Showing every spoken contribution, including 5,750 under 12 words. Hide short remarks
Before Mike Martin moves the motion, I should say that 16 Members wish to speak, so I will probably have to impose a three-minute time limit after he has spoken. My aim is to try to get everybody in, so if we can cut down on interventions, that should give everybody a chance to speak.
Order. There will be an immediate three-minute limit on speeches.
Order. I am sorry, but there is a three-minute limit.
It’s all right—it is a very good speech, but we have to keep to time.
Order. The Minister needs to give the Member in charge some time to respond.
I will call Jessica Toale to move the motion and then call the Minister to respond. I remind other Members that they may make a speech only with prior permission from the Member in charge of the debate and the Minister. As is the convention for 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.
I commend the Secretary of State for his honesty and I agree with everything he says in his statement. What an appalling mess, but part of the original sin was our intervening militarily and then scuttling out. On a wider point, may I take it that we have learnt our lesson and have got over the liberal imperial itch of the Cameron and Blair eras to intervene militarily in ungovernable countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya? Let us now move on, but I support what the Secretary of State said.
On the question of facts, will the Minister give way?
The UK’s benefits system is designed to act as a financial safety net. It exists so that people in hardship through no fault of their own can be supported. Supporting families and helping parents into work requires a balanced and fair system. It must provide meaningful support for those who need it most, while maintaining a sense of fairness for taxpayers. That is why the Conservatives introduced the two-child limit and believe it should be retained—so that people on benefits face the same choices as those in work. The welfare system is growing unsustainably, with spending on health and disability benefits alone set to hit £100 billion by the end of the decade.
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for making that point. It is essential that we put Britain’s finances on a sustainable path. All benefits are funded by taxpayers or borrowing, so every time the cost of benefits rises, so does the burden on taxpayers, or the debt we place on future generations.
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for making that point. I know that he, like all Conservatives, believes in personal responsibility, living within our means and fairness to the taxpayer.
I will not take any more interventions. Many thousands of couples think every year about whether to have children. They make that choice based on several factors, but one of the most important is whether they can afford to bring up that child as they would like to. Under the previous system, pre-2017, there was a fundamental element of unfairness in the system. A family in receipt of benefits saw those increase automatically every time they had another child. That is not true for a family not in receipt of benefits. Why is it that someone on benefits should not have to make the same choices and sacrifices as someone in work? Why should a taxpayer who is unable to afford to have more children subsidise the third, fourth or fifth child of someone not in work? The welfare bill in this country is increasing at an unsustainable rate. Unemployment is rising, thanks to the action of the Government, and more people than ever are receiving disability benefits, but this Government seem completely powerless to do anything to reverse that trend. The Prime Minister says that his welfare reforms strike the “right balance”, but the truth is that he was forced into a humiliating U-turn by his own Back Benchers and has had to totally gut his plans. Scrapping the Government’s PIP reforms means that the welfare Bill will make no savings at all—indeed, the total package will end up costing the taxpayer about an extra £100 million a year. What a fiasco! The Government set out to save £4.5 billion, and have ended up spending more taxpayers’ money to buy off Labour rebels. No thought was given to the burden on the taxpayer, or to the extra debt that the Government would incur and the interest that will have to be paid on it by our children. The fact that so many Labour Members want to remove the two-child benefit cap is testament to the irresponsibility with which they treat the public finances. Their solution is always to spend more money—preferably belonging to someone else. Now, we have the spectacle of the leader of Reform UK, the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), saying that he also supports scrapping the two-child cap, despite having been an outspoken supporter of it when it was introduced. Reform supporters in my constituency are rather puzzled by his decision. It suggests that the hon. Member is not guided by any political principle, but is chasing votes in the red wall, where he hopes to win seats from the Labour party. In my view, that confirms that he is wholly unserious about governing this country. There is only one party in this House that is serious about sound money, and that is the Conservative party. We are the only party that is serious about stopping the creeping reliance on welfare, and that cares about taxpayers keeping more of the money they earn.
