Oral Answers to Questions

Mary Kelly Foy Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Hunt]

Let me tell the hon. Gentleman what we are doing for his constituents, and indeed all the people of Scotland: around £3,000 of support for the average family up and down the country, including in Scotland; paying half people’s energy bills, on average; and a huge amount of support through the benefits system. Nearly £100 billion of support shows that we are stronger together.

[Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)]

6. What recent discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care on the potential impact of inflation on public health and wellbeing.

[The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (John Glen)]

The Government are committed to supporting individuals to live healthier lives. High inflation is the greatest immediate economic challenge that we must address. The Government have made it a priority to halve inflation this year. We are on the path back to the target of 2% and consumer price index inflation fell to 6.8% in July. We will continue to work with all Departments to deal with the inflationary pressures they face.

[Mary Kelly Foy]

Being unable to pay for essentials such as food, heating and rent has an impact on physical and mental health. It can lead to delayed diagnosis, malnutrition and serious mental health problems. As the former Health Secretary will know, prevention is better than cure, but austerity flies in the face of a preventative approach. What discussions has the Chancellor had with the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to ensure that the NHS has prevention at its heart? Will we see a rise in funding in the autumn statement?

[John Glen]

Yes, I have frequent conversations with the Secretary of State and other Ministers about health budgets. We will be increasing the public health grant to £3.575 billion for the next financial year. That is to ensure that we have that real-term funding protection over the next two years, but there are a number of other interventions that we are making on delivering services more effectively, ensuring that we have the provision of additional staff with the long-term workforce plan for the NHS. None the less, I do recognise the challenges that a post-covid NHS faces in terms of the legacy of demand that is yet unmet. We are continuing to work to bring down waiting lists and we have seen significant progress recently, particularly with two-year and 18-month lists.

Covid-19 Pandemic: Fiscal Policies

Mary Kelly Foy Excerpts

Monday 17th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)]

The austerity programme has been one of the most damaging policies our country has seen in decades, and one statistic demonstrates its complete failure: there were more than 300,000 excess deaths between 2012 and 2019. More than 300,000 people died as a result of austerity—they were human beings, with families and friends. Like us, they had aspirations and dreams, but now they are gone, perhaps because of decisions made in Departments and in this House. That is an injustice; after all, the first duty of the British Government is to keep their citizens safe and the country secure. Were those 300,000 people kept safe? Evidently, they were not. That is the sort of statistic that future generations will read and wonder how on earth we could have allowed it to happen.

The subject of my debate is fiscal policies and the covid-19 pandemic, but what I want to get at is the extent to which austerity left us unprepared for the pandemic. I started with that statistic to present the situation in Britain prior to the outbreak of the virus. My speech will discuss healthcare, and the Minister may think, “What’s this got to do with the Treasury?”. I hope that I can convince him on that by saying that our health services require money from his Department, because what matters about cuts is their effects.

It is clear that the austerity programme hollowed out our welfare state, including the NHS. To be ready for a pandemic, we need a strong healthcare system, but we just did not have that in 2020. I was outraged by former Prime Minister David Cameron and former Chancellor George Osborne at the covid inquiry. They denied that their austerity programme had any impact on the pandemic, and it was especially chilling watching George Osborne. Their justification for austerity is at odds with scientific evidence and opinion, which I shall outline.

In their expert evidence to the covid-19 inquiry last month, Professor Clare Bambra and Professor Sir Michael Marmot stated that austerity policies post-2010 had an adverse effect on health inequalities; that health inequalities narrowed in the period of higher public expenditure, from about 2000 to 2010, but widened again post 2010—

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Lady for securing this debate. She is right to say that covid has affected health, but it has also affected finance. Does she agree that covid-19 will have rippling effects upon finances for years to come, and that many people are now grappling with the reality of prices increasing at a greater rate than wages? Does she also agree that the Government must take hold of the financial market once again with a firm grasp and with a strategy to help families in my constituency and hers, and indeed across this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland?

[Mary Kelly Foy]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, and I will come on to that issue in my speech. He is completely right that there will be an ongoing impact on future generations not only from covid, but from the impact on the public purse.

