Business and the Economy
Will the Minister give way?
Showing every spoken contribution, including 5,779 under 12 words. Hide short remarks
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Business and the Economy
I was just observing and enjoying the way in which the Minister was lecturing us about not wanting to talk about the economy, when at one point during the debate, literally only three Labour Members were in the Chamber—it is extraordinary. If they are so wonderfully proud of their record of higher unemployment, higher inflation and slower growth, why are none of them here?
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Business and the Economy
The Minister is being incredibly generous with his time. He is saying what a wonderful outlook there is for wages. Why, then, is the OBR’s forecast for real household disposable income to be lower than in the 1950s, the 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s, the 1990s, the noughties and the 2010s?
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Business and the Economy
Order. May I point out, to prevent any further errors, that the term “you” is not used in the Chamber, because it refers to me, in the Chair? Hopefully no one else will make the same mistake.
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Business and the Economy
Order. “Do you think they are wrong?” We have a long afternoon ahead of us—even longer for me in the Chair.
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Business and the Economy
Andrew Griffith, match that passion!
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Business and the Economy
A substantial opening speech there. I call the Minister.
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Business and the Economy
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
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Business and the Economy
Order. An intervention cannot have examples; it is short and to the point. What is the question?
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Business and the Economy
We now have the pleasure of hearing from Chris Vince.
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Business and the Economy
Order. Just to help Members, let me say that those looking to intervene have to both stand and make a sound; otherwise, the Member who has the floor may not be aware. If requests for interventions are not taken, those looking to intervene must sit down. They may then stand up and try again.
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Business and the Economy
Order. It is good etiquette to speak through the Chair, and to not use the word “you”; it just dampens the tone of the debate a little bit.
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Business and the Economy
Order. It is known that the hon. Lady is not giving way, and is about to conclude.
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Business and the Economy
Order. Has the hon. Member just arrived in the Chamber?
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Business and the Economy
You cannot waft into the Chamber and make an intervention; you have to listen to the contributions. What time did you arrive in the Chamber?
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Business and the Economy
Marvellous—we will check the record. You may continue.
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Engagements
It was extraordinary listening to that last answer from the Prime Minister. Inflation was 2% when the Conservatives left office; it is now nearly double that. When will he recognise that it is Labour’s Budget that is driving up inflation?
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Engagements
That is laughable from the Prime Minister. He knows that inflation was brought down by us to 2%—bang on target. We were reacting to a war in Ukraine that brought inflation up all over Europe. While he is doing trade deals with countries such as the US and India, their inflation is going down, but it is going up here. Why? The Office for National Statistics says that the inflation figures are driven by significant increases in household bills. We warned him repeatedly that this is exactly what would happen—what his policies would do. We called it “awful April”. The Prime Minister came into office saying that he would tackle the cost of living crisis. He has failed. He has not got a clue, has he?
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Engagements
The Prime Minister needs to stop whining about what the last Government did and look at what he is doing. He is the Prime Minister. Look at the numbers this morning. As if inflation figures were not bad enough, we have also learned that the Deputy Prime Minister is on manoeuvres. The Prime Minister has lost control of the economy and he has lost control of his Cabinet. The Deputy Prime Minister is sitting there staring at me. She knew exactly what she was doing when she briefed the papers. She is demanding eight new tax rises—as if we have not suffered enough. People out there are struggling. Businesses are struggling. People are losing their jobs. We cannot have more tax rises. Will the Prime Minister rule out new tax rises this year?
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Engagements
That is desperate stuff. The whole House will have heard the Prime Minister refuse to rule out new tax rises. The whole House heard it: he did not rule them out. There is open warfare in his Cabinet. The Deputy Prime Minister is clearly calling the shots. What have we learned? We are heading for new tax rises. We know that inflation is up. It is just more and more bad news from a Prime Minister who has lost control. We heard the Prime Minister’s earlier answer on winter fuel. Let us try to get some more information. I shall ask him a simple question. It requires only one word: yes or no. Is he planning to U-turn on winter fuel cuts?
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Engagements
I made it really easy for the Prime Minister. It was a simple question—yes or no—and he could not answer it. I wonder how the public feel about a man who cannot give a straight answer to a simple question. Look at the MPs behind him—they are all cheering. When this inevitable U-turn on winter fuel comes, and it will, from a desperate Prime Minister, what will he say to the 348 MPs who went over the top and voted for the winter fuel cut last September? Just like the British public, how can any of them ever trust him again?
