Oral Answers to Questions
Nick Timothy Excerpts(3 weeks, 2 days ago)
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Rachel Reeves
I thank the Chair of the Treasury Committee for that question. She is absolutely right that in our July statement, we set a 2% productivity target, not just for the Department of Health and Social Care, as the previous Government did, but for all Departments. Ministers are absolutely determined to deliver against those targets, because that is the way to ensure that we have resources for the frontline public services—our schools, hospitals and police—that we all rely on.
Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)
Under the last Government, the Chancellor said that interest rates and gilt yields were driven by Government policy. Will the Chancellor guarantee that neither will rise higher than they did under the Conservatives?
Rachel Reeves
The last Government crashed the economy with a mini-Budget and sent interest rates and mortgage rates soaring, putting huge pressure on the costs borne by families and businesses. We will set out our Budget tomorrow, including robust fiscal rules on paying for day-to-day spending through tax receipts and borrowing only to invest, whereas the previous Government borrowed for day-to-day spending, which is why we are in the mess we are in today.
Fiscal Rules
Nick Timothy Excerpts(3 weeks, 3 days ago)
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Darren Jones
I welcome my hon. Friend’s question. [Interruption.] I know that Opposition Members find it uncomfortable, but it is a matter of fact that we will return to time and time again, because the sheer truth of it is that the last Government made promise after promise to the British people, knowing that they did not have the money to pay the bills. It is shameful, and the sooner they come to the House and apologise for their behaviour, the better it might be for them in the long run.
Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)
If the Minister is so confident in his fiscal rules, will he take this opportunity to commit to the House that the 10-year gilt yield in this Parliament will not exceed the maximum it was over the past 10 years?
Darren Jones
The hon. Gentleman is trying to be clever, but he is inviting me to speculate on the Budget. He will have to wait until Wednesday.
Winter Fuel Payment
Nick Timothy Excerpts(2 months, 1 week ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
The hon. Member is absolutely correct. May I just helpfully point out to all hon. and right hon. Members that, in seeking to make repeated interventions, they are actually cutting into each other’s time? I have made the point previously about the correct way to address each other, through me as Deputy Speaker. Interventions need to be a great deal shorter because they are just cutting into the time for the debate and there are an awful lot of Members who wish to contribute.
Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I would like advice from the Chair, please. Reportedly, more than 200 Labour MPs received more than £2 million in donations before the election from the trade unions. Before other Members give speeches about issues such as public sector pay, would it not be in order for them to declare that interest at the beginning of their speeches?
Madam Deputy Speaker
As the hon. Member will know, it is for individual Members to declare their interests, if one is applicable.
Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)
Let us be absolutely clear about what has happened today: every single Labour MP who voted to cut the winter fuel allowance has broken their promise to the country. Pensioners know that before the election Labour denied that it was going to do this, but they might not know that the Chancellor had been planning it for 10 years. In 2014 she said:
“we will cut the winter fuel allowance for the richest pensioners and means-test that benefit to save money”.—[Official Report, 25 March 2014; Vol. 578, c. 174.]
Are we supposed to believe that she changed her mind after that and then changed it back again shortly after the general election? I do not think so.
There may be a case for means-testing, but the Chancellor is cutting the payment not just for the richest pensioners, but for pensioners on very modest incomes. She is also not making the case for it. She is asking the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to do her dirty work for her. If winter fuel payments are to be means-tested, surely the proceeds should go towards low-income pensioners and the cost of social care, but they are not. They are going on above-inflation pay rises for the likes of Labour donors ASLEF.
Public Spending: Inheritance
Nick Timothy Excerpts(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
We could do with some masterclasses in short questions and short answers.
Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)
Earlier, the Chancellor quoted Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, but she omitted the end of his comments. He said that half of the spending hole she claims is public sector pay
“over which govt made a choice”.
That is the truth, is it not? The Chancellor does a good shocked face, but she chose to create her own spending hole, did she not?
Rachel Reeves
It was the previous Government who set the mandate for the pay review bodies. It is extraordinary that they did not include in that remit a measure of affordability, but they did not, which is why the pay review bodies made these recommendations. The previous Education Secretary could have rejected those recommendations, but she let them sit on her desk, because the previous Government were not willing to make tough decisions. We have made those decisions, including making sure that a third of the cost of these pay awards is absorbed, but there is a cost to inaction: last year, there was a £1.7 billion cost to the NHS alone because of industrial action.
