Inheritance Tax: Family-owned Businesses

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd June 2025 Westminster Hall

[Susan Murray]

I thank the hon. Member for raising that issue. I have seen the research and will refer to it later in my speech. That was a timely publication.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Middleton South) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for being generous on this important issue. When she spoke about the contribution that family businesses make, she could have been talking about J. W. Lees, a brewery in my constituency that has a nearly 200-year history of making contributions to the local community and brewing very good beer, or to Joseph Holt, which is on the edge of my constituency. The Confederation of British Industry estimates that the proposed changes to business property relief will lose the Government nearly £1.9 billion. Does the hon. Lady agree that before the Government go through with the changes, they should have a consultation that looks at the impact on tax and local family businesses?

[Susan Murray]

I completely agree: it appears that there are many factors the Government have not taken into account.

The situation was brought home to me by a local company in my constituency: Archibald Young Ltd Founders and Engineers, a family-run foundry that has been operating in Kirkintilloch since 1959—not quite as long as the business mentioned by the hon. Member for Blackley and Middleton South (Graham Stringer). I thank Ian Young for sharing his company’s position and highlighting the vital role that it plays in defence by producing high-precision critical components. Since it was established, the company has grown steadily over three generations. At one time, Scotland had over 260 foundries; it now has 12, of which 11 are family-owned, and all are third generation.

Oral Answers to Questions

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Tuesday 20th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[James Murray]

I am sorry to hear about the experience of the hon. Lady’s constituent. To reassure her and her constituent, one of my priorities as chair of the HMRC board is to improve HMRC’s day-to-day performance. We have seen the percentage of telephony adviser attempts handled go from 59% last March to 80% this March. It will remain a priority for me to modernise and digitise the service.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Middleton South) (Lab)]

T8. The European emissions trading scheme has a carbon price that is 50% higher than the UK’s. What assessment has the Chancellor made of the impact of joining the scheme on inflation in this country?

[Rachel Reeves]

As my hon. Friend knows, sometimes the UK carbon price has been higher, but sometimes it has been lower than in the EU. This deal will ensure a bigger market that, on average, brings prices down. We are confident that the deal secured yesterday will bring more good jobs and bring down bills for consumers.

Oral Answers to Questions

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Tuesday 4th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Darren Jones]

The hon. Member will know that the Government have entered negotiations with our counterparts in the European Commission to improve trade between the UK and the European Union. I had a great meeting to discuss these issues last week in Cardiff with Finance Ministers from the Northern Ireland Executive as well as from Scotland and Wales, and noted that we have given a record-breaking increase in funding to the devolved Governments, so that they can get on with such projects, working in partnership with us where we still have responsibility.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Middleton South) (Lab)]

6. What steps she has taken to increase regional growth in England.

[Michelle Scrogham (Barrow and Furness) (Lab)]

16. What fiscal reforms she has made to help increase economic growth in Cumbria.

[Mr Speaker]

I call Graham Stringer. [Interruption.]

[Graham Stringer]

Sorry, Mr Speaker. I was nearly as shocked when you called me as I was when listening to the Chancellor of the Exchequer on Radio 4 talking about economic growth. She said there had not been a new runway built in this country since 1945. Manchester airport would be very surprised to hear that, because its new runway has been operating for nearly 25 years. I was shocked by that but not really surprised, because I think many officials in the Treasury who advise her show a startling ignorance of the English regions, and that leads to a certain prejudice in the formula they use to calculate whether a scheme should go ahead. Can the Minister and the rest of the Treasury team provide coaches to send Treasury officials around the English regions to talk to people who know about growth? Secondly, will he look at the formulas that decide where economic growth happens, which are biased against the regions?

[Darren Jones]

I thank my hon. Friend for his questions; I will do my best to answer them. I can confirm that Treasury officials routinely engage with local and regional officials across the country, including frequently in Manchester with Mayor Burnham and his team. I would point my hon. Friend gently to some of the announcements made by the Chancellor, including support for the Old Trafford development in Manchester. I congratulate the operators of Manchester airport on running a successful business, which we will continue to support in the normal way.

Budget Responsibility Bill

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Committee of the whole House
Wednesday 4th September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Griffith]

It is good to have a proper debate. I certainly think that if we want and seek good government—which, like the human condition, is not a perfect state, but a state that we should seek constantly to perfect—the highest levels of transparency and the very important exercise in Government publishing of impact assessments when they make material decisions, as required by Cabinet Office guidance, are things that the whole House should join hands and agree on. It is one of the reasons why I asked my colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Droitwich and Evesham (Nigel Huddleston), whether the Government had published an impact assessment on their callous decision to withdraw the winter fuel allowance from so many pensioners. The hon. Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) will well know that the process of trade deals undergoes extensive scrutiny in this House, and I took one of those trade deals through that process of scrutiny in a former life.

I will conclude, because I simply want to alert hon. Members to what they are potentially doing as they seek to support this Bill. It is not for partisan or political advantage, but about the important role of Parliament, which has been litigated many times in this Chamber and in debate.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Middleton South) (Lab)]

Unsurprisingly, I have listened to the hon. Gentleman’s speeches on a number of occasions, and I agree with quite a lot of what he is saying about transparency. Does he agree that the burden of his argument is that we cannot make a Government behave better or govern more effectively by quango? This quango was set up by George Osborne to trap an incoming Labour Government and restrict and slow them down, and it is an odd thing that we see this quango being gilded.

[Andrew Griffith]

As ever, the hon. Member makes an important and weighty contribution. He is exactly right about the direction of travel. On both sides of the House, we will all find our own particular point on the envelope when it comes to the balance around organisations that can hold us to account and, in particular, hold a mirror to Government and ensure that this House acts with the best, most accurate and well-meaning data.

My core point is that we are sent here by our constituents. I again congratulate the hon. Member for Loughborough, who has been sent here on behalf of his constituents and has given a fine speech today, but I do not believe—he may intervene and correct me—that the citizens of Loughborough, whether they voted for Jane Hunt or for him, intended that one of the very first actions he and we would take as legislators would be to award more of our powers and place more fetters on ourselves. This is the right Chamber for accountability. We should hold ourselves to account; we have a number of ways in which to do that to ourselves. The hon. Member for Blackley and Middleton South (Graham Stringer) makes a very real point about quangos, arm’s length bodies and how we hold ourselves to account.