The scientific research also found that between 2000 and 2010, geographical inequalities such as infant mortality rates and life expectancy were reduced, but they then increased after 2010. Why did that happen? It was about money. By 2019-20, after a series of austerity Budgets, health spending was about £50 billion below what it should have been had it matched previous Government commitments. This far surpasses the much-vaunted cash injection of £20 billion between 2019 and 2024 as part of the NHS long-term plan. That level was too little, too late for what was to come.

The results of austerity are not hard to find right across the NHS, with one of the more tangible measures being bed capacity. Between 2010-11 and 2019-20, the average daily total of available beds contracted by 8.3%—nearly 13,000 beds. Britain had less than half the number of critical care beds relative to its population than the average in OECD European Union nations.

Austerity also meant years of pay caps and pay freezes. In other words, there were pay cuts, in real terms, for NHS workers. They were earning thousands of pounds less in real terms in 2019 than in 2010.

--- Later in debate ---

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Mike Wood.)

[Mary Kelly Foy]

Look at the situation with the Nightingale hospitals. They were a good idea in theory, but there were not enough workers available. It was like a sketch in “Yes Minister”—a hospital with no patients, only in this case there were no workers either.

Since the coalition Government’s Health and Social Care Act 2012, which threw all the pieces of the NHS up into the air, no single entity has been responsible for workforce planning. Consequently, staffing over the past decade has been poor and disjointed, and there has been a lack of the staffing projections needed to ensure we have enough health workers to meet demand. So work became more intense, with more turnover and more burnout. This was before the pandemic and should have been a warning signal to the Government.

Let us not forget the removal of the nurses’ bursaries in 2016, which led to a decline in nursing applications in the ensuing years. That has contributed to nursing numbers not keeping pace with demand. In the first quarter of 2019-20, the number of nursing vacancies increased to over 40,000. I know the Government U-turned on that, but why did it happen in the first place?

Staff shortages put enormous pressure on NHS workers. I do not want to be too sentimental, but I do not know how they did it during the pandemic. The demands put on those workers were enormous and the fortitude and resilience of NHS workers was remarkable. In addition, a lack of personal protective equipment caused them huge levels of stress, risking their mental and physical health. How about we start showing a bit of gratitude by giving them the pay rise they have asked for?

Public health, which is such a vital part of our defences, has been the victim of a toxic combination of austerity and ill thought through structural change. As a result, we went into the pandemic with public health services that were ill equipped to handle the arrival of covid.

As part of the coalition Government’s 2012 reforms, public health functions were separated from the NHS and put into local authorities, which I and other members of the health system welcomed. Between 2015 and 2020, the local authority public health grant fell by around a quarter in real terms. Between 2016 and 2019, Public Health England’s budget was cut by 12%. Restructuring of the workforce resulted in experience bleeding away. The number of people working in public health was not enough to meet demand. By 2021, England needed almost 60% more public health specialists to reach levels recommended by the Faculty of Public Health. The voice and influence of public health specialists has been increasingly stifled, and the value placed in their expertise diminished.

Britain was severely on the back foot when the pandemic hit us in early 2020. The NHS was operating without enough staff, there were not enough beds and our buildings were outdated. The failure to ensure that the NHS was properly staffed and resourced in the decade leading up to the pandemic meant that when the pandemic arrived, there was no capacity to meet the increase in demand.

Sickness absence from covid shrunk an already depleted workforce, and the need to separate groups of patients limited capacity further. That meant drastic measures such as pausing nearly all routine care in hospitals, redeploying staff and registering medical students early. There is no doubt that both staff and patients were put in harm’s way because of the historic underfunding, under-resourcing and austerity.

Can the Government say that they were not warned? No, they cannot. MPs, trade unions and even the United Nations all warned the Government. When the UN said that the results of the austerity experiment were “crystal clear”—that our social security net had been torn asunder by austerity—the Government said that they regretted the “overtly political tone” of the UN’s report. Cameron and Osborne’s project failed on its own terms: the books were not, as they often told us, balanced. In fact, we are all worse off because of their actions. History will not absolve them, because, with austerity, there is always a price to pay. Thousands of people are dead, and our welfare state was pushed to the brink. Austerity severely impacted our response to the pandemic, and it must never happen again. The Government have several fiscal events until the next election, and they can change things if they want to.

