Finance (No. 2) Bill

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Wednesday 25th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

Well, there we go. I am struck by the fact that the Leader of the Opposition was very reluctant to say that earlier, but I am pleased that he has been bounced into providing that clarification. [Interruption.] I noticed that he did not answer questions earlier today. [Interruption.] Indeed, he will never have the chance to answer questions at Prime Minister’s Question Time.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

It has taken me five years to learn that Prime Minister’s questions is about the Leader of the Opposition and us asking questions and the Prime Minister not answering them. It is not Leader of the Opposition’s questions; it is Prime Minister’s questions. We do not answer questions; the Government are supposed to.

[Mr Gauke]

I notice that the hon. Lady does not answer questions. I am glad we finally got some clarification on that point, but as I say, I do not think the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) will ever have the opportunity to answer Prime Minister’s questions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gauke]

We have retained the confidence of the markets, and we have retained very low long-term interest rates. When we came to power, we were on a par with the likes of Spain and Italy; now, we are seen very much as a safe haven. The UK’s fiscal credibility has been maintained, and it would not have been had we stuck to Labour’s plans, even with a significant increase in the jobs tax.

[Julie Hilling]

Does the Minister not see that raising VAT and cutting benefits hits the most vulnerable in society? Does he think it is right that children in this country should lose weight over school summer holidays because their parents do not have enough money to feed them, that people are dependent on food banks, and that we have had people starve to death because of benefit cuts? Is that the way this country should be in this day and age?

[Mr Gauke]

Under this Government, child poverty has fallen, and pensioner poverty is at a lower level than it has ever been. Only today, we have seen numbers showing that there are 600,000 fewer workless households than there were in 2010. If we wish to deal with poverty, and we certainly do, the best way is to have a job-creating, growing economy, and that is precisely what the long-term economic plan is delivering.

To be fair to the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies), he says that he would cut VAT, but I am not hearing that from Labour Front Benchers. I must remind Labour Members that, with a handful of exceptions, none of them voted against the increase in VAT in 2010. I note that one of the handful of exceptions is sitting on the Opposition Benches, but Labour Members did not vote against it.

Bankers’ Bonuses and the Banking Industry

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Wednesday 25th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: we are indeed a successful exporting region, but the Government are spending 520 times as much on the transport industry in London as they are in our region, which does not make sense. That is one reason why the Opposition want to set up a business investment bank.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

Low wages are a problem not just in the north-east but in the north-west and across the country. A third of hourly paid workers in my constituency are paid less than the living wage, and 57% of part-time workers are paid less than the living wage, which means that they depend on other taxpayers to support them so that they can get to a point where they receive a living wage.

[Helen Goodman]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. That is why people watching the debate will find it absolutely incredible that millions of pounds have been paid to bankers in bonuses.

I should like to come back to the central points in the motion. Pay should be a reward for good performance, but we have seen a disconnect between bank performance and the pay of many senior executives and traders. We have discussed whether or not there is improved accountability in the banking system. At the Dispatch Box, the Minister tried to persuade us that that was all sorted and that everything was fine and good. However, the argument that it was right for the Government to resist the EU cap on bonuses because if bankers did not receive bonuses they would just receive higher pay reveals that accountability mechanisms have completely failed. If those mechanisms were working properly, shareholders would be able to prevent that abuse and something that is in effect a loophole. [Interruption.] I thought that the hon. Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) would intervene, as that was a point that he made.

Charter for Budget Responsibility

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Tuesday 13th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

We have halved a record budget deficit to 5% of national income. The shadow Chancellor says we should have borrowed more, and his plans involve £170 billion of more borrowing, yet he finds himself in the extraordinary position of asking the Labour party to vote for a charter that requires £30 billion of more consolidation. Where should that £30 billion of consolidation come from? To be fair to the Liberal Democrats, they say we should increase taxes to help achieve that consolidation. The Conservatives say it can be achieved by bearing down on spending, the welfare budget and tax avoidance—£13 billion of savings from the Departments, £12 billion from welfare and £5 billion from tax avoidance. That is our clear plan. Labour cannot pretend to support the charter while claiming that the £30 billion does not exist. It is a totally chaotic position.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Osborne]

Will the hon. Lady, who will be voting for the charter, tell us where she would find the £30 billion of cuts?

