Contributions
1,402 recent contributions in Hansard
HANSARDBudget: Press Briefings(Urgent Question): To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if she will make a statement on briefings to the press about the contents of the Budget.17 Nov 2025HANSARDTaxesI beg to move, That this House calls on the Government to control public expenditure in order to keep the promise made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the Confederation of…12 Nov 2025HANSARDTaxesI am surprised that the hon. Gentleman would follow up what was not the strongest first question with that. The Government are naive enough to think that by simply buying people…12 Nov 2025HANSARDTaxesThe hon. Gentleman’s question identifies the core of the fallacy of his Government’s approach, which is to assume that getting better outputs is all about spending ever more…12 Nov 2025HANSARDTaxesI agree. Of course, higher taxes are bearing down on living standards, but so is inflation. We have the highest level of inflation in the G7 and are forecast to have the highest…12 Nov 2025HANSARDTaxesMy right hon. Friend makes an extremely incisive and correct point. If a Government spend huge amounts of money, there is an opportunity cost to that and it comes through in…12 Nov 2025HANSARDTaxesTo be fair, I think the Prime Minister was referring to facial hair growth, rather than growth in the economy. They are distinctly different things.12 Nov 2025HANSARDTaxesMy right hon. Friend is entirely right. The conclusion that one must draw on the mess that this Government have made of our economy is that it has become brittle, fragile and…12 Nov 2025HANSARDTaxesThere were many great things that the previous Government did, not least creating employment as a job-making machine and, despite the Russia-Ukraine war, bringing inflation down…12 Nov 2025HANSARDTaxesMy hon. Friend is absolutely right. If we borrow more money, we pay more for that borrowing. Of course, that has fed through to inflation. We know that inflation this year,…12 Nov 2025HANSARDTaxesWe did, actually. We did arrest it. We made changes to the work capability assessment, which the OBR scored at £5 billion-worth of savings. The OBR also scored the fact that there…12 Nov 2025HANSARDTaxesI am glad the hon. Gentleman has raised my tenure at the Department for Work and Pensions, when I was the Secretary of State. I was very clear that we needed to arrest the rising…12 Nov 2025HANSARDTaxesMy hon. Friend absolutely gets to the core of it. This is an extraordinary point to have arrived at, but this Government, despite their majority, do not have the plan, political…12 Nov 2025HANSARDTaxesI am pleased that the hon. Gentleman has given me an opportunity to correct the record, because I know this has been spun by the Labour party. At a fringe meeting at the…12 Nov 2025HANSARDTaxesMy right hon. Friend makes an extremely valid point. I shall come to those matters shortly, because there are alternatives to what the Government have decided to do. It was this…12 Nov 2025HANSARDTaxesMadam Deputy Speaker, that is a great shame. The hon. Gentleman has not been here for any of the debate, but that does not mean that he might not have given the best possible…12 Nov 2025HANSARDTaxesIf the hon. Gentleman looks at absolute poverty after housing costs, he will find very significant reductions for children, pensioners and across the piece during the vast…12 Nov 2025HANSARDTaxesWell, he may or may not be—it remains to be seen. What all this ends up with, of course, is lost fiscal headroom. That is the story so far. We had a Budget last October with about…12 Nov 2025HANSARDTaxesMy hon. Friend is absolutely right. He will have heard the various quotations at the beginning of my contribution exactly to that effect. The motion on the Order Paper asks a…12 Nov 2025HANSARDTaxesIt was the Korean war—my right hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is the Chancellor’s choices that have led to this situation. She was the person who chose to put up taxes on…12 Nov 2025