[The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Andrew Griffith)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy) on securing this evening’s debate.

In debating the Government’s fiscal policies, as in so many things, it is all important to set out the context. When the Government were first elected, it was in the immediate wake of the global financial crisis. It was also after we inherited a situation that had led to the Labour Chief Secretary to the Treasury leaving a note—we all remember that note—that said, “There is, I am afraid, no money left.”

In the years preceding the covid-19 pandemic, the Government’s fiscal strategy—the only fiscal strategy—was to reduce the deficit and debt that Labour had left us. As a long-standing finance director myself before coming to this place, I know that Government need to live within their means and show responsibility when entrusted with people’s hard-earned money. That was the time to repair the nation’s finances—before a storm would strike. When the deficit reached 7.5% of GDP in 2008-09, Government decisions supported its reduction to 2.7% of GDP by 2019-20. That approach developed the financial buffers to help absorb the impact of future economic shocks, such as we saw in the pandemic. Yet despite that period, and rather belying what the hon. Lady said, we have still been able to provide departmental spending today that will be around £75 billion a year more, in real terms, by 2027 than in 2010.

It is no wonder, then, that at the time when we took that approach, it received the support of Parliament. It was in line with the recommendations then for best practice. For example, the 2017 fiscal risks report of the independent Office for Budget Responsibility said that

“the public finances need to be managed prudently during more favourable times to ensure that when these shocks do crystallise they do not put the public finances onto an unsustainable path.”

That was why, when the pandemic hit, we were well placed to borrow to provide quick, decisive and consistent support to households and businesses throughout the country, which at that time had significant support from Members on both sides of the House. Estimates from the International Monetary Fund showed that the UK’s discretionary fiscal expansion in response to covid-19—the support that we gave households—was one of the largest and most comprehensive financial support packages globally.

To fund that response, we had to borrow an additional £313 billion—a huge amount of money—across 2021 and 2022, but we could not have done that had we not made the difficult decisions. Had we not acted, the cost to the country would have been far higher. Members will remember the support that we provided, including the furlough scheme, which supported nearly 12 million jobs in total, holding our economy together in incredibly tough times. I note that some 420,000 of those jobs were in the north-east, and that since the pandemic has ended the north-east has had the third-highest increase in employee numbers relative to pre-pandemic levels. The economy in the north-east has been one of the fastest growing.

I also note that, as is sadly so often the case on such occasions, the hon. Member for City of Durham had no alternative plans to lay out. I do not know whether she agrees with the North of Tyne Mayor, Jamie Driscoll, who today said, in respect of the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer):

“You’ve U-turned on so many promises…in fact, a list of broken promises too long to repeat in this letter.”

I do not know whether she has seen the letter from Jamie Driscoll, or whether she agrees with the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) or the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras on an issue like the two child policy. Our policy is clear. I do not think that it is appropriate for the Opposition to hold two policies simultaneously in respect of the two child policy.

When we look back on the pandemic, and on our fiscal approaches both during and in the run-up to it, the Government believe that we can be confident that we acted responsibly. We took difficult decisions on the back of the financial situation that we inherited, allowing us, when that terrible pandemic broke above our heads, to protect livelihoods up and down the country, and ensuring that we could afford to do so and could bounce back afterwards, as we have done subsequently. That was, and remains, sound, responsible fiscal policy.

I understand that not every Member of this House will agree with the decisions taken. I hope that the hon. Member for City of Durham will recognise that many people on both sides of this House did their best in those most difficult times.

[Mary Kelly Foy]

I am quite surprised and confused. I gave statistics about how many deaths there were, and specialists across the board, including the United Nations, have pointed out the damage done by the austerity programme. I have no idea why you mentioned the two child limit. It would have been really helpful if you had stuck to the point of my debate.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. The hon. Lady knows that she must not address the Minister directly.

Council Tax and Stamp Duty Alternatives

Mary Kelly Foy Excerpts

Wednesday 17th May 2023 Westminster Hall

[Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (Simon Fell) for securing this important debate. It is good to see cross-party consensus; I hope the Minister will note that it is not a party political issue. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) for his work in highlighting the problems with council tax.

