Inheritance Tax

Tim Roca Excerpts

Wednesday 14th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Tim Roca (Macclesfield) (Lab)]

Madam Deputy Speaker, “We do not only ask today, ‘How much have you got?’, we also ask, ‘How did you get it? Did you earn it yourself, or has it just been left to you by others?’”. The estate duties provide a “corrective against the development” of the “idle rich”. And, “It is a far better thing to tax the accumulation of the past than to burden the industry of the present.”

Those are not my words, Madam Deputy Speaker, but those of Winston Churchill, speaking 100 years ago. They raise a question that remains relevant today: do we want a country that gives people a fair chance to get on in life or one that keeps finding new ways to protect the wealth of those who already have the most?

This motion tells us exactly where the Conservative party’s priorities lie. It calls on the Government to cut public spending in order to abolish inheritance tax, but it does not tell us which services they would cut, whose support they would withdraw or which communities would pay the price. It simply says “cut public spending.”

That is easy enough to demand when one does not have to explain what it means for people’s lives. The Conservatives are asking us to approve billions of pounds in tax cuts without telling us how they would pay for them. That is not a serious plan; it is a tax giveaway looking for someone else to pick up the bill. They say that the proposals would cost around £6 billion by 2029-30, but as we have already heard from other hon. Members, once we take behavioural effects into account, the cost could be up to £10.8 billion.

Who would benefit? Around 30,000 estates are expected to benefit. Estimates suggest that around 90% of the gains would go to the wealthiest 20% of pensioner households, with around 40% going to the wealthiest 5%. Around 70% of the benefits would go to London and the south-east, despite those areas accounting for only a quarter of pensioner households. Meanwhile, under the current system, fewer than one in 20 estates face an inheritance tax charge—a figure that has remained relatively stable for several decades now.

Let us stop pretending that this is a tax cut for everyone; it is a substantial giveaway that would disproportionately benefit the wealthiest households to the tune of £10.8 billion. Nobody disputes that family farms matter, and families should be able to pass on and plan for the future of those farms and businesses. But wrapping a policy in the language of family farms does not mean that we should stop asking who benefits, and this proposal goes much further than targeted help—it is a wider tax break for the very wealthiest in society.

There are questions about how it would work in practice. Conservatives say that they want to help people to pass on their homes, but what happens if those tax changes give older people a reason to stay in a larger property rather than downsize? Someone might want to sell a large home, move somewhere smaller and release money to support their retirement or help their family, but if inheritance tax treatment makes moving financially unattractive, their policy could discourage exactly the behaviour that they say they want to encourage.

[Lewis Cocking (Broxbourne) (Con)]

That is exactly why we would abolish stamp duty when people buy their home as well.

[Tim Roca]

The Conservatives point to stamp duty as a barrier and promise to scrap it on a home, but removing one cost does not automatically resolve every other tax consequence, and we know that changes in tax policy are very behaviour sensitive. This is what happens when a party writes a policy to win a headline for a conference.

It brings me back to Churchill. More than a century ago, he challenged the idea that inherited wealth should be waved through simply because it happened to belong to the right family. He asked the straightforward question that I quoted at the beginning: did you earn your wealth, or was it left to you?

As my hon. Friends have said, people want to leave something to their children. There is nothing wrong with that. But why should the Government spend billions helping those who are already wealthy pass on even more while telling everyone else that public spending should be cut?

[Dr Johnson]

The hon. Gentleman is making a distinction between money earned by somebody and money earned by their father. If a man and his daughter run a business together and the father dies, should the daughter not inherit? How much did she earn the money by working in that business? Did she not earn it? Why should it matter? That business employs people—whom the hon. Gentleman has talked about—who will lose their job if that business must close.

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[Tim Roca]

If the hon. Lady wants to have an argument with Churchill, she may do so, but I will not join her. I believe he was a great man.

Why should the Government spend billions helping those who are already wealthy? Why should families inheriting millions take priority over families struggling with bills? That is the choice at the heart of this motion: invest in services and support people who rely on them or hand a huge tax break to a small minority and leave everyone else to bear the cost.