That is my point. I understand that many colleagues wish to get in. I support the amendment put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Droitwich and Evesham, because it is quite right that we have rules. I was an accountant by training, and the first thing we learn—whether someone is an accountant or in performance sport—is that we play by the rules as they are; we do not seek to rig the rules in our favour.

--- Later in debate ---

The amendments that I have tabled are intended to probe the legislation and the concept of “fiscally significant.” Amendments 6 and 7—and indeed amendment 8, although it was not considered in scope for selection—are about how we hold ourselves to account for the impact on future generations. I am not here to make a maiden speech; I am essentially the old guard now because I have been here for 14 years—[Interruption.] I know, it is very sad—my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton North (Lucy Rigby) is looking at me in horror.

[Graham Stringer]

You are not as old guard as some.

[Ms Creasy]

Yes. But in that time, many of us have had persistent concerns, and one of mine has always been the private finance initiative. The Government are asking all of us to make and support some very tough decisions because of the economic mess that the country now finds itself in. My view is that we must look at all outgoings in that process. If somebody came to a constituency surgery because they had multiple outstanding loans and could not pay their rent, we would look at the debts that they held. That is the challenge with private finance: it is the legal loan-sharking of the public sector. Amendments 6 and 7 are about the process of getting a grip on our debts and ensuring that we learn from the damage that private finance has done.

Let us be clear: nobody can absolve themselves from private finance. Governments of all persuasions have sought to use that process—the ability to put only the repayments on the books, rather than the substantial cost of borrowing. That started under John Major; yes, there were multiple PFIs under the previous Labour Government; and indeed, the previous Conservative Government continued to use private finance until 2018. That is why, as of February this year, there are still 700 PFI schemes representing a capital value of £57 billion, but for which we will pay back £151 billion in the years ahead. We are asking pensioners to pay more for heating their homes, but we should be asking how we can pay less for the private finance debts that we have built up.

Private finance was about being able to build things such as schools and hospitals. Anybody who has an outstanding PFI debt in their constituency, or a school or hospital that urgently needs rebuilding, such as Whipps Cross hospital in my constituency, understands the importance of being able to access private finance. For the avoidance of doubt, I am not saying through my amendments that we should never work with the private sector; I am saying that PFI was a catastrophically bad deal and that, cumulatively, it would meet the legislation’s targets of 1% of GDP, so it is a fiscally significant policy. My amendments are about trying to understand how we will deal with cumulative debt and cumulatively fiscally significant policies.

[Graham Stringer]

I agree completely with my hon. Friend. As a member of the even older guard than hers—

[Ms Creasy]

The original OG!

[Graham Stringer]

I am certainly the old guard from the start of the previous Labour Government. That is relevant because I had a discussion at the time with the then Paymaster General, Geoffrey Robinson, about the cost of PFIs for hospitals. His answer was succinct: “If you want the hospitals, you have to go down the PFI route.” He said that because the Treasury rules were so rigid about finding money for socially needed projects—hospitals in that case—the Government had to work around them, at what would eventually be a huge cost to the taxpayer. There is a warning there about rigid rules and not dealing with reality.

[Ms Creasy]

It will not surprise my hon. Friend that I agree with him not just about his football team but in his analysis. The legislation is about having better fiscal rules and tougher constraints when Governments make decisions. We saw with the Liz Truss Budget how catastrophic those decisions can be.

Many Members will have come across PFI in their constituencies, but it is worth putting on the record just how big it is, because that is relevant to the legislation. We are talking about 700 projects, but each project can be hundreds of individual buildings. One of those 700 projects is made up of 80 schools, for example, which shows the scale that we are talking about. About half of PFIs are held between the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Education. That is how we built desperately needed schools and hospitals, but the cost is absolutely critical.

Some NHS trusts are now spending 13% of their total budget on PFI repayments—£2 billion a year for some. In practical terms, that means that some trusts are spending more to repay what is essentially a payday loan for the public sector than they are spending on drugs for their patients. It is a huge drain on our public finances. In 2020, during the pandemic, Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust paid £66 million to service its PFI commitments—the same amount that it spent on lab equipment, surgical tools and personal protective equipment. University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has already paid out £200 million in dividends to the company that owns its PFI, so the money is not just going to repay a debt for building a hospital; it is going out in pure profit to those companies. That is why I draw the parallel with payday lenders and buy now, pay later companies: once you are hooked in, you have to keep paying the debt.

It is not just a problem in the NHS. Hanson academy in Bradford has reached a debt of £4.16 million because of its PFI debt. It is now referred to as the UK’s “orphan” school because nobody wants to run it or take it over, given its financial position. Liverpool city council pays £4 million a year for Parklands high school, which was, again, built under PFI but is no longer needed because of falling school rolls. The council has roughly £42 million left to pay back on that contract for an empty, dead building. The equity solutions company that owns it has posted profits of £340,000 from that project this year alone.

PFI companies have made £111 million in pre-tax profit from education projects alone. That is about £800,000 per project, and the equivalent of 5,5000 new teachers’ salaries. The companies took on the risk of those deals to rebuild our public infrastructure, but the reality is that we do not let schools and hospitals go bust, so they took on the ability to print money. That is what the deals are doing. I will wager that every new and returning MP has had a conversation with someone in local government, a local hospital or a local school who talks about the damage that PFI is doing to their budgets, as if it is non-negotiable.

My amendments are about changing that culture. One challenge is that we have let those companies run rampant. That does not mean that we should not work with the private sector; it means that we should learn lessons, and I think we could learn some very simple ones. For a start, a lot of the companies are incorporated in overseas territories, which raises questions about the amount of tax that they are paying on those deals. Tax was originally part of the Treasury assessment of the deals, which was why working in that way was considered good value for money, and why my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Middleton South (Graham Stringer) was told that it was the best way to get a school or hospital.

We could also learn from payday lending by capping what the companies pay. After all, we cap the returns on defence projects. It makes no economic or ethical sense that we cap what can be earned from a military contract, but when someone builds a school or a hospital, they have free rein.