We all know that council tax is flawed. Our constituents know it, we know it and the Government know it, too. The reality of council tax is that it is making councils overly reliant on locally raised revenue streams in order to offset Whitehall cuts. What makes the situation even worse is just how regressive council tax is. It baffled me when I was a local councillor, as it still does, that council tax is based on property valuations made in 1991, over 30 years ago. It was supposed to be revised periodically, but that has never happened in England. Housing inflation since 1991 has made those valuations nonsensical. Crucially, it means that the richest households, who live in the most expensive houses, are not paying their fair share. Billionaires in London will pay the same tax as someone occupying a modest property. Council tax has become like the “community charge”—the poll tax—that it was supposed to replace.

I appreciate that the Minister could not announce a policy change here in Westminster Hall today even if he wanted to, but can he give us a sense of what is happening in the Department on this issue? Last November, at a sitting of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee, the Secretary of State said that the Department was looking into local government finance. Where has that process got to? When are we likely to hear again from the Secretary of State? Will we see a Green Paper? More broadly, can the Minister share his thoughts on re-evaluating property prices? As I said, the current valuations are over 30 years old. I would appreciate an answer from him on those points.

The cost of living crisis is affecting all our constituents. It is leaving people with extremely difficult choices to make. In many cases, their choice is between heating or eating. These are the families who desperately need our vital public services. Replacing council tax with something progressive, as well as adequate funding from Whitehall, would ease the burden on those families and strengthen our public services locally. We need to do this as a matter of urgency.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Household Energy Bills: VAT

Mary Kelly Foy Excerpts

Tuesday 11th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)]

It is undeniable that the cost of living is spiralling out of control and the situation is being made bleaker by sky rocketing energy prices. The Government have failed to prepare for and refused to respond to the problem. When the new energy price cap is announced, households in Durham and across the country face a potential 46% rise in their energy bills, yet the Government are doing nothing to protect ordinary people from that hammer blow.

Fortunately for the Government, while they dither, the Labour party has a plan to protect households from the worst of the spiralling energy costs. The Government must act immediately to reduce the financial burden on households. According to polling by YouGov, a third of people say that a £25-a-month increase in their living costs would be unaffordable, while 50% say that they could not afford a £50-a-month increase. I do not think the Government truly appreciate the gravity of the situation for ordinary people. Labour’s plan would mitigate the impact of energy price rises by temporarily scrapping VAT on domestic energy bills, while taking steps to prevent the costs of supplier failure from being passed on to consumers.

We also recognise that there are those who need greater protection from these rises, which is why Labour would expand the warm homes discount and increase it from £140 a year to £400 a year, ensuring that it reaches squeezed middle-income and low-income households as well as pensioners. This, combined with our other proposals, would give eligible households a £600 a year reduction in energy payments.

The Government will no doubt protest that these plans cost money, but what is public money for if not to be spent on the public? At a time when households are experiencing greater pressure than ever on their resources, it is the Government’s duty to relieve that pressure. The best bit about this is that it could be paid for by a windfall tax on North sea oil and gas profits. As ordinary people are left to shiver in their cold homes or to pay through the nose for energy, these oil and gas companies are expected to report near record income in 2021-22. That simply is not right, and Labour would make these companies pay.

However, we cannot just look at short-term solutions to the crisis. We must also look to the future. Our energy system is broken, and it needs reform to make it greener and more sustainable by accelerating the switch from gas to homegrown renewables and by ensuring that millions of people in Britain have warm and well-insulated homes.

MPs have a simple choice today: we can vote to ease the squeeze on families across Britain or we can leave many to choose between heating and eating. I know which I will be voting for.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Oral Answers to Questions

Mary Kelly Foy Excerpts

Tuesday 9th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jesse Norman]

I do not recognise the figures the hon. Lady has used at all. The facts are that this Government published the “National Infrastructure Strategy” in November, which set out plans for £300 billion-worth of public investment over the next few years, as well as supporting £300 billion of private investment. Since then, the Chancellor has announced the new UK infrastructure bank, which will further support the development of infrastructure and levelling up, and the development of our green infrastructure across the UK.

[Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)]

What recent discussions he has had with his international counterparts on requiring private creditors to cancel debt owed by developing countries during the covid-19 pandemic.

