Women’s State Pension Age

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

Given that the report was published as recently as last Thursday, it is a bit of a stretch to suggest that I should have come to this Dispatch Box with a fully formed set of proposals of the sort that the hon. Lady may wish for. I think that what her constituents and others want is a Government who look at the report very carefully, give great consideration to the complex issues involved and the report’s findings, and engage closely with Parliament, exactly as we did with the ombudsman.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

The Government had to be dragged kicking and screaming to even acknowledge the injustice done to thousands of innocent postmasters. This, too, is an incredible injustice. Millions of women born in the 1950s have been betrayed. Some 3.5 million women have been affected; one dies every 13 minutes, and we have been in this Chamber for an hour. Some 28,000 people have signed the letter from the WASPI campaign to the Leader of the House asking for an urgent debate and series of votes on compensation options, including that proposed by the all-party parliamentary group on this issue. This injustice cannot carry on any longer.

The Secretary of State has sought to avoid answering the question of when a decision will be made. “In due course” is not good enough, and neither is “without undue delay”. When will it happen? When will we get a debate on the issue, and a vote on proper compensation packages?

[Mel Stride]

The hon. Gentleman has been here long enough to know that he should not ask me questions at the Dispatch Box about when debates may or may not occur; those matters are typically handled by the usual channels, including those in his party and mine. It is quite extraordinary that he should try to get me to set out a timetable for debates. Many of these things will be a matter for Parliament, rather than the Government. However, he is right to raise Horizon, and I am very proud of the fact that this Government have acted at speed on that, and brought forward legislation to make sure that people get the moneys and reparations that they deserve.

Disability Action Plan

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Monday 5th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mims Davies]

I wrote to counterparts in Northern Ireland again today, as I did to all devolved groups, and the hon. Gentleman is right about the challenges we have heard in the Chamber today, and I am happy to look at the extra support available for his community. As usual, he makes a pertinent point about ensuring that everybody has that warm home and that support. This is of course devolved in a slightly different way in his community, but I am happy to share the details with him.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

The truth is that disabled people have been at the sharp end of this Government’s cruel policies: their austerity and their attacks on social security and public services. Disabled people are also among the hardest hit by the cost of living crisis, but this disability action plan fails to introduce the emergency measures demanded by disabled people to directly address the crisis, never mind the decade of attacks they have faced; isn’t that the case?

[Mims Davies]

I do not appreciate the characterisation—[Interruption.] Excuse me, the hon. Gentleman seems to be distracted. As I was saying, I do not understand his characterisation. There are 32 actions over the next 12 months in 14 different areas where we have listened and engaged with disabled people. We have heard what they want, and those actions are in parallel with our national disability strategy. His is exactly the kind of rhetoric—“The Government are against you and not supporting you”—that makes disabled people feel more isolated and concerned for their welfare. I want to say squarely to people listening today that we have an absolute focus on what we can do to make sure that disabled people’s daily lives are better and that there is support and help there for them. This is one of the pillars of support that this Government are absolutely committed to. When he reads the full plan, he will see that it will make disabled people’s daily lives better, and that is what this Government are determined to deliver.

Household Support Fund

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Wednesday 31st January 2024 Westminster Hall

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms) on securing this extremely important debate.

We have to look at who is in most need with regard to the household support fund. These people are so desperate. What are they after? They are after food. It is 2024, and we have people pleading—begging—for food. The people in receipt of the support are people who are on the breadline, as other speakers have explained. It is a lifeline—it is a lifesaver. Why on earth the Government are considering not continuing the fund, or have possibly already made the decision not to continue it after the next month or so, is beyond me.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

Is my hon. Friend, like me, seeing more and more people coming to his constituency advice sessions who are in desperate need, pushed into penury and really struggling to make ends meet? What they need now is certainty that the Government will say, “Do you know what? Yes, we’ll extend the household support fund and we’ll do it now.”

[Ian Lavery]

I totally agree. These people are after food; they are after soap powder; they are after sanitary products. Potentially, they are after heat, warmth and light. This is 2024, for goodness’ sake! We all understand it; we all have people in our constituency surgeries who are suffering greatly as a consequence of this.

As politicians, we all have decent lives and we are all very comfortable, but we see constituents who are in desperate need of help. They are not after luxuries; they just want to keep themselves clean and feed their kids. That is what the household support fund is for.

I place on the record my massive thanks to Northumberland Communities Together. It is led by Julie Leddy, who is getting into the community and has been able to speak to people. The people who need support the most are the hardest to reach. Julie and her team have been absolutely fantastic.

