Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Nia Griffith Excerpts

Tuesday 14th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I agree absolutely with my hon. Friend. Conservative Members have always understood the power and importance of enterprise, while Labour Members have never understood just how important it is to boosting our productivity and making sure that our economy keeps growing and creating jobs at a record rate.

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State makes great play of the importance of long-term planning. We all understand its importance for business, so what would he say to the company near Chepstow that used to make wind turbines but is now facing closure because of the sudden change in policy by his Government? Is it not sad that this Government, which should be offering certainty to business, are not only changing policy willy-nilly, but leaving a really big question mark over the European Union that is making businesses very jumpy indeed?

[Sajid Javid]

No one wants to see any company close in Britain, and no one wants to see any of the job losses that would potentially come alongside that. What is most important when changes in the economy affect businesses is a growing economy so that businesses are growing at record rates. We have record high growth as a country among the G7, which is exactly the sort of environment we want so that other companies can continue to grow alongside.

The national living wage will put more money in customers’ pockets. This will deliver a real boost to businesses right across the country, as eight out of 10 people who will see their pay rise live outside London and the south-east of England. These measures will all support growing, dynamic businesses, as we work with them to tackle the economic challenge of our time.

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[Paul Scully (Sutton and Cheam) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson), who gave us a more than adequate demonstration of what one might call the Corbynisation of the Labour party. It is an equal pleasure and a privilege to follow three fantastic maiden speeches. My hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Victoria Borwick) reminded me that I must go back and flick through my copy of the “Alan Clark Diaries”, which I did enjoy. I was not present to hear the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Chris Davies), but knowing him as I do, I am sure he lit up the House. I look forward to reading his maiden speech in Hansard. I had to go to visit a constituent who is a black cab driver attending a rally upstairs about Uber. Those people are small business people in their own right, and it is important that we take that into consideration. As has been said, the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mhairi Black) gave a fantastic maiden speech, and I know we will hear far more of her in the years to come.

For 20 years or so, I have run my own small business—I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Being responsible for other people’s livelihoods, going through bad times when one struggles to pay the mortgage and the bills, but also during the good times of real success when one can think, “Actually, that was down to me and my efforts as a self-employed businessman”—those experiences give one a perspective on life, on business life, on working life, on wages and on what it means for people to strive and take opportunities. That is why I welcome so many of the measures that the Chancellor has given us in the Budget, in stark contrast with Labour. In the lead-up to the election, we had what has been described as the heaviest suicide note in history—the Ed stone.

[Nia Griffith]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the Chancellor has tried to imitate one of our policies by trying to raise the minimum wage? He mistakenly calls it a living wage, but it is not at that rate. However, he has not offered any incentives to employers to introduce it, as we were proposing.

[Paul Scully]

I will come back to the national living wage.

The platitudes on the Ed stone were in stark contrast to the measured policies in the Budget.

Hon. Members can talk about semantics and about whether it is the national minimum wage or the national living wage. What we have seen is a significant—

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[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

This was a shambolic, shameful, pitiful Budget, more interested in grabbing headlines, trying to get the Chancellor in the slot for a future place in No. 10 and trying to lay political traps. This was not a Budget for the future of Britain. My right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher) had it down to a T: this is a Budget to provide cover for the Chancellor to shrink the size of the state. That is all that this has been about.

The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills talked about security, but security for who? There is certainly no security for the working poor of this country, those on zero-hours contracts or the people who provide care on the minimum wage who do not get paid for their travelling time or travelling costs, who have to provide their own uniforms and who quite often have to contribute towards any training they receive, if they are lucky enough to get any. In short, this was a Budget providing no security whatever for the poorest, the most vulnerable or the weakest in our society, but plenty of security for multimillionaires looking to pass on assets and for other people.

The Secretary of State also talked about this great plan that the Government have got. They had a great plan in 2010 that was supposed to pay down the deficit over five years. That great plan failed to do that because it stalled the economy for three and a half years—three and a half years to get back to the same level of growth we had in May 2010. So much for hard work rewarded. No matter what the Chancellor thinks, there are people who work very long hours who can only dream of limiting their hours to those in the working time directive and who can only dream of a decent wage and being able to come back to a home that they can afford to live in. Hard work rewarded? There has been a lot of hard work from those people and very little reward for what they do.

I want to take a quick canter through some of the measures in the Budget. Much has been made about the supposedly national living wage. What an absolute con! The living wage has been put at £7.85 or £9.15 in London. The aspiration over the term of this Parliament will be to reach £9 by 2020.

So talk about this being a living wage is simply not the case. The proposal for it to be set at £7.20 is already well short of the necessary £7.85. As has been said many times, including by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield), setting the living wage takes into account tax credits and additional support. Actually, the real living wage should be recast at a higher figure now that so much of people’s tax credits has been wiped out. This aspiration for what amounts to a rebranded minimum wage is nonsense.

