National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill

Debate between Yuan Yang and Luke Evans

Committee of the whole House & 3rd reading
Tuesday 17th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dr Luke Evans]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Yuan Yang]

I will take two interventions. I will take one from the. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans).

[Dr Luke Evans]

I am very grateful. The hon. Lady makes a fantastic point about wanting to set out the tax base. The difficulty is that the Government are also spending on the NHS. Fundamentally, GPs are private contractors to the NHS. Care providers are private contractors. Therefore, the Government have to make a choice: are they going to exempt them or will those private contractors have to pay? At the moment, the Government have done neither thing. That is the fundamental argument we are having on these amendments in trying to protect those contractors, because the Government have not made a choice. They have said that at some point there may be some payments along the way. That is the concern on the Opposition Benches. What is her answer to that?

[Yuan Yang]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention and for highlighting the perilous state of GPs in my constituency of Earley and Woodley after 14 years of the previous Government stripping away the NHS. I am very confident in the announcements made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health, which he has made several times in this Chamber, to take all funding decisions in the round. I very much look forward to seeing the quality of GPs improve. I also highlight the funding already announced for increasing the number of practitioners in GP surgeries. I expect to welcome them in my constituency, as well as across the UK.

I return to my point about long-term fiscal planning. The hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans) made the point that we need to make choices. Over and over again on the doorstep I have been told that public services are broken, that crime too often goes unpunished on our high streets, and that mortgage rates, which have shot up wildly over the past few years, are too much of a burden on everyday families. All that creates uncertainty and it is that economic uncertainty that hurts businesses. That is why I welcome, for the first time in many years, a credible Budget that addresses the fundamental problems facing our society. Yes, we have to understand the current fiscal situation in the context of the bad decisions that were made before us. We all know about the tax giveaway mini-Budget under Liz Trust and the perilous effects it had on gilts, pension funds and, of course, mortgages, for which we are all now paying the price.