Oral Answers to Questions

Shabana Mahmood Excerpts

Tuesday 1st February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

The hon. Member will know that the oil and gas sector does pay significant taxes. Indeed, it pays additional taxes, and to date it has paid more than £375 billion in production taxes.

[Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab)]

6. What recent discussions he has had with the Financial Conduct Authority on the regulation of the insurance industry.

[The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (John Glen)]

I hold regular discussions, usually on a six-weekly basis, with the chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority on a range of issues regarding the regulation of financial markets, including the insurance market.

[Shabana Mahmood]

Insurance companies are exploiting the cladding scandal by charging leaseholders extortionate, punitive and unethical prices for their buildings insurance. The Treasury and the FCA have frankly done nothing while people are forced to find eye-watering sums of money because of a scandal that they did not cause, and there is no transparency as to how their premiums are being calculated. After many years, a Government Minister has finally written to the FCA, but will the Treasury now step up and ensure that the FCA not only looks into this matter but provides redress for my constituents and the thousands of people across this country who are experiencing severe financial distress?

[John Glen]

The FCA has been looking at this matter, and last week my colleague the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities wrote to the FCA to ask it to look at whether there is a market failure. Since then, it has written back, with the Competition and Markets Authority, to say that they are engaging with the industry and will produce a statement on the matter in due course. I recognise the concerns that the hon. Member has raised and the dysfunctionality that may exist in the market, and it is important that that is looked at carefully.

Additional Covid-19 Restrictions: Fair Economic Support

Shabana Mahmood Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab)]

I have to say, I find the approach that the hon. Member for Rother Valley (Alexander Stafford) has taken—and, indeed, that the whole Government are taking to the virus—and the remarks that he has just made so profoundly depressing. In case he or anybody else has not got the memo, the virus has already started to run amok in our country. The Government have already lost control of this virus. At a time when we all need to pull together, in the context of a global emergency, the Government are pursuing rhetoric and a narrative that is all about dividing communities from one another and sowing division, as if our country needs any more division after the last few years—we have already had quite enough of that. Why pit mayor against mayor? Why pit region against region?

The virus does not care for geographical boundaries or which local or national official is ultimately responsible for any of our policies. The virus is running wild through our country. We all need to pull together, and the Government therefore need to behave as the Government of a United Kingdom and pursue a national strategy that is comprehensible and understandable to the vast majority of us—one that is rational and does not mean careering from one type of measure to another, doing 180° turns from one day to the next. We need some rationality and a clear national strategy from the Government.

The virus has shown the absolute mess of English devolution under this Government, because it is not true devolution; it is just devolution of blame and responsibility for decisions that local people are not involved in. The Government are going to have to change course, because everything that we know about strategies that work to get the virus under control shows that we need local expertise and locally led decision making.

We also need a package of support that can protect jobs and businesses. Nothing that the Government have done since the tiers were introduced, particularly in areas such as mine, which is under tier 2 restrictions, will go far enough to protect jobs, livelihoods and businesses, which will be crucial to our economic recovery when we are through the worst of the crisis. The cost of borrowing is low at this point. I say to all those who behave as though this one change in the measures to support businesses and jobs will somehow destroy our economy: we are in unprecedented times. The cost of borrowing is low, and we should do what other nations are doing. We should provide as much support as necessary to save as many jobs and businesses as possible, so that there is a viable economy for us to regrow once we are back out of this crisis.

Finally, I urge the Minister to deal with the fact that areas in tier 2, such as Birmingham, are in the worst of all worlds, because their business base has been decimated by public health measures, but businesses are not forced to close, so they do not get any support. It is nonsensical that we should end up wishing we were in tier 3 just to get some support. The Government must change course.

Protection of Jobs and Businesses

Shabana Mahmood Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab)]

In my constituency of Birmingham, Ladywood up to 8,600 jobs are at risk if the Chancellor presses ahead with the removal of the furlough scheme and the self-employed income support scheme in October and if he does not change course and adopt a targeted continuation of both schemes for particularly hard hit sectors. My constituency already had one of the highest unemployment rates in the country before the pandemic hit. My fear is that if many of the jobs of those currently on wage support schemes go, then my area and my city will take much longer to recover than other parts of the country.

I want to make the case for the arts and entertainment sector. I know that many are making cases for different sectors in this debate, but there are 60,000 jobs in the arts and entertainment sector in my region of the west midlands, and Birmingham is at the heart of many of those jobs. My constituency encompasses the whole of the city centre, which is home to many of the venues and therefore the jobs in the sector. It is therefore crucial to my area and the social, cultural and economic life of Birmingham.

