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Showing every spoken contribution, including 12,832 under 12 words. Hide short remarks
The straight answer is that my hon. Friend’s question has been tested on a number of occasions and the answer is no, but the legal question is not sufficient. The question is this: what is the right thing to do and are we supporting our veterans? The legal answer to his question is yes, but that does not take away from the need to test that more broadly in the way that we are doing tonight and have done on other occasions.
The answer to that is the legal position I have just set out, which is that the DWP does take that seriously, has considered it and is content that this is consistent with our obligations under the armed forces covenant. I think the hon. Member is trying to go beyond that to say that there are other things we should take into account, including arguments in this place, the position of veterans and the rest. However, narrowly on the legal question, the answer is yes. That has been tested, and our position is that it is consistent with the armed forces covenant. The fact that that is our position in no way undermines the powerful arguments that he has made and other hon. Members have supported, or those we have heard from our veterans, and I want to put that clearly on the record. I should finish by emphasising again the Government’s deep-felt gratitude to our armed forces for their professionalism, bravery and dedication to duty, and to those in such a position previously. Veterans now represent large parts of all our communities, and we continue to honour them for the work they did while they were serving, but also for being active citizens supporting all kinds of work. I have mentioned the veterans hub in Swansea, where I see brilliant work being done by people day in and day out. Question put and agreed to.
2. What steps she has taken with Cabinet colleagues to enhance the whistleblowing framework.
I am working with a constituent who has been subject to bullying and prejudice in high-level amateur sport. Current whistleblowing protections apply only to employees of an organisation, but sports people often have just as much, if not more, to lose if a sporting organisation turns against them. Does the Solicitor General agree that whistleblowing protections are important for good governance, safety and safeguarding in organisations across sectors?
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.
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?
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.
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.
Will the shadow Minister give way?
Will the shadow Minister give way?
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.
It is always a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms McVey. I commend the commitment of my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Dave Robertson) to seeing this crucial bridge in his constituency replaced. The Government are committed to improving the condition of local roads. I recognise that restrictions and closures are sometimes unavoidable for safety reasons, but their costs are considerable. Diversions cost businesses money, take up drivers’ time and can increase congestion on other roads, and I also recognise what my hon. Friend said regarding emergency services. I want to ensure that all highway authorities have what they need to manage their assets as effectively and efficiently as possible to avoid those impacts. We are therefore supporting highway authorities with record investment of £7.3 billion for local highways maintenance over the next four years. That clearly demonstrates our commitment to tackling the poor state of our local roads, which is the result of historical under-investment. We are also ensuring that every single pound of our record investment goes further. The long-term certainty of our four-year settlement allows authorities to plan ahead and shift from reactive fixes to proactive, preventive maintenance, which reduces unplanned disruptions and means that funding can be spent more efficiently. Alongside our record uplift in highways maintenance, the Government have launched the structures fund. Too much of the country’s vital transport infrastructure has been allowed to deteriorate, creating risks for communities, businesses and the wider economy. Across the country, around 3,000 bridges are currently unable to carry the heaviest vehicles, restricting freight and agricultural traffic. The Government believe that repairing or replacing those assets is essential if our transport network is to remain safe, reliable and resilient for the future. The structures fund will provide capital funding for repair or replacement of major local highway structures that local highway authorities cannot afford to restore from their own budgets. Eligible assets include bridges, flyovers and retaining walls. The Government want those investments not only to repair ageing infrastructure, but to ensure structures are fit for modern transport demands and more resilient to extreme weather events. As climate risks increase, strengthening critical assets now will help to avoid future disruption and long-term costs. Local highway authorities had until 3 August to put structures forward for investment, and we expect to announce funding awards in the autumn. I was pleased that Staffordshire county council put Chetwynd bridge forward for the fund, and so effectively conveyed the strength of local support for its plans to replace the structure. It is a testament to the country’s excellence in engineering that a pre-1830s cast-iron bridge still forms part of our road network. I recognise the challenges that modern traffic poses to such old assets, and I appreciate the stewardship that Staffordshire county council has