[Julie Hilling]

I have been trying to get in for a while, so I am grateful to the Chancellor for giving way now. I cannot move on from what he said about cutting the deficit at the level he said he would. Unless my memory is false, he said in 2010 that he would get rid of the deficit over the Parliament. Furthermore, did he intend there to be three years of flat-lining growth?

[Mr Osborne]

The British economy has grown faster than any major European economy over the last four years. It has created 1.7 million new jobs and 750,000 new businesses, and today the Governor of the Bank of England described it as being in a “sweet spot”, but Labour opposed every difficult decision we took to do that. It opposed every spending cut and welfare change. It goes around the country pretending it would reverse these things. It has made £20 billion of unfunded spending commitments. Every day in this Chamber, Labour Members ask for more public money to be spent on more things and complain about the difficult decisions we have taken. It is a totally incredible position from the Labour party and it is being exposed today.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd September 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Andrea Leadsom)]

Yes, I would be happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss that issue. I have been made aware of such cases. Of course, banks try to ensure that they have robust processes in place, but if anything else can be done, we are happy to look at it.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

We now know that the Chancellor has had a letter from the head of the UK Statistics Authority, so when will he correct the record and apologise for giving the House—obviously inadvertently—incorrect information which inflated the success of his tax avoidance programme?

[Mr Osborne]

The Government, including me, did inadvertently give the wrong information, but the explanation provided by the permanent secretary at the HMRC was accepted by the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, the right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge), as a fair explanation of what happened.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Thursday 3rd July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Vaizey]

Yes, I do. The whole point of all the completely justified questions that have been asked is that people want broadband. That is why we are putting £1.2 billion into rolling out rural broadband and why total funding of something like £70 million from BT, European funding and Broadband Delivery UK is going into connecting Devon and Somerset. More than 250,000 premises are planned to be networked and we have allocated a provisional £22 million for the next phase.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

This issue is not just a rural problem. At my recent business event, companies told me how lack of access to fast broadband is seriously hampering their businesses. How will the Minister ensure that areas on the edge of major urban centres also get superfast broadband?

[Mr Vaizey]

The whole point of the rural broadband programme is to help the areas she speaks about. Local councils are in charge of the roll-out, so they should know best where the money should go first for the most impact. As I say, we have had phase 1 to get to 90%; we now have phase 2 to get to 95%; and the money we have allocated for new technologies will give us the figure we need to get to 100%.

Office for Budget Responsibility (Manifesto Audits)

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Wednesday 25th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Ed Balls]

In that case, the head of the OBR is even more supportive of the proposal than I had thought. My hon. Friend makes a helpful contribution.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

I hope that in the final part of his speech, my right hon. Friend will come to the same conclusion as me, which is that the only reason Government Members could be against this proposal is that they are frightened that they will no longer be able to say that our plans are no good.

[Ed Balls]

My hon. Friend, who regularly advises me on my speeches, can obviously see where this speech is going. I have worked hard to try to secure consensus. Despite the support of many influential figures, I have not yet managed to succeed in making it a cross-party consensus. The reason for that is that, so far, the Chancellor has not engaged. He has refused to co-operate with the discussions. He has not responded to my proposals and letters. He has not even turned up today.

The question is: why is the Chancellor so reluctant? The reason cannot be the need for primary legislation, because we will support it. It cannot be the timetable because, despite the protestations of Government Members, the head of the OBR confirms that there is time to get this done and to get it done properly. The Chancellor says that he wants to protect OBR independence, but so do we, and the head of the OBR says that this reform need not jeopardise that independence.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

As usual, my hon. Friend raises an important point. Support from the corporate sector for the cultural sector is very important. It amounted to around £110 million last year, almost a fifth of total investment. In the past couple of weeks, I have been to the Globe, which is supported by Deutsche Bank, and the Matisse exhibition at Tate Modern, which is supported and sponsored by Bank of America. Just yesterday I went to the Vikings exhibition at the British Museum, which is supported by BP. It was held in a new exhibition hall, which received the majority of its funding from the Sainsbury family.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

Lowton girls group came to talk to me about its concerns that music videos portraying sex and violence are being watched by children and young people. Why will the Government not legislate for age ratings for music videos online?

