Cost of Living Support: Carshalton and Wallington

Debate between Nigel Evans and Bim Afolami

Thursday 11th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Bim Afolami)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) on securing this debate. He is an asset to his constituents, who I am sure are pleased to be represented by him in the admirable way he has done so this evening. He is decent and has a clever mind, but most importantly he has a good heart, and that heart is in Carshalton and Wallington.

I think all of us in this place recognise the difficult times through which the people of this country, and indeed people around the world, have lived over the past couple of years. We have had the covid pandemic, Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine, and long-gathering inflationary clouds that have created a perfect storm for us all, but particularly for vulnerable people. However, this Government and this country have consistently fought back—against the virus, alongside our Ukrainian friends and, critically, from the perspective of the Treasury Benches, against the economic headwinds. As my hon. Friend outlined, this Government have provided one of the largest support packages in Europe over the past two years, in contrast to the damaging actions taken in his area by the London Mayor and my hon. Friend’s local Liberal Democrat council.

Some 11,300 households in Carshalton and Wallington were eligible for means-tested cost of living payments this financial year, and 8,500 individuals were eligible for the disability cost of living payment. Those households —my hon. Friend mentioned 30,500 properties in his constituency—along with all their neighbours, would have been eligible for the energy price guarantee, the £400 energy bills support scheme and the £150 council tax rebate, along with fuel and alcohol duty cuts. Energy support alone has paid for almost half of the typical family’s energy bill from October 2022 to June 2023 through both the energy price guarantee and the energy bill support scheme.

It is in part thanks to those measures that growth and real incomes have been stronger than expected this year—not just stronger than expected by the Office for Budget Responsibility, but stronger than expected by international economic forecasters. Inflation has also come down significantly to less than half its 2022 peak, and in November it fell to 3.9%, which is the lowest rate in over two years. Again, that was not forecast by the OBR or international forecasters. I do not deny that the outlook for real incomes remains challenging—it remains very challenging for many people, particularly vulnerable people in my hon. Friend’s constituency and across the country—as does inflation, but that is why we announced further support in the autumn statement in November to support the most vulnerable.

The Government will raise local housing allowance rates to the 30th percentile of local market rents in April 2024. In plain English, what does that mean? It means that 1.6 million low-income households will be better off to the tune of about £800 on average in 2024-25. Some, particularly Opposition Members, often say that that is not a lot of money, but I can tell the House that, for those 1.6 million low-income households, it is considerable support that they will welcome, as they will in my hon. Friend’s constituency.

The Government will also uprate all working-age benefits in full by the September 2023 consumer prices index rate of 6.7%, which is considerably higher than inflation, to make sure that working-age people on benefits are supported properly. That is 3 percentage points higher than forecast earnings for 2024-25 and, again, it will help support the most vulnerable while inflation continues to fall, with 5.5 million households on universal credit gaining £470 on average in the 2024-25 financial year.

My hon. Friend mentioned in his speech that 15,000 of his constituents are over 65, and we are maintaining the triple lock in support of those people and pensioners across this country, who have helped to build this country and have worked hard over years gone by. The basic state pension, new state pension and pension credit standard minimum guarantee will be uprated in April 2024 in line with wage growth of 8.5% in the usual reference period. In 2024-25, the full yearly amount of the basic state pension will be £3,750 higher in cash terms than in 2010 or, to put it more simply, £995 more —almost £1,000 more—than if it had been uprated by prices alone.

That comes on top of cost of living payments this year that are helping more than 8 million households on eligible means-tested benefits, 8 million pensioner households and 6 million people across the UK on eligible disability benefits. For individuals needing further support, local authorities in England continue to provide support through the household support fund, which is backed by £1 billion of funding. This allows local authorities up and down England to provide crisis support for the vulnerable households that need it the most, such as through supermarket or food bank vouchers. This means that, from 2022 to 2025, total support to help households with the cost of living will be over £100 billion—£104 billion—at an average of £3,700 per UK household.

