Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 11th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, Dame Meg Hillier.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister talks about vacancies in the job market. There are vacancies, of course, but many of my constituents earn under £12,000 a year. They will not benefit from the tax cut, so they rely on universal credit to make up the gap. They cannot afford to work because of the high cost of childcare. They are already on the poverty line. What is his advice to them? Will he give us some comfort that the Government will make the right decision on uprating benefits?

[Chris Philp]

I have already explained that the normal statutory process is under way. When it comes to helping people on lower incomes, I mentioned the very significant increase in the minimum wage just a few months ago. We made an unprecedented intervention this year, amounting to £37 billion, which is disproportionately directed towards people on lower incomes. The one third of households on lower incomes are receiving an extra £1,200 this year.

The hon. Lady also referred to the fact that people earning £12,570 or less pay not a penny of national insurance and not a penny of income tax, which is thanks to the action of this Conservative Government.

The Growth Plan

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Friday 23rd September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We will link the investment zones to infrastructure projects, because one without the other does not make sense. I would be very interested to talk to him about Weymouth and the opportunities for investment zones in that area.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

We have seen this Chancellor rip up fiscal responsibility, sack the senior civil servant at the Treasury and mortgage the future of our children and our country. It is not just me who is concerned about his ambition for growth. The Institute for Fiscal Studies tells us that

“we shouldn’t underestimate the scale of the challenge”.

Hopefully, no one does that. It says that

“an increase in annual growth of more than 0.7% of national income—the increase required just to stabilise debt as a share of GDP…would be equivalent to the difference between the growth in the UK”

experienced in the 25 years from 1983.

There is no “miracle cure”, says the IFS. There is not. Can the Chancellor just admit that he is fiscally irresponsible and that he is gambling with this country’s future?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I do not admit that at all. In fact, the gamble was to do nothing. The gamble was to stick on the path that we were on and simply raise spending and taxes and think that, magically, we were going to get to the promised land. That was not a credible path; this is.

Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[John Glen]

The Government are constantly looking at new ideas. The regional angels programme and our reforms to financial services to make FinTech and banks more accessible to regional businesses are at the core of this Government’s agenda, and I will bring further measures to the House in the next few weeks.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

As my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden) highlights, the handouts from the Government to support families are already being wiped out by the rise in inflation and cost of living. One in two children in my constituency live in poverty. From what the Minister just said, he believes in trickle-down from those billionaires to help those people, but they are on low wages and, for many of those who are working, universal credit has been cut. That is not doing enough to support them. What further steps will the Treasury take?

[John Glen]

What I believe in is a Government who make targeted support available to the most vulnerable. The Chancellor and this Government have on a number of occasions used fiscal events and bespoke interventions to support those vulnerable people. We have always been clear that we will not be able to ameliorate the full extent of the challenges facing the country, but we will continue to strive for greater growth and productivity that will bring us back to where we need to be.

National Insurance Contributions (Increase of Thresholds) Bill

Meg Hillier Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 24th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The sum of £83 billion dwarfs most Departments: it is the equivalent of adding Education, Transport and Justice together. We need to take this incredibly seriously. It is the context in which all our decisions in this statement had to be considered, and in which our actions in future years will be possible. We should be clear: it is the most vulnerable and the poorest who lose out the most if the Government lose control of the public finances. That is the central message that the Chancellor would want to emphasise.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister said that the poorest and most vulnerable lose out, but under the Government’s proposals it is precisely the people on benefits who are not being uprated to keep in line with inflation who are going to lose out the most. What has he got to say to that?

[Mr Clarke]

I would say two things. First, there is a raft of measures in place in the package announced yesterday precisely determined to help people on the lowest incomes, including, notably, the doubling of the household support fund to £1 billion, the action that we have already taken in cutting the universal credit taper rate, and the biggest cut that we have ever made to fuel duty. These are all things we have done, on top of the energy price package announced in February, that are designed to help people on the lowest incomes. Secondly, I hold the office of Chief Secretary, and I remember the Labour predecessor who left the note saying that there is no money left. I do not want to be in a position where I hand over a note to any successor of mine saying that there is an equivalent situation.

Financial Statement

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

At Prime Minister’s questions, the Prime Minister batted away a question about fraud during covid by suggesting that it was just about delivery, but it was the Chancellor who gave the ministerial direction for the bounce back loans to be paid at such speed. With a check that was even 48 hours longer, the Government might have avoided the fraudulent duplicate claims that were not stopped until a month later. The £4.7 billion that was lost to fraud could have mitigated measures such as the national insurance increase. Does the Chancellor now regret that he did not pause for thought and that he was not more cautious about fraud?

