Budget Resolutions
The hon. Gentleman cherishes the NHS; does he agree that the single patient record, of which he speaks so eloquently, must be delivered by sovereign British technology?
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Equality Act 2010 Guidance: Gynaecological Conditions
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Tulip Siddiq) on securing this really important debate. I would also like to join other Members from across the House in congratulating and commending the campaigners, some of whom are in the Gallery, on the incredible work that they do on behalf of not just themselves but all women across the country and, indeed, internationally. Millions of women face the difficulty and pain of managing gynaecological conditions such as endometriosis, adenomyosis, fibroids, PMDD—the list goes on and on. It is obvious that more must be done to rapidly speed up diagnosis times and provide effective care and accommodations to those with these often incredibly debilitating conditions. Their impacts on women’s everyday lives extend, as we have heard, to education, employment and fertility. Some women leave work altogether because they cannot obtain the support that they need. We cannot—indeed, must not—accept that as normal. My Liberal Democrat colleagues and I believe that there would be merit in dealing with these conditions in the same way as cancer, HIV and multiple sclerosis, which are deemed to be disabilities, under the Equality Act 2010, from the point of diagnosis and without the need to meet the functional test. I therefore urge the Government to examine that proposal further. As we have heard, however, even getting a diagnosis is appallingly slow. Women’s symptoms are too often normalised or dismissed across all health conditions. I have heard outrageous stories of women’s persistent health concerns being dismissed with sometimes incredibly sexist comments attached. One young woman described to me fairly recently a particularly awful example. She was explaining to a consultant how she felt physically sick because of her persistent stomach pain, in this case while she was out shopping with friends, only to be dismissed by the doctor, who replied, “I often feel sick when I go shopping with my wife”—[Interruption.] There are groans from the Gallery. That actually happened. With there being grossly outdated and misplaced attitudes like this, it is hardly surprising that it takes an average of almost 10 years to receive an endometriosis diagnosis in the UK. Recent research by Endometriosis UK has shone a light on the extent of the impact of this condition. In a recent report, the charity found that 97% of those surveyed worked while experiencing severe pain. It is no wonder that almost half of all those with endometriosis said that it had made it difficult to progress in their career, while 28% had had to leave their job altogether because of it. The same survey found that employers overwhelmingly want to help, but with there being little guidance and with employers facing the everyday pressures of running a business, the support for these women often just is not there. That is costing women—in pain, in missed career opportunities and, ultimately, in dignity. My Liberal Democrat colleagues and I have written to Baroness Merron, the Women’s Health Minister, on several occasions to raise the urgent need to improve care for women with gynaecological conditions. The Government know that health-related economic inactivity costs the UK £212 billion every year. Even if we think about this only in such crude economic terms, the action needed pays for itself. Indeed, one NHS Confederation report found that for every £1 spent on obstetrics and gynaecology, the estimated return on investment was £11. It follows that tackling NHS waiting times for gynaecological services should be a top priority. That is why it was so disappointing that the women’s health strategy contained no specific, measurable, time-bound target to reduce the backlogs in endometriosis care, while the NHS 10-year health plan did not include endometriosis, adenomyosis, PMOS or fibroids in its prevention agenda. Without there being clear direction from Government, we risk consigning more women to even longer waits and prolonged, unnecessary pain. That is why I was proud that the Liberal Democrats tabled to the Health Bill a new clause that would have ensured that the average wait time for endometriosis and other women-specific conditions was no longer than the average wait time for other elective conditions in the NHS. That would be a meaningful step towards equality in women’s healthcare. Finally, we know that what gets measured gets done in the NHS. I hope that the Minister takes this away and conducts a serious examination of adding gynaecological conditions to the Equality Act 2010 guidance. We owe it to these women to do all we can to tackle this injustice.