I can make a very short speech today, Madam Deputy Speaker, because my right hon. Friend, the shadow Chancellor, in his brilliant speech at the beginning of this debate, set things out so clearly. There are common themes running through both Opposition debates today. The first is that the Government have lost control of expenditure and the second one, which I want to develop very briefly, is that the Executive have failed to listen with appropriate care to what people in this House have said. On the first of these points, my right hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) said in an eloquent intervention just a few minutes ago that the Government need to work out how to fix last week’s fiasco with the welfare Bill. Far from saving money, this is virtually now another spending measure. It is important to remember that as the former Chancellor my right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt) set out clearly, had we been successful in winning the last election, we would have reduced the number of working-age welfare recipients to pre-covid levels, thus saving £49 billion by the end of this Parliament. The reason I focus on this welfare issue is that it is welfare expenditure with which this Government must get to grips, and they have failed to learn the lessons of the past. I was a very junior welfare Minister in what was then the Department of Social Security between 1995 and 1997. I learned two very important rules, which this Government would do well to consider. On both, it is clear that welfare reform is extremely difficult. The first is that we cannot take away from poor people benefits that they are already receiving. I think I am right in saying that no Conservative Government have ever reduced disability benefits in payment. But Labour did not absorb that vital lesson, which is why they got into so much trouble last week. The second rule is that if a Government want to reduce the benefits bill, there are only really two ways of doing it. The first is to freeze the level of benefits; that has been done in the past, and it means not falling into the trap that the Government fell into last week. The second is to narrow the gateway into those benefits for future recipients. I urge the Government to absorb these important rules, because they will have to return to the issue of welfare expenditure if they are to make any progress at all on the economy. I hugely praise the rebellion last week by Labour Back Benchers. They have hopefully taught the Executive a most useful lesson: listen to Back Benchers with respect and close attention. As a former Chief Whip, however, I deprecate rebellions unless I am involved in them. It usually takes years for the Executive to get into the habit of treating their Back Benchers with contempt and derision as unelected Downing Street special advisers strut up and down Whitehall, but this lot—this Government —managed to accomplish it extraordinarily quickly. They have learned the hard way not to treat their Back Benchers and elected Members with so little respect.
The hon. Gentleman brings me elegantly to my final point. Having praised Labour Back Benchers and encouraged them to speak out, my one ask is that they now stand up for the election pledge, clearly set out in their manifesto, to restore development spending to 0.7%. I ask them to show the same zeal and enthusiasm as they did on welfare for bringing back the 0.7%. Inexplicably and astonishingly, their Prime Minister has cut the figure from the 0.5% they, alas, inherited from us down to 0.3%, and it is already causing massive difficulties, of which the hon. Member, with his background in Oxfam, will be fully aware. When the House comes back in September, I urge the hon. Member, particularly given his experience, to join other Back Benchers in saying to the Executive, “We will not put up with this. We said in our election manifesto that we would restore development spending to 0.7%, and in the same way that we showed the Government Front Benchers that they could not proceed as they planned with welfare, they cannot proceed as they plan to with development spending.” I urge Labour Back Benchers to ensure that this rethink takes place in the autumn, when the folly of what has happened will be even clearer.
Does my right hon. Friend find it extraordinary that when the Government came into office they made a big play of putting the OBR on a pedestal, but because they did not like the news, they now want to dismiss it and water it down?
The motion is simply asking the Government to commit to what they put in their manifesto. It seems that we are hearing every sort of speech other than speeches that address that point. Let us first take the national insurance rise. It is extraordinary to ask us to believe that businesses in Labour Members’ constituencies are delighted that their taxes have gone up because that will help public services. I am sure that they are all keen to see their taxes go up again to satisfy the new 30% pay rise that resident doctors want. We were told that that would not happen, and that that was why the Government had to put up taxes the last time. A bit of reality has to come to this conversation, given that local businesses are either cutting people’s hours, on a recruitment freeze, making redundancies or going into liquidation. Let us think about companies that go into liquidation. After 30 years of trading, a company in my constituency went into liquidation last month, simply because it could no longer cope with the NI rise. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Twelve people were made redundant immediately, meaning there would be no more taxes—no more income tax or purchasing tax—from that business, and on top of that, benefits would have to be paid. We are on a downward spiral of tax and spend in this country. Indeed, it is quite incredible to listen to the speeches from Labour Members. It is as if nobody has left the country, no money has been withdrawn from the City, and no person has taken their assets elsewhere. Those are literally the headlines on the economy, day after day, in the Financial Times and other newspapers, yet we get a lot of harking back to the past, rather than recognition that Labour has been in power for more than a year.
