Budget: Pre-announcement of Provisions

Before we come to the urgent question, I have a short statement to make. I have repeatedly stated in the clearest possible terms that important announcements should be made by the Government first in this House rather than outside it. I did so again yesterday in relation to the briefings issued to the media about the Budget. I was therefore disappointed to see more stories in the media today with apparently very well-briefed information about what will be in tomorrow’s Budget. The Government do not just have to take my word for this; their own ministerial code says:

“When Parliament is in session, the most important announcements of Government policy should be made in the first instance, in Parliament.”—

in this House.

As I said yesterday, I do not have to give a reason for my decisions about urgent question applications, but in this case I want the House, and especially the Government, to be clear that if the Government continue to treat this House in this discourteous manner, I will do everything in my power to ensure that Ministers are called here at the earliest opportunity to explain themselves. I personally have nothing against the Minister and I feel sorry for the person who has to answer at the Dispatch Box but, once again, this House will not be taken for granted. It is not right for everybody else to be briefed. It is not more important to go on the news in the morning; it is more important to come here. Let us get the message across that these elected Members represent this United Kingdom. It is not done through Sky TV.

(Urgent Question): To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer for a statement on the details of all the provisions in the upcoming Budget that have been made public in advance of the Chancellor’s statement.

Mr Speaker, I have the deepest respect for you, this House and all its processes. It is a pleasure to be with you this afternoon. The ability of Parliament to scrutinise the Government, including the Budget, is clearly crucial, which is why we have five days of parliamentary debate ahead of us this week and next, and it is why my right hon. Friend the Chancellor will, in addition, be appearing before two Select Committees of this House next week.

Tomorrow my right hon. Friend will announce a Budget that delivers a stronger economy for the British people, invests in public services and levelling up, and delivers on growth and jobs with a pay rise for 7 million people— 5 million in the public sector and 2 million through an increase in the national living wage.

I will briefly summarise the headline announcements we have already made on the Budget, with the caveat that the bulk of the detail of the Budget will be delivered by the Chancellor himself at this Dispatch Box tomorrow. Importantly, that includes all market-sensitive information. Part of the Government’s objective in trailing specific aspects of the Budget in advance is to help communicate to the public what we are doing with their hard-earned money, because we believe there is merit in clear and accurate information.

I now turn briefly to just a few of the measures we have announced: an increase in the national living wage from £8.91 to £9.50 an hour, meaning an extra £1,000 a year for a full-time worker; £3 billion-worth of investment to build a high-wage, high-skill economy, with a doubling of investment in 16 to 19-year-olds and a quadrupling of the number of skills boot camps; and a multibillion-pound overhaul of local transport to help level up communities across England, with transport settlements for city regions increased to £5.7 billion and allocated directly to cities. As part of the spending review, there is a £5.9 billion deal for the NHS to tackle the backlog of non-emergency procedures and to modernise digital technology, with at least 100 community diagnostic centres to help clear most test backlogs by the end of this Parliament.

Thank you for granting this urgent question, Mr Speaker.

We face an urgent cost of living crisis. Prices are up in our shops, at our petrol pumps and on our heating bills. Families and businesses are waiting and hoping for the Chancellor to take the action that they and our country desperately need. He has not even delivered his Budget yet and it is already falling apart. In recent days, we have read thousands of words about what he plans to do, but the silence is deafening on the soaring bills and rising prices facing families and businesses.

I have five questions for the Chief Secretary to the Treasury today, and I ask him to answer them clearly and simply, not through a press release but to this House. First, will he properly justify withholding from Parliament decisions that he and his colleagues have detailed in the press?

Secondly, the right hon. Gentleman just stood at the Dispatch Box and said that he believes in clear and accurate information. On that basis, will he confirm he understands that, for a full-time worker on the minimum wage in receipt of universal credit, a rise to £9.50 an hour will place far less than an extra £1,000 in their pocket?

Thirdly, will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that the public sector pay rises that Ministers told newspapers about yesterday will be real-terms pay rises, as the Under- Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), was unable to do so on the telly this morning?

Fourthly, will the Chief Secretary to the Treasury follow Labour’s lead and confirm today, now he is with us, that he will be cutting VAT on domestic heating bills to 0% for six months? Finally, will he back Britain’s high-street firms and freeze business rates now and replace them with a better system fast?

The right hon. Gentleman can tell the newspapers; it is time for him to tell this House.

It is important that we consider all the measures that have been trailed in the round. It is clear that the wider announcements that have been made are entirely accurate. The national living wage is to rise by £1,000 a year, which will take the benefit for a full-time worker on the national living wage to £5,000 since 2016. That is a substantial increase. It beggars belief that the Labour party can stand there and say that a 6.6% increase in the national living wage is somehow not enough. It needs to be considered in conjunction with all the other announcements that have been made, including the £500 million household support fund, the energy price cap and all the action that we have taken to freeze fuel duty and to keep bills low. We are acutely conscious of the pressures that face households and we take action to modify them.

On public sector pay, which the hon. Lady asked about, I am delighted that we will be returning to the normal processes that adjust public sector pay in the light of all the pressures that exist. It will be for the relevant pay review bodies to discuss that, in conjunction with the Government, in the normal way. I am not going to pre- empt that work, but we will work closely with them to make sure that what is announced is right. The Chancellor will have further details on that in his speech.

On the cost of energy, the energy price cap is protecting households, with up to £100 a year off their bills. That is the right thing to do. We all recognise that that is a priority for all our constituents.