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Budget Resolutions
Last Wednesday my constituents in Eastleigh looked to the Chancellor for real help with the cost of living. While some of the measures that he announced are welcome, I am afraid that this Budget lacks ambition, and is short term and poorly targeted. According to the Resolution Foundation, the one-off household energy payment based on council tax band rather than need means that 1.4 million low-income households in higher bands will miss out, while the scrapping of gas standing charges will save the typical household just £1.83 a month. The cuts to VAT on electricity and fuel duty both end next July, long before the OBR expects pressure on family budgets to ease. For constituents like Susan, a widow who lives in a park home in Fair Oak, the Budget offered very little. She is off the main gas grid and has no choice but to heat her home with liquid petroleum gas, which is far more expensive and is not protected by the energy price cap. Her £100 payment will barely touch the sides, and scrapping standing charges does nothing for her. Will the Minister set out what support the Government will provide for off-grid households like Susan’s, who rely on liquid petroleum gas and are not protected by the energy price cap? The Chancellor’s decision to raise the threshold for small business rates relief from £12,000 to £18,000 is welcome. However, the policy does not live up to the headline, benefiting only a limited number of businesses in Eastleigh. On Thursday, I hosted a post-Budget business breakfast in my constituency. Lucy, who runs Telmar CNC, a precision engineering firm in Chandler’s Ford, told me that her rates bill has doubled in six years, and manufacturers like her business got nothing. Jane runs Elite Hair Salon, which, as a microbusiness, is too small for the changes to make any difference. She told me, “Overall, this Budget has done little to support my business or many others within the hair and beauty sector.” I welcome the extra small producer relief. However, raising alcohol duty yet again in February will hit the very pubs and drinkers that small brewers depend on, and that is why we oppose it. We are approaching Remembrance Sunday; and, in the current climate, ensuring that our armed forces are properly equipped is more urgent than ever. In Eastleigh, Stuart, who runs GW Martin & Co, has welcomed the Government’s commitment to small firms in the defence investment plan, but he told me, “We would like to see greater urgency in funding this necessary investment as we have capacity and capability to respond quickly, which will create jobs, growth and revenue.” Instead, the plan to reach 3% of GDP on defence has been pushed back to next year’s spending review. James, who owns JLMS—an apprenticeship provider—told me, “This was not a Budget for youth employment.” The payment for taking on an apprentice has not gone up in five years, while the cost of employing and training a young person keeps rising. The Chancellor had a choice. He could have reversed the increase to employer national insurance contributions, which has sent job vacancies to a five-year low. Instead, he told young people to wait for another review. On plan 2 student loans, this Budget was again silent. It was an opportunity to reverse last autumn’s deeply unfair decision to freeze the repayment threshold from April 2027 for three years. With the minimum wage rising and the threshold frozen, we are approaching the point where a graduate on the minimum wage could have to start repaying. I urge the Treasury to scrap the freeze and link the threshold to average earnings. I am pleased that the Chancellor has finally listened to Lib Dem calls to scrap the carer’s allowance cliff edge. That is a welcome first step, but it will not come into force until 2030, and carers trying to balance work with looking after a loved one need this safety net now, not in four years. Will the Minister commit to bringing forward its introduction so that carers do not have to wait until 2030? Eastleigh needed a Budget with real ambition, but this one falls short. I urge the Chancellor to go further.
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Budget Resolutions
I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, and I am so pleased he is back on his feet. He is making a really important point about a potential blind spot for the Government in terms of rurality. Policy Exchange produced an excellent report recently about the effect of rurality on access to healthcare in England. Does he agree that if we design services around the hardest to reach, that helps the most unequal parts of society everywhere?
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Young People and Work: Milburn Interim Report
The first instalment of the Milburn review has been well received on both sides of the House. As a member of the Work and Pensions Committee, I had the chance to ask Alan Milburn about it a few months ago. One of the things he said, which got a lot of press but has been misunderstood, is that we spend £25 on benefits for every £1 we spend on helping young people into work. Contrary to what some on the right have assumed, that emphatically does not mean that slashing benefits is the way to cure youth unemployment. For years under the Conservatives, jobcentres operated under a sanctions-based culture. That failed. Job hunting is difficult, and totally demoralising job hunters by distrusting their every move is not the way to coach them through their first interviews. In evidence to the Committee, young people described being made to feel like a “leech”. How does that help anyone? The demand for people to demonstrate that they have submitted large numbers of job applications like notches on a belt has been completely destructive. Local employers have disengaged in my constituency because they have been spammed with poorly targeted applications. We should not be so hasty to write off the current generation as a bunch of snowflakes. Rather, we should remember that the current level of nearly 1 million NEETs is less than the peak back in 2011, when we had 1.25 million. The remarkable fact is that 44% of NEETs are not claiming any kind of benefit at all. Surely, even the most zealous right-winger can see that that challenges the cliché of an out-of-control benefits culture. Success stems from intervention at an early age. When kids stop attending school, that is a powerful indicator of their likelihood of becoming NEETs later. In that context, the Government’s youth guarantee scheme will not do the trick. It only kicks in after 18 months of unemployment, when the damage is done. It is also not available to kids on benefits. This will not be a quick fix, but actions today will bring huge long-term rewards for the people who matter most: our children.
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Child Trust Funds
This is fantastic news—so many people have campaigned for it over so many years. I thank my colleague Baroness Kramer in the Lords, who helped by tabling an amendment to the Financial Services and Markets Bill that has brought us to this point. Will the Minister join me in paying tribute to my constituent Andrew Turner, who was one of the first parents to discover this issue when his child Mikey reached the age of 18 six years ago and has campaigned tirelessly on it? He has done a fantastic job. Would she like to congratulate him?
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Train Services: Extreme Weather
It is interesting listening to the hon. Gentleman’s speech and realising the commonalities that we have, even though our constituencies are so far apart, with mine being located on the south coast of England. A lot of my constituents travel outside the city of Chichester for work; similarly, a lot of people living in Bognor Regis and Portsmouth come into Chichester for work. All these people are encouraged to use public transport, but since extreme weather is rapidly becoming just weather, does he agree that it is incredibly frustrating for people who are constantly being told, “We are sorry for the disruptions, but we are experiencing extreme weather”? On 40 days this year temperatures have reached over 30 degrees. Similarly, leaves on the line can stop trains from running; indeed, the other day swans on the line stopped the trains from running on our arterial railway route. We need to get a grip and ensure that trains can run, so that people can continue to work.
