Business of the House

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

Thursday 6th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising those appalling and absurd crimes. How could somebody register a goldfish as a waste dealer? The Government are preparing significant reforms to continue to increase the pressure on illegal waste operators. Our planned electronic waste tracking reforms will make it harder to misidentify waste or dispose of it unsuitably. Our planned changes to the carriers, brokers and dealers licensing regime will improve licensing and make it harder still for rogue operators to escape detection, but I suppose it is to some extent reassuring to my hon. Friend, and to me, that the gentleman he referred to has been found guilty, convicted and sent to jail. Sometimes the law does take its course, in all its majesty.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Some 8.5 million people entered this year in debt. With one in six people struggling to pay bills, escalating food, fuel and housing costs mean that the situation is getting more and more acute. In York, we have launched a poverty truth commission to start addressing the issues, but we know that a lot of the solutions lie in this House, so can we have an urgent debate about the impact of poverty and the solutions that need to be brought forward urgently?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I wonder if I may divide the question into two parts—one on providing support for people in debt, and the other on what the Government and taxpayers are doing to support people in poverty—because I think the two questions, though related, are not identical. Some people get into a spiral of debt for which there are very good organisations in all our constituencies that do amazing work. We should all, as individual MPs, try to point our constituents in the right direction to get help. Often interest rates and repayments can be significantly reduced simply by entering into a conversation with the lenders.

With regard to what the Government have been doing on poverty, the Government are aware of the difficulties, and there is £4.2 billion of support available. Raising the national living wage to £9.50 next year will help. Giving nearly 2 million families an extra £1,000 a year through the cut to the universal credit taper and the increase to work allowances will also be important. Both of those things will help work to pay, and work is unquestionably the best way out of poverty. There are a number of other schemes, but time is pressing, so unless I get another question on the matter I will not go into them all.