The Economy

Debate between Maria Caulfield and John McDonnell

Thursday 24th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

No, I will press on. The hon. Gentleman will have the opportunity to speak.

The Government have made £47 billion in cuts to our public services, they are giving away £110 billion, and to ramp up the profits of these corporations, they have sold out our public services to them: £9 billion-worth of contracts in health and social care were handed over to private companies this year. Outsourcing under this Government has been exposed this week for the racket it is. A report by the think tank Reform showed that outsourcing contracts wasted £14.3 billion of taxpayers’ money in the last three years. Nothing in this Queen’s Speech even acknowledges these rip-offs, let alone promises action to reverse them.



I found nothing either in the Queen’s Speech that addresses the scandal of the industrial scale of tax avoidance and money laundering that is staining the reputation of our country. Today, Transparency International published its report “At Your Service”, which shows how

“UK service providers have been involved in some of the most egregious cases of corruption in our time.”

From the looks of this Queen’s Speech, the Government will continue to do nothing about it. The registration of overseas entities Bill, which will create a register of controlling owners of overseas legal entities that own UK land, is nowhere to be seen in the Queen’s Speech, three and a half years after the Government first committed to it.

We are at the tail end of what has been nearly a lost decade for our country—a near decade of the grotesque mismanagement of our economy by successive Conservative Chancellors; I am on my third in three years. The New Economics Foundation has shown that austerity has suppressed growth by almost £100 billion—that is more than £3,600 per household. After nine years of stuttering growth, GDP even went backwards in the last quarter. Public debt was meant to peak at 70% of GDP in 2013-14, only for it to rise to 86% of GDP in 2018-19. For all their stale claims of reducing the deficit, the reality is that the Conservatives have simply shifted that burden on to the shoulders of headteachers, councillors, NHS managers and police chiefs. These are the people who have had to make the tough decisions, not Ministers, and who have had to face up to the undermining of their services by these cuts.

Part of the testament to the Government’s failed fiscal strategy has been the litany of fiscal rules, invented, published, broadcast widely and then quietly and embarrassingly dropped. Within weeks, we hear that a new fiscal rule—probably largely stolen from us—will be announced in the Budget. I should say that we may have a new fiscal rule because we cannot be sure: only yesterday, despite the Chancellor announcing the Budget and its date, other Government sources were briefing that it was off. We have a Chancellor whose staff are sacked and escorted by armed guard out of their office, without his being told, and now Cummings is possibly cancelling his Budget. I give a word of advice to the Chancellor and his colleagues: get a grip on Cummings before he does any more damage to our country.

Apart from Budget making, one of the vitally important responsibilities of the Chancellor is to ensure that the Government and this House have the fullest information before them when considering legislation or issues impacting our economy. It is therefore extraordinary, and I think a dereliction of the Chancellor’s duties, that he—unlike his predecessors—has refused to publish a detailed economic impact assessment of the Government’s Brexit proposals. Studies of similar proposals have indicated a hit to the growth of our economy of between 3.4% and 8.1%. Even the lower range of that hit will have a severe impact on our people’s jobs and living standards, and on the economy overall. Surely it is only reasonable for Members to have a degree of information and analysis from the Chancellor’s Department before they make this momentous decision.

In their most recent manifestos, both the main parties committed themselves to respecting the outcome of the referendum. We do and we will, but, as we made clear on Tuesday, the House will not be bounced into an unrealistic and unfeasible timetable for considering and scrutinising such a critically important piece of legislation. That is why the Leader of the Opposition and Labour’s Chief Whip met the Prime Minister yesterday to offer a genuine compromise and to agree on a proper timetable that will allow, in the normal manner, proper scrutiny of the Bill and the opportunity to promote, debate and determine amendments. The Opposition have set out their views on the parts of the Bill that it wishes to amend, but of course we accept that it will be the House that decides. As always, we must accept the will of the House, even if, on many occasions, we disagree with it. It is a pity that the Prime Minister does not adopt that attitude.

There is an opportunity here for us to demonstrate to our people that Parliament can and does work. If we can demonstrate civility and a rational process in the House, we may be able to help to overcome some of the division and, indeed, bitterness that have set in within our own society.

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

I thank the shadow Chancellor for giving way. It is very generous of him.

The Labour party’s policy of a four-day week will reduce the earnings of the poorest workers in the country. Those are not my words, but the words of a Labour peer, Lord Skidelsky.

[John McDonnell]

Lord Skidelsky’s report suggests a 32-hour week—not a four-day week—but one without loss of pay, which will be achieved over a decade as a result of our investment in the economy to increase productivity.

Tax Avoidance and Evasion

Debate between Maria Caulfield and John McDonnell

Wednesday 13th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

I gave way earlier to the hon. Gentleman. I will press on because I know that others want to speak and I am sure he will want to speak himself.

This is a world that the super-rich inhabit. They live by different rules and it is an alien world for the majority of the rest of us.

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that his party’s opposition to the removal of the family home from the income tax threshold affects those on the lowest incomes in London and the south-east because it will mean that only the wealthy can afford to stay in London when the family home is sold and they have to pay inheritance tax?