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Engagements
This is a Prime Minister who says he is taking measures, but the jobs tax is killing jobs, inflation is up, and business confidence is down. Everyone is worried. He promised to cut bills, but today we see that they are rising because of his policies. He promised not to raise taxes on working people, but his jobs tax means that people are losing their jobs. Every week, we come here with a new company that says it is shedding jobs, and that is on his watch. He promised to protect pensioners, but his winter fuel cut has driven thousands into hardship. His MPs hate this—he cannot see them, but they all look sick just hearing what it he is going to do. [Interruption.] They are laughing—[Interruption.]
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Engagements
Mr Speaker—[Interruption.]
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Engagements
His MPs are laughing, just as they laughed at the Budget. Hands up who here wanted winter fuel cuts? Not a single one of them. The fact is, this Prime Minister is destroying them. They need to look at what they are doing to the country. The truth is, and we all know it, that it is this Prime Minister, this Labour Government and their policies that are shafting the country, is it not?
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Immigration
On that point, will the Minister give way?
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Immigration
Will the hon. Member give way?
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Immigration
The hon. Gentleman references a returns agreement with France. The Labour party amendment to the motion talks about a deal with France. Is he confident that the French will agree to take illegal migrants back from the UK?
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Business and the Economy
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Harlow (Chris Vince). Harlow is quite close to my old stomping ground, so I know some of the areas to which he referred, although I am surprised that he did not mention the enterprise zone, which is a world-class area for business. I will focus my comments on my constituency—Three Rivers district council is the main council area there—where we have seen business closures outpace new openings since July 2020. My local high streets in Rickmansworth, Chorleywood and South Oxhey are visibly suffering, with shuttered shops, rising costs and dwindling support. Historically, those high streets never had vacancies. As a former retailer, I am increasingly concerned about the volatility in our high streets. Whichever side of the House we are on, if we do not fix this problem, we will leave a poor legacy. The small businesses that I speak to say that they feel abandoned by the Government. They are facing high energy bills and rent, and poor footfall. Part of that—things like parking charges and on-street parking—is not the Government’s responsibility but down to decisions made by Lib Dem local councils. I continue to have dialogue with those councils to ensure that high streets like Kings Langley’s can survive during these difficult economic times. On an international basis, we need to recognise that a lot of wealth creators are leaving our country. Many years ago, I read a book called “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand, and I did not think at the time that it would have such an influence on my life. As many hon. Members will know, I was not politically active at school or university, so I never thought or dreamed of being in this place—let alone aimed to be here—at this stage of my life, but all of us come to this place with life experience and a journey, and part of that for me has been that Ayn Rand book. My overriding memory from that book was that, if the Government do not support wealth creators, those people will find a way to leave, to the detriment of the rest of society.
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Business and the Economy
According to a New World Wealth report, 9,500 millionaires left the United Kingdom in 2024: the highest outflow in recent memory. [Interruption.] Is the hon. Member for Earley and Woodley (Yuan Yang) looking to intervene?
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Business and the Economy
I am conscious that the hon. Member was a journalist for the Financial Times, so she will know the data source better than I do. I am not an economist and have never claimed to be—I have never claimed to be a lawyer, either. I come from a small business background and have local government experience. When I speak to people in my own limited social circle who are employers—people who I hope will inspire the next generation—I hear that a lot are looking to leave these shores. That causes me massive concern. Although our parliamentary system means that parties come and go, we rely on such businesses to grow, succeed and expand. I am a second-generation Indian. When my parents came across in the 1970s, they had the aspiration and hope that, by being willing to work hard and being lucky enough to be in the right place and the right industry at the right time, the state would not intervene. I do not see that type of ambition now. I do not wish to get party political; it is an issue that we all need to be concerned about. Governments of all stripes will spend taxpayers’ money, but it is well worth remembering that Governments have no money. That money comes out of the pockets of people who pay taxes, and we need to acknowledge that wealth creators pay a lot more tax than other parts of society. We live in a global world, and if those people choose to leave, it will mean that the Treasury—I look at the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury in his place—will not have the benefit of income in its coffers to spend on things that are vital to us and to our communities. Business confidence was mentioned earlier. We need to recognise that there is significant volatility, both around aspiration and potential capital expenditure for small and large businesses. Businesses need certainty about the direction of travel.
