Business and the Economy

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Wednesday 21st May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dave Doogan]

rose—

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)]

rose—

[Dr Sandher]

I give way first to the hon. Member for Angus and Perthshire Glens (Dave Doogan).

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[Neil O’Brien]

rose—

[Dr Sandher]

Oh, go on then.

[Neil O’Brien]

The hon. Member talks about deindustrialisation. Can he remind me what happened to the manufacturing share of the economy under the previous Labour Government? Did it go up?

[Dr Sandher]

Manufacturing has been falling in this country since Margaret Thatcher came to this place. The lack of manufacturing jobs, and the inability of graduates to get a decent job in this country, is precisely why they are turning away from democracy itself. More than that, the UK has suffered the fastest deindustrialisation in western Europe.

[Neil O’Brien]

rose—

[Dr Sandher]

In a moment. On top of that, young people cannot move out: some 40% of 18 to 35-year-olds live at home with mum and dad. Each of them is now turning away from democracy.

[Neil O’Brien]

I want to continue on the subject of deindustrialisation. Is it not the case that the manufacturing share of the economy dramatically fell under the previous Labour Government and then stayed the same under the last Conservative Government?

[Dr Sandher]

Luckily, I will come back to reindustrialising the economy and what the Labour Government are doing right now, but let me turn to the motion at hand, which does not really add up, taking each point in turn.

The motion speaks of employment. Employment, including youth employment, is higher than it was at the July election. More people are entering the labour market, and fewer people are off sick. That is because we are getting waiting lists down.

The motion speaks of business closing down. Over 230,000 businesses have been created—a net increase of 10,000. We have made a permanent 40% reduction in business rates for high street shops. Page 4 of the impact assessment of the Employment Rights Bill, of which we Labour Members are incredibly proud, states:

“The package will be significantly positive for society (i.e., the benefits will outweigh the costs)”.

It goes on to mention

“a direct and positive impact on economic growth”.

Pro-worker, pro-business, pro-growth—that is the record and legacy of this Labour Government.

Where we differ entirely and fundamentally from the Conservative party is that we do not believe that it is simply business owners and entrepreneurs who create wealth and growth in this country. Every worker—ever nurse, doctor or teacher—creates wealth in this nation. It is a joint enterprise between capital and labour to produce more. That is where we are. A stronger nation is one where each person does well, and that is the country that we are creating—in stark contrast with what the Conservative party left us.

To get everyone to live a decent life, we need to get costs down. Opposition Members have spoken about inflation. A third of today’s price increases come from energy costs. Why? It is because we depend on natural gas, which sets our price 98% of the time and is 50% to 75% more expensive than wind and solar. That is why we are investing in clean energy—cheaper and secure energy in the long run, not just for the next five or 10 years. We also have some of the highest childcare costs in the world. The Chancellor has put more money into childcare so that everyone can get the care they need and get their bills down.

We are creating good jobs for non-graduates—that goes to the point made by the hon. Member for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Mohindra)—as well as building 1.5 million homes, establishing Great British Energy and implementing the warm homes plan. For young people—our generation—we are building homes so that they can move out of mum and dad’s. That is how we create a better and stronger nation in which each of us can do well—stronger because we produce more, stronger because we have a stake in each other’s wellbeing, and stronger because we have a shared sense of purpose.

These are some of the most dangerous times in our country for almost a century. A third of people cannot earn enough to live, and non-graduates and the young see no prospect of being able to earn a decent life and are turning away from democracy. What was despair and despondency is now becoming anger. We are now up against those whose only answer is to tear everything down, to blame someone else for all our problems. They seek to create division, and a divided nation is a weaker one. That division leads to anger and sometimes, as we saw last summer, to violence. We meet this moment with decency and determination. We meet it by creating a stronger nation, in which every single one of us can earn a decent life.

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[Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)]

The outlook for business and the economy is really not good, to be brutally honest. We learned today that inflation has gone shooting up to 3.5% in a surprise increase. The Chancellor said she is disappointed by that, but it is entirely the result of her own policies. She was warned by the OBR, among others, that if she increased taxation to record levels and increased borrowing to record levels, it would have an inflationary impact. We are now seeing that, and normal people are literally paying the price through higher inflation. That is more alarming because it is against a backdrop in which unemployment is up by 150,000 people and growth is stagnant, with the IMF downgrading its forecast for growth for both this year and the next.

