Spring Statement
Zarah Sultana Excerpts(10 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Rachel Reeves
As a result of the triple lock, which we have been able to protect, next month the basic state pension will increase by more than £400. By the end of this Parliament, the triple lock, which the shadow Chancellor opposes, will cost an additional £31 billion. That is the protection that we are giving to pensioners, as well as record investment in our NHS, which older people use with greater frequency than anyone else.
Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Ind)
The UK is the 6th richest country in the world, yet more than one in three children and 25% of adults live in poverty. Since Labour came into power, 25,000 more children have been pushed into poverty due to the two-child benefit cap. Now, according to the Government’s own impact assessment, more than 250,000 people will be pushed into poverty as a result of these cuts, including 50,000 children. I ask the Chancellor, who earns over £150,000 annually, who has accepted £7,500-worth of free clothing and who recently took freebie tickets to see Sabrina Carpenter, does she think that austerity 2.0 is the change that people really voted for?
Rachel Reeves
There is nothing progressive and nothing Labour about pouring more money into a broken system. The changes that we are making will help young people who are not in education, employment or training, through targeted support. As I set out, the OBR has not scored any of our back to work programme—the biggest programme for many years—and it will do so in the autumn. The best way to lift people out of poverty is to get them into good, secure work that pays a decent wage. From next month we are increasing the national living wage by £1,400 for someone working full time. The Employment Rights Bill will ensure that people have security at work. That is the difference that this Labour Government are making.
Fiscal Rules
Zarah Sultana Excerpts(1 year, 3 months ago)
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Darren Jones
I thank the hon. Member for his question. He and his constituents will know, as much as mine do, that the problem for this country before the election was that the last Government had to borrow each month to pay for bills that they did not have the money to pay for, and that they made a whole list of promises across the country that they knew they could not pay for. That is why we have the £22 billion black hole, and why our first fiscal rule is that day-to-day spending will be paid for from tax receipts by the Exchequer. We will put the public budget back into surplus so that we are not in a doom loop of borrowing and borrowing just to keep ahead of ourselves each month. Where the Government do borrow, we will do so for productive investment to modernise our public services and to get growth back into our economy.
Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Ind)
New research published this month by the Institute for Fiscal Studies shows that reversing the two-child benefit cap would lift 540,000 children above the absolute poverty line. There are no fiscal rules, only fiscal choices. While taskforces meet, more and more children in Coventry South and across the country are consigned to avoidable poverty. Will the Government acknowledge that, prioritise ending child poverty and finally scrap the pernicious two-child benefit cap?
Darren Jones
I share my hon. Friend’s commitment to wanting to tackle child poverty in this country—this party had a proud record on that when we were in government previously. That is why we have set up the child poverty taskforce, which reported last week, and our ambition is to reduce child poverty over the course of this Parliament. We will set out further measures in the Budget on Wednesday on how we intend to deliver that.