However, I and the Government know that relatively short-term help is not enough. The only sustainable way to help vulnerable people in this country, including in my hon. Friend’s constituency, and to improve the living standards is to build a more prosperous future while remaining fiscally responsible. The best way to do that is to grow the economy and get more people into better paid jobs.

On growing the economy, this is not the time for more statistics, but I will say this: taken together, the measures in the autumn statement and the 2023 Budget represented the biggest upgrade in the GDP forecast that the Office for Budget Responsibility has ever scored. That shows the Government’s commitment to and delivery of a growing economy, which gives us all a better future.

When it comes to getting people into better paid jobs, from 1 April 2024, the Government are increasing the national living wage by 9.8% to £11.44 an hour for eligible workers aged 21 or over. That represents an increase of more than £1,800 in the earnings of a full-time worker on the national living wage and will benefit over 2.7 million low-paid workers. Just this month, employees’ main national insurance contribution rate has been cut by about 17%—that is, cut from 12% to 10%—and from April the main rate of class 4 national insurance for self-employed people will be reduced similarly, from 9% to 8%. That tax cut is worth £9 billion a year and is the largest ever cut to employee and self-employed national insurance.

The OBR expects that the measures announced at the spring Budget and autumn statement, taken together, will support nearly 200,000 additional people into work by the end of the forecast period. We do not do this for academic reasons or for fun; we do this because we know that giving people more of their own money—allowing them to keep more of their own money—improves their living standards, and we can do this while increasing funding for public services. Despite the difficulties of the last couple of years, over the course of this Parliament public services will benefit from the public purse by an increase above inflation of over 3%. We are doing this while supporting public services, while bringing down the deficit and bringing down the debt, and we can do all of it because of our careful management of the economy. That will benefit the vulnerable people in my hon. Friend’s constituency of Carshalton and Wallington and people across the country.

These measures underscore the Government’s unwavering commitment to supporting households up and down the country. We firmly believe that the key to a prosperous future lies in creating opportunities for everyone. The boost to the national living wage and the historic reductions in national insurance contributions are powerful tools in driving employment. Getting more people into work is not just good for them; it is good for our economy and for improving living standards, and it is clear evidence of a Government who have been willing to act to the tune of over £100 billion over the last three years. By putting more money into the pockets of hardworking people, we are not only bolstering their financial wellbeing but fuelling economic growth.

As always, we need to balance support for households with fiscal sustainability. The economic position remains challenging. We continue to keep options under review as we take tough decisions to drive down debt, drive down inflation and increase prosperity in every part of the United Kingdom. These are complex issues that affect all our constituents, wherever we call home.

I thank all hon. Members, but particularly you, Mr Deputy Speaker, because you are very kind, and my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington. He cares deeply for his constituents for whom he is a brilliant advocate in this place, and it is an honour to respond to him today.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Thank you for your kind words.

Question put and agreed to.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Debate between Nigel Evans and Bim Afolami

Consideration of Lords amendments
Wednesday 24th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

The Minister will be called no later than 5.52 pm for a 10-minute wind up.

[Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

It is such a pleasure to follow a wonderful speech from my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare). I was roused to get up when he mentioned Trumpian Singaporisation liberalising, and I thought, “That sounds like me and I must now rise!”

It is clear that we are not, at this moment, where we would have loved to have been a couple of years ago. My hon. Friend mentioned, and it has been alluded to by many others, that due to various political events over the last 12 months or so, we have not made as much progress on this agenda as we would have liked. I say to some Members on my own side that of course it would have been better if this process had moved faster, but we are where we are.