demonstrated over the last few years in managing it. I also appreciate the crossing’s importance to local communities, businesses and key stakeholders, such as the National Memorial Arboretum. I recognise the traffic management and compliance challenges posed by the current 7.5-tonne weight and 2.3-metre width restrictions, but road users will no doubt appreciate that it remains open to some traffic. I commend again my hon. Friend’s commitment to seeing this crucial bridge in his constituency replaced. He remarked earlier that Chetwynd bridge is not famous—but trust me, Ms McVey, after endless campaigning, it definitely feels famous to me. My hon. Friend’s constituents should be in no doubt how hard he fights for his community. Although he did not invite me to Bloodstock, I would be delighted to accompany you, Ms McVey. I recognise that the current restrictions are causing his constituents disruption, and we will of course update them as soon as possible when we announce the successful structures fund schemes. Question put and agreed to.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Reading Central (Matt Rodda) for securing this debate. Judging from the contributions that we have already heard, how we are continuing to support Nepal after the devastating floods there just a few months ago is a matter of great interest to the House. I am grateful for the tone of the debate, and for the way in which it has outlined the UK’s engagement with and support for Nepal at this very challenging time, within the context of our long-standing relationship and friendship with each other. I also recognise the very strong relationship that we have with the Gurkhas, who form a very important part of the British Army. I was privileged to visit the Royal Gurkha Rifles in Brunei and to see their exceptional skill, as well as the way in which we work together on tropical jungle warfare, and how the Gurkhas form a key part of the British Army’s elite capabilities in such warfare. They also support the training of other forces in the region. I know that we all want to offer our deepest condolences to those who lost loved ones in the floods. Whole communities were affected, with schools and homes being washed away. Tens of thousands of people either lost their lives or were badly affected by the floods, and many people are still unaccounted for. Just yesterday, I heard from someone about how they were going ahead with funeral prayers, because they realised that their loved one was never going to come back and that they would never find her body. Nevertheless, it was important for them, as it has been for other families, to be able to find some closure, and for people to support each other at this time. There is a long-term relationship between our countries and we need to provide long-term support to Nepal as it continues to recover. I want to recognise the scale of the impact of the floods. A recent report has indicated that the total cost of damage is around $2.7 billion, which is extraordinary. When we consider how and where the floods struck, we think of the hydropower plants where so many people were working and of the pilgrimages that were affected, with people coming to Nepal from a range of countries, including India. Also, the Tibetan region was affected. What the floods have also shown is how important it is, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds) said, that we ensure we work internationally. I would be grateful for an update from the Minister on how we are working with the Indian Government and the Chinese Government, as well as with international NGOs and the international community, including international finance institutions, on helping with recovery and on long-term development in Nepal. I also thank the Nepal all-party parliamentary group for the meetings that it held very quickly after the floods, including with Bipin from the Nepalese embassy in London, to ensure that there is a connection in the conversations taking place between Nepal and our communities here in the United Kingdom and our parties across Parliament, as well as a dialogue between the UK Government and the Nepalese Government. I thank the Minister who is here in Westminster Hall today—the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Chris Elmore)—and another Minister, Baroness Winterton, who I know changed her plans when she was abroad to make a quick visit to stand in solidarity with Nepal on behalf of the UK and to demonstrate the UK’s leadership in helping to co-ordinate some of the humanitarian efforts, and to understand what the Nepalese Government need from the international community at this time. That dialogue continues, and I am also grateful to Baroness Winterton for the interest she has shown in the conversations that I have been having with the Nepalese community in my constituency. There is a very large Nepalese community in Hounslow, and particularly in Feltham and Heston. I am also grateful to our former mayor, Bishnu Gurung, himself a Gurkha veteran, and to those in my constituency from the region affected. I particularly want to thank Dawo Lama, Sushila and Padma for their inputs, which I will share. I also want to thank Maneera from KTM ROX, who held a fundraiser that was really appreciated by the community. It was a way in which people were able to come together, as other hon. Members have mentioned, to support each other and to raise vital funds as well. On my visit to Nepal back in May, I was fortunate to visit not just Kathmandu but Lumbini, which is a UNESCO world heritage site and the birthplace of Lord Buddha. It was also an extraordinary experience to visit the Maya Devi temple. The backdrop to that visit was a wish to understand how we can work together as two nations to support Nepal’s economic ambitions and growth. I was reminded of how closely we worked with Nepal after