Amendment of the Law

Matt Hancock Excerpts

Friday 23rd March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

The previous Conservative Government handed over a golden economic legacy. It was the Labour party that handed over a Britain loaded up with debt, costing us £120 million a day in debt interest, and that left unemployment higher than when it came to office, like every single Labour Government we have ever had. I will take no lectures from the party opposite on economic management, and neither will the British people.

[Matthew Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)]

On the question of investment from overseas, is my right hon. Friend aware that some Labour shadow Cabinet Ministers have said that they would reverse the corporation tax cut, which was cited by GlaxoSmithKline yesterday when it announced 1,000 new jobs in this country?

[Justine Greening]

Ultimately, Labour Members seem to know nothing about how business runs. It may be that none of them has ever worked in business. Keeping our corporation tax rate low is critical in re-establishing our economic credibility and our tax competitiveness. Those are fundamental building blocks in getting the investment that we are seeing. I wholeheartedly welcome the steps that the Chancellor has taken.

As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has said, the infrastructure deficit that we inherited is just as serious as the budget deficit for our future productivity and the country’s ability to be successful. Infrastructure matters because it makes possible our journeys to work, delivers light when we flick on the switch and provides the connections that have created the communications revolution. Whether it is the congestion on our roads, our ageing power stations or the slow speed of our broadband connections, we face massive challenges to ensure that we have the infrastructure that we need to put Britain at the head of the competitiveness curve, not just in the next four to five years, but in the next four to five decades.

My remarks will focus on transport, because the Budget sends a clear message about how crucial the Government and I believe our transport infrastructure is to our economic future. That reflects what business is telling us. The CBI states:

“There are large amounts of business capital waiting to be unlocked if the Government achieves a step-change on transport”.

The Institute of Directors says that it is

“essential to provide more and better transport infrastructure in order to sustain the UK’s competitiveness.”

The British Chambers of Commerce rightly states:

“Infrastructure is the lifeblood of British business.”

I could not agree more. The last Government delivered the biggest boom and the biggest bust. As we chart our way back to economic recovery, what companies and firms up and down the country rightly want to see is a Government taking action.

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[Matthew Hancock]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[John Woodcock]

I will not give way on that point, because I want to make progress.

I am afraid that the priorities the Government and Secretary of State have set out are not—

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[John Woodcock]

That shows just how out of touch the hon. Gentleman and Government Members are. I would like to see him go to the forecourt in his constituency, or any forecourt around the country, and say, “Let’s welcome the further rise in fuel taxation that you’re getting this week. What a great job the Government are doing in keeping fuel prices down!”

Families in Britain, worried by energy bills, clobbered by spiralling rail fares and made poorer by cuts to tax credits, are, thanks to this Secretary of State’s inaction, once again being squeezed even harder at the fuel pump. There is pain today and pain tomorrow. The ultimate victims are jobs and growth, and the nation’s return to prosperity. What is the Chancellor offering motorists in return for their growing fuel bills? He is offering only vague promises, which might well turn out to be yet another ratchet with precious little reward.

The National Audit Office has warned the Government that they are creating a vicious cycle of deteriorating roads and higher long-term costs. A plague of potholes is making our road network less safe for all users, less green and more congested. The road network is a brake on, and not an agent of, jobs and growth. There is no movement on the cuts already set for local roads—that is good news on potholes but bad news for everyone else—but what about our trunk roads, which the Secretary of State mentioned? We need long-term strategic investment in the road network, and we also need to look at how we lever in that investment, but Britain’s drivers and cyclists will have little confidence after seeing Ministers tying themselves in knots in recent days.

Before the Prime Minister’s speech on infrastructure on Monday, those pesky anonymous briefers, who seem to be everywhere in this Government—good luck in trying to catch them, Mr Speaker—said that tolling would be considered only for brand new roads. However, in the speech, “new roads” became “new capacity”. We now know for certain that charging is being considered when improvements take place on existing roads because the Budget document confirms it. We are told that the shortlist of options include “widening some sections” of the A14,

“rationalising access to the route, and improving the route of the southern bypass for Huntingdon.”

