The Growth Plan

Debate between Paul Blomfield and Kwasi Kwarteng

Friday 23rd September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I do not accept the hon. Gentleman’s proposition that the level of tax is immaterial, I do not believe that we can just tax our way to prosperity in the way that the socialists claim, and I absolutely reject the idea that tax does not incentivise economic activity.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

After 12 years of Conservative economic failure, the Financial Times reported earlier this week that those on the lowest incomes in the UK are much poorer than their counterparts across the rest of Europe—20% below Slovenia, for example—while those at the top are among the wealthiest. The Prime Minister has said she does not believe in redistribution. The measures announced today suggest she does—but in the wrong direction, taking from those who have the least and giving to those who have the most. Does the Chancellor not recognise that the British people will see it exactly for what it is?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

What I do recognise is that socialism and high tax do not work. The hon. Gentleman and others have stood four times on a socialist platform and the British people have rejected them four times, and if they go back to their socialism, they will be rejected once again.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Paul Blomfield and Kwasi Kwarteng

Thursday 27th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

We are absolutely mindful of the risk that the hon. Gentleman describes. He knows that the Government are fully committed to ensuring that the dark days of the 1970s do not return to Northern Ireland.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

I see that yesterday the Minister tried to mitigate fears about a no-deal departure by saying that it

“is not a world war.”

That might be an insight into his thinking, but is “less damaging than a world war” really a benchmark for success? Does he agree with the Security Minister, the right hon. Member for Wyre and Preston North (Mr Wallace), who said:

“A no-deal situation would have a real impact on our ability to work with our European partners to protect the public”?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s questions, as always, but I would like to point out that he has wrenched my comments completely out of context, and they were made not yesterday but on Monday. I was merely echoing what the former Governor of the Bank of England, the highly respected economist, Mervyn King, has said about our GDP growth since 1800. On an annualised basis, there would be very little impact, even in the case of no deal.

EU Membership: Second Referendum

Debate between Paul Blomfield and Kwasi Kwarteng

Monday 3rd December 2018 Westminster Hall

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I will absolutely make the comparison and I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Economic Community and now the EU had been a top-line issue for 45 years. If it had not been, why was there a referendum in 1975, the year I was born? This issue has gone on for two generations, so I suggest respectfully to the hon. Gentleman that the electorate did have a sense of what they wanted.

We cannot go down the route of simply relitigating referendums when we do not like the result, because that essentially is what this boils down to. That is essentially what is driving the call for a second vote—the so-called people’s vote. Former Prime Minister Mr Blair has said as much. He makes no bones about the fact that he thinks that Brexit is a disaster and the way to reverse Brexit is by means of a second referendum. It is an instrument by which one can reject the will of the people as expressed in June 2016. Let us not be fastidious or naive about this. The people who generally are driving for a people’s vote and a second referendum want to reverse the result. They think—mistakenly, in my view—that the way to reverse the result is to get a second referendum, which will confirm or reconfirm our membership of the EU. I think they are wrong and, as I have said, the Government have made a clear undertaking that we will not have a second referendum.

The question on 23 June 2016 was clear; it was absolutely unequivocal. The question was simply:

“Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?”

Many of us in the Chamber took part in the referendum campaign—some with Vote Leave and some with the Stronger In or remain campaign. It was a very hard-fought and widely trailed discussion. Some people have said that the quality of the debate was not good enough or that some pieces of information were withheld, but generally it was an extraordinary exercise in democracy. As has been said many times, it was the single biggest vote that this country had ever seen in a general election or any other kind of election. And as we all know, 17.4 million votes were cast to leave the EU. That was the highest number of votes cast for anything in UK electoral history.

What those calling for a second vote—the so-called people’s vote—are saying is that the people should think again. Essentially, they are saying, metaphorically, to the electorate, “Your homework was not good enough. Please do it again.” As the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton suggested, the electorate—certainly in my constituency—are quite a cussed lot. I do not see the floods of support for remain described by others. I strongly suspect—this is my personal view—that a second referendum would not deliver a different result.

That is irrelevant, however, because the Government are tasked to enact the will of the majority of the people, as expressed in the 2016 referendum. All major political parties were committed to respect the outcome. We fought a general election on the basis that we would leave the EU. As has been said, 499 Members of this House voted to invoke article 50, which we all knew would involve a two-year process, at the end of which we would leave the EU. All of that is in the public record and everyone understood the consequences of it. Furthermore, the Labour party committed in its 2017 manifesto to leave the EU and the customs union. More than 80% of the British people voted either Conservative or Labour in the general election. They voted for parties that were absolutely committed to respect the 2016 referendum result. That is exactly what the British people expect us to do.

