Farming and Inheritance Tax

Tom Hayes Excerpts

Wednesday 4th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

I rise to speak on behalf of Mid Norfolk, a rural, agricultural, food-processing constituency that is reeling from this surprise and savage attack that was not in the Labour manifesto. I have no direct interest in farming, but I am the child of a farming family—my stepbrother runs that business. I worked on farms from the age of 15 to 21. I was going to go into farm management, and I think I still have a place at Harper Adams agricultural college if this career does not work out. My first job was with the NFU, working here in Parliament. I was a director of Elsoms Seeds and I was proud as a Minister to lead the agritech industrial strategy. I am chair of the all-party parliamentary group on science and technology in agriculture.

This is a hugely important strategic industry to the UK. It is key to our food security—now, gratifyingly, a Government priority—and it is completely key to the world’s ability to feed 9 billion mouths. We are a great agricultural research and technology economy, and the world is hungry for our innovations. Agriculture is also completely key to net zero. Agriculture and transport are the two dirtiest industries, and agriculture is moving more quickly than any, pioneering regenerative systems of agriculture and carbon-capturing systems. Those innovations are being driven by a new generation of young UK farmers, who are different from the post-war generation. They take their responsibilities to the broader planet and regenerative agriculture seriously.

At the same time as agriculture being a key strategic industry, farmers look after our countryside and keep our rural economy healthy. All of those are achieved in the most extraordinary way, in an industry not dominated by big companies. This industry is made up of millions of small businesses. Moreover, they exist in the most extraordinary business climate. They operate on incredibly expensive assets—the land—which they never seek to monetise, as colleagues have pointed out, in an industry in which their costs are fixed. They invest in all their costs up front and wait hopefully for a price for their product, which is subject to the vagaries of the weather and of climate change. Most business people looking at that business model would say, “That is not a business I want to be in.” Why do our family farmers do it? They do it because it is a way of life and because it is deeply embedded in the values of their families, their countryside and their communities. It is about stewardship, and it makes it all the more remarkable that this Government have decided to attack that very bit of the agricultural economy.

What are the aims of this policy? What is the impact of this policy? How should this House and those MPs who understand the rural economy respond? If the Government had said, “Our aim is to close the loophole of land asset speculators enjoying the legitimate family tax relief that the Conservatives put in place in 1984,” I probably would have supported them. If they had said, “We want to stop international hedge funds enjoying a tax relief designed to protect family farms,” I suspect many of us would have supported them. If they had said, “We want to support new entrants to the industry to promote diversified, regenerative agriculture, to increase investment and to promote the vibrant rural economy,” I probably would have supported them. That, however, is not the aim of this policy. The truth is that we do not know its aim, because the policy was never in the Government’s manifesto and it is not from DEFRA. It is a Treasury policy that has been landed on unwitting Ministers, who are now having to carry the can. We know it is anti-small business, anti-family business and anti the rural economy.

The former Labour adviser, John McTernan, let the cat out of the bag. He said that Labour has waited a long time to seek revenge for the Tory attacks on the miners, and it was going to attack the farming community now—[Interruption.] That is exactly what he said. The impact of the policy is clear; we only have to read the CLA and NFU briefings. I have met Gavin Lane, Phil and Sophie Ellis, Oliver Munday and Nigel Stangroom. Most of our average family farms will have to pay tax bills of £400,000, £500,000 or £600,000. Where will they get the money, when the businesses do not generate the profits to pay those bills? They will all have to sell land, but who will buy it? It will not be their neighbour, because they will be selling land, too. I fear that this policy was designed in the Treasury with the support of bits of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and DEFRA. The people hanging over Mid Norfolk waiting to buy the land are the big solar developers and the big mass housing developers.

