Income Tax (Charge)

Debate between Mel Stride and Gareth Snell

Monday 4th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

My right hon. Friend is right that this is another broken promise. At the general election, the now Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs gave an unequivocal guarantee to farmers across the country that there was no question of farms being brought into inheritance tax. There is a good reason for the exemptions and relief, because if inheritance tax is levied on family farms that are passed down to another generation, those farms will have to be broken up, with parts sold off to pay the tax.

I am glad that my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) mentioned this, because the OBR has said that, by 2030, this measure will raise the princely sum of £520 million, which is enough to run the national health service for just one day. Has a more modest sum ever raised so much misery? I think not.

The Chancellor assured us that she will not fiddle the figures by changing the fiscal targets, yet we have seen the fiscal targets changed to allow this Government to borrow an additional £140 billion.

This is not a good time for the Secretary of State to talk about pensioners, but she mentioned them at the end of her speech. They were so badly let down by the means-testing of the winter fuel payment, and they were not told in advance to expect anything like it. Ten million pensioners across the country will lose up to £300 as a consequence of this measure. The Government claim that only the wealthiest, only the millionaires, will be affected, but two thirds of pensioners below the poverty line will have this benefit removed.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful to the new shadow Chancellor for giving way. I could be wrong, but was he not the Secretary of State who took through the legislation to suspend the triple lock—the one and only time it has been suspended—which has since cost pensioners £500 a year every year?

[Mel Stride]

We fought for the “triple lock plus” in our manifesto, which would have spared millions of pensioners from being dragged into income tax, many for the first time, under this Government’s arrangements. There were, as the hon. Gentleman knows, particular circumstances in October 2022, including inflation surging above 11%.

What are the broad effects of this Budget? The tax burden will rise to the highest level in the history of our country—higher than in 1948, when we first started to collect the data. We will be borrowing a staggering £140 billion over the next five years. What are the consequences of that, apart from passing on debt to future generations, who will have to pay it by way of higher taxation in the future? It is the crowding-out of private business investment, which this Government say they are eager to drive up.

If we look at OBR’s forecast from the spring Budget last year and for inflation in every year under this Budget, it is higher in every single year. Why? Because there has been a huge fiscal splurge, particularly in the first two years of the forecast, that will require a monetary response, so interest rates will stay higher for longer. That will mean, the OBR estimates, an extra 0.25% on mortgages—or over £400 extra for the average family, up and down the country. According to the OBR’s forecast, wages will stagnate across the period, with lower real household disposable income than under the spring forecast, when the Conservative party was in government.

I am surprised that the Secretary of State raised the subject of living standards. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimates:

“The average family will be £770 worse off in real terms by October 2029 compared with today.”

I am also surprised that she raised the issue of poverty. When we were in government, we faced so many lectures from Labour Members, while we were bringing poverty down—the number of pensioners in absolute poverty fell by 200,000.

Social Security

Debate between Mel Stride and Gareth Snell

Tuesday 10th September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. That slightly lengthy question might be better addressed by way of a rather lengthy letter to the leaders of Birmingham city council.

Of course, all politics is about choices, and what this Government have done is cave in to their trade union paymasters. They have settled way above inflation. Junior doctors—22%. Train drivers—14%. They have stood up for their trade union paymasters on the backs of vulnerable pensioners, and that is not right. If it is not the case that the trade unions are running the Labour party, hands up everybody on the Government Benches who has not received money from the trade unions for their campaigning or their private office. [Hon. Members: “One!”] One person. Therein lies the truth about who is running the Labour party.

Of course, we have seen all of this before. Under the last Labour Government, we had the 75p pension increase, we had Gordon Brown’s stealth tax on private pensions—£118 billion in total—and was it any surprise that we ended up with the fourth highest level of pensioner poverty across the whole of Europe?

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

The right hon. Gentleman talks about choices and pensioners. When his party chose to suspend the triple lock in 2021 and give a below-inflation increase to pensioners, costing them £500, what was his concern then? Why did he say nothing?

[Mel Stride]

The hon. Gentleman is entirely wrong. We went into the election promising the triple lock plus. Unlike his party, under which millions of pensioners are going to be dragged into income tax spend, many of them for the first time, we were prepared to stand up and say that we would not do that.