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Budget Resolutions
As the MP who represents the furthest away constituency in the British mainland, the words “growth in every postcode” interest me hugely. In preparing for my contribution today, I thought perhaps I would talk about the lack of affordable housing or efforts to promote employment opportunities for the young, but I did something last week that made me think. As some colleagues know, my wife is disabled. That is not what I am on my feet to talk about—she is a brave lady, she puts up with it, and it is all great. I thought it would be kind to order her a fireside chair. I found one online at a very good price, reduced, called a jubilee fireside chair, in the colour mineral. It was virtually the first one that came up when I googled “fireside chair for the disabled”, so I clicked on it. There it was, and I thought, “Yes, we’ll have that.” The website said that there was free delivery—great!—and yet, when I came to look more closely at the amount of money, £50 had been added on because of my postcode. I went back to the page, and in very small print, under “Free delivery”, it says, “Perhaps not everywhere”. I can afford that, but lots of people out there cannot afford an extra 50 quid when they want to buy something for somebody they love. In preparing yesterday, I remembered what happened last week, and I thought, “Right, let’s have a little look at the various postcodes.” I worked my way down Scotland. First, I looked at Orkney: delivery costs £50. I looked at Wick: £50. I went down and down and got as far as Perth: £50. So I went east to St Andrews: free delivery. I thought I would then look at Land’s End, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George): there is a £50 charge for delivery. Then there was a little bit of good news. I looked at the Western Isles, represented by my very good friend the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Torcuil Crichton). In Stornoway, delivery is free. In Castlebay in Barra, down the bottom of the Outer Hebrides, they can get their fireside chair for the disabled in mineral colour—whatever mineral is; I think it is green—delivered for free. I do not begrudge the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar; jolly good luck to him. Out of devilment, I then put in EH99 1SP, the postcode for the Scottish Parliament, and guess what? John Swinney gets it delivered free. My point is that we have these extra charges that we have to pay in the remotest parts of the UK, and it has been going on for years. I spoke in a debate about this issue back in December 2017, when I was first elected to this place, and yet we still have the problem today. It is an iniquitous and completely unfair extra tax on people who really cannot afford to pay it, and it is not in the spirit of fairness one little bit. I have had a good reception from Ministers in the previous Government, but at the end of the day, it was fine words, or, as we say in the highlands, tea and sympathy. I do not expect an instant answer from the Government on this. There are so many demands for things that should be put right, but I would respectfully add these iniquitous extra charges to the list. I would be very, very happy on behalf of all the people who pay these extra charges to sit down with a relevant Minister, outline the problem in detail and help to think of how we can sort it out.
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Budget Resolutions
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. I am not going to string this out any longer. I think I have made my point, which is that if we want growth in every postcode, including some of the remotest parts of the UK, we should tackle this issue of some people having to pay extra charges simply because of where they live, which has a knock-on effect on everything else they buy or do. I rest my case.
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Young People and Work: Milburn Interim Report
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. I congratulate the hon. Member for Wrexham (Andrew Ranger) on securing this debate. Alan Milburn’s interim report is a thorough and, in places, uncomfortable piece of work, but it is an important foundation for anyone serious about tackling the waste of a million young people’s talent, not least because it takes apart some myths. Some 54% of young people who are NEET told the review that they want to work, and another 30% want to get into education or training. These are not lazy young people: as the report puts it, they are “exhausted”. The mechanisms that used to bring young people into work are working less well. The first rung has thinned. The share of 16 and 17-year-old students doing any paid work has fallen from 35% in 2006 to just 19%.
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Young People and Work: Milburn Interim Report
I agree. Opportunities have been thinning for a long time, and that is a big part of the issue. Employers ask for experience, but the pathways through which experience was once gained have narrowed or gone. The report is blunt about why the system is failing. Britain has not ignored youth employment. It has had the new deal for young people, the future jobs fund, the youth contract and kickstart, but each was abolished once the immediate crisis passed. Milburn describes what we have as “parallel play”: education is accountable for attainment, welfare for benefit flows and health for treatment, but nobody is accountable for the pathway from childhood to working life. The clearest sign of that is what the report calls the “hidden cohort”: about 314,000 NEETs aged 18 to 24 in England, nearly half of whom claim no benefits at all. They are in no caseload, and no institution is responsible for them. The system needs a long-term commitment through a permanent architecture. That is why the Liberal Democrats advocate a wholesale overhaul of jobs coaching so that every young person has a real person who sits down with them several times a year and helps them to plan where they want to get to, building on models from the Netherlands and Germany. Such support has to be delivered locally, because labour markets, transport and employers operate locally. The risk, Milburn warns us, is that without a national framework, devolution can become a delegation of failure. Skills England ought to be part of that national framework, but in its short life it has already been moved from one Department to another, and it remains simply an Executive agency. It needs supercharging; it should become a genuinely independent body with the standing to work across Government, including local government. The Milburn review estimates that for every £1 the Department for Work and Pensions spent on employment support for young people in 2024-25, about £25 was spent on benefits. In its words, “The UK’s approach for decades has been to pay the bill for…youth inactivity, rather than invest in preventing it”. Milburn argues that the Treasury’s usual value-for-money tests do not look far enough ahead to capture the lasting damage of time out of work or training at a young age. Once that is counted, early intervention pays for itself many times over. In the Budget last week, the Chancellor announced