My hon. Friend sums things up perfectly. What terrifies me is that the Government do not seem to be taking any notice of that. When they talk about bringing in more taxes, such as a wealth tax, Labour Members all cheer. When my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor—I think it was him—said that Labour Members do not care, and would like to see more people who have wealth go, someone on the Government Benches shouted “Good!” It is absolutely incredible to say that the people who generate the wealth in this country are the enemy. Let us just think about my constituency of Wetherby and Easingwold, which does exactly what it says on the tin: Wetherby and Easingwold are the two main market towns in the constituency. Market towns are part of the big ecosystem of the economy that is linked around farming, and the farming tax has created a huge problem in the farming community. People are scared to invest in capital equipment. That is the first thing. “How are we going to pay these bills? Is it even worth passing the farms on? So let’s pause our investment.” That ecosystem in my constituency is not just about the farmers and what gets sold at the farmers’ market. It is about the businesses that service farm equipment. It is about the businesses that supply mechanical support. It is about the businesses that are involved in every aspect of the supply chain around farming in my constituency, and the worry and concern that is being felt throughout the communities means that they do not spend any money. That means that the Government are now losing out on VAT and on other taxes. So, what is their answer? Let us bring in a wealth tax; let us tax more—it is quite frankly frightening. In terms of taxation, I am terrified of where this country is heading.
I am sure it has just slipped the hon. Gentleman’s mind that people have the ability to do that. Famously, when Stanley Baldwin was the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, he gave a third of his wealth to the country to try to help with the national deficit. He did it behind the scenes and just signed it “FST”. He did not actually declare that it was from him. People can pay more tax if they wish. What they cannot do is sit in an unfair position where they can see that we do not have the most competitive taxes in the world; otherwise, they would stay here. It is blatantly obvious what is happening. If I were to throw a party at my house and I locked everybody in and halfway through the party they were trying to tunnel under the fence or get out in a hot air balloon, I would not say, “Well, that’s going really well. Let’s lock some more doors.” This is an overall assault on the lifeblood of the economy of this country. All this motion does today is ask whether the Government will be sticking to their manifesto promises. When the Chancellor came to the Dispatch Box last July, about a year ago, she kept talking about the OBR. She talked up the OBR, saying we could never again have a situation like under the Tories where they ignored the OBR. She announced £22 billion-worth of taxes for the alleged black hole. The OBR immediately came out and said, “That’s not true, it doesn’t exist.” At best, it was £9 billion, and most of that had been caused by giving pay rises to the public sector because, allegedly, that would solve the problem. We on these Benches warned that, without reform, the public sector would come back. And boy, have they come back! If the Government wanted to be believed that there was a £22 billion hole, one, why did they raise taxes by £44 billion; two, why did they then do another £30 billion-worth of borrowing; and three, how come we now have a £30 billion hole? That is a £100 billion hole in the economy that has been created since 12 months ago. How can anybody say that the Government have taken responsibility for the economy and are building it up? Somebody on the Labour Benches said that we were trying to rewrite history, but they are trying to rewrite the last two weeks! Labour is the only party I have known to come to the House trying to cut welfare and increased the bill! Where is the money coming from? What do we hear? We hear that we must get rid of the triple lock, because it is now going to cost £15 billion instead of £5 billion. How about we stop people self-declaring just to have time off work and get on universal credit, which is costing £40 billion, and we do not hit people who are on fixed incomes who do not have the ability to do other things? A great number of the retired people in this country are carrying the burden of supporting their families in work, looking after their grandchildren, and doing those things unpaid. We should be grateful to pensioners in this country and not be saying, “You’re the ones whose income we’ve got to cut” because the Government are letting welfare run out of control. This does not stop at what the Government have done to businesses in my constituency or to the ecosystem that relies on a rural economy, and it does not stop at them wanting to put solar panels all over credible farming land, pushing those businesses out even further, because they have brought in VAT on schools, and they have done it through pure ideology and envy. My constituents are not rich people. They have cars that are 15 or 20 years old. They do not go on holidays. They have been putting money in to give their children the best education, and they are now having to withdraw their children from those schools.
