Autumn Statement Resolutions

Nigel Huddleston Excerpts

Monday 27th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Nigel Huddleston)]

Well, we have seen it, haven’t we—the same old Labour, never knowingly missing an opportunity to talk the country down yet again. I will return to that theme in a moment because it is very serious. I am delighted, in my first debate in this House as Financial Secretary, that I get to offer the closing words in our debate on the autumn statement. I also thank my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions for opening today’s debate. His speech was a compelling argument for the value of work. This is an autumn statement that is good for the businesses of this country and good for the people of this country. We know that the two things go hand in hand.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

The Minister referred to his colleague in the DWP. Earlier today, we heard one of his colleagues in the Home Office confirm that the Government had no intention of allowing asylum seekers to work to help pay the cost of their accommodation. How does it make sense to say that the way to stop a disabled person being a burden on the taxpayer is to force them to work when they are not fit to, but that the way to stop an asylum seeker being a burden on the taxpayer is to ban them from working even if there is a job they want to do?

[Nigel Huddleston]

The hon. Gentleman is missing the purpose of the reforms that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions clearly outlined earlier today. Perhaps if he had been in the Chamber, he could have listened to it directly.

When this Government came to power, we inherited not only higher unemployment from Labour, as always, but a lopsided welfare system that discouraged people from even seeking work. In the last 13 years, by reducing workless households, tackling low pay and reforming the welfare system, we have helped hundreds of thousands of families out of poverty. In the wake of covid-19, we have nearly 1 million vacancies in the economy, yet more than 7 million adults of working age, not including students, are still not working. Even Opposition Members seem to recognise that many of them want to work, and therefore we will be spending £1.3 billion over the next five years to help nearly 700,000 people with physical and mental health conditions to find jobs. And we will provide a further £1.3 billion of funding to offer extra help for the 300,000 people who have been unemployed for over a year, to help them find work.

The Government also recognise that, to get more people working, we must back business, as it is business that creates the jobs and pays the wages that lift up our communities, as my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Giles Watling) articulated. We will help the households of this country by boosting business through a variety of measures outlined in the autumn statement. Of course, the much-asked-for full expensing will be pivotal. We are also providing £4.5 billion over five years to support strategic manufacturing sectors that already have, or can gain, a competitive edge, namely in aerospace, automotive, clean energy and life sciences, as mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) and others.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) mentioned, we are also supporting small businesses in this autumn statement. For those smaller businesses that are so integral to their communities, we are freezing the small business multiplier and extending the 75% business rate support for retail, hospitality and leisure businesses for another year. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East and my hon. Friends the Members for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) and for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double), and others, for highlighting the importance of the tourism sector, which they know I care passionately about.

We are also establishing new investment zones throughout the country that will generate billions of pounds of investment, as my hon. Friends the Members for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) and for Clwyd South (Simon Baynes) highlighted.

There are other things we can do to ensure that work rewards workers, such as increasing their rate of pay and making sure they keep more of their earnings, which is exactly what we have done. We are abolishing class 2 national insurance contributions and cutting class 4 contributions. Alongside these cuts, we are raising the national living wage by 9.8% to £11.44 an hour and, of course, we are cutting the main rate of employee national insurance by two percentage points, giving a tax cut to 27 million workers. The Opposition may not appreciate that, but I assure them that their constituents do.

These measures will create work, get people into work and make sure that work is rewarding, as Conservative Members have recognised, particularly my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Jayawardena) and my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton).

Before briefly addressing some of the other points that have been raised, I take this opportunity to congratulate the new hon. Member for Tamworth (Sarah Edwards) on her maiden speech. She started well by praising her constituents, which is always a good move, and I wish her well in this House.

The hon. Member for Gordon (Richard Thomson) mentioned R&D, and the Government will merge the existing R&D expenditure credit scheme and small and medium-sized enterprise scheme from April 2024. This will simplify and improve the system, helping to drive innovation in the UK economy. That message of simplification was also pushed by my hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman). These reforms represent an overall increase in support to R&D companies of around £200 million a year by 2028-29.

