Finance (No. 2) Bill

Mick Whitley Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 29th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

I rise to speak in support of the reasoned amendment tabled in the name of the Leader of the Opposition, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), and the shadow First Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner).

The amendment rightly raises the question of priorities. When the Prime Minister outlined his so-called five missions to the country early in the new year, he promised the British people that

“your priorities are our priorities”.

But the Bill put to the House today, just like the Budget from which it derives, is the work of a Government who seem to be fundamentally adrift from the needs and priorities of the British people.

Indeed, looking at the measures that have been outlined today, people could be forgiven for thinking that this country was not in the midst of the worst cost of living crisis in a lifetime, that the price of basic foodstuffs was not rising at the highest rate since the late 1970s, and that the dilemma of whether to heat a home or eat was still the preserve of a few households in crisis, not a choice that is now depressingly familiar to hundreds of thousands of families across the country.

My constituents desperately needed the Chancellor to step up with a plan for progressive tax reform that would boost their disposable incomes, secure their standards of living and guarantee additional investment in our ailing public services, by asking the wealthiest few to pay their fair share. They needed action to tackle the soaring costs of food and rent, including price controls if necessary, and to close at long last the glaring loopholes in the Government’s oil and gas windfall tax scheme, so that we can begin to move towards creating an energy system that serves the public need, not the greed of private shareholders.

They wanted Ministers to take inspiration from President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, to recognise the importance of public finance policy in acting as a catalyst for green growth, and to begin to make up for what the Climate Change Committee has described as a “lost decade” on climate action, presided over by successive Conservative Governments. But from what we have seen today, it is clear that the Chancellor is not listening.

On the most recent reforms to the tax regime for businesses, Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies has rightly said:

“There’s no stability, no certainty, and no sense of a wider plan.”

He could well have been speaking for this Government as a whole. This is a Government who do not have a plan, a vision for the future of our country or the appetite to make the meaningful changes that the British people want to see. After 13 long years in power, it is time they stepped aside for a party that does.

Autumn Statement

Mick Whitley Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Hunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for his advocacy for Aylesbury. My basic view is that we should give as much flexibility as we can to local authorities to deliver local infrastructure projects, and significantly more than they currently have. I hope to come forward in the months ahead with ways to progress that. I will write to him on the specific issue of a link road.

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

Local authorities all over the country are at breaking point, with Conservative- run Kent and Hampshire County Councils warning this week that they face the very real prospect of bankruptcy. The challenge is especially acute at Wirral Council, which is grappling with a shortfall of nearly £50 million next year, driven in no small part by a drastic cut in central Government grant funding since 2010. Does the Chancellor accept that his proposals to allow local authorities to hike council tax risks forcing people in the most deprived communities, such as Birkenhead, to pay even more in return for ever-diminishing services? Will he commit to providing more direct financial assistance to local authorities so that they can continue to provide those services, which will be so essential in helping local towns such as Birkenhead?

[Jeremy Hunt]

Local authorities have requested this package, particularly the two-year delay in the Dilnot reforms. Although those reforms are very important, we will not implement them, but we will leave the funding that was set aside for them with local authorities. That will help his council and many other councils.

Tackling Short-term and Long-term Cost of Living Increases

Mick Whitley Excerpts

Tuesday 17th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

In my constituency and in similarly deprived areas around the country, the Government have been remarkably silent about what they intend to do about the cost of living crisis in their legislative programme for the coming year. While some on the Conservative Benches have advised the poorest in our country to take up cookery lessons or scour the shops for the cheapest brands, the Government have offered little more than scraps from their table. A £200 loan here and a £150 rebate there—such measures give little comfort to people whose housing benefit has been frozen since 2020 while rents have skyrocketed. They offer no long-term solution to those whose benefits and pensions have been cut and pegged back, nor do they help those in work who face soaring prices and falling wages.

Family budgets are at breaking point, and two in five people are now buying less food because of the cost of living crisis. In April, 2 million adults skipped a day’s eating to try to save money. The Resolution Foundation predicts that almost 1.5 million people, including half a million children, will fall into absolute poverty next year. This is what food inflation of 9% and rising means for millions, and it is what energy costs heading for a 54% increase are inflicting on the poorest and most vulnerable people in this country. It is a Sophie’s choice of heat or eat.