[The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (John Glen)]

The Chancellor regularly engages with his international partners in the G7, G20 and the Paris Club on debt issues, including private sector participation in debt restructurings, and Treasury officials are also engaging with the private sector on this issue.

[Mary Kelly Foy [V]]

As the Government slash international aid, covid-19 could push up to 150 million people globally into extreme poverty, yet many banks and asset managers operating in the UK, including HSBC, BlackRock and J.P. Morgan, continue to demand debt repayments from developing countries, leaving them with less money to respond to covid-19. Will the Government urgently introduce new legislation to prevent developing countries from being sued in UK courts by banks, asset managers and vulture funds if they are unable to pay their debts as a result of the pandemic?

[John Glen]

I note the hon. Lady’s long-standing interest in this subject, but I want to state clearly that the Government support the role of the low-income developing countries to be supported by the UK’s G7 presidency. We have made clear our expectation that the private sector and the firms she mentioned will offer debt treatment on at least as favourable terms as the official sector, under the common framework, as agreed by the G20 last November.

Government's Management of the Economy

Mary Kelly Foy Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab) [V]]

There is no doubt that the coronavirus has hit us very hard and that we are undergoing the worst economic crisis of any major economy. While some of that impact would have happened anyway, much of it is due to two things. First, there is the Government’s chaotic handling of the crisis, with failures and shortcuts being followed by U-turns, causing a great deal of confusion and damaging public health messaging. Secondly, the coronavirus crisis arrived on the back of 10 years of austerity, public sector cuts and privatisation. There are deep roots of this crisis.

The north-east has been badly let down, but all over the country, the impact of austerity has left working-class communities vulnerable to the pandemic and to lockdown. On Friday, the Health Foundation highlighted the legacy of poor health and inequalities, which has left much of the population more vulnerable to coronavirus. We know that mortality from the virus has been higher for those with pre-existing health conditions. Since 2011, for areas such as the north-east and some deprived groups, life expectancy has declined. In addition, many families were ill-prepared for the economic impact of the virus. Action for Children has shown that going into the crisis, 51% of children in the UK were living in families with no savings at all.

This underlying vulnerability has been made worse by social conditions that allowed the virus to spread: overcrowded housing, poverty and insecure work, making it hard for people to self-isolate. That is why it is so important that economic support goes hand in hand with restrictions, so that people can stay safe in reality, rather than just in theory. That means an immediate extension to the furlough scheme to give certainty to workers and businesses and a pay rise for key workers, so that they can live with some security and confidence.

Of course, it is not all gloom and doom. The coronavirus has taught us a lot about work, our communities and our society. If the Government had any ambition, they would look beyond sticking-plaster solutions towards a new type of economy, aimed at reducing the inequalities between regions in health, housing, work and opportunities. They might also imagine a green future for our economy, based in areas such as the north-east that have been neglected. Years ago, we talked about 1 million climate jobs. That should be part of the transition to a net-zero future. This is an opportunity to rebuild the economy on different foundations, if those in power could only see it.

Economic Update

Mary Kelly Foy Excerpts

Monday 11th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. Hospitality is such an important sector for our local communities and indeed our national economy. I cannot comment on future Budgets, but I will bear what she says in mind. She can rest assured that I will do what I can to support the hospitality industry and ensure that it can drive our recovery.

[Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab) [V]]

Last week, the Chancellor graced Members of this House with a 90-second video on Twitter announcing support for the retail, hospitality and leisure sectors. While I look forward to him delivering the Budget on TikTok, those gimmicks leave businesses in the dark through a lack of scrutiny. Now that he has been freed from Twitter’s time limits, will he tell struggling businesses in my constituency just how long they need to make those grants last?

[Rishi Sunak]

The grants we have put in place are one-off but can help businesses through to the spring. Additionally, they will, of course, continue to receive the monthly grants of up to £3,000, which will be paid throughout. That means that, for example, over the next three months, a business could receive up to £18,000 in cash support. We will, as the hon. Lady said, have a Budget on 3 March, before that time elapses, at which point we will set out the next stage in our economic response to coronavirus.