The sector is struggling because it cannot get back up and running like other sectors can. The public health advice and the laws that are in place because of public health mean that its businesses cannot get back to normal. In those circumstances, it is unconscionable that economic support does not follow where the public health rules lead us.

Everything we heard from those on the Treasury Bench today about the challenges in continuing a sector-specific wage support scheme sounds very hollow to all those who are desperately trying to save their jobs. The Government have shown real creativity in coming up with economic policy to deal with the impact of the pandemic, and that should not stop now. They should overcome the hurdles that are in place to adopt a sector-specific approach, because every job in every sector that is saved today or in the next few months will decrease the scale of the bills we will all face when we ultimately have to pay off the costs of this pandemic. The cost of supporting jobs and sectors facing total collapse—those businesses are going to go to the wall—will be cheaper than the cost of inaction, which will be much more expensive in the long run. The Government’s current approach, I am afraid to say, not only does not make economic sense, but fails the test of fairness, too.

In the short time left to me, I wish to make the case for Birmingham in particular, because we are due to host the Commonwealth games in 2022. If the heart of our arts and entertainment sector is ripped out from our city, we will not be able to see the full benefits of what the Commonwealth games could bring to the brilliant city of Birmingham. I urge the Treasury to take a region-specific approach and take into account factors such as international events, so that we can have the full benefits for all our constituents—benefits envisaged when we win such bids in the first place.

Covid-19: Economic Package

Shabana Mahmood Excerpts

Tuesday 12th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

My hon. Friend is an excellent advocate for the freight industry and the importance of the port in her town, which does so much to help fuel the growth of our country. That is why I was pleased to extend support to the sector, to maintain our vital freight links.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: as I said at the outset of this crisis, we are in this together—everyone has to play their role, and that means employers and companies as well doing their bit to support and protect their staff to the best of their ability and pitch in to help get through this crisis. I would be happy to talk to her further if there is more that she thinks we can do.

[Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab) [V]]

Women are considerably more likely to be furloughed than men, and the disproportionate impact of covid-19 on our black, Asian and minority ethnic communities is already being investigated from a health perspective by Public Health England. Has the Chancellor assessed the equality impact of all his package of economic measures on women and our BAME communities? If so, will he publish that impact assessment?

[Rishi Sunak]

What is clear and emerging is that the sectors and people most impacted by the lockdown are disproportionately women, as the hon. Member mentioned, and those in lower-paid sectors, who probably are financially less resilient. That is why the scheme is so important in providing job and income security to millions of people. That is why today I have made the decision to extend the scheme, to maximise the possibility that those people will have a job to go back to. The hon. Member can rest assured that I keep a very careful eye on all the impacts of the scheme. I do believe that it is benefiting some of the most vulnerable in our society today.

Finance Bill

Shabana Mahmood Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Programme motion & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution
Monday 27th April 2020 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab) [V]]

When the Minister introduced the Bill’s Second Reading, he spoke for everyone in the country when he said that every day feels like a decade. There is an air of slight unreality about the debate. As other Members have remarked, the Budget was out of date almost immediately from the moment the Chancellor sat down after delivering it, because of the scale of the crisis, the fast-changing situation that we are living in and the difficulties that businesses and people are facing all over the country. It is vital that we do everything we can in a national effort to keep people in work and to get cash to struggling businesses.

In that context, I welcome the Chancellor’s announcement today that the bounce-back loans are now 100% Government backed, but I must say we are far behind other countries—in particular the US, China, Germany and Switzerland—on measures to get money through to small and medium-sized enterprises. So often we describe SMEs as the lifeblood or the engine of our economy, yet we are failing to get the right level of support to them quickly enough in this crisis.

That is why we have seen multiple announcements made to correct defects in previous announcements. That approach is simply not good enough. In my view, the Government need to go much further than the current schemes, because they are not equal to the task that we face. In particular, they must as a matter of urgency streamline the application process and remove the high barriers that are in place at the moment for businesses to prove their viability.

I understand the argument about placing too high a burden on future generations, but if we fail to take adequate action now, that burden will be high in any event. We must try to limit the long-term damage to our economy, and that means supporting small and medium-sized enterprises much more than we are doing at the moment.

This crisis highlights more than ever the need to deal with fundamental weaknesses in our economy. I think in particular of my constituency, the challenge that we have with long-term unemployment and the plight of the working poor. We cannot allow such structural weaknesses in our economy to continue after the crisis, which has exposed the dangers that we see as a result of those fundamental weaknesses.

