PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Topical Questions - 3 December 2024 (Commons/Commons Chamber)

At the Budget, I wiped the slate clean after 14 years of chaos and mismanagement of our public finances, and I have brought stability back to our economy, so that we can get on with fulfilling our promise of delivering change. That means investing to fix the NHS and rebuild Britain, while ensuring that working people do not face higher taxes in their payslips.

Only through economic growth can we deliver on the promise of change. That is why we have wasted no time in delivering on the Government’s No. 1 mission. We have established the national wealth fund, have kick-started planning reforms to boost long-term growth, are developing an industrial strategy, and are announcing reforms for our world-leading financial services sector, including in pensions. I am under no illusion about the size and scale of the challenge that we face, and the struggles of working people. That is why we choose stability and investment. The Conservatives, however, choose chaos, austerity and decline.

According to the Local Government Association, local government spending on public services is down 42% on what it would have been had it kept pace with demand and costs since 2010. My local authority, Greenwich, faces a £3 million to £5 million gap in commissioned social care costs, and after 14 years of Tory austerity, there is very little headroom to bridge that gap. Does my right hon. Friend agree that local authorities need more assistance to bridge such gaps in the December local government finance statement?

As my hon. Friend will know, in the autumn Budget and phase 1 of the spending review, more than £1 billion was made available to local government, including £600 million for social care. The allocation of that money will be set out in the normal way over the next few weeks, so that local government is funded properly and can deliver the services that it needs to deliver.

I call the shadow Chancellor.

What a pleasure it is to appear opposite the right hon. Lady for the first time. I was tempted to ask her how things were going, but I did not want to start out by being unkind. I will instead ask this: when she recently pledged to the CBI that she would not raise taxes again, did she mean it?

I welcome the right hon. Member to his place, and look forward to many exchanges with him across the Dispatch Box. At the Budget in October, as he knows, we had to fix a £22 billion black hole in the public finances. Some of that black hole comes from the fact that we are the only G7 economy in which employment is lower than it was before the pandemic, when he was Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, so we had to raise taxes to fund our public services; but never again will we have to repeat a Budget like that one, because we have now wiped the slate clean and drawn a line under the mess created by the previous Government.

I did not actually discern any answer to my question, so may I put it this way? No. 10 has stated that it is not prepared to stand by the Chancellor’s commitment on tax. Is that because No. 10 changed its mind, or because the right hon. Lady spoke without thinking?

No Chancellor of the Exchequer would write five years’ worth of Budget in their first five months in post, but I can say that we will never have to deliver a Budget like that again. We took decisions in this Budget in order to wipe the slate clean after the mismanagement, decline and chaos of the previous Government. That required us to make difficult decisions, but we were right to make them, so that we can get going with our plans to achieve growth and reform public services, and deliver the NHS and schools that our country desperately needs.

My hon. Friend has campaigned extensively on this issue in his constituency. I understand that National Highways continues to develop proposals to improve the A50/A500 corridor through Uttoxeter. That is part of the pipeline of projects for future road investment strategies. He will know that in the Budget, we invested £1.6 billion to maintain and renew the nation’s local roads. That includes a £500 million increase in 2025-26 alone.

The tax rises in the Budget were used to provide a £22.6 billion uplift in the Department of Health and Social Care budget to ensure that our NHS is properly funded. The NHS will ensure that important services are properly funded, and those allocations will be set out in the normal way.

I will head to the Great Northern conference in Hull later this afternoon to speak about the impact of this Government’s policies on Yorkshire and the wider north of England. We are supporting local leaders and communities through integrated settlements, are investing in the trans-Pennine route upgrade, East West Rail and High Speed 2, and are reshaping public services.

Primary care providers have yearly negotiations with the Department on what services they provide and what money they are entitled to. More broadly, the reason why we are, in the Budget, taking difficult decisions about national insurance and other matters is precisely to fund the NHS, so that we have the health service that our country needs and deserves.

In the past four weeks since the Leader of the Opposition was elected, the Conservatives have made £7 billion of commitments to cut taxes, but with no idea of how they would cut public services to afford them. I do not know how they will vote on national insurance, but we can see pretty quickly how they ended up leaving us a £22 billion black hole.

The single most important factor in raising living standards, driving income equality and improving children’s life chances is having a job. Why is the Chancellor disregarding that fundamental truth, with tax policies that will actively harm employment, particularly youth employment?

If we look at the OBR forecasts for this Parliament, employment will increase from 33.1 million to 34.3 million. The right hon. Gentleman talks about youth employment. I suggest that he read our “Get Britain Working” White Paper, which sets out in detail what we will do to help get young people, and people suffering from ill health, back into work.

As my hon. Friend set out, the Government confirmed the introduction of a vaping products duty to ensure that young people and non-smokers do not take up vaping. Registration for the duty will open on the digital platform from 1 April 2026, and the duty will take effect from 1 October that year.

On economic black holes, the Labour Mayor of London thinks that Brexit punched a £40 billion black hole in the public finances. A very simple question for the Chancellor: has leaving the EU been a net positive or a net negative for the public finances?

The Government have no overall estimate of the impact of the UK’s exit from the EU, but the OBR has projected a 4% drop in productivity in the long term. That is why we are starting negotiations with the EU to improve trade in our mutual interest.