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[George Freeman]

I will not, as time is short and colleagues want to speak. This policy is a prescription for the industrialisation of the countryside, cooked up in the Treasury in the summer when nobody was looking. It will lead to family farms being broken up and sold, farm investment falling and young farmers leaving, with a major economic impact and tertiary impacts in my part of the world. Those industries that support farming are already seeing the effects. The response of rural MPs should be to move fast behind the hon. Member for Penrith and Solway (Markus Campbell-Savours) and make it clear to the Treasury that it needs to adjust the mechanisms, change the thresholds and change this policy, unless Labour wants to be the party of rural devastation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rachel Gilmour (Tiverton and Minehead) (LD)]

As many Members know, I am able to speak with some expertise on this subject, as I was the first female director of the NFU in some 100 years and I now represent a constituency, in which I have lived for 34 years, where there are 1,006 farms or holdings. The Country Land and Business Association says that 432 of those farms will be affected by the measures.

I am known as somebody who tries to reach across the Chamber and make friends with hon. Members on both sides. I do not particularly enjoy confrontation, so there are elements of the debate that I have found unpleasant and disappointing. I do not like the references to class coming from the Labour Benches, or the suggestions that it has anything to do with class coming from hon. Members on the Conservative Benches. That is an irrelevance. Please do not play politics with my farmers—they are too important.

My plea to the Minister, when he is listening, is that he looks again—I am not asking him to change the policy; I understand that it is Treasury-driven—at some things that need to be looked at again. It is a flawed assumption that ownership is split 50:50 between spouses. That is not the case across Exmoor. And if it is not the case, especially in cross-generational farming families where older farmers hold on to the property so as not to burden the younger generation with increased capital gains tax on any future sale should they wish, then the relief stated by the Chancellor will not add up to the value stated.

Another flawed assumption is that average family farms are worth under £3 million. They are not. I am grateful to my constituent and good friend Guy Thomas-Everard, who went out of his way to give me the bill of sale for a perfectly average farm outside Winsford in my constituency. It is valued at £3.5 million, and that is before we count the deadstock and the livestock.

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Rachel Gilmour]

No.

Another flawed assumption is that the residential nil rate band will be applicable. If the value of the farm business is worth over £2.65 million, there is no residential nil rate band, so that swallows up large numbers of family farms.

I know that many Members are very, very unhappy indeed with the proposals. The hon. Member for Penrith and Solway (Markus Campbell-Savours) said he will vote with the Government because of the dire state that the former Government left farmers and agriculture in, but he is right when he says that this is a flawed piece of legislation. It will devastate family farms. I implore and beg the Minister to look at it again—and at least to get the facts right.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Mundell (Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale) (Con)]

I commend my near neighbour, the hon. Member for Penrith and Solway (Markus Campbell-Savours), on his brave contribution. It is hard to come to this Chamber and tell the truth when the pressure from the Whips and the party is to defend the Government at all costs. He made it absolutely clear that this measure will have a devastating effect on farms and the farming industry in his constituency if it goes through as currently set out.

The hon. Gentleman’s constituency and mine have something in common in that, in the 2001 foot and mouth outbreak, which devastated the farming industry, we saw for sure how important farming was to the whole community. Because farming was shut down, business was shut down. Shops were shut and lots of businesses including garages and all the services in rural areas could not function because farming was not functioning. That showed me the great importance that farming has.

Ironically, however, the outcome for my constituency of this measure from a Labour Government will be the further acquisition of land by private equity companies. This is because, thanks partly to the Scottish Government’s lifting of restrictions on land that can be afforested, good farming land in my constituency is under huge pressure from private equity funds buying it up to plant trees for carbon capture reliefs. It often seems that it is a great thing to plant trees and that we should all be in favour of it, but the reality is that these trees are Sitka spruce trees that are planted very close together. There is no light or environmental content within these forested areas. No creatures can survive in them. They are not environmentally friendly or sustainable, but they are financially attractive. They employ nobody. There is no employment once the forest has been planted.

When farmers come under pressure, as they will, to sell land to meet the inheritance tax, this is who the buyers will be. It will be these private equity firms, and if it is not them, it will in many instances be those who want to develop solar panels in a farming scenario, as other Members have highlighted.

[Tom Hayes]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that even the most ambitious estimates show we could cover only 1% of agricultural land with solar farms? Does he agree with Tom Bradshaw, the NFU’s president, who told journalists 85 days ago:

“What I do want to say is that an individual solar farm is not something which risks national food security”?

