tobacco and Vapes Bill. I fear that the tax on vapes will hurt people who have made the decision to switch from smoking to the less harmful alternative—a decision that has already saved the NHS tens of thousands of pounds per person.
Yesterday’s Budget has renewed the hope of ordinary people that the future can be different—a Labour Budget for lower-income households, working people and children. Our public services can be rebuilt, living standards can begin to turn around, and our politics can deliver progress again.
Oral Answers to Questions
Mary Glindon Excerpts(4 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Pat McFadden
This is my first but I suspect not my last exchange with the hon. Member. I have not seen a specific breakdown of this figure for Northern Ireland, but I can tell him that we take relations with Northern Ireland extremely seriously. That is why the Prime Minister went to Northern Ireland, as well as Scotland and Wales, on the weekend after the general election.
Mary Glindon (Newcastle upon Tyne East and Wallsend) (Lab)
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Pat McFadden)
Yesterday, I met the civil service unions together with the new Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Queen’s Park and Maida Vale (Georgia Gould). We had a very positive discussion covering a whole range of issues. I made it clear that the days of Government Ministers waging culture wars against civil servants are over. Instead, we want a civil service that is motivated, valued and helps the Government to deliver their priorities. On the specific issue of pay, the Government will have more to say on civil service pay before the summer recess.
Mary Glindon
In 14 years, the Tory Government did nothing to tackle the ludicrous situation whereby there are over 200 pay bargaining units for civil servants across all Government Departments and agencies, a highly time-consuming and inefficient process that generates unfair pay disparities between people doing near-identical jobs in different Government offices. Will the Minister take this opportunity to look again at whether pay bargaining can be consolidated across the civil service, and will he agree to meet the Public and Commercial Services Union to discuss the advantages of such reforms?
Pat McFadden
We do value civil servants, and of course we want all public servants to be properly and fairly rewarded. As with any public expenditure, what is spent on pay has to be balanced against other priorities and fair to taxpayers as a whole. On meeting the PCS, yesterday, I met the general secretary of the PCS, as well as other civil service unions. I hope for a fruitful dialogue with them. Departments do have flexibility on pay. They can direct pay towards the needs of their own workforces. As I have said, we will have more to say about civil service pay before the summer recess.
Oral Answers to Questions
Mary Glindon Excerpts(7 months, 1 week ago)
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The Prime Minister
As my hon. Friend knows, I care deeply about the future of our community pharmacies. There are over 10,500 community pharmacies across the country and they are working incredibly hard to serve their patients. I am pleased that about 80% of people live within a 20-minute walk of a pharmacy. That is why we are backing them with Pharmacy First, with £645 million of extra funding, whereby people can now go to see their pharmacist, rather than their GP, to get treatments for the seven most common ailments, such as ear infections and the like. Not only will that ensure that they can get treatments closer to home, but it will help to deliver our plan to cut waiting lists and get people the care they need more quickly.
Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
The Prime Minister
I thank the hon. Lady for raising the case. As she knows, the Department for Education has provided extensive support and funding to all those schools that have RAAC, which in the end was less than 1% of all schools that could have been affected. More generally, there is the very significant amount we are investing in school rebuilding and maintenance. I am sure the Education Secretary will have heard her concerns and will write to her in due course.
Oral Answers to Questions
Mary Glindon Excerpts(7 months, 4 weeks ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight the really serious concerns about Labour councillors in Hastings. One former Labour councillor said that Labour are no longer providing
“the policies, the support, or the focus on local government”.
I could not have put it better myself.
Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
The Deputy Prime Minister
The Government will engage with any proposals that have been brought forward, as we always do, but it is actually the case that we have already provided over £700 million in energy cost relief to the steel sector in the past 10 years. It is also the case that, even in the past year, the Government spent £97 million more on UK-made steel for major public projects. So we are continuing to work with the steel industry, but we have already provided tremendous support.
Oral Answers to Questions
Mary Glindon Excerpts(10 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
Can I start by commending my hon. Friend on her work on this issue? She is absolutely right that user verification can be a powerful tool to keep people safe online. The Online Safety Act 2023, as she knows, requires companies to offer all adults optional user identity verification. Companies will also need to take firm action to improve safety for children in particular, and Ofcom will be able to monitor tech companies and have strong powers to ensure they comply. I can tell her that the Home Secretary is meeting the industry on Monday next week and will be sure to raise the points she has mentioned today.
Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
The Prime Minister
I am happy to look into the issue that the hon. Lady raises. What would be damaging to the north-east and the Tyne are her party’s plans to stick with their completely ridiculous 2030 decarbonisation target with absolutely no plan to pay for it, which just means higher taxes for everyone in her constituency and the country.
Oral Answers to Questions
Mary Glindon Excerpts(10 months, 4 weeks ago)
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Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (John Lamont)
As you know, Mr Speaker, the Secretary of State has suffered a family bereavement this week, so will not be with us today. I am sure that the whole House will wish to send him and his family our deepest condolences. Can we also pause to think about the communities, including those in my own area in the Scottish borders, that have been devastated by the recent storms? I know that the emergency services, council and power company workers are supporting them as best they can. Lastly, Mr Speaker, I wish you a happy Burns night, which will be celebrated around the world tomorrow.
