Income Tax (Charge)

Pete Wishart Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. You cannot tax your way to growth and you cannot invest in public services without that growth. If the predictions we are seeing about growth are borne out, there is a real risk to our public services’ sustainability in future.

The Chancellor said that the funding would help to deliver 40,000 more NHS appointments a week, but again we see no reference to specific actions by which that will be achieved. The Government seem not to know the difference between a target and a plan, and simply restating their ambition while throwing money at the challenge will not be enough to deliver on that commitment.

As I have said, elements of the Budget relating to the Department of Health and Social Care were welcome, one of them being the Secretary of State’s one-nil win over the Chief Secretary in respect of funding. An additional £2 billion to drive productivity is important. I fear that it is a slimmed-down version of the £3.4 billion NHS productivity plans that we announced and funded, but I will study it closely, and, similarly, the Secretary of State’s plan for mental health is deserving of serious study. On both sides of this Chamber, we recognise the importance in mental health investment of not only parity of esteem but parity of services, and it is therefore right for us to scrutinise very carefully how the right hon. Gentleman intends to build further on the success that we had in driving that agenda forward.

Let me now turn to the subject of capital investment, which was touched on by the hon. Member for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell). It concerns me that, as far as I am aware, the Secretary of State has still not told us exactly when his review of the new hospital programme will report and set out the future for each and every one of the hospitals that he committed himself to delivering during the election campaign—the programme to which the previous Chancellor had committed funding, building on the original £3.7 billion allocated in 2019. The question for the Government, and the question for the Chief Secretary to answer when he winds up the debate, is: “When will that review report, and when will each and every one of those colleagues and communities who are looking forward to a new hospital know whether it will be delivered in line with the Secretary of State’s pledge, or whether the programme will be cut?”

Nearly a week after the Budget, Members will be familiar with the verdict of the Office for Budget Responsibility: namely, that the £25 billion assault on businesses risks lower wages, lower living standards and lower growth. And let us not forget what this tax hike will mean for those providing essential services across primary, secondary and social care—the general practices, care homes, adult social care providers, community pharmacists on our high streets, hospices and charities such as Marie Curie and Macmillan which provide additional care for patients alongside the NHS.

I was deeply disappointed that the Secretary of State did not take the opportunity offered by my hon. Friend the Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans) to state clearly that all those groups would be exempt and would not be hit by this hike, and I hope that when the Chief Secretary winds up the debate he will be able to give that reassurance. The Royal College of General Practitioners has warned that the extra costs of the employer’s national insurance hike could force GP surgeries to make redundancies or close altogether, and the Independent Pharmacies Association has warned that community pharmacies will have to find an extra £12,000 a year, on average, to pay for the hike.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and Kinross-shire) (SNP)]

I welcome the right hon. Gentleman to his place. I was waiting for the Health Secretary to turn to devolution issues, but he never quite did. We have a particular issue in Scotland: up to £500 million of extra costs will be forced on to the NHS there because of that national insurance hike. We have heard no commitment from the Secretary of State that he will meet those costs in full, and we look forward to hearing such a commitment. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will share my concern about what this is doing to devolved services across the United Kingdom.

[Edward Argar]

The hon. Gentleman is right to highlight the ill-thought-out consequences of this hike for hospices and general practices, both in Scotland and elsewhere. I would dearly love to be able to respond to his question. Sadly, however, I am on this the side of the House and not the other side, but I am sure that the Chief Secretary will attempt to do so.

The Nuffield Trust has said that without additional financial support, the tax raid is likely to force social care providers to pass higher costs on to people who pay for their own care, or potentially collapse financially. Charities are not exempt either. As a result of the increases in the national living wage and employer’s national insurance contributions, one of the UK’s largest social care charities says it is facing an unfunded increased wage bill of £12 million a year, and Marie Curie has warned that the rises in employer’s NI contributions will only serve to put the services that it delivers on behalf of the NHS under further pressure. Those charities will be looking to the Chief Secretary to say what succour he can offer them in the form of an assurance that they will not be hit.