My hon. Friend makes a very powerful point. I am just wrapping up, but I will tell you this, Mr Deputy Speaker: I am a comprehensive schoolboy, and I am not going to take any lessons off the private schoolboy on the Front Bench who tells me that it is unfair that we are not taxing people who are trying to do the best for their children—talk about pull up the ladder, I’m all right, Jack. Overall, the economy is being destroyed under this Government. We will have a political kickabout this afternoon, but I am terrified of where we are going. The 1970s is back good and proper—public sector strikes, ridiculous pay demands constantly bringing the Government down, 240% debt to GDP ratio predicted on this path, more and more taxes to come, and more and more wealthy people leaving. We saw what happened by 1977 when we went off to the IMF. The situation was so bad that the IMF said no! We are on that path, and it terrifies me.
Members across the House will be familiar with the winter of discontent. In 1979—the year our Chancellor was born—the Labour Government were at the behest of their union paymasters, and refuse piled up across the country. Fast-forward 46 years: we are a year into the Chancellor’s term of office, and we have before us a summer of anxiety. We have a long and seemingly hot summer ahead of us, with the spectre of impending taxes looming. In a desperate and flawed attempt to paper over the financial chasm of Labour’s own making, the Government are targeting the hard-working people they vowed to stand for. What has happened in Labour’s first year in office? Well, my farmers are reeling from the raid on their cash-poor industry through changes to APR and BPR, national insurance and the withdrawal of the SFI, to name but a few. The Government ask them to diversify and invest in growing their business, while simultaneously taxing them for the privilege. The Carrdus school in South Northamptonshire is closing as a direct result of the VAT raids and the national insurance rises. Families who work hard and invest in their children’s education have been punished. Students have been displaced, teachers have lost their jobs, and standards have been hit. Hospitality owners have said they cannot risk expansion; they are just about surviving as it stands. This year alone, over 1,000 pubs across the UK have closed—220 since April. Beauty salons and hair industry businesses in my constituency have been calling me in because they cannot take on any more apprenticeships. If things continue as they are, there will, the British Hair Consortium says, be no apprentice starts in 2027. What a legacy for this Labour Government. Pensioners in my constituency were hit first by the removal of the winter fuel allowance, and they now face the prospect of being taxed on their pension for the first time, which is also a terrible disgrace. We have learnt a crucial lesson after a year of this Government: they are the embodiment of the phrase, “Fail to prepare, prepare to fail.” They have had years in opposition to come up with a plan, and they have failed miserably. They keep asking us what we might do. Is that because they are seeking advice from the more fiscally prudent and wise side of the House?
I can certainly give you more. The Minister and Government Members rarely want to listen, but I raise these points on behalf of my constituents, who have asked me to do this. I implore the Government: if they want growth, they must take this summer to think again about how to achieve it, or it will be an autumn of anguish.
In my constituency there are dozens of hard-working family businesses, which are the backbone of our local economy and key to our local identity. These business owners get up early, go to bed late, work weekends, employ hundreds of local people and contribute hugely to our local high streets, local communities and local economy. But this Government seem desperate to squeeze every single penny out of those family businesses and into the hands of the Chancellor. The rise in employer national insurance puts a huge strain on the wage bill, especially when coupled with the rise in the minimum wage. That is squeezing every single family business, as well as schools and hospices. Indeed, last weekend I took part in a local fundraising event—the Oxenhope straw race—which raises money for our local hospice, the Sue Ryder Manorlands hospice in the Worth Valley. Every year they do fundraising, but they tell me that instead of the money going to provide end-of-life care, it now goes straight to the Treasury through employer national insurance. The sad fact is that the large sums of money going to charities is not providing the support that is needed because it is going directly to the Treasury. The business rate relief reduction is impacting many hard-working businesses across Keighley and Ilkley. The inheritance tax challenges are impacting many of our farming businesses and family farming businesses through slashing the 100% relief on agricultural property relief and business property relief to the £1 million threshold. That is where the naivety kicks in. When we consider the size of the average farm in England—about 200 acres—and value the farmland, the house, the cottage, the growing crops, the machinery and the livestock, we reach well above the £1 million threshold, therefore exposing nearly every farming business to an inheritance tax liability. Those hard-working businesses make a return of less than 1%, if any at all, yet Labour Members say that they must have the weight of responsibility on their shoulders. That is a disgrace.
I will take a quick intervention from the hon. Member, but I hope that he will justify why those hard-working family farms and businesses in Keighley and Ilkley, who get up day in, day out, have to shoulder the burden for the mistakes that this Labour Government are making. Will he answer that point?