Above all, we need to know how much we owe, because even the Infrastructure and Projects Authority within Government could not get a grip on the total reality of our PFI commitments to date. That is partly because this has been done at a local government level, through devolution and in silos within companies, but it seems a very simple thing: even if those debts are being held overseas, the people paying them are very much here. In Northampton, there are 42 schools costing £30 million per annum, including £4.2 million in pre-tax profits in 2021-22, and Northampton’s budgets as a local authority are in a very difficult position right now. The firm that owns all those schools is based in Guernsey. In Birmingham, 11 schools are part of the Birmingham Schools Partnership, owned by Innisfree. Innisfree owns 260 schools across this country, as well as my local hospital in Whipps Cross. It is based in Jersey and is making millions of pounds in profit from these deals. We have never consolidated those loans to ask ourselves whether we could renegotiate them as a country and therefore claw some money back, because we do not know who we owe what to, or how much it is going to cost.

Amendments 6 and 7 deal with the challenges posed by the threshold of this legislation. It is absolutely right to set a threshold for what is fiscally significant, and individual PFIs would not go anywhere near a threshold of 1% of GDP, which is about £28 billion. However, when we add them up, it is very clear from what we already know about our PFI commitments that they do. As such, these amendments are intended to probe the Government about how we deal with debts and spending that might not meet that threshold individually, but might do so cumulatively, and to look at what we can do in the future to make sure that if we work with the private sector—again, I am not saying that we should never do so; I am saying that we should learn from PFI—we make better decisions. After all, this legislation is about making better-informed, independent decisions.

That is why I also tabled amendment 8, to learn the lessons from trade deals. The hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs is right: the Government’s decision to go for the trade and co-operation agreement—the hardest of Brexits—has cost us an estimated 4% of GDP, so again, that would be a fiscally significant decision. It would be as catastrophic as that Liz Truss Budget—indeed, many of us can see that it has been—but we did not have an independent assessment. Amendment 6 and amendment 7, which is an enabling amendment, would ensure that we have an independent assessment of cumulative spending looking at these issues.

I know that the Minister is as interested as I am in what we can do to tackle the drain that PFI represents and work better with the private sector. I hope that this legislation and the concept of putting PFI on the books is the start of a conversation about better public spending, and I hope that Toad of Toad Hall will recognise that maybe this time it is good that they are in the passenger seat.

Oral Answers to Questions

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[John Glen]

I took the precaution of researching my hon. Friend’s interest in this subject, and I note that he was issuing challenges on it 14 years ago. The Government remain—as they were then—fully committed to delivering HS2 and the integrated rail plan. This is a long-term investment that will bring our biggest cities closer to each other. It will boost productivity, and will provide a low-carbon alternative to cars and planes for many decades to come. As my hon. Friend knows, we are also working, through the IRP, on a £96 billion package to improve inter-regional rail connections, which obviously affects his constituents.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree that this country’s performance on productivity has been pitiful over the last 10 years? There has been virtually no improvement in productivity, and one reason for that is our lack of investment in national infrastructure. Slowing down HS2 is a bad move when it comes to improving our infrastructure, and it is years since we agreed to a third runway at Heathrow. Does the Minister agree that if we are to improve our productivity, we have to invest in infrastructure?

High Income Child Benefit Charge

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Thursday 2nd February 2023 Westminster Hall

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I am covering for my colleague who cannot be here today because of a constituency commitment. I thank the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day) for bringing forward a really important debate today. He spoke compassionately about his constituents, who are clearly struggling, and I applaud him for bringing this matter to the House. He will be pleased to know that Labour always welcomes the opportunity to highlight the significant pressures that families are facing across the United Kingdom, including in my constituency, as the cost of living crisis gets worse.

We have heard how hundreds of thousands more families are being pulled into the high income child benefit charge. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) put it well when he said that a lot of them are not from wealthy families, yet they are still being pulled into that charge. It is sad that hard-working people are having to pay for the chaos caused in recent months, and for 12 years of economic failure.

I want the Minister to explain the fiscal drag of freezing the threshold for the high income child benefit charge. I am sure she will make the case that maintaining the threshold at £50,000 allows the Government to prioritise the majority of families, particularly the poorest households, and that she will talk about difficult choices that have to be made and how taxpayers’ money is best spent. We all agree with that, but the truth is that the current benefits system is not working for anyone, least of all the poorest. A report published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation last week found that the benefit system is fundamentally “not fit for purpose” and has “trapped” millions of children and families in poverty.

Helping more people into good-quality work must be a priority of social security. Over 1 million people are out of work, despite wanting a job, and yet employers are struggling to fill over 1 million vacancies. I looked at the figures. Employment in the UK is lower now than it was before the pandemic, and the employment rate has had the biggest drop out of the major G7 economies.

A shocking 2.5 million of those who have fallen out of the workforce have done so because of ill health. We know that being out of work is bad for health. The longer someone is out of work for sickness reasons, the more difficult it is for them to return to a job. Unfortunately, it feels like nothing is being done to break that dangerous cycle. We cannot simply write people off. Only 4% of people in the employment and support allowance support group return to work each year. That is a huge waste of the potential of British people, who we know can contribute a lot to the economy.

The hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Douglas Chapman) wanted to know about Labour’s approach. We would take a very different approach to the benefits system. We would modernise jobcentres, turning them into new hubs that focus on work progression. They would be no longer just a conveyer belt to lower-paid work, but an escalator to well-paid, secure jobs.

I looked at the figures again. Only one in 10 older or disabled people who are out of work are receiving any support to find a job. That is because the Government impose programme after programme on local areas, regardless of their local economic needs. A massive £20 billion is being spent across 49 schemes, administered by nine different Government Departments. Even that statistic sounds so confusing.

The fragmented system is wasting taxpayers’ money and failing to get people into work. In contrast, when some limited local design has been allowed in pockets of the country, such as the inspirational “Working Well” initiative in Greater Manchester, there have been real successes in helping people get back into employment. That is why the Labour party will shift resources and power to the local level and guarantee local innovation in the design and delivery of employment support services.