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[John Grady (Glasgow East) (Lab)]

Glasgow has the shortest life expectancy in Scotland and in western Europe. The people of my city, who bring me so much joy, live shorter and less healthy lives than those anywhere else in the UK. Far too many die too soon. They do not get the happiness that the autumn of life brings: time with grandchildren, time with friends and time volunteering at a local church or a local mosque.

My constituency has some of the highest levels of poverty in the United Kingdom. Poverty is one the principal causes of ill health and early death. Health is the topic of today’s debate. Many of my constituents cannot afford to pay for the essentials and live in shocking housing conditions. They live every day petrified of what tomorrow will bring. This Budget confronts poverty. It increases the national living wage, giving a pay rise to the lowest paid in my constituency, and gives pensioners more than £400 this year under the triple lock and more than £1,700 over the course of the Parliament. This Budget makes a choice—it targets our scare public resources at the poorest—and I support it.

My constituents rely on the Scottish NHS, but the Scottish NHS is in crisis. Almost one in six Scots is on an NHS waiting list.

[Pete Wishart]

Look at what they have done in Wales.

[John Grady]

I am discussing Scotland. This is a serious topic about my constituents’ health. The waste by the Scottish Government—hundreds of millions returned to the EU unspent and hundreds of millions wasted on ferries—could have been diverted to the hospitals in Glasgow, to put beds in the Royal Infirmary, where they are needed.

The SNP is never to blame. The 62-day cancer treatment standard has not been met for over a decade, despite cancer being one of Scotland’s biggest killers. I have met countless pensioners who have been forced to pay thousands of pounds to go private for their hip replacements and knee operations, because the Scottish NHS waiting lists are so long. This Budget means £1.5 billion this year for the Scottish Government to spend on the NHS, and an additional £3.4 billion next year.

Our Budget puts the people of Scotland first and enables the SNP to fix the mess it has made of our health service. With its record increase in Scottish funding, this Budget demonstrates our commitment to Scotland.

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[Pete Wishart (Perth and Kinross-shire) (SNP)]

It is a long time since I have had the pleasure of speaking in a Budget debate. Usually there is a bit more competition for the opportunity to speak, but given the much-diminished numbers present, I got this chance today.

Having been more of an observer in the past few years, I have noticed one aspect of the Budget: the form, the tempo and the rhythm that seem to be part of every single Budget debate. It always starts with a high, fevered crescendo of excitement. The Government reel off all the staccato of freebies and giveaways. Cheers come from the Back Benches, Order Papers are waved, and the nation feels bamboozled by this apparent avalanche of largesse. Then, of course, the first cracks appear—a negative forecast from the OBR here, bad news on the gilt markets there. Beyond that, it all starts to fall apart. Once the public realise what the Budget means to them and get over the intoxication, the hangover starts and the first opinion polls start to come out. There was one in Scotland at the weekend, and it showed a calamitous decline in Labour’s fortunes, just as the party was measuring up the curtains for Bute House. It is not so straightforward for Labour any more.

I want to do something different and actually praise the Labour Government. I want to thank them and say, “Well done for getting that funding for infected blood. That’s great!” I also thank them for the extra funding that Scotland will get—it would be churlish not to do so. It is what we asked for, and I am really glad that they have started to listen to us. I just wish they would do a little bit more of that.

However, there are issues with all of this. One of the main issues is the change in employer’s national insurance contributions, which has caused a real problem for some of our colleagues in Scotland, because we do not know what we will get as a block grant. Will we be fully funded for the national insurance contributions in our health and policing budgets? We need to have clarity, and the money has to be in addition to the block grant funding, not in place of it. I would like clarity from the Minister on that issue.

There is one local issue that I want to raise: the levelling-up funding for Perth. Levelling-up funding was pork barrel politics at its most gratuitous, and we were the only city local authority that did not get one penny from the Conservative Government. We finally got a paltry £5 million, and we were so excited about that. We had three shiny projects in Perth city centre that we were going to develop. Then, of course, the Budget came along. After we secured practically nothing from the Conservatives, a Labour Government are taking the money away from us. I want to hear the Government say that they will give Perth what it is due.

