Energy (oil and gas) profits levy

Debate between Stephen Crabb and Chris Stephens

Tuesday 22nd November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Crabb]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, and I will go on to say something about that, but I agree with the point he is making.

Over the past 10 to 11 years, what the Government have done, in essence, is hold back increases in working-age benefits while boosting the state pension for older people. That is very much part of the picture. When wages did not increase in the way we wanted them to, following the last financial crisis, we saw an increase in in-work poverty as a direct result. I wish to flag up three areas that should be longer-term concerns for this Government.

I welcome the additional spending on health and education announced in the autumn statement, but let us not forget that our spending on education, as a percentage of GDP, has been squeezed over the past 10 or 20 years; this is a long-term trajectory. As a country, we are not spending anything like as much as we should be on our skills and vocational education if we are to see increases in productivity. We are also not spending as much as we should on our armed forces and on defence. We are not spending what we should be on these other areas because three large areas are not sustainable in the long run and they are constraining Chancellors of the Exchequer in their decisions.

The first area I wish to flag up is the triple lock. I called for it to honoured during this cost of living crisis, but there are long-term question marks as to its sustainability. I asked the House of Commons Library to do some calculations for me. It found that over the past 10 years if we had increased the state pension by CPI—the consumer prices index—inflation rather than by the triple lock measures, we would have saved almost £13 billion. If we had applied the same uprating measures to the state pension as we did to working-age benefits, that figure would have become about £23 billion. The triple lock is a very expensive long-term policy. It has played a hugely important role in lifting many pensioners out of poverty—no one will forget the derisory 75p increase in the state pension that the last Labour Government made—but I want those on the Treasury Bench to bear in mind that we need a more honest discussion about that area.

The second area to mention, which has already been flagged up this afternoon, is working-age benefits and economic inactivity. Some 9 million people in this country are economically inactive. Many of them have good reasons for this, such as older people and students, but there are millions of people in this country who could work—many of them want to work—but are finding themselves increasingly distant from the labour market.

[Chris Stephens]

The right hon. Gentleman will know that the Select Committee on Work and Pensions is looking at some of what he is discussing. Is he as concerned as I am that a good number of disabled people were in work during the pandemic but there has been an increase in unemployment among them since, because employers are moving away from home working? We need to look at incentives to help disabled people, particularly in respect of home working, and to be creative in some of our thinking.