On business rates, we will get the upshot of the fundamental review of how we can get the future of business rates right. The Labour party has committed to abolishing business rates, without any clear idea of how it would fund that. Indeed, the disconnect between what the Labour party has committed to and what it has actually identified the funding for is somewhere in the region of £400 billion of commitments with £5 billion of savings to pay for them. That is not a responsible way to run the economy.

This is not the first Government who have wanted more than one day’s news out of a Budget, but the right way to do it is for all Ministers to observe complete Budget secrecy, for the Chancellor to announce the tax changes and the block totals on spending and then, in the days that follow, for Cabinet Ministers to come to the House to announce the detailed spending plans and subject them to our scrutiny. If that was right for all previous Governments, why is it not right for this one?

I thank my right hon. Friend for his question, and I completely share his assessment of the importance of this House, of which both the Chancellor and I are acutely aware. In 2013, the then Chancellor, George Osborne, asked the permanent secretary for Her Majesty’s Treasury to conduct a review of the practice of the release of Budget information under embargo on Budget day, and he set out a series of recommendations. His central conclusion was that the Treasury should introduce

“a ban on the pre-release of the core of the Budget…that is: the economic and fiscal projections, the fiscal judgement and individual tax rates, reliefs and allowances.”

We have observed that stricture in full and I am obviously totally committed to continuing to do that.

That is a matter of judgment.

I do not know whether to congratulate the Minister on his promotion, as he has come here to give us the Budget a day early. What he has not given this House is an apology. He should not be announcing things on Twitter; we should be waiting for the Budget to see the full detail. This has been going on since September—it is not new. There have been daily announcements drip-feeding the entire Budget ahead of time. Of course, the Government hold all the cards, along with the Office for Budget Responsibility, because we cannot tell what the detail actually means. For Scotland, we cannot tell what the Barnett consequentials —if, indeed, there are any—will be.

We know what is going to be in the Budget speech and we know what is not going to be in it, because the Government have not done things such as carbon capture and storage in Scotland. Of course, none of it is what the Government and the Chancellor should be doing in the Budget speech. They should be reinstating the £20 universal credit cut; scrapping the national insurance tax on jobs; tackling the spiralling cost of living crisis; and supporting hospitality and tourism with a VAT cut to see them through the winter months and into next year.

If the Government cannot be responsible with the powers that they hold and if they cannot be trusted to give us the actual truth on Budget day tomorrow, all the financial powers—I call for this again—should be given to the Scottish Parliament so that we can make the decisions that are right for the people of Scotland.

I thank the hon. Lady for her remarks. I think that we are much stronger as one United Kingdom. The OECD has reaffirmed that we are expected to have the fastest growth in the G7 both this year and next and that is something that we are achieving as one country together. She asked about the Barnett consequentials. Those will be set out very clearly in the Budget tomorrow. (Interruption.) I can assure her that, of course, we consider this very closely and we will be in a position to give good news for Scotland as part of a strong United Kingdom tomorrow. I had productive conversations about the future of the fiscal framework with the Scottish Finance Minister, Kate Forbes, just last week. I can commit that I will be speaking to her in accordance with the usual Budget conventions tomorrow morning, ahead of the statement.

I am sure that my right hon. Friend accepts that the rabbit may be out of the hat. So if the Chancellor is still looking for a fluffy bunny to present on Budget day, may I advise that we make a huge announcement about the Government’s levelling-up fund? That would be welcomed by communities across the north of England and demonstrate our Government’s commitment to make sure that we level up the peoples of the north.

I thank my right hon. Friend for his question. He is absolutely right that levelling up is a core theme of this Government. It is something of which I am very proud, as a north-eastern MP, to have the chance to help deliver, and it is going to be one of the golden threads of the Budget and spending review tomorrow. I wish that I could start plucking rabbits out of the hat for him now, but he will have to wait just a few more hours to get some, hopefully, very welcome news.

Sky TV tomorrow.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question. It has taken me nearly 30 years, but I now find that I agree with the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) in his question. This is serious. As an Opposition, we cannot look in detail at the slew—the blizzard—of Budget announcements that have been going on week after week, because we do not have the OBR report and we do not have the detail. This is treating parliamentary democracy with utter contempt and the Minister should be completely ashamed of himself. He should have come to this House and apologised. His boss should have come to this House and apologised.

I thank the hon. Lady for her points. Clearly, as a former Treasury Minister herself, she would never have engaged in any activity of this kind. The point is that there is absolutely no question of our commitment to observing all the proprieties, reflecting the Macpherson review, which was an internal review conducted by Sir Nicholas, the then permanent secretary, to work out what was sensible in advance of the Budget. We have not commented on any of the substantive tax measures and there will be a raft of full information in both the Budget documents and the documents provided by the OBR, which obviously provides a level of detail that the last Labour Government never provided in terms of their equivalent events.

There are two sides to this coin. The first is the Government broadcasting without first letting us know. The other is the information that they are trying to keep from us. Why was the leaked information on the substantial costs of winter plan B marked “Not for publication”? What are the Government trying to hide? Why are they frightened of our scrutiny?

I thank my right hon. Friend for his question. I will not comment on leaks—[Laughter.] The absolute bottom line is that we are, of course, committed to plan A, and there is no question but that he will find that plan A remains the resolute conviction of both this Government and, I believe, this House in terms of how we can most sensibly take the country through the winter ahead. We are not moving to plan B. We are committed to plan A. He should be reassured that we want to keep our economy and society open as we move through the challenges of the weeks and months ahead.