Justine Greening
Main Page: Justine Greening (Independent - Putney)Department Debates - View all Justine Greening's debates with the HM Treasury
(13 years, 7 months ago)
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The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Justine Greening)
Many, many people have got involved with the spending challenge review, and on the spending challenge website we received more than 100,000 suggestions from members of the public, including more than 60,000 from public sector workers. We also had correspondence across government, including 10,000 e-mails and letters to the Treasury alone. I know that many other Departments received similar correspondence. Finally, Ministers have been out and about across the country, and have had meetings in their Ministries with a range of stakeholders to make sure that we make the right decisions.
Rehman Chishti
Is there still time for new members of the shadow Cabinet to contribute to the spending challenge, given that they should have £44 billion of ideas to hand?
Justine Greening
No, it is not too late for members of the shadow Cabinet to get involved with this process. They had an opportunity last night, as you remember Mr Speaker, on the Finance (No. 2) Bill, but they failed to take it. I think that that may be because they do not have the capacity or the courage to come up with their own suggestions.
Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
Can the Minister confirm well-sourced reports that she has received Treasury advice to delay some of next year’s proposed spending cuts? How, if that is true, does it square with the harsh cuts rhetoric that we have heard from Treasury Ministers since the election? Will she take this opportunity to confirm that it is her decision, and that of the Front Benchers, to stick with the £23 billion of cuts that we know they are planning for next year?
Justine Greening
We are clear about what we need to do to sort out the last Labour Government’s terrible legacy—a Government, incidentally, who left unemployment higher than when they took office. We will stick to our economic plan, which, as we have heard, the IMF and the OECD think is the right one, and it is the plan that stands alone, because the Labour party simply has no alternative.
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
Among her responses to the spending challenge, will the Minister bring into line the Local Government (Early Termination of Employment) (Discretionary Compensation) Regulations 2006, which have enabled four former Wiltshire council bosses to share remuneration of almost £2 million in their final 12 months in office?
Justine Greening
We are looking at a range of ways we can ensure that we get the most value from every pound of taxpayers’ money, and we will stop at nothing to make sure that we get there in the end. We are going through a difficult process with many difficult decisions, but we aim to ensure that all of them are tough, but still fair.
Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)
Does the Minister agree with her very good friend Sir Philip Green that one of the ways of spending money effectively would be for the Government to delay their payments to small business?
Justine Greening
Sir Philip Green is one of those people I was talking about in my first answer: somebody who has got involved trying to come up with constructive suggestions on how we can tackle the fiscal deficit left by the hon. Gentleman’s party. The bottom line is that we want to ensure that we support business. His party was against the package of corporation tax reductions that we brought forward in the Budget, which will support companies across this country. We also got rid of his party’s job tax.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
10. What recent discussions he has had with the Minister for the Cabinet Office on the cost to the public purse of the Government Whips Office and the Opposition Whips Office.
Karen Lumley (Redditch) (Con)
14. What assessment he has made of the effect on GDP of proposals to increase the level of economic growth in the June 2010 Budget.
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Justine Greening)
A key part of the emergency Budget was to make sure that we rebalanced our economy on to a more sustainable, private-led footing with economic growth taking place. As I said, we introduced a range of measures to support business, but we did not stop at that; we now have a second Finance Bill that brings forward further measures. The Office for Budget Responsibility’s analysis following the emergency Budget showed that it is forecasting a sustained recovery in economic output, with employment growing year on year and unemployment falling year on year.
Karen Lumley
What would have happened in smaller, mixed-economy areas such as my constituency of Redditch if the Government had refused to take the challenge as they have and face up to the difficult decisions?
Justine Greening
Such areas would have faced a jobs tax with higher national insurance, higher corporation tax rates, lower economic confidence and, quite possibly, higher interest rates.
Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)
15. What representations he has received on the new arrangements for child benefit which will apply to one and two-parent families.
Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
17. What assessment he has made of the effect on GDP of proposals to increase the level of economic growth in the June 2010 Budget.
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Justine Greening)
As we discussed earlier, the emergency Budget supported businesses in a variety of ways. We know that we have to rebalance our economy by getting an unwieldy public sector back into a sustainable, private sector-led economy that generates the tax revenues needed to fund our public services sustainably. We will never go back to the profligacy of the Labour party.
Harriett Baldwin
Businesses in West Worcestershire welcome the cuts in corporation tax that were announced in the June 2010 Budget. Does the Minister agree that the most basic economics primer would say that, if they are possible, lower tax rates for business can lead to higher tax revenues from business?
Justine Greening
My hon. Friend is right, and I know that she had wide experience in business before entering the House. Opposition Front Benchers really ought to listen to the CBI, the Institute of Directors, the Federation of Small Businesses, the British Chambers of Commerce and a range of other representatives from across industry who welcome the measures that the Government have brought forward to support business. As long as the Opposition put their head in the sand they will remain what they are right now, which is incredible.
Katy Clark (North Ayrshire and Arran) (Lab)
18. How much tax revenue each enforcement and compliance officer in Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs collected on average in the last financial year.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
19. What assessment he has made of the effect on GDP of proposals to increase the level of economic growth in the June 2010 Budget.
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Justine Greening)
The Government are continuing to do whatever they can to support business. As I said in answer to previous questions, Richard Lambert from the Confederation of British Industry described our emergency Budget as a
“first important step on the long journey back to economic health.”
It is a step that the Labour party unfortunately does not want to take with us.
Bob Stewart
How do we ensure that everyone benefits from economic growth, particularly pensioners? With interest rates so low, many pensioners in Beckenham are rapidly eating into their life savings.
Justine Greening
My hon. Friend raises an important point. Although the emergency Budget was very much about supporting business and creating again the conditions for employment, he is right to mention pensions. That is why another key part of it, which perhaps got less attention than it otherwise would, was our managing to re-establish the earnings link with the state pension. The Labour party failed to do that in 13 years—it promised but, as ever, failed to deliver.
Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Justine Greening)
I will be very happy to meet my hon. Friend. The coalition agreement mentions the desire to reform air passenger duty and move towards a per plane duty. In the intervening period, I have had a range of meetings, including with airport owners, and I would be happy to add him to my list of people with whom I have discussed that policy.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
T8. The Chancellor was a millionaire the day he was born, so he has not got a clue what it is like to try to raise a family on £40,000 a year—[Interruption.] Do you mind? He cannot hear me. People who earn that much are not the super-rich; they are hard-working people who are getting by and getting on. The cuts to child benefit will take about 10% of the income of some of them. By what definition of fairness does he think robbing 10% from hard-working people is a fair deal for such families?