[Mr Vaizey]

Parents tell us that they want age ratings on music videos that are unsuitable for younger children. We consulted on legislation to introduce the British Board of Film Classification age ratings for music DVDs. We will introduce legislation to Parliament within the coming months, and we will bring into force new age rating requirements as soon as possible. I am also working with the music industry to get age ratings for online music videos as well.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Tuesday 29th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I absolutely agree with my hon. and learned Friend. [Interruption.] The shadow Chancellor is chuntering away, but this is what he said on the radio this morning: “I don’t think I’ve been too pessimistic in the last few years.” He predicted that the economy would be choked off and that jobs would be lost, but the reverse is happening. In Sleaford and North Hykeham, as my hon. and learned Friend knows, the claimant count has come down and 1,700 jobs have been created.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

T4. When the Chancellor said earlier this month, “If you are hiding your money offshore, we are coming to get you”,did he mean “coming to get you to work in the Treasury”?

[Mr Osborne]

This Government have taken action against tax avoidance that the last Government never dreamed of taking. We have increased the resources for tackling avoidance and evasion. I will tell the House something else: we do not preside over a tax system in which cleaners pay higher tax rates than the people they work for. That was the tax system that the Labour party voted for, and we have got rid of it.

Finance (No. 2) Bill

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Tuesday 1st April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Danny Alexander]

My hon. Friend makes his point eloquently and accurately. I do not wish to add anything to it, but neither would I subtract a single word, as he is absolutely right.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

rose—

[Danny Alexander]

I will give way one more time and then I will set out some of the measures we are taking, which the previous Government had 13 years to introduce but failed to do so.

[Julie Hilling]

Why were there fewer confiscation orders—raising less money—in 2013 than in 2012? Why did the Government have to reduce the top rate of tax because people were avoiding paying it if they had been so wonderful at closing all these loopholes?

[Danny Alexander]

The hon. Lady might well ask her own Front-Bench team why they increased the top rate of tax for their last few days in office, given that it was clear that it was not going to raise the money it supposedly would have raised. We have made sure that the wealthiest in this country are paying a far greater share of income tax than they did in any year under the previous Government—[Interruption.] Let me respond to her point before she seeks to come back on it; I listened to what she said, so she can listen to what I have to say. Measures in that Budget raised five times more from the same group of people. The analysis from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs showed that this tax was not raising any money, and I would prefer to have the substance of actually raising revenue from people than the pretence of measures that do not raise any money.

[Julie Hilling]

Not only has the right hon. Gentleman not answered the question about loopholes, but the truth is that during that short period when the full tax was in place it raised, and was raising, much more money than has been the case since it was reduced. The Government do not like to look at what happened during that one full year of the tax being in place.

[Danny Alexander]

I encourage the hon. Lady to read the detailed analysis published by HMRC more than a year ago.

Let me deal with some of the measures to tackle—

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Swales]

Unfortunately, I was not here during the last Parliament, but I have read a great deal of what my right hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Vince Cable), now the Business Secretary, said at the time. He was warning of the difficulties many years before they actually arose. I am quite certain that our party was watching the situation carefully, and that it could see what was happening.

There is a growing myth, which was repeated by the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty), who is no longer in his place—[Hon. Members: “He is here.”] My apologies; he is in a different place. That myth has also been repeated in the Opposition’s reasoned amendment, which states that

“working people are £1,600 a year worse off”.

Even the Institute for Fiscal Studies would admit that that is to do with gross income; it is not to do with net income, and it is not the amount by which people are worse off. Even the shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) pointed that out in his speech. One reason why people are not worse off by that amount is that there has been a large cut in income tax. That was a high priority for the Liberal Democrats, and I am delighted that in a few days’ time people will have experienced a £700 tax cut since the general election. The Bill includes another £100 for basic rate taxpayers.