the 2015 earthquake. I also visited Nepal with my constituents at that time. It was a long-term partnership to support recovery. It is important to recognise the ambition that the new Nepalese Government have demonstrated: they want to see a future in which Nepal is much more on the world stage in terms of industrial partnerships, growth and ambition. That is the reason why I want to reference the call for a British-Nepalese investment conference by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas). I hope that can be taken away by a Foreign Office Minister and discussed with colleagues in the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade. I was pleased to be able to discuss the ambitions of the Nepalese Government on one of the first ministerial visits to Nepal after the elections. Data from the World Bank indicates that the Nepalese economy grew at a rate of 2% in 2023, 3.7% in 2024 and 4.4% in 2025. The Nepalese Government have aspirations for an average real economic growth rate of 7% over the next decade, and that aspiration has been underpinned by a fundamental restructuring of economic incentives, intentions to simplify the business environment in Nepal to also attract more domestic, foreign and diaspora investment, and reform of the tax regime and digital economy. That was set out in detail in May in The Rising Nepal, an English-language newspaper in Nepal. It is important to recognise what the Nepalese Foreign Minister has been saying about Nepal’s immense potential for clean energy production, alongside agriculture, tourism, industry, information technology and human capital, which I have spoken about during dialogues in Nepal and in conversations with the diaspora community here in the United Kingdom. That ambition is an important backdrop for the conversations that we are having: we must recognise that coming together is so important to support the long-term recovery in Nepal following the devastating floods. We must keep our focus on how we support greater resilience in Nepal. I also want to pick up on the points that have been raised about ensuring that Nepal has a programme for stronger resilience, disaster prediction and understanding the data, which might be specific to the environment. As we know, Nepal and the Himalayas are a unique and important global destination not just for leisure and mountaineering, but for spiritual retreats. Because of its unique place and natural assets, it is also open for partnerships around the world in a way that aligns with our own aspirations, not just to support a clean and green energy transformation in the United Kingdom through our ambitious targets, but to show global leadership and support countries with great potential and opportunities for investment and capability support from across the world. I would therefore like to understand from the Minister, for my second question, what work we are doing to support investment to ensure greater resilience. I am grateful for the conversations I have had with scientists in Nepal about this. They see great potential for British scientists and universities to be part of that story in Nepal, and if there is one thing we have learned from this—and from Members’ contributions about more recent natural disasters elsewhere and the shared risk—it is that we should be looking at this project with greater urgency. Indeed, I suspect these larger-scale projects will require international finance and scientific partnerships. My constituents have also raised with me the importance of keeping climate change on the agenda. It is important not just to look at the short-term politics, whether in the UK or the US. We have to look at the underlying direction of travel that we must continue to take to tackle climate change. As the Nepalese community have said to me, Nepal has not contributed to climate change, yet it is suffering in the way that we have seen. That risk will continue unless we continue to show global leadership as an international community, not only by taking climate change seriously and preventing it, but by ensuring resilience to tackle its impacts. Let me come to the UK’s response, for which I am grateful. The £5 million that was immediately announced has been an important part of the UK’s wider response to the flooding and its deployment of support, in combination with the UN, Red Cross and NGO interventions. Some of that humanitarian support has been absolutely critical, but we must also continue the important work of supporting regions that have not had the investment to recover. Constituents who are from the area, one of whom has been a civil engineer in hydropower and whose colleagues were affected, have raised with me the importance of building bridges and roads, and also ensuring safeguarding for young people and the 1,000 children who have lost their parents. To wrap up, the recovery and relief efforts, the humanitarian efforts, the road building and bridge building, and the safeguarding of children are all issues that have been raised. If the Minister does not mind, I will write to him about that and particularly about the affected areas of Trishuli, Tupche, Sole and the Kispang rural municipality, which my constituents have raised with me.
I thank my hon. Friend for his brilliant speech about a campaign that we have been trying to run for a long time, and I am grateful that the Minister is present to hear us. Farmers in my patch have complained about the cost that the diversion is adding to their businesses, because sometimes they need to use an extra 20 litres of red diesel. Given the cost of living crisis and the challenges facing businesses, that is not acceptable, and it is also an environmental problem. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is essential that we get this bridge? We have been promised it for 20 years now, and it is about due.
