Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton South)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps his Department is taking to help the retail, hospitality and leisure sectors recover from the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
In December, Government announced a £1bn package of support for businesses impacted by the Omicron variant. This included grants worth up to £6,000 for businesses in the hospitality and leisure sectors.
These measures are just the latest action we have taken to safeguard businesses and jobs and are in addition to:
Thanks to the Government’s decisive action to implement balanced and proportionate measures in response to the Omicron variant, Cabinet has decided to return to Plan A in England. This means the economy will get back to operating freely and businesses can recover more quickly.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton South)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps his Department is taking to support public services.
Answered by Simon Clarke
I refer the Hon Member to the answer that I gave on 3 February to the Hon Member for Crewe and Nantwich: UIN 114989.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton South)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps his Department is taking to manage the public finances effectively.
Answered by Simon Clarke
I refer the Hon Member to the answer that I gave on 3 February to the Hon Member for Crewe and Nantwich: UIN 114988.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton South)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what progress his Department has made on supporting people to upskill and change career paths.
Answered by Simon Clarke
The Treasury is working to support people to upskill and change career paths.
At the Spending Review, young people and adults benefitted from the biggest long-term settlement for post-16 education in England since 2015. The government is investing a total over the Parliament of £3.8bn in skills by 2024-25, equivalent to a cash increase of 42% (26% in real terms) compared to 2019-20.
Spending Review 2021 delivered on the government’s commitment to invest an additional £500m per annum (£2.5bn total) in adult skills through the National Skills Fund, including continuing to offer free Level 3 courses for adults aged over 19 in high value subjects. This substantially boosts retraining opportunities for adults and will level up basic skills.
We are also quadrupling the current annual scale of skills bootcamps over the SR period. Employers work with providers to deliver short courses to develop occupational skills, with participants guaranteed a job interview on completion. Bootcamps offer an opportunity for all adults to reskill and change career paths.
SR21 also announced ‘Multiply’ – the Government’s new programme to level up adult numeracy. £560m across the SR period will give people the opportunity to develop their numeracy skills, funded from the UK Shared Prosperity Fund. Local areas will be allocated funding to deliver interventions from a menu of options including: delivering flexible Functional Skills courses to fit around adults’ lives; supporting adult to build their confidence with numbers; working with employers to deliver innovative workplace-based numeracy programmes. Getting numeracy skills is one of the most valuable things we can do to help people get on: getting Level 2 numeracy increases wages by an average of 14% after seven years, compared to 4% for Level 2 literacy.
Apprenticeships are the government’s premier in-work training offer, providing learners of all ages and at all stages of their careers the opportunity to learn new skills, retrain or upskill. There are over 640 high-quality apprenticeship standards available at levels 2 (GCSE equivalent) to 7 (Master’s degree equivalent), including in ‘in demand’ sectors such as logistics, digital, and health and social care, allowing learners to both build on existing learning and explore new career directions. Higher-level apprenticeships can be an important stepping-stone to achieving these aims. Spending Review 2021 announced the first increase to apprenticeship funding since 2019, with funding rising to £2.7bn by 2024-25.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton South)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what progress his Department has made on supporting young people into high-skilled jobs.
Answered by Simon Clarke
The Treasury is working to support young people into high-skilled jobs.
Spending Review 2021 delivered the biggest long-term settlement for post-16 education in England since 2015. It delivered on the government’s commitment to invest an additional £500m per annum (£2.5bn total) in adult skills through the National Skills Fund, including continuing to offer free Level 3 courses for adults aged over 19 in high value subjects, quadrupling the current annual scale of skills bootcamps and delivering 24,000 traineeships for 16-24-year-olds a year.
These actions will help young people access high-quality training suitable to their needs and career goals.
For 16-19 education, Spending Review 2021 doubles the investment we made through Spending Reviews 2019 and 2020, giving young people more money for the high value subjects that matter most for their future careers. In addition, we have invested further in T Levels, which offer young people the opportunity to experience a mix of classroom learning and on-the-job training via an industry placement.
Apprenticeships are the government’s premier in-work training offer, providing learners of all ages and at all stages of their careers the opportunity to learn new skills, retrain or upskill. In academic year 2020/21, almost 50% of apprenticeship starts were by under 25s. Spending Review 2021 announced the first increase to apprenticeship funding since 2019, with funding rising to £2.7bn by 2024-25.
In addition to this Government’s support for post-16 education and apprenticeships, over 122,000 Kickstart jobs have been started by young people across Great Britain. Kickstart gives young people the chance to build their confidence and skills in the workplace, and to gain experience that will improve their chances of finding long-term, sustainable work. As well as Kickstart, DWP’s Youth Offer provides a guaranteed foundation of support to young people on Universal Credit in the Intensive Work Search group, ensuring they can access the right support, education or training to support their work and career ambitions.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton South)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what progress his Department has made in levelling up all regions of the UK.