We also want to address the hindrance to work in the social security system by empowering jobcentres to help to broker flexible working opportunities for those who have caring responsibilities. Crucially, we will reform the Access to Work scheme, for which the waiting list for an assessment has trebled. People now wait months for a decision, and overall the work capability assessment regime leaves too many people trapped in unemployment.

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Order. This is not a high-pressure debate and there is plenty of time, but the title is the high income child benefit charge. I am willing to relax and let the hon. Lady go a bit off-piste, but I think she is wandering quite a long way off the subject of the debate.

[Tulip Siddiq]

Apologies, Mr Stringer. You will be pleased to hear that I am on the last bit of my speech.

I ask the Minister to respond to the specific concerns raised today, especially in relation to the growing number of people pulled into the high income child benefit charge. I sincerely believe we need a proper plan to lift families out of poverty. We need to get our economy growing, and we need to offer opportunities for people in every part of the UK. I want to hear what the Minister has to say.

Covid-19: Economic Impact of Lockdowns

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2022 Westminster Hall

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Tatton (Esther McVey), both on her speech—the vast majority of which, if not all, I agree with—and on bringing this matter before the House. It was not only during the time of covid that we did not debate covid enough; since the end of lockdown, we have not debated the consequences of the policy decisions taken during covid.

I will just go back to what the Government said at the start of covid; it is always better to go back and examine whether those things actually happened or were honoured. The first thing the Government said at the start of the crisis was that they would follow the science. They did not follow the science. I can give a large number of examples where they did not follow the science, but I will just concentrate on two or three important examples.

One of them has already been mentioned: children losing their education. It was clear from the very beginning of this disease that it was primarily a disease of the elderly and of people with other co-morbidities. It was clear early on that there was essentially no danger to children or anybody else from opening schools, but they were not opened quickly enough. Anyone who goes into schools and knows young children can still see the damage that was done to them both emotionally and educationally because the science was not followed.

The hon. Member for Bolton West (Chris Green) will remember that Greater Manchester, which had a two-tier system of lockdown, was put into lockdown before Merseyside. The Government’s statistics on infection rates and the R number were higher for Merseyside than they were for Greater Manchester, but the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock), who is better occupied in the antipodes than he was in this House as the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, decided that he liked the Mayor of Merseyside rather more than Andy Burnham, so Greater Manchester went into lockdown and Merseyside did not, even though the statistics suggested otherwise.

More trivially but importantly for those who like a drink was the decision to close pubs at 10 pm. When we questioned the Government’s chief scientific adviser and chief medical officer on the Science and Technology Committee, they openly admitted that this was a ministerial decision with no science behind it whatever. So the Government did not follow the science, and I do not think they ever had any intention of doing so.

[Chris Green]

One concern I had from the very beginning of the pandemic was that we had the Prime Minister, professors, doctors and Ministers saying, “This is the scientific evidence. This compels you to do as we are saying. We have the weight of evidence behind us.” However, not long afterwards—in fact, within days or weeks—it was clear that there was no scientific basis for the 10 pm curfew. That undermines people’s confidence when the scientific and medical establishment tells us to take the necessary precautions.

[Graham Stringer]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. Most politicians are not scientists—there are very few; I do not think we even have an epidemiologist in the House—or scientifically trained.

Dominic Cummings came to the Science and Technology Committee and made an extremely good point: members of the Government are not experts, so when scientific evidence was being given to them, it should have been challenged, and other scientists should have been brought in to challenge it—so-called red teams. That challenge would have helped the Government to see that there was a debate. Many scientists were frustrated because they had a different view of the evidence presented—sometimes they even had different evidence—and it should have been considered. However, that internal debate did not happen in Government, and the debate in the House of Commons, as the right hon. Member for Tatton said, also did not happen as it should have done.

What did happen was that the Government decided on lockdown. My view is that once Italy, China and a number of countries in south-east Asia had locked down, the Government believed that lockdown was the politically safe thing to do. It was not scientifically the right thing to do; it was not the most effective way of dealing with the covid epidemic.

There are two reasons for locking down. The first is to eliminate the disease very early on to stop it spreading at all. That position had passed a long time before the Government locked down. After that, the reason is to stop the NHS being overwhelmed by too many infections at once. The Government’s other slogan—apart from that they were following the science—was that they were going to protect the NHS. They did that in a very simple sense, because it was not overwhelmed by covid. However, since the start of 2020, there has been effectively no NHS for many people. During covid, hospitals were empty and GPs could not be seen. The fact that deaths are now about 10% higher than normal shows the impact of people not being able to access GPs or get cancer care and of elderly people suffering from dementia not getting any support or human contact.

[Chris Green]

Does the hon. Gentleman share my concern that the Government’s approach appeared to be to use the precautionary principle to protect the Government rather than to protect people, and to say, “If we lock down and do the restrictions, no one can blame us for what comes out from it”? In contrast, the Swedish approach was to give people good advice and take only the necessary measures.

[Graham Stringer]

The hon. Gentleman puts it in an interesting way, although there is another interpretation of the precautionary principle. Some people interpret it as meaning that we should be as cautious we can be, but it actually means that we should not take action until we are certain of the facts. It does not mean that we should not do anything, which is how the Government interpreted it.

The right hon. Member for Tatton made a good point about the Government’s position on lockdown. Gavin Morgan, who was a member of SPI-B, the sub-committee of SAGE, said that behavioural psychology was weaponised and that there was an exaggerated threat. We got into a vicious feedback loop: the Government frightened people, so people demanded more lockdown from the Government. That was bad for health and the economy.

That is the health side of it, and we are suffering from it now, with 6 million-plus people on the waiting lists for elective surgery. However, this debate is primarily about the economy. The Government say that the war in Ukraine is the prime reason why the economy and the Government’s finances are in difficulty.

The right hon. Lady mentioned the IMF’s estimate that £407 billion was spent on covid. Some of that money was spent really well. Some of it was spent on developing the vaccines and on the vaccine taskforce, and that work was brilliant and very effective—I congratulate the vaccine taskforce—but much of it was wasted. The National Audit Office estimated that the bulk of the £37.5 billion spent on Test and Trace was wasted because there was no communication between the centre and the public health teams. That is a huge amount to waste, and that was just the budget.