[Julie Hilling]

Would the hon. Gentleman like to mention the 24 tax rises that his Government have introduced, including the massive hike in VAT?

[Ian Swales]

I will come on to some of those tax rises in a moment. I am just saying that working people are not £1,600 worse off, as the Labour amendment suggests. There is no expert who says that they are.

This Government’s tax cut has reduced inequality. It has been praised by the Living Wage Foundation as reducing the gap between the minimum wage and the living wage, and I am proud that my party has driven it through in this Parliament. It is also good that the Budget shows that there will be real growth in household disposable income from now on.

--- Later in debate ---

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

Mr Deputy Speaker, I find these financial debates deeply frustrating and often very bad for my blood pressure, particularly when I follow—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

We do not want you to collapse—the hon. Lady does not have to speak if it has such a great effect.

[Julie Hilling]

I assure you, Mr Deputy Speaker, that I will not collapse. I might just get a little excited.

I find speeches such as that just made by the hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) exceedingly frustrating. The Government say that they want to build a fairer society, but fairer for who? Their actions certainly are not fair for the 2.5 million people seeking work and the nearly 1 million young people still being left on the scrapheap. The Chancellor says that this is a Budget for makers, doers and savers, but it does nothing for those who are making do and who, far from saving, find themselves deeper and deeper in debt.

The worst thing is the continual ridiculous comment that the global financial crash was caused by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown). Powerful though he is, he did not bring down the world economy. Labour’s public investment did not cause the global credit crunch. Building new hospitals and schools and recruiting tens of thousands of extra nurses, doctors, teachers and police officers in Britain did not cause the sub-prime mortgage defaults in the USA that started the collapse of financial institutions throughout the world. It was not Labour’s public spending that triggered the world’s economic crisis but the global interdependency of reckless banking that triggered an economic meltdown in Britain and across the globe.

[David Rutley]

Was not a record structural deficit a major contributing factor as well? The hon. Lady seems to airbrush that out of the equation.

[Julie Hilling]

The hon. Gentleman should continue to listen to what I have to say, because before the crash we did not have the structural deficit that he is talking about.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

The hon. Gentleman just referred to a “record structural deficit”, but according to the OBR in 2010 it was 7.7%. In 1998, it was more than 8%.

[Julie Hilling]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I will come on to some of the details in just a moment.

Before they say that Labour should have done more to regulate the banks, Government Members must show some humility. The Conservatives wanted less regulation. Yes, Labour responded by boosting public spending and borrowing to offset the catastrophic collapse in private sector spending, and the £90 billion spent on the bank bailout plunged the public sector into record annual deficit, but what would they have done? Would they have allowed the banks to collapse and allowed us to go into a depression worse than that in the 1930s? Would they have allowed thousands, if not millions, to lose their houses, their pensions and their jobs? Yes, we bailed out the banks, we cut VAT and income tax and we gave 150,000 businesses more time to pay their tax bills. We put in place measures that helped 300,000 people stay in their homes and we set out how we would halve the deficit over four years once the recovery was in place.

Do Conservative Members agree with those who were on their Front Bench at that time? They opposed the fiscal stimulus and the measures to support the economy and families. They pushed for the deregulation of the mortgage market even as the crisis began and they voted against the Bill that became the Banking (Special Provisions) Act 2008, which would have let Northern Rock fail. Where would families and businesses be now if the Tories had got their way then?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

It is highly questionable that Northern Rock needed to fail if the Bank of England had been willing to act as a classic lender of last resort when there was a liquidity problem rather than a solvency problem.

[Julie Hilling]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. At that time our Government needed to act to bail out those banks. He says that the Government need not have acted if the Bank of England had, but the reality is that the Government acted and needed to do so.

It has been claimed that before the global collapse we were spending too much, so why did the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr Cameron) pledge in 2007 to match Labour’s spending plan for further three years—to match our spending on investment, jobs and growth?