The household support fund needs to be funded adequately and needs to be renewed on a multi-year basis. We need to encourage non-digital applications. Most of all, we need to ensure that the fund continues in the best interests of the people who, sadly, we all see in our constituency offices on a regular basis, who have got absolutely nothing.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Monday 18th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mims Davies]

The Government are determined to ensure that all children, wherever they come from, have the best start in life. We are committed to supporting families and helping them into work. The full uprating, this year and last, is the signal.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

14. What steps his Department is taking to help reduce the number of people experiencing destitution.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mel Stride)]

The Government are, of course, fully committed to protecting the most vulnerable, which is why we rolled out £104 billion in cost of living payments across the period from 2022 to 2025. It is why, as the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Mims Davies), has repeatedly stressed, we increased the rates for the LHA housing support, and why benefits increased by the full 6.7%.

[Richard Burgon]

It is absolutely heartbreaking that in the world’s sixth-richest country we now have 4 million people living in destitution. We know that disabled people are more likely to live in poverty, yet this winter disabled people will not be getting any additional help with the cost of living after the separate disability cost of living payment was quietly dropped. The cost of living for disabled people is still going up, so will the Secretary of State commit to reinstating the payment, and at a level that meets the extra living costs faced by disabled people?

Health and Social Care Levy (Repeal) Bill

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 11th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Steve Brine]

And corporation tax, as my hon. Friend says from a sedentary position. If we believe in prevention—and, as I say, I believe that those on the Front Bench do—we need to have the courage to act on that. That will mean doing unpopular things, but sometimes we have to do unpopular things to do the right things, and that means preventing some of the major killers and some of the major causes of ill health that I have mentioned. If we do not do that, the NHS will continue to cost unsustainable amounts of money and it will become unsustainable. There endeth the lesson of Dr Brine.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

I want to focus my remarks on my new clause 2. I thank the 25 right hon. and hon. Members who added their signature to mine on the amendment paper, and I am pleased that it has support from Plaid Cymru, Alba, Labour, Green, and Social Democratic and Labour party MPs.

The Conservative party was wrong to introduce the health and social care levy, so it is right that it is being scrapped, but it is wrong that the Government are imposing a package of unfunded tax cuts, which have created financial panic and led to interest rates shooting up and millions of people fearing how they will keep their home. The package has created a Tory crisis made in Downing Street, but being paid for by working people.

As I say, I welcome the scrapping of the levy, but of course health and social care still need the extra funding that it would have raised. We only have to look at today’s news about how the number of social care workers has fallen for the first time in a decade to see just how broken our care system is, and rising waiting lists and soaring ambulance waiting times show that the NHS is in dire need of a funding boost. So my new clause 2 would require the Chancellor, in addition to scrapping the levy, to look at different taxes to raise the income that would have been raised by the levy. Specifically, it calls on the Chancellor to look into the iniquity of tax rates on wealth being lower than the taxes paid on income from work.

We are, I am afraid, one of the most unequal countries in Europe when it comes to income distribution, but it is even worse when we look at wealth. The richest 1% hold almost a quarter of UK wealth, so we need a full and wide debate in our country about wealth taxes. I have been calling for a wealth tax—for example, a one-off wealth tax of 10% on wealth over £5 million, which could raise £100 billion and provide an emergency wealth fund to help get us through this crisis—but today, with new clause 2, I want to concentrate not on the taxing of wealth itself, but on taxes on income deriving from wealth.

We have a scandalous situation in our society in which income derived from wealth is taxed below income derived from work. If someone is lucky enough to be able to live off share dividend payouts, they will pay less in tax than someone who earns exactly the same amount by getting up each and every day and going out to work. Likewise, capital gains tax, which is paid on profits when selling assets such as a second home, is paid at rates below income tax rates. How on earth can that ever be justified, and how can it be justified when the Government are plotting—without any democratic mandate, I would add—to cut benefits and public services across society?

In fact, there is huge potential for increasing tax revenues by simply ending the significant tax discounts that go to income from wealth over income from work. How much would be raised by doing this? Ending the lower rates paid on capital gains and share dividends, and removing the related exemptions on those taxes, would raise around £24 billion per year. That is a lot more—nearly double—than the amount from the national insurance tax hike on working people, which would have raised around £12 billion to £13 billion. The funds that my proposal would raise could be a big down payment on the investment that we need to ensure our social care system delivers for everyone, and it could make a big difference in addressing the crisis in our health service.

