Covid-19: Economic Package

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 12th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

The scheme, as it is designed, does provide income support of 80% of those wages. Indeed, where those wages are variable the scheme allows an average to be taken to benefit the employee. We have also strengthened the safety net, as I mentioned earlier. Crucially, employees who are furloughed are then able to work elsewhere as well to supplement their incomes. That flexibility is often unnoticed, but it is very helpful. I know many people are taking advantage of that to boost their incomes during this time and I think the scheme, as it is designed, provides the required support especially to those on the lowest pay.

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

The Chancellor has spoken about freelancers, who often work on short-term contracts or for personal service companies. In answer to the right hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green), he talked about optimising the existing mechanisms for those people, but will he come forward today with the suggestion that there are concrete proposals in place? These are people with clear financial records and they often have accountants, so there is a track record. Will the Chancellor support these different types of self-employed people?

[Rishi Sunak]

They are being supported. The scheme to support them goes live tomorrow, ahead of schedule. Those who are self-employed whose returns and earnings we are aware of will be contacted, and are already being contacted. They are able to apply from tomorrow and will receive cash in their accounts for a three-month grant as early as next week. The scheme is one of the most generous in the world for those who are self-employed.

Finance Bill

Meg Hillier Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Programme motion & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution
Monday 27th April 2020 Commons Chamber

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

It really is a pleasure to be back in this place today. I welcome the bold steps that have been taken by the Government since the Budget, which seems like aeons ago, and the subsequent support in the Coronavirus Act 2020 and in the Chancellor’s settlement. I particularly welcome the support for start-ups, of which my constituency has many, especially in the Shoreditch part of Hackney South and Shoreditch. They will be the engines of the future economy, so the move is very welcome. None the less, some very big issues obviously exist, so while those bold steps were necessary—I pay tribute to the Chancellor, to the TUC and to so many others who have contributed to this thinking—we do need to have some answers to some very important questions. I want to rattle through some of them before touching on a couple of other very important issues around the Budget.

Will the Minister today confirm that the coronavirus business interruption loan scheme does not require a personal guarantee by businesses? Only today, I spoke to a business in my constituency, which has been hampered in trying to get this loan because the bank has asked for a raft of personal information about the financial arrangements of every director of that company. This is a company that has praised the Government for the furloughing scheme, but that is struggling on this point. We have heard that that personal guarantee is not necessary, but really clear guidance is needed from the Government to make sure that those banks that were bailed out in 2008, as the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) highlighted, are going to support the economy now.

One of the big issues in my constituency relates to other forms of work. There are those who are self-employed, those who freelance and the many people on repeated short-term contracts who fall outside the employment support schemes. The self-employed and, in fact, most of those workers will often have an accountant or will have very clear financial records, so just as the PAYE scheme has been reverse-engineered to support furloughing, there must be a way that HMRC and the Government can work together with those people to make sure that there is a scheme in place to support them.

Many people are really scared. The emails in my inbox are not from people I normally hear from. They are from people who are about to lose their jobs. They are people who never thought that they would be in a position to have to consider claiming from the state, but they actually cannot even do that—they cannot even qualify for universal credit.

Another group caught up in this is sole directors, including those of personal service companies. I can relate an ironic example that really highlights this matter. An occupational therapist working in the national health service was told by the NHS that, for liability reasons, she had to set up personal service company. She is a frontline health worker supporting our NHS and yet does not qualify for any of the business and employment support schemes. That surely shows this up as a nonsense. The chickens are coming home to roost in this crisis: the economy has split in a different way, which means that people are working in different ways and that businesses are setting up in different ways. They are now being penalised because of a system that grew up like Topsy, with little thought for the consequences.

I want to touch on the huge demand on the hardship fund, which is the responsibility of local authorities. Those local authorities are already overspending on this. Everything that is not quite fitting has to come from the hardship fund, which is a huge problem. The overall cost to local government is enormous, with many councils now effectively bankrupt. Although the extra injection of cash the other week was welcome, it will not be enough. We may have to be very careful post-cv-19 to ensure that those very councils, which were going to be the engines driving the support that people will continue to need, are well resourced to do that.

I want to highlight an issue around housing. In 1992 and in 2008, under Governments of different political colours, money was given to housing associations to buy up unsold properties. In 1992, a housing market package was in place to buy up properties on the street, and in 2008, unsold properties from private developers were bought up. That money was there to buy those houses to create homes for homeless families. Many people in my constituency are living in severely overcrowded conditions, including a woman with a seven-year-old daughter who has had four years in a single hostel room with shared facilities, and a mother and daughter living with grand- mother—one family in one room and one in another. I have many other examples like that. Such a move would keep the housing market going and, crucially, give a fillip to the social housing market and give people a chance, in the long-term future we want to see, to support themselves.