And does he agree with the CLA, which said in 2022:

“Solar is also a valuable diversification and cost reducing land use for farms—helping to shield exposure to volatile agricultural markets”?

[David Mundell]

No, I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman’s proposition. I do not think that viable prime agricultural land should be used for solar farms. I believe there is plenty of other brownfield land, or land that is not prime agricultural land, that could be used for solar farms. I am, therefore, not supportive of some of the huge developments proposed for my constituency.

I will now touch on one or two other points that have been raised but not expanded on. First, a lot of this discussion has been as if the sole structure of a family farm is mother, father, son and daughter. Brothers and sisters, or cousins, are often involved in the farming business, and it is quite wrong to suggest that some of the reliefs that can be applied would work in that situation. I have constituents who are in exactly that situation. A family farm is not just mum, dad, son and daughter. It is brothers, sisters, cousins and extended family.

The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) touched on tenant farmers. Tenant farmers in Scotland, in particular, are in a very difficult position because they cannot sell a couple of fields to pay their inheritance tax. They will have to give up the whole of their business, if they cannot find the money in other ways to pay these bills. We need to understand the issues that face tenant farmers.

I also commend the right hon. Gentleman’s suggestion that there should be a much wider debate about farming finance. The way to secure farming finance, and to secure our farmers, is not to destroy the family farm.

Employer National Insurance Contributions

Tom Hayes Excerpts

Wednesday 4th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

The Chancellor’s Budget has created a right mess. No matter how regularly the Prime Minister bleats that he is fixing the foundations, it is a mess of Labour’s own making, date stamped 30 October 2024. The OBR has forensically dismantled the Government’s pathetic fallacy of a £22 billion black hole, but even if it had not, my constituents are not stupid. If the Chancellor was as worried by the state of the public finances as she said she was, why would she increase borrowing by £32 billion annually, undermining our financial resilience? Why would she make the choice to splurge cash on union pay rises with no productivity commitments? Why would she make a series of decisions that would lead the OBR to downgrade its growth forecasts since our April Budget?

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

I welcome the extra pay for our teachers and our doctors. Even if the hon. Lady does not think that our public sector heroes deserve that pay rise, does she accept that lost school days cost the economy £900 million and that the NHS has had to spend £9.3 billion on temporary staffing?

[Julia Lopez]

I was interested by the train drivers’ pay deal, where the Government actually went back to the deal that we had made and undid the productivity commitments that we put in.

Why would the Chancellor front-load spending on the NHS before the Health Secretary even has a plan for how he will use that precious cash, therefore risking billions being wasted? It makes no sense, and everyone outside this place and all those inside it, apart from the Labour Members who are gleefully wafting their Order Papers around, can see that.

The Chancellor is asking for an extra £40 billion in taxes from the British people, and it is largely being taken from some of the most productive, entrepreneurial people in the country: the people who provide jobs and who do the right thing. I worry deeply that their good money is going to be poured into the public sector and benefits without any noticeable improvement in public services, and that when that happens, the Chancellor is going to come back for more. The incentive for anyone in this country to be entrepreneurial, to stick their neck out, to take the risk of employing people or to build true wealth for this nation will diminish. We will then find ourselves in a downward spiral, ever more unable to withstand external shocks and ever less appealing as a country in which our young people will want to stay to create, to innovate and to build.

As we know, a big chunk of that £40 billion is coming from the sneaky rise in employer national insurance—something the Government obscured from their plans in July—but let us start with the pain that the Chancellor’s choice on NI is causing her own Cabinet colleagues. She has blown holes in the budgets of every major Government Department. The Health Secretary now has problems with GPs, pharmacies, social care and hospices. The Deputy Prime Minister has councils telling her that they have to find over £1 billion extra to pay providers for their services. The Culture Secretary has charities, tourism businesses and cultural venues telling her that they have major problems. The Education Secretary has had to raise tuition fees by £400 million because universities are telling her that they now have a hole in their budgets of exactly the same size. It goes on.