I know time is short, so I thank my hon. Friend for indulging me one more time. The bridge is essential to all our constituencies, so closing it is not an option. We have already spent £14 million to try to fix it, and it did not work. It is a heritage bridge. Does he agree that we need a new bridge and that we must have support from the Minister to ensure that it will help all our constituents?
The hon. Member is making an excellent speech about the importance of NHS trusts being able to meet their targets and provide care. My local trust, similarly, is not in my constituency. University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS foundation trust has been missing its cancer targets, with 40% of patients waiting two months, which is just not good enough. Does she agree that despite the fact there have been announcements and increased funding, we are bearing the brunt of the cut after cut that we saw under the previous Government, and it will take a long time to turn this around unless we have increased intervention from Government?
I thank my hon. Friend for his incredible leadership and work on campaigning to get this bridge sorted. He knows Ollie Neilson, who runs Catton Hall and who shared with me that just three festivals run at the estate in the last 20 years have brought £20 million to the local economy. Does my hon. Friend agree that this is not just about emergency services or people having a fun time at festivals, but about the local economy?
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Siobhain. I commend my friend, the right hon. Member for New Forest West, for introducing this excellent Bill. I am so pleased that, as No. 1 in the ballot, he chose this issue and to build on the work of Dame Andrea Leadsom in the other place. So many people in this Parliament, including my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Gateshead South, have done so much good work to make sure that the Bill comes to fruition. I spoke in support of the Bill on Second Reading, which was a real honour, and I would like to speak today in support of amendment 1, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Lowestoft. I take on board what the right hon. Member for New Forest West said about the Bill’s intricacies—I defer to his abundant knowledge of intricacies, because he knows far more in this place than I do—but I support the amendment because it is all about the inequalities. We also know that a number of charities and NGOs support the amendment. There are currently stark and stubborn inequalities in outcomes in the UK, and factors including ethnicity, family income, geography and disability are all associated with differences in the likelihood of parents and babies surviving pregnancy and the first parts of life. It is also so important to ensure that they are healthy and developing well as they go forward. The amendment would not prescribe which services the Government must provide, nor would it require them to achieve specific outcomes through any single service. Instead, it would require the Government to understand and report on whether babies and their parents are doing well, where inequalities exist, and whether they change over time. Putting those requirements on the face of the Bill would ensure that outcomes and inequalities remain a consistent part of the Government’s assessment and reporting, regardless of future changes in policy, Parliament or personnel. Those were the important points for me. Obviously, I defer to the right hon. Gentleman’s interpretation, but it is important to recognise that we cannot go forward with a Bill unless we know what it is measuring. We need a baseline, and we then need to be able to return to the data, year after year, and ask whether we are making progress. It is an issue if we cannot do that, because we cannot then adequately amend services to make sure that they work in the future. I declare an interest as a physiotherapist for 32 years, many of which I spent as a paediatric physio, so I know how important the Bill is for pre-term babies, when they are in the womb. My physiotherapy colleagues now treat babies in the womb, which is amazing stuff, and surgeons also operate in the womb. The first 1,000 days are really important, as the right hon. Gentleman said, and this is about conception through to the first couple of years, as well as pre-conception planning. Once the baby is born, whether or not they are born pre-term and go to a neonatal intensive care unit—in my day we called it a special care baby unit—we know that those first 1,000 days are so important for every baby across the UK. I say that as a Welsh MP, because Flying Start in Wales never went away—it is a bit shaky, but it never went away, compared with Sure Start in England. It is really important to make sure we have a level playing field for all mums and babies. The evidence is clear that a brain needs stimulation from day one, because its neuroplasticity becomes so much less after the age of five. That is really important. Whether or not the amendment is accepted, I believe this is an excellent Bill. It is a good start that allows us to go forward united and make sure that we do the best we possibly can for parents and babies in the future. I pay tribute to the hard work undertaken by all the right hon. and hon. Members who have been here much longer than I have, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.