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Business and the Economy
I will let the new Member make his political point. The only thing I will say in response is that in my first two years in Parliament, we dealt with a global pandemic, in which we spent more than £400 billion of taxpayers’ money. When I was elected in December 2019, as part of an 80-seat majority, we were looking to reform our tax base and the way we financed our Government spending, but we did not have that opportunity. With the Government’s current majority, I hope that they are ambitious. Other Members have spoken about business rates reform. It is massively outdated to look at businesses based on bricks and mortar, and if I were a furniture retailer today, I would have an online presence only. However, that would mean that the vibrancy of our high streets would be lost, because they would end up with only bookmakers, hairdressers, charity shops and coffee shops. There is nothing wrong with those, but the high streets that I support and am honoured to be the Member of Parliament for offer significant diversity; we have not yet spoken about banking and the move away from on-street branches, but we are trying to deal with that issue locally through places such as post offices becoming banking hubs. There was a reference earlier to HMRC—and my remarks in this regard are a pitch to the Minister. From my limited experience over the years, HMRC has become increasingly aggressive and not necessarily fair, including in regard to interest rates. If an employer or business makes an overpayment, the interest rate that they receive is different from that which HMRC takes. We should not regard businesses as a cash cow if they have done nothing wrong. I will leave that with the Minister. Further, I would prefer HMRC not to be an arm’s length body; I would be willing at least to investigate whether ministerial control and oversight was practical, on the full understanding that civil servants need to have the freedom to raise and collect revenue. In Hertfordshire, the median weekly wage is £851, which is higher than the UK average of £728. However, with inflation rising—we heard overnight that it is now at 3.5%—and the rising cost of living, people are feeling poorer, which means that they are spending less on our high streets and are less likely to use capital expenditure on their homes, on a new car or on whatever else they would have spent it on if they felt more flush with cash.
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Business and the Economy
That is an excellent point. I have a plea to Government. Perversely, reducing tax rates sometimes increases the amount of money received in the coffers. I say that as a retailer. When VAT was reduced to 15%, it allowed me the certainty to expand our furniture business; we secured another outlet, employed more people and paid more business rates. In effect, it was a win-win for both the state and for our small business. We have spoken about NICs, but the Employment Rights Bill also causes me massive concerns. I would now think twice about the risks that I would have taken hiring a 16 to 18-year-old, because it would cost me the same to employ someone in their 30s or 40s as to employ a first-jobber. There is a ticking time bomb for people leaving university or college in the summer. Where are they going to work? We have spoken about the 100,000 fewer jobs over the last 12 months; that will only get worse when those people finish their degrees, A-levels, BTECs and so on, and cannot get into employment. That is going to affect the Minister’s workings. We on the Conservative Benches will be fully supportive of the Government if they do the right thing. Our role in this place is to be critical friends because we all want—
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Business and the Economy
Well, I have been listening; I spend a lot of time in the Chamber. Yes, there is an element of Punch and Judy, but the reality is that there are 650 of us here who want great legislation to support our communities and make sure that people can get on with their daily lives without the burden of having to think about legislation. They want us to get on with it on their behalf. On tax rises, we have seen the leak of the Deputy Prime Minister’s letter to the Chancellor. I remain concerned that any ambition to increase taxes is another death by a thousand cuts for our small businesses. We need certainty and support from this Government, saying to people, “Go and be ambitious.” If people are risk-averse, there will be a structural problem for us on our high streets and for our small businesses. That means that we will not create the world’s next unicorn because those ambitious people will already have left our country to generate their income in a better financial climate, typically in the middle east or other parts of Europe.
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Business and the Economy
I have always thought that business rates were totally outdated. They generate a significant amount of money for the Treasury, so it is resistant to reform without knowing for certain how it will fill that significant black hole. We have not spoken about hospices and the effects of NICs increases on the charity sector. Others have spoken about the winter fuel allowance. All these things affect our most vulnerable individuals, and the community groups and charities that fill a massive void that the state or the private individual do not. My worry, which is increasing, is that we are doing things that will have unintended but significant consequences. We chose this subject for debate to ensure that the Government heard loud and clear from across the House that where they do the right thing, we will support them, and where they need to adjust their direction of travel—I will not say “U-turn”—we will support them. It benefits no one, and provides no benefit to our communities, if we just chuck political grenades. I will end my remarks on the loss of business confidence. Small businesses are closing, investors are leaving, inflation is rising and confidence is collapsing. I know that there is a direct lack of business experience on the Treasury Bench, but that is neither here nor there. I know that there are various economists, think-tankers and so on in the Minister’s party, but I urge him to listen to those who run businesses of whatever shape or size, because that life experience brings them value in this place. My hon. Friend the Member for Broadland and Fakenham (Jerome Mayhew) created a business that employs 1,000 people. That is real life experience; he knows how the Government’s decisions would have influenced the projections and ambitions of his business. I know from my continuing conversations with businesses that they are looking to shrink and be secure rather than expand and be ambitious. That is not what the UK is about; we are outward-looking and globally ambitious. I wish the Government success in getting to that point.
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Immigration
Will the hon. Member give way?