The level of debt under the Labour Government before the banking crisis was lower than that we inherited from the Tories in 1997. We brought the deficit down, we brought borrowing down and, far from failing to fix the roof when the sun was shining, we invested in repairing the terrible state of our public services. People were dying on hospital trolleys before they were seen, others were waiting a year to get on the waiting list before waiting another year to have their operations, schools were crumbling, the railways were decaying and youth services were disappearing. We repaired all that, and then the bankers behaved totally irresponsibly and brought down the world economy.

Yes, there was a failure by every Government right across the world to recognise the seeds of the banking crisis, but it was not caused by Labour’s overspending, and it was not caused by Labour’s high borrowing or high debt, because none of those things was going on before the banking crisis. If we had not dealt with the crisis as we did, the whole economic and banking system in Britain would have collapsed. If our Prime Minister at the time had not worked with other world leaders to bail out banks and bring forward investment, the world would have been plunged into a depression beyond belief.

We need honesty from Government Members to acknowledge the truth. The Government should acknowledge that the national debt has doubled on their watch to £1,400 billion. They should accept that wages are down by £1,600 a year since May 2010, and that people will be worse off in 2015 than they were in 2010. The Government should acknowledge that they have introduced 24 tax rises, that energy bills are up by almost £300 since the election, and that even though they inherited a growing economy, they squashed that growth, had three years of flatlining and have overseen the slowest recovery for 100 years.

The Government like to talk proudly about the number of jobs that they claim have been created in the private sector, so I asked them some questions about those jobs. I asked how many of the new jobs created lasted more than 12 months, but they could not tell me because they do not collect those statistics. So I asked them

“how many new jobs created in the private sector in the last 12 months were (a) unpaid workfare or internships, (b) through zero-hour contracts, (c) part-time, (d) part-time working 16 hours or less per week, (e) part-time working eight hours or less per week, (g) paid at the level of the minimum wage and (h) jobs transferred from public sector organisations.”

What a surprise. I was told:

“Information regarding the number of jobs created is not available. As an alternative, estimates relating to the net change in the number of people in employment in the private sector have been provided from the Labour Force Survey (LFS).”—[Official Report, 11 November 2013; Vol. 570, c. 460-61W.]

Estimates showed that more than a third of the new jobs that have been created are part-time, and that a third of those are under 16 hours. However, the Government do not collect the figures for those people who are on unpaid Government schemes or internships, even though those are included in the number of new jobs created. They cannot tell with any accuracy the number of people on zero-hours contracts or the number on the minimum wage. They also cannot tell me how many of the jobs now designated as being in the private sector are simply jobs transferred from the public sector, even though we know there are a large number of such jobs. The proud boast that over a million new jobs have been created is based on sand. We do not know how many are really new jobs, how many are unpaid, how many are low-paid, how many are zero-hours or how many are temporary. The Government like to think that any job is better than unemployment—a job at any price—but that is causing untold misery to many.

Let me tell the House a story of a man who went to the Allerton food bank. He was absolutely made up that he had got a job in Poundland. In week one, no work was offered; in week two, still no work offered; in week three, still no work offered. At this point he and his family were existing on boiled pasta because that was all they had in their household. Fortunately, somebody directed him to the food bank. People at the food bank helped him and spoke to Poundland, who said, “Well, we can’t finish him because he may get hours next week.” In the end he had to resign from his job and take the hit from the Department for Work and Pensions because he had resigned from a job—a job in which he was never given any hours to work. He had to resign so that he could feed his family.

Zero-hours contracts are a scourge on the unemployed, but instead of cracking down on them, the Government fail to collect statistics. Other sources estimate that a million people are on zero-hours contracts; a million people who do not know whether they can feed their families or pay their rents each week; a million people who cannot get a mortgage or a loan to buy a car; a million people who can make no plans for their future. It is like the bad old days when people had to queue up at the dock gates just to be picked for a day’s work. These workers are paid 40% less than those on permanent contracts, and 20% of them have said that they have had money docked or been penalised in some other way if they were unable to work when they were called for at a moment’s notice. Half the people have said that they have had shifts cancelled at the last minute. The Government should take Labour’s lead and regulate zero-hours contracts, not allow the exponential growth that has occurred under their watch.