Business confidence is down at levels last seen during the pandemic, when the entire world economy was brought to a stop. Businesses are clearly very anxious, and that is apparent from talking to businesses in my constituency. When business suffers, ultimately it is living standards that suffer. The brilliant Minister, the hon. Member for Swansea West (Torsten Bell), produced loads of good work when he was a think-tanker for the Resolution Foundation. He used to produce lots of wonderful charts—I am a great enjoyer of charts—about real household disposable income, and he was worried about that. Now the Government have come in, and the measures they took in their first Budget reduced the forecast for household disposable income. The post-measures forecast, in technical terms, was lower than the pre-measures forecast. The outlook for living standards in terms of disposable income is one of the worst for many decades, as shown in the OBR’s forecast for living standards; growth is a tiny fraction of what we have considered to be normal since 1945.

The outlook is bad, and it is not difficult to explain how we got here. The Government have taken the tax burden up to an all-time record high, and in lots of different ways. They increased national insurance and they cut agricultural property relief and business property relief. It is interesting to see how that is percolating out across the rural economy. People often think of the family farm tax as something that just hits farmers, but I have been struck by the multiplier effect. When I met local businesses, there was a whole group of people there—farmers, sure, but also suppliers of tractors, insurers, vets and those from the whole wider rural economy. It is all being dragged down. We have already heard from Welsh colleagues about the massive reduction in investment in their rural economies as a result of that unfair tax.

As has been noted by various Members, the family farm tax has been floated many times. It was certainly put in front of us when I was at the Treasury, and we said no. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) said the same thing. This terrible idea has been produced many times, and I am afraid that there has been a mugging on Great George Street; naive, totally innocent young Ministers have come in and been mugged by wily civil servants, who have finally been able to have their way. We have all had that piece of paper on the winter fuel payment put in front of us, but we chose not to do it. Civil servants must not have believed their luck when these Ministers agreed to do it. The Government are now hastily trying to do a bit of a U-turn, but let us see what comes forth.

[Josh Fenton-Glynn (Calder Valley) (Lab)]

I am enjoying the hon. Member’s peroration on the halcyon days of the last Conservative Government, but he knows, as I do, that had the last Conservative Government seen growth even close to what we had in the mid-2000s, everyone in this country would be £2,400 better off. However, what we saw was stagnation and Liz Truss.

[Neil O’Brien]

One of the things that happened during our time in government was a massive global pandemic that brought the entire world economy to a complete halt, but memories are short. Perhaps more importantly, every single thing that this Government are doing is bad for growth. That is the bottom line.

[Antonia Bance (Tipton and Wednesbury) (Lab)]

Perhaps the hon. Member has not had a chance to see the piece of work produced by a former shadow Chancellor that sets out the relative recovery rates of different world economies in the developed world since the pandemic. It shows that the United Kingdom is right at the bottom of the pile thanks to the mess left to us by Liz Truss crashing the UK economy.

[Neil O’Brien]

Labour Members who were not in the House at the time—it is before their time—will not remember that the deficit we inherited in 2010 was twice the size of the one that Labour has inherited, and the structural deficit was twice as big. Indeed, we went into the global recession—the financial crisis—with the largest structural deficit in our peacetime history. That is the record of the last Labour Government.

We had had a recession that was the size of the 1980s recession and the 1990s recession put together, and when I say we were cleaning up the mess—I am afraid I am going to use a generation X metaphor—I mean it was like one of those enormous brontosaurus poops in the film “Jurassic Park”. We were cleaning up a big mess, and it took us a long time. We had to make some difficult decisions, particularly during the coalition years, to clean that up. Members have referred to my peroration, but I am afraid I am only getting started. [Interruption.] The House groans at the prospect.

[Jerome Mayhew]

My hon. Friend talks about the mess that the coalition Government, as it then was, inherited in 2010. Does he recall that youth unemployment was running at about 10%? The coalition and then the Conservative Government were successful in rebuilding the nation’s finances. Painful as those decisions were, at the same time that Government created 800 jobs every single day from 2010 to 2024.

[Neil O’Brien]

We inherited a situation where unemployment had doubled. One of the great achievements of that Government was to halve it again. This is confidential, but the first time I met Nick Clegg, I was accompanied by a gentleman wearing a chicken suit—this is the kind of serious economic analysis I am famed for—but I have to say that Nick Clegg was not a chicken when it came to making difficult decisions to clean up that huge mess; the Liberal Democrats made some difficult decisions along with us to try to do that.