For those on the Conservative Benches who may be appalled by this idea or this moderate proposal, I want to point out that the former Chancellor—not the last one, but the one before, the right hon. Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Rishi Sunak)—commissioned a review of capital gains tax, and that review recommended slashing the annual allowance and aligning capital gains tax rates more closely with income tax, in a move that could raise billions of pounds for the Exchequer. On this, Margaret Thatcher, even, had an interesting view. Under Thatcher’s premiership, the same basic unfairness of lower taxes on capital gains was ended. It was back in 1988 that the then Chancellor, Nigel Lawson, said that

“there is little…difference between income and capital gains, and many people effectively have the option of choosing…which to receive. And…it is by no means clear why one should be taxed more heavily than the other.”—[Official Report, 15 March 1988; Vol. 129, c. 1005.]

Since then, wealthy people living a low-tax lifestyle have been benefiting from even lower capital gains rates than over 30 years ago, so something has gone wrong and it is now time to put that right. We need solutions to deal with this economic crisis in a socially just way, not through austerity, not through benefits cuts and not through public service cuts. Social justice means putting tax justice at the heart of our economy. We should start by ensuring that those who live off their wealth pay at least the same level of tax as those who live off their own work.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

I disagree with new clause 2 and new clause 1. I welcome very much the legislation. One of the objectionable features of the original proposal was hypothecation, because I do not think it is possible to identify a single tax that just happens to meet the costs of a particular service, let alone a tax that would then have revenue growth at the right pace to take care of the needs of that service. This one was particularly misleading. There was no way that the amount of tax to be levied got anywhere near paying the full costs of social care. It was misleading to make people feel that social care might be as cheap as this particular tax, although the tax itself was burdensome on all those who go to work.

There are still strong elements of hypothecation in new clause 2, which I would equally object to. Again, we should not mislead people into believing there is a simple, relatively low tax that takes care of a huge problem—social care. Indeed, when the Government compounded the difficulty by saying that in the first instance the tax would be mainly used for the health service, and by some magic that would drop away and it would go to social care, it all became incredible to me. That is why I did not like the idea in the first place. It is very good news that we are sorting it out.

The challenge of new clauses 1 and 2 is a perfectly fair one, and I think the answer is straightforward. Social care does need more money to go into it, and it will need progressively more. If we fund our social care better and expand it, it will release some of the pressures on the NHS. There are some people who could vacate a bed quite safely and get better social care if that were available, so this is worthwhile expenditure from that point of view as well. Above all, it is worthwhile expenditure because people deserve better care and better treatment and that should be funded out of general taxation.

The Government are right now to abolish the hypothecated specialist tax, to give up the idea that there is a single, relatively low tax that solves all the problems, and to accept that social care and NHS provision together is a major claim on the general taxation of the country. If the general taxation of the country does not reach total spending—it does not seem to at the moment—it is also a claim on borrowing.

On that last point, we should remember that for the previous two years the Office for Budget Responsibility grossly underestimated the revenues that came into our economy, and we borrowed considerably less than it was forecasting. It may not be so wildly wrong this year, when it looks perhaps as if its borrowing forecast is a bit on the low side, but we must remember that the way to pay for these services is to grow the revenue. That was what we were doing last year and the year before, and that is what we must do next year, to take care of the need to spend more on the NHS and social care.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mims Davies]

Across Rotherham, our jobcentre teams are really helping to employ people and get those vacancies filled. I have been in jobcentres where people have quite often been unemployed for a very long time; the experience of being offered a job, there and then, changes their lives. We are working locally and nationally with employers on local recruitment days, jobs fairs and sector-based work academies, all as part of the commitment to get half a million claimants into work by the end of June.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

18. What steps her Department is taking to support people with the increase in the cost of living.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Dr Thérèse Coffey)]

The Government are providing support worth over £21 billion across this financial year and the next to help families with the cost of living. Through the Department for Work and Pensions, that includes cutting the universal credit taper rate and increasing work allowances.

[Richard Burgon]

Most benefits and the state pension will rise by just 3% in April, but inflation could be over 8%, so that is a real-terms cut of 5% for people who are already having to choose between eating and heating. Given that, how on earth does the Secretary of State think it acceptable to target the incomes of the poorest in our society like this? Will she commit today to action so that nobody’s benefits are cut during the deepest cost of living crisis in decades?

In-work Poverty

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Wednesday 16th March 2022 Westminster Hall

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Rees. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) on securing this important debate. This debate takes place in the context of a sustained attack on the living standards of ordinary people in this country. Energy bills are rocketing. There are tax rises and real-terms pay cuts for millions of people, as well as cuts to universal credit, benefits and pensions. That does not happen in a vacuum; it comes after a decade of austerity, cuts to public services and the tightest squeeze on wages in 200 years. Experts warn that this could be the biggest drop in living standards in many decades.