that from the next spending review there will be a ringfenced budget for prevention. The question is whether the support for young people at risk of becoming NEET will go in that ringfenced budget. The report shows that we can already identify many of those most at risk while they are still at school, but the pupil premium stops when a young person turns 16, at exactly the point that the risk peaks. Extending it to post-16 learners, including those in further education, is a long-standing call from the Lib Dems. I hope we see it in Milburn’s prescription. We would also like to see a guarantee to every young person of 100 hours of work experience before they turn 18, so that it no longer depends on who their parents happen to know. That brings me to who else needs to be part of the solution. Milburn has said that there is a contract at the heart of all this, referring to the relationship between young people and the state. I suggest that the contract is missing a signatory. For most young people, the first job is offered not by the state but by an employer. If the final report’s recommendations are to work, employers must be part of the bargain. Milburn’s own evidence makes the case. He argues that as the cost of employment rises, the case for taking on someone inexperienced becomes harder, unless employers are given the support to offset the risk. On cost, the national insurance changes of the Government’s first Budget undoubtedly added to the pressure on part-time, entry-level roles, especially in retail and hospitality. That is why we Liberal Democrats have called, at the very least, for a lower rate between £5,000 and £9,100, but cost is only half of it. A large employer can absorb the risk of a young recruit who needs supervision and support; a small firm often cannot, however cheap the hire. That is why we have proposed skills co-operatives as part of the solution, with SMEs pooling training and pastoral support so that no single business carries the whole risk of giving a young person their first start. I realise that the Minister will not pre-empt the final report, so I have three questions of principle. First, the report highlights that no institution is responsible for this. Does the Minister accept it as principle that someone must be, and should that responsibility be with a named local body working within a national framework that guarantees a minimum standard? Secondly, will employment support and post-16 provision for disadvantaged young people count as preventive spending when the new ringfenced budget is set? Thirdly, before any new obligations are placed on young people, will the Government ensure that the support offer is in place? The report says that inaction or tinkering at the edges is itself a decision—a costly one. I hope the Minister will tell us that the final report will be met with something much more than that.
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Equality Act 2010 Guidance: Gynaecological Conditions
I also have a constituent who suffers with endometriosis and who has been unable to work as a result; she, too, has not received the support that she requires. Although the Equality Act protects pregnancy, does the hon. Member agree that it should also protect gynaecological conditions such as endometriosis? There are other conditions to consider, too. We know that currently one in six women leave the workplace due to endometriosis, because they just experience apathy, lack of understanding and so on, so it is really important that we empower women with conditions such as endometriosis to be able to remain in work.
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Budget Resolutions
Does my hon. Friend agree with my constituent, Philippe Messy, who runs the excellent Little Wine Shop in Taunton, who was hoping to see a big move in VAT, but who has instead described the Budget as “a soufflé that did not rise—flat, flat, flat”?
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Train Services: Extreme Weather
In the south-west, we share a lot of those problems. The Salisbury-to-Exeter line runs a reduced service over the summer as a result of “soil moisture deficit”—a catchy term that means the ground is too dry and too hard, and the trains cannot run over it. That is not a new problem: we had a reduced service last year and the year before. Proper planning for what is now our everyday experience of climate change is vital. I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman agrees with me that the Railways Bill, currently in the other place, is an opportunity to ensure that our infrastructure is resilient for the future and is also taking account of our climate targets.
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Solar Panels on Agricultural Land
Does the right hon. Lady agree that it cannot be right that farmers in the South Cotswolds, who have had no say in this, now face the compulsory acquisition of rights over their land purely because the developer has chosen to locate a solar farm 13 miles away from the nearest grid connection?
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Apprenticeship Opportunities for Young People
For a young person in a South Cotswolds village, the barrier to an apprenticeship is often just getting there. Buses are rare or non-existent, and the cost of running a car is out of reach on an apprentice’s pay. Will the Chancellor work with the Transport Secretary to cap bus fares at £1 and to fund more rural bus routes?
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Young People and Work: Milburn Interim Report
It is worth noting that 13% of NEETs are university graduates. I meet many people who have just graduated with good degrees from good universities, who are applying for more than 300 jobs and not even getting a response. There is very little talk about support for graduates, and we are disappointed that in the Budget there was no mention of reforming the student loan system that is adding pressure on them. Will the Minister assure us that the Government are looking at the student loan system?
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Cost of Living
The Government’s use of the outdated council tax system to roll out their energy support package has led to an absurd situation whereby between 800,000 and 1.4 million people on low incomes will miss out on the £100, while a wealthy couple who have retired early and have downsized are set to benefit. There is absolutely no excuse for this. The Government could have followed our plan to use existing DWP and HMRC data to roll out a targeted essential energy guarantee, getting the most help to those who need it most, so why on earth did they not do so?
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Advanced Manufacturing
The Prime Minister and his Cabinet rightly point to Brexit as a major reason for the UK’s doom loop of low economic growth, and in two and a half weeks’ time, the Government will have an opportunity to do something about it. Rather than just discussing a timid UK-EU youth mobility scheme that should have been agreed months ago, will they start negotiations for a new growth and defence partnership as the only surefire way to put money back in people’s pockets and make the UK stronger, safer and more prosperous?