[Jonathan Edwards]

The Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Bill was recently passed in the Welsh Parliament and my party put forward an amendment to prohibit the use of zero-hours contracts in that sector, yet the hon. Lady’s party, the governing party in Wales, voted down that amendment. What is her message to her colleagues in Wales?

[Julie Hilling]

With the greatest respect to the hon. Gentleman, I am not a Welsh Member and I am not a Member of the Welsh Assembly, so I do not feel able to comment. However, I wholly believe that what the Labour party says it will do in government is the action that should be taken, and that we need to crack down on zero-hours contracts.

The Government have presided over the destruction of permanent appropriately remunerated jobs with decent terms and conditions, with the creation of insecure, poorly paid private sector jobs.

At least we have not had the omnishambles of a Budget that we had a few years ago. I am pleased that the Chancellor, albeit secretly, has turned to plan B and is investing in infrastructure. But he is still doing nothing to tackle the cost of living crisis, and he is still ploughing ahead with further unnamed cuts. But we know where some of those cuts are being made. We already know that northern local authorities are bearing the brunt of the cuts in local government spending. Bolton will have lost £100 million from its budget, cutting services to the most vulnerable. Will the Government ever accept that they cannot cut their way to growth; that holding down wages means that more people are reliant on tax credits and many are in poverty?

The proposals on pensions appear to be welcome, but the Budget has done nothing for the 1.6 million pensioners living in poverty. Nor will it do anything for the crisis in social care, which has seen the number of older people receiving support falling by more than a quarter since 2005. Proposals on child care are welcome, but we need action now not in 18 months’ time. I met a woman on Friday in Horwich when I was campaigning for an energy price freeze who told me that she used to work in a nursery, but had to give up her job because she could not afford the child care costs for her own two children.

How on earth can the Government justify sacking tax collectors when the tax gap is somewhere between £35 billion and £120 billion? In 2011-12, before the last round of cuts, 20 million calls to HMRC were not answered. The estimated cost of those calls was £33 million, and the value of customers’ time was estimated at £103 million. Since then, the number of staff has been further reduced. Recent figures show that there were fewer confiscation orders in 2013 than in 2012 and less money was recovered, and only four officials are hunting 124 of the worst tax dodgers. The biggest scandal of all is that the Government say that they reduced the top rate of tax from 50% to 45% because people were avoiding paying their tax. They think that if people are poor they will work harder if their pay is cut. They think that people should pay all their tax, and that will make them better people, getting jobs and working harder. But the rich just have to pay less. They just have to say they will find other means so that they do not have to pay their taxes.

What nonsense. If the poor do not pay their taxes, they are prosecuted. If the rich do not pay their taxes, they get a tax cut. Even sadder, is that in the only full year that people had to pay the 50% tax, when they could not pre-pay or post-pay their tax bills, it brought in £1.1 billion extra. Perhaps I am a little strange, but I think that £1.1 billion is quite a lot of money. It could go some way towards solving some of the problems in our economy and some of the desperate situations my constituents face.

Until the Government deal with the cost of living crisis facing so many people in Britain today, they cannot possibly claim to be building a fairer society. It is an utter disgrace that in the sixth richest country in the world people are dependent on food banks and children are going to bed hungry. It is a disgrace that people are living in houses with no heat because they cannot afford the bills. It is a disgrace that long-term unemployment is going up. Yet again the Government seem to miss the point. They leave the poor and the vulnerable to suffer.

--- Later in debate ---

[Julie Hilling]

This is the sort of speech that raises my blood pressure. Where does the hon. Gentleman believe the recession started? Does he agree that the global economic crash started in America? Does he accept that his party in opposition argued for less financial regulation? What would he have done when the crash came—let the banks go and leave everything else to go into a depression?

[Charlie Elphicke]

I apologise to the hon. Lady if I have raised her blood pressure. In England, the NHS will look after her very well; it has an increasingly good record.

