Graham Stuart
MP for Beverley and Holderness · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I hope and expect that we can move forward in the right way and get the balance right between being overly prescriptive to the banking industry and setting a clear sense of direction to make sure that no one is left behind, as so many Members have set out.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Wishart. I congratulate the hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) on securing this debate.”
“Is my hon. Friend as astonished as I am that the Minister—I know she is new to her post—has come here to propose a six-month extension of the movement of costs from bills to the Exchequer and cannot tell the Committee how much money that will cost?”
“The Minister is being most generous again. I did not ask her about protecting consumers from energy price shocks; I asked about a clear, unequivocal manifesto pledge to reduce household energy bills by £300. She, like her predecessors, refuses to address it directly. It was a clear promise.”
“Banking hubs themselves came out of an industry response from the NatWest executive. Does the Minister agree that we must present the information from the Lloyd review to the banking groups, be clear about what we want, and give them the opportunity to respond and provide a solution, as they did with banking hubs, so that we can perhaps a…”
“I am pleased to say that Lloyds listened and, as of this morning, people can deposit cheques at those places. These issues being raised by Members across the House today are important. I trust that given the timing of the Richard Lloyd report, the Minister in her seat will make sure that they are be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction.”
The complete record
Every one of 5,829 lines we hold for Graham Stuart, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 5 of 117.
“The Minister says that there will be no cut to capital budgets, but of course he is talking only about the public sector. Has he seen the CBI Economics research that suggests that there will be severe capital budget reductions in the private sector—the very sector that creates the wealth on which everything else depends?”
“The Minister is always both gracious and generous. Further to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) about the impact of BPR, imagine a company that is worth £11 million. It will have a £2 million BPR tax payment to make. The person who inherits the shares will not have that £2 million, so they will have to extract that money from the business. Am I right in thinking that that would require £3.3 million to be deducted and taken out of the company in order to pay that £2 million in tax? Is that in the right order?”
“Does my right hon. Friend worry, like me, about the background of those on the Government Front Bench? I do not want to disrespect either of the individuals sitting there now, because they are both fine people, but neither has ever, so far as I am aware, been involved in running a private business. They do not understand how private business works, and they equate the inheritance of money—for example, from a father to a daughter—with a family business. A family business needs to continue, because of all the employment that arises from it. Equating the two and saying that it is half the normal inheritance tax is to show a complete failure of understanding of the economy of this country and the economy of a family business.”
“There are businesses that are prepared to do that—unlike any other business sector I can think of or have ever experienced, or would certainly ever have entertained being part of myself. There are businesses that would take such low returns, work all the hours God gives and bring brilliant food to the tables of people up and down this country at low cost. Why on earth would the Government want to drive the people running those businesses out so that the people they say they want to attack—namely, huge billionaires and vast trust-based businesses—can gobble up those very farms, which are currently run by decent people in our communities who do all that good and ask for very little in return?”
“But should they not increase the profitability of farmers before imposing a tax that, mathematically, arithmetically—whatever other word you want to use—they cannot pay? The truth is that farmers cannot pay it. More than half of farmers literally do not have the profits to allow them to pay that tax. That simple truth sits at the heart of this. These businesses are prepared to do it because of their lifestyle, personal commitment and love of farming. They do it in order to put food on our plates that is among the highest quality in the world and at costs that are among the lowest in Europe. The Government could think about this from a public policy point of view too.”
“Even if Treasury Ministers do not have any business experience—sadly, Labour Treasury Ministers typically do not—they should at least practice numeracy. If they are numerate, they can work out that if someone makes just 1% return annually on the capital value of their business, it would take 20 years of earnings to pay a 20% tax—and a third of farmers do not make anything at all. How is someone who makes 1% profit going to pay a 20% tax? This is not some freak thing that has just happened; it is consistent. The Government, to be fair to them, seem to have woken up in one sense. They said, “We must have a new initiative”—I forget what it is called—“to increase the profitability of farmers”. Well, yippidy-doo, well done for that.”
“It is a pleasure to take part in this debate and follow the hon. Member for Penrith and Solway (Markus Campbell-Savours), who is rare, as a Member on the Labour Benches, in feeling such commitment to maintaining and fulfilling the promises he made, not least to his farmers. I will begin by focusing on the farming issue. Too often we look at it in an overall, structural way and make comparisons with other types of inheritance, rather than looking at the specifics of the farming industry. A third of farmers do not make any profit at all, and those who do make profit make very little. Although we do not have exact data, it would appear that well over half of farmers make a 1% return on capital employed or less.”
