Engagements

Q1. If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 18 May.

I know that Members across the House will want to join me in offering our best wishes to Rangers for this evening’s match in Seville. This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others, and in addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.

The latest “State of Ageing” report reveals that last year in this country, 9,000 people over the age of 60 died because their homes were too cold. Will the Prime Minister give a guarantee that that figure will be lower, not higher, this time next year?

I think everybody has every sympathy with people who are facing difficulties with the cost of heating. That is why the Government have stepped up with an extra £9.1 billion in addition to what we are doing with the cold weather payments and the warm home allowance, and we will continue to support people throughout the aftershocks of covid, just as we did throughout the pandemic.

Q2. Figures released from the Department for Education show that last year, once again, Lib Dem-run Sutton Council became the highest rejecter of children applying for education, health and care assessments in the country. Nearly half the children were rejected, compared with the national average of just 23%. Can the Prime Minister outline how the special educational needs and disability review will help children with special educational needs and their families to get access to the education that they deserve?

Yes, indeed. I thank my hon. Friend very much for his campaign, and he is completely right. That is why we have a SEND review, and we will ensure that SEND children and young people can get access to the right support at the right place and at the right time across the country.

We now come to the Leader of the Opposition, Keir Starmer.

I, too, send my best wishes to Rangers. It has been quite an extraordinary story for that football club over the last few years.

A one-off tax on huge oil and gas profits would raise billions of pounds and cut energy bills across the country. The Chancellor rightly says there are two camps on this: you are either for it or you are against it. But in which camp does the Chancellor put himself? He says neither. Well, I am in favour of it. This is the question for the Prime Minister: is he for it, is he against it or is he sitting on the fence like his Chancellor?

I remind the House that the right hon. and learned Gentleman struggled to define what a woman is. If he cannot make up his mind on that point, heaven help us. This Government are not, in principle, in favour of higher taxation; of course not. Labour loves it. They love putting up taxes. Dogs bark, cats miaow and Labour puts up taxes. What we want to do is take a sensible approach, governed by the impact on investment and jobs. That is the test of a strong economy, and it is by having a strong economy that we will be able to look after people, as we did during covid and as we will in the aftershocks of covid. I am proud to say it was revealed this week that unemployment has come down to the lowest level since 1974. I do not know how old he was, but I was 10 years old.

Hang on; last week the Prime Minister said he will have a look at the idea, and yesterday he voted against it. Anyone picking up the papers today would think the Government are for it, and now he says he is against it again. Clear as mud. To be fair, it is not like the rest of the Cabinet know what they think, either. On the same day, the Chancellor said it was something he is looking at and the Justice Secretary said it would be “disastrous.” The Business Secretary called it a “bad idea,” but he also said he would consider a Spanish-style windfall tax. One minute they are ruling it in, and the next they are ruling it out. When will the Prime Minister stop the hokey-cokey and just back Labour’s plan for a windfall tax to cut household bills?

Labour’s plan, always and everywhere, is to raise taxes on business. I remember the right hon. and learned Gentleman campaigning in 2019 on the biggest taxes for business that this country has ever seen. That is their instinct. This country and the world face problems with the cost of energy, driven partly by covid and partly by Putin’s war of choice in Ukraine. We always knew there would be a short-term cost in weening ourselves off Putin’s hydrocarbons and in sanctioning the Russian economy. Everybody in this House voted for those sanctions. We knew it would be tough, but giving in and not sticking the course would ultimately be a far greater economic risk. Of course we will look at all the measures we need to take to get people through to the other side, but the only reason we can do that is because we took the tough decisions that were necessary during the pandemic, which would not have been possible if we had listened to the right hon. and learned Gentleman.

He just doesn’t get it, does he? He doesn’t actually understand what working families are going through in this country. They are struggling with how they are going to pay their bills. While he dithers, British households are slapped with an extra £53 million on their energy bills every single day. Meanwhile, every single day, North sea oil and gas giants rake in £32 million in unexpected profits. Does he not see that, every single day he delays his inevitable U-turn—he is going to do it—he is choosing to let people struggle when they do not need to?