I am sure that the Government Whips were watching the hon. Gentleman and making a note that he will be in line for a job, and I saw the Minister quaking in his boots at the thought of those bizarre recommendations. The point is that the Labour Government do not realise that all these tax increases are hitting the many hard-working businesses across every constituency represented in this House. Shame on the Government for bringing them forward. No matter how elaborate the rain dance or how impressive the Government press releases, growth will not come, precisely because of the decisions that the Chancellor has taken. We need a reset; we need a new direction; we need to limit spending so that we can cut tax, not consistently raise it. Until the Government realise that, I am afraid for all the family businesses up and down the country, which are being penalised time and again by this Labour Government.
We have had an exciting and heartfelt debate. I commend for their speeches my right hon. Friends the Members for Sutton Coldfield (Sir Andrew Mitchell), for Wetherby and Easingwold (Sir Alec Shelbrooke), for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Holden), for Salisbury (John Glen) and for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart), my hon. Friends the Members for Bromsgrove (Bradley Thomas), for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey), for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford), for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore), for South Northamptonshire (Sarah Bool) and for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Alison Griffiths), the hon. Members for Angus and Perthshire Glens (Dave Doogan) and for Ynys Môn (Llinos Medi), and the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim (Jim Allister). We have heard some excellent speeches from Members speaking with passion on behalf of the small businesses, farmers, workers and pensioners who have been hit by Labour changing its mind on taxes and doing things differently from what it said it would do at the election. We have also heard two new phrases today. Thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, we now realise we have to challenge the Chancellor based on her “flagship failures”, not her flagship policies. With great passion, the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim told us how Labour’s tax on family businesses means that small businesses are no longer planning for growth; they are planning for death. The public feel they were misled by Labour at the general election. They think those on the Labour Front Bench are incompetent. They think the Prime Minister is woefully out of touch and the Chancellor is out of her depth—and why shouldn’t they? A Prime Minister who needs multiple attempts to define a woman, and multiple attempts to define a working person, does not exactly inspire confidence; a Chancellor who says that she will not raise taxes on working people, and then hikes national insurance, costing working people their jobs and earnings, does not inspire trust. Our motion provides the Government with an opportunity to draw a line, recognise the overreach and errors in their taxation policies, and give some hope to the makers in our society and those who work hard in our warehouses, offices, factories, shops, restaurants, and public services. They could recognise the errors in the Treasury’s assessment of the impact of the family farm tax on those who grow our food, and the trauma caused by the jobs tax for those who build our businesses. Those are the people who know how to grow our economy, not the numpties on the Front Bench, so why are the Government intent on holding them back? Alas, the Chancellor thinks that she knows best, and despite taxes being at their highest rate on record, she is on the hunt for new taxes: wealth tax, capital gains tax, pensions tax, council tax, savings tax, tax, tax, tax, tax—it is always the same with a Labour Government. The Government’s strategy is to tax their way to growth, but I have to tell the Chancellor that that strategy will not work. No economy can tax its businesses out of existence and create growth. Tonight the Chancellor starts her new tax campaign with a visit to the City. For the first time it will not be so much a Mansion House speech as a mansion tax assessment. The Chancellor will claim that the Government’s actions have brought about financial stability—well perhaps, but not in this country. The Government’s Chagos deal has eliminated income tax in Mauritius but given British taxpayers a new £30 billion tax bill, and the Government’s abolition of non-dom status is boosting the tax revenues of Portugal and Italy but will mean taxpayers here having to cough up billions a year more to plug the gap as people leave the UK, taking their tax payments with them. The truth is that the Chancellor has done the complete opposite of her claims of stability. She is the eye of an instability storm of her own making, where nobody knows when her next tax raid will come, and who will get hit the hardest—a second summer of doubt and uncertainty caused by this Chancellor, and tolerated by this Prime Minister. Labour Back Benchers know it. They know all the times that the Chancellor has led them up the hill, only to lead them down again: the “once in a Parliament” tax hike, the removal of winter fuel payments, the blundered attempts at welfare cuts, and it has only been one year! Labour Members are limping towards recess—look at them, Mr Deputy Speaker. Napoleon’s troops were in better humour on their march back from Moscow than some Labour MPs are as they make their way back to their constituencies, and back to the people to whom they promised so much just one year ago, only to deliver oh so little. No wonder people feel so let down. But let us be fair: some Labour Back Benchers are going back with a warm feeling. A reshuffle is coming soon, to clear away all the dead wood on the Front Bench —oh, so much dead wood—and some Labour Back Benchers have already had the tap on the shoulder. They already know who they are, and they are going home with great expectations of high office— [Hon. Members: “Ah!”] No, no, spare a thought, please, for the many other Labour MPs who have missed out. They felt that they were given a promise that if they did the right thing they would be looked after. Now they know that the Government have reneged on their promise, and that the change they hoped for will not come. For them, I am truly sorry. But there is one consolation: at least now they know how the rest of the country feels.