I turn to where the Labour party has managed to get to. We have set out a clear economic plan, through which we have successfully cut the deficit by a third and cut taxes on average by £705 for hard-working people. We have managed to support business and cut business taxes, which the anti-business Labour party has taken to opposing of late. It says it supports the welfare cap, but in media interviews it wants to exempt this and that benefit from it. We have managed to take firm action to control immigration and we have plans for better skills for our young people, to give them a better future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bain]

There is a degree of wisdom in what the hon. Gentleman says. I encourage him to look at the work of the social mobility and child poverty commission, which has come up with some interesting conclusions. It is critical that there is better investment in skills. My constituency was once powered by the railway industry. The economic heart of my constituency is now the college that is across from my constituency office. That is the means by which children in a ward with one of the highest levels of child poverty in Scotland will get the skills that they need to succeed in the jobs that we want to create in a modern economy.

[Julie Hilling]

Before my hon. Friend moves on from statistics, does he agree that one of the cunning ploys of the Government is to change the way in which they measure things? There are fewer people in poverty because they have shifted the point at which they declare that people are in poverty, and fewer people are waiting in A and E because the measure for waiting times has been shifted.

[Mr Bain]

My hon. Friend is entirely correct. It is shameful that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has abandoned the child poverty targets of the previous Government and is instead trying to finesse them with some unspecified alternatives. Yesterday, he disgracefully called the bedroom tax a success. That will be long remembered by the 600,000 people across the country and their families and friends who see it not as a success, but as an abhorrence that should be scrapped without delay.

Let me deal with some of the specific measures that are set out in the Bill. On the personal income tax allowance, it has been established by the IFS and the Resolution Foundation that four fifths of the benefit go to people in the top half of the income distribution. As I said to the Deputy Prime Minister in questions last week, the sneaky freezing of the work allowance by this Government, which was announced in the autumn statement and confirmed in the Budget and the Finance Bill, means that £600 million will be removed from the post-tax incomes of hundreds of thousands of people on low incomes. That is another example of the Government giving with one hand through the personal tax allowance, but taking two thirds of it away with the other.

The Government have not taken the steps that are needed to enforce the minimum wage and ensure that there is a real wages recovery for people in the lower half of the income scale. Liberal Democrat Members have spoken in this debate about taking people out of tax, but in the next financial year, 1.6 million low-paid people will still pay national insurance contributions and higher VAT. People will not forget that they have not been made better off by this Government’s fiscal policies, but have been made worse off. This is the first Government in over a century who will have to go back to the electorate with that record.

Despite the changes on individual savings accounts, people have seen the savings ratio in this country fall over the past few years by 3%. People have been forced to draw down their savings to make ends meet. The collapse in real wages has been compensated for by the reduction in the savings ratio.

The measures in the Bill will not be enough for an increase in savings. That is not surprising because people would need to earn more than £125,000 a year to get full benefit from the changes to ISAs. The Government should have come forward with more radical measures to increase saving, particularly for low earners—policies such as the Saving Gateway that was introduced by the previous Government and scrapped almost immediately by this Government in 2010.

The Chief Secretary was quick to boast of the effects the Bill will have on income from tax avoidance schemes, but as the Office for Budget Responsibility and the Institute for Fiscal Studies confirmed after the Budget, there are higher up-front taxes payments, although in a sense they are over-balanced by reduced revenues from 2019-20 onwards. The average benefit of the policy is a mere £90 million a year.

The Government should have been far bolder in the Bill in bringing forward more ambitious provisions to tackle avoidance and evasion. Where are the clauses that would have introduced mandatory company-by-company reporting of taxes paid and profits made? Where are the provisions on beneficial ownership of companies? They were promised by the Prime Minister at the G8 summit, but we have seen nothing of their delivery.

For some of these policies, the IFS has noticed a worrying trend. Yes, the Government have provided extra child care assistance for people through universal credit, but how is that paid for? By £200 million a year cuts to other, unspecified, parts of universal credit. The IFS has said that that is happening across a range of policy areas: permanent giveaways are funded by temporary increases in revenue, but there is no long-term plan about where the money is coming from. With that kind of financial planning, it is unsurprising that the Government are borrowing £190 billion more over this Parliament than they predicted at its beginning.

