Parliament's party history for this member: Labour ( – present).
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Councils have spent considerable time and resources building the case for local government reorganisation, including by producing robust financial analysis, housing data, work on the social care impact and work on the impact on travel-to-work areas. Today’s announcement raises serious questions for any future timetable. Will the Minister confirm if councils are expected to go back to the drawing board and negotiate with surrounding councils on new boundaries? If so, how can they be expected to do that by January while meaningfully consulting their residents?
I welcome many of the measures in the Budget: policies to lower energy bills and the price of a food shop, support for our high streets, the assurance that every penny of the mineworkers’ pension scheme surplus will go to former miners, and our continued commitment to supporting Ukraine’s defences. The Government are absolutely right to double the fund to end rough sleeping, and the extra £1.5 billion for 10,000 social and affordable homes is very welcome.
I am glad that the Government are tackling this issue with such ambition. However, if we are to reverse 40 years of neo-liberalism, we must apply that same ambition to every area where people are struggling. We have the deepest poverty levels in 30 years. Rents and mortgages, food prices and bills are spiralling, and wages simply are not keeping pace. Despite the increase in funding in recent years, public services are still under severe pressure. We cannot expect people to endure this fall in living standards, and to keep going without, while the super-rich get richer.
I recognise that the Government are in a difficult position as a result of the global economy, but it is their job to shield people from the shocks, and to build stronger protections for the future. That is why we must be bolder in taxing wealth. We could fairly raise billions of pounds to fund our public services, strengthen social security and renationalise essentials, such as water and energy.
I welcome measures to tax banks and raise property income tax, but we must go further and take impactful measures, such as a reform of capital gains tax. The current system encourages people to convert labour income into capital gains, hoard wealth and leave the UK without paying their fair share. This measure could raise £20 billion a year—enough to fund a national care service. We could <span id="531" class="column-number" data-column-number="531"></span>expand national insurance contributions to cover investment income and partnerships. That could raise £6 billion a year, which could fund higher local housing allowance rates. We could replace council tax and stamp duty with a proportional property tax, which could raise £5.6 billion a year and leave most people better off. And, of course, we could introduce an annual wealth tax at 2% for individuals who have wealth of over £10 million; that could raise £24 billion a year.
As the Chancellor said, we need fresh hope for the future, but hope cannot come from words alone. We cannot paper over the cracks of a rigged economic system. It is this Labour Government’s duty to fundamentally transform our economy, so that it is just and resilient, and shifts wealth and power back to working-class people.
The Government claim that approving Jackdaw will help fund clean energy—making them, if you like, both the arsonist and the firefighter. The North sea is a declining basin, though, meaning that it is a rapidly shrinking tax base. The Office for Budget Responsibility expects the North sea to provide just £100 million in tax per year by 2030. At that rate, the oil and gas sector would take 20 years to match the Government’s injection into the energy wealth fund today, so does the Minister see that approving Jackdaw is a false economy?
I very much welcome the Minister’s statement, and I am glad that the Prime Minister has already committed to a national care service that is free at the point of use—a vital principle that mirrors our NHS. Does the Minister agree that one of the key problems in our current system is our reliance on private providers? Will she explore how we can make the new national care service publicly run, with people who receive care, care workers and unpaid carers co-producing that system?
One major driver of the housing crisis has been the selling off of our council homes under Thatcher’s right-to-buy scheme. Not only has that greatly reduced the supply of social housing, exposing more people to higher rents and the insecurity of private renting, but we now know that it has indirectly inflated private rents by shifting low-income households into market-rate renting. That is why I welcome the Bill’s aims of protecting existing social housing stock and incentivising the building of more social rented homes. I also commend its commitment to provide greater social security and stability for social tenants who are victims and survivors of domestic abuse.