Economy, Welfare and Public Services
Nick Timothy Excerpts(4 months ago)
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Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)
I congratulate the other new Members on their excellent maiden speeches, in particular the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Brash), where I know his predecessor, Lord Mandelson, recommends the mushy peas.
It is an honour to be called to speak for the first time. I pay tribute to the last MP for West Suffolk, Matt Hancock, who oversaw the delivery of the covid vaccines, a vital achievement for our country. Less well known is that Matt once rode in, and won, the Blue Square Cavalry Charge horserace in Newmarket, a feat that required him not only to be propelled forward by a thoroughbred horse at 30 miles per hour, but to train for three months and lose 2 stone. For all these reasons, not least the dubiousness of the idea that I have 2 stone to lose, I can assure the House that I will not be stepping into my predecessor’s stirrups.
Newmarket is the best-known town in my constituency. It is most famous for horseracing, an international success story that brings thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of pounds to the local economy every year. From Charles I to Charles III, racing gives West Suffolk its long connection to royalty, but unfortunately ours is not an unblemished record, for Newmarket was once the home of Oliver Cromwell’s new model army. Old Ironsides championed free expression yet persecuted his enemies. He attacked aristocratic privilege and patronage, but handed power to his cronies. Censorious, joyless and puritanical—it is like he wrote the Labour manifesto.
Fortunately, we have left those days of self-denial behind, and from the Star in Lidgate to the Queen’s Head in Hawkedon, the Affleck Arms in Dalham to the White Horse in Withersfield, and many others, we have some of the best pubs in Britain. And we have plenty more besides: beautiful villages, vibrant towns and farms that feed the country; Anglo-Saxon settlements and ancient churches; rolling countryside and big Suffolk skies; dense forest and the world-famous gallops; businesses doing everything from seed drills to particle engineering; charities such as Reach in Haverhill and the day centres in Brandon and Newmarket; Highpoint prison near Stradishall; the airbases at Lakenheath and Mildenhall; and public servants working for their communities every day.
I look forward to championing them all and addressing our challenges too, including dealing with flooding in Clare, Cavendish and elsewhere, and fighting the appalling decision to approve the Sunnica solar and battery farm, due to be built on high-quality agricultural land. In Brandon, lorry traffic is a problem. We need the Ely and Haughley junctions sorted to get freight on to the railways. In Mildenhall, where 1,300 new homes are coming, we need a relief road. We are not against new house building in West Suffolk—we have had 3,000 new homes built in the last five years—but we need attractive family homes in the right places. We need services and infrastructure to keep pace. We need to get tougher with the developers and reform the construction market. We need to drastically cut immigration, not just for the economic and cultural reasons that should by now be obvious, but to limit new demand for housing.
Our largest town, Haverhill, has doubled in size in only 30 years, to almost 30,000 residents. It has an incredible community spirit, but the town centre is struggling. We need a new start for our high streets, and I will fight for a railway linking Haverhill to Cambridge. The development of Cambridge looms large for us, but I want us to embrace the opportunities, not just fear the risks. If we get it right, we have the chance to get better infrastructure, new investment and more jobs. That is why I wanted to speak in today’s debate.
From potholes to public sector pay, the thread that runs through all our challenges is an inconvenient truth. While it is plainly incorrect to claim that the new Government have the worst economic inheritance since the war—[Interruption.] It is incorrect, but we are less prosperous than we often tend to assume. This is not a question of party politics, but of the decline and failure of our country’s long-established economic model. Put simply: we do not make, do or sell enough of what the world needs.
Our £33 billion trade deficit—1.2% of GDP—means we sell off valuable assets and build up external debt to limit the current account deficit. We end up with less control over our economy, and more exposed to global risks and shocks. From low pay to regional inequality, poor productivity to the funding of public services, all the things we worry about are symptoms of this wider problem.
We need to question economic theory, challenge Treasury orthodoxy and think beyond the intellectual limits of ideological liberalism. Theories like comparative advantage have led us to offshore industry and grow dependent on hostile states, like China. But international trade is neither free nor fair, and net zero cannot mean sacrificing our prosperity and security. Being a services superpower is a great advantage, but alone it is not enough. We need a serious strategy to reindustrialise, narrow the trade deficit and rebalance the economy. We need to change and, in the months and years ahead, I look forward to debating how we do so.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Christopher Chope)
I call Alan Strickland to make his maiden speech.