[John McDonnell]

The hon. Lady makes an important point. We have supported the increase in tax thresholds to try to take people out of tax altogether, but the benefits overall have actually accrued to the highest earners rather than the lowest and we need a more sophisticated system than that. With regard to inheritance tax, the cut that was made this time around by the Government benefited the top 5% of the population. There must be a better way of ensuring that people can pass on their wealth to their children, rather than just benefiting the super-rich. We have to look at that again. I am happy to do that and meet her to discuss it.

[Maria Caulfield]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for being extremely generous in giving way, but there are low-income families in London and the south-east whose home’s value has increased beyond recognition. They are now asset rich but income poor. How will the Labour party help them if it does not take them out of inheritance tax?

[John McDonnell]

The important thing now, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner) has said, is that we build more homes to house those people. That will be an effective way of reducing prices, too. That will give access to home ownership to thousands more in the capital.

The Economy

Debate between Maria Caulfield and John McDonnell

Wednesday 18th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

Of course that is true, but there are false economies. On a cross-party basis, we came to the conclusion that cutting tax credits to working families would be a false economy because it would remove an incentive to work—one of the principles on which many of our budgetary proposals are founded.

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[John McDonnell]

I will press on with my speech, because Mr Speaker has warned me that a large number of Members want to speak. I will come back to the hon. Lady.

It would be helpful to have an assurance today that no one will lose out. I have said repeatedly that if the Chancellor withdraws the tax credit cuts in full and fairly, he will have our support. On fairness, will Ministers also assure us that if the Chancellor does scrap his tax credit cuts, it will not be paid for by cutting the benefits and support for families elsewhere? I seek that assurance because, unfortunately, the Chancellor has a bit of a reputation for giving with one hand and taking with the other.

[Maria Caulfield]

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s wish for cross-party support in reducing the deficit. I take it from his stance that his party wants to control the deficit, so where does he suggest the cuts should be made? Should they be made in the health service, schools, local government or defence? Will he give some suggestions as to how he would reduce the deficit?

[John McDonnell]

We have raised this matter time and again. I think that Members on both sides of the House found it incongruous that, at the same time as the Chancellor was seeking to cut working families’ tax credits, he was reducing inheritance tax for the wealthiest families in our country. People saw that as being basically unfair.

There is much that we hope the Chancellor will address in next week’s statement. We agree that we must continuously bear down on the deficit and debt, but that has to be done with realistic good judgment and fairness. I say that the judgment must be realistic because it will undermine confidence in government if we go through another comprehensive spending review like the one in 2010, when the Chancellor announced that he would eliminate the cyclically adjusted current deficit in the five-year period—that is, by this year—whereas he has cleared only half of it. In the last financial year, the current budget deficit stood at a massive £44 billion. I also remember the Chancellor saying in 2010 that he would reduce the debt to 69% of GDP. It now stands at over 80%.

The mistakes of the last CSR should not be repeated in this one. Our fiscal rules must be realistic, achievable and fair. The Chancellor’s rules, for all the revisions in recent weeks, have been none of those things.

Charter for Budget Responsibility

Debate between Maria Caulfield and John McDonnell

Wednesday 14th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

I could not have said it better myself. Can we move on?

The Chancellor may not appreciate these economic points, but I believe many of his advisers do. That is why there is a sizeable get-out clause for the charter rules not to apply outside normal times when there is a significant negative shock to the UK economy. Not only are the social consequences of this programme devastating, but the scale of the cuts we are witnessing represents a false economy. They jeopardise the long-term economic prosperity of our country. It is a false economy to cut adult social care when the burden is shifted on to hospitals and accident and emergency departments. It is a false economy to pursue an ideological sell-off of council housing eventually to put up the rents and eventually increase housing benefit. It is a false economy, ironically, that when this Government came to office there were 70,000 people at HMRC and within the next year that is planned to fall to 52,000—a cut of more than 25% in the number of tax-collecting staff, when HMRC says that tax evasion is as high as £10 billion a year. But the worst—

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[John McDonnell]

If the hon. Lady does not mind, I have taken a large number of interventions. The debate is time-limited. If she has any points that she would like to raise with me, I am happy to meet her separately or write to her. [Interruption.] I am doing my best to be nice. It is the new politics of the Labour party.

The worst false economy is the failure to invest. This will be a direct result of Government policy embedded in this charter, with its limits on all public sector borrowing. Economists from across the spectrum have written and commented on the need for investment for the future. The World Economic Forum ranks the UK 10th for the quality of our infrastructure, behind Germany, France, the Netherlands and Spain. This Chancellor’s strategy has given us investment as a share of GDP lower than all the other G7 countries, falling even further behind the G7 average in recent years.

That is why business leaders, trade unions and a host of others are calling for investment. It is incomprehensible for the Chancellor to rule out the Government playing a role in building our future. For him to constrain himself from doing so in the future, no matter what the business case for a project, has no basis in economic theory or experience.

We also face an uncertain medium-term future for the global economy. In recent weeks there has been mounting evidence of a decline in global demand, particularly in the emerging markets.