The cost of living crisis is a war on the poor, and it is the scourge of countless working families. It is scandalous that the chief executive officer of Tesco has just pocketed a pay packet of almost £5 million for one year’s work. A customer assistant at Tesco would have to work for 267 years to earn the same as the CEO got for 12 months’ work. That should be a badge of shame.

A Government who care about their people should be working towards both short-term and long-term solutions in their plans for the year ahead. Sadly, this Government plan for very little beyond their own self-preservation. In the short term, we can help people by introducing a windfall tax on the profits of the fuel giants. Two big oil companies coined in more than £12 billion in the first three months of this year. Let us tax them to help those who cannot afford to heat their home. Even top directors such as the CEO of Asda are calling for it now. Let us restore the £20 universal credit uplift to prevent the poorest from sliding into irreversible food and fuel poverty, let us immediately provide extra funds to hard-hit pensioners through extra warm home and winter fuel payments, and let us set a real living wage at a level on which people can really live.

In the long term, we need to address the economic problems at the heart of our economy that are the legacy of industrial vandalism by the Conservative party over many years. We need to stimulate inward investment by recasting our economy through a green industrial revolution that can provide hundreds of thousands of well-paid jobs and can create industries, including vibrant, publicly owned ones, that meet our energy needs on a clean and green basis, helping to save our planet while overcoming the chronic failings of the current supply chain. We need a progressive wealth tax, and we need to close the loopholes that enable the rich and the corporations to evade the taxes they rightfully owe. Fair taxation can pay for the uplift and reform of the benefits system, which currently punishes the poor. Benefits and pensions must be substantially increased and inflation-proofed.

Finally, where the Government control wages, they must scrap the miserly below-inflation pay limits that are really pay cuts. These cuts took, on average, £845 away from NHS workers last year. We clapped their efforts during lockdown, and then the Government slashed their wages during crackdown.

These are the answers to the cost of living crisis, and they should be in the legislative programme for this year.

National Insurance Contributions Increase

Mick Whitley Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

I thank the Leader of the Opposition, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), and the shadow Chancellor, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), for selecting this extraordinarily important debate. A long and bitter winter is at last coming to an end, but while my constituents look to Westminster for a helping hand to see them through the enormously difficult months ahead, this Government are instead planning to deal millions of hard-working people and small businesses a cataclysmic tax hike at the very worst time. Even before Putin commenced his barbaric onslaught on the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine and sent shockwaves across the global economy, thousands of my constituents were grappling with spiralling inflation, rising food costs and soaring energy prices.

Time and time again, I have warned this House about the devastation being inflicted upon constituencies like mine in Birkenhead, with parents going hungry so that their children can eat, old-age pensioners who have worked all their lives freezing in their homes because they cannot afford to put the meter on, and kids without even a mattress to sleep on. That is the grim reality confronting our country today. Now, Britain’s billionaire Chancellor is threatening to shove millions of hard-working families off the precipice and into the deepest depths of destitution with this senseless hike in national insurance contributions.

While Ministers are asking my constituents, some of the poorest in the country, to dig deep to pay for the mess that the Conservatives have made in health and social care, the Chancellor and Prime Minister have been quick to assure their friends in the City—those with the broadest shoulders of all—that they will not be called upon to play their part. There should be absolutely no doubt about whose side this Government are on. Let us be clear about exactly what this tax hike will mean for the people I represent. A single-parent family earning minimum wage in my constituency will be forced to hand hundreds of pounds more over to the taxman each year, while the landlord who charges them extortionate rents for damp and draughty houses will pay exactly zero pence more.

For 12 long years, Government Members have turned their eyes away from the immense human suffering that austerity has inflicted upon my constituents in Birkenhead and on communities across the UK, but they can plead ignorance no longer. This historic cost of living crisis will spare no corner of our country, and however they vote later today, they will do so in the full knowledge of what this catastrophic tax hike will mean for the people who elected them to this place. The country will not soon forget the fact that when they were given the opportunity to stand up for working people in the midst of the worst cost of living crisis in recent memory, Tory MPs shrugged their shoulders and slinked away.