What does that mean in reality? The daily reality of this crisis for families in my constituency of Leeds East and throughout the country is grim. How, in the fifth-biggest economy on Earth, can we have families who cannot turn the heating on? How, in the fifth-biggest economy on Earth, can we have a situation where parents are missing meals to make sure that their children can eat? How, in the fifth-biggest economy on Earth, do we have more food banks than branches of McDonald’s? I recently met staff at the Chapeltown Citizens Advice in Leeds; their data shows that already, more than one in seven people in my constituency cannot pay their energy bills without cutting back on essential spending.

At the same time, the richest are getting richer. While millions suffer, the millionaires are doing very well. British billionaires have increased their wealth by £290 million per day. The Government have been slashing the taxes of bankers and the gas and oil giants that make £900 profit every single second. Let us be clear: the right to be warm is more important than the right to make super-profits. It is a rigged economic system, which is failing ordinary people. It is a crisis made in Downing Street—let us not be scared to say that.

The Government are trying to shift the blame; they are trying to say that the cost of living crisis is due to the horrific war on Ukraine. It is not. The Government’s plan is to make working people pay the costs of the pandemic, just like they made ordinary people pay for the bankers’ crisis. Poverty is a political choice, and the Tories are choosing to push people into poverty through the cost of living crisis.

What do we do about it? We need an emergency plan to tackle the situation. I will make five suggestions. First, the Government must scrap the national insurance hike that is coming in next month and replace it with a wealth tax on the richest 1%. Secondly, we need a windfall tax on energy profits, to be immediately used to lower energy bills, and a huge home insulation programme to save people hundreds of pounds a year. Thirdly, we need a national minimum wage of £15 per hour. Fourthly, we need the restoration of the universal credit uplift, and its expansion to those who are denied it. We need to uplift benefits by the 8% that the Resolution Foundation and others are calling for to meet inflation pressures. Finally, we need to tackle child hunger, with free school meals for all schoolchildren—learning from what Labour is doing in power in Wales.

We cannot allow the Government to yet again force working people to pay for a crisis. They have made a political choice; our political choice is to fight back with a set of proposals that will make a real difference.

Social Security and Pensions

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), who spoke, as ever, with great moral force. This is a moral question.

It is important to put the issue under consideration into its full context. As long as I live, I will never forget being at one of my constituency advice sessions in Leeds East with a tearful constituent rolling up the sleeve of her jumper to show me the scar on her wrist from where she had attempted to take her own life as a result of her benefits being unfairly reduced. That will stay with me to the grave.

I mention that because it is how people on social security are treated in this country. They are scapegoated and treated as if they are somehow on the make, but we know the truth. We know who the real parasites are—the people who are really taking money from the public purse and not paying their fair share. They are some of those at the very top, who are very good at not paying tax, at not paying their fair share and at getting money out of the Government through corrupt covid contracts and the rest.

I also want to put the debate in the context of the historic cost of living crisis that people are facing. One of the things that brought it home to me, as well as speaking to people at my advice sessions, was a WhatsApp group with some of my friends who never talk politics—and not just because they do not want to hear my political views. We talk about music, but out of nowhere, rather than talking about the latest albums coming out, one of my friends—they are in a pretty well-paid job compared with many of my constituents—messaged, “Is anyone else worried about paying their fuel bill?” That is the reality that people across the country are facing.

We have heard that this is the fifth richest country in the world, and it is true, but there are 4 million people living in poverty. We heard in the House earlier today about half a million children in this country who are not even able to sleep in a bed at night. There are also many disabled people who are being treated like dirt by the system and by the Government, but we are the fifth richest country in the world. Politics is about choices, and those choices are moral choices.

Only last week, Tory MPs turned out in force to let bankers off the hook with yet another tax giveaway, but they are notable tonight by their absence. Those green Benches are deserted. Is that because some Tory MPs have now developed a conscience about the millions of people struggling in our society? The smirk of a Tory MP says maybe not. Maybe they do not want to defend the indefensible. What is being proposed is another kick in the teeth for people struggling in my constituency and around the country.

As we have heard, this so-called increase is a real-terms cut for social security and a real-terms cut for pensions. They are using the figure of 3.1% from last October, but the Bank of England is predicting that by April, when the re-evaluation takes effect, the figure will be closer to 6%. That is a 3% to 4% real-terms cut for people who are already struggling to keep their heads above water.