I want to talk about the pain that this policy is causing to my constituents, particularly the lowering of the NI threshold, which is whacking the kind of businesses that employ a lot of young lower-wage workers, parents getting back into the workplace and people who are picking up extra jobs to make ends meet. Let me give some examples. The first is a local after-school club provider employing 34 people and offering wraparound clubs that help out hundreds of Havering families. It is the kind of club that makes that work/family juggle survivable. Because of the NICs hike and the lowering of the threshold, its bill is going to rise from £10,851 to £26,040 annually. The last thing it wants to do is to lose staff or hike fees for local families, but it cannot see a way around that.

Another example is an outdoor activities business that gives young people across London the most amazing opportunities. Its costs next year are going to increase by £70,000 as a direct result of the Budget, and it now worries that it will not be able to fund the young people’s bursary that is providing over 1,300 disadvantaged kids in the region with outdoor experiences. A third is a home care business that looks after older people in Havering. Its branch in Hornchurch faces paying an extra £100,000 a year, making it loss-making from April. That is absolutely crazy.

National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill

Tom Hayes Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 3rd December 2024 Commons Chamber

[James Murray]

The hon. Member focuses on the national insurance contributions changes, which is rightly the focus of this Bill, but I urge her to look at that in the context of everything else the Government are doing, not least the employment allowance doubling that I have mentioned. There is also our decision to freeze the small business rates multiplier as it applies in England, our decision to introduce permanently lower retail hospitality and leisure rates for businesses on the high street in 2026-27, and the decision in our corporation tax road map to maintain the small profits rate and other allowances from which small businesses can benefit. I urge her to understand that what we are doing on national insurance is taking a tough decision to fix the public finances, while at the same time providing the stability that businesses need to invest and grow, and that is the way to move our country forward.

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree that many people who want to work have struggled to do so because of poor health? They are unable to get access to a doctor, a hospital appointment or a dentist appointment—to a whole range of appointments—and as a consequence they have been forced out of work when they want to be in work, earn a living and get dignity from work. With the changes that the Government are bringing forward, we will see investment in our NHS and our public services that will help people to get the appointments they need to return to work. Does he agree that this investment is much needed and a good thing for our economy?

[James Murray]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, and he is right. He points out why we are taking these difficult decisions, and why it is so important to fund public services and fix the public finances. Healthy businesses need a healthy NHS, healthy businesses need a healthy workforce and healthy businesses need public services to be functioning so that they can maintain their investment and grow the economy. I am sure that my hon. Friend, and other Members, will have seen the Government’s “Get Britain Working” White Paper, which sets out the barriers that ill health puts in the way of people being economically active. We are determined to challenge that and to help people who are able to get back into, and stay in, work. That will be a mission of this Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bradley Thomas]

I think the hon. Lady misses the point that I am making. If we are to have a thriving, sustainable set of public services, it is not just a case of funding them; we need structural reform, so that we can deliver the best-quality services at the point of need. Take the NHS as an example. It is fundamentally different from how it was at its inception. People live longer and suffer from different illnesses. It is incumbent on Government, the whole of the public sector and this Parliament to focus on how money is spent to deliver value for money for everyone involved.

A few weeks ago, the Chancellor said that businesses that were concerned about the impact of proposals in this Budget should “cut their cloth accordingly”. Well, the same should apply to Government. Every single one of us should challenge Government to spend our money much more effectively. Once we do that, the tax burden will come down, and when that happens, we can pass on those savings. It is those savings that will ultimately underpin and provide the foundation for an economy that will grow and incentivise businesses across the board.

The Government talk a lot about the climate and the context that they inherited, but they repeatedly fail to acknowledge covid—one of the biggest public finance interventions this country has seen, which took place only a few years ago.

[Tom Hayes]

I agree that there needs to be reform of the NHS alongside this investment, and I welcome the point that the hon. Gentleman is making. In a recent speech, the Secretary of State set out what some of those reforms could be; I would welcome hearing what the hon. Gentleman thinks the reforms to go alongside the investment ought to be. Would he acknowledge, too, that one of the reasons why the NHS was in such a difficult position when dealing with the pandemic was that it was starved of funding and left under-prepared?

