Budget Resolutions

Debate between Sam Rushworth and Mike Wood

Wednesday 26th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mike Wood]

My hon. Friend hits the nail on the head. I would go slightly further and say that it is not about paying off the debt; it is purely about servicing additional borrowing. That has real consequences for working families.

Perhaps the most concerning part of the OBR’s report is in paragraph 1.9, which says:

“Growth in real household disposable income per person is projected to fall from 3 per cent”

last year. It is falling not to 2%, or even to 1%, but to one quarter of one per cent on average for the next five years.

[Sam Rushworth (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mike Wood]

I will make a little progress; I can see the time.

The difference between 3% per year and 0.25% per year in growth in disposable income adds up to £2,700 less per family in disposable income because of the Chancellor’s choices.

We needed a Budget for jobs, but instead this was a Budget about saving the Prime Minister’s job by giving his mutinous Back Benchers the welfare rises that he forced them to vote against just last year. If the Government really wanted to support jobs, they would have undone some of the damage that the Chancellor did last year, particularly on hospitality.

A number of Members have raised the issue of hospitality and business rate reform. Before the election, the Chancellor was clear that business rates would be reformed, which meant that pubs, restaurants and cafés would have lower bills. Instead, the owners of cafés, pub landlords and restaurant owners saw their business rate bills more than double in April. We have heard today from the Chancellor that—because of the effects of revaluation and the fact that she has decided to go with a reduction of only 10p on the multiplier, instead of the 20p signalled when the Government introduced the legislation last year—when the new regime comes in, we will again see the bills for those pubs and cafés increasing, even though business rate bills have only just doubled.

This is a bad deal for hospitality. It will have a devastating impact on our high streets, and it is made only worse by the decision of the Chancellor to increase alcohol duties. That will hit pubs again, and make it more difficult for our pubs, our bars and our responsibly licensed venues to compete with supermarkets piling them high and selling them cheap.

EU-UK Summit

Debate between Sam Rushworth and Mike Wood

Thursday 22nd May 2025 Westminster Hall

[Sam Rushworth]

I was not in the previous Conservative Government, so I cannot answer that, but it is absolutely clear that what people voted for actually got worse.

[Mike Wood (Kingswinford and South Staffordshire) (Con)]

According to the House of Commons Library, in 2018, out of more than 5,000 requests under the Dublin III regulation, just over 200 were granted. That is not the silver bullet—and never was—that the hon. Gentleman imagines it to have been.

[Sam Rushworth]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman is disagreeing with the shadow Home Secretary, because I was quoting his words.

Is it not also the case that Brexit ended our co-operation on policing and ended intelligence-sharing? I welcome the fact that, with this deal, the Government have negotiated access to EU facial imaging data to help to catch people smugglers and dangerous criminals, and to increase co-operation to track down rapists, murderers and drug lords. Is that not also something the European Union has put on the table that Britain benefits from?

Free School Meals (Automatic Registration of Eligible Children) Bill

Debate between Sam Rushworth and Mike Wood

2nd reading
Friday 14th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mike Wood (Kingswinford and South Staffordshire) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Crawley (Peter Lamb) on promoting this Bill so ably. The last Conservative Government massively expanded eligibility for free school meals, meaning that the proportion of children and young people eligible is much higher than was the case under any previous Government. The evidence here proves that the inheritance we left behind in this area last July was much kinder than that which the last Labour Government left us in 2010, with one in three children able to get a free school meal—as opposed to one in six when the previous Labour Government was last in office—despite a large fall in the number of workless households.

[Sam Rushworth]

We see in the bodies of children increased stunting, with the average 10-year-old 1 cm shorter than they were in 2010. How does that square with what the Minister is saying? We see a malnutrition crisis.

[Mike Wood]

When we look at dietary habits in recent decades, we see that that is not confined to parts of the income spectrum. There has been a deterioration in the quality of diets going back over several decades that is quite separate from issues of poverty.

As of January 2024, more than 2.1 million pupils were eligible for benefits-related free school meals, which amounted to 24.6% of all pupils. In addition, more than 90,000 disadvantaged students in further education received a free school meal at lunch time. Collectively, this supported the children and young people who needed it most to ensure that they could make the most of their world-class education, boost their health and save their parents considerable amounts that they could not afford.