When faced with such a scenario, the Government have a choice. They could either say that political machismo demands we keep going down a route, even if we fear that that route, by 31 December, may lead to some or a lot of negative outcomes, or they could take a grown-up approach—the sort of approach that in a sensible debate Opposition Members would much more readily accept and highlight explicitly—which is that we will do what we can now, remove the sunset clause and, in an orderly way, make sure that we get this right. I remember the advert from when I was a child that said a dog is for life, not just for Christmas. The laws passed in this House are for life. We intend to get this right for the long term. That is why, fundamentally, the Government’s approach of repealing roughly about 2,000 laws by the end of this year, with a further 3,000 to be done in a sensible, structured and strategic way, will improve our regulatory system. Mr Deputy Speaker, I should have mentioned, as the chair of the Regulatory Reform Group, my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bim Afolami]

I thank my hon. Friend for confirming that to the House. I have talked a lot in the last few months about strengthening and improving our regulatory system, and getting more scrutiny for our regulators when they take decisions, and more ability for the House to scrutinise the decisions taken in our name. I am impatient that we are not doing more of that, faster. But I also recognise that we need to do that in a way that looks not just at the EU law—my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) talked earlier about the danger of having one set of EU regulations and the rest of law in another set. It is so important that, as we deal with European-derived law, we incorporate it into our full body of law in a strategically sensible way that improves our regulatory system—not just a cut and paste job, as may have happened.

I fear that a lot of the Lords amendments are about finding ways to delay the process that the Government have rightly strategically and politically committed to. My hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon) made that point very well and I will not repeat it.

I would like to talk a little about Lords amendment 15, which relates to various environmental issues. I have many problems with it—first, the notion that it is always clear whether one is reducing or increasing what the amendment claims to be the “level of environmental protection” or level of “protection of consumers”. That is very hard to do. It deliberately adds a huge amount of delay and bureaucracy to the entire process and it elevates the Office of Environmental Protection, which, if I remember rightly—I am sure that someone will correct me if not—is meant to be an advisory body, not a body to impose regulations on this House or anywhere else. It is elevating the Office for Environmental Protection to do a job that it was not designed to do. That is a good example of the sort of regulatory creep that we continually see and that I campaign and fight against in this House. The amendment is very dangerous for that reason.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) and my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset spoke accurately and amusingly about the political insanity of weakening things that the public want and that are completely contrary to the broad direction of our policy. Biodiversity net gain, the Environment Act 2021, the Agriculture Act 2020 and the Fisheries Act 2020 are all the things that we have done as a Government over the last few years. It would be insane to go back on all the things that we have done in relation to particular regulations. The Bill is not a clear and present danger to our environment.

Let me finish by saying that I have a feeling, like my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford, that the amendment is not really about what it says on the tin. It is really about trying to create wedge points that can be used to generate emails by 38 Degrees, or to create Facebook ads or clips to somehow suggest that Conservative Members are not in favour of environmental protection. That is dangerous, and the House should not be used in that way. I have seen this practice grow in my time in Parliament, particularly among Labour and the Liberal Democrats. We should not allow the House to be a place where people put down motions to—incorrectly—embarrass Members by suggesting they are not in favour of something they are in favour of. I make that point before I sit down, and I will support the Government in all the Divisions today.

Royal Assent

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I have to notify the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967, that the King has signified his Royal Assent to the following Acts:

Protection from Redundancy (Pregnancy and Family Leave) Act 2023

Carer’s Leave Act 2023

Electricity Transmission (Compensation) Act 2023

Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Act 2023

Northern Ireland (Interim Arrangements) Act 2023.

Black History Month

Debate between Nigel Evans and Bim Afolami

Tuesday 20th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. Interventions should be short. I did remind the House about the length of speeches, and we are in danger of a time limit being imposed if we are not careful.

[Bim Afolami]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I like the hon. Lady as well. What she says has a huge amount of truth. Of course there is a difference between people of different backgrounds, and it is in that diversity that we find strength as a country. I accept that I have had advantages that certain white working-class boys or girls may not have had, and I have had advantages that certain black people from working-class backgrounds may also not have had. Of course that is true, but at the same time—and I think this view is shared on both sides of the House; it is not partisan—we need to make sure that everybody can aspire to everything and there are no no-go areas, whatever someone’s race or background. That message of aspiration is one of the key reasons why I became a Conservative.

We have made progress. I do not want to repeat what others have said about where we have fallen short and need to make progress. I look at what my friend the noble Lady Morrissey, has done over the last few years with the 30% Club to get more women into senior positions in big public companies. We should look at that sort of approach and think about how we can increase the number of black people and other minorities in leadership positions.