Social Security
Debate between Mike Amesbury and Mel Stride(3 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Mel Stride
I will in a moment. We do not know what the impact will be across the income distribution. No Member of this House knows what the impact will be within their own constituency. We do not know what the recommendation of the Social Security Advisory Committee will be. Why? Because it will not be given the information until tomorrow, we are told. And of course, the measure does not form part of what it should: a major fiscal event with the Office for Budget Responsibility scoring it and an economic and fiscal outlook accompanying it.
Mel Stride
I will come to the hon. Gentleman.
In fact, the only authority to comment thus far on these measures is the House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which said:
“We are unconvinced by the reasons given for the urgency attached to laying these Regulations and are particularly concerned that this both precludes appropriate scrutiny and creates issues with the practicalities of bringing in the change at short notice.”
That, I think, says it all.
Mel Stride
I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, who has been very patient.
Mike Amesbury
I thank the shadow Secretary of State for finally giving way. Will he clarify which Conservative leadership contender has called for the means-testing of the winter fuel allowance?
Mel Stride
I am left feeling that that intervention was barely worth the wait.
The fact that we even have a debate today is near miraculous given the resistance from the Labour party—we have it thanks to the scrutiny that the Conservative party is providing to the Government. We know that petitions have been railing against the measures: 100,000 people have signed the Silver Voices petition, a third of a million the 38 Degrees petition, and over half a million the Age UK petition. They are calling on the Government to think again. The press, particularly the Express newspaper, is doing a sterling job in bringing these matters to our attention. Even the trade union movement, including Unite, is pointing a finger at the Government and saying that they are picking the pockets of pensioners.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Mike Amesbury and Mel Stride(7 months, 1 week ago)
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Mel Stride
I thank my hon. Friend the Father of the House for his question. I cannot prejudge the outcome of the very detailed set of considerations. He makes reference to the amounts involved, which are considerable. As I have said, it is absolutely right that we look very carefully at the conclusions of that report and listen to what Parliament has to say in that respect.
Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)
Roslyn Gilmore is one of several thousand WASPI women in my constituency. It has now been six weeks since we had the statement to the House, so I repeat the call again: when can we expect the response to the ombudsman’s report?
Mel Stride
I refer the hon. Gentleman to the answer that I have just given to the Father of the House. It has to be stressed, quite rightly, that the report was five years in the making, and that was—in part at least—due to the complexities of the matters under consideration. We are looking at those matters extremely carefully.
Women’s State Pension Age
Debate between Mike Amesbury and Mel Stride(9 months ago)
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Mel Stride
As the right hon. Gentleman will know, I am fully aware of the reports’ findings. As he will know, they raise many questions, which we need to look at carefully. We will not delay in so doing, but that is why I have come to assure the House that we will do exactly that and engage with Parliament in an appropriate way.
Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)
This interim statement felt like a non-statement. It spoke about clarity but offered none at all to WASPI women or Members of the House. I repeat what many across the Chamber have said: on what day and in what month can we expect a full statement? WASPI women up and down the country expect that full statement.
Mel Stride
The hon. Gentleman raised the question to which by now I have probably responded two dozen times. The answer remains the same: we will look at these matters extremely carefully and diligently, which is what everybody who has an interest in them would expect us to do. The report was published as recently as Thursday, and it is now Monday. We will look at these issues very carefully indeed, and there will be no undue delay. We will ensure that we interact with Parliament in an appropriate fashion, as we did with the ombudsman.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Mike Amesbury and Mel Stride(9 months, 1 week ago)
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Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)
The last Labour Government lifted 1 million children out of poverty. After 14 years of Tory Government, we have 1 million children in destitution. What has gone wrong?
Mel Stride
I have to take issue with the hon. Gentleman. He needs to look more closely at his party’s record in government. Fact No. 1 is that the Labour party always leaves office with higher unemployment. Fact No. 2 is that economic inactivity in our country is lower than in any year in his party’s time in office. Fact No. 3 is that absolute poverty has declined in our country since his party was in office. Fact No. 4 is that there were more children in workless households on his watch than there are on ours. Perhaps most tellingly of all, during his party’s time in office, over 1 million people languished on long-term benefits for almost a decade. That is a disgraceful record.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Mike Amesbury and Mel Stride(1 year ago)
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Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)
In 2010 there were 117,000 16 to 24-year-olds on long-term sickness and health benefits. That figure now stands at a massive 235,000. Why is that, and what are the Government doing about those appalling figures?
Mel Stride
The hon. Gentleman is right. There has been a marked increase in the prevalence of mental health conditions, particularly among those aged 16 to 24, which is why we are bringing in measures such as universal support and talking therapies within the national health service, for which 400,000 additional places were announced by the Chancellor at the autumn statement. We have introduced measures such as WorkWell, and others, to address exactly these issues.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Mike Amesbury and Mel Stride(2 years, 1 month ago)
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Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)
Does the new Secretary of State—whom I welcome to his place—still agree with his statement that cutting maternity rights will be good for business?
Mel Stride
Given that I never made that statement, I do not agree with it, no.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Mike Amesbury and Mel Stride(6 years, 11 months ago)
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Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mel Stride)
For all Budgets, Treasury Ministers very carefully assess the gender impact of the various measures under consideration. We do that as a statutory duty, but we also do it because it is our firm policy to do so. Of course, one of our centrepieces in the Budget was the 4.4% increase in the national living wage from this April, which will disproportionately benefit women.
Mike Amesbury
Women still bear the brunt of the Government’s failed austerity agenda. What was the Minister’s assessment of the autumn Budget’s financial impact on women and those with protected characteristics?
Mel Stride
As the hon. Gentleman will know, the Government constantly carry out assessments. There are various assessments of the impacts of all fiscal events, but I point him not only to the national living wage increase, which disproportionately benefits women, but to the personal allowance increase that takes many hundreds of thousands of women out of tax altogether. Of course, by 2019-20 we will spend some £6 billion a year on childcare, a record level of expenditure.
Tax Avoidance and Evasion
Debate between Mike Amesbury and Mel Stride(7 years, 1 month ago)
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Mel Stride
I will now make some progress. I am aware that this is just a two-hour debate and that many Members wish to speak.
We have covered the various measures that we have taken, and we have covered the huge investment that we have made in HMRC. Perhaps I can now turn to the international aspects. We all agree that we need to look closely at what is happening in the international sphere. On that, this Government have a record of which we can be proud. Through the OECD, we have been in the vanguard of the base erosion and profit shifting project. We have worked closely with the Crown dependencies and overseas territories.
We have brought in a diverted profits tax, which will raise £1.3 billion by 2019, and common reporting standards to ensure that information is exchanged in relation to around 100 countries. We have introduced a directory of beneficial ownership that is accessible by HMRC, the authority that needs to have that information. All this has happened in the last couple of years, and it is a game changer. Many of the issues arising from the Paradise papers go back very many years, but these measures are in place right now.
I also want to make an important point on transparency. In last week’s debate, I asked the right hon. Member for Barking, in relation to the 13 million files held by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, whether she would join me in calling on the ICIJ to release that information to HMRC so that we could go after anyone who, as a consequence of that data release, was thought to be abusing our tax system. Will she support us in that endeavour?