Downing Street Parties: Police Investigation

Mick Whitley Excerpts

Tuesday 25th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Ellis]

My hon. Friend is quite right to focus on what matters around the world and to the Prime Minister of this country.

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

Every day, in my constituency of Birkenhead, parents are going hungry so that their children can eat, while elderly people are living in freezing homes because they simply cannot afford to put their heating on. Will the Minister concede that the Government are more interested in their own internal turmoil than in helping those most in need? Will he now join the calls for the Prime Minister to step aside so that we can finally begin to get grips with this Tory cost of living crisis?

[Michael Ellis]

As I said in this House last time, the Prime Minister is going nowhere.

Coronavirus Grant Schemes: Fraud

Mick Whitley Excerpts

Tuesday 18th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[John Glen]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his question. He helpfully highlights that many of these grants and schemes were very effective in getting money to the right people in a timely way. I spoke earlier to an official from HMRC, who said, “We managed to get some of the money out in six days. If we had spent more time designing in more verification, we could have made it watertight. That would have taken several months and many businesses would have gone to the wall.” That was the dilemma we faced. I am not saying we got everything right, but it was certainly done in all good conscience to try to get the balance right.

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

The announcement that no action will be taken to recover the nearly £4 billion fraudulently claimed from the covid support schemes stands in stark contrast to the Government’s treatment of some of the poorest people in my constituency who had their benefits cut off, and who were even chased through the courts, for making the simplest of mistakes when claiming benefits.

Will the Minister concede there is a double standard when it comes to holding the rich and powerful to account, whether for breaching lockdown restrictions or even for downright fraud? Will he also commit to providing redress to my constituents who have suffered so enormously as a result of this Government’s heavy-handed approach to accidentally misclaimed benefits?

[John Glen]

I do not accept the premise of the hon. Gentleman’s question. The estimate of the amount of fraud is broadly in line with what we see in other Departments, including the Department for Work and Pensions. There is no complacency here. There is a desire to iterate our response by using insights into behaviour to examine all avenues to reclaim this fraud, and we will continue to take that approach fairly across all the schemes.

Household Energy Bills: VAT

Mick Whitley Excerpts

Tuesday 11th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

Our country faces the worst cost-of-living crisis in recent memory as families grapple with rising inflation, soaring food costs and an energy crisis that has rapidly got out of control. This Government’s decade-long failure to reduce the country’s foreign energy dependence has left us especially exposed to the devastating impact of wholesale gas prices. In the space of just a few short months, no fewer than 27 energy providers have collapsed, and ordinary people are being forced to reckon with the real possibility that their gas and electricity bills could rise by as much as 45% to 50% by spring 2022, according to the trade association Energy UK. No one has been spared the fallout from this spiralling crisis, but it is the poorest communities, such as those in my constituency of Birkenhead, that are being hit hardest of all.

Last autumn, I warned the House that thousands more people across Wirral risked being pushed into poverty as a result of changes to the energy price cap and the cut to universal credit. At that time, those concerns were dismissed out of hand by complacent Ministers, but now National Energy Action is warning that 2 million more people could be plunged into fuel poverty as a result of rising costs, bringing the overall total to the highest level since records began.

At this challenging time, the country has the great misfortune to be governed by a party more interested in its own internal power struggles and the increasingly untenable position of the Prime Minister than in giving British households the support they so desperately need. Ministers rushed to take to the airwaves this weekend to condemn Labour’s plans to bring energy bills down, but it is clear for all to see that they have no realistic plan of their own. Some Conservative Members have seen this crisis as an opportunity to take aim at the net zero agenda, calling for the environmental levy on energy bills to be scrapped and for the resumption of fracking and the expansion of drilling in the North sea. That is not prompted by the slightest concern for people struggling to get by. Instead, those Members are motivated by a deep-seated and ideological objection to climate statute.

