Energy (oil and gas) profits levy

Debate between Drew Hendry and Chris Stephens

Tuesday 22nd November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Chris Stephens]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that point, because we should be looking at an excess profits tax across the board. It is quite right to mention the oil and gas companies, but they are not the only ones who benefited from the pandemic. We now seem to be being told by the Government that tax avoidance and evasion somehow disappeared during the pandemic. That is the only conclusion we can reach when we look at the figures in these documents.

In addition, the Government seem to be making no attempt to discuss how we tackle energy prices. People have a very real perception that the regulators are on the side of the energy companies, not the consumers. That is exactly what the people on the streets believe when they talk about energy. We should start giving the regulators more teeth and encourage them to use their powers to go after the energy companies that are making excess profits, as well as to bring prices down for consumers, because that has to happen.

[Drew Hendry]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful point about the absolutely crushing effect that energy costs are having on families and communities. Does he agree that off-gas grid supplies should be regulated as well? For too long they have been ignored, and people are paying substantially more to heat their homes than people on the gas grid do.

[Chris Stephens]

I agree, and my hon. Friend made powerful points earlier about costs, as did the hon. Member for South Antrim (Paul Girvan). Poverty is a real issue across the UK—it is not just an urban, but a rural issue—and it affects all the communities across these islands.

As much as I welcome the fact that benefits were uprated in line with inflation, it has always been regarded as a political fact that that should happen anyway, so we should not give the Government any kudos just for following what should take place. However, as the hon. Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain) rightly argued, food inflation has gone up by 16%, and we are seeing a rise in the use of food banks and affordable food projects, which are the next level above food banks. Pantries and larders are opening up in many of our communities to help people move away from food banks, and I am involved in many such projects in Glasgow South West.

[Drew Hendry]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Chris Stephens]

I will in a second, but I want to talk about poverty and the Department for Work and Pensions—I am on the Work and Pensions Committee.

The DWP is closing offices and laying off its workers. Incredibly, the Department that is responsible for employment and social security is saying to its workforce, “You are no longer required,” because it is closing offices. That position is absolutely risible, and it is made even more risible by its refusal of home working for people who are under threat of redundancy. One thing that did work during the pandemic was home working; it helped people to get into the workplace. As we heard in my exchange with the right hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb), when we encourage home working, we encourage people into paid employment.

It seems daft that Government Departments are telling their workforce, “Come into the office, come into these workplaces, but you can’t work from home.” The Government have to show a bit more creativity if they are serious about dealing with long-term unemployment, turning around people’s lives and getting them into work. It seems completely contradictory for them to say to their workforce, “You cannae work from home.” The position they find themselves in is completely and utterly risible.

I hope that the Minister will answer this question: of the 6,000 additional employees that the state is going to employ, what will the ratio be between the DWP and HMRC? I will make an educated guess: the overwhelming majority will end up in the DWP chasing social security fraud and error, not in HMRC tackling tax avoidance and evasion.

Finally, there was nothing in the statement about public sector pay policy. So many workers have taken the view that they have no alternative other than to withdraw their labour because of the low pay offers that they get from employers, including many in the public sector. The overwhelming majority of civil servants are not covered by pay review bodies, yet we do not know the Government’s policy on public sector pay. Public sector workers spend that money in the economy and there could be an economic boost if we give public sector workers the pay rise that they deserve. I hope that we will get an answer to that, because public sector workers deserve better than to be treated as the Government are treating them.