The Conservatives’ record makes their claims of fiscal responsibility even harder to take seriously. Between 2010 and 2019 the national debt increased from £1 trillion to £1.8 trillion. That was before covid and the war in Ukraine. Debt to GDP increased from 69% to 84%. As Members have pointed out, we then got treated to the Liz Truss magic of a disastrous experiment in unfunded tax cuts that sent markets into turmoil and damaged confidence in the UK.

Then before the 2024 election we had many other promises of tax cuts worth billions that did not have any credible funding plans set behind them. Here they are again with another enormous tax giveaway but unable to tell us precisely which public services would pay the price. They have not learned the lessons of their failure; they just found new ways to replicate them.

The public finances are not a bottomless pit that politicians can dip into whenever they fancy announcing a tax cut. Every promise has to be funded properly, because it has consequences for real people. The Conservatives spent years telling people that there was no alternative to difficult decisions, yet when it comes to their own priorities, they make the promise and leave somebody else to deal with the bill. That is not fiscal responsibility; it is fiscal incontinence.

Their priorities are clear when we look at the two-child limit. The Conservatives indicated that they would reinstate a policy that would push 500,000 children back into poverty. At the same time, they want to direct a substantial tax benefit towards a tiny number of wealthy estates. The contrast is clear: they tell families on low incomes that the country cannot afford to help them, but they propose billions in tax cuts for the very wealthy. That is a choice, and it tells us who they put first in our society.

[Dr Johnson]

What proportion of people working in the private sector on low wages are employed by people who own businesses?

[Tim Roca]

As they say in “Father Ted”, that is an ecumenical matter. I am sure that the Minister will pick it up in his wind-up.

Labour Members have done a great job of outlining the fantastic measures that the Government are taking, including measures on VAT and electricity bills, capping bus fares and 24-hour bus travel for disabled people from next April, so I will not touch on those. I will finish on what has—I hope—been the main theme of my speech. Today is all about one thing: tax cuts for the wealthiest, cuts to public services for everyone else. It is the same old Conservatives. They have not changed at all.

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[Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)]

As I have listened to this debate today, I too have been reminded of the chilling words describing Labour MPs by their own Work and Pensions Secretary:

“Every meeting I have is ‘who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others’.”

This debate today once again sets out the battle of ideas between the welfare party and the Conservatives. This is the eighth vote the Conservatives have forced on the family farm and family business taxes since the disastrous first Labour Budget of broken promises. In that time, we have seen off a Prime Minister, a Chancellor and two DEFRA Secretaries of State, and discovered that one DEFRA Minister views black Labradors, warm ale and pubs as a far-right fantasy.

We have also shown the power of rural and coastal communities, because through their protests here and across the country, the heartrending stories we have heard from families of the terrible discussions and decisions they have had to make in order to avoid this vindictive death tax, as set out eloquently by my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore), and the pressure we have exerted here in Westminster, we forced the Government into one of their most humiliating U-turns. There have been many, but this one was humiliating: their partial U-turn on these vindictive taxes.

We are forcing another vote today, ahead of Budget, because we know the damage that these vindictive taxes continue to cause to the rural economy. We know that this Government have overseen the highest number of farms closing on record in a year—shameful. The Financial Secretary did not admit that.

We also know, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries and Galloway (John Cooper) has set out, that the 10-year payment scheme that the Government keep talking about applies only if the estate is able to make the first payment within six months of the death, probate having been settled. Does anyone know of such a scenario in their own constituencies? This means that the 10-year payment plan is nothing but warm words from those on the Treasury Bench. It is an absolutely impossible condition to fulfil for the overwhelming majority of family farms and businesses that will be hit by these taxes.

The Financial Secretary also did not acknowledge that investment in rural economies has dropped off a cliff. [Interruption.] He is not listening, but he might want to do so. In a recent Country Land and Business Association survey, nearly nine in 10 rural family businesses stated that they have paused investment; in fact, 85% say that the current threshold of which the Financial Secretary is so proud is not enough to cover the value of their business, given the cost of machinery and livestock and the other business costs imposed by this Government. Of course, two pubs are also closing every day under this Government. In short, rural communities cannot afford Labour.

Despite their protestations over the past two years, every single Labour MP has voted for the family farm tax and the family business tax multiple times; only one had the courage to vote for his constituents. There is one other who did not: the Prime Minister, because he was not in Parliament at the time of the other votes. He knows that Labour has a rural problem, though. He has said that he recognises that the Government have a

“long way to go to build back trust”

with the farming community across the country.

