Economic Responsibility and a Plan for Growth

Debate between Rachel Reeves and Richard Holden

Wednesday 19th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves]

Levelling up has truly been replaced by trickle down, and my hon. Friend’s constituents are paying the price.

We need strong public services focused on early intervention and prevention, reducing greater demand with better outcomes for people. We need the Government to stick to their manifesto commitments, including uprating benefits and pensions in line with inflation. It should not be working families, pensioners and the most vulnerable who pay the price for these Tory mistakes.

[Mr Richard Holden (North West Durham) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Rachel Reeves]

I will make a bit more progress.

Labour will get value for every pound of taxpayers’ money. That is why I announced last year that a Labour Government will introduce an office for value for money, tackling the endemic waste that we have seen under the Tories. Under the Conservatives, £11.8 billion of public money was handed to fraudsters and organised criminals because of a refusal to include the most basic security checks for covid support. That is before we get to the £7 billion spent on unusable personal protective equipment, the £13 billion wasted on failed defence procurements and the millions and millions flushed down the drain by this Government’s outsourced Serco test and trace system.

This week, we have read reports that the Treasury is shutting down the taxpayer protection taskforce that it belatedly set up in March to try to retrieve the money that the Government gave to the fraudsters. The taskforce should not be shut down; it should be empowered to get taxpayers’ money back.

As for the £3.5 billion handed out to friends of and donors to the Conservative party, many of whom failed to deliver on those contracts, in business if you award a contract and it does not deliver, you claw the money back. The Government must now strain every sinew to get that money back, because taxpayers demand it, and that comes before the cuts and the austerity that this Government are about to unleash.

The Government say that working people now have to put up with eye-wateringly difficult decisions, but there are so many easy decisions that the Government could make to stop families feeling the pain. Why keep in place an outdated and unjustifiable non-dom tax status loophole which means that some of the wealthiest pay no tax on their incomes while ordinary working people face the highest tax burden in 70 years in this low-growth, high-tax economy? Labour’s principle is clear: if you make Britain your home, you should pay your taxes here. Research carried out at the London School of Economics and Warwick University has shown that the UK’s non-dom system costs us £3.2 billion a year.

Look at the tax break for private equity managers, which was cooked up in the 1980s by a Conservative Government—a tax break of nearly £200,000 each for 2,000 private equity bosses every single year! It is not right that bosses pay a lower rate of tax on their bonuses than workers do on their wages. It is indefensible, so Labour will abolish it. At present, private schools enjoy charitable status which makes them exempt from both business rates and VAT at a cost of £1.7 billion every year, but here is the truth: private schools are not charities. We will end that exemption, and put that money back into our state schools.

That is what a fair tax system looks like, and that is what Britain will get with a Labour Government: fiscal responsibility, and a fair tax system that puts working people first. Labour will stabilise the economy by being responsible with public finances through our strong fiscal rules. It is on that foundation that our green prosperity plan will invest in the jobs and industries of tomorrow as we meet our climate obligations and secure our energy supply here in Britain. There are great opportunities for the industries of the future, and opportunities for Government to partner with industry and invest in, for instance, domestic renewables such as wind, hydrogen and carbon capture, and nuclear as well. Labour will create a national wealth fund so that when we build British industry, the public will have a stake and receive a return on those investments. The next Labour Government will buy, make and sell more here in Britain, with an industrial strategy that is pro-worker and pro-business. We will breathe new life into our high streets by calling time on the outdated model of business rates. That is a real plan for the future, not lurching from crisis to crisis like the Conservatives.

[Mr Holden]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Rachel Reeves]

No. I have almost run out of time. I have been speaking for 20 minutes, and I have taken a great many interventions.

So much damage has been done to our economy by the Conservatives’ reckless mini-Budget, but the Government can prevent things from becoming even worse. Today they can show that they have listened, and publish the OBR forecasts and assessments that they are sitting on so we can know the true state of our public finances and our economy. They should publish the assessments that they already have of the windfall profits of the energy giants in the next two years, and then set out clear steps to introduce a proper windfall tax. It is a sign of how far off the road of competence and responsibility this Conservative Government are that they have not already done those basic things.

People can no longer afford the cost of Tory failure. We need a stronger and fairer economy from a Government committed to financial responsibility, and a serious plan for growth that puts working people first. The very least the Government can do is publish the numbers, and I urge all Members to support this motion to ensure that they do exactly that.