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I thank the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) for obtaining this important and very timely debate on SEND provision in the south-east. First, I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, as I am a serving Surrey county councillor. I was also a member of the Public Accounts Committee during its inquiry on support for children and young people with special educational needs. SEND support in the south-east is in crisis. Children are not getting the support that they are legally entitled to at the right time, which is driving poorer outcomes and putting untold stress on families. My inbox, like those of many Members here, is full of examples: parents battling to secure much-needed support for their child to thrive, yet facing incompetence and fundamental misunderstandings of the law by the council; carers forced to give up work to stay at home with their child while they languish without school provision; and families driven to the brink of despair by the adversarial system. Those issues must be addressed, and fast, for the sake of our children and their loved ones. Despite significant increases in recent years in SEND funding, to £10.7 billion, there has been no consistent improvement in outcomes for children and young people since 2019. Only half of EHCPs are issued within the 20-week statutory deadline, resulting in children having to wait too long for support. Shockingly, in about 98% of cases that go to a tribunal, the tribunal finds in favour of the family, indicating that something is going very wrong in the original decision-making process. It is clear that the overall system is not fit for purpose and is inadequately funded, making local authorities’ already difficult job in this area even harder. Worryingly, a statutory override system has been put in place, which essentially allows the ever-growing SEND deficit on local authority books to be ignored. According to the recent Public Accounts Committee report, nearly half of all English local authorities are at risk of “effectively going bankrupt” when the statutory override ends.
I will not, because of the time—we all have lots of questions for the Minister that we want to get through. The statutory override was due to end in 2026, but the Government have decided to extend that accounting trick for another two years. I cannot emphasise enough to the Minister that we are on the brink of a financial disaster in local government. Accounting fudges only delay the inevitable and make the problem even worse—and it will not just be SEND services impacted when local authorities are issuing section 114 notices; it will be all local authority services. Before I put some questions to the Minister on her proposed changes to the SEND system, I want to address some of the issues raised about Surrey county council specifically. Members have already laid out clearly some of the challenges experienced by Surrey parents trying to secure SEND support for their child. I too share their concerns and agree that that is unacceptable. Like them, I have spent much time grappling with the council to ensure that it delivers the right support to children in Reigate, Redhill, Banstead and our villages, so I have seen at first hand deadlines being missed, information being withheld, decisions being delayed and essential support not being provided. Although I recognise the challenges and pressures on the council from an insufficiently funded and less than optimal system, the fact is that the law is clear on support for children with SEND. I thank parents and groups that have fought hard in recent years to shine a light on the issues both in Surrey and beyond. I want to make special mention of the Let Us Learn Too campaign, whose founder, Hayley Harding, is one of my constituents. That important campaign started in 2021 and has sought to raise as an issue the difficulties that disabled people and young people have been experiencing in accessing education. It is important to say that they were extremely disappointed at the lack of detail coming out of the hearing of the Education Committee on 1 July about the forthcoming changes. To return to the situation in Surrey specifically, I welcome the recent appointment of Councillor Jonathan Hulley with a specific focus on addressing the issues and delivering a better, more effective SEND service. One of his first actions has been to propose boosting the future annual SEND budget by 42% in order to substantially increase staff. As part of the plans, the number of caseworkers will be increased from 81 to 111, resulting in caseloads being reduced from over 200 per staff member currently to 150. Also, 30 new assessment officers will be put in place to support families during the 20-week process, and a mediation and dispute resolution officer team will be established to support early resolution of cases where mediation or a tribunal has been requested. The proposals will increase SEND staff by 103 permanent positions—an 80% overall increase in SEND staff. That is all very positive, and I welcome Surrey’s actions to address the issues raised, but we are still in the dark about national reforms and how they might impact plans such as those at local authority level. Without firm information, we see speculation starting. Last week, the future of SEND support was splashed across the front pages of three national newspapers. Despite the off-the-record briefings from the Department, Government Front Benchers have failed to give parents any reassurance on their plans. Parents are rightly anxious about what any change could mean for their child and the support they are entitled to. I have a series of questions for the Minister. When will we finally see the White Paper? Does she anticipate a change to the Children and Families Act 2014 as a result of the Government’s proposed reforms? Can she confirm that no parent or child will have their right to support reduced, replaced or removed as a result of her planned changes? Will EHCPs be part of the plan going forward? Will there be any new capital funding for new special schools, or does the Department plan to build capacity in mainstream schools? Is the Department engaging with parents, schools, colleges and local government leaders ahead of the publication of the White Paper to ensure their support? Will the White Paper include reforms to school transportation? Is work under way in the Department to look at early identification, and what role will support staff and access to specialist interventions, such as speech and language therapists and educational psychologists, play? Given that any changes will be a worry to many constituents up and down the country, can the Minister confirm today that MPs will be given a chance to vote on any proposed changes? I will now allow time for the Minister to go through that list of questions.