[Bradley Thomas]

Absolutely not. I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman. Under the previous Government, the NHS received record levels of funding. The Government have committed additional funds to the NHS, but they have not put forward a productivity improvement plan. The Government are unable to deliver structural reforms because they are in the pocket of their union paymasters. They have zero incentive at all to structurally reform the public services that they claim to care about so dearly. I touched on covid and the financial climate that this Government inherited. Over 14 years, the previous Government delivered 800 jobs per day. The previous Government also delivered a direct cut of £900 in national insurance to the pocket of every “working person”.

Governing is about choices. In this Budget, the Government are borrowing £40 billion of additional spending. In reality, we are seeing the same old tax-and-spend Labour. Let us look at some of those choices. National insurance contributions are up. The Chancellor said that NIC increases for employers would be a jobs tax. The Institute for Fiscal Studies said that would be a straightforward breach of the manifesto. Rate relief is down. A typical pub is paying £6,000 more in business rates per annum. There is the family farm tax, which I desperately hope this Government will do a U-turn on, and the education tax.

Let us look at the impact of all those decisions. The economy is flatlining—there was 0.1% growth in quarter 3. Inflation is up, from 1.7% to 2.3%. There was a 64% increase in business closures the week after the Budget. Asda has said that the Government’s decisions in the Budget risk price rises. John Lewis has said that it is worried about the impact of the national minimum wage increase. Two thirds of businesses claim that they are looking at freezing recruitment or making job cuts. We have already heard hon. Members talk about the impact on the charity sector. In fact, during this debate, I received an email from YMCA, which said that because of the increase in national insurance that it will have to pay in Worcestershire, it will look to freeze all recruitment and probably make redundancies. It will not be able to give a pay award to any of its staff, and it will look at cutting services. That is damning. We see from the Government an ideological pursuit of a policy that is really a false economy. Labour is failing the very working person that it claims to be protecting.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

As a new Member of Parliament, I was looking at the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for North Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller), when he was responding to the Minister, and trying to figure out why he looked so familiar. I realised that it was because he was Liz Truss’s Economic Secretary to the Treasury; the person who had to go out and defend Liz Truss’s mini-Budget. I therefore wonder why this new Conservative party led by a new person is sending out Liz Truss’s Treasury Minister to respond to a Labour Budget that is mopping up some of the mess created by her. When I realised that, it got me thinking about how much we should be listening to the Conservative party. This is a party that, in its contributions today, has shown no desire to learn a lesson from the election or listen to voters who were so damaged in their incomes and their lives by the Government we have replaced, but only a desire to play politics at its worst. The Conservative party has done that rather than actually scrutinise what this Government’s Budget is intended to achieve.

It is worth reflecting on what has happened over recent years. The economy crashed, mortgages were sent through the roof and an early election was called to avoid the Conservative party having to deliver the Budget. There were covid contracts that cost this country millions and a £22 billion black hole; that is what this Government are having to respond to.

[Stuart Anderson]

As this is such an important topic, why are there fewer than half a dozen Back-Bench Government MPs here to discuss it? It is not important enough to get their Benches full?

[Tom Hayes]

I have literally just said that this debate should not be about party politics, but about the scrutiny of this Government’s Budget. Instead of asking questions about the nature and substance of the Budget, the Opposition are resorting to party politics. [Interruption.] As my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Chris Vince) says from a sedentary position, we could list debates such as the Grenfell Tower inquiry debate yesterday, during which Conservative Members were deserting their Benches.

The burden of tax has fallen on working people for far too long under the Conservatives. Working people have suffered in many more ways, too: they have been unable to get the NHS appointments they want, the mortgages they want and all the services they should be entitled to. When I have knocked on doors in Bournemouth East and spoken with thousands of people over the last two years, the overwhelming feeling has been of hopelessness. It is the feeling that nothing ever changes in politics because there is a constant back and forth between our Benches about unimportant things rather than a focus on what those people actually want.