Financial Reward for Government Workers and Key Workers

Mary Kelly Foy Excerpts

Monday 14th December 2020 Westminster Hall

[Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) for securing this important debate. I want to talk about the workers who throughout this pandemic have delivered furlough schemes, processed millions of new claims for universal credit, and kept the courts, ports and airports open and our prisons safe and secure. When we as a nation applaud our key workers, those key workers are often forgotten. Worst of all, they have been abandoned by the Government.

Unfortunately, the words, “civil servant”, still conjure up visions of “Yes Minister” for many people—including, it seems, the Government. Nothing could be further from the reality. The truth is that civil servants have suffered years of real-terms pay cuts. The average civil servant on a salary of £26,000 is now worse off by £2,110 a year compared with 2010. Following the end of national pay bargaining, there are now over 200 sets of pay negotiations in the civil service and related areas. What that means in reality is that there are huge inequalities in the pay of civil servants, with many falling into poverty pay. In HMRC, 12,000 staff—around one in five—are paid at the minimum wage or just above. It is unacceptable to have Government workers forced into poverty.

Then we come to another group of workers who are often overlooked: prison officers. As my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) has just said, they deserve not just our praise but our respect for their courage in the course of their work, year in, year out. Covid has made a dangerous job even worse. In my constituency, we recently heard of an outbreak at HMP Frankland, where more than 200 members of the prison staff were off with covid symptoms or were self-isolating. That puts enormous pressure on the remaining staff, yet just last week the Government rejected a key recommendation from an independent body to raise the salaries of people on the frontline. It is nothing less than a kick in the teeth for hard-working and loyal public servants. As hon. Members have pointed out, prison officers are banned from taking any sort of industrial action. I disagree with such a limiting of their basic rights.

The Prison Service Pay Review Body recommended a significant pay rise for band 3 officers. Without justification or reason, the Government claim that is unaffordable. Of course, we know where this all leads—prison officers will vote with their feet and leave the service they love. We will lose valuable knowledge and experience at a time when we need it most. As experience goes down, violence goes up, leading to more officers leaving and so on. It is a vicious cycle.

Civil servants do thankless work. They do not want applause; they want to be rewarded fairly for the work that they do. The Government should listen to the Public and Commercial Services Union and start to restore the real value of civil servants’ pay with a 10% increase. On prison officer pay, the Government should think again and listen to the Prison Officers Association and the Prison Service Pay Review Body. The demands are not excessive; they are simply about keeping key workers’ heads above water and giving them some decency, respect and fairness. Surely that is the least we can do.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kemi Badenoch]

No, I am afraid I am not giving way.

I am also happy to remind hon. Members that almost exactly a year ago, after nine years of Conservatives in Government and the very same fiscal policies that hon. Members have criticised today, the public chose to renew their faith and trust in this Government—not just with an increased share of the vote, but with a much increased majority. Since 2010, they had heard these arguments about what we were doing on fiscal policy over and over again, from many colleagues on the Opposition Benches who are not in the House today. We all believe in fair pay, but we disagree on where it is sent. However, I remind hon. Members that the public also want fiscal responsibility.

Good government is about making the right choices. To paraphrase the Chancellor, our health emergency is not yet over, while our economic emergency has only just begun. At a time like this, it is the responsibility—in fact, the duty—of Government to prioritise and target support where it is most needed, in a way that is fair and sustainable, that protects jobs and businesses, and that limits long-term damage to the economy. The hon. Member for Gower referenced many previous responses the Government have given on this topic. She may not like the answer, but the facts have not changed, and I am happy to repeat them here. Fairness has been a guiding principle.

[Mary Kelly Foy]

Will the Minister give way?

[Kemi Badenoch]

I am not giving way. I have already said I am not; please stop asking.

As the Chancellor pointed out in his statement on the spending review, in the six months to September, private sector wages fell by nearly 1% compared with last year. Over the same period, public sector wages rose by nearly 4%. Workers in the private sector have lost jobs, been furloughed, and seen their wages cut and their hours reduced, while those in the public sector have not. [Interruption.]