It is therefore a shame that today of all days, the Prime Minister has put another tax on family farms—the fertiliser tax. And every Labour MP voted for it. Again, the Work and Pensions Secretary was right. This is another hammer blow to British farming, only weeks after the shambolic handling of the sustainable farming incentive, the collapse of the Government’s environmental policy and the Prime Minister’s botched response on how his deal with the EU will, in fact, favour foreign farmers over British farmers and hand control over our food laws to the European Union.

In the battle of ideas today, we have heard some superb speeches from the Conservatives Benches. My hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Patrick Spencer) painted a picture of the many local pubs and black Labradors in his Suffolk constituency—the DEFRA Minister may wish to take note. My hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Biggin Hill (Peter Fortune) set out sound economic analysis, even if he admitted that his cricketing skills are not quite what they should be. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Blake Stephenson) set out a description of the Labour party that I think hits home almost as much as the words of the Work and Pension Secretary: Labour is the party that taxes aspiration. This vote tonight is the proof of that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Sir Ashley Fox) made an excellent intervention about the fact that the tax focuses only on British family farms and family businesses and does not affect foreign owners of farmland. Perhaps the Minister will explain how it is fair that foreign farmers should not pay this tax but British farmers should do so.

We heard other excellent speeches, including by my hon. Friends the Members for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Mohindra), for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore), for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns), for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford), for South West Devon (Rebecca Smith), for Solihull West and Shirley (Dr Shastri-Hurst), for Broxbourne (Lewis Cocking), and for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer), who described Labour’s approach to taxation as “asset stripping our country”.

Let me turn to some of the speeches from the Labour Benches. We heard from the hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Andrew Lewin), who by the way voted for the family farm and family business tax seven times—tonight will be an eighth—and the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Tim Roca), who only voted for it three times. I am sure his farmers are so happy about that. Both of them asked, “What can be done to help those who are not yet on the housing ladder?” I am delighted to tell them that the Conservative party has the answer. We will be scrapping—

[Tim Roca]

Will the shadow Minister give way?

[Victoria Atkins]

No, if the hon. Gentleman sits down—[Interruption.] I have some words about his AI-generated speech in a moment.

The Conservatives have the answer: we will scrap stamp duty on primary residences. That is how we help people back on the housing ladder. The hon. Member for Macclesfield also described his own constituents who want to pass on their family homes or family businesses to their children as the “idle rich”. I hope that was just the AI.

[Tim Roca]

Will the shadow Minister give way?

[Victoria Atkins]

I will, and I genuinely hope that he will explain his “idle rich” comment. Go on.

[Tim Roca]

I was quoting Churchill, in particular from a lecture given by Professor Daunton at Gresham College in 2021, when he directly quoted Churchill when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer as a Conservative.

[Victoria Atkins]

That will not plough any furrows with the farmers in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency whom he has just described as the “idle rich”. What is more, he has got his figures wrong. He keeps throwing these figures around, but in fact that Tax Policy Associates think-tank that so many Labour colleagues seem to rely on has said that by the end of this decade one in six families will pay inheritance tax—many of them in his constituency, which I know well.

The hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Noah Law) voted for the family farm and family business tax only a mere six times—he missed one of them—but he had the bright idea that farmers should get life insurance and planning advice. How on earth are farmers in his constituency on an income of around £20,000 a year going to afford that? It is yet more business taxes.

We also heard a reliance on Dan Neidle and his organisation Tax Policy Associates. I merely make the point, so that it is open and transparent, that Dan Neidle is a senior member of the Labour party and served for three years on its disciplinary committee.

The Conservatives are setting out the tough decisions to cut spending and help hard-working families up and down the country invest in their businesses and homes, ready to hand over to their families. People who have worked hard, paid their income tax, lived within their means and saved have not done so in order for the current Labour Chancellor to tax that all over again. They have done so because they have a deep desire to leave something to help the next generation prosper when they are no longer here.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tim Roca Excerpts

Tuesday 9th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves]

I absolutely recognise that businesses face challenges, but they also have lower borrowing costs because of the five cuts in interest rates, which the Bank of England was able to make because of the stability that we have returned to the economy. It would be good to have a bit more honesty from political parties. If they oppose the national insurance increase, then they oppose the extra money for the national health service. If they stood up and said that, they might get a little more respect and credibility.