Ministerial and other Maternity Allowances Bill

Debate between Rachel Reeves and Richard Holden

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Thursday 11th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves]

I could not agree more with the hon. Gentleman. Elected representatives, whether here in Parliament, in devolved Administrations or in local government, and indeed those in all workplaces, absolutely deserve maternity rights which in some workplaces, including those of elected representatives, just do not exist today. I would very much support further reform in this area.

[Mr Richard Holden (North West Durham) (Con)]

I very much welcome what the Opposition are pushing for. Does the hon. Lady agree with me that this House has a position of leadership, in relation not only to the devolved Administrations but to the rest of the country, and that is why work towards paternity leave and, particularly, shared parental leave is so important?

[Rachel Reeves]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. The Paymaster General and I have been speaking about the further reform that is needed, and in a way, the case for this Bill has shone a light on the wider reform that is necessary. We should not just be reacting to events; we should be thinking towards the future and about the challenges of combining work and family life which all of us in this place—men and women—face.

I would now like to turn to some of the challenges that women in Parliament have faced over the decades, and to talk about why it is so important that we continue to modernise some of our, frankly, outdated working practices. Without the battles fought in Parliament by the women who have come before us, I do not think we would be here today, fighting for those further changes that will make us more representative of the people we seek to represent. Pioneers such as the indomitable Barbara Castle fought for years to secure equal pay for women. There was also the independent MP Eleanor Rathbone, who successfully battled to see the Family Allowances Act 1945 become law. They both helped to build the foundations for a better, fairer society, particularly for women.

There are many other inspirational women MPs who have done so much for women’s rights. However, that often came at a high price. None of the first four women in Cabinet—Margaret Bondfield, Ellen Wilkinson, Florence Horsbrugh and Barbara Castle—had children, and it is hard to see how in those early decades they could have combined their job, and the antisocial hours it involved at that time, with having much time for family life. The first woman Cabinet member to have children was Judith Hart in 1968, a full 50 years after the first woman took her seat in this place. As the then-Labour MP for Lanark, she found it very hard to combine long periods away from her family with her work in this place, and eventually made the difficult decision to relocate her family from Scotland to London.

The first woman MP to have a baby while serving as a Member of Parliament was the former MP for Welwyn and Hatfield, Baroness Hayman, who had her first baby in 1976. However, just 10 days after giving birth, she was forced to come into Parliament because pairing had been suspended, and there was certainly no proxy voting then. She had to leave her baby in the Whips Office in order to take part in crucial votes. I also remember seeing my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) in a wheelchair in this Chamber two years ago for a key vote, as it was just two days before the birth of her son. At least that unacceptable situation has been ended by the system of proxy voting which, because of cross-party support, now enables MPs who are new parents to nominate another MP to vote on their behalf if they choose to do so.

Despite the hurdles they faced, those remarkable women built the foundations for the work in Parliament taken forward by irrepressible campaigners such as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), Dame Joan Ruddock, and the late and very much missed Dame Tessa Jowell, who all tackled inequalities, injustices and rights for women in Parliament and in the country. In fact, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham has long supported the changes that we are discussing today. Under the last Labour Government, Ruth Kelly, my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) and my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) had babies while serving as Ministers but had no formal provisions for maternity leave. The same has been true for Conservative Ministers in the past few years. They all watch with interest and contribute to this debate. It is fair to say that their experiences of combining their work as Ministers and their roles as new mothers were mixed, and I am very much looking forward to hearing my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford speak later in this debate.

I have already touched on Barbara Castle’s achievements with the Equal Pay Act 1970, which came when there were just 24 female MPs and was a watershed in the fight for gender equality. We have also had the Equality Act 2010 from my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham, the introduction of thousands of Sure Start centres, and the introduction of child tax credits and of free nursery places, all of which have been a lifeline for so many women and families in our country.

However, there is still much work to be done on improving employment conditions for women and the culture in workplaces, both in Westminster and across the rest of the country. The decision a decade ago by the former Speaker to close a bar on the parliamentary estate and replace it with a children’s nursery was undoubtedly a welcome move and has benefited many in this House and our staff, but it was not before time. I also recall that in 2015, when I was shadow Work and Pensions Secretary and expecting my second child, a Conservative Member suggested that as an expectant mum I should not be appointed to the Cabinet if Labour won the general election, as I would not be able to manage doing two things at once. I hope that he has since revised his opinions, and I am pleased that this Bill will allow Cabinet Ministers, for the first time, to have paid time off after the birth of a child.