Cost of Living Increases
Debate between Matt Rodda and Helen Whately(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Helen Whately
As I was outlining—I do hope the hon. Gentleman was listening—we have put multiple interventions in place to support people with the rising cost of living. Specifically on energy prices, on the one hand we have the price cap and on the other, the package of £9 billion in support announced literally last month, which his motion says he would like to scrap.
On top of everything we are doing to help people with the cost of living, we are helping people to help themselves through our plan for jobs, and that plan is working. The UK was the fastest-growing economy in the G7 last year, and the International Monetary Fund forecast, produced before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, was for us to be the fastest-growing major advanced economy again this year. Unemployment has now fallen to 3.9%, below its pre-pandemic rate, and payrolled employees are at a record high.
Helen Whately
I will give way, because I am about to move on to talk about energy.
Matt Rodda
The Minister is obviously covering a range of issues, both employment and the cost of living for households. As the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) mentioned, is now perhaps the right time to look again at the national insurance rise, given the pressure on families and the stalling rate of growth?
Helen Whately
The Chancellor has already been asked about this, and the fact is that we have taken the difficult, fiscally responsible decision to ensure that there is a long-term funding stream, both to support the NHS to tackle backlogs and to fund the cost of social care reform. That has to be the right thing to do, going hand in hand with our determination to invest in growth in this country, which I will come to in a moment.
I will just talk for a moment more about energy. We have talked about the support for people’s energy bills, but the best way to support people with the cost of energy is to tackle the problem at source and reduce the overall cost of energy in the UK, as well as reducing demand for energy, and we have already taken steps to do that. Our investment in renewables in recent years has already reduced our dependency on gas, meaning overall that bills are now materially lower than they would have been.
Looking ahead, now is the time for us to go full steam ahead with our transition to renewables. We are investing in nuclear. We are accelerating our progress on renewables, in which Scotland plays an important part, and we are boosting energy efficiency, investing more than £6 billion in energy efficiency measures over this Parliament, including £3 billion to install energy efficiency measures in low-income homes. That will save low-income households hundreds of pounds a year off their energy bill, as well as being a fabulous growth opportunity for our economy.
The motion we are debating today specifically mentions implementing a windfall tax
“on companies which are benefitting from significantly increased profits as a result of impacts associated with the covid-19 pandemic or the current international situation”.
I am sure that SNP Members are talking about a windfall tax on North sea oil and gas. I say to them, and in particular the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Stephen Flynn), that North sea oil and gas are important to our energy transition.
The UK Government place additional taxes on the extraction of oil and gas, with companies engaged in the production of oil and gas on the UK continental shelf subject to headline tax rates on their profits that are currently more than double those paid by other businesses. To date, the sector has paid more than £375 billion in production taxes. Those of us on the Government side of the House support the North sea oil and gas sector and its role in our energy security and our energy transition.
This Government have consistently acted whenever and however necessary to support families and businesses. It is our responsibility on their behalf to protect the public finances. Our level of debt means we are and have been vulnerable to shocks, including changes in interest rates and inflation. A sustained one percentage point increase in interest rates and inflation would cost more than £22 billion by 2026-27. Events in Ukraine are a clear reminder that there will always be the risk of further economic bumps in the road, and we must be ready. To that end, as we come out of the pandemic, we must focus even more on boosting productivity, growth and investment across the whole UK.
We are focused specifically on the three priorities that the Chancellor outlined in his recent Mais lecture: capital, people and ideas. That will help us foster a new culture of enterprise and drive growth. The Government continue to support business through the temporary super deduction to encourage firms to invest in productivity-enhancing plant and machinery assets. We are committing to unprecedented levels of investment in ideas: increasing investment in research and development to £22 billion a year, reforming and improving our tax credit system, improving access to finance, and helping small businesses through our flagship Help to Grow programme. The £4.8 billion levelling up fund will invest in infrastructure that improves everyday life across the UK, while the £2.6 billion shared prosperity fund will support our wider commitment to level up all parts of the UK. In these cases, we have public investment crowding in private sector investment, which is what will drive the growth of our economy. The spending review also confirmed a total of £100 billion of investment in economic infrastructure over the spending review period. Together, that adds up to an extraordinary, and extraordinarily ambitious, programme of investment in the UK.
The Government understand that this is a challenging time for British households, including in Scotland. That is exactly why we have acted in dozens of ways on multiple fronts for the entire United Kingdom, but it is also why we are looking to the future, focusing on our economic recovery, on growth and on skills—elements that together will raise the living standards of millions of people all across the Union.