In other words, the A14 will be not a new road, but the existing one with added tolling.

Britain’s motorists, already squeezed to breaking point, demand plain speaking from the Government, so I will give the Secretary of State another opportunity. Will she tell us what will constitute a capacity improvement on an existing road that could lead to tolling? Will that include an extra lane, a contra flow, a new slip road, a roundabout or a bollard? Motorists deserve to know what the Government have in mind.

[Matthew Hancock]

As the A14 runs through my constituency and is rather a long way from Barrow, may I point out to the hon. Gentleman that adding extra capacity, even if it is tolled, will help all those who go on the free bit of the road, because they will be able to get home faster? That is why the proposal is supported locally, even if there is opportunistic opposition from Labour.

[John Woodcock]

The hon. Gentleman seems to have more information about how the scheme will work than either me or the Secretary of State, who does not seem to know how exactly motorists will be clobbered with tolls.

Who, if anyone, will police tolls? Will contracts stipulate that tolls must be removed when improvements have been paid for? How will we avoid people being driven off the motorways and dual carriageways and back into the communities and road networks that the toll roads were built to relieve?

In addition to the fear of massively increased tolling, there could be a further, lasting sting in the tail for motorists from this Budget. Buried on page 70 of the Red Book are plans for what can be described only as a new stealth tax hike on motorists. The Government say they will consider reforming—by which they clearly mean “increasing”—vehicle excise duty. Ministers need to come clean on how much extra they plan to squeeze out of motorists through that new stealth tax increase. They also need to say what it will mean for motorists who behave responsibly and opt for fuel-efficient vehicles.

On a less testing note on the subject of sustainable road travel, let me say that the Opposition welcome the £15 million the Chancellor has found to help to make London’s roads safer for cyclists. The spate of injuries and deaths in the capital has been truly appalling, and the Opposition fully support the campaign, led by The Times, for significant change. As the Secretary of State will know, however, the Budget contained only this one-off grant for London—the fact that there is an upcoming mayoral election is a complete coincidence, I am sure. Labour has committed to reserving a portion of the roads budget to dedicated cycle facilities on roads across the country, not just in the capital. Will she make a similar commitment?

If transport on the ground is up in the air with the uncertainties created by the Government, transport in the air, aviation, remains at serious risk of being grounded—if Members follow me. On aviation capacity, the Government still do not know—and we still do not know after the Secretary of State’s speech—whether she is taking off or landing.

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[Richard Harrington]

I thank the hon. Lady for those comments. I remind her that I said that the rate of taxation was one of a package of things that gives confidence. I have started and owned a business, and I did not draw a salary for two or three years as a result. I drove minicabs and ran a market stall at weekends in order to pay my way, so I know what it is like, as I have experience in that field. I do not feel it is appropriate to take lectures from people who perhaps have not done that themselves. I am talking not about the hon. Lady, but about many other people who have mentioned these things.

[Matthew Hancock]

Should we not base our approach on evidence? Given that the evidence, supported by the Office for Budget Responsibility, shows that there are behavioural effects that lose revenue, does this not show why the Labour party got us into such a mess? That party ignores and is positively disdainful of the impact of taxes on people’s behaviour.

[Richard Harrington]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I hear a lot from people from all parts of the spectrum in my constituency, as other hon. Members do in theirs. In my judgment, people are very realistic, because they realise that the mess we got into was caused by chronic overspending and a budget that was completely out of control under the previous Administration. I believe that the polling on who got us into this mess is consistent on that point. So it is clear that no matter which party people are going to vote for in the future, they do not want this to happen again; they do not want overspending to take place and they do not believe that spending more money and borrowing more money is the solution to this country’s economic problems. This is the first time in my adult life, from reading the papers and taking part in politics, that I can recall this important lesson having got into the public’s consciousness. That is sensible, because people can relate to it in their own household earnings and the budgets that they make for themselves.

Let me move on to the growth area of the Budget. The focus is on economic growth and infrastructure and that is important because the future growth of this country is the most significant thing that the Budget is about. Rather than talking about—

Proceedings interrupted (Standing Order No. 11(4)).