The shadow Chancellor said, and I agree with her, that after the crisis we will need a new economic settlement. We will need a new economic settlement not only in our domestic politics and economy, but in the international sphere as well, so I will speak a little about the digital services tax. I welcome the new 2% tax on revenues of search engines, social media platforms and online marketplaces that derive their value from UK users. As we all know, this measure will not deal with the differential tax treatment between brick businesses and click business, and it will certainly not deal with Amazon, which continues to grow exponentially, but it is a step in the right direction. I appreciate that there is a debate to be had about whether to take multilateral or unilateral action in this space, but as far as I am concerned the status quo needs breaking apart, and that can happen only through Governments taking unilateral action. In this case, I urge the Government to go further. We cannot keep standing by, watching this ridiculous situation where hugely wealthy companies pay little or no tax in countries such as ours where they have a huge presence.

The current crisis means that, once we emerge from covid and all its related difficulties for our economy, it will not simply be a case of playing populist politics; I simply do not think the public will accept a situation in which such huge multinational enterprises do not pay a fair share of tax in countries such as ours where they create a huge amount of their value. Something needs to break open the logjam on this in the international sphere. We know that the US will react, but we must be bold and we must be brave—we must grasp the nettle on this, because we need well resourced Governments if we are going to deal with the challenges that we face as a result of the covid crisis.

Oral Answers to Questions

Shabana Mahmood Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jane Ellison]

There are two points here. First, as I have said, if people feel their tax credits have been incorrectly withdrawn because of errors they should contact HMRC, which will review that and redress can be made. Secondly, customers can ask for mandatory reconsideration if they do not feel that their circumstances have been correctly identified. Sometimes that is because people do not send through the right information.

[Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab)]

11. What assessment his Department has made of the potential effect on the economy of the UK no longer having access to the single market.

[The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr Philip Hammond)]

The UK will leave the European Union and will introduce control of migration between Britain and the EU. Working with officials across Government, the Treasury continues to undertake a range of analyses to inform the UK’s position for the upcoming negotiations and we have made it clear, I am afraid, that we are not going to provide a running commentary, but we do want the best outcome for the UK and that means pursuing a bespoke arrangement that will allow our companies maximum access to the European market.

[Shabana Mahmood]

The Chancellor’s predecessor had many a failed target and plan, one of which was a target of £1 trillion in exports by 2020, a target that is nowhere near being reached even with full access to, and membership of, the single market. Meanwhile other countries such as Germany currently export more than we do to China and other growth markets. Does the Chancellor agree that the failure of the Government to improve the UK’s export performance has left us unable to take full advantage of opportunities outside the EU and more vulnerable to—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I think the hon. Lady should leave a full version of her question in the Library of the House.

The Economy and Work

Shabana Mahmood Excerpts

Thursday 26th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak in the Queen’s Speech debate today if only for three minutes. As many people, both inside and outside this House, have remarked, this speech has felt a bit like a damp squib, or, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) said, all filler and no killer. Perhaps that is because all eyes are on the referendum. It is astonishing that the Tories have been waiting for a majority Government since the 1990s and have already run out of ideas by their second Queen’s Speech. That takes some doing.

As far as the economy is concerned, the sum total of Bills in this Queen’s Speech does not add up to the comprehensive plan that would put the recovery on a more sustainable footing, or allow our citizens to meet the challenges of the labour market as it is today and also, more importantly, as it will be in the future. We are not producing enough secure, well-paid jobs, and the Government have presided over record low pay growth, so we badly needed a clear, bold and comprehensive productivity plan, which is totally missing from this Queen’s Speech.

The Chancellor has been the steward of the UK economy for the past six years, but unfortunately for all of us he appears to be a one-trick pony struggling with his only trick. His only real plan for the economy is deficit reduction, and he continually misses his own targets. We know that he failed to eliminate the deficit in the last Parliament as promised and figures released by the Office for National Statistics on Tuesday showed that the Chancellor had missed his borrowing target from last year by £3.8 billion, with the deficit still standing at £76 billion. Manufacturing remains 6.9% below 2008 levels, and our export performance is really worrying. Although services continue to outperform, we are still lagging behind on goods exports, with the widest shortfall since records began. It is worth remembering that, in 2011, the Chancellor said that our exports were critical to our economic growth, and that he was going to double the value of exports to £1 trillion and increase the number of exporters by 100,000. His record shows that exports were not even mentioned in last year’s Budget because there has been only a tiny increase in the value of exports since 2011. In fact, the number of exporters has fallen between 2013 and 2014. The Chancellor will try to blame the global cocktail of risk, but many of the problems are of the Government’s own making, because of their failure to do any serious heavy lifting in rebalancing the UK economy.

