Welfare Spending

Debate between John Glen and Tom Hayes

Tuesday 15th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Tom Hayes]

I always agree with my hon. Friend, especially when she says that I should agree with my mum. I thank her for her intervention, and I agree that nobody’s background should shape their future. We are in this place to create a better social security system, a better NHS and better public services, so that children today in all our constituencies can access the support that they need, in the form that they need, enabling them to truly thrive.

It deeply saddens me that in my constituency of Bournemouth East, children are growing up in poverty. Some 27% of children in my constituency are growing up in relative poverty; in the ward of Boscombe West, that figure is 43%, and in the ward of Springbourne, it is 36%. That is unacceptable in 2025 in modern Britain, and we should not put up with it. Looking beyond my constituency, a near-record 2.8 million people are out of work due to long-term sickness—thrown on the scrapheap. Some 300,000 people fall out of work every year because of their health, and part of the reason for that is the underfunding of our public services; that leaves people on waiting lists, and waiting lists kill.

We know that 4.5 million children are in relative poverty after housing costs, a figure that has risen by 900,000 since 2010. We also know that the Tories presided over the worst Parliament ever recorded for economic inactivity; it rose by over 800,000 to 9.4 million people. We hear from Opposition Members about the connection between work and welfare, but when they presided over such economic inactivity, such poor productivity and such sluggish growth, is it any wonder—

[John Glen]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Tom Hayes]

I will not be taking an intervention.

Is it any wonder that, as a consequence, we have people who are in significant difficulty, particularly when the social security and public services that they rely on have been chopped back?

As such, I welcome the launch of the child poverty taskforce as an early priority of this Government. I was pleased to meet the Minister just last week to talk about my priorities, which include trying to make sure that play is not squeezed out of childhood and that we have a social security system to meet the needs of children, particularly in the disadvantaged areas of my constituency.

Taxes

Debate between John Glen and Tom Hayes

Tuesday 15th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[John Glen]

I will come on to address the fundamental dynamics of spending and that area in particular, but first I want to draw the hon. Gentleman’s attention back to the subject.

[Tom Hayes]

Will the right hon. Member give way?

[John Glen]

No, I will a bit of progress now. I will give way to the hon. Gentleman later, even though he did not give way to me earlier.

The Chancellor came to the Treasury Committee in November. She said, “We have now set the envelope for spending for this Parliament, and we will not be coming back for more tax increases or, indeed, more borrowing. We now need to live within the means that we have set ourselves in the Budget and in the allocations of those spending totals.” What has happened in a year? Of course, I recognise that events occur, and I have referred to those under the previous Government. They do present challenges, but the Labour party’s fundamental problem is understanding the effect of high burdens of tax on wealth creators and their motivation to employ people and to invest in the productive capacity of the economy—more jobs and more tax revenues from lower rates. This Government are saying that we can do a little bit more on national insurance; that we can just put a few more burdens of regulation; that the long-term capital investment of £190 billion will transform our economy.

However, what I hear from businesses in Salisbury—small or large—is that the motivation to grow a business, to employ more people, and to say that they are determined to do so because there are some rewards from that is rapidly diminishing. What we hear is speculation about which additional taxes will be imposed after the next three months. Today, Government Members have suggested equalisation of capital gains tax, a flat rate of pension relief, a wealth tax, or higher bands of council tax—although they may have been ruled out. The overall effect on top of what we have already had is for businesses to say, “I’m not going to do this anymore.” We have now had two consecutive months of negative growth. That may well continue, which is bad for everyone. It is bad for the capacity that we have as a country to invest in the transformation that we all seek to deliver on—some things we will agree on—and it is not sustainable if the Government do not recognise that businesses will not grow and expand if that tax level rises beyond a certain amount.

[Tom Hayes]

I thank the right hon. Member for giving way, particularly as I apparently did not give way to him. I did not realise that it was he who was trying to intervene on me, otherwise I would have given way.

I recognise what the right hon. Member is saying about covid. I think that as a country we have not yet come to the terms with the true impact of covid and we will not do so for a long time, because it still feels very near to us. As a new Member of this House, I take the point that we ought to understand the true impacts. The concern for me and perhaps for other colleagues is that by trying to focus only on covid, and not on the economic and fiscal impact of Liz Truss—I know that he was talking about the political impact—we will never learn the lessons of the Liz Truss moment, and we just do not want to lose sight of the lessons that can be learned.

