Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Simon Clarke and Emma Hardy

Monday 17th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

Yes, this is new money. It is coming from the Treasury as part of the settlement. Clearly, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor will be setting out the medium-term fiscal plan on 31 October and that will be the moment of confirmation.

[Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

What guarantee can the Minister give that investment zones will not lead to any reduction in the desperately needed flood protection and flood mitigation measures? Will the Minister look again at the amendments that I have tabled to the levelling-up Bill to look at strengthening flood protection and mitigation?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Simon Clarke and Emma Hardy

Tuesday 28th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

My hon. Friend is a fantastic champion for Wrexham. I remember her coming to see me to talk about the merits of this particular bid, which obviously has enormous popular support; the number of people who have signed her petition testifies to precisely that.

[Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

Real levelling up requires money, and that means everybody paying all the tax they owe. So why did the spring Budget allocate three times more additional funding to the Department for Work and Pensions than to HMRC to deal with fraud, when we know that every £1 spent on fraud in the DWP recovers £6, but every £1 spent on fraud in HMRC recovers £18? Why are the resources not prioritised to bring the greatest reward?

[Mr Clarke]

This is undoubtedly an important issue, and the hon. Lady is right to raise it. Clearly, we are at a very important moment in the fight against fraud. Only next month, the new Public Sector Fraud Authority reporting to this Department and the Cabinet Office will go live, backed up by an additional £25 million over the spending review period. This represents increased resources for further support in terms of active measures on data, intelligence, risk and enforcement—all the things we need to do to crack down on fraud and to pursue the perpetrators.

Budget Resolutions

Debate between Simon Clarke and Emma Hardy

Tuesday 2nd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Mr Simon Clarke)]

It is a privilege to bring the past four days of Budget debate to a close. Over that time we have heard dozens of excellent speeches from across the House. I echo what the shadow Chief Secretary said in thanking all those who contributed. I express my deep gratitude to the civil service and the wider Treasury team, who have devoted long hours to preparing this Budget, working closely over the course of the spending review with all other Government Departments. I am immensely grateful for their hard work.

I also pay tribute to the Chancellor for his third Budget in 19 of the most challenging months in living memory. Winston Churchill once told this House:

“The first Budget of a Chancellor is often well received, but the third Budget is the most critical of all, because it is the heir of previous decisions”.—[Official Report, 22 September 1943; Vol. 392, c. 212.]

Well, this third Budget is a vindication. As Members will recall, over his first two Budgets, the Chancellor developed our plan to protect jobs and livelihoods and to safeguard the economy from coronavirus. In the words of the Office for Budget Responsibility, that plan has proven “remarkably successful”. The OBR’s forecasts show that our economy returned to its pre-pandemic size around the turn of the year, several months earlier than previously expected. Wages are rising, growing in real terms by 3.4% compared with February 2020. More people are in work and literally millions fewer people than anticipated last July are unemployed. Our public finances are under control and debt is under control. To echo the Chancellor: growth up, jobs up, debt down.

Just because disaster has been averted does not mean that we should take that for granted. It is the result of conscious policy decisions that have steered our nation to a safer place. Now is the time to carry this momentum through into building the economy this Government were elected to deliver, with a future of higher wages, higher skills and rising productivity, no longer based on Labour’s and the SNP’s model of low-skilled migrant European labour, but based on training and equipping our own people to succeed; and a future where our businesses flourish and drive growth and that growth is shared more evenly across the United Kingdom. We will have a greener economy. Multiple Opposition speakers, such as the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome) and the right hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz), seemed to forget the £30 billion net zero strategy announced just a fortnight ago. It will be a future where our citizens benefit from world-class public services at every stage of their lives.

[Emma Hardy]

I am aware that the Minister is very familiar with the area I represent, and indeed the local council, but on the issue of labour shortages I raised in the debate, and have raised in earlier proceedings, we have a shortage of adult social care workers in the East Riding of Yorkshire—a shortage so great that people cannot access all the care that they need. When he talks about labour shortages, is he going to address the shortages we have in that sector?

[Mr Clarke]

I thank the hon. Lady; hers was one of the more thoughtful speeches in this debate. We have committed £162.5 million as part of our winter plan to help fund the adult social care workforce. That money is exactly designed to make sure that we can attract people into this most pivotal of sectors. That comes on top of the £5.4 billion across the spending review that we have committed, thanks to the new health and social care levy, and the record funding for local government that was announced in the SR. I am always happy to work with her on this, but there is more money for this sector.

Motorhomes and Vehicle Excise Duty

Debate between Simon Clarke and Emma Hardy

Tuesday 21st January 2020 Westminster Hall

[Mr Clarke]

I will of course be happy to take such interventions if colleagues wish to make them. I may regret saying that in a moment, but I will take the chance for now.

As I was saying a moment ago, we recognise the importance of this sector for our tourism economy and that it supports thousands of skilled jobs right across the United Kingdom and, indeed, in certain clusters. Yorkshire is obviously one of those.

To recap the situation, the Government use the vehicle excise duty system to encourage the take-up of vehicles with low CO₂ emissions to help meet our legally binding climate change targets. The new VED regulations were introduced in September to aid that, as motorhomes with higher emissions are liable to higher rates of VED than those with lower emissions. After all, transport is the largest sector for UK greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for some 27% of the total. Road transport makes up more than 90% of that.

[Emma Hardy]

Does the Minister not accept that the Government are taxing new motorhomes, which have a greener engine, at a higher rate, while allowing older motorhomes, which have a dirtier engine, to continue on the lower rate? It is completely illogical.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Clarke]

Indeed. The NCC is a passionate champion for its sector, and I look forward to further conversations.

[Emma Hardy]

I thank the Minister for giving way again; he is being very generous. Is it not right to say that when the tax was devised, he did not meet with the motorhome or campervan industries to talk about how it would affect them specifically?

[Mr Clarke]

To the hon. Lady’s point, I was not the responsible Minister at that point. In fact, I think I was not even a Member of Parliament at that point. I genuinely cannot speak to whether those conversations were held, but we are now engaged in dialogue. I have met with representatives of the industry since being appointed. Anyone who is present for today’s debate can see the strength of feeling that exists across the House.

The structure of reformed VED is designed to encourage drivers to make the lower emissions choices that we all want to see. However, the high rate reduces significantly in subsequent years, which means that the VED liabilities in year one are not reflective of the total VED liabilities for a vehicle over its lifetime. The VED charge also remains a relatively small proportion of the purchase cost—these are, after all, expensive vehicles—typically between 1% and 5%. It is therefore a comparatively small charge, albeit that marginal costs obviously add up.