Tax Credits

Oliver Dowden Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Ian Blackford]

Absolutely. I hope that we will go on and have a robust debate about productivity in this country and about skills and innovation, because driving investment into the economy will drive wages up and negate the need for tax credits. None of us has a fundamental desire to see the long-term existence of tax credits, but they can only be removed when wages are driven up. What we cannot do is what the Government are doing and cut tax credits ahead of increases in wages.

[Oliver Dowden (Hertsmere) (Con)]

rose—

[Ian Blackford]

I am going to make some progress, because I am aware of the time.

One has to ask about the moral compass of a Government who want to increase the inheritance tax threshold while the poorest in our society are being squeezed to such an extent. One nation, they tell us, but whose nation is that? It is not a country in which we want to live. Perhaps from an economic point of view we need to ask where the logic is in this policy. We are told that it is about getting the deficit down, but taking cash out of the pockets of the poorest means taking cash out of the economy and depressing economic activity. Those on low incomes tend to spend what money they have. This provision does not fix the deficit; it takes spending—[Interruption.] That is patronising? I will tell Government Members who is being patronised, and that is poor people in this country.

Let us make it clear, as we did during the election in Scotland, that we want to get the deficit down but that this is not the way to do it—[Hon. Members: “How?”] Members ask how we will do that, and I am happy to give them an answer since they have given me the opportunity. I remind them that we won the election in Scotland, with 56 MPs returned for the SNP, and we had a progressive message that we delivered to the people of Scotland of investing in our country by increasing spending by a modest 0.5% per annum that would have delivered additional spending in the UK of £140 billion and would have reduced the deficit to 2% of national income by the end of the decade. That is a much more responsible way to deal with the future of our country.

There is a philosophical question of whether effective support through tax credits for employers paying low wages excuses those employers from paying a real living wage that offers dignity for work. I would argue that we all want to reach a situation in which work pays, to the extent that those in work have a decent standard of living. The SNP has been championing a real living wage as a response to dealing with poverty and that would mean that hard-working families would become financially sustainable, driving up tax revenues, reducing the deficit, enhancing economic activity and, ultimately, leading to an enhanced fiscal position. The desire to make work pay, which the SNP fully supports through the idea of the living wage—the real living wage, not the Tory construct—has to go hand in hand with an environment that encourages productivity, but we know that that has not happened for the past eight years, with productivity flatlining and even the OBR’s forecast for the next four years showing only limited recovery in productivity. We cannot have sustained growth in wages unless we have growth in productivity.

[Oliver Dowden]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Ian Blackford]

No, I am going to make some progress.

We need a national debate about how we can strengthen and drive sustainable economic growth, driving up living standards and making work pay. We can only reach a high wage economy with investment in skills, innovation and business. That is not happening, and its absence is why we need the safety net of tax credits. That is why the Government must reconsider what they have voted through.

The Resolution Foundation has shown that the so-called living wage will boost wages by £4.5 billion by 2020, nowhere near the impact of the £13 billion of cuts to various working age benefits. It cannot be acceptable that working people pay such a price. We need to cut inequality, not drive it, which is what the Government are doing.

Let us come back to the example of the family losing £1,525 of their income next year. What will the Government say to such families when they are faced with difficult choices? Family budgets are already tight and something has to give.