Budgets are like fireworks on bonfire night: they go up like a rocket, with lots of noise and colour, then they come down like a damp squib. Today, the Government’s Budget feels very much like that damp squib.

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[Darren Jones]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, the ombudsman reported to this House before the election, making a number of recommendations, but did not conclude the basis on which a compensation scheme might apply. Further work is therefore required, which the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is looking at, but I would point him to the fact that this is a Government who honour their promises. If we look at the infected blood scandal or the Post Office Horizon scandal—an issue that I worked on for many years—we were told by the Conservatives that they were doing the right thing by compensating the victims, but they did not put £1 aside to pay for it.

From education to our justice system, we have inherited public services that are on life support, but I do not need to tell working people that. Sadly, they know it all too well, because the last Government lost control of both our public finances and our public services. This Budget and this Government will get both back under control. I will now outline how we should do that, by focusing on one simple word: reform. Reform is urgent, because we cannot simply spend our way to better public services.

This is a Government for working people, and we are determined that they will get the best possible public services for the best possible price, but public service reform is not just about policy or IT systems or procurement, as important as they are; it is about people. It is about the people at the end of each of our decisions: the patient in the hands of the NHS with worry and hope in their heart; the pupil in a school, college or university with aspirations that should be met; and the pensioner who wants to feel safe walking to the shops on their high street. Behind each of those people is a doctor, a nurse, a teacher, a police officer or a civil servant.

These are public servants who have chosen to work in public service to serve the public, as this Government do. They are public servants and people who today feel frustrated by not being able to access public services and not being able to deliver them. These are public services that, when performing well, deliver a well-functioning state and help keep workers educated, well and able to help grow our economy and protect our country. It is for these people that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor confirmed we will deliver a new approach to public services that is responsible, that looks to the future and that balances investment to secure public services for the long term with reforms to drive up the quality of those services today, and with reform as a condition for investment. From the Attlee Government founding the NHS to the Blair Government reforming poorly performing state schools, reform is in Labour’s DNA.

I now turn to some of the points made by right hon. and hon. Members today, and I begin by congratulating my hon. Friends the Members for Broxtowe (Juliet Campbell), for Sunderland Central (Lewis Atkinson) and for Stourbridge (Cat Eccles), and the hon. Member for Yeovil (Adam Dance), on delivering their maiden speeches.

There were many speeches today, so colleagues will have to accept my apologies for not being able to address all 80 contributions individually. However, I join my Labour colleagues in celebrating this Budget, because building an NHS that is fit for the future is one of this Government’s five missions. That is why we have invested over £22 billion, the highest real-terms rate of growth since 2010 outside of the covid response.

I have also heard the voices of hon. Members from Northern Ireland and Scotland, including the hon. Member for Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire (Mr MacDonald), who encouraged me so dearly to listen to his speech but has not returned to the House for my summing up. Under this Labour Government, the largest real-terms funding increase since devolution began has been delivered for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. This Labour Government are delivering from Westminster for the people of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and we will work in partnership with the devolved Governments to deliver the change for which people voted, and which we have now given the devolved Governments the money to deliver.

[Pete Wishart]

We thank the Minister for that, but will he reassure the Scottish Government right now that their £500 million of national insurance contributions for public sector employees will be given back in full compensation to the Scottish Government, rather than being put into the block grant?

[Darren Jones]

It is the greatest real-terms increase in funding since devolution began. If the devolved Government wish to take responsibility for devolved matters, they should do so. If they do not wish to do so, Labour will happily take over at the next election to deliver better services for the people of Scotland.

Many Members have asked me to comment on the new hospitals programme. As the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has confirmed, this Government are committed to delivering a realistic and deliverable plan, and we will deliver the outcomes of the review to the House in due course.

Many Members have also asked me about the difficult decision to increase employer national insurance contributions, in the context of Labour honouring its promise to working people not to increase employee national insurance contributions or income tax in their payslips. It is right that the Government are not legislating to exempt non-public sector organisations from these changes but, as the Secretary of State said, we pay for these services and it will be reflected in their settlements. To answer the shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, whether now or in the spring at the conclusion of the spending review, those departmental settlements will be published in the normal way.