“But as far as I am aware, the sons and daughters of most entrepreneurs in Beverley and Holderness do not have £2 million tucked away down the back of the sofa. To pay that bill, which is a tax not on the business but on the people who inherit the business, as they are outside the business—I am not sure whether people have focused on this enough—they will be forced to extract that money from the business itself, usually in the form of dividends, and those dividends are taxed at rates approaching 40%. So a £2 million inheritance tax bill becomes a £3.3 million hit on the business, with £2 million to pay the Chancellor and another £1.3 million to pay—oh yes—the Chancellor, simply because the money was invested in jobs, equipment or the business overall rather than left idle.”
“He was unable to respond off the top of his head to my specific numbers, which is entirely understandable, but I hope that the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, armed and perhaps refreshed by the brilliant people in the Box behind her, will be able in summing up to address the specifics of the tax reality for a business faced by the double tax bill that thousands of sons and daughters will receive when their entrepreneurial mum or dad passes away. From April, the 100% inheritance tax relief that family businesses rely on will be capped at just £1 million; anything above that will be taxed at 20%. Take a small company worth £11 million: the inheritance tax bill alone will be £2 million.”
“I think they—and, I hope, the Minister—are realising just how counterproductive this is. The one thought I will try to implant above all is those numbers, which mean that it is absurd. Madam Deputy Speaker, imagine generally being a business owner today, and not necessarily in farming. You hike your way up the mountain to get to success, wading through an eternal shower of tax rises and hacking your way through a jungle of red tape. Then, on your death bed, you are met not first by the grim reaper but by the Chancellor, armed with one final sting: a double tax bill for your children. This is the reality facing family businesses: if the Government cut business property relief next year, that will lead to a double tax bill. I asked the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, who opened the debate, to comment on how that double taxation works.”
“Yes, indeed—and they did. We have seen it. All the evidence is there, and it is happening now, regardless of the argument from Ministers as to what percentage of farms will be affected. We can see it in all the stats. Those stats are available—particularly, I would have hoped, to Treasury Ministers to find out what the real-world impact of this policy is. The real-world impact is that we have seen a drop in investment in the farming industry. That is a disaster. It may be that the hon. Member for Penrith and Solway is standing alone, but let us look at the enthusiasm on the Labour Benches for the Second Reading of this major Finance Bill that is supposed to be doing such good for the country. There are more than 400 Labour Members, but they are not exactly here to cheer it on.”
“That is yet another example of this innumerate Government having the exact opposite outcome from the one they wished, as investment falls, businesses restructure and growth is choked off. Instead of supporting the Government’s claim to be pro-business and pro-worker, this change could cost more than 200,000 jobs, on top of the 200,000 that the Chancellor has already cost the country. That is money sucked out of the economy and into Labour’s bottomless black hole. The impact will be felt directly in Beverley and Holderness, where it is expected to put 237 local jobs at risk, according to the CBI. Those are apprentices—”
“As so often, the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Again, the talk is of hitting the fat cats and big businesses, but it is the huge corporates that will benefit. They will snap up the farmland and the small business. This is not fair taxation; it is irrational double taxation. The consequences of this policy are real. If the hon. Member for Angus and Perthshire Glens (Dave Doogan)—I will call him my hon. Friend, if I may—is right about the Treasury being obsessed with the bottom right-hand corner, I hope that if no other argument weighs with the Minister, this might. A report by the CBI suggests that far from raising the welcome £1.4 billion forecast by the Treasury, the changes are likely to reduce tax revenues from family-owned businesses by £1.8 billion by 2030.”
“I had better not. That means apprentices not taken on, machinery not upgraded and businesses downsizing. The changes will leave us all poorer, so I ask the Minister and the Chancellor a simple and constructive question: if the Chancellor will not reverse these changes to business property relief, will she at least consider a targeted mechanism so that when these dividends are necessarily extracted, solely to pay the inheritance tax bill, those dividends are not taxed again?”
