Getting Britain Working Again
Phil Brickell Excerpts(3 weeks, 6 days ago)
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Phil Brickell (Bolton West) (Lab)
Yesterday’s King’s Speech showed that, despite all the noise from Opposition Members, this Government are determined to get their heads down and get on with the job that the British people sent us to Westminster to do. After years of drift, decline and short-termism under the Conservative party, this Labour Government are choosing a different path—one that restores hope to towns like Westhoughton, Horwich, Blackrod and Bolton in my constituency. As the electorate told us last week, and as the Prime Minister has acknowledged, the challenges we face need to be met with substantial systematic reforms.
Families in my constituency are feeling the pressure of rising bills, stretched public services and insecure work, which is why I was proud that in the previous parliamentary Session, this Government passed landmark legislation on workers’ rights, protections for private sector renters, bringing rail back into public ownership, rolling out clean energy and achieving much-needed reforms to our policing system. This Session’s programme shows that the Government are prepared to act with urgency and purpose in order to build on the good work that has already been done. One of the most important priorities set out yesterday is ending the opportunity crisis facing so many young people and families across our country. I will focus most of the rest of my remarks on that topic.
For years, families navigating the special educational needs and disabilities system have felt exhausted and ignored. At a roundtable that I held recently with concerned parents, I was told about the endless battles to secure assessments, support and specialist provision for children. Frankly, teachers and schools have been asked to do more with less, and children with enormous talent and potential have too often been denied the support they deserve. That is not acceptable, and it is not sustainable for this country.
The education for all Bill represents an important step towards the meaningful SEND reform that is vital because, as Labour Members believe, every child deserves the opportunity to go as far as their talent and effort can take them. We all know, deep in our hearts, that it should not matter where children are from or how wealthy their families are, yet all too often the current system bakes in inequalities at a young age that stay with children for the rest of their lives.
Alongside that reform, another vital commitment featured in the King’s Speech yesterday: our offer to young people, including this Government’s youth guarantee. For too long, too many young people have been locked out of work, training or opportunity, which is why the Government’s industrial strategy and apprenticeships plan matter so much. It is this Labour Government who are removing the barriers to economic growth that stifled innovation and creativity, and it is this Labour Government who are creating the much needed pathways into secure, highly paid jobs for the next generation of Boltonians.
David Reed (Exmouth and Exeter East) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman is making an impassioned speech. One of my big concerns, about which we need to be talking far more, is that jobs for young people in the 18 to 24 category are being replaced by automation and artificial intelligence. That is especially true for young people who are in the age category coming out of university: they are shackled with tens of thousands of pounds of debt and the graduate jobs that they had hoped to get are now being automated. What does he think that the Government can do to ensure that the cohort coming out of university and coming into the workplace have good career pathways in front of them?
Phil Brickell
The hon. Member makes a valid point about artificial intelligence and the world of work, which is increasingly changing and facing threats but also facing opportunities. I would like the Government to continue to work strongly with our further and higher education sector, to think proactively about what opportunities are coming down the line for work in the sectors that he is talking about, five or 10 years in the future. We have to be creative in thinking about what those opportunities look like, although artificial intelligence is not just about threats.
Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)
On the topic of giving younger people access to AI and digital skills, Charminster library in my constituency of Bournemouth East has been closed indefinitely by the Liberal Democrat-led council, which does not have a plan to repair or rescue the library. That library could provide a space for younger people to acquire those critical AI and digital skills, so does my hon. Friend agree that our community is only as strong as the space that we have and that we need libraries, like the one in Charminster, to be reopened, so that younger people can have access to such skills?
Phil Brickell
My hon. Friend makes an extremely valid point about Charminster library. I know that he is a terrific campaigner for his local community assets and I wish him all the best for success in that campaign.