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Budget Resolutions
What we needed was a growth Budget, because only by growing the economy can we cut people’s taxes and bills. We Liberal Democrats have repeated our calls for a new growth and defence partnership with Europe, because growth through such a partnership would enable us, in time, to raise the income tax threshold to £15,000. If we can grow the economy, we can put more money in people’s pockets. The Government’s cost of living package was too timid and not well targeted. The OBR is clear that living standards are not set to improve. I am deeply disappointed that the Government’s energy proposal is linked to the outdated council tax system. That means that between 800,000 and 1.4 million of the most vulnerable people on low incomes will not benefit from the £100 payment, while wealthier people who may have retired early and downsized will. That could have been avoided. We have called several times on the Government to use existing data held by the Department for Work and Pensions and HMRC to roll out an essential energy guarantee to slash the cost of the first chunk of essential energy, benefiting everybody, and giving extra support to those who are most in need, such as the disabled. That is the most progressive way of supporting people with the cost of energy bills, it is the most targeted way of doing it, and it is within the Government’s reach.
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Budget Resolutions
The Government already have the data through DWP, which it uses to roll out the warm home discount. That data is already there, the system exists with energy providers and it would have operated just as quickly. HMRC has the data on child benefit; equally, it could have been rolled out just as quickly. Yes, I recognise that some money has been given to local authorities to roll this out, but that process will not act as quickly as the system that the Government wanted to roll out in January. It would have been done through the energy providers far more quickly than the additional support. It would have been a more targeted, faster and more progressive way of rolling out help. We have been calling for it for six months; it is unfortunate that the Government have not listened. On business, we welcome support for small businesses, and raising the small business threshold will support a number of businesses. However, that is still tinkering around the edges rather than delivering the fundamental reform of business rates that this Government promised in their manifesto. If we are serious about breathing new life into our high streets, we have to reform the outdated, broken business rates system. In my constituency of St Albans, the rateable values are so high that only eight pubs are set to benefit from the support, and that comes in the face of a whole raft of measures in the last two anti-growth Budgets. The chair of my local Save St Albans Pubs campaign has sent me this: “The budget does nothing to help or support most of the pubs in St Albans. Still no business rate reform. Alcohol duties up. No cuts in VAT. No cuts in the horrific employers national insurance jobs tax and a huge increase in wages”. That means one thing: it will put up the price of a pint. Founders’ relief has been described variously by people as “bonkers”, “dreadful” and “a pointless lottery”. It will benefit, at most, 600 people and will undermine productivity and growth. That is not exactly the ringing endorsement that I believe the Government were after. I encourage them to look at that relief again. As for the BAD—business asset disposal—relief, the clue is in the title, and the Government’s measures do not close the loopholes. On property taxes, we need to see real reform of all the outdated property taxes—council tax, stamp duty and business rates—but the Government’s so-called mansion tax is not the way to do it. All the funding will go to Whitehall; it will not go to local councils. That is from a Government who say they want devolution at a time when they are ripping money out of local authorities. The OBR says that there is a 20% chance of appeals. Just five weeks ago, I stood right here and challenged Ministers to contact the Valuation Office Agency because it had issued the wrong valuation to two of my small businesses. I dread to think what will happen to the many people who will want to sell their house and move to other parts of the country to support family members, but who cannot because they are stuck in an 18-month appeal process with the VOA. It is not clear that the Government even have a definition of a “working farm” when it comes to the operation of the so-called mansion tax. It looks to me that it could be family farm tax 2.0—I urge the Government to look closely at that—and for what? For £400 million in three years’ time. This will not sort out the cost of living crisis that we are facing right now. I am pleased that the Government have shifted on bank taxes. We Liberal Democrats have long called for taxes on the big banks that have made eye-watering profits. To those on the Conservative Benches who say that they are worried about the competitiveness of our financial services, let me tell them this. Under their botched Brexit deal, they have hammered the financial services, which have been hit by a loss of jobs and a loss of business. If anybody is serious about protecting our world-class financial services, they should support our calls to join the single market and to move the liability for online fraud from banks to the big tech companies. If we could do that, we could grow our world-beating financial services market and still increase the taxes further so that they can contribute to tackling the cost of living crisis. Finally, let me just say that there is a role for optimism; there is a role for talking about real hope. I hope that we can project to the rest of the world the fact that we believe in the future of UK plc. If we are going to talk about fresh hope, however, it must be matched with meaningful action. I am afraid to say that this Budget did not deliver the meaningful change that the country expects and deserves.
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Budget Resolutions
My hon. Friend mentions the example of an indoor play centre where the business rates are going up. Is she concerned, as I am, that this winter those increases will simply price children out of play altogether?
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Budget Resolutions
The right hon. Gentleman surely has not missed the evidence that, since his party’s botched Brexit deal, it has become more expensive to do business in the UK, businesses are wrapped up in red tape, and many businesses have moved abroad, taking good, high-quality jobs with them. We have a NEETs crisis in this country, caused by many different factors. One of the reasons that there are graduates who cannot get jobs is because his party’s ridiculous Brexit deal has driven businesses abroad. If we get back into the single market and make doing business cheaper, those businesses will come back here and create jobs for British young people.
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Budget Resolutions
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely contradicting himself. He has simultaneously said that we need to shorten supply chains to improve our food security while defending the very trade barriers that prevent British importers and exporters from getting food to each other on a shorter supply chain. It was the right hon. Gentleman’s party that agreed the terrible trade deals with New Zealand and Australia that have put up food prices and undermined British farmers. Would he like to apologise for that? After 10 years, we are still teaching the Conservatives how damaging their trade deals were.