“I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way while he is on the subject of energy. Of course, what should have been in the Bill was an end to the additional tax levy, because there are no sky-high profits any more, there are no excess taxes that need to be paid, and 1,000 people a month are losing their job in the oil and gas industry.”
“I wonder when the people of this country will catch up with the hon. Gentleman and start to express the appropriate gratitude for all that has been bestowed on them by this Government.”
“If we look at employment over time, we see that employment was growing every month until a certain thing happened in July last year: Labour came to power. As of this morning, unemployment has officially gone up 5.1%. As it stands today, there is a 25% increase in the number of people who are not in employment. How can that possibly correspond with a mission for growth?”
“My constituent Katie has served in the RAF for 25 years. In preparation for her return to civilian life, she secured an MOD rentals tenancy to provide housing stability before she receives her pension next year and can buy a house of her own. At short notice, that tenancy was withdrawn, leaving her and her family facing potential homelessness, in clear violation of the armed forces covenant. Despite repeated appeals and over 28 days of silence from the Ministry of Defence, no resolution has yet been offered. Will the Minister please review this case urgently and the letter I sent to Ministers on 5 December to ensure that female veterans like Katie are properly supported during their transition back to civilian life?”
“I am extremely grateful. My hon. Friend is setting out a powerful case. We are puzzled, because a system designed for ordinary workers that has a sensible cap is now being opened up to the very CEOs who, as has been highlighted, would not have previously used it. We have a Labour party in hock to the unions yet strangely proposing a measure that was not included their manifesto which can only help the rich. What happened to the Labour party?”
“On that very point, does the hon. Member believe that it is totally pragmatic to have disregarded her objections to the removal of the cap in return for additional places for the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords?”
“Labour colleagues shake their heads as my hon. Friend lays out the blindingly obvious. That goes to show why introducing a measure at the last minute during ping-pong is inappropriate and precisely why the House of Lords is right to say that we must consider this fully. It is quite obvious that Labour Members do not want to understand it; they obviously do not understand the implications.”
“May we have a debate in Government time on the quality of parcel delivery services? Prompted by constituents, just last night I asked about Evri on Facebook. I have more than 100 responses already, most of them negative, sadly. Amid the gloom, one name did stand out, and that was Patrington’s Evri delivery superstar, Rachel McVitie, who goes above and beyond to make sure that parcels arrive safely and on time and seems universally beloved in the village, so it is good to mark that. Although some individuals provide that exceptional service, too many customers, particularly in rural areas, are facing problems with parcel delivery at Christmas. Will the Leader of the House consider granting time for a debate so we can explore what more can be done to ensure consistent, high-quality delivery services across the country?”
“That is not spin or sophisticated political communications; it is deceit, and it does matter.”
“My hon. Friend may be aware that just across the channel in France, high regulation and high tax has led to consistent, long-term high youth unemployment. Speaking of Andy Williams, another song says that there is a “lesson to be learned” from this, and we do not have to look too far to learn it.”
“What seems to be missing on the Government Benches is any recognition of the growing anger among young people at the fact that they are being shut out of the jobs market. It is the most damaging time in someone’s life to be barred from work when they are young. The Minister does not seem to be an Andy Williams fan, but The Clash sang under a previous Labour Government: “Career opportunities are the ones that never knock”. Not under Labour.”
“My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech, and he is entirely right about the impact on seasonal workers, but we should always look beyond the producers to the consumers. What will the impact be at music festivals and at all sorts of events—community events—all around the country? We will see higher prices and there will be less competition and choice. It is socialism in action—everybody losing, including society as a whole.”
“Tom, the landlord of the Kings Head in Hedon, heard on Budget day that business rates would be cut for businesses like his. Instead, the rateable value of that pub, which provides such an important service to the people of Hedon and the surrounding villages, has gone from £9,000 to £32,000.”
“Would the Minister like to apologise to the more than 280,000 people who are not in work now, compared with the level of unemployment last year, and could she spell out how a business that, for example, provides catering at summer festivals and then ceases to have any festivals to service can guarantee hours to a workforce it does not need any more?”
“My right hon. Friend is right to put his finger on the issue of trust. It is not the 280,000 people who are not employed now compared with last year; it is not the lost opportunities for so many young people in hospitality or, indeed, the so many other areas of failure, such as the reduction in numbers of teachers. The issue that is most corrosive for this Government is a loss of trust, because we can see their mendacity from Mars.”