As a former Erasmus student, may I put on the record my heartfelt support for our re-entry to that programme? My time on the Erasmus programme in Hanover opened up a world of possibilities that were unimaginable to a young lad growing up in Bolton, expanding my horizons, teaching me new skills, preparing me for the world of work and giving me the confidence to go out and get full-time employment after I graduated. It is only right that the kids of today have the same access to the opportunities I had when I was growing up.
The King’s Speech recognises a simple, inescapable reality: Britain is stronger when we work closely with our European partners. Businesses across Bolton and the north-west know the importance of strong European ties. Manufacturers, exporters and local employers all benefit when Britain has stable, constructive relationships with our nearest neighbours. The Conservative party wrecked our ties with Europe, damaged trade flows, hindered growth and frustrated co-operation. Businesses faced unnecessary barriers, opportunities were lost and relationships that took decades to build were neglected.
Take the trailer supplier Indespension, located in my patch, a pioneering company snared up by Brexit-related red tape. I have been working with the Minister for Trade, my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda and Ogmore (Chris Bryant), to cut through some of that duplicative bureaucracy, but the European partnership Bill should be the vehicle to clear away the very burdens imposed by the Conservatives, aided and abetted by their colleagues in Reform UK. What we saw under previous successive Conservative Governments, whether they were supported by the UK Independence party or the Brexit party at the time, was common sense sacrificed on the altar of ideological purity by a Government then more focused on pithy three-word slogans than on doing the hard yards to negotiate the best deal for Britain. My constituents know it, the members of my party know it and my colleagues on these Benches know it too. That is why this Government’s EU reset is about acting pragmatically in Britain’s national interest to secure the very best for our country.
Taken together, this Government’s programme will build national resilience, spread opportunity and restore confidence that the future can be better for working people and their families: a Britain with stronger public services; a Britain where children in Bolton West with SEND receive the support they deserve; a Britain where young people in Westhoughton, Horwich, Bolton and Blackrod all have the chance to succeed; a Britain with clean, home-grown energy and stronger economic security; and a Britain that rebuilds its place in the world with confidence and purpose.
There are no silver bullets after 14 years of decline. We must be honest about the trade-offs and investments required to rebuild our country. I am proud to support a King’s Speech that shows that Labour is getting on with the job for my constituents across Bolton West.
Saqib Bhatti
The Government have claimed that the Bill will make generational reforms to the SEND system. The outlines of those proposals have been included in the White Paper, but parents are none the wiser. I have met a lot of parents, and despite the Government’s rhetoric, I see parents with more anxiety, not less. Just this Monday, I met a number of SEND parents from my constituency. All they want is for their children to have a chance at life, so I will ask the Minister a question that has been put to me by parents—perhaps she will address it when she responds. The consultation does not sufficiently address what will be done to help those 16 to 19-year-olds who can work to get into work. With all that is going on outside of the Chamber and in No. 10, if the Government are consumed by leadership contests and machinations, when will the legislation come before the House? This chaos will only further exacerbate the anxiety and anguish of parents and their children. I was told yesterday that the Government have actually been distributing briefing documents to their MPs to get supportive responses to their consultation. If the Government’s proposals for reform are so good, why are they trying to stack their own consultation?
Phil Brickell
I thank the shadow Minister for giving way, but he seems a little confused in his remarks. In the same breath, he is urging the Government to bring the Bill to tackle the broken SEND system before the House as soon as possible, and saying that the consultation has not run its full course and has not brought enough people in. Which is it? It cannot be both at the same time.
Saqib Bhatti
I do not think the hon. Member was paying attention. What I said was that I worry that the consultation is being stacked, but parents want to see the legislation, because there is not enough clarity in the consultation and they do not have the answers to the questions they are asking. I certainly hope that the parents the hon. Member meets make that clear to him.