[Tim Roca (Macclesfield) (Lab)]

T8.   In Macclesfield we are lucky to have a thriving life sciences sector. At AstraZeneca, we have 5,000 people employed in well-paid jobs across the pharmaceutical value chain. What are the Treasury and the Government doing to ensure that we take advantage of the innovation we produce here in the UK for the benefit of our local life sciences economies?

[Rachel Reeves]

My hon. Friend is a proud advocate for his constituents in Macclesfield and is doing great work to bring more investment into the local area. Life sciences is one of the eight sectors that this Government, as part of our modern industrial strategy, are championing. That is why we put record investment into research and development in the spending review earlier this year, and why we are supporting our universities to help create more spinouts to ensure that we can have more home-grown British businesses, as well as backing the big businesses, such as AstraZeneca, that operate in his constituency.

Property Taxes

Tim Roca Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mark Ferguson (Gateshead Central and Whickham) (Lab)]

It is wonderful to be back for another Opposition day debate, as I am sure we can all agree. It is another debate about imagined proposals. It must be a difficult time for Opposition Members, because for so many years, this was the time of year when they were preparing for their conference and for the Budget, but this year, scant attention will be paid to them—and, of course, they are not writing the Budget anymore.

[Tim Roca (Macclesfield) (Lab)]

Thank God.

[Mark Ferguson]

Indeed. Thank God the Conservatives are not writing the Budget, because we have seen what their Budgets led to. I understand Opposition Members’ frustration. It is nice to see that they have settled into the most comfortable aspect of being in opposition. As I have said before in these debates, as a Labour party member of many years’ standing, I have a huge amount of experience of the comfort of opposition; you start to create straw men, talk about what the Government might be doing and your fears, rile your supporters, and spark up a bit of concern among them. However, the Opposition are not willing to set out their actual plans for the country. [Interruption.] An hon. Friend makes a good point: they do not have any.

All the Opposition parties—again, this is the nature of the easy early years of opposition—want the benefits that result from our difficult choices, but they are unwilling to say how they would pay for them. I am sick and tired of listening to the never-never from those on the Opposition Benches. They are confident and comfortable with the imaginarium of the Budget that they believe will happen, but they are unwilling to come up with real, meaningful proposals—incapable of doing so, perhaps.

Proposals floated by the Conservatives include cutting maternity pay, means-testing the state pension and attacking the minimum wage. We know the impact of a Conservative Budget: the grotesque chaos caused by Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng. I would call that Budget a bombshell, but bombshells go off only once, and that bombshell is going off in homes and communities across this country every single day. Families on mortgage rates that were fixed for five years or longer would have had lower interest rates now if it had not been for that Budget. Despite the five admirable and welcome interest rate cuts made under this Government, those families will be paying hundreds or thousands of pounds more a year.

Opposition Members express concern today for those in valuable homes. Many of those in valuable homes will understandably have significant mortgages, and many of them will have seen their mortgages go up by hundreds or thousands of pounds, thanks to the actions of the previous Government—actions that Opposition Members were cheerleading at the time. We are all still living with the results of those actions. That is not imaginary; that is the real consequences of their Government, and it is what we are trying to put behind us.

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[Gregory Stafford]

I do not want to correct the hon. Gentleman, but I was not here to oppose or support any of them. I gently remind him—I use the word “gently” because I know that the Minister loves the word “gently”, so I have used it twice now—that there was a pandemic that had to be dealt with, and that had to be funded. There was a war in Ukraine, and dealing with that had to be funded. As we have gone back in history a bit, let me add that we also had to deal with the deficit that the last Labour Government left us. That is the reality of the situation.

[Tim Roca]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Gregory Stafford]

No, I will not. I have already given way a couple of times.

This is a tax on the family home, and it will hit hardest those who have worked hard, saved responsibly, and played by the rules. Let us be clear: this is not simply a question of numbers on a balance sheet. It is about whether families can stay in the communities where they raised their children, whether pensioners can pass on their homes, and whether young people will ever see the ladder of opportunity come down again. A capital gains tax on main homes will trap people in their properties, create a locked-in market, and dry up the supply of homes. Transactions will slow, chains will break, and first-time buyers—the very people whom Labour claims to champion—will be shut out even further.

