Working People’s Finances: Government Policy — House of Commons, 2021-09-21
Topic: Macroeconomics
Aaron Stuart Bell (Conservative, Centre-right): Like my hon. Friend, I have the honour of representing a former mining area, and it is so important that we give our areas the hope, the skills, the jobs and the future they need. So much public money is coming into places such as Newcastle-under-Lyme, but in the long term we will need the private sector to sustain our economy, which we can do by using the pump-priming of the towns fund and the future high streets fund—we have got money from that—to grow our local economy to support people. We can do that by paying people higher wages, and by giving them better skills they can earn those higher wages. He is absolutely right The Government have a plan for jobs, but where is the Opposition’s plan? We did not hear one from the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson). Labour must address the fiscal reality; it cannot wish it away. We spent £400 billion in extraordinary support during the pandemic. We now have a £300 billion deficit—nearly 15% of GDP—but we were able to put that support on the table only because previous Conservative Governments accepted that we have to live within our means and get the deficit down when we can. We dealt with Labour’s deficit and we will now have to deal with the deficit that is the legacy of the pandemic As the Chief Secretary to the Treasury—I welcome him back to his rightful place at the Dispatch Box—said, the Opposition do not seem to want to accept any of that. They voted against extra money for the NHS, which I find astonishing. They say that we should put the tax elsewhere, but they voted against our increase to corporation tax. They also voted against freezing income tax thresholds, which was not a popular decision but a necessary one in the face of the fiscal realities. They also voted against the reduction in the international aid budget. Again, we breached the manifesto on that, but in the extraordinary economic circumstances we are in, I believe it is the right thing to do Labour Members want more spending and they want no tax rises in the face of an unprecedented, enormous deficit. I believe that that is economically incoherent, and it takes the British people for fools. They tried that once before in the face of an enormous deficit during the 2010 to 2015 Parliament, and I have to tell them that it did not work out well for them at the next election. I am reminded by today’s news that they also took the opportunity during that Parliament to change the way they elect their leader. They are trying to do that again now, and that really did not work out well for them, so they really should be very careful what they wish for. In conclusion, the reason why Government economic policy is working and is in the interests of working people is that it is really all about jobs. Conservative Members all believe that jobs and work are the best way out of poverty. There are more jobs, more people helped into jobs, more training within jobs, including the apprenticeships I talked about earlier—[Interruption]—with up to £3,000, as my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew) says. There is our lifetime skills guarantee for those who are in the wrong job and want to change jobs, and we have also put an end to unlimited immigration, protecting our citizens from the race to the bottom in wages that, sadly, we have seen so often. The Labour party wants us to rejoin the EU, reopen those borders and force wages back down again From the plan for jobs to the increase in the national living wage, I firmly believe that this Government are putting those on lower incomes at the heart of our economic policies and at the heart of our economic planning, and it will be a brighter future for all of us.