The ongoing situation with the Post Office and Horizon is clearly very serious. We need to ensure that all sub-postmasters wrongly prosecuted finally get justice, no matter where they reside in the UK. I assure the hon. Lady that my officials are working at pace with the office of the Advocate General and other key UK Government Departments to consider the issues around wrongful convictions.
Mary Glindon
In Scotland, these prosecutions were carried out by the Crown Office and the procurator fiscal. Ministers of the Crown were made aware of concerns around potentially unsafe prosecutions in 2013. Can the Minister tell the House why it took so long for the prosecutions to be halted and for previous convictions to be reviewed?
John Lamont
The Horizon scandal is one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in this country’s history, with hundreds of people having their lives ruined and reputations dragged through the mud. The Prime Minister has announced new laws that will be introduced to ensure that those wrongly convicted are exonerated and swiftly compensated here in England. As the hon. Lady will know, the administration of justice is devolved, but the UK Government are in contact with the Scottish Government to explore the most effective way to exonerate and compensate those innocent people.
Oral Answers to Questions
Mary Glindon Excerpts(1 year ago)
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The Prime Minister
I thank my right hon. Friend for his work on this specific and important issue. I am happy to tell him that I believe the Health Secretary is attending this afternoon’s event to hear more about that work. I can assure him that we are focused on fighting cancer on all fronts: prevention, diagnosis, treatment, research and funding. We are making good progress, but there is always more we can do. I look forward to hearing from him after this afternoon’s event.
Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
The Prime Minister
That is a total mischaracterisation of what was put out, which was an advert, not a commitment. I am glad that the hon. Lady now cares about this issue—not something we have seen previously from Labour. Our track record is clear: we have got the numbers of small boat arrivals down this year by over a third. That is what we are doing about it. The Labour party is voting against every measure that we have taken.
Oral Answers to Questions
Mary Glindon Excerpts(1 year ago)
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The Prime Minister
I am aware that some local authorities, including the one my hon. Friend mentions, have taken excessive risks with borrowing and investment practices. That is why we have taken a range of measures to strengthen the regulatory framework to prevent that from happening. They include new powers that make it quicker and easier for the Government to step in when councils take on excessive risk through borrowing. I will ensure that he gets a meeting with the relevant Minister to raise his concerns, because his constituents deserve better.
Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
The Prime Minister
As I outlined, we have provided considerable support for particularly vulnerable families this year and through this winter. We are also investing record sums in improving the energy efficiency and insulation of vulnerable homes through our home upgrade scheme and the warm home discount, which on average can save people hundreds of pounds on their energy bills when they receive that support. We are expanding those programmes across the country, including in the north-east.
Oral Answers to Questions
Mary Glindon Excerpts(1 year, 3 months ago)
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Oliver Dowden
That is an interesting proposal. If we are to get public consent for the number of houses we need to build, we must be able to reassure people that the infrastructure is in place. That is precisely what the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill seeks to do. I will look at my hon. Friend’s proposal for an inter-ministerial group. I am always a little cautious about setting up more inter-ministerial groups, unless I can be sure that they will actually deliver some further outcomes, but I take his proposal seriously.
Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
Jeremy Quin
I am sorry that strike action is ongoing. Ultimately, this is a matter between the employees and their employer.
Infected Blood Inquiry
Mary Glindon Excerpts(1 year, 6 months ago)
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Dame Diana Johnson
I hope that the Minister will respond to that particular point when he speaks later.
I want to go back to those who have been infected and affected and are still alive. I hope that today they will witness the Government atoning for what went so systematically and catastrophically wrong. There is simply no excuse for dragging out the process of justice any longer.
It is not as if the scandal has just been discovered, with those in power hearing about it only recently. It is now five years since the infected blood inquiry was launched, and three years since the then Paymaster General, the right hon. Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt), wrote to the Chancellor saying:
“I believe it to be inevitable that the Government will need to pay substantial compensation… I believe we should begin preparing for this now”.
Since then, we have had three Prime Ministers, four Chancellors and five Paymasters General. Today, I ask the Minister for the result of all their combined efforts to prepare for paying compensation.
Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
I thank my right hon. Friend for all her work and for securing the debate. I am sure that she understands the frustration of my constituent, who was a young teenager nearly 40 years ago when he was infected and who has HIV. He just wants justice now.
Dame Diana Johnson
Absolutely. The House is probably united in that view. We want justice now.
We know that the report of Sir Robert Francis KC, which the former Paymaster General commissioned, on a framework for what compensation would look like was presented to the Government at the start of 2022. The former Paymaster General understood that preparatory work could start, ready for the Government to act quickly, when Sir Brian reported—which he did, on 5 April 2023. I am therefore hopeful that the Minister can set out, in detail, all the work that has been undertaken to date when he speaks later in the debate.
The story of how successive Governments responded to those infected and affected by contaminated blood is a story of how a disaster became a scandal.