I gently say to the Minister that she and her Back-Bench colleagues do not have a monopoly on talking about poverty. If she really cared about poverty, she would not have allowed a policy to be brought before this House last week that, before it was changed, would have put 150,000 extra children into poverty. If she genuinely believes in tackling poverty, why is she still standing at the Dispatch Box as a Minister, because she should have resigned for putting more children into poverty under her proposals?
When the price cap fell last month, the Labour party boasted, “£129 off your bills, delivered by Labour”. The Minister knows that energy bills fell as wholesale gas prices fell, and she knows that her policy is to take the country off gas and keep increasing policy costs on bills. That is why she refuses to repeat the claim. Will she take this opportunity to apologise for her party saying something that she knows is untrue?
As well as risking lives, this extraordinary error has cost taxpayers huge sums. The Secretary of State says that it will now cost £1.2 billion less, but what will be the total cost of all these schemes after that? First, given the extraordinary lack of transparency that this Parliament has been subjected to—and voters too—will the Secretary of State agree to publish the legal advice that led to the expansion of the ARR and other schemes so that we can properly discuss it? Secondly, the Secretary of State did not mention any official resigning or being sacked over this extraordinary episode. I think my constituents will find that quite surprising. Will he name the number of people who have resigned or been sacked over this extraordinary error, and if nobody has been, does he agree that that is wrong?
I am grateful to the hon. Member for giving notice of her point of order. The Chair is not responsible for Members’ comments on social media, but I am sure the Table Office will be able to advise on how to pursue the matter further.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for giving notice of his point of order and, I believe, for confirming that he notified the hon. Member for South Suffolk. The remarks he refers to were not recorded in Hansard. None the less, I remind all hon. Members that good temper and moderation are the characteristics of parliamentary language and that heckling from a sedentary position from either side of the House does nothing to enhance the quality of debate. Bill Presented Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57) Secretary David Lammy, supported by the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Pat McFadden, Secretary John Healey, Stephen Doughty, and Luke Pollard presented a Bill to give effect to, and make provision in connection with, an agreement between the governments of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Mauritius concerning the Chagos Archipelago. Bill read the first time; to be read a Second time tomorrow, and to be printed (Bill 285) with explanatory notes (Bill 285-EN).
I inform the House that Mr Speaker has not selected any amendments. I call the shadow Secretary of State to move the motion.
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Order. We have two Opposition day debates that are both heavily subscribed, so we will start with a speaking limit of four minutes.
Order.
Order. The speaking limit has now been reduced to three minutes.
People across Basildon and Billericay, and indeed across the country, want to see more jobs in energy production and to see cheaper energy. What they do not understand is why the Government are backing some but not all forms of energy. Why are the Government insisting on shipping jobs in oil and gas abroad, rather than keeping them here while investing in green energy at the same time?
The shadow Chancellor is making an excellent speech. Does he agree that the danger is that if Governments do not have a prudent financial position, they end up in the situation that we are now seeing, with the interest on Government debt going up and up? We are now paying around £10 billion a year more than we were at the time of the general election.
Labour Members pretend that 2010 was year zero. In truth, in 2010 there was an annual deficit of 10% of GDP in Government spending, which meant that the Government were borrowing £1 for every £4 they were spending. Does the hon. Member not acknowledge, or understand, that that was a far worse economic inheritance than any Government have been offered since the second world war?