Supporting Small Business
Debate between Rachel Reeves and Jessica Morden(2 years, 6 months ago)
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Rachel Reeves
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She speaks about businesses in Brent, but that could go for so many other constituencies, high streets and town streets across our country. We want businesses to thrive and power our recovery and for every village, town and city across the UK to feel the benefits of a stronger and more resilient economy. Diluting ambition or postponing new thinking comes at a high price for businesses and jobs.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
In Wales, the Welsh Labour Government have helped 70,000 businesses, which will not have to pay any rates until next year, whereas in England over the summer, the support was scaled back. Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a stark contrast between Labour in power supporting business and the Conservative party?
Rachel Reeves
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Labour Government in Wales ensured that there would be no business rates at all for the retail and hospitality sectors in Wales for this financial year. That is in stark contrast to the Conservative Government in Westminster, who pushed ahead with restarting business rate bills in June this year.
What is decided in this place has huge implications for businesses, from the kitchen-table start-up to our high streets, industrial parks and commercial giants known across the world. That is one of the reasons it is so worrying that, at this crucial time, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor concocted a new jobs tax to arrive in the spring. Despite all their election promises to cut national insurance contributions, they are actually raising them against the strong advice of businesses and trade unions.
The Conservative Government’s actions will make each new recruit more expensive and increase the costs to business. The decision to saddle employers and workers with the jobs tax takes money out of people’s pockets when our economic recovery is not yet established or secure and only adds to the pressure on businesses after a testing year and a half. When all other costs are going up—the costs of energy and of supplies—these tax rises are only hitting them harder.
State Pension Age (Women)
Debate between Rachel Reeves and Jessica Morden(13 years ago)
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Rachel Reeves
The point is that these women will have time to prepare for changes if they happen in 2026. Changes in 2026 were legislated for in 2008, which meant that the people we are talking about today had 18 years’ notice of any changes. That is very different from the changes that the Government are introducing because they will start in 2016, giving people just five years’ notice. That is the point that Members are making today. We are not saying that we do not think that there should be any changes to the state pension age, because with increasing longevity it is right that people should work longer, but it is not right to move the goalposts and leave people so little time to prepare for changes.
As I said earlier, the loss of pension income for someone who has to wait two more years for their state pension is about £10,000, or it can be up to £15,000 if they are on pension credit. It is not feasible that that group of people can make up that difference in a five-year period, yet that is what the Minister is asking them to do.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
In Newport, 1,500 women will be affected by this change. Some of them have contacted me to say how betrayed they feel about it. Presumably, however, hundreds of them are unaware that it will happen. Is it not true that many women are not only not being given enough time to prepare for the change but are unaware that it is coming in a very short period of time?
Rachel Reeves
Yes. That is another point that my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead made earlier. Many of the women who will be affected by this change have written to us, but even more women have not done so. The reason they have not written to us is not because they are happy and fine with these changes. By and large, it is because they are not aware of them. They are aware that they will have to work for longer than they had previously thought, because of the changes made in 1995 that will equalise the state pension age for men and women by 2020, but they do not know that those additional changes are coming down the line. So they are making changes now—as I said before, many of them are moving to part-time work so that they can care for elderly parents or young grandchildren—unaware that these additional changes are coming down the line. I think that people will be particularly worried or scared about what the future holds for them.