Business of the House

Wes Streeting Excerpts

Thursday 9th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

I have to say I am surprised that this report has not yet been published, and I shall draw my hon. Friend’s representations to the attention of the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

Yesterday’s national insurance rise was not only a breach of the Conservative party manifesto, but an attack on small businesspeople, entrepreneurs, taxi drivers and others who take the risk to start a business and go it alone. Given the Leader of the House’s answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford), may I ask the right hon. Gentleman by which parliamentary mechanism this rise will be enacted? Will it be through a national insurance Bill, a statutory instrument or another measure?

[Mr Lidington]

Legislation will be brought forward at the appropriate time later this year. I simply say to the hon. Gentleman that he and others from right across the House have rightly been calling for more money to be spent on the NHS and on social care, and that money has to be raised in revenue. We have seen that the introduction of the new state pension system has removed the greater part of the disadvantage that previously applied to people who were self-employed rather than employed and which had justified the very significant difference between the national insurance contributions paid by self-employed people as against employees. The important narrowing of that difference in pension and other benefits, coupled with the Government’s further pledge to look at parental benefits, justifies the measure the Chancellor announced yesterday.