People want an NHS that will truly deliver. They want the 40,000 additional appointments a week. They want the billion pounds that is being invested in SEND. They want the £600 million going into social care. They want the £22 billion going into our NHS to start to fix the problems that have been ongoing for 14 years. I say to Opposition Members that if they are dedicated to their constituencies, if they care deeply about putting our public services back on track, and if they care about an economy that grows so that we have private businesses supporting our investment in the public sector, they should be voting with the Government tonight. I am disappointed to see so many of them saying that they will not be doing so.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

We are the Opposition. You are the Government.

[Tom Hayes]

We are the Government taking decisions in the national interest. The Conservatives are the Opposition taking decisions on behalf of their party’s interest. That is why, I am afraid, the Conservatives will not be coming back into power any time soon. They are not prepared to listen to what voters want, they are not prepared to take the tough decisions, and they are not prepared to come to the table, be constructive and try to put right the problems that they have created.

We have a long road ahead to put our NHS our economy and our public finances back on track, but this is a Government with a historic majority and a historic mandate to serve our nation’s interest. I call on those on the Opposition Benches—obviously not the Conservatives—to support this Government in what we are doing, because, together, we can put this country back together.

Finance Bill

Tom Hayes Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 27th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jerome Mayhew (Broadland and Fakenham) (Con)]

We are debating the Finance Bill following an election. In usual times, such a Bill would enact what was said in the winning party’s manifesto, but not this time. On the electoral trail, all the Labour Members who are now Ministers repeated what was said in the Labour manifesto time and again: their plans were “fully costed” and “fully funded”. They repeatedly said that they had no plans to raise taxes beyond VAT on private schools or to increase public borrowing. The manifesto said, in bald terms, that

“we will not increase National Insurance”.

There was no qualification to that—it was there in black and white.

It is extraordinary that we are debating a Finance Bill that has no correlation to the manifesto that it comes after. The electorate were profoundly misled. The reality is that the Labour party is increasing spending by more than £70 billion. Labour Members use the argument of their fantasy black hole, which has been thoroughly debunked by the independent Government body, the Office for Budget Responsibility, the independent IFS and the Financial Times. No one believes Labour, because that black hole is not there. It is not a black hole; it is more like a red herring.

The reason for that red herring is that Labour needed it as the excuse to do what it always intended to do—put up taxes and increase spending on public workers. Why did it do that? Because Labour Members—all of them— knew that if they had been honest with the electorate and told them that Labour was going to be a tax and spend party, no one would have voted for them. Even then, only 34% of the public did. It was a big con on the electorate. That is why we have a petition live on the Government website that says:

“I believe the current Labour Government have gone back on the promises they laid out in the lead up to the last election.”

As of this afternoon, 2.75 million people have signed that petition because they feel misled by this Government.

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

The Budget provided £2.6 billion for education, £1 billion for SEND, £22 billion for the NHS and several billion more for things like councils. Would the hon. Gentleman’s constituents in Broadland and Fakenham welcome the contribution of those funds to the NHS, schools and councils, or would he not like that investment to go into his constituency?

[Jerome Mayhew]

There were a number of points in the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. First, how much money should be spent? Secondly, what should it be spent on? And thirdly, where should we get it from? I will go straight to the heart of where we can get the money from: if we return public service productivity back to 2019 levels, there are tens of billions of pounds to be saved; if we return the size of the civil service to the 2019 level, before the big covid expansion, there are tens of billions of pounds to be saved; and if we return welfare spending on disability back to pre-covid levels, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride) was in process of doing before the general election, there are tens of billions of pounds to be saved.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jerome Mayhew]

I am not telling anyone anything; I am reporting what businesses are telling me. As a direct consequence of the actions of the Members on the Labour Benches, young people are not being employed who otherwise would have been. The OBR says that will lead to more than 50,000 jobs being lost. Time will tell, but I think that is an underestimate.

We have a reduction in recruitment, a reduction in the employment of young staff, a reduction in investment and, as a result, we will have a reduction in growth over the course of the forecast period. But worse than that, we will have a reduction in living standards. This cost of living crisis, which has now been caused by Labour, will reduce living standards by 1.25% by 2029. That reduction is a direct result of the Budget, so if Labour Members vote for this Bill, they will be voting for increasing the cost of living crisis by 1.25%.

