Tracy Brabin
Main Page: Tracy Brabin (Labour (Co-op) - Batley and Spen)Department Debates - View all Tracy Brabin's debates with the HM Treasury
(5 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Hammond
I cannot. The £100 million that we have announced today will be for the police as a whole, and my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will engage with police chiefs. If the hon. Lady is concerned, as she obviously is, about policing in London, may I suggest that she gets in touch with the Labour Mayor of London and asks him to get off his backside and do something about it?
Tracy Brabin (Batley and Spen) (Lab/Co-op)
I listened carefully to the Chancellor’s statement and very little was said about freelancers and the self-employed. In Prime Minister’s questions this afternoon, the Prime Minister said that the Government want to increase female entrepreneurship, but excluding the self-employed from sharing parental leave is causing women’s businesses to fail. Research by the Campaign for Parental Pay Equality showed that only 20% of mums were back to their pre-baby earnings by the time their child was two. Will the Chancellor and his colleagues please work with Members across the House and support my Bill so that all parents can share parental leave and women can fulfil their full potential?
Mr Hammond
I am happy to look at the issue raised by the hon. Lady. We have been looking at access to employment rights and benefits by the self-employed. As she knows, however, there is an issue: the self-employed pay significantly lower contributions than the employed into the Exchequer. The pressure is always to raise entitlements and access for the self-employed, but it is very clear—I learned the hard way in 2017—that the self-employed do not want their contributions to the Exchequer to rise, and that creates a tension.