I have talked about the increase to national insurance contributions, and I will return to that in a little more detail. We have also talked about APR and BPR. One of the most striking developments in my constituency, though, has been the effect of the doubling of business rates for the hospitality, leisure and retail sectors through the ending of the relief that we introduced—an effect that is very visible, particularly in the high streets such as the Parade in Oadby, and in Wigston and South Wigston. The situation is also bad in Market Harborough. The problem is compounded by some local decisions—the council has increased parking charges, which was a big mistake—but it is the ending of those reliefs and the huge increase in national insurance contributions that have been especially bad for our local high streets, and for pubs in particular.

When I was talking to a brilliant pub landlady who owns several pubs in my area, she said, “We hoped so much that this new Government would be a morale-lifter and there would be a boost and a feel-good factor, but now we have a feel-bad factor.” I often drive past a number of pubs that have recently closed because of the confluence of the ending of the reliefs, the higher energy costs, and a number of the tax measures that the Government have introduced. It is desperately sad to see all those closed pubs that used to be huge centres of community life. When people lose their local pub, they lose a piece of their social fabric as well. Pubs are important local businesses, especially in rural areas.

We have had the tax increases, and we have also had the increase in energy costs as a result of everything that the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero is doing. We were promised a £300 reduction in our energy bills but instead we have seen a £281 increase, and that can only rise as the Government do all sorts of ill-advised things to hit their ill-advised target of fully decarbonising electricity by the end of the Parliament—something that will massively increase the costs of going green in comparison with the counterfactual.

At the same time, we have seen a massive increase in employment red tape. One of the bright spots in the UK economy over the last 30 years has been a relatively liberal labour market, but there has now been an extraordinary moment when all the big five business groups in the country came together for the first time—they have never done this before—to criticise the Employment Rights Bill. A Member on the Government Benches said earlier that it was all right because some Cambridge professor had said it was fine; on the other hand, every single business in the UK is saying it is a disaster. The fact that Members are accepting that kind of donnish approach to managing the economy, rather than listening to the views of the people who actually create jobs and drive our economy, really says something about the contemporary Labour party. This is no joking matter, though; it is a serious issue and a major economic detriment.

At a higher level, the wealth creators have been affected: the non-dom changes, some of which have already been rowed back on and more of which may be rowed back on in future, have driven away people who have a great deal to give to our economy. There are plenty of reasons for this picture of economic underperformance and gloom.

I would not mind so much if all the tax increases, leading to a record tax burden, had been imposed against a backdrop where the Government were bringing our debt and deficit under control. Perhaps the Minister will be able to correct me, as his knowledge of fiscal factors may be greater than mine, but I cannot recall any fiscal event when the Government have presented a Budget and at the end of the forecast period, public sector net debt was still rising. There have been plenty of fiscal events when debt has risen, because of events such as the pandemic or the war in Ukraine, but they have all shown a path towards falling debt. This is the first time I have seen a chart—I think it is chart 7.3 in the Office for Budget Responsibility’s economic and fiscal outlook—that shows debt still ceaselessly rising even at the end of the forecast period. I cannot remember another Budget like that. We are seeing the confluence of a stalling, stagnating economy, rising unemployment, increasing tax and, as a result of all that, debt rising and storing up major problems for the future.

I want to go into a bit more detail about a couple of matters, the first of which is that national insurance increase. Labour in opposition promised that there would be no tax increase for working people, so I was stunned—jaw on the floor—when the biggest tax increase that they introduced fell squarely not just on working people, but on low-income working people. It is like a laser-guided, heat-seeking precision missile, targeting those low-income workers, particularly women, who graft hard and are not paid a lot. I find it incredible that a Labour Government—a Labour Government!—should have chosen, as their big tax increase, to lower the threshold for national insurance while increasing the rate. It hammers those on the lowest incomes. That is amazing.

