James Murray – 2022 Speech on the Health and Social Care Levy (Repeal) Bill

The speech made by James Murray, the Labour MP for Ealing North, in the House of Commons on 11 October 2022.

Just over a year ago, Opposition Members stood in this Chamber urging the Government to drop their plans to hike national insurance contributions and to introduce a new levy on working people and their jobs. It was not just my Opposition colleagues and me making the case against this tax rise; the Government were warned by so many others, from the Federation of Small Businesses to the British Chambers of Commerce, the CBI and the TUC. Ministers were warned from all sides of the harm that their approach would cause. The Government were warned by their own Back Benchers. Ministers at the time even warned themselves. The tax information impact note on the tax rise was signed off by the Minister who took the original legislation through Parliament, and that note said:

“There may be an impact on family formation, stability or breakdown as individuals, who are currently just about managing financially, will see their disposable income reduce.”

In relation to businesses, it said:

“Behavioural effects are likely to be large, and these will include…business decisions around wage bills and recruitment.”

Yet the Government pressed ahead with the tax rise, supported in the Lobby by the current Prime Minister and the Chancellor. The Government kept supporting it until the then Foreign Secretary became Prime Minister and decided to perform a U-turn.

We welcome this U-turn, as it puts an end to a tax rise that we said was wrong from the very start. It is, of course, not the only U-turn that we have seen under this Prime Minister. Just last week the Government U-turned on their damaging and misguided plan to cut the top rate of tax for the very highest paid, so our current message to the Prime Minister and the Chancellor is to keep on U-turning.

James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)

Will the hon. Gentleman clarify something? Would he keep the social care cap and the spending on the backlog, and if so, given that he supports repeal, how would he fund that?

James Murray

The truth is that we are having this debate as part of a wider Government economic strategy that has caused economic chaos, and contains no plan for growth and no plan to fund public services. Even when we were discussing the original Bill last year, there was no plan for social care: there was no guarantee that a penny of the money would go into social care. So I will not take lectures from the hon. Gentleman.

James Cartlidge rose—

James Murray

I am going to make some progress. I may let the hon. Gentleman intervene again in a few moments.

As I was saying, right now our message to the Prime Minister and the Chancellor is to keep on U-turning. They need to U-turn on their whole disastrous approach to the economy, which the Chancellor set out just over two weeks ago. That Budget—in all but name—was the most destructive, unfair and irresponsible fiscal announcement in a generation.

The Prime Minister and the Chancellor should now U-turn on their decision to lift the cap on bankers’ bonuses. They should U-turn on their refusal to ask oil and gas giants to put some of their eye-watering excess profits towards helping keep to people’s energy bills down. They need to U-turn on their discredited, dangerous trickle-down approach to the economy. It is time for them to reverse their disastrous kamikaze Budget, which has unleashed an economic crisis that they made in Downing Street, and which working people are paying for through higher mortgages and prices.

Alex Cunningham

My hon. Friend says, rightly, that we support this particular U-turn, but is he not as perplexed as I am about where all this money will actually come from—or does he know that, rather than having a magic money tree, the Tories have a full orchard?

James Murray

My hon. Friend is right to point out that the Conservatives’ sums simply do not add up. However, you do not have to take our word for it, Mr Deputy Speaker. Just look at the markets: they have issued their own judgment on the Conservatives’ so-called economic plan, and they are not convinced.

As we consider the repeal of the Health and Social Care Levy Act, it is important to remember how the Government’s decision to bring in this national insurance hike came to pass in the first place. Over the last 12 years under the Conservatives, we have been stuck in what the Chancellor himself rightly described last month as a “vicious cycle of stagnation”. With tax revenues stagnating under low growth, the Government made it clear that they felt the only way to raise more funds was to raise taxes on working people.

On Second Reading of the legislation that is being repealed today, the then Chief Secretary to the Treasury tried to defend the Government’s approach, saying that this new charge would

“enable the Government to provide additional funding to the NHS so that it can recover from the pandemic.”—[Official Report, 14 September 2021; Vol. 700, c. 843.]