[Rishi Sunak]

I have a lot of respect for the hon. Lady, but on this matter I believe she is wrong. She has incredible hindsight to point out now issues that neither she nor anybody else raised at the time. Quite the opposite, in fact: I was told daily in this Chamber to get money out not in weeks and months, but in hours and days. Putting longer fraud checks in place would have taken weeks, so I stand by the decision that we made.

We have put various safeguards in place. We have blocked £2 billion of bounce back loans—60,000 because of the checks at Companies House. The National Investigation Service and the National Crime Agency are in the process of successfully prosecuting dozens of people. We are striking people off from Companies House and we are investing more today in the NCA, NATIS and the British Business Bank so that they can work on the interventions that we know are doing very well. I think it is wrong for hon. Members to pretend now that they wanted to do something at the time, when they did not.

Economic Update

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right; I know that is something she is perhaps bringing up on behalf of her constituents. A price increase of this magnitude impacts almost everybody, and it is right that our response therefore helps almost everybody. That is what we are doing: ensuring that those families who are working hard on household incomes of £40,000 or so will still get £150-worth of support. Four out of every five households will benefit. We are on the side of hardworking families like those, and I make no apology for it.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

I see we now have the Klarna Chancellor—“Get it now, pay later.” There is an important issue with council tax: in areas such as mine and other parts of London, there are not many people in those bands, and certainly not in bands A to C. Who will fund the council tax rebate? Will it be fully funded by the Exchequer, and will there be a weighting of the £150 million fund to areas such as mine, where there are poor households in high-value properties?

[Rishi Sunak]

Just to confirm for the hon. Lady, it is council tax bands A to D, so it is four out of every five households across England. Obviously, that will vary by region. I can confirm that it will be fully Exchequer-funded and, on top of that, there will be a discretionary fund of around £150 million, for which the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities will decide the best allocation formula. Local authorities will be able to use that to help those low-income households that happen to live in higher council tax band properties and those people, such as students, who are exempt from paying council tax at all, but whom we would want to get that support to.

Tackling Fraud and Preventing Government Waste

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 1st February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. The Government say that they need to raise taxes to fund public services, and yet at the same time they are writing off billions of pounds-worth of taxpayers’ money. That is why I say it is an affront to taxpayers and to all those businesses who were excluded from Government support when they most needed it. They now know that criminals got their hands on the money while genuine businesses and self-employed people could not get a penny.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

Given the rate of return for every pound spent by HMRC in compliance, is my hon. Friend puzzled about why money is not being invested to get back furlough fraud?

[Rachel Reeves]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that it is good value for money to invest in HMRC to get that money back, but the truth is that it did not need to be like this in the first place. The Government could have avoided these enormous levels of waste and fraud, but they set up the covid support scheme without proper checks and balances. It is not beyond the wit of Government to direct money where it is needed without giving it to organised criminals and fraudsters. It is incredible that the Government were dishing out lump sums of £50,000 to businesses that were not even trading at the start of the pandemic. It just does not make any sense. The Treasury did not even require checks with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to see that self-certifying businesses had made a tax return as proof that they were genuine. What on earth was going on in Government? Those checks take just a matter of minutes. The result of those failures was that criminals created fake companies to receive public money and that is a disgrace.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Ellis]

I must make some progress. The measures that we implemented to minimise fraud and error were robust and comprehensive. Some £2.2 billion of what were deemed potentially fraudulent bounce back loan applications were blocked through up-front checks—£2.2 billion that the Labour party has not said anything about. Lenders were required to make and maintain appropriate anti-fraud, anti-money laundering and “know your customer” checks. Specifically, they were required to use a reputable fraud bureau to screen against potential and known fraudsters and, if an application failed the lender’s fraud checks, the lender was unable to offer a loan.

There were measures in place: those lender checks, with the duplicate loan check, incorporation date check and change in director check that were put in place in the following months, were the most impactful of all the checks implemented. The minimum standards were agreed following consultation with PwC and lenders on what would have the biggest impact on preventing fraud while still meeting the policy objective of delivering finance quickly.

It is true that PwC originally estimated the extent of fraud relating to bounce back loans at £4.9 billion, but last December it revised that figure down to £3.3 billion—so, as usual, the Labour party has its figures wrong. We will not be taking lectures from a party that, I seem to recall, left a multi-billion-pound black hole in the Defence budget the last time it was in government.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

I should just pick up on that point. As the Paymaster General knows, those figures are all still highly uncertain. Around £17 billion—another highly uncertain figure—of the £47 billion of loans may never be paid back. Some of that will be fraud and some because businesses have gone under. However, the key point is that he says checks and balances were put in place. He knows that was not the case: they were dropped for speed. We all lobbied for speed but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) said, it was the Treasury’s responsibility to ensure that the checks were in place. Why were 61% of loans by value out of the door before checks were introduced in June so that people could not apply twice? That is a simple thing, and the door was shut after the horse had bolted.