I fully understand the emotional impetus behind the call for a second referendum, but I think it is a ruse by which people seek to stay in the EU. We are pledged to leave the EU. The full democratic process of the referendum delivered a clear directive, which this Government hope to deliver. The call for a second referendum opens up a huge question about the levels of trust in our Government and our democracy. We have to respect the will of the people. To do otherwise and say, “We will have a second referendum and try to reverse the result of the first referendum, because you got the wrong answer first time,” is not only an abnegation of democracy, but profoundly disrespectful of the electorate. As a Minister, I would not want to see that.

We have to look at the nature of the referendum itself. It was a long, four-month campaign, but we cannot just think of the referendum as those four months in 2016, because this debate had been going on for decades, not only in my party but in the Labour party. I am old enough—just—to remember the 1983 general election, in which the Labour party was pledged to leave the EEC. That created great divisions and caused great debate within the Labour party. My own party has been a scene of great discussion and lively debate on this issue. It is not right to say that those four months of the referendum campaign in 2016 encapsulated the whole debate, because it has been ongoing for 45 years and more.

I sense that I am in a room of clairvoyants, because everyone has told me that the Government will lose the vote on Tuesday. I have been in the House long enough—let us see what happens. People have asked, “What about plan B?” If I knew plan B, I would not divulge it in this Chamber—I assure hon. Members of that—so the question is redundant. I remind hon. Members that the choice is between a deal and no deal, because, as others have suggested, the hourglass is running quickly. We are running out of time. Article 50 was invoked on 29 March 2017. It does not take a mathematician to work out that 29 March 2019 will be the end of our formal membership of the EU. Nor does one have to be mathematically gifted to work out that there are fewer than four months between today and exit day. In that timeframe, the notion that the Government will throw off their policy of the last two and half years and then bring in some parliamentary device for a second referendum to take place before the exit day is, frankly, ridiculous. We do not have the time to do it and people would feel that it would be extremely irresponsible to do so.

I could spend the next hour and three quarters trying to convince hon. Members of the merits of the deal. I do not want to do that, because they probably want to do other things. However, I will say that the deal does precisely what the electorate voted for. On immigration, we have heard about restrictions to freedom of movement.

[Paul Blomfield]

Given that the Minister has raised the question of immigration, does he agree that it is incumbent on the Government to do as they previously promised and publish the immigration White Paper before we vote on the deal?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

The shadow Minister is trying to tempt me down paths I do not want to go down. We will have a plan. At the moment, the Government are focused on winning the vote on Tuesday and getting on with Brexit, as so many of our constituents want them to do. My hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam said that someone was bored of Brexit. I have used that phrase myself—not of me: I love Brexit and am fascinated by it, but a lot of my constituents want to get the ball rolling. They want to get on with wider political debate and to get on with their lives. They see that the deal is a way of getting to the finishing post of 29 March. Anything we do to jeopardise that would not only frustrate Brexit, but be a great abnegation of democracy.

The debate about our relationship with Europe will not end with our formal exit from the EU. There will be all sorts of ongoing discussions and debates about bits of the EU that we might want to pay into and others that we might not. That is the nature of democracy: we can debate it. It will not be set in stone, but we will have an evolving and, I hope, co-operative and fruitful relationship with the EU. However, we seek to close the question of membership of the EU and we will formally end it on 29 March.

People have talked about the money—the £39 billion. The figure of £35 billion to £39 billion has been quoted as a divorce payment. That is actually a small fraction of the £100 billion that we saw in the newspapers and the other huge amounts that were trailed across the media. Looking at our 46-year commitment to the EU, we see that £39 billion works out as four years of net payments to the EU—what I call the annual subscription.

The annual subscription in the 2014 to 2020 budget period was about £10 billion a year net, depending on how it is calculated. After the payment and the implementation period, we will not have to pay a penny piece. The golf club subscription, as one of my constituents once referred to it, will be over. We will not be paying into the common kitty to the tune of £10 billion a year. We will secure—we hope and confidently expect—a free trade deal. We will be able to co-operate with the EU, but our formal membership and the annual tribute or payment that we used to make will be over.

My last point is about sovereignty, which was raised by the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton. People wanted to have a sense that they were electing to this Parliament Members who would exercise the sovereign will of the British people and make our own laws. That is a fundamental point that cannot be captured in trade deals, money or economics; it is about fundamental independence and sovereignty. That was a big driver of the vote and this deal delivers it. I am pleased to speak on behalf of the Government in this debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam on introducing it and I look forward to his concluding remarks.

Rights of EU Nationals

Debate between Paul Blomfield and Kwasi Kwarteng

Wednesday 19th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

The Minister is now well established in his new role, but let me take this opportunity to welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker). I look forward to working with him and the rest of the team in the years ahead.