Business of the House

Debate between Mel Stride and Gareth Snell

Thursday 27th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

The hon. Lady has put an enormous amount of work into the whole issue of infected blood and highlighting how important it is, and she should be congratulated on that. On compensation, the best way to take that forward would be a meeting with a Minister, and I would be very happy to facilitate a meeting with the appropriate Minister so that she can discuss those issues.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

The blistering incompetence of the independent members of Stoke-on-Trent City Council is becoming legendary across Staffordshire. Their most recent wheeze is to instruct a secondary school in my constituency, Birches Head high school, to increase the number of children that it takes but not to provide a single penny of capital funding to build the classrooms for the children to work in, forcing the school to cancel its in-house bus transportation scheme for the rest of the school to make budgets work. Can we have a statement at some point, perhaps from the Department for Education, on the sustainability of capital investment in school buildings, and perhaps a debate on a fit-and-proper-person test for cabinet members such as Ann James and Janine Bridges and whether they are fit to run cabinet, executive-level positions in any authority?

[Mel Stride]

I do not think I will get too drawn into the—how shall I put it?—cross-fire of the issues that the hon. Gentleman raised in respect of Stoke-on-Trent City Council, other than to say that if the hon. Gentleman writes to me about the general matter of capital investment in schools, I will be very happy to have a close look at whether a debate might be appropriate or whether I might suggest facilitating a meeting with an appropriate Minister.

Finance (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Mel Stride and Gareth Snell

Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Monday 18th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. The point about up-front costs—alongside the costs of conveyancing, surveyors and so on—is a critical one, particularly for young people getting on to the housing ladder.

[Gareth Snell]

Average wages in Stoke-on-Trent are £100 a week lower than the national average, and the average house price is only £123,282, so will the Minister tell me the tangible benefits of lifting the stamp duty threshold to £300,000 for my constituents in Stoke-on-Trent?

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison McGovern]

Will the Minister give way?

[Gareth Snell]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mel Stride]

I will make a little progress, if I may.

The Budget announced an ambitious package of new policies to tackle the housing challenge, including planning reform; spending; and a new agency, Homes England, to intervene more actively in the land market. Together with the reforms in the housing White Paper, the housing package announced in the Budget means that we are on track to raise annual housing supply by the end of this Parliament to its highest level since 1970 and to 300,000 a year on average by the mid-2020s. That means that housing supply is on track to be higher over the 2020s than in any previous decade. However, it will take time to build these new homes, and the Government want to act now to help those young people who are aspiring to take their first step on to the housing ladder. That is why the Bill permanently abolishes stamp duty for first-time buyers purchasing a property for £300,000 or less. First-time buyers purchasing a house that is between £300,000 and £500,000 will save £5,000. To ensure that this relief is targeted at those who need it most, purchases above £500,000 will not benefit from the relief.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gareth Snell]

I thank the Minister for taking a second intervention from me. To my earlier point, though, there are fewer than 15 properties currently on the market in Stoke-on-Trent between the value of £250,000 and £300,000. I say again: the average wage in Stoke-on-Trent is £100 a week less than the national average. How will young people in Stoke-on-Trent benefit, when the housing supply does not exist and the wage level will simply not allow them to purchase a property of that value?

[Mel Stride]

The figures the hon. Gentleman chose to use were, I think, a range between £250,000 and £300,000, and he says there are 15 properties in that category. Of course, stamp duty kicks in at £125,000, so it is the range from £125,000 to £300,000 that we would actually be considering in that example.

First-time buyers are typically more cash-constrained than other buyers, and stamp duty requires cash up front, on top of a deposit and conveyancing fees, for purchases over £125,000. The Government think it is right to reduce the up-front costs that first-time buyers need to pay, giving them an advantage over the rest of the market.

Duties of Customs

Debate between Mel Stride and Gareth Snell

Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 20th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister will be aware that there were many responses by manufacturing organisations to the White Paper on the Trade Bill. The British Ceramic Confederation, which is based in my constituency, is genuinely concerned about the market and trade remedies that will exist post-exit, particularly for dumped goods such as tiles and tableware, which could undermine the indigenous manufacturing base. Will he clarify what those remedies might look like once we leave the EU? The time between the closure of the consultation on the White Paper and the publication of the Trade Bill was very short, so we cannot really be sure whether those representations were considered.

[Mel Stride]

The bulk of the measures to which the hon. Gentleman refers will be in the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Bill, including trade remedy measures on dumping, excessive subsidy and safeguarding. He will know that we take those issues extremely seriously. In the event that there is evidence of dumping or the other things to which I have referred, there will be a trade remedies authority, the details of which have already been disclosed to the House in the Trade Bill. That body and the Secretary of State for International Trade will be able to work together to ensure that, when there are problems due to activities such as dumping, we will be able to take appropriate action in the normal manner.