Budget Resolutions
Debate between Rachel Reeves and Kevin Foster
Rachel Reeves
The hon. and learned Lady will also know that the manifesto promise the Conservative party was elected on has been delayed time and again. If she really thinks that the support that will, we hope, come forward in September will be enough to help women get back to work and to deliver the high-quality childcare we need for all children, I am afraid she is deluded.
Cutting inheritance tax is unfair and misguided, and this blatantly unfair policy is further evidence of the Government’s warped sense of priorities at a time when we should be doing far more to help the millions of families struggling with childcare costs. Just one in 2,500 people in England and Wales will benefit from this cut, which will lift 26,000 of the richest families out of inheritance tax. This measure will only deepen the north-south divide, and it is another Tory policy benefiting the already well-off, when we could be investing in the future of all our people.
Secondly, I would like to turn to the issue of the self-employed. Today, the Chancellor made changes to national insurance contributions for the self-employed. I am all in favour of cracking down on bogus self-employment, especially when employers effectively force employees to become self-employed and to lose out on the security and benefits that go with being employed. I am also all in favour of cracking down on tax avoidance as a result of individuals incorporating rather than being direct employees.
However, I am worried about these changes. My back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that a self-employed person on £20,000 a year will end up paying £20 extra a month because of these changes in national insurance. We also know from the Budget documents and from previous announcements in Budgets that the cuts to corporation tax are worth £3.8 billion and will primarily benefit the largest businesses, yet in this Budget, we are increasing taxes on the self-employed by £2 billion. That seems to be the wrong priority: we should be doing more to help the self-employed and small businesses, and less to help the big businesses already making large profits. In the Budget documents, the Chancellor also speaks about tax avoidance, but the tax avoidance measures amount to £810 million. Again, we have this huge discrepancy: we are taking £810 million from tax avoidance, but asking the self-employed to pay an extra £2 billion.
While it is right for the Chancellor to say that we should look at access to maternity and paternity benefits for the self-employed, what about the other benefits that people take for granted if they are direct employees, such as sickness benefits, out-of-work benefits and access to universal credit? Will the Chancellor look at access to those for the self-employed, as well as ensuring that the self-employed can get a mortgage and a private pension—things that too many self-employed people find are denied to them?
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
I am listening with interest to the hon. Lady. She made reference to a number of benefits; she might recall that in late 2013, the Labour party’s then shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions said that Labour would be tougher than the Tories on benefits. Is that still her party’s approach?
Rachel Reeves
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman read that article; I said I would be tougher than the Tories in controlling the rising costs of benefits. For all the cuts we have seen from the Tories, the benefits bill keeps rising. Why is that? More young people are out of work, more is being spent on housing benefit because we are not building social housing, and one in five people is not paid a living wage. I will take no lectures at all from the Tories on controlling social security benefits; in fact, they have breached their social security cap, and they have had to come back to Parliament to explain themselves.
Thirdly, I welcome the announcement that the Government want to crack down on the small print in contracts, but I have a specific request, which the Minister at the Dispatch Box knows about. In 2013, Parliament capped charges on payday loans, resulting in a maximum charge of £24 a month if someone borrows £100. However, if someone goes overdrawn with their high street bank, they can be charged as much as £5 a day—almost £100 a month. If the Government are serious about protecting consumers from unscrupulous business practices, they should get tough on the banks that are using excessive overdraft charges to exploit customers, particularly those who are vulnerable and getting into debt.
Finally, I want to say something about grammar schools. The Budget documents say that the Government will spend £1 billion on new schools—presumably, those will be primarily grammar schools—but only £260 million on all other schools combined. How can that possibly be right? How can that new spending be fair and ensure that all our children get access to good schools? Instead of spending £25 million on bussing children to these new grammar schools, why do we not do more to ensure that all our children have the best possible start in life? That would be a fair Budget; that would be a Budget that addressed the concerns of all our constituents. We will not get it from the Conservatives; we will get it only from a Labour Government.