With little indication that the Government will set out comprehensive plans to support young people, the Opposition have been busy drawing up their own proposals for an alternative King’s Speech. We have laid out comprehensive plans to help recruit thousands of new apprentices. Our apprenticeship guarantee will remove the funding cap for apprenticeships for 18 to 21-year-olds. This will ensure that employers have fully funded access to training, helping 100,000 extra young people into work every year.
In addition, we would encourage more employers to take on 18 to 21-year-olds by introducing a business rebate for investment in training and skills, or BRITS scheme. It would provide a new incentive of up to £5,000 for businesses to take on 18 to 21-year-old apprentices.
In the higher education space, the Conservatives have clear plans to rebalance the system. We have a proud record of expanding higher education, but we also recognise that more needs to be done to address the growth of low-value courses. Some degrees have ended up becoming a poor deal for both taxpayers and graduates. They do not help young people into work and the bill ends up being footed by taxpayers, some of whom have not benefited from a university education. That is why our alternative King’s Speech lays out plans to get more people into apprenticeships using money saved from cutting low value, low outcome degrees.
National Savings & Investments
Phil Brickell Excerpts(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Torsten Bell
Let me try to take the right hon. Member’s questions in turn. I would think of compensation as two buckets. There will be automatic compensation relating to the withholding of funds. The FCA provides guidance on how that should be administered, and we will ensure that is put in place in full. More complicated cases—he has given examples in which the deprivation of funds has had implications—will be considered on a case-by-case basis, rather than by using the FCA formula that I have mentioned.
I am keen to praise journalists where we can, but I am afraid that, in the case of The Daily Telegraph in recent weeks, praise needs to be caveated. It is important to raise cases brought up by members of the public, but some of the reporting I have seen in the past 48 hours has been incredibly inaccurate. I will give the right hon. Gentleman two examples. The Daily Telegraph has published a piece claiming that 160,000 cases relating to NS&I have been brought to the Financial Ombudsman Service, when in truth that number is in the hundreds. That was printed on the front page of the newspaper without basic fact-checking taking place. Today, the paper has talked about taxpayers’ money being used to reunite people with their funds. That is entirely inaccurate for the reasons that I have set out. I worry that that will have worried some MPs and members of the public. It is important that we raise questions of customer service, in which NS&I has fallen short, as I have said, but we should not be blind to what has been inaccurate journalism in the past 48 hours.
Phil Brickell (Bolton West) (Lab)
I have very fond memories of the National Savings & Investment savings account that I held as a child—I regularly paid money into it at Little Lever post office. I understand how important it is for the Government to right historical failings at NS&I, and to reassure my constituents. I commend the Minister and the Treasury for the decisive action that they have taken, including the appointment of a new NS&I chief executive who is well respected across this House. What more can the Minister say to assure savers in Bolton West that NS&I will get to grips with the issues that he has mentioned today? In the light of his comments about false reporting in The Daily Telegraph, and given the extreme sensitivity around bereavement and funds, what more are his Department and officials doing to dispel the false information that has been put out by newspapers?
Torsten Bell
I am sure that many Members across the House, and many people across the country, share my hon. Friend’s experience of early engagement with NS&I. The brand has very high awareness and support for exactly the reasons he gives. On his question about an assurance that there will be change, I hope that I have set that out. The most important thing is putting in place new leadership and ensuring that we have spent the time with external advisers involved in recent months to understand the problem in detail and to set the path to putting it right. He will have heard what I have said about some of the media reporting. I hope that my statement has laid out the facts on the implications for taxpayers and the nature of the problem we are facing.
Oral Answers to Questions
Phil Brickell Excerpts(4 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Andrew Western
The hon. Member raises an important point. Can I begin by commending that charity in her constituency? There is an acknowledgment among the ministerial team that we need to look particularly at the support available for people looking to move into self-employment, and I would be happy to meet her to discuss the work of the charity further.