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Immigration
The hon. Member just referred to the Government as equivalent to the fire brigade turning up to put out a fire. Given the Government’s track record since coming into office, does he agree that it would be fair to say that they brought petroleum to put out the fire, not water?
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Immigration
It does not matter how many times the Prime Minister repeats and repeats his vacuous election slogan of “smash the gangs”, there is no plan to do it, it is not happening and nobody out there believes him. The Government had an opportunity when they came to office. The Rwanda scheme was on the brink of becoming operational, which would have given them one of the most robust deterrents in Europe. As we saw in Australia, when a scheme similar to Rwanda was set up in the Pacific, it only had to deport the first few thousand and it had the impact of largely stopping the boats arriving—but in a callous, irresponsible and purely political move, Labour cancelled the Rwanda scheme. It is a political calculation that the Government have got entirely wrong, as without a deterrent everything else they announce or say is just words. The Government have had nearly a year to show us they had more up their sleeve on immigration than buzzwords and crocodile-tear outrage about the scheme—so, how is that going? Since the election, almost 36,000 illegal immigrants crossed the channel, a 30% increase on the same period 12 months prior. To date, 2025 has been the worst ever year for small boat crossings, with around 12,000 arrivals. That surge in numbers has led to Labour already breaking its manifesto promise to end the use of asylum hotels. Figures show that on 31 December 2024, there were 8,000 more people in asylum hotels than when the Conservatives left office. The Government have been clutching at straws for good news. They started off by holding a press conference to celebrate the arrest of one member of just one gang—out of the thousands of criminals involved in the illegal immigration trade—to show they were smashing the gangs. If that was not enough of a laughable spectacle in its own right, the investigation had mainly been undertaken before they came to office and such arrests are a matter of course anyway. More recently, they have switched to triumphantly claiming 24,000 deportations. Time and again, even at Prime Minister’s questions today, the Prime Minister has refused to outline how many of those are just routine and voluntary removals, rather than enforced deportations of people who have illegally crossed the channel.
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Immigration
I will give way to the hon. Member from Lancashire.
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Immigration
It did not start. The scheme was not even operational. That is like buying a car, waiting until it gets to the showroom and then claiming that only the showroom manager is driving it, so it is not worth the money. It is a ridiculous thing to say. We hear vacuous slogans, empty words—quite apt—cooked up stats and a Prime Minister unable to answer the most basic of questions; he is now not only reduced to begging other countries to give him options to provide a safe country to deport to, but he is publicly getting slapped down by the leaders he is asking. The return hubs he is now so desperately trying to set up are only a watered-down version of the Rwanda scheme. Even more worryingly, not only have they shot themselves in the foot by cancelling Rwanda; in launching their new border security Bill, they have not realised that without a deterrent it is all just words.
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Immigration
The hon. Member would have to ask my right hon. Friend. The only tangible elements of the Bill are: a Border Security Commander with no powers other than writing a report and setting some objectives; and new powers to confiscate phones from people who arrive illegally, missing the fact that most of the them discard their phones to hide their identity anyway. Notably, the Bill repeals lots of the Illegal Migration Act 2023, lifting the requirement for the Government to remove people who arrive here illegally and allowing illegal migrants a path to citizenship. Let us be clear: there should be no route to citizenship for anyone who arrives in this country illegally. France is a safe country, and to get to France—let alone the UK—people will have had to pass through many other safe countries. Everyone who arrives in small boats across the channel or in lorries from the continent is arriving from a safe country and should therefore qualify for immediate deportation. These are not asylum claims; it is illegal immigration. As much as I would like to take up all the time in this debate—and more—talking about the ludicrously weak and counterproductive policies of this Government, by the time I finished, many more small boats would have crossed the channel. I would rather spare the Minister the time, and hope the Government spend it instead correcting some of their mistakes. We have outlined some provisions in our Bill that would help, including: disapplying the Human Rights Act from immigration matters; a requirement to deport all foreign criminals regardless of human rights claims; the introduction of a scientific age assessment technique when an illegal immigrant is trying to pretend they are over 18; a requirement to impose visa sanctions on countries that do not take back their own citizens; and increasing the period to qualify for indefinite leave to remain from five years to 10. I live in hope, though—for the sake of our national security, the confidence of the British public in our immigration system, and to reduce the strain on our public services—that the Prime Minister picks up the phone to his opposite number in Rwanda, apologises for the disrespectful way he treated their country and begs to get the deal back on the table. However, I think it will take a few more years of repeating empty slogans, dodging difficult questions, and holding press conferences every time there is an arrest of a single person out of the thousands involved in the illegal immigration trade, before the Prime Minister realises that instead of smashing the gangs, he is making everything worse, and that it is time to pick up the phone to Rwanda again.