Answered by Simon Clarke
The Government published its Levelling Up White Paper earlier this month. It sets out our missions as part of a decade long plan to see the potential of every corner of the United Kingdom fulfilled.
It builds on the funding allocated at the Spending Review, for example boosting investment in skills training with a total of £3.8 billion in skills by 2024-25, transforming local transport networks with £5.7 billion investment in five-year consolidated transport settlements for eight city regions in England, including Greater Manchester and Liverpool City Region, and supporting local infrastructure through the first round of the £4.8 billion Levelling Up Fund, which saw 12 places in the North West receive £232 million in funding.
It also provides further detail on the £2.6 billion UK Shared Prosperity Fund, helping people to access new opportunities in places in need.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton South)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps his Department is taking to increase wages and support the lowest-income households.
Answered by Simon Clarke
The National Living Wage is increasing by 6.6% to £9.50 an hour for workers aged 23 and over in April 2022, which will benefit more than 2 million workers. This means an increase of over £1,000 to the annual earnings of a full-time worker on the National Living Wage and keeps us on track to our target to end low pay by 2024-25.
We have taken further decisive action to make work pay by cutting the Universal Credit taper rate from 63p to 55p and increasing Universal Credit work allowances by £500 per annum. Taken together, this is a tax cut worth around £1,000 a year for around two million low paid households.
The Government recently announced the ‘Way to Work’ campaign to get 500,000 jobseekers into jobs by the end of June. We know work is the best way for people to get on, to improve their lives and support their families because people on benefits are at least £6,000 better off in full time work.
Through the Plan for Jobs, the Government is also investing £99m in a new In Work Progression offer from April 2022, which will mean more people in work on Universal Credit will be able to access individualised Work Coach support to help them progress and increase their earnings.
The Government is also committed to helping low-income families with the cost of living, including providing £500m for a Household Support Fund to help vulnerable households with costs for essentials such as food, clothing and utilities over the Winter.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton South)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps his Department is taking to encourage regional growth across the UK.
Answered by Simon Clarke
The Government published its Levelling Up White Paper earlier this month. It sets out our missions as part of a decade long plan to see the potential of every corner of the United Kingdom fulfilled.
Encouraging regional growth is a key part of our ambition to level up opportunities right across the UK. The Levelling Up White Paper builds on funding allocated at the Spending Review, including ensuring small and medium sized enterprises across the UK can access the finance they need including through British Business Bank programme such as the Start Up Loans scheme and the Regional Angels Fund, and launching the new £1.4bn Global Britain Investment Fund to ensure that economic opportunities are spread more evenly across the UK by supporting investment in the UK’s life sciences, offshore wind and automotive manufacturing sectors.
To improve infrastructure for everyday life, the Spending Review also announced the first 105 places to receive support for regeneration from the £4.8bn Levelling Up Fund, alongside unprecedented investment of £5.7bn in five-year consolidated transport settlements for eight city regions.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton South)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps his Department is taking to support the financial services sector’s competitiveness.
Answered by John Glen - Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office
In his Mansion House statement last July, the Chancellor set out the Government’s vision for an open, competitive, green, and technologically advanced financial services sector.
A sweeping set of reforms to sharpen the UK’s competitive advantage in financial services is already underway. In November, the Government published the second consultation in its Future Regulatory Framework Review. This provides a once in a generation opportunity to ensure that, having left the EU, the UK establishes a coherent, agile, and internationally respected approach to financial services regulation that is right for the UK.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton South)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment his Department has made of the effect on businesses of the increase in the business rates multiplier in England since 1990.
Answered by Lucy Frazer - Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
The business rates multiplier was frozen in 2021-22. Additionally, at Autumn Budget 2021, the Chancellor announced the decision to freeze the multiplier for 2022-23, a tax cut worth £4.6 billion over the next 5 years. This will support all ratepayers, large and small, meaning bills are 3 per cent lower than without the freeze.
A restaurant chain with 400 restaurants with a rateable value of £45,000 each will receive support worth around £1,350,000, or 3 per cent of their rates liability over the next 5 years.
Cutting the standard business rates multiplier to their 1990 levels of 35p in 2022-23 would cost an estimated £9 billion annually, with costs rising every year to over £11 billion per year by 2030. A cut of 1p to the multiplier in 2022-23 would cost around £600 million.
The revenue forgone for a cut of this scale would be highly significant. For instance, £10 billion of revenue is equivalent to around 20 per cent of 2021-22 local government Core Spending Power. Raising the equivalent funding elsewhere in the tax system would require an increase of around 1.5 percentage points to the standard rate of VAT.