The Government have tried to defend this agenda by talking about “fairness”, but there is nothing fair about a pensioner in Greatham being forced to sell his or her family home to pay the taxman. There is nothing fair about young families in Lindford choosing between childcare and a new annual property levy, and there is nothing fair about placing the heaviest burden on one region of the country simply because the value of its housing stock is higher. In truth, this is a south and south-east tax dressed up as national fairness; and it is part of a pattern.

From scrapping the pensioner fuel allowance, mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Biggin Hill (Peter Fortune), to threatening VAT on private schools to punitive business tax rises, every single decision seems to be about sending a political signal rather than supporting families or growing the economy. The consequences are plain to see: falling business confidence, another year of negative hiring expectations, and growing unemployment. Wasn’t the Government’s White Paper meant to be called “Get Britain Working”? All we are seeing is Britain grinding to a halt. The Chancellor may talk of fairness, but she is stripping away the last sanctuary for working people—the roofs over their heads. Over-taxation, without clarity, will paralyse the housing market, punish my constituents, and undermine economic stability.

If you tax homes, you tax hope, and that is the surest way in which to drain ambition from our country. We should be protecting families, not forcing them to sell up. We should be supporting aspiration, not taxing it into extinction.

National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill

Tim Roca Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Wednesday 19th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Davies]

Yes, it is. My right hon. Friend is exactly right; the Government are giving a small amount with one hand and taking a larger amount with the other, but the bottom line is that it is all taxpayers’ money. It is a double tax on those people who now face the brunt of this tax increase.

[Tim Roca (Macclesfield) (Lab)]

Will the shadow Minister give way?

[Gareth Davies]

I will make some progress, if the hon. Gentleman will allow me, and then give way.

This tax, purely and simply, is a financial penalty on 940,000 businesses—that is how I look at it. The analysis shows that it is going to cost businesses an average of £26,000 per year per employer. Not content with ruining farmers’ futures through the immoral family farm tax, the Chancellor wants to hammer them with this Bill, too. She is going to make pubs, cafés and restaurants stump up more to cover her jobs tax, without regard for the impact on our high streets or the communities they serve. She is going to squeeze the creative industries, from theatres to film producers, in a desperate attempt to keep this circus on the road. It is crucial that we understand the impact that the Bill will have. That is why Lords amendment 21 requires the Chancellor to carry out a review within six months of the Bill’s impact on the sectors I have described as well as on farming, creative industries, hospitality, retail and universities.

UK-China Economic and Financial Dialogue

Tim Roca Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves]

I was not seeking assurance from any foreign Government on the performance of this Government. What I was seeking—I achieved this in China—were tangible outputs for British businesses trading overseas, helping to create more good jobs that pay decent wages here in Britain. The Conservative party absolutely failed to do that in 14 years.

[Tim Roca (Macclesfield) (Lab)]

I thank the Chancellor for her statement. I particularly welcome the fact that she raised the issues of Jimmy Lai and human rights in Beijing, which is really important. After 14 years of the Conservative party’s inconsistency on China, does she agree that we need a cross-Whitehall strategy and a pragmatic approach?

[Rachel Reeves]

What is really important is that we take decisions in Britain’s national interest. Taking decisions in the national interest means engaging with our trading partners all around the world, which is why, since being appointed as Chancellor, I have been to Brussels to reset our relations with the European Union, as well as to Washington and New York to welcome investment from overseas. I have secured £600 million-worth of benefits for UK businesses doing business in China.

Finance Bill

Tim Roca Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 27th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Tim Roca (Macclesfield) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Samantha Niblett) on her phenomenal maiden speech. She is already proving to be a powerful advocate for her constituents.

The Finance Bill is a necessary corollary to the Budget. It is the beginning of a process that the new Labour Government are undertaking to rebuild the foundations of our country, after an incredibly poor inheritance from the predecessor Government. I have been quite shocked to hear the joy with which Conservative Members have been speaking about the phenomenal economy that they left the country with. It is an economy in which wage growth has flatlined at the lowest level since the Napoleonic wars, leaving households £10,000 worse off per person. Trade has fallen 15% lower than our neighbours’, and national debt went from 64% in 2010 to 96% just before the pandemic. I know they love blaming the pandemic for everything, but things were pretty bad before the pandemic. The heart of the problem is that the Conservatives lack credibility.

