Finance (No. 3) Bill

Wes Streeting Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Monday 12th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. Let us take employment: in this country we have a near record level of employment, we have a near record number of women employed, and we have the lowest level of unemployment since the 1970s. What is Labour’s record? Every single Labour Government in history have left office with unemployment higher than when they started. That is a simple fact. [Interruption.] It may be an inconvenient one, but it is a simple fact none the less.

The tax cut in the Bill is worth £9.5 billion. That means more money in people’s pockets. Since 2015, some 1.7 million more people have been taken out of tax altogether. The saving to the average taxpayer has been more than £1,200 since 2010.

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

What the Financial Secretary has neglected to mention but the Treasury Committee has heard clearly is that in respect of the long-run impact of the tax and benefit changes under this Government since 2015 alone—putting the coalition to one side—it is clear that their successive policies have left the wealthy better off and the very poorest worse off. That is deeply regressive and unjustifiable and it is why the Bill should not be supported.

[Mel Stride]

Hopefully, the hon. Gentleman will welcome the announcement that the Chancellor made in the Budget that we will provide a £1,000 uplift to the universal credit work allowance, which will be worth, when we reach full roll-out, a total of £630 million for 2.4 million recipients of that benefit.

Finance (No. 3) Bill

Wes Streeting Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 8th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for tabling the new clause. I found HMRC’s answers to the Treasury Committee wholly unsatisfactory. There remain serious questions to be asked of the promoters of these schemes, of the employers, including public sector employers, who promoted them to contractors, and also of HMRC. If people were given tax advice and followed it, and if HMRC was aware of these schemes but did not take action in any previous tax year, how on earth could any reasonable person have concluded that they were doing anything wrong?

[Sir Edward Davey]

I totally agree, and I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention.