Finance (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Wes Streeting and Stephen McPartland

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 21st February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stephen McPartland]

You are very kind, Madam Deputy Speaker. I obviously had no intention of misleading you in trying to mention it now and again. New clause 9 and the Treasury publishing a distributional analysis of the cumulative impact of Government’s tax, welfare and public service spending is quite a wide-ranging topic. I was trying to make the point that I do not support new clause 9 because it seems academic, as opposed to helping people from different backgrounds to achieve their life chances. On that note, I shall conclude.

[Wes Streeting]

The speeches from Conservative Members have been so rousing that I have been moved to speak to take on the sheer absurdity of the arguments we have heard this afternoon. Member after Member has told us that they oppose new clause 9 because the Government already do this. If the Government already do this, why do they not support new clause 9?

The fact is that the Government do not already do this. What the Government do is publish an impact assessment with a distributional analysis of Budget measures by households depending on income. That measure was introduced by a previous Chancellor, until the current Chancellor’s predecessor decided it was politically inconvenient and got rid of it. The present Chancellor, to his credit, decided to bring it back. That assessment is interesting and useful. It informs Ministers when they are making decisions, but it does not cover the measures that new clause 9 addresses.

The fact is that the Government’s Budget and the Finance Bill are a reflection of their political priorities and tell the country about the problems the Government want to address and how they intend to do so through sufficient provision of resources. The simple fact is that if the Government made an equality impact assessment of their Budget measures, we may not be in a position where women in their 50s are being clobbered by changes to their state pension age at a time in their life when they have little time or opportunity to address it.

As a result of the Government’s refusal to listen to argument, evidence and reason, I see constituents in my surgery on a Friday afternoon—women in their 50s—who tell me that they have lost their job and are not able to access their pension when they expected. They had planned for retirement, and as a result, they can no longer make ends meet. There is nothing they can do about it at that stage. Had the Government considered the evidence, they might have made a different decision.

Had the Government assessed the equality impact of their Budget, we might not be in a position where disabled people have been consistently and repeatedly clobbered by changes to welfare and other areas of public policy. If, as local authorities do, the Government looked at the equality impact of their decision, they might seek to take steps to mitigate the impact on disabled people. Instead, nationally and locally, disabled people have too often had the books balanced on their backs, which is totally unjustifiable.

If the Government looked at the impact of their Budget measures on black and minority ethnic people, they might well take a different approach to the provision of resources in education to address the imbalances. They might also find, through analysis and research—words that have become anathema to this Government in their approach to public policy making—some surprises, such as the fact that detrimental changes to small businesses have a disproportionate impact on BME communities. They may choose to do something about it, or they may not, but at least their policy making would be better informed.

In the debate on this Bill, someone has to stand up and make the case for reasoned, evidence-based public policy making. It is a total disgrace that in the democratic discourse of this country, we now see the trashing of experts. We are warned that if we adopt new clause 9, academics may debate it—God forbid that people with some degree of expertise should debate the laws that we pass, because goodness knows it does not happen in this Chamber often enough. What is it about expertise and data that the Government are so afraid of? What it is about information that they find so terrifying?