To pick up on an earlier exchange, many employers have, sadly, seen the national minimum wage as a reason to dumb down wages rather than to use it as a baseline. Here there is an issue with tax credits because some employers have indeed said, “Hang on, let the state subsidise our profits and we’ll pay the minimum wage.” Those self-same employers will not now say, “Well, we should not have done that even though we did, but we are now going to put the minimum wage up to a proper living wage level”. Of course not. They will keep people working on the same minimum wage and see that their workforce are worse off on account of the reduction in tax credits.

Yet again, this is all about pulling the rug from under the working poor. The Chancellor makes great play of how the Government want to help people in work. These are people in work; they are people who are doing their best and working very long hours, but they are having the rug pulled from under them.

We hear talk about tackling aggressive tax avoidance and evasion, yet this Government have made various attempts to deal with it. We have seen various attempts to introduce general anti-avoidance type provision, but none of them had teeth and none was really designed to address the situation. I remember from when I was a tax and finance adviser in a previous life that people were capable of coming up with schemes to get round legislation within minutes. The Government have known about this for a long time; this is not new. To be fair to the Government—I rarely try to be fair to this particular Government, but I will be on this occasion—from time immemorial, Governments have not seized the opportunity to provide for proper anti-avoidance measures that will have teeth and will work. There are simple ways of achieving that.

As we have heard, reductions in public spending are about trying to take us back to a small state. The proposal to increase personal allowances, much heralded at the Dispatch Box, sounds wonderful, but it is all jam tomorrow. It is a £400 increase in the personal allowance, which is nowhere near the level it should be and nowhere near the level necessary to provide a genuine living wage in the sense of a basic amount that people need to live on. People will continue to earn less than they need to survive—and will be taxed on it, thrown into the bargain. Raising the threshold for higher rate taxation and raising the personal allowances has provided double help for those on higher incomes, who will see less of their income taxed.

[Nia Griffith]

Does my hon. Friend suspect that the Chancellor has deliberately renamed this “the living wage” so that he can break the promise of taking everybody on the national minimum wage out of tax?

[Robert Flello]

Absolutely. That could well be one of the motives behind it: it is certainly not about giving a genuine living wage to people, and it is certainly not about ensuring that people who work 40, 50 or 60 hours a week just to make ends meet will actually be able to secure a decent living wage. As I say, £7.20 from next April is already short of the £7.85 needed to take tax credit changes into account.

Let us move on to some of the Chancellor’s real friends in all this and consider inheritance tax and the increase to a £1 million threshold. How many people will benefit? It will be a tiny number, and that has to be set against the millions of people who are, to quote the Secretary of State’s words, “hard work rewarded”. It is nonsense, and it shows where the Chancellor’s thoughts lie and who he is really concerned about.

The reduction in corporation tax is another issue. On the face of it, it might seem very good. We already have one of the most competitive rates of corporation tax, but what about the small businesses that are not corporations or not incorporated companies? What about those small businesses that, as sole traders or partnerships, are the lifeblood of our country? What of the small businesses that do not pay corporation tax, for which it is not an issue?

Another item on this long list of measures is the introduction of a supplementary tax on banking sector profit versus the bank levy. I suspect—and I fear that I am right—that more smoke and mirrors has been going on in respect of what the levy was levied on and what profits will be subject to the supplementary tax; I suspect that this will work in favour of the banks.

The increase in insurance premium tax is another measure that will hit those on the lowest incomes. The Minister shakes his head, but there are no two ways about it. People who are already stretching their budgets to try to afford their contents insurance, for instance, will then be hit by a massive increase in insurance premium tax, from 6% to 9.5%.

As for the proposals for the Chancellor’s good friends, those with non-domiciled status, they are welcome on the face of it, but how soon will it be before someone comes up with a great ruse to get around the “15 of the previous 20 years” residence rule? How soon will it be before someone says, “That is OK; I will go abroad for a year, and then restart my clock”? How soon will it be before someone takes advantage of some scheme or other? Why not be more assertive, and take much stronger action?

I am conscious that time is beating me again, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I want to draw attention to a few more points. There are to be more apprenticeships, but the question is the quality of those apprenticeships. The ending of student maintenance grants will hit the poorest yet again—in this instance, the poorest students. I have already made my point about the public sector pay increase.

Buried among these measures is the reduction in the backdating of housing benefit from six months for working-age claimants and three months for pensioners to a maximum of four weeks. It is not really about reducing benefit; it is about saying, “If you were not quick enough to spot the benefit that you were able to claim, or if the paperwork was not processed, or if you are a pensioner who struggles with paperwork, you will lose out.” That will save £10 million, which is outrageous.

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[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. Did you say 10 minutes?

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

I said eight.

[Nia Griffith]

In that case, let me very briefly congratulate those who have made their maiden speeches today, before turning to the subject of the steel industry.

Let me begin by thanking the Minister for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise for being so helpful last week by voting to retain anti-dumping measures for wire rod. The steel industry is being flooded out by a massive increase in imports from China, and it is important for us to work with other EU countries on anti-dumping measures. I hope that the Government will take the same approach to measures in relation to steel reinforcing bar, grain oriented electrical steels, and cold rolled steels.