The Government recognise that ports are an important route to growth, which is why the national wealth fund will deploy at least £5.8 billion into five priority manifesto sectors, including ports. I would be happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss that specific constituency issue in due course.

WealthTek was placed into administration by the Financial Conduct Authority after losing £80 million of its clients’ money. FCA-appointed administrators are now deducting fees from victims’ compensation. My constituents Dominic Knights and his wife have between them lost thousands of pounds. What is the Treasury doing to safeguard the £85,000 compensation limit?

The FCA is held to account by the Government and Parliament, but Treasury Ministers cannot comment on individual cases, and the Treasury has no stake in the operational issues of the FCA. I am very happy to meet with the right hon. Lady and the FCA to discuss that matter, but let me be clear: the FCA is an independent regulator.

I happily join my hon. Friend in welcoming Mansfield’s success. We have launched a revamped fair payment code, under which signatories commit to paying their suppliers on time, and the disability finance code for entrepreneurship. That comes on top of reforms announced at the Budget to protect small businesses, such as doubling the employment allowance to £10,500, and our commitment to maintaining the small profits rate and marginal relief at their current rates and thresholds, as well as to freezing the small business multiplier for 2025-26—

I call Greg Smith.

And like my hon. Friend, I look forward to small business Saturday this week—

Order. [Interruption.] No, we are going to have a little talk now, because this is not fair; I have to get all these other Members in. I understand that these are set questions, but questions and answers should be short—it works both ways—otherwise I cannot get Members in and it makes my job impossible. Please work with me.

The owners of a 380-acre farm in my constituency have worked out that they would have to spend 40 years paying back the money that they would have to borrow because of the changes to agricultural property relief. When will the Chancellor start listening to farmers rather than hiding behind Treasury figures?

We are taking an approach that balances significant tax relief for family farms with the need to fix the public finances in as fair a way as possible. The hon. Gentleman will have seen the data that the Treasury has put out, based on claims data from His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. It shows how few farms will in fact be affected. The measures are a fair and balanced way to fix the public finances, which we desperately needed to do given our inheritance from the Conservative Government.

Minister, you’re running out of road.

The Government will always support local authorities to deliver good value for money road enhancements to support economic growth and improved connectivity. The Norwich western link road is currently the subject of a live planning application, so I am afraid that I cannot comment further on the specifics.

I cannot help but think that this morning has made for rather depressing listening. We hear this repetition about a £22 billion black hole, but we are dealing with very serious matters such as people’s employment. Ultimately I hear the Chancellor talking about a central planning agenda, but it is public services that are the problem; they are wasting money, and we must seriously consider that. Will the Chancellor accept, if the economy turns down next year, which it surely will, that she has made a mess of it?

We mention the £22 billion because that is the inheritance that the Government now have to address. We have published a line-by-line account of the £22 billion black hole that the previous Government left. We are now growing the economy through our national wealth fund, our planning reform and our pensions reform, and we are reforming our public services, so that we can deliver for the people we came here to represent.

As the Treasury team may be aware, there is a growing body of evidence that the growth of the financial sector beyond a certain size has an impact on the economy, particularly the productive economy. Over a 10-year period, it has cost the rest of the economy £4.5 trillion, so how will the Chancellor ensure that a growing financial sector will not harm the Government’s wider missions and the productive economy?

My hon. Friend will know that there is a long-standing debate about the relationship between financial and real economy growth, on which there is no consensus. The Government are clear that we see the financial services sector as a key part of our future economic success. The growth of the UK economy and our wider missions will not be achieved if we do not champion one of our biggest assets—the growth of the UK’s financial services sector—and mobilise it towards achieving those goals.

Achieving for Children is the arm’s length body of Richmond council that delivers its vital children’s services, yet because of the rise in employer’s national insurance, it now faces a staggering bill of £588,000 because the employees are not directly employed by Richmond council. When the Chancellor looks at her local government settlement, will she build in reimbursement for councils such as Richmond, or indeed exempt arm’s length bodies?

As the hon. Member will know, we announced in the Budget an increase in local government funding of 3.2% next year, and the Chancellor announced extra funding for early years providers to deliver Government-funded childcare places, meaning that total funding will be over £8 billion in 2025-26. I look forward to the hon. Member’s support for all that extra funding.

Today is International Day of Persons with Disabilities. With a disability employment gap of nearly 30% and a disability pay gap of nearly 14%, how is the Chancellor helping to address those inequalities?

Just today, the Government launched the disability finance code for entrepreneurship—something championed by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business and Trade—to ensure that people from all types of backgrounds, including those with disabilities, can start and grow their own businesses.

When the Windsor framework was introduced, it was accompanied by the boast that access to the EU single market would result in a huge increase in investment in Northern Ireland. Is the Chancellor aware that Invest NI has reported that there has been no upturn, and is that not because of the barrier presented by the Irish sea border to the bringing of raw materials into Northern Ireland from Great Britain?

The Government are committed to increasing the flow of investment to every nation and region of the United Kingdom, and we will continue to work with the Northern Ireland Executive to deliver that for the people of Northern Ireland.