I am grateful to the SNP for bringing this issue back to the House. For the avoidance of any doubt—if the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) were still in the Chamber, I would say that this applies particularly to him—I should make it clear that Opposition Members accept the result of the referendum. We simply want to ensure that our departure from the EU takes place on the best possible terms for the UK. As one of my colleagues said during last week’s Opposition day debate, the British people voted to come out; they did not vote to lose out. Providing guarantees for EU nationals now is part of securing the best deal for the UK. That is why we made it the topic of an Opposition day debate just two weeks after the referendum, and why we support the motion moved so ably today by the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry).

Back in July, as now, it was clear that the Government did not have a plan. They had no plan for what Leave would look like, and no plan for the 3 million EU nationals who are living, working and studying in our country. During that debate, however, one of the leading leave campaigners rightly pushed for certainty on the issue. He said:

“I would like to put on record what I think has been said already—that countless times the Vote Leave campaign gave exactly this reassurance to everybody from EU countries living and working here, and it is very, very disappointing that that should be called into question. I think it is absolutely right to issue the strongest possible reassurance to EU nationals in this country, not just for moral or humanitarian reasons, but for very, very sound economic reasons as well. They are welcome, they are necessary, they are a vital part of our society, and I will passionately support this motion tonight.”—[Official Report, 6 July 2016; Vol. 612, c. 939.]

Let us give credit where it is due. After making that contribution, the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) not only talked the talk but walked the walk, as did the overwhelming number of Members who voted for the motion to guarantee EU nationals the right to remain here. I hope that now that he is Foreign Secretary he is making the case even more strongly, because I guess in his new role at the Foreign Office he is learning the art of diplomacy. [Interruption.] Yes, he may have some way to go; I appreciate the Prime Minister is not yet entirely convinced. What he will know by now is that the way in which the Government have turned EU nationals living here into bargaining chips for the Brexit negotiations, or, as the Secretary of State for International Trade put it,

“one of our main cards”,

is not only deeply unfair to those concerned, but severely undermining our reputation with the very people with whom we want to be entering into negotiations next spring, not to mention the damage it does to our economy. Put simply, it is not in our national interest.

It is absolutely wrong for the Government to suggest that we cannot guarantee the status of EU nationals here—many of whom have been here for decades—without a reciprocal arrangement for UK nationals abroad. The Government are effectively asking people—doctors in our NHS, business owners and entrepreneurs, teachers in our schools—to put their lives on hold and wait until March 2019 to find out what their future holds. But many will want certainty for themselves and their families.

[Kwasi Kwarteng (Spelthorne) (Con)]

The following question then arises: if he were in the Government, what guarantees would the hon. Gentleman give to British citizens living in the EU regarding their rights? What possible guarantees or safeguards could he give them?

[Paul Blomfield]

By giving those guarantees to EU nationals living in this country, we set the marker, and we give the best guarantees to our citizens living in the rest of the EU by making that stand now.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between Paul Blomfield and Kwasi Kwarteng

Tuesday 14th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield]

I will tell the hon. Gentleman that too many people are employed on zero-hours contracts, and I could cite countless examples of people in my constituency whose lives have been destroyed by them and who have raised the issue with me.

It was interesting last week to hear Ministers, almost in the same breath, expressing their concern about low pay and then condemning tube staff for their industrial action.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Paul Blomfield]

I will not at this stage, simply because other Members want to speak and I am conscious of time.

Over a generation, we have seen a shift of between 5% and 7% of GDP from wages to profits, and from profits to shareholders’ dividends. That has widened inequality and reversed a century of progress towards a more equal society, and it started with deliberate decisions in the 1980s to weaken the bargaining power of working people and the trade unions that represent them. A sensible policy response to low pay would be to strengthen the negotiating hand of working people, but instead the Government made it clear in the Queen’s Speech that they want to weaken their position further with more attacks on the trade union movement.

[Paul Blomfield]

It is absolutely true that when people go on strike, everybody gets hit, including those on strike. Trade unionists go on strike only with enormous reluctance, because of the impact on services and their wages. The uncomfortable truth for Conservative Members is that improvements in living conditions, health and safety and other workplace situations have been won through the struggle by trade unions.

The campaign for a living wage was a great response to the challenge of low pay. Members on both sides of the House have rightly praised the work of the Living Wage Foundation, but that work has been made more difficult by the Chancellor’s attempt to steal its clothes. We need to be clear. The increase that he proposes to take the wage floor up to £9 for many workers is welcome, but let us not pretend that it is a living wage. Let us call it the over-25s rate or the national minimum wage supplement, or we could just call it the national minimum wage, but he should not damage the brand of the living wage by associating his proposal with it.

We should continue to work to encourage employers to adopt the living wage and to incentivise them to do so. We need to recognise, as the Living Wage Foundation has pointed out, that the rate will need to rise to take account of the cut in tax credits. Here is the rub: although the new rate of the national minimum wage might benefit up to 5 million workers, more than half of them will be worse off—an estimated 3 million families, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies—by an average of £1,000 a year because of the changes in tax credits. It could not be any other way: an estimated wage uplift of £4 billion is being offset by welfare cuts of £12 billion.