“I wonder how best this behaviour can be described—as a falsehood, an untruth, a fib, a lie or a whopper, or are there other synonyms that better describe the repeated failure to do what one promises?”
“I think it is the dishonesty that is catching at everybody’s throat. A year ago at the Budget, the Chancellor said that she was not going to freeze income tax thresholds because—I think I quote—it would be an additional tax on working people, and therefore in breach of the Labour manifesto. A year later, she did exactly that, and then claimed that it was not a breach of the Labour manifesto. That is rank dishonesty. That is why Madam Deputy Speaker is allowing language that would not normally be used in this Chamber: because this motion and this Government mean we have to address issues that normally do not occur.”
“On the issue of the manifesto, will the Minister confirm that it does not say that it would not raise the income tax rates? It just says that it would not raise those taxes. The word “rates” is not in there. It is that that is misleading. It is that that makes everyone outside throw things at their television, because they are disgusted by a Government who cannot face up to simple truths!”
“Let me make a point before the hon. Lady makes it herself: the jobs tax is a peculiarly misconceived tax. It is a £25 billion or £26 billion hit on the real economy, with all the lost jobs that we have seen as a result, and it does not even raise much money. Looking at all the negative impacts in the round, it may actually raise even less than £10 billion. There is a £25 billion or £26 billion hit, and the measure potentially raises less than £10 billion. It is economic madness, and it shows why the Government need to think more deeply.”
“I think it was Gladstone who said that the first duty of a statesman is to be honest. Is the hon. Gentleman, who I think would be recognised across the House as someone for whom honesty is a natural state, entirely comfortable with the Chancellor cherry-picking the confidential briefing from the OBR in that 4 November speech and not setting out the full circumstances that she was then aware of?”
“Britain is hurting: families are cutting back, bills are soaring, and inflation is twice the Bank’s target. Just last month, the Chancellor claimed that she had no choice but to raise taxes on working people, and in true Harry Enfield style she blamed the Tories, the Tories, the Tories—and, of course, the OBR. On the subject of honesty—the thread that runs through today’s debate—it is worth me returning to my earlier exchange with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, in which I said that the Labour manifesto did not specify that it was the rates of the taxes that would rise. I was quite wrong, and the Minister was correct. I would like to apologise to him and the House for getting that incorrect. The OBR told the Chancellor in October that tax receipts were £16 billion higher than expected. She knew that but suggested otherwise.”
“That is not a vision for the future, and it is certainly not leadership; it is fantasy dressed up as policy, and the people of Beverley and Holderness can see right through it. Labour came to power promising change. Unfortunately, change has been delivered, but it is not what we were promised. We have 280,000 more people on the unemployment register, more than 200,000 businesses have closed, and 5,000 people are signing off sick every single day, because of the decisions made by this Labour Government. People are angry about the impact of Labour policy, but my constituents tell me that they are particularly angry about feeling misled. I hope I have shown my own candour in addressing my earlier error, for which I apologise again. Can we Members of this House try to speak honestly and accurately, and not gaslight or mislead?”
“The Chancellor appears to have learnt nothing from last year’s Budget of broken promises. It was a Budget that brought higher unemployment, fewer businesses and lower growth. She did not learn from that first exercise. As the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper) pointed out, the weakness of the jobs tax is not just that it will hurt growth; it does not even raise much money. It was peculiarly poorly thought through. This year’s Budget repeated more of the same. The British people know that the way to tackle the cost of living is by getting people into work, not increasing the number of people on welfare; and by creating opportunity, not dependency. But Britain has a Chancellor who talks about helping working people while making it harder to work, to save and to succeed—and throwing the OBR under the bus while she is at it.”
“I have very limited time, so forgive me but I will not. It matters because the Chancellor has a nearly £3 trillion debt to service, and because trust is everything. Because the policies that are being implemented and the promises that were made by the Chancellor are at such variance, the markets—unlike in any other western nation, I believe —have put a higher and higher cost on borrowing for this country. That has very real-world impacts. Investors from Beverley to Berlin need to believe what the Chancellor says. After all, “credit” comes from the Latin “credo”, meaning “I believe”. If that belief falters, borrowing costs rise and more of our taxes go to paying lenders instead of funding the priorities of the British people. When trust goes, growth goes. Investors hesitate, businesses hold back and families feel the pinch.”