Money on personal protective equipment was wasted not only because it went to friends of the Government in pretty dodgy contracts, but because it went on pretty dodgy personal protective equipment that did not work. All that has had a disastrous effect on the Government’s finances, and therefore the economy, because it is preventing the Government from spending money where they should.

I will finish on two points. I could go on for much longer, but other Members want to speak. There was no proper debate inside or outside the Government about the science. Just before Parliament went to sleep, it passed the Coronavirus Act 2020. One would have expected that Act to be used, but it was not. The Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 was the Act under which the Government mainly enacted the decisions that they had made. That Act allows less scrutiny in Parliament, and we lost many of our civil liberties for no good reason at all. I am still shocked that, when I left the House to go back to Manchester after the House had started sitting again, and I was going into Euston station, a police officer asked me where I was going. This is not Nazi Germany in the late 1930s; this is the United Kingdom of free people. I am not going to tell police officers where I am going. We need to look at that issue.

Finally, there is a great deal of hope that Baroness Hallett’s inquiry will get to the bottom of many of the issues we are discussing all too briefly today. Like other colleagues who have spoken, I have written to Baroness Hallett setting out my worry that she is disproportionately asking for evidence from people who naturally supported lockdown and not from businesses that have gone to the wall because of lockdown or from people who cannot access health services because we are still suffering the impacts of lockdown. I am worried about the way that that inquiry is structured.

I will finish on a figure from Professor Thomas of Bristol University, who has pointed out one of the issues I raised in the debates that took place when I was asking for an economic as opposed to a health analysis: poverty kills—not just covid. Professor Thomas thinks that 2.5 million life years have been lost because of the loss of GDP so far. It is a statistical factor, but it gives an indication of the economic damage and the impact that lockdown has had on people’s lives.

Government Response to Covid-19: Public Inquiry

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House notes the Fifth Report of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee of Session 2019-21, A Public Inquiry into the Government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, HC 541; and calls on the Government to provide an updated response to that set out in the Committee’s Fourth Special Report of Session 2019-21, A Public Inquiry into the Government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic: Government’s response to the Committee’s Fifth Report, HC 995, setting out how the Government intends to implement the Committee’s recommendations, to ensure that the administrative arrangements necessary to set up the public inquiry committed to by the Prime Minister to the House on 11 May 2021, in particular the appointment of an inquiry chair, take place in a timely manner and no later than the end of this year, and to agree: that the Government’s preferred candidate to chair the inquiry should be subject to a pre-appointment hearing by the relevant select committee for the sponsoring Government department.

It is a privilege to move the motion, in the name of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, into the very important subject of the Government’s response to the covid-19 pandemic and the promised public inquiry.

We, as a Committee, have taken evidence from some very well informed help, if I may put it that way, and we have brought our deliberations forward in the reports under discussion today. We thank our witnesses who gave evidence—Emma Norris from the Institute for Government, Dr Alastair Stark from the University of Queensland, Jason Beer, QC, Lord Butler of Brockwell, Sir Robert Francis, QC, Dame Una O’Brien and Baroness Prashar of Runnymede—and all those who submitted written evidence to the inquiry. I also thank fellow Committee members for their well-informed deliberation on these matters.

We are all used now, I think, to public inquiries as a routine part of the UK political landscape, and it is clear that the issues with which we have been grappling over the past 18 months, and the very difficult measures that the Government have taken to combat the pandemic, are very much the right subject for a public inquiry. However, although we are used to public inquiries, there is very little guidance about how public inquiries should be established, Chairs appointed and terms of reference agreed, so, in the absence of such guidance, our Committee has happily stepped into that void with a view to taking discussions forward.

The Prime Minister has committed in principle to establishing a public inquiry, and in May 2021 he suggested that it should be established in spring 2022. The first message that the Committee would like to give is that that timetable really ought to be brought forward, for the simple reason that it takes a number of months before an inquiry can get under way in terms of establishing its secretariat and so on. I guess one issue that we were keen to grapple with is that the farther away from events an inquiry is established, the less we can learn in a timely fashion. So we would strongly encourage the Government to think about how they can be setting up that inquiry from now. It really should not get in the way of the fight against the pandemic, especially given where we are with regard to vaccination.

Obviously, we need to be very sure about the purpose of the inquiry. As a Committee, we were very keen to ensure that the inquiry should be about learning lessons, not apportioning blame. The facts of the matter are that the Government, and all our public services, were dealing with unprecedented challenges, and there can be no right or wrong answers when the evidence on which you seek to make decisions is changing before your very eyes from day to day. Ultimately, it will come down to a matter of judgment exercised at the time.

I really hope that we can enter the inquiry very much in that spirit, because although I have not agreed with every aspect of the Government’s decision making on this matter, I absolutely recognise that everyone involved in that process was doing so honourably, with the best of intentions. We are not going to be honest about lessons learned unless we can approach the inquiry on that basis. We in this place need to give some very clear messages that we are doing so in the spirit of learning.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

I commend the Committee for its thoughtful and thorough report.

I listened carefully to what the hon. Lady just said about one of the recommendations, and I understand about learning lessons; that is often what Committees do. I would challenge any Member, particularly Members who have been in this House for a long time, to remember the lessons learned and recommendations from the mad cow disease inquiry; my guess is that nobody will.

We already know that there have been heroes and villains over the last 18 months, and I would hope that any inquiry would identify those heroes and villains. Mistakes have been made in some cases because mistakes were bound to be made, but some mistakes have been made wilfully and we need to know who was responsible for them.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. Clearly, where there is wilful bad behaviour it should be exposed, but we need to set the tone: this inquiry is about how the Government and society have dealt with a very difficult set of issues. The heroes and villains to whom he refers will find a way of being outed, if I can put it in such a way, without it being the entire focus or ethos of the inquiry.