None the less, we have seen some increases: debt costs are increasing; inflation is increasing, which will exacerbate the cost of living crisis; and mortgage costs are increasing.

[Tom Hayes]

You talk about increasing inflation, yet we saw record levels of inflation—11%—under the Conservative Government, one third of which was caused by our exposure to gas shocks. Does he agree with this Labour Government that we need to invest in clean energy, so that we are no longer left vulnerable to foreign dictators and their control of fossil fuel markets?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

Order. Before the hon. Member answers that intervention, I remind Members not to use the word “you”. Moreover, this is a debate on the Second Reading of the Finance Bill, so can we please make comments, interventions and speeches relevant to the Finance Bill?

--- Later in debate ---

[Josh Simons]

Not only do I agree with my hon. Friend’s point about the carer’s allowance, which will benefit 8,000 people in my region of the north-west, the increase demonstrates a wider point about respecting those who provide care in our society and economy. For too long, we have thought the profession to be unskilled, and have undervalued it as a path of work. In several of the measures that the Finance Bill will pay for, the Government have demonstrated that caring is a vital part of the economy that we wish to build. I have said this before, and will say it again: higher productivity and more technology mean more care. We must respect and value that most human of professions if we are to build an economy in which we all want to live in the future.

[Tom Hayes]

Every Thursday during the pandemic, we clapped, cheered and made noise to signal to our NHS carers that we cared about them. It was not just about noise; it was about the promise of a better future on the other side of the pandemic, which is where we are now. Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the most important things that this Labour Government have done is give a much-deserved pay rise to our teachers and NHS staff? Under the Conservatives, 1.5 million NHS appointments were cancelled and 25 million teaching days were lost. Because of Conservative policies, the NHS was forced to spend £9.3 billion on temporary staffing, and we lost school days that cost the economy £900 million. Conservative Members ask how much our public sector workers are paid, and how much they are worth. Does my hon. Friend agree that they are worth every single penny that they will be paid under this Labour Government?

[Josh Simons]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend that those who kept this nation going, who kept teaching our children and who kept looking after those who were sick and dying deserve every penny of the pay rise that this Government awarded them.

Since the subject of the pandemic has come up, I would add that the moral credibility of Conservative Members to ever use the sacrifices that our nation made during the covid pandemic as a rebuttal to anything that this Government do was lost the moment the Prime Minister told the nation to stay at home while he invited his colleagues to a booze-up in No. 10 Downing Street.

--- Later in debate ---

[Adrian Ramsay]

First, I have welcomed the measures in this Budget on non-doms and capital gains tax, and I have argued for the Government to go much further and be much bolder with a genuine wealth tax on the very richest. I am very happy to set out the measures I want, which are bolder than the Government’s, to raise capital. On farms, as I say, I would urge the hon. Member and the Minister to look at the work of people such as Dan Neidle, which suggests ways in which the Government could better achieve their own stated aim of rightly preventing people who often have no interest in farming from investing in farmland in order to avoid inheritance tax.

I spoke to many farmers last week, as I am sure did Members across the Chamber, and those with ordinary farms in my constituency told me that typical Suffolk farms of 320 acres may be worth £3 million to £5 million on paper, but if they are always in the family—if they are never sold and those farmers are earning very little income—they are not realising the benefit of that. The farmers I spoke to were extremely distressed about how much pressure they are under for generating very little income, with all the work they do and want to do for our natural environment. We need to look at the detail of what is being proposed, while welcoming the main aim of clamping down on tax avoidance that the Government are setting out.

I make these points conscious that the Government chose to table an income tax charge motion on Budget day, thereby restricting scope for amendments to the Bill today. I wish to put on record my disappointment at that decision, because an “amendment of the law” motion would have demonstrated a commitment to a much broader debate, greater scrutiny, and a healthy willingness to engage with alterative views. I expected better on that, as I know did my constituents. Although I will seek to amend the Bill to take account of the compelling case for a wealth tax, the scope for doing so has been deliberately and unnecessarily constrained by the Government in what Ruth Fox of the Hansard Society called a decision to prioritise

“ministerial control and convenience over robust parliamentary scrutiny.”