Why was that option chosen? It was chosen for all the wrong reasons. It was chosen because the Labour party hoped that it could say, “This isn’t a tax on the workers; this is a tax on businesses.” Of course, everyone can see through that. The problem for the Government is that the Office for Budget Responsibility immediately popped up and said, “No, three quarters of this will be passed through to people’s wages.” The OBR says that people on £13,000 a year will lose £500, which is a lot to lose for someone who is on only £13,000. People earning £9,000 a year are the biggest losers proportionately. According to the OBR, they will lose 5% of their income as a result of the huge tax increase being passed through into their wages. It is amazing that Labour Members are not up in arms about the fact that the Government have just implemented one of the biggest tax increases ever and have targeted it at lower-income workers. That is incredible for the Labour party—absolutely unbelievable.

On the other side of the ledger, what has happened to public services? Of course, they are all hit by the national insurance increase. We were promised in the autumn Budget that they would be looked after, but that is not what has happened in practice. First, we found out that lots of bits of the NHS would not be compensated, including primary care—that GPs, opticians and dentists were all going to have to suck up the increase in tax. We also found out that social care would not be protected and would have to suck it up.

Intriguingly, and as I pointed out at the time, there was a difference between the Budget document and the OBR’s EFO, which I am sure the Minister will remember. The EFO cited a different number for the cost of protection and it mentioned that social care would be included. One of the joys of having the OBR—although it is not a joy for those in the Treasury—is being able to see the Government’s handwriting and the last-minute changes; in this case, we can see that they were thinking very seriously about exempting social care from the big increase in tax, but that they chose not to do so at the last minute. That was the wrong decision.

[Josh Fenton-Glynn]

As a member of the Health and Social Care Committee, I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s conversion to the cause of social care. Could he point me to where in the record, between Dilnot reporting in 2011 and today, he mentioned it while his party was in government?

[Neil O’Brien]

The hon. Member was probably not here at the time, but I was actually Social Care Minister. He says I have been converted to the cause of social care, but I am quite passionate about it. In addition to the professionalisation of the profession and the investment in skills and technology, one of the things we chose to do—particularly in the wake of the pandemic—was to prioritise money going to the frontline, rather than towards the protection of people’s property income. I am not a social democrat, but occasionally we have to make tough choices; rather than protecting people’s property income, our choice was to protect and put money into the frontline of social care.

[Josh Fenton-Glynn]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Neil O’Brien]

In one moment.

I want to talk about some other public services that have been affected by the national insurance increase. There are a lot of examples in education. Nurseries have lost out, and they are screaming right now; they are in real difficulty. Lots will close and lots will fail to deliver the places that parents have been promised. If Ministers meet representatives of nurseries, they will hear a tale of incredible woe, because nurseries are caught by both the large increase in national insurance, which squarely hits their workforce, and the increase in the national living wage. I am not against the national living wage—in fact, I helped to give it its name—and I believe in fair pay for fair work, but we have to be conscious about what we are doing with tax, because we cannot have a big increase in the national living wage and then wallop those exact people with a massive tax increase. That way lies disaster for our public services and for our small businesses.

Nurseries have lost out, and schools are losing out. Schools were promised that they would be fully compensated. It is not us saying this; it is the Association of School and College Leaders, which is a trade union, and the Confederation of School Trusts. They have discovered that schools are losing out by up to 35%—that is how much they have been shortchanged by this Government. The Government have deliberately obfuscated the funding and they are not even attempting to compensate each individual school for however much money they are losing. The result is that schools might sack about 13,000 teachers.

In fact, I have been meeting representatives of schools and school trusts in recent weeks, and they are currently sacking teachers. The Harris Federation—one of the best trusts in the entire country, with an amazing and proud record of turning around London schools—is sacking people. The Synergy multi-academy trust is sacking people. Sir Jon Coles, who runs the largest school trust in the entire country, has said that schools are obviously going to have to sack people, because schools have been shortchanged over national insurance. It is pretty poor that they were promised something that has not been delivered.

It is the same for our universities, and I have to say that this was a masterclass in un-joined-up government. First, the Government broke their promise on fees. They said graduates would pay less, and they increased tuition fees instead. That was the first broken promise. Secondly, the universities did not even get the money; it was entirely wiped out by the increase in the national insurance rate. Thirdly, with industrial action looming across the sector because they had taken away all the money they had put in, the Government made it easier to strike through the Employment Rights Bill. It is now rumoured that the Office for Students are to bring in a new mechanism to make it easier for students to sue universities if there are strikes. This is a case of left hand, right hand—or of arse and elbow, if I am completely honest—and a masterclass in totally chaotic government.