We obviously need to be very clear about the inquiry’s terms of reference, to inform what the focus will be, and about how the various themes that could be looked at will be examined. The chair will obviously be a very important appointment. This is by tradition the choice of the relevant Minister, but, again, respect for and the authority of the inquiry will be very much set by who the chair is. The Committee was very attracted to the idea of a chairman and panel approach, recognising that some of the issues that will be considered by the inquiry are broad ranging so it would be right for the chairman to have access to appropriate expertise in various areas. The Committee also felt that the appointment should be subject to a pre-commencement hearing with the relevant Select Committee, given the very high level of parliamentary interest in this inquiry. That would be an unprecedented step, but, again, in terms of setting the tone of how the inquiry will be progressed, it could be a very important innovation, and I hope the Government will consider that.

One of the issues that needs to be considered by the inquiry is of course the response by the Department of Health and Social Care in terms of management of risk of transmission and so on, but we need to consider in the round the tools adopted by the Government to deal with that, including the impact on liberties and the impact on our economy. There will be obvious consequences in the longer term for the nation’s wellbeing in the round. We also need to consider the wider behaviour of public services in that regard.

There also needs to be a way of considering the impacts in the devolved nations, including whether this should be a UK-wide inquiry or there should be separate inquiries; quite possibly there should be a combination of both.

Oral Answers to Questions

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Tuesday 26th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

I am happy to confirm to my right hon. Friend that there are not financial constraints. The UK Government have guaranteed that the Welsh Government will receive at least £5.2 billion in additional resource to deliver their coronavirus response, including the vaccine deployment activities.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

What recent assessment he has made of the effect of the covid-19 outbreak on regional economic disparities.

[The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Kemi Badenoch)]

The Government recognise the significant impact of covid-19 on every region and nation of the UK. I can assure hon. Members across the House that levelling up remains a key priority for the Government. That is why the spending review also announced longer-term measures to support every region and nation, including a new £4 billion levelling-up fund to invest in local infrastructure priorities.

[Graham Stringer]

It is good to hear that the Government are still committed to levelling up, but all the academic studies that have been done have shown that covid has disproportionately affected the regional economies, with Greater Manchester the third most badly affected region in the country. Those regions need more support, but Transport for the North and Northern Powerhouse Rail are being cut; is that not going in exactly the opposite direction?

[Kemi Badenoch]

I would dispute the hon. Gentleman’s claims. We have taken unprecedented steps to support people and businesses around the country. We have supported 19,100 jobs in his constituency through the coronavirus job retention scheme. Greater Manchester Combined Authority has been allocated £54.2 million from the Getting Building fund for a wide-ranging package of projects. We have also provided over £170 million for the Greater Manchester-Preston city region and Liverpool city region to improve public transport. We have also supported the regeneration of 33 towns in the north-west through the towns fund. There is a lot that is happening on levelling up. If he would like me to write to him to explain everything that we have done in his region, I am happy to do so.

Financial Reward for Government Workers and Key Workers

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Monday 14th December 2020 Westminster Hall

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

I remind right hon. and hon. Members that there have been some changes to the procedure in Westminster Hall, and that even if Members have attended a Westminster Hall debate before under the new rules, there have been changes to the changed rules. In order to respect social distancing, I ask Members to sit at the seats with ticks against them. There are more people on the call list than seats on the horseshoe, so I will call Members to speak only if they were here at the start of the debate. If Members who have spoken wish to leave, or move to the seats at the back, they can; that is the only way to ensure that other Members can speak, because Members are not allowed to speak from the Public Gallery.

I also ask Members to respect the one-way system by coming in through the one door, and going out through the other, and to sanitise the microphones that are in front of them.

[Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petitions 306845 and 328754, relating to financial rewards for government workers and keyworkers.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer, and an honour to lead for the Petitions Committee on this debate.

As we come to the end of any year, we all start to reflect on the events of the past 12 months, but 2020 has been such an unprecedented year for everyone. Throughout the year, the extraordinary contributions made by so many, particularly our key workers, have made our lives so much better throughout the pandemic. I put on record again my sincere thanks to all those who have worked hard and have given what was most needed, when we needed it most. Those people have been invaluable. However, it seems that despite warm words, the Government do not appreciate the work that so many have done for us. We clapped for them on our doorsteps, but it turns out that they are not worth paying properly in recognition of their dedication. As we can see from the number of signatures on these two petitions, and indeed the sheer number of petitions on this issue, there is strong feeling across the country on how we should reward people on the frontline.

During the summer, I had a phone call from my friend Mel’s brother, a local refuse collector and union rep. He wanted to tell me at first hand that his team had turned up throughout the pandemic, and continued to not miss a round. I am so proud of them, and so proud of the efforts that people have made to keep our country going. Swansea Council and local authorities across the United Kingdom can be very proud of their workforce and how they have adapted to the challenges they have faced. Although Rob Stewart, the leader of Swansea Council, is looking at different ways to reward staff, his hands are tied financially.

Former colleagues of mine in the teaching profession, in both England and Wales, who have kept schools open for key workers’ children, described to me their immense fatigue, and the pressure they are under. They are moving classrooms, carrying resources, and increasing their planning and preparation, in a job in which they feel deeply responsible for the learning and progression of our future generations. They are also on their knees. When the Welsh Labour Government tried to reward workers in care homes with a £500 bonus earlier in the year, the Chancellor of the Exchequer taxed them on it, with those claiming universal credit suffering a double whammy. These are the poorest paid people in the public sector, and they took those hits again and again—and it looks like the same will happen if the Scottish Government try to give a thank-you payment to their NHS staff.

In response to my friend the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens), who I am pleased to see in this debate, the Prime Minister said that he was

“lost in admiration for the efforts of our civil servants, whether in DWP, HMRC or the Treasury. If we think about the furloughing scheme, everybody said it was impossible and far too complicated, and that we would never get that cash into people’s pockets, but they did it within four weeks. That is a fantastic tribute to the work of our civil service, and I thank them from the bottom of my heart.”—[Official Report, 11 May 2020; Vol. 676, c. 38.]

Following the Chancellor’s spending review announcement that there will be a pay freeze for all public sector workers, I suspect that civil servants will not be feeling the Prime Minister’s “admiration” so much as the “lost” bit. This further pay freeze comes after public sector workers have already been punished by a decade of pay freezes and increased workload. I know; I was one of them.