[John Glen]

Absolutely. [Interruption.] I am told that I ought not to take any more interventions, but I will say that Liz Truss’s insight about the imperative for growth was right; we do need to look for growth. What she did not do was examine the conditions to do that in a way that the market could understand, and it had catastrophic effects.

We now have a Labour Government, and we now have working people being massively affected by tax changes. We have Andrew Bailey, Governor of the Bank of England, saying that as a reaction to the national insurance changes, businesses have made changes to employment—that means firing people—and we have Paul Johnson downgrading growth prospects, alongside virtually every other independent analyst.

The winter fuel payments were an absolute disgrace. The changes to agricultural property relief and business property relief were put on my desk at every fiscal event, but one just has to say no, because they are the wrong thing to do. The political capital that has been lost by the Government and the damage to their reputation for their stewardship of the economy is catastrophic. I say to those on the Labour Benches that we are facing some really tough challenges as we approach the next Budget. The choices that this Government need to make on taxes will define their future. What happened last week was the worst possible situation.

Several times today we have been asked, “What would you do?” What we would have done and what we would do now is take a root-and-branch look at the welfare system to see what the Government should do. We would focus on the most vulnerable and look after them well. We would recognise that one of the legacies of covid is that the pathway into benefits has gone fundamentally wrong and the country cannot afford it. Unless we grip that major driver of costs for this country, we shall see taxes rise and rise to meet those iron-clad fiscal rules, and we will be in a spiral of decline.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Debate between John Glen and Tom Hayes

2nd reading
Tuesday 15th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[John Glen]

I will make a bit more progress before giving way to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell), who, like me, has been here for well over four hours.

Making one’s maiden speech is a key moment, and I pay tribute to the five or six Members who have done so amid 22 speeches from across the House, including some excellent contributions. I turn first, however, to my parliamentary neighbour and friend my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare), the newly elected Chairman of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, who expressed very well the challenges of defending the hereditary principle, but in his usual way pointed also to the lack of coherence and made the case for a series of ambitious amendments that could be made to the Bill. He also made a very reasonable point about the case for life peerages for the hereditary peers who have made such a significant contribution, and that merits further consideration.

I turn now to some of the maiden speeches. The hon. Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Claire Hazelgrove) made a brilliant maiden speech; she talked of her experience working for the Tony Blair foundation, her commitment to fairness, her enthusiasm for financial education, and her devotion to her constituency. I wish her a long career in this House. The hon. Member for Knowsley (Anneliese Midgley) spoke of the warm affection she had for her background in the trade union movement and her commitment to the people from the council estates and the working class that she comes from. I also noted her commitment to apprenticeships and the energy transition, and I wish her well in this place. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Mid and South Pembrokeshire (Henry Tufnell) on his maiden speech, too, and his commitment to serve the many not the few, even if his perspective differs somewhat from that of his father, who many of us will know.

The hon. Member for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone) said that the Bill did not go far enough. I suspect he would want to take it to a different place than we would, but I wish him well in his time in the House. The hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Maureen Burke) spoke of her deep commitment to Glasgow and paid a moving tribute to her brother David and the inspiration he has given her to serve here.

There were a large number of other thoughtful speeches, which I will not have time to go over. I just say that it is right, as we all know, that there is a constant review of parliamentary institutions; at times, evolution is in order so that they remain relevant to the public that Parliament is designed to serve. The Government’s view of this evolution has also been on a journey. In September 2022, the Prime Minister, who was then Leader of the Opposition, made a speech at the launch of the Brown report making the case for abolishing the House of Lords entirely—I acknowledge that is a principled position—to replace it with a new elected Chamber. He was reported as saying that he would do that to “restore trust in politics”. The question that many will be asking today is: what happened? Here Labour is, in government with an enormous majority, and what is its big idea or grand plan to deliver on all that?

[Tom Hayes]

Today, Conservative colleagues have said that the reforms go too far but not far enough, and too fast but not fast enough. They have said that we should abolish the hereditary principle and that we should keep it. What is the official Conservative position? May I ask whether what we have seen today is exactly the reason that the Conservative manifesto said nothing about the hereditary principle?

[John Glen]

If the hon. Member takes the trouble to read the reasoned amendment, he will know the position of His Majesty’s Opposition. Let me get back to what his Government have not done. Their plan is simply to kick out 92 peers from the other place. I am afraid that just will not cut it.