Autumn Statement

Seema Malhotra Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

No; I am sorry to say that to my hon. Friend. What I have done today is added £23 billion-worth of infrastructure and R and D expenditure to existing very significant budgets. Part of that will go to transport and some of that will go to road schemes, but it will be for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport to listen to the representations that my hon. Friend and others are making and to allocate the fund, according to the appropriate principles, to maximise productivity growth in our economy. I am sure that he will be delighted to talk to her.

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

Schools in my constituency are not alone in stepping in to fill the welfare gap, as parents on the breadline hit by Government cuts struggle to buy their children’s school uniforms, shoes and stationery. The situation is getting worse—in the 21st century. What impact does the Chancellor believe his projected 8% per-pupil spending cuts, as estimated by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, will have on the social mobility of a generation of children? How can it be right that instead of softening the cuts, for which he voted, he has instead chosen to spend £60 million a year on expanding grammar schools? What I have raised should have been part of his plan for productivity.

[Mr Hammond]

I do not agree with the hon. Lady; she needs to look at these things in the round. I know that Labour Members like to take a single example and exaggerate it, but they need to look at the package in the round: what we are doing with raising personal allowances for taxation for people in work, dramatically reducing the tax that they pay; taking millions of people out of taxation; and a pay rise for millions of people from the national living wage. The hon. Lady should look at it in the round.