I know from bitter personal experience that a period of opposition is an opportunity for a political party to reflect on what went wrong in government, so that it can take a different approach and seek to win the trust of the country again. Unfortunately, it appears that the Conservative party is instead using its time in opposition to double down on the mistakes made in government. Of course, we must support our farms and our family businesses, but the complete abolition of inheritance tax, not only on farms and family businesses but on all family homes, does not represent sound stewardship of this nation’s finances. I am afraid that it is a proposal all too worthy of one of the key architects of Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-Budget. For me, the key question about the proposal is its impact on my constituents in Glenrothes and Mid Fife. They are already paying the price of the SNP’s failures in education and health services, with still too many people in pain on NHS waiting lists. Medium-sized and large businesses in Scotland are paying some £54 million more each in year in business rates than their counterparts in England, and if the Scottish economy under the SNP had grown at the same rate as Manchester’s with Andy Burnham over the past 10 years, it would be £33 billion bigger. My constituents need fiscal policies that meet their priorities, protecting both the economy and public services. The Opposition’s proposal does not meet that test. The latest available figures show that inheritance tax is payable on fewer than one in 20 estates. Just 1,620 of those estates were in Scotland, and in Glenrothes and Mid Fife, so few estates pay inheritance tax that HMRC withholds the figures to protect confidentiality. In other words, the number of people in my constituency who would benefit from the proposal is so diminishingly small that it is not possible for HMRC to publish the figures. With so few people in Glenrothes and Mid Fife qualifying for the theoretical benefit of the policy, we must look at the costs. The Opposition have said that the proposal would cost £6 billion, but as a number of hon. Friends have mentioned, Tax Policy Associates estimates that the cost could be up to £11 billion a year once behaviours as a result of the tax change are taken into consideration. Forty per cent. of the benefit of the cut would go to the richest 5%. Once again, the Conservatives are the party of the few and not the many. Given the pressures being felt by UK households because of the challenges facing the global economy, the cost of living increases for families across the country and the challenges facing key public services such as social care, how on earth can this be a policy priority? How can the abolition of inheritance tax, not just on farms and family businesses but on all family homes, be a priority for any Government who truly have the interests of the whole country at heart? My constituents need actions like those already taken by this Government, which include scrapping VAT on energy bills, action on business rates, which is needed in Scotland as well, and procurement changes to back British businesses and jobs. They do not need billions of pounds of investment in policies that will benefit precious few people in the communities I represent. Our pensioners and our older people need a Government who are prepared to act on real priorities, such as social care. It is highly regrettable that the First Minister of Scotland has spent more time propagating factually incorrect statements on the proposal to adjust the triple lock than on dealing with the reality of social care in Scotland. Just as in England, in Scotland people who require care support face high social care charges, services are under-resourced and social care workers are underpaid.
We are already acting. We have already cut VAT from energy bills. What we are not going to do is invest up to £11 billion in priorities that do not represent the needs of people who are facing those high energy bills at the moment. It is this Government who are showing that they are prepared to take action on the real priorities of my constituents and this country. The spending proposals from the Opposition show, regrettably, just how far they remain from being a credible party of Government again.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart. I thank the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Marie Goldman). The staff at Salford Royal are absolutely amazing. I have seen their dedication, and I have joined them on picket lines as they have campaigned to improve patient safety as much as their own workplace conditions. I have also met whistleblowers ringing the alarm on patient safety, and I have repeatedly raised their concerns and patients’ concerns and called for them to be listened to by trust management. Sadly, they have been let down and now the situation is critical. The Minister may know that Salford Royal was the poster child of NHS safety; it was one of the best hospitals in the country, if not the best. Savage austerity and round after round of cuts have undoubtedly brought our NHS to the point of collapse right across the country, but the fact that an individual trust’s services can fall from “Outstanding” in 2018 to “Requires improvement” a few weeks ago warrants her personal oversight and intervention. I will briefly canter through how matters got to this point. In 2018, the CQC rated Salford Royal NHS foundation trust as “Outstanding”. The stand-alone hospital trust then merged to form a super-trust across Greater Manchester called the Northern Care Alliance. Just a year after the merger, the CQC rated the newly formed trust “Requires improvement”—a long way from Salford’s previous position. Between 2023 and 2024, worrying reports about patient safety started to emerge, and there were then various interventions. In 2025, there was a rapid quality review process, and that September the CQC issued its first section 29A warning notice regarding the trust’s surgical services, citing inadequate staffing arrangements and ineffective systems for identifying and managing patient safety risks. A few months later, in August 2026, another warning notice had to be issued due to significant concerns about the trust’s management of risk, patient safety complaints, freedom to speak up, and workforce wellbeing and inclusion. That brings us to the latest CQC report, a couple of weeks ago, which rated the hospital “Requires improvement” and identified 12 regulatory breaches relating to safe care and treatment, governance and staffing. All that is very worrying, but one staff member recently told me: “It really is getting worse, especially with theatres, and they’ll try and blame the current industrial action, but it’s not those days. It’s normal days, they are just horrendous. Staff crying. Staff exhausted, increasing sickness rates.” It is clear that there is a crisis unfolding, and the staff are exhausted. I urge the Minister to meet me to discuss what action she can take to get the trust back on the steady and safe footing that its staff and patients deserve.