[Kemi Badenoch]

Thank you, Mr Stringer. For that reason, the Chancellor announced a temporary pause to pay awards for some public sector workers for the year 2021-22. Disappointing though I know this will be, this approach allows us to protect public sector jobs at this time of crisis and ensure fairness between the private and public sectors. Crucially, as I have said, we are targeting our resources at those who need them most. First, taking account of the NHS Pay Review Body’s advice, we are providing a pay rise to over 1 million nurses, doctors and others working in the NHS. Secondly, we are protecting those on lower incomes. The 2.1 million public sector workers who earn below the median wage of £24,000 will be guaranteed a pay rise of at least—and I emphasise “at least”—£250.

In the spending review, we also accepted in full the recommendations of the Low Pay Commission—to increase the national living wage by 2.2% to £8.91 an hour, to extend that rate to those aged 23 and over, and to increase the national minimum wage. According to the commission, those rates will give low-paid workers a real-terms pay rise and protect their standards of living without significant risks to their job prospects. A full-time worker on the national living wage will also see their annual earnings increase by £345 next year. That is a pay rise of over £4,000 compared with 2016, the year in which the policy was first introduced. Taken together, these minimum wage increases will likely benefit around 2 million people and help make real progress towards ending low pay in the UK.

The risk with broader-brush measures, including income tax or national insurance policies—this particular point was not made today, but it is an important one to reiterate—is that it is difficult to define and limit who should benefit. The result could merely be to reward the better paid, at a time when the Government have already been forecast to be borrowing at record peacetime levels.

As a Government, we are committed to keeping taxes low in order that working people, including key workers, are able to keep more of what they earn. In April 2019, the Government increased the personal tax allowance to £12,500, meaning that the personal allowance is up by more than 90% in less than a decade, ensuring that more of the lowest earners do not pay any income tax at all. In April this year, we also increased the national insurance contributions primary threshold and lower profits limit to £9,500—a move that will benefit 31 million people. Add all that together, and changes to income tax and national insurance contributions between 2010-11 and 2020-21 mean that a typical basic rate employee in England, Wales or Northern Ireland is more than £1,600 better off a year.

[Mary Kelly Foy]

Will the Minister give way, with 15 minutes to go?

[Kemi Badenoch]

I will conclude by saying that this Government and all the people of this country are grateful for everything that our key workers in both the public and the private sector have done and continue to do, but in the choices we make, we must chart a way ahead that is fair and sustainable and that gives us the best chance of a strong economic recovery. That is the thinking behind what we have done and it will remain the thinking behind what we do in the challenging months and years ahead, as I believe it should.

Lockdown: Economic Support

Mary Kelly Foy Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

My right hon. Friend is right to pick up on that grievance culture. Through our ability to act on a UK basis, we have been able to offer the unprecedented support that we have to date. Furlough has always been a UK-wide scheme and, as the Prime Minister said, the Government will always be there to provide support to all parts of the United Kingdom.

[Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)]

Last month, the Government disgraced themselves by voting against extending free school meals into the holidays for our most vulnerable children. Even if the Government will not reverse that cruel decision, will they at least follow Action for Children’s recommendations and extend free school meals for all families in receipt of universal credit?

[Steve Barclay]

The hon. Lady raises a serious issue and one that all Members of the House care deeply about, but it is also important to look at the package as a whole. We have put in an additional £9 billion of welfare support, recognising the increasing pressures. That includes the £20 uplift on universal credit, the lifting of the minimum income guarantee and the various other measures in the package. Above all, retaining jobs and getting people back into the labour market is the best way that we can protect people from poverty.

Public Health Restrictions: Government Economic Support

Mary Kelly Foy Excerpts

Tuesday 13th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

There is always a balance between the operability of schemes, the speed at which one can deploy them and how bespoke one makes them. I know that my hon. Friend is a huge champion of the ceramics industry, and I know it is important to Stoke and to businesses in his constituency. If there are specific issues, I am happy to pick them up offline with him, but the key message we usually get from businesses is the importance of getting packages to people quickly and in particular of addressing the cash flow challenges that they face.

[Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)]

Last week, the Chancellor announced that workers at businesses and workplaces forced to close would be eligible for grants worth two thirds of their salary. That is clearly not enough. Will the Minister tell me whether bills, rents and mortgages will be charged at two thirds of the usual amount? If not, will the Government extend the evictions ban?