In 2010, the right hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) stood for election on a manifesto that said that the Conservatives would “eliminate” the deficit by the end of the Parliament. In 2015, he stood for election on a manifesto that said the same thing, as he did in 2017. In 2019, he and his colleagues decided to give up entirely on tackling the national debt, which is one of many things that we now have to tackle. Of course, that was the more rational end of the previous 14 years, and there were seven Chancellors in 14 years, by the way. We had the blip, which I know Conservative Members do not like talking about, when one of their Chancellors, with the backing of a Prime Minister, Liz Truss, promised £45 billion—2% of GDP—of unfunded tax cuts. I am incredulous that the Conservatives were talking about gilts earlier. Gilts moved more in one week under Liz Truss than in a whole year on average. There is no comparison—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman was in the Chamber when I asked Members to return to debating the Finance Bill, rather than the rather context of the Budget.

[Tim Roca]

I was, Madam Deputy Speaker. I tried to intervene on the right hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness a number of times, but he would not give way, so I felt I had to squeeze in a couple of points before getting to the Finance Bill.

The Finance Bill includes many important measures that I support. The freeze on fuel duty is an important and welcome decision by the Chancellor. The Conservatives imposed a stealth tax on the country by freezing thresholds on income tax, and the Chancellor rightly committed to changing that in 2028. It was a revenue-raising Budget, but despite all the changes, we will have capital gains and corporation tax rates that are very competitive with those of our G7 colleagues.

My constituency needs this Budget because it needs stability. It needs the investment that this Budget will bring. That investment is crucial because the legacy that I talked about spanned a number of areas, including a lack of public investment. The Institute for Public Policy Research said that nearly £500 billion less was invested in the public sector than in comparable economies, as we can see in our public services, hospitals and schools. The Budget was about choices. It was a difficult Budget, and not a perfect Budget, because of the inheritance. We have to deal with the facts. There was disagreement on the Budget, but people who disagree with the revenue-raising measures and agree with the spending have to say what taxes they would have increased. I say gently to Liberal Democrat colleagues, who have found other sources of income, that the Institute for Fiscal Studies effectively said that their plans to raise income elsewhere had no real credibility.

This is a difficult Budget, but it is the beginning of plotting a course for stability, economic growth and investment in public services in our country. That is what my constituents very much hope will be the legacy.

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[Damian Hinds]

Well, we shall see. As a teacher, he will know that teachers move between the state and independent sectors all the time. They move in both directions, but that is not what the Association of School and College Leaders was talking about. It was talking about the fact that the change is being made mid-year, and said that it carried a risk of redundancies, and of the permanent loss of teachers to the profession.

Labour Members—the hon. Member for Harlow (Chris Vince) is one of them—frequently like to say to Opposition Members that we have to choose. They say: “Are you on the side of the many or the few? Are you with 94% or the 6%?”. Well, we refuse to choose. It is not a question of whether we care about the 94% or the 6%. We care about the 100%—all the children. It is definitely true and right that at the Department for Education—this was true when I was a Minister there—Ministers spend way more than 94% of their time and effort on the state sector. In our time in government, between 2010 and 2024, that paid off with huge results. When we supported our brilliant teachers in their great work, our results went up. We went from 27th in the world to 11th for maths, and from 25th in the world to 13th for reading. We had the best primary school readers in the western world. Free school meal eligible children were 50% more likely to go on to university, and the number of schools rated less than good was down from one in three to fewer than one in 10. That was through supporting teachers, academy trusts, a broad knowledge-rich curriculum and the propagation and spread—from school to school and teacher to teacher—of proven methods, such as maths mastery and synthetic phonics.

Yes, the system does also need money. Per-pupil funding under the last Government was higher than it was under previous Labour Governments. Among the G7 nations, it was middle of the range in cash per child, and the highest as a proportion of national income. Of course, we have to keep increasing the resourcing that we put into key services, none more so than education, but the Conservatives did that as a priority from general taxation, not by taking from another part of the wider education system. I repeat: the Government do not have to choose. These are all children.