We argued at the time that if the Government felt that they had to raise taxes, those with the broadest shoulders should contribute more, but the Government refused. They pushed ahead with this tax rise on working people and their jobs, and they refused throughout the debate on the original legislation to ask those with the broadest shoulders to take more of the burden. Now, as they repeal the legislation for the national insurance increase, they have abandoned any attempt at fiscal responsibility altogether, with an economic approach that has borrowing at its heart.

In a letter sent to the shadow Chancellor and the shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care on 22 September, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury wrote:

“The additional funding used to replace the expected revenue from the Levy will come from general taxation and may require further borrowing in the short-term.”

Labour takes a different approach. Our pledges are fully and fairly funded. As the shadow Chancellor has set out, we would boost NHS investment by ending the outrageous non-dom tax loophole exploited by the super-rich. We will use money from what is saved by scrapping that arcane practice to double the number of district nurses qualifying every year, to train more than 5,000 health visitors, to create an additional 10,000 nursing and midwife placements every year and to double the number of medical students so that our NHS has the doctors it needs.

Chris Philp

I think I heard the shadow Chancellor on television a week or so ago saying that her proposals on non-doms would raise about £2 billion. The cost of this measure is about £15 billion, so where is the other £13 billion going to come from?

James Murray

The Minister must not have been listening carefully enough to the shadow Chancellor setting out Labour’s plans, because we have set out how we would scrap the non-dom status, which it is completely irresponsible to keep in the current context, and to use some of that money to set out our plans for investment in the NHS. The difference between the Government and the Opposition is that the Government make promises and use throwaway comments about how they might fund this with general taxation or through extra borrowing, whereas when we set out our pledges, we set out exactly what we will pay for. They are fully costed, fully funded and paid for through fairer taxation.

James Cartlidge

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

James Murray

No, I am going to make some progress.

We have set out that we will not borrow for day-to-day spending and that we will not ask working people who are already struggling to foot the bill. That is what we mean when we say we are the party of economic responsibility and the party of social justice. The Conservatives have shown themselves to be the party of a failed approach to the economy. After six so-called growth plans from the Government that have all failed, the drunken gamblers of Downing Street have rolled the dice one last time, putting their faith in the ideological mantra that if they just slash taxes and regulation, they will unleash business investment and growth. They believe that wealth is created only by a few at the top, when the truth is that it comes from the bottom up and from the middle out.

The trickle-down economics of the Prime Minister and her Chancellor are wrong. Their approach will not work and it is not fair. It will hit working people’s spending power, undermining prospects for growth, and it ignores the need for the Government to be a partner for business to grow—something that is more important than ever with the turbulent, changing, challenging outlook that we face. That is why the next Labour Government would do things differently. We would bring together businesses and trade unions through a national economic council. We would support businesses to grow, through our modern industrial strategy, and we would use a national wealth fund to invest in the new green industries of the future. That is our approach to the British economy: pro-business, pro-worker, pro-growth.

The Government are making the wrong calls again and again. They were wrong last year to introduce the national insurance rise on working people, just as they were wrong last month when they tried to cut tax for some of the highest paid in society and to hide the OBR report on their plans. We welcome the Government finally admitting that they were wrong to raise national insurance on working people and businesses in the middle of a cost of living crisis, but their wider economic approach is one that is characterised by ballooning borrowing and a discredited trickle-down approach to economic growth.

The Prime Minister and her Chancellor are gambling with the livelihoods and wellbeing of people across the UK. Their gamble is dramatically worsening the cost of living crisis, with higher costs and mortgage payments for households across the country. It is shredding any reputation for economic competence the Conservatives might once have claimed to have, and it will fail to deliver the growth we need after 12 years of stagnation.

Throughout the cost of living crisis, Labour has forced the Conservatives to U-turn time and again. By repealing the national insurance rise and levy and by halting their plans to cut the top rate of tax for the very highest paid, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor have shown that they have it within themselves to make a U-turn. Our message to them is clear: do not stop there. The Government must U-turn on their whole economic approach and reverse their disastrous kamikaze Budget. Our message to the British people is also clear: this is a Tory crisis that has been made in Downing Street and is being paid for by working people. Only Labour will fix the damage that the Tories are doing. Only Labour will deliver economic responsibility and social justice. Only Labour will be a Government that are on your side.