For business, we welcome the reverse in cuts to capital and investment allowances, but it is stark to consider that the Government’s policy goes up only to 2016. Business needs certainty and does not know what the Government’s plans will be after 2016 for capital and investment allowances. Imagine if we are back in the same position as in 2011 when this Government cut those allowances? I hope that when he responds to the debate, the Exchequer Secretary will offer assurances to business that there will be certainty in investment and capital allowances for the rest of the OBR’s forecast period, because that is certainly not in the Bill.

If we consider the effect of these policies on business investment, the OBR finds that there will be no appreciable increase in investment in the economy as a whole, or by businesses in particular, until 2018. The recovery was supposed to be fuelled by business investment; instead, it is fuelled by consumption, and led by people getting into debt or running down their savings as wages have slumped. That cannot be a balanced recovery in the economic well-being of our country. I also welcome some of the changes made to research and development tax credits, but even after those, this country will have one of the lowest levels of investment in innovation and science, in both public and private terms, of any major developed country. The Bill should have done far more to tackle that record.

Another omission from the Bill is—oddly—the provisions on tax-free child care. They have been much trumpeted by the Government but we do not see them reflected in the Bill, and one can only presume that the Government intend to make them the centrepiece of what will otherwise be a threadbare Queen’s Speech in June. If we consider the details of that policy there are worrying issues. I am pleased that the Government at least did not continue with their stated policy of leaving up to 1 million working poor people on universal credit without any assistance through the tax and benefit system to deal with their child care costs, particular as the child care tax credit was decimated by the Government in 2011.

What about the sustainability of this policy? Where is the provision in the Bill to increase the supply of child care places? As we see child care costs go up for families across the United Kingdom, the cry we hear from constituents is about the lack of affordable places. The Bill could have made progress on that, but the Government simply did not meet the challenge.

I believe that a Finance Bill that concentrated on jobs, child care, a lower starting rate of tax and bringing fairness to our tax system again by introducing a higher 50p rate would have begun the job of securing a recovery for everyone, not just a few at the top. National debt is rising, long-term youth unemployment is doubling, exports and productivity are stagnating, and investment is slumping. This is the damp squib Finance Bill of a failing and lethargic coalition slithering its the way out of office. Our country deserves better. Next May, it will get it with a Labour Government.

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

It is an honour to follow the speech of the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Bain). I anticipate hearing the words of my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) and I, as the Member for Macclesfield, represent north-east Cheshire.

It is good to see you smiling in your place, Mr Deputy Speaker, because the sea of gloom on the Opposition Benches reminds me of one of Eeyore’s greatest quotes:

“‘It is snowing still,’ said Eeyore gloomily…‘And freezing …However,’ he said, brightening up a little, ‘we haven’t had an earthquake lately.’”

That is the spirit on the Opposition Benches: gloom and despondency. This morning I went to the annual conference of the British Chambers of Commerce. Opposition Members are out of touch with the mood of the business community and the progress that is being made in the real economy. I ask Opposition Members to get out of the Chamber from time to time, speak to local businesses and get a sense of what is going on and the opportunities out in the real marketplace.

[Julie Hilling]

I do go and talk to businesses, but I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman talks to his ordinary constituents: the people seeking work or who are in low-paid work, and those using food banks or those who cannot afford to heat their houses. The Budget is not just about business, but about stopping people living a dreadful life.

[David Rutley]

That is a good question and I thank the hon. Lady for giving me the opportunity to respond. Of course I speak to members of the public in Macclesfield and outside my constituency, too.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Tuesday 11th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Danny Alexander]

I share the hon. Gentleman’s pride in the fact that the coalition Government have delivered that important measure, which is supporting 26 million working people in this country with an income tax cut worth about £700 a year. My pride is enhanced by being a member of the party that proposed it at the 2010 election.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

T6. In 2011 the Chief Secretary said that anyone who wanted to cut the top rate of tax was living in cloud cuckoo land. Is it not clear that that is exactly where he and his friend, the out-of-touch Chancellor, now live?

[Danny Alexander]

In the Budget in which we reduced the 50p rate to 45p, we introduced measures that raised five times more from the wealthiest people, including, for example, the annual tax on enveloped dwellings, which is a mansion tax for tax dodgers in respect of people from overseas who own properties in this country. It raised five times more than we expected at the time.