The same is true in lots of other bits of our public services—public transport, culture, housing and local government. According to the Local Government Association, local authorities have been short-changed by £1.8 billion, which is an enormous hit. They were promised they would be compensated, but they have not been compensated.

However, the worst example for me is our charity and voluntary sector. As the Minister knows, at least 7,000 charity and voluntary sector leaders have written to the Chancellor asking her to change her mind and reverse the massive increase in national insurance on these small, vulnerable organisations. When I talk to charities and voluntary groups in my constituency, they tell me some pretty disturbing things about what they are having to do to their staff because of those big increases.

I pay tribute to organisations such as Helping Hands up in South Wigston, Voluntary Action South Leicestershire, Loros and Rainbows. I am afraid we were recently forced to use one of our brilliant local hospices, Loros, to help look after my mother-in-law, and it provided wonderful care. However, its job is not made easier by the fact that it has been hit by this enormous tax increase. If the Minister wants a really good measure for the next Budget, he should reverse that. It would be hugely popular, but more importantly, it would be the right thing to do. Public services have been short-changed, and low-income workers have been the hardest hit, which is a pretty bad combination.

I want to mention something that has not been much explored in recent days, which is a tax increase—a stealth tax increase—that has gone unrecognised. By linking the UK emissions trading scheme with the EU scheme, the Government have increased the tax on energy that firms face, because the ETS is of course a tax, albeit a traded one. Prices in the UK ETS have been driven upwards for the last couple of months not just by the final deal announced the other day, but by the prospect of a deal and the prospect of connecting those two different markets.

Two different things have become a bit muddled in the public discussion—one is about trading electricity and the other is about the actual ETS as a tax. In January, UK allowances were trading at about £36 a tonne for December 2025 delivery, and EU allowances were about £25 a tonne more expensive, so £36 plus £25. As of today, the UK ETS is £54 a tonne and the EU ETS is only £4 a tonne above that. We have seen a tremendous price convergence, with the UK tax rate—the UK carbon price—shooting up to match the EU one. Although the price had been ticking up on the prospect of connection to the EU scheme, it went shooting up on the announcement of the deal: it is up by a further 10% since Monday’s reset announcement. That is increasing the cost to businesses, and it will ultimately pass through to the wider economy and to the rest of us.

Looking at the EU ETS price movement so far, it seems to me that the UK Treasury will accrue about £1.2 billion extra as a result of these increased ETS costs, which would certainly outweigh the supposed benefits from the carbon border adjustment mechanism—not that that tax is necessarily paid by firms in the UK, because it is paid by importers in the EU—so the wider cost of this stealth tax could be more than that. I mentioned that the potential increase to the Exchequer is about £1.2 billion, but the overall cost could be higher at more like £2 billion or so. That is an immediate result of the deal announced on Monday, and it is in effect a stealth tax, because it has given us a higher carbon price immediately.

I thought it was ironic that the Draghi report—the EU’s own report into how it can become more competitive—was quite critical of the EU’s ETS. It said it had given the EU one of the highest carbon prices in the world—a high and volatile price. The Government were telling us what a wonderful benefit it was to be part of it, even as senior people in the EU were saying that it is a problematic scheme. That part of the deal has been a bit underappreciated so far.

[Deirdre Costigan (Ealing Southall) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman has spoken now for, I think, 23 minutes. He has criticised on many fronts the decisions the Labour Government have made to fix the foundations of the economy and clear up the mess that his Government left. Would he mind spending maybe 30 seconds on what decisions his party would take to put police back on our streets, fix our public services and put money in people’s pockets?

[Neil O'Brien]

I had not realised I had spoken so long. Even I, at 23 minutes, have probably had enough O’Brien at this point, never mind the rest of you poor souls! The hon. Lady talks about police. In the last Parliament, the previous Government added 20,000 extra police officers to our streets. I was not going to raise it, but national insurance hits the police as well. I see TV footage of prisoners released from jail by this Government popping champagne corks. I am not going to widen this out into a debate about criminal justice, but if I did so it would be more enjoyable for Conservative Members than for the current Government.