May I bring greater clarity? Discussion of the wellbeing of prospective parents or carers could include their wellbeing pre-conception, as I will argue later. In that case, a technical amendment may be needed to the definition in clause 1(2).
We are indebted to the right hon. Member for New Forest West for introducing the Bill, and for all the work he has done on this issue. I will start by focusing my contribution on clause 4(2)(b), on which this debate hinges. It looks at inputs into the services and then outcomes with respect to matters mentioned earlier in the Bill. We are talking about fine lines and distinctions, but they are incredibly important. In my intervention, I talked about the need for outcomes. If we are serious about achieving equality in outcomes, we cannot simply start at the point of pregnancy or childbirth, as set out in the Bill, or the point at which someone becomes a prospective parent, as set out in the amendment. A prospective parent means someone who expects to become a parent as a result of a current pregnancy or someone who expects to become the parent or carer of an infant already born. I raise this issue because taking a public health approach to pregnancy means acknowledging that many of the factors that impact on outcomes are determined preconception. One clear example is the exposure of infants to fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. Around 77% of parents at the point of conception have used alcohol, exposing the foetus to risk of developing FASD. The trajectory through pregnancy and beyond of that infant has therefore been impacted by what happened in preconception. If we are serious about the outcomes as set out and addressing the inequalities, we cannot simply start at the point of conception because we would miss a huge opportunity to change the outcomes for those infants and address these issues. Given that children with FASD are now more prevalent than children on the autism spectrum, we must recognise the impact that focusing on preconception can have in ensuring that parents have support. I spoke to my local director of public health just yesterday. As one might expect, he raised issues around smoking cessation, mental health, exercise and diet. Ensuring that women are healthy at the point at which they conceive means that their pregnancy will carry in a safer environment. If we are serious about addressing the inequalities, we must consider the opportunity provided by this amendment. There is some conflict, and that is why it is important to consider that through the earliest of years. I also want to raise the factors that can have a real impact. Can the right hon. Member for New Forest West assure me that we are talking not just about physical, mental and emotional health, but environmental health? That would be an important public health intervention. I cannot count the times I have had to support pregnant women because they are in appalling housing conditions, which can cause real stress and anxiety throughout the pregnancy. That can lead to poorer outcomes. It is important, when considering the Bill, that we are look holistically at women’s surroundings and make sure they have the support they need.
I am grateful to the right hon. Member for his clarity. I hope that airing the issue in this debate will ensure that we measure the elements and secure the right environments. A further issue that is particularly important to me, as chair of the APPG on adoption and permanence, is that of children at risk. We know that if early interventions are made to support parents through a pregnancy, we can diminish the risk of a child being taken into the care system. I spoke to our director of midwifery about the distress caused to midwives by trying to support a distressed mother as her child is removed. Reducing the risk of that happening is important. Information sharing between health services and local authorities is absolutely crucial for interventions to be made to try to secure the relationship between the child and their parents, and for reducing the risk of a child being removed at birth or in the early days after it. I recognise that, in the lone local authority in my constituency, much is done to secure family bonds at the point the baby is born, but it is important that interventions are made during pregnancy to reduce the risk of a child being removed. The issue often stems from inequalities, so being able to measure them is incredibly important. My final two key points look at input under clause 4(2). We know that the issue of workforce has been incredibly difficult to address at times, because we do not have a comprehensive workforce plan for the multi-agency teams involved in work around an infant. I therefore propose that the Minister consider creating an integrated, multi-agency workforce plan for the 1,001 critical day period to ensure real integration of service. That would also ensure that we do not see a workforce deficit, because clearly, not having the workforce there would have a huge impact on outcomes, particularly for more vulnerable families. On how the report will be produced under clause 4, we need a pathway within the measurement, as it is important that parents and carers with lived experience have agency and voice in its formulation. I would appreciate the Minister commenting on that in her remarks, because we have demonstrated in York that when parents and carers are involved in providing feedback, services improve.