Phil Brickell (Bolton West) (Lab)
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Dame Diana Johnson)
I thank my hon. Friend for his question on this important issue for the Government. Action to support families includes raising the national living wage, expanding access to free school meals and tripling investment in breakfast clubs. Removing the two-child limit in universal credit will benefit 1.5 million children across Great Britain, including over 2,500 children in Bolton West. We have also implemented the fair repayment rate for deductions from universal credit and announced a new £1 billion a year package to reform crisis support.
Phil Brickell
Almost 4,000 people with jobs in my Bolton West constituency still need universal credit to cope with the cost of living. Heating, water and food bills have been stubbornly high. What steps is the Minister taking to ensure that families in my constituency get the support they need to pay the bills?
Dame Diana Johnson
We recognise that too many homes in England struggle to afford heating, and tackling fuel poverty is a Government priority. On 21 January, we published a new fuel poverty strategy, alongside the warm homes plan, to better protect fuel-poor households by 2030. At Budget 2025, we cut energy bills by an average of £150 and expanded the warm home discount, providing £150 rebate to a further 2.7 million low-income households.
Budget Resolutions
Phil Brickell Excerpts(6 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Phil Brickell (Bolton West) (Lab)
I warmly welcome the Chancellor’s Budget. It will improve the lives of my constituents by putting £150 back into the pockets of working people through removing levies on energy bills and by lifting 2,570 children out of poverty. This is a Budget with fairness at its core; it reduces child poverty, has more funding for the NHS and has more investment in school libraries. After the chaos of the 2022 Truss mini-Budget, the Chancellor has shown what real fiscal discipline looks like: inflation falling, growth prioritised and proper headroom restored.
I am particularly pleased that the Chancellor has stared down the sloganeers at both extremes. She has rejected the failed trickle-down instincts of the populist right, which bequeathed this Government with a legacy of failed austerity and profligate wasting of taxpayers’ money on dodgy PPE contracts during the pandemic. She has also dismissed unevidenced calls from the left-wing populists for a wealth tax, when it has no answers to the hard questions about capital flight, offshore assets or our overburdened enforcement agencies. All the while, she has increased the burden on those with the broadest shoulders, including via the new high-value council tax surcharge on homes valued at more than £2 million, ensuring that homeowners in mansions are not paying less in council tax than someone living in a mid-terrace in Blackrod.
I thank the Chancellor for heeding my calls by introducing new measures to tackle high street tax dodging and organised crime. The National Crime Agency estimates that some £12 billion in criminal cash is generated in the UK every year, including in the suspicious vape shops we have all clocked while walking round our constituencies. Those suspect enterprises not only erode the civic pride we have in our high streets, but undercut genuine businesses looking to provide a service and make ends meet. I welcome the Chancellor’s commitment to a cross-Government taskforce to tackle tax abuse and money laundering on our high streets, backed by £50 million every year over the next three years, which is funded by an increase in the economic crime levy paid for by the banks and other professional services firms. That is despite the platitudes from Lib Dem Members saying that banks are not being asked to pay more, when actually they are.
I will bring the issue of tax dodging on our high streets to life with an example of just how egregious some of these wheezes truly are. In the brief time that I have, let me talk a little about the world of snails—snail fornication, snail gestation, snail feed and snail cannibalism. London Centric’s Jim Waterson recently published an investigative report on this topic. It details how former Lancashire shoe salesman, Terry Ball, runs elaborate snail-based tax avoidance schemes that are costing councils millions of pounds simply by placing boxes of snails in vacant office buildings in an attempt to exempt them from business rates.
The scheme, perfected over many years to prevent the snails from eating one another and stop mass snail fornication, allows unscrupulous individuals to claim that empty warehouses are being used for agricultural purposes. In turn, landlords are granted a business rates exemption. If the firms in question are challenged by the local council, they are simply liquidated. They hold no assets, so no business rates can be claimed back, and they magically reappear under the guise of another mollusc-based enterprise registered at Companies House—it is taking shell companies to the extreme.