The hon. Member for Gordon also mentioned the Scotch whisky industry. It is somewhat surprising, therefore, that his party’s Members have singularly failed to support any one of the new trade deals that we have signed and are signing, despite the fact that they support every single nation and region of the United Kingdom and are transparently in the interests of their constituents.

[Richard Thomson]

Will the Minister give way?

[Nigel Huddleston]

No, the hon. Gentleman has had plenty of time. I hope he will support the CPTPP deal when it comes before the House.

I always support Scotch whisky, which is a success story that we should all champion. It is a £6 billion export industry, and we can all be proud that 51 bottles of Scotch whisky are exported every second. Let us create more opportunities by supporting these trade deals.

The right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) mentioned the UK tax gap, and she is absolutely right to highlight that important matter but, of course, she is well aware that the tax gap is on a long-term downward trend. We have one of the lowest tax gaps in the world. The tax gap was 7.5% under Labour, and it is now at a record low of 4.8%, which is something she forgot to mention.

Perhaps most importantly, there is the context in which we have made this autumn statement, as was mentioned by many hon. Members, particularly my right hon. Friends the Members for Wokingham (John Redwood) and for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb), and my hon. Friends the Members for Waveney (Peter Aldous) and for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double). I refer to the fact that we have faced difficult times, with not just one but two global shocks that have had an impact on, and reverberated around, the world. That meant that we were required, expected and proud to intervene in a way that we have not had to do since the second world war. The figures are astounding: more than £350 billion provided during the pandemic to make sure that we supported lives and livelihoods; and, in the light of the invasion of Ukraine, a further £100 billion of support to help those facing cost of living challenges, including our paying nearly half of people’s energy bills last winter.

The Opposition seem to have a collective sense of amnesia about that; it is astounding that they do not understand that all of this money needs to be paid back. Their constituents, who are managing their finances every day, completely understand that you cannot spend money you do not have and if you get into debt, it needs to be paid off. Today, not only are the Opposition criticising us for high taxes, but their solution then seems to be spending even more. That is absolute economic incompetence and shows that they are completely unfit for office. The reality is that Conservatives increase taxes out of necessity and then reduce them out of choice, whereas the Labour party increases taxes out of necessity and out of choice. That is a fundamental difference between our parties, and therefore at the first opportunity we have had to reduce taxes, because the economic circumstances are better—how disappointing is good economic news for those on the Opposition Benches—and we are now in a better economic position, we are now reducing taxes.

Another important theme we have seen from those on the Opposition Benches is this utter pessimism and lack of confidence and faith in the UK economy. We are not pretending, for one minute, that everything is perfect; we know, as constituency MPs, that many people in our constituencies, right across the country, are suffering—we are all aware of that. However, constantly talking the UK down is not only incorrect, but bad for business and for the UK economy. I hope that the Opposition Members understand that when they are talking Britain down, they are talking workers, businesses and their constituencies down. Expectations and confidence matter, as they are what lead to investment in the UK. Because of the confidence in the UK economy, we saw investment announced last week by Nissan, this very day we have the global investment summit taking place and we are seeing billions of pounds more of incremental investment coming into the UK. That is because other countries have confidence in the UK economy, as do Conservative Members. The Opposition are signalling that they do not, and that is a terrible signal to send to the world. Again, if you do not have confidence in the UK economy, you are not fit for office.

The Opposition are talking Britain down. We have seen a huge amount of incremental investment. The Opposition do not like to understand that, for example, we have the second highest level of foreign direct investment in the world, after only the US. Just recently, we have overtaken France and moved from being the ninth largest to the eighth largest manufacturing country in the world. Because of our exporting success, we have gone from being the sixth biggest to the fifth biggest exporter in the world, and we have the second largest export of services of any country in the world. The Opposition may not like those facts, but they are true and provide every reason why we are keen to talk Britain up.

Today, we have seen a positive debate and measures in the autumn statement that back both business and our citizens. From a platform of progress, this is an autumn statement for growth, which will bring jobs, opportunities and prosperity to every corner of the country. I commend the autumn statement to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That—

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