Recruitment

Debate between Rachel Reeves and Brandon Lewis

Friday 13th September 2013 Ministerial Corrections

[Rachel Reeves]

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government how much his Department has spent on advertising job vacancies since May 2010.

[Official Report, 4 March 2013, Vol. 559, c. 786-7W.]

Letter of correction from Brandon Lewis:

An error has been identified in the written answer given to the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) on 4 March 2013.

The full answer given was as follows:

[Brandon Lewis]

My Department has spent £3,298 on advertising specialist posts (this excludes spending that was commissioned in April 2010 but paid under this Administration, as detailed in the answer of 2 November 2011, Official Report, column 655W).

To place such overall spending in context, the Department spent £601,605 on advertising (of all types) in 2009-10.

I also observe the £57,389 of taxpayers' money that was spent by the Department in a roughly comparative period under the last administration just on job advertisements in The Guardian, as outlined in the answer to my question of 16 December 2010, Official Report, column 933W.

The correct answer should have been:

Finance (No. 4) Bill

Debate between Rachel Reeves and Brandon Lewis

Thursday 19th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Brandon Lewis (Great Yarmouth) (Con)]

Putting aside the fact that people on incomes such as my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) mentioned would pay zero in tax, which makes the hon. Lady’s argument purely academic at best, is it not true that she is referring to the same group of people who have just had the biggest ever increase in their pension? That is much different from the previous Labour Government’s 75p insult.

[Rachel Reeves]

The people who will be hit by this tax are those who have an income in retirement of between £10,500 and £25,000 a year. They will pay tax at 20% on any income over £10,500 a year. That is why 4.4 million pensioners will lose out by an average of £83 next year. People retiring next year will lose out by up to £322. That is the reality of the change that we will vote on this afternoon.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rachel Reeves]

No. Cuts to vital services such as the NHS and to social care and local transport also hit pensioners hard on top of the increases in VAT and the cuts to their pensions.

Many of the worst cuts are still to come. Analysis of the 2010 spending review showed that, on average, pensioner couples would be hit hard by cuts to services, amounting to £1,275 a year or 6% of their household income, while single pensioners stood to lose services worth £1,300 a year or 11% of their income. As we heard from the Treasury Committee yesterday, many pensioners are also paying a price for the Government’s failure to get the economy moving because the Government are relying on the Bank of England to undertake more quantitative easing to prevent the economy from sinking deeper into recession. That means that annuity rates and returns on pensioners’ savings are lower than they would otherwise be.

[Brandon Lewis]

The hon. Lady referred to the increase in the pensioners’ allowance and linked it to inflation. How high would the Labour Government have moved it in the current circumstances of inflation? How would they have paid for that with council tax rises elsewhere?

[Rachel Reeves]

I return to my earlier point: if inflation was 10% and pensioners got a £10 increase in their pension, would Government Members celebrate and say that that was huge largesse for pensioners? It is not; it just keeps pace with the cost of living. The increase in VAT, and the increases in gas and electricity prices, which the Government have done nothing to tackle, and the rise in petrol prices, mean that the cost of living for pensioners and other families has increased enormously because of the Government’s choices.

There is a further hit to pensioners’ incomes, buried in the detail of the Budget documents. This year, an estimated 300,000 pensioners stand to lose their savings credit, while others stand to lose as much as £276 a year as a result of reduced rates of savings credit. Under the Chancellor’s latest plans, the savings credit will be abolished completely, costing more than 100,000 new pensioners as much as £897 a year: another stealth tax that the Chancellor tried to slip past pensioners; another slice taken from the constrained budgets of ordinary families.