The £1 billion announced in the Budget for cladding is about a tenth of what is needed, but will the Minister tell me when we will get the detail on how that £1 billion will be bid for? If not, perhaps the Treasury will write to me. It was supposed to come in June, but with coronavirus it is likely to be delayed. When we reach the day of reckoning on the pounds that we are spending now that will have to be paid back, that is just one of many issues that will need to be sorted. Many of my constituents are paying over the odds to support things such as waking watch while they wait for that money to come and, because of coronavirus, those who were already hit hard are being hit harder still.

Coronavirus: Employment Support

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Thursday 19th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[John Glen]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point about the resilience required in banks at this difficult time. I discussed that with the heads of the banks last night and over the previous two days. We need to ensure that the terms of these loans are effective in allowing people to access them swiftly and we need to ensure that the banks can ramp up the accessibility of their specialist advisers. I have been given assurances that that will be in place.

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

So many of my constituents are caught up in this, like those of other hon. Members, and I have constituents who have no recourse to public funds, so when they are unable to work they cannot claim benefits. Many are freelancers and people who are self-employed and running small businesses. None of the packages the Government have announced help them so far. The Minister has had to be dragged here to answer an urgent question and has nothing he can say that will comfort our constituents. I think we all recognise that it is difficult, but could he not even give us a clue about the general direction of thinking from the Government? Will he raise the local housing allowance? Will the Government ensure that those with no recourse to public funds get funded? Will they stop this ridiculous loan system, which will never get paid back? Businesses will go bankrupt before they can pay it, and they are laying off staff now.

[John Glen]

The hon. Lady raises a number of sensible points. We are looking at many of them. I reassure her that we will make further announcements very soon. Yes, we are looking at the ideas raised. We are looking at other jurisdictions. But in some cases we have a very different set of processes and IT systems behind some of these Government Department distribution mechanisms. I know that that is very technical, but the bottom line is that we need to ensure that when we introduce something, it delivers.

Economic Update

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 17th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments and am happy to look at what he is saying.

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

Many of my constituents are freelancers. One wrote to me unable to pay his rent or bills in the next couple of weeks. That is how urgent the situation is. Can the Chancellor give any comfort tonight for people who are very worried? They have been laid off today, have no ability to pay the bills and their freelance work has dried up. We are told that we have to wait for an answer from the Housing, Communities and Local Government Secretary. The Government have known that this was coming. Where is the planning? What answer does the Chancellor have now?

[Rishi Sunak]

For those people, the measures that we took last week will already start to help from day one. The Work and Pensions Secretary has already put in place support to make sure that access to the security that they need is both faster and more generous than it was.

Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 11th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

The local government pension scheme is fully funded, which means that all local authorities contribute on an annual basis. It is right that that is taken into account when setting annual budgets. I am pleased that the Government have outlined a three-year school settlement, which will take school funding up by £4 billion in real terms over the forthcoming spending period. Those extra resources will allow schools to deal with the pension pressure and invest in our classrooms, which is where the money needs to go.

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

It was extraordinary to hear the Treasury Minister talk about the biggest year-on-year increase in funding after a decade of major cuts. He knows, because he can do the maths, that that is nowhere near making any recompense. The Public Accounts Committee looked in detail at local government spending and we concluded that in simple terms, it was being squeezed massively, particularly for children’s and adult’s social services. When will he acknowledge that for many things that his Government purport to want to deliver, local government is key and that it needs sustainable and increased funding to make up for the cuts of the previous decade?

[Rishi Sunak]

Local government deserves enormous praise for the hard work that it did in helping to restore this country’s public finances to a sustainable state. We all know why we were in that situation a decade ago, but we can now look forward with confidence. Local government is benefiting from a very significant increase in spending power this year. The hon. Lady is right to highlight the pressure on social care, which is one of the largest areas of spend, which is why the Government have just committed an extra £1 billion in social care grant to help local authorities to alleviate that pressure this year and into the future.

Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

My hon. Friend will know that the NHS is this Government’s No. 1 spending priority. I just wish that it was the same for the Labour Government in Wales, who have let down Welsh people time and again, especially when it comes to healthcare. In the recent spending round in September, the Welsh Government received an additional £600 million, much of which can be put to good use in the NHS system in Wales. I hope that they are wise enough to help the Welsh people and, in particular, to look again at resurrecting Flint Community Hospital.

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

One of the major crises is the recruitment of GPs, so it is not just money that needs to be thrown at the issues. What steps is the Treasury taking to ensure that when money is provided, it is spent well and, crucially, that it is not stop-start funding, so that the NHS can properly plan for the long term, particularly in the recruitment of frontline staff?

[Sajid Javid]

It is worth reminding Members that one of the reasons the NHS has so many problems, including with the recruitment of GPs and in hospitals, is the PFI policies of the previous Labour Government, which have cash starved many NHS trusts for far too long. We are now putting that right with our historic settlement. The hon. Member is quite right about the importance of recruiting more GPs to have more appointments, and that is why we set out in our manifesto exactly how we are going to do that.

Spending Round 2019

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Wednesday 4th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I want to take this opportunity to thank my hon. Friend for his campaigning and for the way in which he has worked with the Treasury and the Department for Education on this. I think he is referring to the f40 campaign, with which I am very familiar as a constituency MP. I am pleased that we have been able to make this huge step change in school funding, which I know has been welcomed across the country.