What we really needed from the Queen’s Speech was a proper productivity plan, not just a vague ragbag of old failed policies that the Government have tried to put together under a new label. We needed a fresh start for exports, so that our performance in exports can start the rebalancing that our economy so urgently needs.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Shabana Mahmood Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab)]

During the Chancellor’s opening speech today, I could not help but reflect that he should consider a job swap with his Financial Secretary to the Treasury, who did a much better job of trying to defend the indefensible in the Chamber yesterday. The Chancellor could have improved his performance by saying sorry—sorry to all the disabled people he has frightened over the last few days—but not for the first time for him sorry proved to be the hardest word.

On the basis of the things the Chancellor does say, it is clear he has a habit of saying one thing and then doing quite another. He famously promised in 2010 that he would eliminate the deficit within five years, but it now seems it will take him another full Parliament to achieve that. He said the debt would peak at 70% of GDP in 2013-14 and then fall and that our debt-to-GDP ratio would fall every year, but he has missed those targets.

The borrowing figures out today do not make for good reading for the Chancellor. Public sector net borrowing was higher than expected last month. Last week, the borrowing forecast was lowered to £72.2 billion, but the ONS tells us that borrowing so far this fiscal year, from April 2015 to this February, is already at £70.7 billion, meaning he can only borrow £1.5 billion in March. I very much doubt this is achievable, given that in March 2015 he borrowed £7.4 billion. It is another target that is likely to be missed. He said he would cap welfare spending, but he has well and truly bust his own welfare cap. Last summer, when he launched the productivity plan, he said it would produce “world-beating productivity”. It is a damning indictment of that plan that the OBR has significantly revised down its forecasts of our national productivity.

The combination of all those factors means that as a nation we are ill prepared for the global cocktail of risks that the Chancellor himself has spent the last three months telling us about. His habit of saying one thing and doing another is something he has been getting away with for some time, but this year, finally, some on his own side are recoiling. His iteration of that famous phrase “We’re all in it together” was too much for the former Work and Pensions Secretary. Taking money from the disabled and cutting capital gains tax for the better-off was more than he could bear—and he is not exactly a soft touch. It comes to something when the Government are deemed too right wing even for him.

The Government’s retreat is welcome, but with it comes a hole in the Budget and a scorecard that no longer adds up. The scorecard already had the air of surrealism about it. Many people play fantasy football, but it seems the Chancellor plays fantasy Budget. The fiscal forecast for 2019-20 suggests that in one year we will go from a £21.4 billion deficit to a £10.4 billion surplus—never mind that we will never have reduced the deficit by that much in any year since 2010; never mind that the fiscal charter, introduced in October, has already been broken; never mind the retreat from the cuts to PIP.

The Chancellor has reigned over a litany of missed targets—growth down, productivity down, fiscal rules broken, a fantasy scorecard. The resignation of the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) puts the attention squarely back where it should be—on the Chancellor’s ability to deliver what he says he will—and it has become clear, especially over the last few days, that he has utterly failed.

Budget Changes

Shabana Mahmood Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight that measure, which was announced last week. This Government are taking the issues of homelessness seriously and an important set of policies was announced last week.

[Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab)]

Given that the Chancellor has been warning us all about the so-called global cocktail of risks, and given that we learned from the Budget statement that our growth forecasts are down, as are those for our productivity, which is fast reaching crisis point, what possible justification can the Minister offer, considering all the other changes that have already been made to the Budget, for retaining the substantial cut to capital gains tax, which disproportionately benefits the better off and is simply a cut that, at this point, we do not need?

[Mr Gauke]

One of the important challenges that we face is improving productivity in this country. If we want to improve productivity, we want more investment. If we want more investment, we do not want high rates of tax that discourage investment. May I point out that in terms of capital gains tax, the rate is still higher than the one we inherited in 2010?

Oral Answers to Questions

Shabana Mahmood Excerpts

Tuesday 19th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Harriett Baldwin]

My other constituency neighbour is a fine advocate for the excellent credit unions industry. As he will know, we have backed the industry with £38 million of investment through the credit union expansion project, and we will continue to seek ways to back credit unions.

[Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab)]

Given that manufacturing remains at 6.1% below pre-crisis levels, with worrying trends in the manufacture of plant and machinery and of pharmaceuticals, will the Chancellor accept that his domestic policy agenda has just as much impact on our performance as the global factors that he is so very keen to blame, and that if the march of the makers is now going backwards, he must bear a measure of responsibility and come forward with proposals to halt the decline?

[Mr Osborne]

As I said, manufacturing makes up a larger sector of the economy than when I became Chancellor, but there is a huge amount more to do to make the UK more competitive, to make our businesses more competitive, and to improve skills for our manufacturers and the like. I have to say, and I suspect the hon. Lady agrees with me, that the idea of banning manufacturers from paying dividends would not be a particularly sensible way forward. Unfortunately, that is now the policy of the Labour party.