The right hon. and learned Gentleman says that this Government have no sympathy for people who are struggling and working. Let me tell him what we are already doing. We are already spending £22 billion. We are already helping people with the cost of living in any way that we can, but the reason why we can do that is that we took the tough decisions to get this country through covid, to make sure that we came out of lockdown in the way that was necessary, and to have a strong economy with robust employment growth. We will continue—[Interruption.] He talks about cutting taxes. In July, we will have the biggest tax cut for 10 years: £330 in cuts, on average, for 30 million people who are paying national insurance contributions. The reason why we can do that is that we have a strong and robust economy. I am going to look at all measures in future to support our people—of course I am—but the only reason why we can do that, and why our companies are in such robust health, is because of the decisions this Government have taken.

The Prime Minister is still pretending the economy is booming. He still has his head in the sand, in the middle of an economic crisis. He keeps saying that more help is coming, but we have heard it all before. On 13 May, he stood there and said,

“We will do more right now.”

A week has passed, and there has been nothing. On 19 April, he stood there and said:

“we will do more as soon as we can”.—[Official Report, 19 April 2022; Vol. 712, c. 60.]

A month has passed, and still nothing. The Chancellor said, “Wait until the autumn.” At least he is honest that the plan is to do nothing. Does the Prime Minister not realise that working people across the country cannot afford to wait while he vacillates? It is time to make his mind up.

I will tell the right hon. and learned Gentleman what has happened in the past month. We have got 300,000 more people off welfare and into work, on our Way to Work programme. It is because we get people into work that those families, those people, are £6,000 a year better off. It is by getting people into work that we fix the long-term problems of this economy. His answer, in addition to putting up taxes, is to borrow more—we heard it from the shadow Chancellor this morning. She says she wants to borrow almost another £30 billion; that is what she says. Do Members know what that means? It means more pressure on interest rates. It means pressure on mortgages. It means pressure on every family—on every man, woman and child—in this country. That is Labour economic policy. That is why there has never been a Labour Government who left office with unemployment lower than when they came in—that is the reality.

On the day when inflation went to 9%—the highest rate for 40 years—the least the watching public can expect is a Prime Minister who concentrates on the cost of living crisis. Clearly, he just cannot make his mind up, so let us have a look at who is for this and who is against it. On one side, we have the chair of Tesco; the chair of John Lewis; the Chair of the Treasury Committee; the Chair of the Education Committee; Lord Hague; and Lord Browne, the old chief executive officer of BP. They all support a windfall tax. Even the current boss of BP says a windfall tax would not discourage investment. On the other side, we have the right hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg), who, when he is not sticking notes on people’s desks like some overgrown prefect, is dead set against it. When is the Prime Minister finally going to get a grip, stand up for the people of Britain and get on the right side of the argument?

Nothing could be more transparent from this exchange than Labour’s lust to raise taxes on business. We do not relish it. We do not want to do it. Of course we do not want to do it; we believe in jobs, in investment and in growth. As it happens, the oil companies concerned are on track to invest about £70 billion into our economy over the next few years, and they are already taxed at a rate of 40%. What we want to see is investment in the long-term energy provision of our country; Labour has signally failed to do this, cancelling our nuclear power investment. The people suffering from high energy prices in this country today have previous Labour Governments to blame for that mistake. Of course we will look at all sensible measures, but we will be driven by considerations of growth, investment and employment. I just remind the House that unemployment has now hit a record low—or for 50 years, I should say—and half a million more people are now in payroll employment than before the pandemic began.

So the Prime Minister is on the side of excess profits for oil and gas companies; we are on the side of working people—there you have it. He clearly does not like me pushing him on this, but the reason why I keep coming back to this subject, and why it is so frustrating that he has not acted, is that so many people are living through this nightmare and feel totally abandoned by their Government.

This week, I spoke to Phoenix Halliwell. A rare kidney condition means that Phoenix has to do dialysis from home, from 10 pm to 7 am, five days a week, just so he can take his daughter Rosie to school. His dialysis is life-saving, so he cannot turn it off. Even though his wife, who is a midwife in the NHS, works extra shifts, during the winter they had to turn their central heating off, and Phoenix skips meals to make ends meet, but their energy bill has still doubled. Phoenix says he feels like he is being “priced out of existence.” And it is not just him: millions of our disabled, elderly and vulnerable neighbours are at the sharp end of this crisis. They simply cannot afford to live with dignity.

The decisions we make here matter. The cost of indecision is enormous. People across the country need action now. The plans are already there; Prime Minister, stop the delay and work with us to put them in place. Do it for households that face bills they cannot afford, and do it for Phoenix, who simply cannot afford to wait.