I am sure that we will hear from the Minister about the difference between public and private sector pay, but we know that once workforce characteristics such as experience and educational attainment are taken into account, there is close to 0% difference in pay. Undoubtedly, we will hear about the need for fairness for those working in the private sector, and I wholeheartedly agree that they should be treated with fairness, but this is not, and should not be, a race to the bottom. We should be bringing pay in the private sector up to a standard that makes all “work pay”, as the Conservatives are wont to say.

The Minister will probably talk about value for money for taxpayers, but guess what? Public sector workers pay their taxes, too. If the Government do not think that the work that has been done by civil servants—nurses, the police, the fire service, work coaches, Border Force, refuse collectors, workers in the justice system, our armed forces, teachers and, indeed, all those who have faced the biggest challenge and have put themselves on the frontline in fighting this pandemic—is worthy of a pay rise, they should say so. And I will wait for the Government line to be trotted out about the poorest paid being rewarded. If they were being rewarded in any meaningful way, I would welcome that announcement, but as with all these things, the devil is in the detail. A pay rise of £250 for those earning under £24,000 a year is equivalent to just £4.80 a week, and that is before tax, so in terms of take-home pay, it is about enough for some mince pies, 2 pints of milk and some teabags—what a Christmas bonus for them!

Just one look at the civil service campaign “Here For You” shows what a resilient and adaptive workforce we have in our civil servants, including the defence equipment workers who have been overseeing the staffing of the Nightingale hospitals; the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency, which has worked to get other key workers their driving test quickly; and those in the Foreign Office who repatriated thousands of British citizens from abroad. We cannot forget this. I personally thank them all, especially the workers in Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs who got the furlough scheme up and running, and the Department for Work and Pensions staff—friends of mine—who processed thousands of universal credit claims. Some of them are already on low wages.

Public sector workers are not asking a lot; they just want their contribution to be recognised. They were undoubtedly grateful for our applause earlier this year, but that will not put food on the table, buy new school uniforms, keep the car on the road or enable them to get to work on public transport. Claps do not pay the bills. At the end of the day, we are here to represent them, and just from looking round Westminster Hall today, people can see who really cares about this.

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

I intend to start calling the Front-Bench spokespeople in approximately 40 minutes. I think I have 11 speakers, so I will start with a time limit of four minutes. If some people speak for less, that should just about do it, but if there are many interventions, I will have to reduce the time. I call John McDonnell.

--- Later in debate ---

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this important debate. I thank my good friend, my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi), for opening this important debate on behalf of the Petitions Committee.

In the time I have, I will talk about two particular groups of key public sector workers: prison officers and firefighters. Both are key Government workers. Prison officers in particular deserve our praise, recognition and respect for their bravery—as, indeed, do firefighters—not only during the pandemic but year in, year out. As hon. Members may well know, prison officers are banned from taking industrial action; it is a criminal offence even to suggest that they should, for example, start working to rule. In return for the loss of that most basic human right, the independent Prison Service Pay Review Body was established in 2001 to make recommendations on pay, which the Government agreed to follow in all but the most exceptional circumstances. To encourage people to join and stay in the Prison Service, the independent Prison Service Pay Review Body recommended a significant pay rise for band 3 offices on fair and sustainable contracts, with new, modernised terms, ending the effectively two-tier workforce.

Five months ago, the Government promised to consider that recommendation and to consult the recognised trade union, the Prison Officers Association, on its implementation. However, on Thursday last, the Government rejected the recommendation, claiming it was unaffordable, without having had any discussion with the Prison Officers Association. Prison officers are understandably angry and have accused the Government of nothing less than pay betrayal. I understand that the Prison Officers Association intends to launch legal action against this decision, and I hope it will receive the full backing of all hon. Members in this place today.

The Prison Service is clearly experiencing a crisis in recruitment and retention, especially of band 3 officers, the main operational entry grade into the service. The review body calculates the cost of new recruits leaving after less than two years’ service at around £30 million per annum, a wasteful and inefficient use of public money. That is why the pay review body recommended an immediate £3,000 uplift in pensionable pay, to try to stem the rising tide of resignations. The Government claim that is unaffordable. However, no exceptional circumstances have been cited to justify their decision, as is required. The Government have earmarked around £4 billion for a new generation of private prisons yet claim to have no money to pay prison officers. This is an abuse of power and an insult to people’s intelligence.

The situation is unfair and unsustainable, and our prisons suffer as officers vote with their feet and leave the service, taking with them valuable skills, knowledge and experience at a time when we need it most. The Government must think again, treat our prison officers with the respect they deserve, get round the negotiating table with the POA, and make a fair and sustainable offer.

I also want to mention firefighters. I chaired a meeting of the Fire Brigades Union parliamentary group this afternoon. Firefighters had a pay freeze in 2010 and 2011, followed by a 1% public sector pay cap imposed for six years from 2012 to 2017—

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Order. I call Lilian Greenwood.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) on her powerful and eloquent opening speech. I am not sure that I will add anything unique to the debate, but some points bear repetition.

We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the people who have been delivering our public services during the coronavirus pandemic. Some of them are in public-facing roles that simply cannot be done from home, including social care workers, refuse collectors, firefighters and border control staff. They have been working hard, day in, day out. They have exposed themselves and their families to additional risks to help to keep us safe, secure and well.

Others who have been working just as hard are often invisible. They are among the unsung heroes of the crisis. I am thinking of the staff working at Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to administer the job retention scheme, or those in the Department for Work and Pensions coping with a huge influx of new universal credit claims. Their work has been just as essential in helping to protect jobs and livelihoods. They were often unprepared and under-resourced to deal with that new sudden demand, but they stepped up. Of course, there are many others. Their reward for that work is to be handed a real-terms pay cut. The Chancellor might try to use softer language, with talk of a pay pause rather than a freeze, but soft language does not pay the bills. Prices are set to rise by 1.4% next year, and many people will be even more shocked when they realise that their council tax bill will go up by 5%. Thousands of public sector workers will be worse off, including every single police officer, every single teacher and 90% of armed forces personnel based in England. As many hon. Members have said, for many of those workers, that is just the latest kick in the teeth, because public sector staff have already endured a decade of cuts in the value of their wages, with many seeing their buying power cut by almost a fifth between 2010 and 2020.