However, while the Bill turns over a new leaf in our housing policy, I am concerned that it does not go far enough on right to buy. New social homes will only be protected for 35 years, and existing tenants will wait seven more years to buy their homes at a discount, so we will still lose our social housing stock, just at a slower pace. The argument we often hear against removing right to buy from existing social housing is that it would be unfair to those hoping to buy their homes at a discount, but selling public assets to private individuals at a loss to the state is accelerating the housing crisis for all.
Since council homes began being sold off at a discount, the state has effectively given away an estimated £194 billion, and to add insult to injury, 41% of those homes are now <span id="1290" class="column-number" data-column-number="1290"></span>in the hands of private landlords. The Government rightly recognise that we need to replenish our social housing stock, so as well as a mass programme of council house building, we must help local authorities to recover former council homes through grants and a stronger right of first refusal policy. These measures will, in the long term, pay for themselves.
A typical private tenant spends over a third of their income on rent today, compared with only 10% in 1980, so we need more drastic measures to tackle the housing crisis, and that includes stabilising our social housing stock. We should be ending right to buy completely, as Wales and Scotland have, because every year delayed is another year that we fail the hundreds of thousands of people without a secure home, the over 170,000 children in England who are in temporary accommodation and, of course, the millions paying extortionate rents to their landlords.
My hon. Friend is making an incredibly emotional speech. I know, from the Nottingham maternity review, the harm and hurt that is caused when people with knowledge and involvement in institutional failures are allowed to dodge accountability and scrutiny. Does she agree that it is therefore vital there is no exemption from the duty of candour, including for the security services, and that campaigners, including our hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool West Derby (Ian Byrne), have been right to fight for so many years for a Hillsborough law that is worthy of the name and that can truly end cover-ups?
It is great to hear my right hon. Friend supporting schemes like Homes for Ukraine. The reason we do not see Ukrainians crossing the channel on small boats is because, rightly, we have a safe and legal route. Why not expand those safe and legal routes to places like Sudan and Eritrea, because obviously if an asylum claim comes from those countries, at the very least they should be fast-tracked? That would help to clear up the backlog, so would she support that?
There is little evidence that the Bill will do what it claims and fix the most serious issues in our asylum system. In fact, experts say that it will divert focus and resources to a system that is unfair, unsafe and unworkable. There are many problems in the Bill, but for the sake of time I will focus on the independent immigration appeals authority. The Government say that to tackle the backlog they will replace the tribunal system, which is made up of judges, with a new system of adjudicators, who are not legally qualified but who are given power and responsibility to make what are, in many cases, life and death decisions. The Government claim that they will be independent, but they are appointed by the chief executive, who is appointed by the Secretary of State. That undermines the independence of the judiciary and the separation of powers, which are key cornerstones of our democracy. The Law Society says that it risks
“more wrong decisions, more court challenges, higher costs and longer uncertainty.”
Poor Home Office decision making drives the appeals backlog. In the last financial year, 39% of appeals were granted, and more than 10,000 were withdrawn because the Home Office abandoned its initial decision. Rather than building new expensive bodies, the Government should invest in the existing system and get asylum decisions right the first time. The Government could <span id="706" class="column-number" data-column-number="706"></span>have brought forward a Bill containing evidence-based policies that would fix our broken asylum system—for example, a not-for-profit asylum accommodation system to improve living conditions and integration, genuinely safe routes that are not severely restricted and heavily capped, and fast tracking of obviously well-founded asylum cases such as those from war zones. Instead, I am ashamed to say that the Bill is a betrayal of our party’s values, and I cannot support it. I urge the Government to withdraw this Bill, and instead to work with sector organisations and experts to create an immigration and asylum system that is rooted in compassion, justice and human rights.
The interim report rightly recognises what disabled people have long been saying, which is that PIP is a broken system. What assurances can the Minister give that the recommendations of the final report will be grounded in disabled people’s right to social security, right to independent living and right to participate in society? Will disabled people and their organisations properly shape the next phase of the reforms, rather than merely being consulted on them?