Winter Fuel Payment
Saqib Bhatti Excerpts(1 month ago)
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Torsten Bell
I congratulate it and I thank my hon. Friend, and probably hon. Members on both sides of the House, who I am sure have engaged with local charities in supporting their pensioners in the months that have gone by.
Saqib Bhatti (Meriden and Solihull East) (Con)
The Minister is being generous in giving way, and I am sure that he will continue to be. He talked about making responsible choices. According to Government analysis, 100,000 pensioners are being pushed into poverty. Is that a responsible choice?
Torsten Bell
The poverty assessment, which we provided to the Work and Pensions Committee, does not take into account any increase in pension credit take-up, which I will come to shortly. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately), talked about absolute pensioner poverty—the kind of poverty that should be falling every year as an economy grows. But relative poverty—a form of poverty that we look at—rose under the last Administration. Opposition Members may not like to hear this, but relative pensioner poverty rose by 300,000 under the last Government. I just gently say that when it comes to pensioner poverty, we have more to do—I take the hon. Gentleman’s point seriously—but the record of recent years is not one of success on that front.
Everyone in this House knows the economic and fiscal context—the economic stagnation of the past decade, visible in flatlining wages, collapsing public services and strained public finances. Every economist and every person in the country knows that Britain has lived through an unprecedented economic failure. In a challenging fiscal environment, difficult choices are unavoidable. The Government have set fiscal rules and we will stick to them. But, as some older Members may remember, prudence is for a purpose: to support a growing economy that benefits everyone. It is the prerequisite for rescuing our public services and rising living standards for workers, but also for pensioners.
Louise Jones
My hon. Friend is exactly right. The triple lock is a serious commitment that we are utterly committed to, and it will make a difference to every single pensioner in this country—far more than trying to pretend that we do not face the systemic problems that this country faces.
Saqib Bhatti
The hon. Member is being very generous with interventions. She talked about fairness in pay. Those pensioners also worked all through their lives and also deserve fairness. What is fair about the hundreds of millions being given to train drivers as opposed to what has been taken away from pensioners? What is fair about the £18 billion, or whatever the figure is, being spent on the Chagos islands, compared with what pensioners deserve?
Louise Jones
What is fair is a 4.1% rise in the state pension and a 5.5% to 6% rise for our soldiers, teachers and nurses, and I will say that as many times as I need to say it.
Many people in this country have been grappling with skyrocketing energy bills, which have caused real poverty. Those bills have skyrocketed largely because we are at the mercy of international markets, so it is vital that we take back sovereign control of our energy and energy prices, and GB Energy is a vital part of that.
Alberto Costa
The hon. Lady has raised that point already and erroneously said that my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately) had misspoken. The only person who has misspoken this afternoon, and continues to do so, is the hon. Lady. The Conservatives have been very clear. Last year, when the Labour Government chose to give train drivers an exorbitant pay increase, we highlighted that that was a poor decision precisely because it had a negative impact on the most vulnerable in society, the very people we are speaking about today—pensioners.
Saqib Bhatti
My hon. Friend is making an impassioned speech and excellent points. It is about not just the pay rises for train drivers, but the fact that they were not asked for any savings in return. In fact, the only people who were asked to make a sacrifice were the poor pensioners.
Alberto Costa
Indeed. My hon. Friend continues to make very sensible points. I am sure pensioners watching this debate will, once and for all, see that in 14 years of Conservative government we had protecting the most vulnerable and weakest in society at the forefront of our mind.
Mark Ferguson
I am about to get to the thrust of my argument, if the hon. Lady would not mind.
We have been talking about the winter fuel allowance and money being taken from pensioners, which is a serious point. I wish to talk briefly about what happened four years ago, when, in this place, the Social Security (Up-rating of Benefits) Act 2021 was passed. That was a very serious decision that the previous Government had to take. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Brash) for some of the enlightening research that he commissioned from the House of Commons Library. In 2021, the Conservative Government made a decision, following the unusual turbulence in the employment market after covid, that the triple lock would become, for one year only, a double lock. The Conservatives, who are very keen to say that they are the party of the triple lock, turned it into a double lock. I think that it is fair to say—as many Members did at the time—that it was a very unusual time in the market—
Mark Ferguson
I would be happy to give way, but I am coming to the thrust of my argument.
As a result, the state pension did not increase by 8.3%, as it could have done that year. It instead rose by the absolute minimum of 2.5%, and that has had cumulative effects. In year one, pensioners were £470 worse off. In year two, they were £520 worse off. And in year three, they were £560 worse off. As I want to be reasonable in this debate, I make it clear that the Labour party did not support the 8.3% rise, because we believed, as a reasonable Opposition who went on to win the general election, that it was not within the bounds of what would normally be considered a rise in wages and was because of the impacts of covid. However, Members on the Labour Benches—I was sadly not one of them at the time—supported a Lords amendment that asked for the covid-specific elements to be stripped out to allow the Conservative party to maintain their manifesto commitment to a triple lock. That was voted down by the Conservative party.
Labour Members have been attempting to be reasonable and considered in opposition and in government about the impacts of spending on pensioners. Conservative Members are arguing as if they have never had to take difficult decisions that would have impacts on pensioners. We have all had to take difficult decisions, and we will all continue to do so.
