Neil Gray
Main Page: Neil Gray (Scottish National Party - Airdrie and Shotts)Department Debates - View all Neil Gray's debates with the HM Treasury
(5 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Speaker
May I very gently exhort caring and sharing comrades to care for and share with each other, and not to speak in such a way as to stop others speaking? I am sure they would not want to do that—it would be uncomradely.
Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)
I and my colleagues, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and, I presume, the Work and Pensions Secretary have encouraged the Chancellor to scrap the final year of the benefit freeze. Given that he knows that, alongside the two-child policy, it is one of the worst policies for driving up child poverty, why has he maintained it? Why has he not scrapped it in the spring statement?
Mr Hammond
I repeat once again that the spring statement is not a fiscal event, so I am not making fiscal announcements. I have already explained why the benefit freeze was necessary—difficult but necessary—and that we have no intention of extending it. When it comes to an end, benefits will resume their increase in line with CPI inflation.