Government Ministers want to pit public sector workers against private sector workers, but it is all smoke and mirrors. Private sector wage growth has fallen behind this year primarily as a result of furlough, having previously run ahead. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, once we adjust for the different profile of public sector workers in terms of experience, education and other factors, there is no difference in hourly pay rates compared with the private sector. The truth is that such divisive language helps no one. We all lose as a result of the proposals. It is noticeable that not a single Back-Bench Conservative MP has dared to turn up and defend them.

In Nottingham, 23% of all employees work in the public sector, which is significantly higher than the average for the east midlands or Britain, although of course there are parts of the country where it is far higher still. When the pay of those workers is cut, they have less to spend in local shops and with local businesses. Freezing their pay harms the local economy and risks the jobs of the private sector workers employed in those shops and businesses. At a time when our local high streets are suffering real damage and small businesses do not know whether they will survive the pandemic, this pay policy delivers a further blow to confidence and risks further weakening a weak recovery.

The Minister should think again. We need action to save jobs, rebuild businesses and get the economy back on its feet. Instead of cutting real wages, the Government should be boosting them, particularly for the lowest paid. That is the right thing to do ethically and economically.

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Unusually, there have been no interventions and some Members have not turned up, so I will increase the time limit for Back-Bench speakers to five minutes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Order. If the hon. Gentleman had been here at the beginning of the debate, he would have heard me explain that hon. Members can take part only if they are present at the beginning, regardless of whether it is to make an intervention or give a speech.

[Abena Oppong-Asare]

Young people in my constituency of Erith and Thamesmead have been submitting portraits of key workers as part of my Christmas card competition. I asked them to write why the key worker they have drawn means so much to them, and one young person said to me:

“I have chosen to draw many different key workers…They have been pushing themselves every day so they can help us. They have put us first and we should be indebted to them.”

Does the Minister agree that we are indebted to key workers, given their hard work and sacrifice during this pandemic?

Freezing pay for public sector workers is not only insulting, but irresponsible. I am curious to know whether the Minister has given due regard to the impacts that the pay freeze will have. Has the Minister read the report by the TUC, which found that public sector pay increases could boost GDP significantly? That has been echoed by a number of Members in the debate. Does the Minister recognise that imposing a real-terms pay cut, when 1.8 million key workers already earn less than the real living wage, risks driving thousands into poverty? Can the Minister explain how she plans to tackle the shortage of over 80,000 NHS and care sector jobs at the same time as freezing public sector pay?

Over 1 million key workers face a real-terms pay cut next year. That includes 125,000 police officers, 500,000 teachers, 300,000 civil service staff and 125,000 armed forces personnel. By failing to reaffirm the Government’s manifesto commitment to ensure that teachers’ starting salaries reach £30,000 by 2022, the Chancellor has made it clear that he has no intention to back our public sector workers. Cutting universal credit, and giving the go-ahead for council tax rises in the middle of a pandemic, is pushing more people into poverty. The Government are making poor spending decisions that threaten to push our economy and public services to breaking point.

I want to conclude by quoting my hon. Friend the Member for Gower. Public sector workers are not asking for a lot. They just want their contributions to be recognised, and claps do not pay the bills.

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

I ask the Minister to leave enough time at the end—we have plenty of time—for the proposer of the debate to wind up.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kemi Badenoch]

I am not giving way. I have already said I am not; please stop asking.

As the Chancellor pointed out in his statement on the spending review, in the six months to September, private sector wages fell by nearly 1% compared with last year. Over the same period, public sector wages rose by nearly 4%. Workers in the private sector have lost jobs, been furloughed, and seen their wages cut and their hours reduced, while those in the public sector have not. [Interruption.]

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Order. Carry on.

[Kemi Badenoch]

Thank you, Mr Stringer. For that reason, the Chancellor announced a temporary pause to pay awards for some public sector workers for the year 2021-22. Disappointing though I know this will be, this approach allows us to protect public sector jobs at this time of crisis and ensure fairness between the private and public sectors. Crucially, as I have said, we are targeting our resources at those who need them most. First, taking account of the NHS Pay Review Body’s advice, we are providing a pay rise to over 1 million nurses, doctors and others working in the NHS. Secondly, we are protecting those on lower incomes. The 2.1 million public sector workers who earn below the median wage of £24,000 will be guaranteed a pay rise of at least—and I emphasise “at least”—£250.

In the spending review, we also accepted in full the recommendations of the Low Pay Commission—to increase the national living wage by 2.2% to £8.91 an hour, to extend that rate to those aged 23 and over, and to increase the national minimum wage. According to the commission, those rates will give low-paid workers a real-terms pay rise and protect their standards of living without significant risks to their job prospects. A full-time worker on the national living wage will also see their annual earnings increase by £345 next year. That is a pay rise of over £4,000 compared with 2016, the year in which the policy was first introduced. Taken together, these minimum wage increases will likely benefit around 2 million people and help make real progress towards ending low pay in the UK.

The risk with broader-brush measures, including income tax or national insurance policies—this particular point was not made today, but it is an important one to reiterate—is that it is difficult to define and limit who should benefit. The result could merely be to reward the better paid, at a time when the Government have already been forecast to be borrowing at record peacetime levels.

As a Government, we are committed to keeping taxes low in order that working people, including key workers, are able to keep more of what they earn. In April 2019, the Government increased the personal tax allowance to £12,500, meaning that the personal allowance is up by more than 90% in less than a decade, ensuring that more of the lowest earners do not pay any income tax at all. In April this year, we also increased the national insurance contributions primary threshold and lower profits limit to £9,500—a move that will benefit 31 million people. Add all that together, and changes to income tax and national insurance contributions between 2010-11 and 2020-21 mean that a typical basic rate employee in England, Wales or Northern Ireland is more than £1,600 better off a year.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Stephens]

On a point of order, Mr Stringer. If I heard the Minister correctly, it was suggested that there were to be no job losses in the public sector, yet a number of us in the debate mentioned that there were 2,000 redundancies in HMRC. Mr Stringer, can you tell me how the record can be corrected—or has the Minister just cancelled the redundancy notices of 2,000 workers in HMRC?

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

That is not a point of order; it is a matter of fact and for debate.