Oral Answers to Questions Debate

Full Debate: Read Full Debate
Department: HM Treasury

Oral Answers to Questions

Patrick Grady Excerpts
Tuesday 14th November 2023

(12 months ago)

Commons Chamber
Read Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Deidre Brock Portrait Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

4. What recent assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of trends in the level of food inflation.

Patrick Grady Portrait Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
- Hansard - -

20. What recent assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of trends in the level of food inflation.

Jeremy Hunt Portrait The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Jeremy Hunt)
- View Speech - Hansard - - - Excerpts

UK food inflation has been driven largely by global factors and has already fallen from 19.6% to 12.3%, and external forecasts expect it to continue to fall.

--- Later in debate ---
Jeremy Hunt Portrait Jeremy Hunt
- View Speech - Hansard - - - Excerpts

The lesson I have learned is straightforward: if we had not reduced the deficit by 80% between 2010 and the start of the pandemic, we would not have been able to help families across the United Kingdom with payments of more than £3,000, on average, including 700,000 households in Scotland and more than 1 million pensioners.

Patrick Grady Portrait Patrick Grady
- View Speech - Hansard - -

Even if the inflation rate is falling, food prices are still going up considerably. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation reckons that they have gone up at least twice as fast as the value of benefits since September 2021. At the very least, can the Chancellor commit to ensuring that the Department for Work and Pensions has enough resource to raise benefits at least in line with September’s inflation rate?

Jeremy Hunt Portrait Jeremy Hunt
- View Speech - Hansard - - - Excerpts

The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is doing his review at the moment to decide the correct amount by which to uprate benefits. If the hon. Gentleman looks at this Government’s record, he will see that we took the decision a year ago to uprate benefits by inflation, and we committed to £94 billion of measures to help families get through the cost of living crisis.