The wording of the motion in the name of the Leader of the Opposition “calls on the Government to cut public spending in order to abolish Inheritance Tax on family homes, farms and businesses.” That is abolition without conditions, without qualification, without any taper whatsoever, and without any reference to the growing cost of social care or the vital contribution that inheritance tax receipts make to supporting our ageing population. Let me be clear that it is the Conservatives who are proposing a tax break, paid for by cuts to public spending, for those who have inherited or accumulated considerable wealth. It is a tax break for the wealthiest 5.5% who are forecast to be subject to IHT this year. Let us be honest about what the Conservatives are proposing. They are proposing to abolish a progressive, redistributive tax in its entirety, at a potential cost of £10.8 billion a year, to benefit a small minority of the very wealthiest estates. I have no objection to people wanting to pass something on to their children—it is a natural and valuable part of being a parent—but the question before us is not whether families should be able to pass on their hard-earned assets fairly, but whether the right priority for this country is to abolish inheritance tax altogether, regardless of the cost, and I think the answer is clear. I do not want to dwell too much on figures, but one figure is worth remembering. My constituency is a varied one—it has affluent areas and not so affluent areas—yet at the last general election, fewer than 1% of estates in my Bolton West constituency were expected to fall within the inheritance tax threshold. So I have to ask, on behalf of my hard-working constituents: who exactly are the official Opposition speaking to with this proposal, because it will do precious little for the overwhelming majority of people in Bolton, Blackrod, Horwich and Westhoughton? It will not help the small business owner struggling with rising costs in Westhoughton, it will not help the single mum in Horwich managing the weekly shop, it will not help the pensioner in Blackrod worried about their energy bills and it will not help the young person in Bolton trying to get on the first rung of the housing ladder. It is designed to benefit a small minority with the largest estates. Let me reiterate the remark of my hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Andrew Lewin) that this is a return by the official Opposition to their “comfort zone”. Most families in my constituency—and, I wager, in the country at large—would far rather see that money used to tackle the cost of living crisis, improve public services and give working people some breathing room. The official Opposition may have concerns about the tapering of the personal allowance for earners over £100,000 and the high marginal tax rates that can create, or the economic distortions that follow. Those are legitimate subjects for debate, but they are not the motion before us today. If the Conservatives wanted to bring forward proposals that would genuinely help ordinary families, they had plenty of alternatives. They could have focused on cracking down on aggressive tax avoidance and evasion, which deprives the public purse of billions of pounds that could otherwise fund our public services. They could have tackled the tangled web of professional enablers who help wealthy individuals—and, yes, some businesses—to conceal assets, exploit loopholes and avoid paying what they owe. They could have proposed a fairer tax system that levels the playing field between online giants and high street businesses. Those are debates worth having. Those are the sorts of proposals that could command support across this House. Instead, the Conservatives have deliberately chosen to pursue a narrow partisan agenda that benefits those who are asset-rich, while offering precious little to those who need help the most. That brings me to the wider question of priorities, because this Government understand that helping people with the cost of living means taking practical action on the bills they pay, the services they rely on and the businesses that sustain their communities. This Government have pursued those, including through scrapping VAT on electricity bills for this winter. Those are practical measures. They speak to the everyday concerns of working people, families and, yes, small businesses. That is what responsible government looks like. Yet the Conservative party, by contrast, wants us to believe that the answer to the pressures facing this country is to spend less on public services so that a small minority can pay less tax on their estates. I must say that it sounds remarkably like they have learned little from the Liz Truss debacle. What they are proposing means less money available for public services, less money to support vulnerable people and less capacity to address the pressures facing our country. If the official Opposition are serious about rebuilding their support across the United Kingdom, about speaking to people in every community and about demonstrating that they are ready to govern again, they should scrap this motion. They should focus on the issues that speak to the country at large. Politics is about priorities. In choosing the complete abolition of inheritance tax as the subject of today’s Opposition day debate, they have sent a very clear signal: tax cuts for a small minority over support for the many and the interests of the wealthiest estates over the needs of children growing up in poverty. They have chosen to spend billions on a policy that will do precious little for my constituents across Bolton West. That is why I will not be supporting the motion.