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Cost of Living
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Cost of Living
The Treasury is cutting £1 billion from the warm homes fund, including a smaller than planned pot for the boiler upgrade scheme. Combined with tax rises on heat pumps, these cuts risk creating a boom-and-bust cycle for installers and leaving more households exposed to the volatility of the oil and gas market. Can the Chancellor explain how cutting support for clean heating is consistent with the Government’s own mission for a clean energy transition?
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Poundland
This is a hugely uncertain time for workers at Poundland in Yate, and I am sure that I am not alone among MPs in finding the DWP one of the hardest Departments to get answers out of. I am concerned about the practical support that the local jobcentre will be able to offer Poundland workers who lose their jobs. Can the Minister assure me that jobcentres will support those people?
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Train Services: Extreme Weather
Order. I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to be called in the debate.
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Equality Act 2010 Guidance: Gynaecological Conditions
I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to be called.
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Equality Act 2010 Guidance: Gynaecological Conditions
I ask Members to stick to an informal time limit of three minutes.
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Train Services: Extreme Weather
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I congratulate the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury) on securing the debate. Many decades ago, I did an excavation in Rugeley of a Mesolithic cave site. Moving forward a little to the bronze age, we know from the excavations at Flag Fen that our forebears knew how difficult it was to travel across the fenland and how to build, maintain and keep an investment in good routes. Moving forward to the 21st century, it is extremely disappointing that we do not seem willing to put the same level of investment into our transport systems as they did back in the bronze age. In June and August this year, one third of the trains on the line between King’s Lynn and King’s Cross did not run at all. Of the two thirds that did, 80% were delayed. That is extremely unreliable for commuters, students and people just trying to go about their daily lives—to go to the theatre and sports events. They cannot rely on a train that may or may not come, and may or may not arrive on time. The other insult is that the train quite often terminates partway through the journey, so someone trying to get back from London will get as far as Cambridge, be told that that is as far as the train will take them and have to work out how to finish their journey from there. I myself have been impacted by that, obviously quite often, with all the going back and forth, but there was a particular instance when I had a surgery in Littleport. I left in plenty of time, but the train that I was trying to catch was cancelled and the next train terminated at Cambridge, so I arrived an hour later than I had intended and therefore was late for my surgery, which is extremely rude, and I really hate being rude to my constituents. Worse than that is what constituents have written to tell me. One in particular has written to say that because their train has been so unreliable for getting to their job in London, their employer is now putting them under pressure. They are becoming an unreliable member of staff; their employer does not know when they will turn up to work. They are also having to make up the time at the end of the day, which means that they are getting home very late—often later than they expected, because not only have they left late but the train has then been delayed. That makes it a complete nightmare for them, because they have to be up early the next morning to go in. The reasons are many and various, but one of the main ones is the overhead power lines. They do not like very hot weather. I think they do not like very cold weather either, but in the summer the issue was the very hot weather. However, the really big problem is that the tracks are buckling, because the soil underneath is moving. We have the same problem with our roads. This is a major problem and, with climate change, it will happen year in, year out, so we need to put investment into sorting that out. I have talked to Great Northern and, in fairness, it is doing a lot to try to make the service less unreliable, but it will need proper funding from Government to help it to address the problem. My constituents rely on the service. As I have said, they need it for getting to work. Many students rely on it because the sixth-form colleges are in Cambridge and they need to get to college. Our main hospital is in Cambridge, so people need to get to the hospital. These train services are vital to people, so I call on the Government to look hard at what the particular issues are with extreme weather and the impact that it has on fen soils and at how we can make our rail lines more resilient so that my constituents can rely on a good train service.
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Young People and Work: Milburn Interim Report
Does the hon. Member agree that making it easier for young people to get functional skills qualifications, rather than being stuck in an endless cycle of resits, would allow them to get those qualifications and then on to an apprenticeship and into work, exactly as those at the Aspire youth hub in Witney do so well?
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Train Services: Extreme Weather
Forgive me for being late, but the railway did not want me to be here for the start of this debate. My hon. Friend talks about the impact of delays on the line on working people; we in the west of England are going to be impacted for two years or possibly more by the works at Old Oak Common. For the tiny sum of £12 million, which is just over half of what is being spent every day on HS2, highspeed wi-fi could be put on every one of the 94 trains on the Great Western Railway network. If it was, all those working people like me who get stuck on delayed and slow trains going down to the west of England would not mind an extra 10 or 15 minutes on the journey time, because it would be productive. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government need to fund that project?