Let me be clear: we cannot solve the problems of today by trading away our grandchildren’s future. Hard-won progress on the climate must not be sacrificed to make up for the Government’s monumental failings. In truth, only my party has put forward credible proposals to meet the immediate needs of British households and industry. I commend my hon. Friends on the Front Bench for the proposal that they have brought before the House today, including the removal of VAT on domestic energy bills, a windfall tax on North sea gas and oil, and a £600 contingency fund to support energy-intensive industries such as British Steel.

The Minister must put partisanship to one side and engage constructively with those proposals in the national interest. But I believe that he must go further, too. The current crisis has exposed enormous vulnerabilities inherent in our fragmented and privatised energy system. Wholesale reform of the sector is badly needed. By bringing energy into public hands, we can—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. Sorry. Claudia Webbe.

Working People’s Finances: Government Policy

Mick Whitley Excerpts

Tuesday 21st September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

I welcome the opportunity to say clearly to the Government that their current pursuit of benefit cuts and tax hikes, their economic mismanagement of the energy sector and the housing market—to name but two—and their casual indifference to the spectre of soaring inflation in the price of basic goods and food are combining to inflict poverty, hardship and misery on working people. The other week, the Prime Minister responded to my question on the negative impact of the £20 a week universal credit cut by saying that his Government have always been ready to put an arm around the people of this country. I would contend that the Government’s policies will more likely lead to a hand being clasped around the throats of working people, the unemployed, the disabled and—tragically—their children. This is not levelling up; it is grinding down. This is not building back better; it is a new round of austerity designed yet again to make the poor pay for another fine mess of the Government’s own creation. People’s standard of living is not, as the Government claim, rising inexorably because of recent wage increases. Overall, it is declining because of the toxic cocktail of measures administered by the Government, which they pretend are medicine to make us better.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has found that more than 12,500 working-age families in my Birkenhead constituency will be hit by the cut to universal credit, including more than 6,000 working-age families with children. That is almost one third of such families in Birkenhead, and they are set to lose just over £1,000 a year. How can that be fair? In the run-up to the day of shame on 6 October when the axe is scheduled to fall, more people have written to me asking me to oppose the cut than on any other single issue. My mailbag on the cut far outstrips the previous record holder: Dominic Cummings’ emergency eye test at Barnard Castle.

One letter stands out. It is from the seven-year-old son of a constituent who told me how worried he is that this family will not be able to afford to feed to him because he heard that they were about to lose £20. This is a particular concern for children because, as of 2020, 33% of children in Birkenhead—more than 6,000—were officially classed as living in poverty.

This vindictive cut would be bad enough any day of the week, but look at its timing—it is like something straight out of “Hammer House of Horror”. The cut coincides with the increase in national insurance, the surging cost of gas, the prospect of transport costs going through the roof, rents being driven up by the housing crisis and basic foodstuffs costing ever more as the supply chain becomes more and more disrupted.

Let me tell the House what that means to ordinary people. One of my constituents—I will call him Gary—lost his job due to contracting covid-19. He was not furloughed and he rents from a private landlord. He is on universal credit and, with the £20 uplift, after rent he had £46 a week to meet all his expenses. When the cut comes in, he will be left with £26 to meet those same expenses, each of which is going up. Gary, like so many others, faces ruin. I know full well that the Government will respond with their usual refrain that universal credit will help Gary to get a job, but they conveniently forget that their measure, which will put an estimated 800,000 into poverty—including 300.000 children—will have an impact on the about 40% of universal credit claimants who are already in work.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

I intervene to make the point that my hon. Friend has made that there are many working families—those in work—who are on universal credit, which the Prime Minister does not seem to understand.

[Mick Whitley]

My right hon. Friend makes a good point. I made that point to the Prime Minister, who just did not give me an answer.

Those working people will be hit by both the cut and the increase in national insurance. They will number thousands of working hairdressers, shop assistants, street cleaners, hospital porters, farm workers and countless others who are paid peanuts and have no choice but to claim in-work benefits. I genuinely hope that Conservative Members will not cry TINA—there is no alternative—as a previous Government of their persuasion did. Rather I hope that they will withdraw their package of measures that will slash the standard of living for the majority, and adopt the progressive tax policies that my party stands for and that can ensure that those with the broadest shoulders and the most bloated bank accounts pay their fair share, so that my constituents are not forced into a life of poverty.