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

After all the announcements over the summer, I had hoped for more detail today. The Chancellor and his Department might have a laser-like focus, but he can rest assured that the Public Accounts Committee will be delving through these figures and holding him to account.

As others have said, the Chancellor has indicated that he is going to change the fiscal rules. We already have an 85% ratio of debt to GDP. Can he advise us of the tolerance level that he would go up to in that debt level, and is he considering increases in taxation?

Leaving the EU: Economic Impact of Proposed Deal

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Wednesday 20th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

My advice, although I doubt very much that the Scottish National party will take much advice from me, is, first, get behind the deal and let us get certainty and increase investment; and secondly, accept the result of the 2014 referendum, stay with the United Kingdom and do not end up in a situation that creates a border between the country of Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom.

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

In response to the Chair of the Exiting the European Union Committee, the Minister said that it would be reckless of the Government not to plan for no deal. However, the detailed work of the Public Accounts Committee has clearly shown that the Government are not prepared for no deal and are woefully prepared for a deal. Would not the responsible thing be to delay any exit or extend the transition period and take stock, and make sure that the D-minus-37 uncertainty that is hanging over our country is resolved? It is too late just to pass the deal—uncertainty is now built in.

[Mel Stride]

I do not accept that we are not adequately prepared or are not deeply preparing for the possibility of no deal. This work has been going on for many months, and in far greater depth than many people appreciate. In my area of ministerial responsibility, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and borders, we have staffed up, and we have 4,500 more personnel ready for this work. There will be over 5,000 in place by 29 March. We have engaged with stakeholders across the piece by making sure that we have the most facilitated possible customs arrangements in place, particularly in respect of the short straits crossing—Dover and Calais—and so on. An immense amount of work has been carried out.

HMRC Estate Transformation

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

As a former tax inspector, my hon. Friend is probably about as popular as I am as a tax Minister, which is never the most popular job in the world. The answer to his question—in a short and pithy response, Mr Speaker—is that we have to move to the more digital-based, data-based and inspection-based system that is facilitated by the very hubs I have been describing.

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

This has already cost more; the projected savings have gone down; there are no break clauses in most of the 20 to 25-year leases; and there is little buy-in from other Departments. The Minister has said that the DWP and NHS Digital—interestingly, he picked only two small examples—are buying into a couple of the hubs. Will he list the other Departments that are buying in by locating in these regional hubs?

[Mel Stride]

There has been a series of discussions right across Whitehall, led by the Cabinet Office, in the area in which the hon. Lady has framed her question. The hon. Lady levelled the charge of cost, but she then very quickly went on to talk about savings, and there will of course be net savings from this approach of some £300 million by 2025.

Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 11th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I reject the hon. Gentleman’s accusation. The methodologies we use are designed to be fair and equitable in the distribution of infrastructure funding, but if he would like to meet me and my hon. Friend the Exchequer Secretary, I am happy to go through the whole issue. We are as concerned as he is to make sure that infrastructure investment decisions are made on a transparent and equitable basis.

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

6. What assessment his Department has made of whether value for money has been achieved by the sale of public assets.

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

It is Government policy to explore options for the sale of corporate and financial assets where there is no longer a policy reason to retain them and value for money can be secured for taxpayers. All asset sales are subject to a rigorous value-for-money assessment before they can go ahead.

[Meg Hillier]

In the Government’s pursuit of paying down the debt, they are at risk of selling off assets that could be of benefit to the public in the long term. Although the Economic Secretary talks about the modelling, we know from our work on the Public Accounts Committee that the model is very debatable in exactly what the benefit and disbenefit will be to the public in the long term. Will he commit to assessing every upcoming sale rigorously and making sure that the Treasury is learning, so that it is not selling off the family silver and taking things away from the British public that belong to them?

[John Glen]

I read the report published by the hon. Lady’s Committee, and I recognise the need for a rigorous value-for-money assessment of every sale. That is why, with respect to student loans, which was the subject of the Committee’s last report, I was pleased that the NAO said that

“the sale achieved prices at the upper end of these estimates”

and that

“the transaction…achieved value for money.”

The Government will continue to be guided by that in every transaction they undertake.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hammond]

The Treasury will look closely at that.

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

T9. At our border, we need to ensure that we have security while securing freedom of movement of goods and people as well as gaining revenue. The head of HMRC has said that it will be almost impossible to do all those things if we crash out without a deal. The Chancellor keeps talking about a deal, but we are just over 100 days away from potentially crashing out, so what conversations is he having to ensure that we are not hit in the pocket as a result of a lack of revenue?

[Mr Hammond]

We have made it clear that we will first prioritise the security of the UK, and that we will then prioritise the flow of trade. We will not prioritise the collection of customs tariffs. The hon. Lady will be aware that these are tariffs that we are not currently collecting; they would be additional revenues. We will treat that as something that we can do in slower time, if the situation arises.