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Budget Resolutions
The Government have labelled today’s debate “fresh hope for the future”, but I regret that the Budget failed to meet the hopes of my constituents. My constituency contains a number of leading spin-out, innovation and engineering companies, from Oxford Ionics to Zero fuels and from the Jaguar and McLaren Formula E teams to Siemens Healthineers. They want to put the area on the map as one of the fastest-growing tech hubs in the country, yet too many face one major constraint: energy. The queue for grid connections faced by many new businesses and developments in my constituency goes far into the 2030s. Many households in the area are also used to power outages. The Cooper school in Bicester recently had to close for a day because of a lack of power. North West Bicester, a site for 6,000 homes, was delayed by more than two years purely because of a lack of grid connectivity. We now have two proposed mega data centres. Exeter college proposes a new centre south of Kidlington, while a large centre south-east of Bicester will require electricity equivalent to that needed for 1.4 million homes. That is a huge amount for an area already facing energy scarcity. My constituents are worried that the Chancellor’s commitment to pushing data centres to the front of the queue will overload local networks or delay connections for essential new services. The Government must commit to publishing an assessment of capacity before allowing data centres to jump the queue. I agree with the Prime Minister and Chancellor that we need to give more power back to the people and to end the UK’s excessive centralisation in London. In principle, I support the creation of a Thames valley mayor and regional devolution, but devolution must give local communities a stronger voice when it comes to the cumulative impact of development in our areas. New housing, data centres and major infrastructure projects cannot be considered in isolation. They make demands on the same roads, public services and electricity networks, and residents experience the combined impact. The pressure on roads, GP surgeries, schools and utilities must therefore be assessed across the whole area. Buried in the Budget document is another announcement of real interest to my constituents. There is £150 million of additional funds to support large asylum centres, such as that proposed for site A of MOD Bicester. My constituents and I oppose this scheme for many reasons, but in this Budget debate I will limit myself to the eye-watering costs of converting this derelict storage depot, which has never had accommodation for people, into a village for 1,256 asylum seekers. The best estimate is some £280 million in capital costs and £80 million in annual operating costs, which sums to more than £1 billion over 10 years. That raises serious questions about how far the additional £150 million will stretch. I urge the Chancellor, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and their officials to take a close look at Home Office spending. I fear that they will find once again that the asylum programme is out of control. They will certainly find that building new accommodation at MOD Bicester is a bad deal for the taxpayer. Turning to hospitality, pubs, cafés and restaurants are key to the health of the high streets of Bicester, Kidlington and Woodstock. In the rural villages of my constituency, the local pub, alongside the church and the primary school, is the key local institution. Too many such businesses, including the much-loved Fat Zebra café in Bicester’s Market Square, have been forced to close. Too many others tell me that they are facing mounting and unrelenting cost rises. The changes on business rates relief are welcome, but businesses tell me that they may not be enough to keep them afloat. I urge the Treasury to look again at the Liberal Democrat proposal to cut VAT for hospitality businesses. This Budget was a missed opportunity for my constituents. It failed to assure them that infrastructure would come first, before major developments. It backed a failing Home Office programme for large asylum centres. It failed to deliver a stronger local voice, despite promises of devolution, and it failed to support the pubs, cafés and restaurants at the heart of our communities. I urge the Government to give my constituents more hope in the future.
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Budget Resolutions
Some have dubbed this a “steady as she goes” Budget. That has been interpreted differently by those on different sides of the debate: some have taken it as praise while others have taken it as a criticism. You might be surprised to hear, Madam Deputy Speaker, that I fall on the side of that being a criticism. That is because I hold the really controversial view that avoiding market turmoil is a minimum requirement for a Budget; it is necessary but not sufficient, especially given the challenges we face in this country. I accept that we face constraints, given the war in Iran and everything that is doing to the country’s finances, inflation, energy prices and so on, but we have more challenges to face up to. This Government actually recognise those challenges. They have commissioned reports on welfare reform, but they have pushed it to the other side of the Budget. They have a Chancellor who recognises that we need a plan to spend 3% of GDP on defence, but those decisions, too, have been pushed further down the track. They understand that growth has been appalling in this country for a long time, yet they have not revealed what their plan for growth will be. These are all known issues that are unaddressed in this Budget, and I think that is a massive missed opportunity. That is not for want of measures in this Budget. There are a record-breaking 98 measures in the Budget, but they add up to the lowest total value we have seen for a very long time. Let us get into some of those. The Government have praised themselves for their £100 energy support package, and who can be churlish about £100 in times like these? But the truth is that the scheme is insufficient and poorly targeted. The tragedy is that we had an energy crisis in 2022, when we had to deliver huge sums of money, almost universally. Everybody said, “We cannot let this happen again; we must have a much more targeted scheme in future.” Four years on, what is the system we have? We are relying on the valuations of properties from 1991 to target our support. What a failure of Government. Moreover, hundreds of thousands of low-income households are now set to miss out on support, and those most in need of support will not get enough. Looking at all the “breathing space” measures combined, those in the very poorest deciles will get, on average, just £15 more than all the others. This Government could have done far more to deliver on breathing space. For instance, they could have looked to the Liberal Democrat proposal for an essential energy guarantee, which would be more targeted and would provide more support at the right income levels. This has been a real failure of Government. A second measure for which the Government have been praising themselves is the bank tax and the contributions that they have got that sector to make. We called for a bank tax and so we broadly welcome it, but why did they not go further? The banking industry expected this measure to be permanent and expected it to be set at 8%, and bank shares went up when we found out that that was not what the Government were going to do. In the Treasury Committee this morning, we heard from people in the banking sector, who said that they did not believe the tax would affect competitiveness and that they would be unlikely to pass on the costs to the consumer. Basically, the banks have been getting £1 billion a week this year because mortgage rates and interest rates are so high. They could have been squeezed some more, and this Government failed to do it. On living standards, this morning the Resolution Foundation described the situation as “catastrophic”. The 2010s was the worst decade on record, with 14% growth in real household disposable income. For the 2020s, the OBR’s growth forecast is 1.4%. This is a tragedy for every working family in Britain, and that is before we get on to the cost of doing business or the spending pressures that are pencilled in for down the track. Courtrooms, classrooms and councils are all set for real-terms cuts under this Government—it is all in black and white. That is their proposal to come. All of this can be solved in only one way: via growth. I said at the beginning of my speech that there is a lack of a growth plan, but there is one waiting on the table for the Government. We would like the Prime Minister to stop having an open, frank conversation with himself on Europe, and to actually start putting forward some concrete proposals such as rejoining the single market. That is the quickest single measure to boost growth in this country, and we should get on with it. This Budget has deferred decisions on welfare, defence, Europe, public services and growth. The Prime Minister came into office promising to end 40 years of neoliberalism, but it will surely make its 41st birthday. It has been a missed opportunity that the Government will come to regret. Budgets do not come around very often—just ask any of the six Chancellors in the last six years. Political capital is a depreciating asset—it is best to spend it early, and the Government have utterly failed to do so.