That is not a one-off; it is part of a pattern of targeting ordinary people and the most vulnerable. The £20 cut to universal credit, which could not have come at a worst time, affected over 14,000 families in my constituency alone, and millions of disabled people did not even get the uplift in the first place. We see the choice to bring in a national insurance hike, which is another kick in the teeth for people across the country, and now we see this real-terms cut to incomes. That is a choice. I say it is a moral choice, but in fact it is an immoral choice to stick the boot into people in our communities.

Let us look at the other side of the coin—at how others are doing. Gas giants and oil giants make an eye-watering £77 million in profits every day. A windfall tax on those megaprofits could mean that not a single person in this country has to face fuel poverty or food poverty. The Government have a choice: they choose to treat the super-rich with kid gloves, to demonise the vulnerable and scapegoat those on social security, and to stick the boot into ordinary people. It is the Conservative party doing what it has done for generations and generations.

The Government are making ordinary people pay for the covid crisis. There are corrupt covid contracts for some, VIP lanes for some, tax breaks for some and a refusal to tax the richest properly. I know it is sometimes unfashionable to talk about class politics, but this is class politics. The greatest practitioners of class politics in mainstream political parties in the history of this country are those in the Conservative party, which has practised class politics throughout its history—class politics on behalf of the 1% against the 99%. That is what the Conservatives are doing today by pretending that the best they can do for people in our country is a real-terms cut to social security and pensions during an historic cost of living crisis. That is what they are doing. It is absolutely heartless and absolutely immoral, which is why I shall vote against these orders.

We cannot just accept this as if it is the best that a Government in the fifth richest country on earth can do. We need better. The Government need to ditch this disgrace and come back with something better. As 33 charities have said, they need to come back with a 6% increase. I ask everyone in the House to find it within themselves to stand up for their constituents. Today, we need to speak up and vote for those who have had to choose between heating and eating; for those who are worried about not being able to afford school uniforms for their children; and for those in our society who have been treated for too long as if they do not matter.

Let us abolish food banks and indignity. In one of the richest countries in the world, let us turn things around. It makes me sick to the stomach to see how people are treated in our society. My constituents deserve better than this Conservative Government are giving them, as do people right across this country. The Government should take a good, hard look at themselves and, if they wish to sleep soundly and with a clean conscience tonight, they should drop this change and come back with 6%.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mims Davies]

We have seen 130,000 people going into work through kickstart, working with employers. Way to Work is exactly the same, so we can showcase that local talent to local employers at JCPs.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

T2. Kevin Dooley, the father of a constituent of mine, Leanne Dooley, took his own life after the DWP decided to stop his benefits. Leanne was one of five bereaved families who wrote to the Secretary of State calling for an urgent public inquiry into deaths related to the benefit system and asking for a meeting. Six months’ on, the Secretary of State has not replied. Will she agree today to meet that group of bereaved families, including my constituent, Leanne?

[Dr Coffey]

I am very sorry for the family of the individual to whom the hon. Gentleman refers. It is the role of the coroners to undertake appropriate investigations. I am surprised, and am sorry to hear, that the letter has not gone back. It is not my intention to meet them, recognising the ongoing work that we continue to do to try and provide service to such people.

Universal Credit and Working Tax Credits

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Wednesday 15th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

Late last night on social media, I invited my constituents who will be affected by this cut to write in and explain how they would be affected by it. I tell you what, my phone was buzzing all last night and all this morning with messages from distraught constituents, and it is no wonder, because 14,000 families my constituency will be affected by the cut. Two thirds of people in my constituency who work and who have children will be affected by it.

I want to use the time I have today to read from just one of the messages I received, a message from young woman who wrote to me and said:

“Hello Richard, I’ve seen your tweet about you hopefully speaking to parliament about the cut and just thought I’d like to say how it’d affect me.

I was homeless from the ages 16-20 almost as I left an abusive home from my father and lost all my family and most friends I had. I finally got my own flat this year and the amount that I have been living on has the increased boost from coronavirus payment. After this has been cut I am not going to be able to afford food, phone bills, electricity/gas/wi-fi, council tax and the odd few bills like Netflix here and there. After all these payments have come out I will have about £5-£10 to live off for the month and that’s not even enough to travel for places I need to be or in case of emergencies. My mental health is at an awful place at the moment and I’m trying to attend counselling for it but my anxiety and depression are so bad that I can’t work right now.”

[Interruption.] I hear chuntering and I see grinning from people on the Government Benches.

I think it lets the Tories off the hook to say that they do not know the reality and that they do not live in the real world. In a way, they do. They know that this is the effect, but they are not bothered. They are taking the immoral choice, the shameful choice to stick the boot into the people we as a society should be supporting. That is a disgrace in one of the richest countries in the world. This is the choice that they have made. Don’t make this cut.