[Tim Roca]

Will the right hon. Gentleman clarify his comment that all the education spending that he mentioned came from general taxation? My understanding is that the figures that he just quoted include the student loan system.

[Damian Hinds]

No, they do not. If the hon. Gentleman is talking about the OECD figures, they are for primary, secondary and college-based education in the state sector, but I am grateful to him for his intervention.

When Government Members talk about “the 6%” in the same tone in which they sometimes talk about “the 1%”, I think they believe that they are about to topple the toffs and achieve some sort of great victory in the class war. They are not. Eton college will not miss a heartbeat over this measure. The pupils who will be hit will be those in smaller town schools—the ones that are significant employers locally and a big part of the local community. They do not have big endowments; they do have pretty thin margins. Schools that cater to children with special educational needs will be hit. Denominational schools will be hit.

There have been some concessions from the Government. They are not the most massive concessions in the world, but they are not nothing either. We should acknowledge them, and I thank the Government for them. The first is on the music and dance scheme, with extra help for families with children at the schools in question, albeit that the concession will benefit only a little less than half the total number of families in what is a means-tested scheme anyway. There is also the confirmation that centres for advanced training will be exempt, and of what the Government plan to do on the continuity of education allowance. We need to ensure that those mitigations are more comprehensive than they are now, and that they become permanent.

Of course, the Opposition would prefer the Government to drop this measure altogether and not be the international outlier by taxing education, but if they are determined to bulldoze on, we must have key changes in Committee. We must have an exemption for all children with an EHCP—not only if it specifies the individual school—children who have SEN support, and those who are currently applying for an EHCP. We must have exemptions for schools whose fees are lower than the average charge in the state sector, and for religious denominations where there is no faith school provision in the state sector.

I do not accept the notion that, as Ministers have said at the Dispatch Box, members of religious faith communities are not discriminated against by this measure. It may well be that, as a whole, people of faith are not discriminated against more than others because the vast majority of people of religious faith are in the state sector anyway, where there are plenty of Catholic schools, Anglican schools and other denominational schools, but it is not credible in the slightest to claim that there is no discrimination, and that the effect will not be felt much more strongly by members of certain traditions within Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

We also need key postponements. Children who are already in public exam years, or the year before public exams, cannot have their education disrupted in this way. The school that they move to may not even offer the same GCSEs or A-levels, the same exam board or the same syllabus. Most significantly of all, the Government must for good reasons, including simple practical reasons, at least postpone the introduction of the measure in areas where state schools are already full, or almost full, at that stage of education, because the biggest effect of this divisive, destructive tax attack will be on state schools. It will be felt in class sizes, and ultimately in all parents’ ability to get the preferred choice of school for their child.

Financial Assistance to Ukraine Bill

Tim Roca Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 20th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Tim Roca (Macclesfield) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Linsey Farnsworth) on her fantastic maiden speech. She is a really powerful advocate for her constituents. She talked movingly about her father losing his voice, but she has certainly found hers in this place. I was with her on that visit to Ukraine in September, and I still find it incredible that in this day and age, in 2024, it is possible to visit the capital city of a fellow democracy on the European continent and hear air raid sirens and see civilians—women and children—heading for air raid shelters. That is the dystopian future that Vladimir Putin has set out for Ukraine in this terrible war, but also potentially for the rest of the continent if we do not get our act together.

Several times this afternoon, hon. Members have made the powerful point that this is an existential war for the people of Ukraine. They are not fighting for some unforeseeable future, but to ensure their national independence and preserve their sovereignty. Some 3 million Ukrainians are living under occupation at the moment, and the people of Ukraine know what the full occupation of their country would entail: the destruction of their national life and of their liberty. We know this because, despite Vladimir Putin’s mendaciousness, he has set out time and again his historical worldview—his perverted sense of world history and Russian revanchism. There is the essay that he published just before the invasion and the strange speech he gave on the eve of the invasion itself, in which he basically posited the idea that Ukraine was not a real country. Well, it has very much proved to be a real country, and it has defeated him in his evil ambitions for the past two years.