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Budget Resolutions
My hon. Friend is making an excellent case for rural communities on heating oil, farming and other issues, but may I add the failure of this Government to extend the rural fuel duty scheme? My rural North Cornwall constituency does not have buses running to hospitals, educational opportunities and jobs. Does he agree that the Government missed an opportunity to extend that scheme to help our rural constituents?
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Young People and Work: Milburn Interim Report
When the Government commission a review, people often just roll their eyes, because we all know there is no better way to kick an issue down the road than with an independent review. Few issues have been kicked down the road as much as doing something about the one in eight young people not in employment, education or training. Given what has been published so far and the conversations that I have had, I am genuinely hopeful that the Milburn review will give us a real shot at change. I would talk all day about this, but given the time, obviously I cannot. However, I would like to focus on two special areas of the report: rurality and special educational needs and disabilities. The review has highlighted what is obvious to everyone from south Somerset: transport is a huge barrier to work and further education. Nothing else that a young person or the system does matters. The review highlights that bus journeys in rural England have declined sharply. We have seen this with the No. 11 and No. 54 bus routes in Yeovil. Even if there is a bus, some young people still face three to four-hour delays. We urgently need action to improve rural transport networks and access to affordable driving lessons and tests. The £2 bus fare cap is a good start, but we need a new bus fleet in Somerset and to start looking at more innovative ideas, such as smarter booking for our most isolated communities. Equally, the Milburn report paints a clear picture of the challenges faced by young people with SEND, who are 80% more likely to be NEET. I have been saying for ages that the lack of early intervention is largely the driver of this problem. That is backed by the report, which highlights that children who fall behind at five years old are, on average, still behind at age 16. I was incredibly happy to hear from academics that the Universal Classroom Project got the increased Government funding that we had been calling for to develop a free profile-building screener for key learning strengths and weaknesses. I understand that in the final recommendations, Alan Milburn will look to present solutions radical enough to address the scale of the crisis. I can only hope that the Government do something about this.
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Young People and Work: Milburn Interim Report
Last week, I went back to Hideout, a youth club in Gorton that opens its doors to hundreds of young people every week. I asked some of the kids I met about their future hopes and dreams and they all scrambled to tell me about who they thought they could be; I could genuinely feel the hope in the air. But ask anyone slightly older—a teenager or young adult—and you hear a clear, bleak understanding of the ways that the world is already letting them down. Their hope has faded away. Almost a million young people are growing up finding themselves not in education, employment or training. Every week I meet young people across the constituency who want to work hard and build a good life for themselves but find that the system is stopping them. A 25-year-old care leaver with no family, no network and no safety net told me that he tries so hard every day to stop himself becoming homeless, Despite being a university graduate, he cannot find secure, well-paid work. The risk of being not in education, employment or training is not equal: it doubles if someone comes from a disadvantaged background and has low qualification levels, and is far worse in Greater Manchester and the north than in London and the south-east. Opportunity should not be a postcode lottery. Those who need a hand most are being left behind by the Government’s sustained real-terms funding cuts to schools and colleges, despite ever-increasing demand, and because small and medium-sized businesses are unfairly being asked to train up the next generation of workers without the money and support needed to make that a success. Young people do not need cuts to the universal credit health element, which will just harm those who cannot work. Cutting cash benefits does nothing to improve employment outcomes. What they need is an approach from this Government that acknowledges that investment now will save money in the long run. What they need is change to the very structure of our economy and education system, more flexible and inclusive post-16 pathways and green skills at the forefront. The Milburn review is clear that urgent action is needed. The question is not whether young people in Gorton and Denton and across the country have ambition, but whether this Government are willing to match it.
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Young People and Work: Milburn Interim Report
Order. I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to speak. Due to the number of people who have indicated their wish to speak, there will be a strict time limit of two minutes for speeches, so that we can get through everybody. I call Ann Davies.
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Immigration: Earned Settlement
This country owes those in the Gurkha regiment a debt of thanks for their continued service. Will the Secretary of State outline what will happen to them and their dependants with these changes?