Before concluding my remarks, I wish to mention one other aspect of the Bill that relates to the urgent climate action we need to take. That must be about scaling up renewables, but it is also about the transition away from fossil fuels. Hidden in the Bill and the Budget is the Government’s intension to subsidise carbon capture and storage—a fig leaf for new fossil fuel projects—and failing to end the obscene subsidies, including tax reliefs, that are handed out to the oil and gas sector. I hope to pick that up further, and for it to get more scrutiny as the Bill progresses.

[Tom Hayes]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Adrian Ramsay]

I am about to finish.

In conclusion, Green MPs will vote for the Bill on the basis that we welcome a number of improvements and investments. We are constructive in supporting improvements that move in the right direction and the investment that has started in the NHS, and I want to see that committed to and expanded for the NHS and social care in further years. We look forward to further debates about how that can be strengthened to deliver a coherent vision of a greener, fairer future for all.

Financial Services: Mansion House Speech

Tom Hayes Excerpts

Monday 18th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Tulip Siddiq]

We are looking at a diverse portfolio of assets, and the pension funds mentioned by the right hon. Gentleman have already pooled and are investing in the UK.

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

Bournemouth is a wonderful place to represent for lots of reasons; one very good reason is the presence of a large finance sector. We have JP Morgan and Nationwide building society, which I was pleased to visit recently and hear from about its aspirations. Over the last 14 years, that sector on the south coast has been starved, so what steps will the Minister and this Government will take to support coastal finance hubs? Moreover, I recognise that her diary will be quite booked up, but can I invite her to come to Bournemouth and meet with representatives of those firms? If she does, I am happy to buy her an ice cream.

[Tulip Siddiq]

My hon. Friend will know that I can never resist an ice cream, so I probably will visit after all. Places such as JP Morgan, which employs 4,000 people in the financial services industry, are vital to us. One of the things that the Chancellor’s speech built on was the significant steps that the Government are already taking to enhance the competitiveness of our financial services sector. We want to look at the biggest changes to the UK’s listings regime in more than three decades and—my hon. Friend will be familiar with this—deliver the final stages of the post-crisis capital reforms to banks. With our financial services growth and competitiveness strategy, which I hope my hon. Friend will write to us on, we want to give the industry certainty and the confidence to invest. That is the main thing that the financial services sector wants right now, and people in Bournemouth will probably agree with that. I look forward to that ice cream.

Fiscal Rules

Tom Hayes Excerpts

Monday 28th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Darren Jones]

The hon. Member asks me so politely, but he will know that I cannot guarantee anything in advance of the Budget. However, it sounds as though he has already experienced the positive way in which this Government are approaching how we will repair the NHS and get it back on its feet, both by getting junior doctors off the strike line and back into wards and by investing in hospitals for the future. I know that he will look forward to the announcements in the Budget on Wednesday.

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

Before I became an MP, I led services for very vulnerable people and, unfortunately, came into close contact with gaslighting. As a new MP, I am afraid that my contact with gaslighting is not diminishing, and I slightly despair at what I am seeing from Opposition Members. While I was out canvassing over the weekend and talking with residents on Ken Road in Southbourne, I met a constituent who said, “We knew it wasn’t going to be pretty and you were going to inherit a mess, and we knew that it would be a long haul to get things right. But we were sick and tired of politicians who weren’t taking the big decisions and investing in the long term.” Does my right hon. Friend agree that we should listen to more of our constituents, like the person I just mentioned, who happened to vote Labour on 4 July for the first time in her life?

[Darren Jones]

I thank my hon. Friend, and I thank his constituent for putting her trust in this Labour Government. As the Prime Minister said today, this Government will “run towards” the problems, as opposed to running away from them, as the Conservative party did. That will mean difficult decisions at the Budget on Wednesday to deal with the mess that we inherited, to reset public finances and to be able to start to deliver our manifesto. But this Government will take those decisions and we will announce the detail on Wednesday.