Because this war is existential and because it is crucial for the defence of this country, we have a duty to be realistic. I do not expect Ministers to comment on this today, but we in this Chamber are all very much aware that there has been a sea change in American politics, and that the comments from people who will either be part of the future Administration, or are likely to be part of it, suggest that the United States’ support for Ukraine might not be what it has been. That brings me to the issue that the hon. Member for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry (Stephen Gethins) mentioned, which is that we are running up against the clock. We have limited time. We have to be realistic: there is a new Administration coming in, so Europe has to pick up the slack and provide greater leadership.

However, we are also seeing massive changes in Europe. On the day that President Trump was elected, the German Government began to fall apart, and in France, we are seeing a presidency stumble towards the end of its term. The United Kingdom is the country that has to provide the leadership in Europe on these matters, as it has done since the start of the war, but we need to go even further.

The support that Ukraine gets at the moment is already subject to so many restrictions. It has been drip-fed to them over the past two years, rather than giving them what they need right away, which has potentially made the war longer. We have not given the Ukrainians the tools they have needed when they have asked for them. Ukrainians talk about the “long yes”, where European partners say “Yes, of course” and promise delivery of arms, but those arms take months or even years to arrive and make a difference on the battlefield. I wonder whether we would be in a different place if all the systems that have eventually been given to Ukraine had been given at the start of the war.

This Bill is absolutely crucial, as various Members have said, and I support it. I think it is extremely important, but Members have also talked about going further with Russian assets. I can completely understand why, a year or 18 months ago, it might have been rational to think that those assets could be used during the peace negotiations—that they could potentially be the source of funding for rebuilding Ukraine. However, as Members have pointed out several times, there may not be a Ukraine if this war is not won. That is why we have to give serious consideration to unlocking those funds and using them now for the defence of Ukraine.

The last time this country was fighting for its life, in 1940, there was also a presidential election. We were much luckier back then, because both the Democratic and Republican candidates were stalwart allies of the UK in its fight against fascism. This election has changed things, but going back to that time, when President Roosevelt announced lend-lease, he said that when your neighbour’s house is on fire, you do not haggle over the cost of the hose. You give them the hose—you give them what they need to put out the fire—and then you go back to the details later. That is the attitude European partners should have towards the defence of Ukraine.

Earlier today, I mentioned that one of the Defence Ministers has said that the world is becoming darker every day. If this war is not won, the world will be plunged into darkness, because it will send an incredibly dangerous message to other autocracies around the world about the rules-based order and “might is right”, and the refugee crisis that we see here in Europe at the moment will pale into insignificance as millions of Ukrainians flee the prospect of living under Vladimir Putin’s tyranny. As such, I welcome this Bill, but like many colleagues, I hope to see Britain’s leadership continue to grow and for us to go further, seizing Russian assets and giving the Ukrainian people what they need.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tim Roca Excerpts

Tuesday 29th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves]

Last week, when I was in Washington, I was very pleased to hear the International Monetary Fund say how important it is that countries, including the UK, borrow to invest in their capital infrastructure. Under the plans we inherited from the previous Government, capital spending as a share of GDP is due to fall from 2.6% to 1.7%. If those decisions were to go forward, it would mean plans delayed and cancelled. We will set out our plans tomorrow in the Budget, but it is crucial that we have rules ensuring that we pay for day-to-day spending through tax receipts, and that we borrow only to invest, unlike the previous Government.

[Tim Roca (Macclesfield) (Lab)]

9. What assessment she has made of the potential impact of recent fiscal events on investor confidence in the UK.

[The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Rachel Reeves)]

The Conservative party oversaw years of chaos, which cost not only families but businesses. The Government are committed to delivering the economic stability needed for investor confidence. Our commitment to a credible Budget, strong institutions and robust fiscal rules are at the heart of that plan. Earlier this month, we announced a record-breaking £63.5 billion of investment at our international investment summit. That shows that the UK can attract investment from around the world, to boost jobs and growth here in Britain, through serious, stable Government policy.

[Tim Roca]

When does the Chancellor think that the Conservative party lost its fiscal credibility? Was it with the Liz Truss mini-Budget? [Interruption.] Was it when national debt rose from 65% to nearly 100% of GDP? Or was it when they made the farcical promise to abolish national insurance?

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Who wants to go for that cup of tea? Normally this happens at Prime Minister’s questions; I do not want it starting in Treasury questions.