Saqib Bhatti
I thank the hon. Member for giving way and for getting to the thrust of his argument. He keeps referring to market turbulence, but I think he means the once-in-a-lifetime pandemic. We have repeatedly said how difficult governing is. The fact is that we would have made different choices from the ones that the current Government are making right now.
Mark Ferguson
I thank the hon. Member for his point, but I feel like he has not really listened to what I was saying. The point that I was making was that, at the time, the Government of the day had an opportunity to strip out the covid effects. I have already used the phrase “covid effects” and I have referred to the once-in-a-generation pandemic—my Lord, did we not all live through it? None of us has forgotten about it. But instead of stripping out the covid effects, the Conservative Government argued that that would be too difficult, so, instead, there was a 2.5% rise. That had an effect on pensioners, but I do not feel that the Conservative party has had the same reckoning with that difficult decision that we on Labour Benches have had with the decisions that we have taken.
Income Tax (Charge)
Saqib Bhatti Excerpts(5 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Saqib Bhatti (Meriden and Solihull East) (Con)
The Chancellor’s Budget last week was a shocking demonstration of economic illiteracy. The Government often speak about growth, but all the Budget showed was a disdain for wealth creators, and it betrayed family businesses and farmers—reminiscent of the damage that the Labour party caused in the 1970s. Conservative Members know that we cannot tax our way to growth. My constituents in Meriden and Solihull East are particularly dismayed by the trail of broken manifesto commitments, and the highest debt burden and tax burden, with taxes being put up by £40 billion. They are particularly angry about the disdain shown for our rural communities and small businesses. The Government often talk about them being the lifeblood of our communities, but that is more than just a slogan.
I will focus on farming in the limited time I have. As the proud representative of a number of family farms, I speak on behalf of many constituents who are appalled by the Budget. Our farmers work seven days a week, 365 days a year, to keep food on our tables, and they nurture our green and pleasant land. They work no matter the weather, and are vulnerable to it like no other workers in any other industry in the country. The Chancellor argues that the tax on family farms is necessary to support our public services, but she clearly fails to recognise that those farms also provide a public service. They put food on our tables, ensure our food security and protect our rural heritage.
The Chancellor’s betrayal of our rural communities through the family farm tax will have damaging consequences for farmers and everyone in the country. I welcome the interventions from Jeremy Clarkson and the NFU president Tim Bradshaw, who today made arguments about the deepening mental health crisis in our rural communities. The Chancellor must recognise that farming is not a hobby or pastime for the landed classes; it is an engine that drives our food security and sustains our rural communities. Farmers do not have huge bank accounts to pay death tax bills. The Budget will lead to an exodus of farmers, undermining our food security and making everyone more vulnerable to global instability. We should not be surprised by the measures. The Labour party included only 87 words on the farming industry in its manifesto, which I thought was particularly disrespectful.
I would talk about the billions that our small businesses contribute to our high streets, but I will talk instead about fuel duty. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith) was very kind to mention me earlier, but there were 73 Conservative Members of Parliament who wrote to the Chancellor, and 131,000 people signed the petition. Just two weeks ago, Government briefings revealed that they were going to raise fuel duty by 7p. We were able to force a U-turn and protect the freeze on fuel duty.
What does this Labour party stand for? It does not stand for small businesses on the high street, it does not stand for our farms or rural communities, it does not stand for hard-working families, and it certainly does not stand for working people.
Social Security
Saqib Bhatti Excerpts(7 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Saqib Bhatti (Meriden and Solihull East) (Con)
I stand to speak on behalf of my 18,500 pensioners who will be affected by this measure. Before I do so, I commend the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) on a really impassioned speech. I know it is not easy to stand against one’s own party, but today’s decision is a choice between right and wrong. Members are defending the choice by the Government and the Chancellor to make this decision on the backs of pensioners, who have the sheer brass neck to go out and defend it, alleging a black hole when they have paid billions to unions without any savings in return. There is GB Energy—a shell company for £8 billion—and climate promises of more than £11 billion, and then they say that there is no money and they are going to get £1.1 billion on the back of pensioners.
Helena Dollimore (Hastings and Rye) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the hon. Member give way?
Saqib Bhatti
I will not, because I am sure the hon. Lady can participate later. The Government might be fooling themselves, but they are not fooling the British public or my pensioners. If they want to do the right thing, they should follow the example of the hon. Member for York Central. If there are issues, I am sure that even the Opposition will look into them in depth and we will do the right thing, but the Government are using our pensioners as some sort of political tool to make an ideological point. The Chancellor stood up and found this alleged black hole to try to justify that. It is a horrible situation—
Saqib Bhatti
I will not give way, as I will make some progress in the limited time I have. Many Opposition Members are absolutely enraged that this is happening. The Labour party talked about transparency, yet there has been no full impact assessment of the measure. Where is it? If the Government have nothing to be afraid of, where is the impact assessment? Why did they not wait until the Budget—the big fiscal moment?
Saqib Bhatti
I have already said that I will not give way. There could have been adequate scrutiny so that the House could analyse it and see the impact. Some 4,000 people are at risk of death—that is not my number; that is what the Labour party said in 2017. That is what Labour Members are voting for if they allow this measure to pass. They must do the right thing, and not use our pensioners as a political weapon for their own ideology. This is a horrible situation to put them in. The anxiety that Members are causing is outrageous. The Government really must step up their game if they are to convince the British public that this is the right thing to do.