Health and Social Care Levy Bill

Mick Whitley Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 14th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

I draw the attention of the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

More than two years ago, the Prime Minister promised that he had a plan to fix our country’s broken social care system. It was something that my constituents in Birkenhead so desperately needed—from the elderly people denied the most basic right of dignity in old age, to the dedicated but overworked carers earning less than the minimum wage and forced to turn to universal credit just to get by.

After a decade of brutal austerity measures and chronic Tory mismanagement, there is absolutely no doubt that we need a funding settlement for social care, but the Prime Minister’s announcement last week will have provided no relief to the people I have the privilege of representing. Instead of asking those with the broadest shoulders to contribute just a little bit more, the Government are intent on pursuing an utterly regressive tax on hard-working families and British businesses. Charities working on the ground in my constituency predict that the impending cut to universal credit, coupled with soaring energy bills, will force another 6,500 people living in the Wirral into poverty. Now, many of those families will be bracing themselves to lose even more in increased national insurance contributions, while the very wealthiest in our society are left untouched.

Not only will this tax bombshell make it even harder for thousands of my constituents to make ends meet; it will also deal a devastating hammer blow to many of the small and independent businesses that play such a precious role in the life of our town. It will cost jobs and dangerously undermine a very fragile economy. Let us be clear: this tax hike makes a mockery of the Government’s promises to level up and build back better.

We do need solutions to the crisis in social care, but these proposals just are not fair or credible.

Better Jobs and a Fair Deal at Work

Mick Whitley Excerpts

Wednesday 12th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab) [V]]

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Yesterday, the Government had an opportunity to show people living in left-behind communities, such as my Birkenhead constituency, that they are serious about building a fairer and more prosperous economy in the wake of this terrible pandemic. My constituents desperately needed decisive action to create jobs, rebuild our local economy and high street, and support our struggling public services. Instead, they got the shortest Queen’s Speech in five years and one that says nothing about the most important issues of our time, from protecting workers’ rights in the workplace to fixing our crumbling social care system and creating the green jobs of the future.

Not for the first time, the Government’s promises to build back better have been exposed as nothing more than empty rhetoric. We cannot hope to build back better while millions of people remain trapped in precarious work and so vulnerable to exploitation in the workplace. The foundation of an economic recovery has to be secure, well-paid employment, which today is all too scarce in the communities that I have the privilege of representing, but yesterday’s speech made no mention of the employment Bill that British workers were promised two long years ago, nor did it contain any measures aimed at stamping out despicable fire and rehire tactics, despite these measures being routinely condemned by senior Cabinet members from the Dispatch Box.

The promises to level up the country are utterly meaningless without immediate support for the 600,000 young people who have felt the fall-out of the pandemic most of all, yet the Queen’s Speech did absolutely nothing for the more than 50% of young people living in my constituency who are out of work. A year into the pandemic, it is clear that the job schemes introduced by the Government last year are just not working. The kickstart scheme has created jobs for a measly 3% of young jobseekers and, too often, these positions come without the quality training that is so essential to prosper in a fast-changing job market. That is why I urge the Minister today to adopt Labour’s pledge of a jobs promise, which would guarantee young people the right to training, education and employment opportunities after six months of unemployment.

As we build back better, we must build back greener, too. A green industrial revolution has the potential to breathe new life into towns such as Birkenhead. In my constituency, we can create thousands of new jobs through investing in the Mersey tidal project, the expansion of offshore wind in Liverpool bay and the development of a world-leading hydrogen industry. However, just months away from the UK hosting COP26, the Queen’s Speech had nothing to say in support of low carbon and green industries and on getting the green homes grant back on track. That was a total dereliction of responsibility.

There is no clearer illustration of how twisted the Government’s priorities are than their plans to drive through discriminatory voter ID laws that risk disenfranchising 2 million predominantly young and black, Asian and minority ethnic voters—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

It’s a wrap. Sorry. I call Richard Holden.