The Chancellor will argue that raising the tax threshold will benefit low-paid workers by taking them out of tax, but he knows that that is not true. He knows that lifting the tax threshold is a regressive tax measure, because it benefits everybody equally except the lowest paid. Six million workers who are already paid too little to pay tax in the first place will not benefit at all from raising the threshold, whereas Members of Parliament will get a tax break. Frankly, in comparison with low-paid workers, we do not deserve one.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

Don’t take it then.

[Paul Blomfield]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman can explain how people can choose not to take a tax break.

The hon. Member for Braintree (James Cleverly) rightly spoke forcefully about small businesses. I do a lot of work with small businesses in my constituency. They are a driver of growth. When there is any increase in pay, they face a challenge, as does the voluntary sector. They need support, but the Government and the Budget have got it wrong. Support should not have been provided through a greater cut to corporation tax; it should have been provided to small businesses by further cuts to business rates.

The Prime Minister is right that company profits should not be subsidised by the public purse. If he is serious, why not tax listed companies that fail to pay the real living wage to recoup the cost? If he is serious about tackling poverty pay, what about strengthening labour market enforcement? We know, for example, that thousands of workers do not even get the national minimum wage in the care sector because employers refuse to pay for travelling time. We debated that in the last Parliament. Ministers admitted that the practice was widespread and said it was illegal, but nothing is happening to chase down those rogue employers and bring them to book.

amendment of the law

Debate between Paul Blomfield and Kwasi Kwarteng

Monday 25th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

It was good to see the Chancellor pop into the Chamber a few moments ago, although I wish he had been here a few moments before that to hear the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) accuse him of “absolute madness” for saying in opposition that he would back Labour’s spending plans, right up to the world financial crisis in 2008. That was the case, however, and the truth is that it was not Labour’s spending, which repaired the damage of the Thatcher years, that caused sub-prime lending, the collapse of Lehman brothers or the world financial crisis.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Paul Blomfield]

No, I will not, simply because of time; I would love to otherwise.

That crisis created choices, and the Conservative-led Government have consistently made the wrong choices. The Liberal Democrats also have something to answer for because during the election they argued—rightly, and alongside Labour—that the post-2008 Tory austerity plans were wrong: wrong because they caused pain and wrong because they would damage the economy. They were elected on that basis; they have no mandate for this ideological assault on public spending and the welfare state.

The Secretary of State opened the debate by talking about housing. That is a good topic because it says a lot about this Government’s wider economic policy: wrong choices and missed opportunities, epitomised by the lack of investment in housing. The Government have cut direct support for affordable housing by 60%. The stagnating economy has limited private sector investment, and as my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods) said, there was an 11% fall in housing starts last year.

The Secretary of State, who is currently checking his BlackBerry, attacked Labour’s record on housing. The Labour Government did not do enough, but let us set the record straight—[Interruption.] He should keep checking his BlackBerry. It is worth remembering that housing starts have been lower in every quarter since April to June 2010, the last quarter that Labour was in power.

The Chancellor claims he will solve the housing crisis with his latest right to buy scheme, but we have heard that before. Back in November 2011, we heard that the NewBuy scheme would help 100,000 people to buy their own homes. How many did it help? Only 1,500 people, just 1.5% of the target.

For many young families, the alternative would be social housing, but it is not. With nearly 5 million people on local authority waiting lists, the Homes and Communities Agency has reported that affordable housing starts collapsed in the last financial year by 68%. It has been estimated that as many as 60,000 extra homes would have been built had the Chancellor used the Budget to lift borrowing restrictions on councils and arm’s length management organisations. He could have done that, but he failed to do so.

Ideology and not practical policies drive the Government, so instead of helping with social housing, the Chancellor extended the right to buy, which is at the root of much of the problem of social housing supply. As private landlords win out, we lose vital social assets. When the Government extended the right-to-buy scheme in April 2012, the Secretary of State—he does well to smile—promised one-for-one replacement. How many have we seen? Three hundred and eighty-four new homes have been built to replace 3,495 sold, which is a 90% loss of socially rented stock.

Finally, the new homes bonus has an unfair impact. It is designed to incentivise local authorities to approve new housing development but is calculated on the value of property, which means that areas with low property values lose out. In my case, resources moved away from Yorkshire to wealthier areas, and from Labour councils to Conservative and Liberal Democrat councils. For example, it is estimated that Sheffield council lost more than £3.5 million as a consequence of the scheme. The Secretary of State might well smile, but people in Sheffield are not smiling.

As with the economy overall, so with housing: we need a plan B, and we need it now.