Economic Update

Mike Amesbury Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

My hon. Friend is always a champion for those who are working hard and doing the right thing, and that is why he has rightly championed the freeport in his constituency to provide jobs and opportunity for those families. I can give him that reassurance. It is because it is likely that energy prices will remain high and may even increase when the October price cap is set that the rebate of £200 will come in in October—in that month. I hope that will help at that time if energy bills continue to rise then, and of course the £150 will come much sooner, which gives him the reassurance he needs. As I said earlier, we do have to be honest and recognise that we are all going to have to adjust to higher energy prices, but what we can do is slow the pace and scale of that adjustment for families across the country.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

Is the Chancellor comfortable about the fact that he has given more support to fraudsters, writing off billions of pounds of debts, than he is giving to hard-pressed families for whom this just prolongs the pain? This 54% price rise will be paid over four years, won’t it, Chancellor?

[Rishi Sunak]

As I outlined earlier this week, nothing has been written off. We are committed to going after everybody who has defrauded the taxpayer. It is important to remember the context. These schemes were delivered at enormous scale: 9 million people benefited from the furlough scheme and 1.5 million small businesses benefited from bounce back loans. At the time—we can remember the context—I was here almost every other day being rightly held to account by Members on both sides about the speed of support that we were getting to businesses in all of our constituencies that needed cash as quickly as possible. In those circumstances, I had to make balanced trade-offs and judgments about the best way to support those people. I am confident in the judgments we made, but it is also right, now that we are through the pandemic, that we go after anyone who has defrauded the Government and the taxpayer with the full force of the law.