One local council has reported a loss of £370,000 in tax receipts just because of this specific mollusc-based wheeze. This is not just a quirky anecdote; it is a hard-edged example of how loopholes in our system are being exploited, made all the easier by the Tories’ decision in the last Parliament to abolish the Office of Tax Simplification. Indeed, the very same council is reporting losses of £10 million a year due to non-payment of business rates.
I welcome the further steps announced by the Chancellor yesterday, such as rewards for informants of high-value tax fraud, extra funding for trading standards, enhancing tax transparency on real estate, 350 new criminal investigators to tackle fraud and illicit tobacco and vapes, and a boost to HMRC to go after tax dodgers and their unscrupulous advisers. We need to do a lot more, but I commend the Chancellor. I urge her to continue in the same vein by reforming reliefs, strengthening enforcement and sending a message that Britain no longer tolerates tax gimmicks—whether involving snails, shell companies, or slimy advisers.
Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill
Phil Brickell ExcerptsTuesday 1st July 2025
(11 months, 1 week ago)
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Mr Peter Bedford (Mid Leicestershire) (Con)
So there we have it: a Prime Minister not in control, a Work and Pensions Secretary with her hands tied behind her back, and a Chancellor now scrambling to find ways to balance the books after months of reckless spending. This shoddy attempt at welfare reform has revealed something that the nation has learned over the last year: Labour did not plan for government. We all know that the welfare bill is enormous, with more than £150 billion being spent on benefits for working-age adults. A staggering one in four claim to have some form of disability; that is simply unsustainable.
The Government had a prime opportunity in their first year in office—their honeymoon period—to bring about long-term reforms, yet this half-baked Bill, which has already been hastily rewritten to appease hard-left Government Members, does not even achieve the £5 billion of savings originally intended. Worse, it leaves us with a two-tier system from a two-tier Prime Minister.
We all know why the Chancellor needs these savings: she will go down as the Klarna Chancellor—spend now, pay later. After all, she has blown taxpayers’ money on 25 more pointless quangos.
Mr Bedford
I am not giving away.
The Chancellor has also blown billions of pounds on GB Energy—a project so vague that no one seems to know what it does—while handing out inflation-busting pay rises to appease the unions. Now she cannot even claw back £5 billion of savings to keep market confidence as the country’s debt spirals out of control.
When the Work and Pensions Secretary tabled the Bill, Conservative Members gave her three reasonable asks. First, we needed the Government to commit to reducing welfare spending, yet as their screeching U-turn shows, they are incapable of tackling that problem. Indeed, the Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts an increase of £60 billion in annual welfare costs by the end of the Parliament.
Secondly, we asked for a clear commitment that the Government would get people back to work. However, as was highlighted by the Secretary of State yesterday, the pathways to work programme will not be fully funded until the end of the Parliament, so it will arguably be inconsequential, weak and woefully underfunded.
Mr Bedford
I am not giving away; I am going to make progress. The hon. Member can repay the favour sometime.
Thirdly, we needed a guarantee that taxes would not rise again in the upcoming Budget. But let us be honest: the Chancellor has only one move left—she will raid the pockets of hard-working families, which is something Labour promised not to do. Even today, we have heard rumours in the media that she is coming after people’s ISAs.
It is painfully clear that the Government have lost their fiscal credibility. I say to my constituents: I will always be there to support you and I will fight your corner when the Government come back again for more of your hard-earned income to cover their incompetence. This embarrassing failure of leadership from a Government who should be at the height of their power has led Conservative Members to conclude that we cannot and will not support the Bill.
Green Book Review
Phil Brickell Excerpts(1 year, 2 months ago)
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Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Phil Brickell (Bolton West) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Pritchard, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Mrs Russell) for introducing this important debate.