[Michael Ellis]

The hon. Lady has fairly said that she and others on the Opposition side did push for the Government to take action. They are right to accept that—and they were right to do so. This Government did take the precautions and, if we had waited any longer, businesses would have gone under. They would have gone down.

I suggest to the House that the news has been good in other ways too. In 2020, a National Audit Office report contained an estimate that as much as 60% of the sums lent might never be recovered. In fact, nearly 80% of the loans are being repaid or have already been repaid, and we are keeping up the pressure. For instance, we have given the Insolvency Service and Companies House new powers to prevent rogue company directors from escaping liability for their bounce back loans. So far, that has been used in respect of—

[Dame Meg Hillier]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker, I am reluctant to make a point of order in a debate, but it is important to reflect on what the Paymaster General has just said and he may wish to correct the impression that he gave. Those loans are 10-year loans, so it cannot be the case that 80% of them have been repaid at this point. He may want to look again at his notes and perhaps correct the impression he gave.

[Mr Speaker]

I think that is more a point of clarification than a point of order, but it is now on the record.

Coronavirus Grant Schemes: Fraud

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 18th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[John Glen]

I recognise that the gymnastics club in Kettering, along with so many other clubs of that type around the country, provides an enormously valuable point of contact for young people. I should be happy to examine my hon. Friend’s point in detail and write to him with clarification, rather than dealing with it from the Dispatch Box. The principle of giving discretion to local authorities in order to meet the needs in particular communities has guided the Government throughout this process, and we have used this grant channel a number of times for that reason, but I will look as sympathetically as I can at the question that he has raised.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister referred to default as though it were the equivalent of fraud. The Public Accounts Committee has examined in great detail the issue of fraud in this area. As I am sure he knows, there are grants and bounce back loans taken fraudulently that people will be repaying, but the criterion on which they obtained them was itself fraudulent.

The Minister seems to be accepting this level of fraud. Will he make a clear statement that fraud at all levels will be investigated? We gained the impression from HMRC and others who appeared before us as witnesses that they would take the low-hanging fruit and let a lot of fraud continue without being tracked down.

[John Glen]

I know that the hon. Lady’s Select Committee is conducting an in-depth inquiry. I believe that the second permanent secretary and others appeared before the Committee last week, and I look forward to its report.

I can absolutely clarify that we do see the distinction between a credit loss and fraud. What we are talking about here is: what are the most effective mechanisms, and over what timeframe, to get that money back? Also, we have received moneys back from, for example, the furlough scheme: moneys and grants that were made in error. So it is a complicated picture. I am certainly not suggesting from this Dispatch Box that the Government are writing anything off, or do not grasp the distinction between a credit loss and fraud. This needs to be tackled, but it needs to be tackled in a time and money-efficient way. Obviously the law of diminishing returns begins to apply after a certain point, and we will again by led by HMRC and its excellent advice as we pursue the matter.

Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 7th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right say that we need to have the right skilled workforce for our transition to net zero, and training is part of that. This year we have provided £6.4 million to help 18 training providers to train around 8,000 people, and our £2.5 billion funding for the national skills fund includes funding for employer-led boot camps. I would be very happy to meet her to discuss the part that SGS College and the Active Building Centre in her constituency could play in making sure that we have the workforce we need for the net zero transition.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

A decade ago we saw the failure of the green new deal, and only recently we have seen the complete and woeful failure of the green homes grant scheme. These were supposed to retrofit homes, create jobs and boost the economy. Will the Treasury work with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to get a grip on this, so that they invest taxpayers’ money in achieving net zero and creating jobs rather than throwing good money after bad?

[Helen Whately]

The green homes grant and its associated scheme for the Chancellor’s plan for jobs saw £1.75 billion invested in improving more than 100,000 homes. We are now bringing in a more targeted replacement, the home upgrade grant, to support low-income households, and that received £950 million at the spending review. We will continue to support low-income households to ensure that they become more energy efficient, which is good for keeping bills down and an important part of our net zero transition.

Northern Ireland Protocol: EU Negotiations

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Michael Ellis]

I shall resist the temptation to ask my hon. Friend to join the negotiating team but, as ever, he speaks powerfully for his constituency, which I think is the centre point of this country, geographically, and also a centre for the movement of goods. My hon. Friend speaks with some authority on the matter and I have noted what he said.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

This was all so predictable when, just under a year ago, we in this House voted for the agreement. Is it not the case, first, that the people of Northern Ireland want a compromise, and secondly, that in reality the Government just threw Northern Ireland under the bus when they went into negotiations in the name of Brexit?

[Michael Ellis]

Certainly not.