Oral Answers to Questions

Pat Glass Excerpts

Tuesday 10th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

8. What recent assessment he has made of the effect of fiscal policy on family incomes.

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

10. What recent assessment he has made of the effect of fiscal policy on family incomes.

[The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Sajid Javid)]

The Government have published distribution analysis for all our fiscal policies at each fiscal event, and we are the first Government to do so. The most recent assessment was at the 2013 spending review, and the analysis showed that the richest 20% of households continue to make the greatest contribution to reducing the deficit, both in cash terms and as a percentage of their income.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sajid Javid]

As the hon. Lady has already heard, all millionaires will be paying a higher tax rate under this Government than they did for the whole 13 years that the Labour party was in power. She should also welcome the tax cut we provided for the lowest income families, 25 million people, with 2.7 million taken out of taxation altogether. I note that the Labour party has recently talked about reintroducing the 10p tax rate, which they abolished. Well, I have news for it: all those people are now paying a 0% tax rate on that income.

[Pat Glass]

The Times leads this morning on yet another banking scandal that has cost savers in this country billions of pounds. At the same time, bonuses in the financial sector have risen by 90% and ordinary families are really struggling. It is simply not working, so when will the Government step in and do something about the regular obscenities in the banking industry?

[Sajid Javid]

The hon. Lady should look up the facts. Bank bonuses reached their peak when the shadow Chancellor was City Minister; today they are almost one seventh of what they were at that time. The hon. Lady should welcome the measures we have taken to help working families. They have helped reduce interest rates and keep mortgage rates low, meaning that the average family with the average mortgage are paying £2,000 less per year than they did under the previous Government.