In recent weeks, the Argentine Government have increased their economic aggression towards the Falkland Islands. Given that, will the Prime Minister update the House on the actions that the Government are taking in response to that belligerence?
My hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Tim Roca) referred to Winston Churchill. I often like to refer to Shakespeare, because I think that goes a little above that. Shakespeare said: “no legacy is so rich as honesty.” Does my hon. Friend agree that this debate from the Opposition is dishonest? They left the finances of this country in a mess, and they have to be honest about it and face up to that.
Will the hon. Member give way?
The hon. Member mentions countries growing faster than Great Britain. Can he name a single country in the G7 that is growing faster?
There are issues with the current administration of the tax, but those are more to do with the fact that many of the wealthiest are avoiding it. Does the hon. Lady agree that businesses are genuinely in a better place to receive tax planning advice, so while there are a lot of retorts about the difficulties of selling plant and machinery, for example, businesses are better placed than households to take on that tax planning?
Does the hon. Lady really believe that the top 4% of households are being “hammered” by inheritance tax right now? I do not believe that is the case.
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Does the hon. Member care to recall how many pubs closed on the previous Conservative Government’s watch, and just how big a deficit we were trying to fill through some of the interventions to which he referred earlier?
The hon. Member is making a set of technical and important points. Does he not accept that for businesses of the size and scale he is talking about, whether family owned or not, succession planning and perhaps even life insurance are important tools that should be considered to mitigate some of the things he is describing? [Interruption.] I do not think that is unreasonable.
The Conservatives’ decision to cut inheritance tax for the wealthiest tells us exactly where their priorities lie: not with the everyday working man or woman but with the very wealthiest in our society, and not with constituents such as mine but with the wealthiest 4% or so, whose estates are affected by inheritance tax. The Conservatives’ proposal would allow couples to leave their children £1 million of wealth, on top of a potentially very large home, without paying a penny in tax. They claim we are the party of welfare, but what does that make them? Tax cuts for the wealthiest paid for by spending cuts that take our country’s public services backwards. They tried that for 14 years, and it left our country poorer, sicker and economically stagnant. It is clear that they have not learned their lesson. Arguing for the effective abolition of inheritance tax sends a different message to what could be a much more reasonable debate about, say, uprating the threshold in line with inflation.
That is quite right. This is not pragmatic at all; this is complete ideology and returning to— [Interruption.] It is. It is pure ideology. The Conservatives are returning to their core comfort zone of defending only the very wealthiest at the expense of all the rest of us.
I respect the point the hon. Member makes and fully respect what she says about the aspirations of those of us who grew up in rural areas where property prices are often inflated. But I will be honest: I know very few people from back home who have ever paid inheritance tax. I do not know these people. If she would like to correct me on that—
It is objectively untrue that inheritance tax penalises people at all levels. It penalises, at best, 4% or 5% of people with the wealthiest estates. I understand the cultural arguments that the Conservatives are making about aspiration and all the rest of it—we should all strive to support that—but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Chris Vince) pointed out, this proposal is not pragmatic at all; this is bonkers.
We would do far better to have a pragmatic debate, as my hon. Friend suggests. Perhaps we should look at uprating the thresholds or bringing in more tax revenue through some of the means that the Treasury is exploring. I would be keen to hear in the Minister’s winding-up about progress on that. This Government are already investing £1.7 billion in improving the efficiency of tax collection and cracking down on tax avoidance. That should yield an extra £7.5 billion a year by 2029-30. Are these not the kind of discussions we should be having, rather than just encouraging more and more tax avoidance by people who, quite frankly, can afford to pay their way? It should be clear to those on both sides of the House that the answer to the very richest avoiding taxes is to legislate to close those loopholes and not to cut their taxes, which is exactly what a would-be Tory Government are proposing to do.
The hon. Lady has referred to the indivisible bond between families. Does she not agree that that bond must also apply to the community and the public more generally, from generation to generation?