National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill

Shockat Adam Excerpts

Tuesday 17th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[John Slinger (Rugby) (Lab)]

The crux of today’s debate is an interplay between our objectives and missions as a new Government and our inheritance from the previous Government. It is about the choices we have taken to achieve our objectives while mitigating and navigating the dire inheritance we received.

First, our objectives were clearly stated to the British people in our manifesto in July:

“to begin the work of national renewal. A rebuilding of our country, so that it once again serves the interests of working people.”

Secondly, the previous Administration bequeathed us the following: the highest tax burden on working people since the second world war; an economy built on weak foundations, with little or no industrial strategy, low productivity, low investment and low strategic visions; public services on their knees, having been cut to the core; staff undervalued and underpaid, but overburdened due to the previous Government’s failure; and after the cuts and chaos came that cut-and-run election, with unfunded spending commitments and, yes, a £22 billion black hole.

I turn to the choice that we face. The people resoundingly rejected a return to the chaos and cuts of the previous Administration. We rejected making further cuts to services when the people who voted in the election need those services so desperately. We rejected insulting people by increasing taxes on their pay packets after those dark, high-tax Tory days. We rejected increasing borrowing; we are keeping it under control with our stability rule in order to bring the current Budget into balance, so we will not borrow to fund day-to-day spending.

Therefore, we have had to take difficult choices. Some groups will have to contribute more, which is never popular. We are asking employers, not employees, to contribute more, but we fully recognise the need to protect the smallest businesses and charities. We have more than doubled the employment allowance to £10,500 and expanded it to all eligible employers, including charities. The OBR expects 250,000 employers to gain and an additional 820,000 to see no change.

The change that we are debating today should be seen in the context of the overall Budget—a Budget of huge, long-term investment in our economy; setting the right environment for better jobs, more opportunities for businesses, stronger public services and a more confident, optimistic future, particularly for our young people.

The last Government were very good at some things: kicking the can down the road, finding carpets and sweeping things underneath them, and making promises while dressed in the emperor’s new clothes. This Opposition are good at crying crocodile tears about the changes we are making, and wanting to have their cake and eat it. They seem to want all the benefits, but they do not want to say how they would pay for them. That is not this Government’s approach.

What is being proposed today is reasonable and proportionate; it is necessary, given our objectives and the inheritance we received; and it is part of a transformational Budget that will put the economy, our public services and our country on a proper footing, for a fairer and more prosperous future for the people of our country.

[Shockat Adam (Leicester South) (Ind)]

I refer the Committee to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as an optometrist. I will speak to amendment 7, which stands in my name, which calls for GP surgeries, pharmacists, the often forgotten profession of optometrists and other health professionals to be excluded from the national insurance rise, along with charities with fewer than 50 employees.

We have seen the over-strain and burden on our GP services being taken over fantastically by the Pharmacy First programme. However, the National Pharmacy Association has voted for action, which could include reducing opening hours, in response to the increased costs that will be caused by the national insurance hike. This hike is going to cost each pharmacy business an estimated £12,000, which is absolutely unattainable for many of the pharmacists I speak to.

My constituency of Leicester South has the second-highest ratio of patients to GPs, with 3,260 patients to a single GP. This already overburdened service is going to be hit even further with this rise in national insurance, with the Royal College of General Practitioners warning in November that the national insurance hike risked GP practices making redundancies or even closures. Nearly 450 GP practices have already closed or merged since 2018, according to a survey by the GPs’ journal Pulse. This is simply an untenable state for the national health service and healthcare workers.

Pharmacists, dentists and optometrists employ their professional staff. Many people I have spoken to are now going to have to remove employment and bring in locums. I would like to ask the Minister whether any impact assessment has been made on the loss of earnings for employed staff if locum staff are brought in. Primary care services are the bedrock of the NHS and many are already on a financial tightrope due to years of austerity. The national insurance hike will see many community GPs, pharmacists and optical health facilities reduce services or completely close down.

[Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)]

GPs such as those in the Twyford surgery in my constituency have made it clear that the increase in employer national insurance contributions will impact their budgets. They urgently need clarity to determine what they can provide for my constituents and whether they will be forced to make redundancies. Does the hon. Member agree that the Government need to provide certainty on whether GPs will receive funding for national insurance increases, and not abandon them, as they were abandoned by the previous Government?

[Shockat Adam]

I totally agree with the hon. Member that GP services are already on their knees, and this is going to further increase their despondency. It will give them no confidence whatsoever.

A second issue relates to our charities. I do not think there will be a single Member in this House who has not posed in front of a charity for a photo for their social media or for the work that they do. In my short time in this profession I have seen that this country is virtually run by charities, but every single year they have to jump through fire hoops just to make ends meet. They have to prove their worth and look for funding every year, living virtually hand to mouth. This will be the final nail in the coffin for many charities that are doing vital work for our communities.

There are so many that I could mention, but I will mention just one. Jasmine House is a charity in my constituency that provides vital support for women who have been victims of sexual violence. We already know the dire state of the judicial system, with women who have been raped having to wait up to five years or sometimes seven years for justice. This home, which provides much-needed psychological and emotional support, already has a two-year waiting list. This rise in national insurance will completely destroy this charity and many more like it across the country, which is why I urge the Government to rethink this disastrous policy and accept my amendment.

[Jim Dickson (Dartford) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak once more on this critically important Bill, after an excellent debate on Second Reading several weeks ago. I do not wish to rehearse the entire debate on these national insurance changes, but I will raise a few points about the Bill and why it is necessary.

As we have discussed at some length, this Government inherited public finances that were in a parlous state and public services that were not delivering what residents in Dartford and across the UK need. Yet, from their contributions today and on Second Reading, I do not think that Conservative Members have really accepted that legacy. In the five stages of grief, they are still in denial.

When the previous Government left office—it is painful to repeat these statistics—NHS waiting lists were at 7.6 million, with 300,000 people waiting longer than a year for treatment. Those waiting lists were already growing before the pandemic, with the number of people referred but waiting for treatment doubling between 2010 and 2019.

On crime and community safety, neighbourhood policing was decimated and PCSO numbers were halved, and the number of arrests has halved since 2010, including sharp drops for theft. Perhaps most concerningly, we face a real crisis in our prisons. The National Audit Office recently confirmed:

“The current crisis in the prison estate is a consequence of”—

the previous Government’s—

“failure to align criminal justice policies with funding for the prison estate, leading to reactive solutions which represent poor value for money.”

That is as close as the National Audit Office ever gets to saying, “You wasted money.”

The previous Government also spent a whopping £715 million on their Rwanda gimmick over two years, in exchange for a sum total of four voluntary departures. That is the legacy of the Conservative party, yet Conservative Members still refuse to acknowledge their mistakes. They vote against every measure, including the national insurance changes to raise crucial funding to fix the problems they left behind, without ever saying which investments in public services they would scrap.

In a long and, at times, entertaining speech, the right hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) rehearsed the greatest hits of the previous Government, in which the omnishambles Budget seemed to feature very strongly, but his speech was fatally holed below the waterline by his inability to answer one simple question from the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin): “What would you do instead?” We heard a lot of flannel about train drivers, but that was basically it.