Employer National Insurance Contributions

Debate between Mel Stride and Jeevun Sandher

Wednesday 4th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

I think the hon. Gentleman might just be overlooking a little something called covid, which shrank the UK economy by over 10% overnight.

What this Government have done is take us right back to the 1970s when it comes to the jaw-dropping level of tax increases and spending splurges. The impact on jobs is stark, and it is clear. The OBR says there will be 50,000 fewer full-time equivalent jobs as a result of the measures in the Budget. Bloomberg says that 130,000 jobs will be destroyed. The Confederation of British Industry, in a survey of its membership, says that 50% of businesses report that they will cut employment as a consequence of the Budget, and two thirds say that they will row back on the recruitment plans that they previously had.

It is not just about the headline rate; the threshold is so pertinent and important here. It is bearing down on sectors where wages are lower, and on cohorts in the labour market who earn the least, because of the disproportionate impact of lowering the threshold. They include hospitality, leisure, retail and women. Some of the youngest people in our country will now see their jobs taken away from them as a consequence of what this Government are doing. We know that the Labour party has form when it comes to youth unemployment. Under the last Labour Government, youth unemployment increased by over 40%. Under the last Conservative Government, it reduced by over 40%.

Labour said in this fantastical document that it would keep inflation as low as possible. It said the same of mortgages, and yet what has happened? This fiscal splurge, this £70 billion each year that the Government are now going to be spending, will mean higher inflation in every single year of the forecast, compared with the forecast back in the spring. What is that doing to people’s living standards? It is destroying them, and I will come to that momentarily. Part of the inflationary pressure is the national insurance increase itself, because while we know that, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility, about 80% of it will be transferred into lower employment rates and depressed wages, about 20% of it will go into higher prices.

And what of living standards? This fantastical Lewis Carroll document said that Labour would be making everybody, not just the few, better off. However, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation—hardly a right-wing thinktank—says that by October 2029, the average family will be £770 worse off in real terms than they are today.

[Dr Jeevun Sandher (Loughborough) (Lab)]

We on this side of the House will not take lectures on living standards from the party that left us with the worst squeeze on wages since Napoleon, the highest energy prices in the G7 and the highest inflation. The Conservatives left us with the worst-insulated homes and dependent on natural gas. That is why this party will invest in insulation to make us all better off in the long run.

[Mel Stride]

I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman raises the inheritance that his party has received from the Conservatives. We had the highest rate of growth in the G7. We had brought inflation right down from 11.1% in October 2022 to 2%—bang on target—at the time of the general election. We had a near-record level of employment. We had a near-record low level of unemployment. We had real wages that had been increasing month after month for 13 or 14 months prior to the general election. That was not a bad inheritance.