Oral Answers to Questions

Patricia Gibson Excerpts

Tuesday 20th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)]

2. What fiscal steps he plans to take to help reduce the impact of recent increases in the cost of living on households.

[Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)]

5. What recent assessment he has made of the potential effects of his policies on inflation on the cost of living.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Hunt]

I totally respect the hon. Gentleman for raising the concerns of his constituents in the way that he has done. I do not believe that capping prices is the right long-term solution, but we are doing a lot, including payments of £900 per household for people on means-tested benefits, £150 for households with someone disabled living in them and £300 for households with pensioners living in them, precisely because we want to help the people that the hon. Gentleman is talking about. I will be meeting the regulators next week to talk further about what needs to be done with respect to supermarkets.

[Patricia Gibson]

Over the weekend, the former Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, spoke about how before the Brexit referendum, the Bank of England had set out that the likely consequences of Brexit were

“a weaker pound, higher inflation and weaker growth”.

Does the Chancellor think it is fair that the UK Government’s decision to ignore the stark warnings from the Bank of England are now being paid for by the households who can least afford it?

[Jeremy Hunt]

I am afraid that I do not buy this Brexit narrative from the SNP. Food price inflation has been around 20% in Germany, Sweden, Portugal and Poland in recent times, so this is not a UK-specific issue. We are all dealing with the consequences of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the aftermath of the pandemic, and we are all tackling it with one central focus, which is to bring down inflation as our overriding priority.