I rise today to make the case for communities such as mine in Bolton West to be placed at the heart of the Green Book review. The Government’s laser-like focus on growth is welcome, but I know from talking to businesses in my constituency, such as Woodall Nicholson in Westhoughton, Scan Computers in Horwich and Cohens Chemist in Lostock, that they face real obstacles to expansion and job creation. Some of that is a result of a lack of central Government co-ordination. The Green Book has consistently reinforced an economic model that prioritises investment in parts of the country that are already more prosperous, such as the south-east, rather than constituencies like mine.
Despite the expensive self-congratulation from the previous Government, levelling up did not amount to all that much in Bolton West. Indeed, under the last Government, Bolton West simply did not get a fair deal on funding. Time and time again, our towns lost out—a situation played out across the north. The result is that inequality has become entrenched and high streets across the north-west have become ghost towns, with young people having to leave their communities to find work, just as many of my peers had to when I was growing up.
The review is the perfect opportunity to fix this fatal, regressive flaw and ensure that investment decisions consider the wider benefits to our communities: job creation, skills development, better transport and improved public services. Crucially, investment in Greater Manchester cannot just mean investment in Manchester city centre; it must mean investment in the towns and communities that make Manchester the innovative economic powerhouse it has become.
We are at the cutting edge of the cyber and digital industries in Greater Manchester, and Bolton is a key part of that, with a growth corridor that stretches out across to Wigan. Bolton and other surrounding towns, however, have yet to be given the tools to harness that immense opportunity. After years of the Conservatives failing to put their money where their mouths were, we now see more investment into connecting Bolton to these high-growth sectors through training, infrastructure and partnerships, which bring those opportunities to my constituents’ doorsteps.
In my constituency, despite having a number of brilliant small and medium-sized enterprises, including the pioneering Blackedge brewery around the corner from my office in Horwich, I worry that many smaller firms still struggle to access the finance they need to grow. Too often, our local businesses struggle to secure the funding they need to expand, innovate and compete. We must ensure that businesses across the UK, including those in Bolton West, can access the capital they need to succeed.
If we are serious about driving economic growth, Government must invest and build the appropriate infrastructure. We must also work with the private sector to empower our entrepreneurs and local businesses, and not leave them battling a system that is stacked against them. The Green Book review must lead to real, tangible change that rebalances our economy and puts regions like ours at the heart of national prosperity. Never again should we live in a country where people’s futures are too often determined by their postcodes.
Income Tax (Charge)
Phil Brickell Excerpts(1 year, 7 months ago)
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Phil Brickell (Bolton West) (Lab)
The Budget is a strong first step in delivering a better future for our country, for towns such as Westhoughton, Horwich, Blackrod and Bolton, and for restoring the trust that is so vital for our democratic system. After all, this is a Budget that will increase the national living wage—by £1,400 for a full-time worker—and invest £25.6 billion in the NHS so that my constituents can access health services when and where they need them instead of waiting hours on end, as well as cracking down on fraud, tax avoidance and waste so that every penny of taxpayers’ money is put to good use.
Fully funding the electrification of the Bolton to Wigan train line will make a tremendous difference to the rail network for those travelling to work and to see loved ones in my constituency. I commend the Government for committing to investing in public infrastructure across the Bolton borough.
Parents, teachers and school staff across my constituency have told me time and again that current funding for education is simply inadequate. That is why I am so pleased to see an extra £1 billion for special educational needs, the breakfast club budget tripled, and a £2.3 billion increase in the core schools budget. I particularly welcome the additional £1.4 billion allocated to rebuild 500 schools, noting that St Bernard’s Roman Catholic primary school in my constituency was found to contain aerated concrete.
The Conservative party increased taxes to their highest rates for working people in more than 70 years, so I welcome the raising of much-needed cash for public services by putting up taxes on unearned wealth, but that does not mean that the Budget is anti-business—not at all. As someone who worked for over a decade in the private sector, I know that a strong, business-friendly economy is needed to deliver prosperity for working people and decent public services. The Government are making tough choices, but fair choices. I commend them to the House.