Let me now say something about the EU compensation package. As we know, the Government set the carbon floor price too high, thus causing considerable difficulties to the steel industry. They have now come up with a compensation package for energy-intensive industries, but it is still a long time until April 2016. Will the Government think again about whether the date could be brought forward, and will they make absolutely certain that the package will not be cut?

As well as the problem of the carbon floor price, the steel industry faces the challenge of the EU emissions trading scheme. I firmly believe in working with the EU to create a level playing field, and I believe in the need to reduce our carbon emissions, but the energy-intensive industries need special consideration. It is important that the Government work with them so we actually achieve those goals, rather than achieving what is called carbon leakage—manufacturers going elsewhere where they are allowed to get away with higher emissions levels. There is a lot of work to be done here.

Business and industry need absolute certainty as they plan ahead and invest, and I am disappointed at the infrastructure projects that have been scrapped. The cancellation and postponement of rail projects and other infrastructure projects is very serious both to our skills base and our manufacturing industry. I am pleased that electrification is still planned for the railway line to Swansea, although I would like to see it come a lot further west, but it has still not started. I urge the Government to make sure that goes ahead with full speed.

I would like the Government to make greater efforts to maximise the UK input into the supply chains for such infrastructure, too. It is possible within EU regulations to include in tendering criteria a recognition of the benefit to the local community. Other EU countries manage that very effectively, and we should do a lot more in this regard.

Roger Evans from Schaeffler in my constituency of Llanelli is working with the Swansea tidal lagoon to maximise the proportion of supplies for the construction of the lagoon that is sourced locally in Wales and the UK. He is to be applauded for his efforts and I hope the Government will take note and do likewise, and that they will also strike the right price for the tidal lagoon to make it economically viable.

Business and industry need absolute certainty. We saw the Government cut the feed-in tariffs unexpectedly sharply without consultation, resulting in manufacturers and installers—many of whom had spent a lot of money training up as solar panel installers—going out of business, and now the Government’s sudden cut to the wind turbine incentive is again threatening manufacturers. When such decisions are made, they should not be knee-jerk, politically motivated decisions; there should be proper consultation with the industry and sensible lead-in times for any changes. There will now be a massive knock-on effect on the manufacturers and installers of wind turbines.

On the financial changes in the Budget, I welcome the national minimum wage going up to £7.20 next April, but it is, after all, a national minimum wage and it is high time it did go up to that amount—and the Chancellor promised ages ago it would go up to £7. I am very concerned, however, that it does not apply to those under 25, and I am extremely concerned about the loss of tax credits. They are an important part of our current taxation system. As has been mentioned, a couple on the current minimum wage with two children gain £1,500 but lose £2,200 in tax credits. We must raise the wages first, before scaling down any tax credits. This hits those on the lowest incomes who are often dealing with problems of insecurity, juggling more than one job to make ends meet, and working antisocial hours.

We still need a crackdown on zero-hours contracts as well. It is not enough to do what the Government did, which was say “You shouldn’t be prevented from taking another job.” They must do a lot more to try to ensure people can have proper contracts. USDAW has done a lot of work in this regard by getting annualised contracts that allow flexibility for employers and employees, but guarantee an agreed number of hours, so offering some security and chance of planning ahead for workers.

The cuts to tax credits will have a massive knock-on effect on local economies. People on low incomes out of necessity use their money immediately, putting it back into the local economy. There are wards in my constituency where Government changes over the past five years have already led to a loss in income of an average of £800 to £1,000 per person per year. Add to that the new cuts to the tax credits and we will see even more money sucked out of local economies. That is bad news for local business and could lead to further job losses.

I was shocked a fortnight ago to hear the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions say that the way for families to get out of poverty is through education and getting higher paid jobs. Of course it is, but in the meantime they need help. They cannot get that education and move into higher paid jobs in two minutes; we are talking about very long-term goals. What we are seeing in this Budget is a cut to what was a grant and has now become a loan for going into higher education for those very families on the lowest incomes.

We are also worried that the Government are removing the cap on the £9,000 fees for what are probably going to be the most sought-after and prestigious universities. Again, they are creating disincentives for people from less well-off homes to achieve the best and go to the very best universities. These are extremely worrying features of the Budget. Obviously, people want their children to do well—

[Mr Speaker]

Ahem.

[Nia Griffith]

I am sorry, Mr Speaker, are you suggesting that I should finish? I thought I was allowed eight minutes.

[Mr Speaker]

Yes, eight minutes.

[Nia Griffith]

In conclusion, then—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. There is not a formal limit at this stage, but colleagues are being encouraged to stick to eight minutes to give everyone a decent chance of getting in. However, it is up to the hon. Lady at this point.

[Nia Griffith]

Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Very briefly, tax credits are extremely important for those who work part time, who have to juggle childcare responsibilities or who simply cannot find enough hours’ work, and I would have liked the Government to ask those with the broadest shoulders to bear a great deal more of the burden, perhaps by putting up the 45p tax rate to 50p for those earning more than £150,000 a year. Instead, I believe that there is to be legislation that will limit income tax rises for millionaires. It is completely the wrong priority that it is those with the least money, rather than those with the broadest shoulders, who will be bearing the greatest burden.