We have a pretty bleak picture: inflation up, unemployment up, growth stagnant and being revised down by international bodies such as the IMF, business confidence at its lowest level since the global pandemic, and an outlook for living standards that is absolutely miserable. Something has to change, and I hope the Government are having a rethink on the economy, as well as on other subjects such as migration. The Prime Minister used to be madly in favour of it, signing letters saying, “Don’t deport anybody.” I do not really think the policy has changed hugely, but at least the rhetoric has changed. On the winter fuel payment, let us see how far the policy goes. What we really need, above all else, is a change in economic policy to one that is more about getting growth moving. Until we do that, we will not get anywhere.

The Minister, being brilliant, will remember the economist who said:

“Once you start thinking about”—

economic—

“growth, it is difficult to think about anything else.”

I am sure he is thinking about economic growth, but we need to move from the wonking and the thinking to the changing of policy in a more growth-oriented direction if we are to get unemployment down and give people a chance of having better living standards and a better future.

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[The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Torsten Bell)]

This is hopefully one thing on which all Members and definitely those on both Front Benches agree: “It’s the economy, stupid.” It is a growing economy that raises living standards and that sustains public services and eases public finances. Perhaps most importantly, it is a growing economy that proves to people that tomorrow can be better than today.

I welcome it that the Conservative party has called this debate. It is an important topic, it is deserving of our time and I thank all hon. Members for their contributions, even if I cannot thank them all for the duration of those contributions. Fifty minutes to deliver one speech is Britain’s productivity crisis right there. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith) is still talking. The productivity crisis rolls on.

Given how important this topic is, it will be a surprise to hon. Members, probably those on both sides of the House, that this is the one and only time that the Conservative party has wanted to talk about the economy in the year since the election. It is the first Opposition day on the economy. I initially thought that that could not be true. I am a new Minister and I have a lot to learn, so I said to my office, “Go and check. They can’t have got through a whole year with no Opposition day on the economy.” My office checked and it found that it has been 10 months with not one debate on the economy. Private schools? Oh yes, the Conservatives want a debate on that. But investment, growth, jobs and the economy? Not one debate. It is no surprise that they do not want to talk about the economy, because their economic legacy was one of entirely unprecedented failure, as my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Dr Sandher) set out.

[Neil O’Brien]

Will the Minister give way?

[Torsten Bell]

I will in a second.

It is a legacy of stagnation not seen in living memory, with the lowest business investment in the G7; wages, which used to grow at a consistent 2% a year, flatlining for their entire period in office; the worst Parliament on record for living standards; and the public finances trashed as debt soared. It is no surprise that the Conservatives have nothing to say about the past—the Leader of the Opposition said that it was true that they had no plan for growth—and it is staggering that they still have nothing to say about the future.

[Torsten Bell]

I said that I would give way first to the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston (Neil O’Brien), but I will come to my hon. Friend.

That is not just my view, but the view of George Osborne. He says that the Tory party has no “credible economic plan”. I always enjoy listening to the hon. Member for Grantham and Bourne (Gareth Davies), so I listened extra carefully just now, and there is still no plan, credible or otherwise.

[Neil O’Brien]

I was just observing and enjoying the way in which the Minister was lecturing us about not wanting to talk about the economy, when at one point during the debate, literally only three Labour Members were in the Chamber—it is extraordinary. If they are so wonderfully proud of their record of higher unemployment, higher inflation and slower growth, why are none of them here?

[Torsten Bell]

Because Labour Back Benchers support and have total trust in their Front Benchers. All they would have said is everything that I am about to say about the record of this Government, of which we are very proud.

I will come on to the labour market, which the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston raised. The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) asked about employment and changes to national insurance, and several Members claimed that there is a direct relationship between changes to national insurance and changes in vacancies in the labour market. Let us introduce some facts to the debate—[Interruption.] While the shadow Secretary of State chunters, here are some facts: vacancies in Britain have been falling for 34 months, there has been a Labour Government for 10 months, and there has been a national insurance change for one month. Those are the facts. We cannot let the Conservative party escape from their disastrous record by reinventing history.

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[Torsten Bell]

It is not boom and bust. Wages for workers need to rise in Britain once again. We also need to turn the corner on an economy that is far too unequal. That is what our Employment Rights Bill will do.

[Neil O’Brien]

The Minister is being incredibly generous with his time. He is saying what a wonderful outlook there is for wages. Why, then, is the OBR’s forecast for real household disposable income to be lower than in the 1950s, the 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s, the 1990s, the noughties and the 2010s?