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Last time I checked, this debate was supposed to be about the conduct of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I know the Minister is relatively new to the Dispatch Box; perhaps he may need a little guidance.”
“I remind hon. Members that they may only make a speech with prior permission from the Member in charge of the debate and the Minister. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention for 30-minute debates.”
“I wonder whether my hon. Friend is concerned, as I am, about how Ministers will square their responsibility to the trade unions—who, of course, fund the Labour party —with the producer interest, and whether she has any reflections on their past failure to get that balance right.”
“The Minister responding to this debate represents Selby. One of the great successes of the open system has been Hull Trains, which provides a fantastic service from Hull, through Selby, down to London, and then back again. Does my hon. Friend worry, as I do, that open services such as Hull Trains will be crushed by Great British Railways and the Minister, despite whatever he may say?”
“I am sure that Hull Trains will be grateful for the passionate way in which the Minister made its case. Would he be open to amendments to the Bill that would look again at that balance? As the Bill is currently drafted, it looks as if GBR can just squeeze out the open operators—it has all the power and they have none.”
“We just want the transparency that was promised to be delivered. The Minister has been given an impossible task as a junior Minister, but the House surely deserves to know how much cash was transferred to the Prime Minister by someone who has been given a £130,000-a-year part-time sinecure. [ Interruption. ] If the Minister will not answer today because he is being told not to do so by the chair of the Labour party, the right hon. Member for Redcar (Anna Turley), will he undertake to come back and give the House an answer? We are entitled, on behalf of the whole country, to be given an honest answer by the Government, who are supposedly committed to transparency.”
“Like the shadow Secretary of State I welcome the announcement on moving forward with SMRs, but like the Minister’s extremely knowledgeable hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols), I am concerned about gigawatt scale. Wylfa is truly the best site for a gigawatt-scale nuclear development. When we build in such a way we create a lot of jobs in north Wales, whereas bringing in a modular pre-made SMR will do less of that. Why was the decision made to put SMRs on Wylfa, when Wylfa is practically unique in its attributes for large-scale gigawatt nuclear production, and many sites could host SMRs? Will the Minister please explain that to the House, because I genuinely do not know the answer?”
“Correlation is not causation, but no one has so far mentioned that our environmental levies on legal waste disposal go up and up, in correlation with rises in criminal dumping. Is it possible that we have gone too far in that direction? Regardless of the enforcement we do, we are creating an incentive, and if there is enough money in it, we will have criminals doing it. There is no point wringing our hands in this Chamber and urging greater enforcement if we have created the fundamentals of an economy that we can never fix.”
“Even before my right hon. Friend came into the Department and asked for a whole-system energy cost analysis when I was the Energy Minister, our strategic objective was to be among the countries with the cheapest electricity prices in Europe by the 2030s. Does she have any idea why the Labour party has now dropped that as a strategic objective?”
“The Minister talked about honesty, which is ironic given where he sits at the moment, in the Government of which he is a member. The Minister is better than this. He was talking specifically about renewables. Less than 7% of our electricity came from renewables in 2010, and by 2024 the figure was approximately 50%. To suggest that the Conservatives did not transform and improve our renewable energy is a falsehood, and because I know he is a better man than this, I am sure the Minister will now withdraw the allegation he made.”
“One of the hon. Gentleman’s fantastical suggestions is that he has a way of breaking the link between gas and electricity prices. I do not know which model he wants to follow—that of China, or perhaps a Korean model—but will he please explain how exactly we do that? When I was the Energy Minister, I looked to see whether that could be done, and we could not find a way of making it work. I am really interested to see the Liberal Democrats’ detailed work, and for them to explain it to the House.”
“The hon. Gentleman is being most generous in giving way. Under the last Conservative Government, we went from 7% to nearly 50% renewables. We cut emissions more than any other major economy on earth, but as has been said, we also saw electricity prices go very high. When I was the Minister responsible for net zero, we were looking at heat, transport and industry, and the fundamental way of decarbonising each of those is through electricity. How can we decarbonise them if we keep driving electricity prices ever higher? I admire the hon. Gentleman’s ideological fervour, but we have to get prices down if we are to take a balanced approach that looks after families and decarbonisation.”