Dame Harriett Baldwin
MP for West Worcestershire · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I welcome the Chancellor to his new role. I paid close attention yesterday to the long speech he made to reset the narrative and drive growth Britain. In paying tribute to his predecessor, will he recognise that she left the highest tax burden on record? Instead of postponing the words he could utter to my hon.”
“I welcome the new Prime Minister to the Dispatch Box. I note that in his statement he referred to the biggest issues facing the country as being “the economy and the cost of living crisis”. Will he accept that one of the things that has damaged our economy and caused prices to be higher is the tax-and-spend Budget in November 2024?”
“Could the Leader of the House make a commitment that the new Chancellor of the Exchequer will come to the House on the first day we are back from recess?”
“With a stroke of his Whitehall pen, the Secretary of State has just abolished Malvern Hills district council, Worcester city council, wonderful Wychavon district council and Worcestershire county council. He said in his statement that this is about making “real improvements to people’s lives and…communities”.”
“In recent weeks in West Worcestershire, I have met local police and the police and crime commissioner; the police and crime commissioner is being abolished, and the police are being reorganised. I have met the local health commissioners; they are being reorganised, and Healthwatch is being abolished.”
“Will the Leader of the House confirm that, given that the other place is sitting next week, there is nothing to stop him tabling a business statement to enable this House to sit next week? Given the enormity of the events happening in the Government next week, does he not think that would be a good idea?”
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“I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way on this extremely important issue. Is his solution the same as that of the groups he mentioned earlier—to put more money into child care?”
“On the important subject of free school meals, is the right hon. Gentleman suggesting that the taper would begin immediately someone went into work, or would it come into play once the earnings disregard had moved out of the way, and if so, what would be the cost of his proposals?”
“Does the hon. Lady not accept that that is exactly what happened when people were stuck in jobs that paid them to work for 16 hours, so that it made no sense for them to work for 15 or 17?”
“The hon. Lady has repeated the much-quoted figure of £18 billion being taken out of welfare spending, but does she acknowledge that £3.75 billion of that is coming from higher rate taxpayers such as myself who receive child benefit on a four-weekly basis? Would she like me to get my child benefit back after 2013?”
“That fails to take into account an entire psychological barrier and frame of reference that a parent can have when they move into work. It is very hard to take the first steps into work, particularly when someone makes that choice—which, as we have heard, is optional, with smaller children. Those are large steps to take, so allowing parents to move into work by doing fewer hours—perhaps two days a week in the office or at work—is an extremely important part not only of encouraging a parent to move into the workplace, but, importantly, encouraging parents to maintain contact with the workplace when their children are small. That is a really important benefit of the approach that the Secretary of State has been discussing with us.”
“I welcome the opportunity to discuss the child care element of the universal credit. We did not have the chance to talk about it at length in Committee, but we all got invited to a discussion with the Secretary of State on the various different options for child care. This is an essential part of the equation that any parent considers when deciding the best way for them to approach the workplace. I wish to talk about a slightly different approach from the one in new clause 2. I disagree with new clause 2, because I do not think that it takes the right approach, and I want to say exactly why. First, it retains the characteristic whereby someone has to work for a minimum of 16 hours to qualify for support with their child care.”
“Yes. We were reassured earlier by the Minister that any kind of sanction regime would apply only once children joined school at the age of five. This linear move into work is an important aspect here—it is probably even more important for parents than for any other group in society—so I am pleased to see that it would be possible under the Secretary of State’s proposals. I am also pleased that the £2 billion which has been mentioned will still be in place to provide support for families making that transition into work.”
“When people make the difficult first choice to go into work, the first few hours of child care, perhaps up to the earnings disregard—I ask the Minister to ask the Department to consider some of the maths involved—should be reimbursed at 100% as they make that important transition. When they reach the level of annual earnings represented by the disregards that we are talking about, the tapering of the contribution that the person in work would make to their child care would begin.”
“I shall deal with some of those other points in my later remarks, because they are all important subjects for debate. Indeed, the proposals in new clause 2 suggest a figure of £300 a week for this element. I was genuinely surprised that there were people who were getting as much as that. I do acknowledge the cost of child care in central London: I have paid it for many years, so I recognise what we are talking about. However, £300 a week is a lot of money—it works out as £15,600 a year. It is indeed a generous cap. I propose that we turn the child care element on its head. The initial move in what we might call the slide into work should be reimbursed at 100%.”
“I would like to see some experimentation with the formula so that the child care support for the first steps into work is more generous, and the tapering begins further down the line.”
“The hon. Lady underestimates the extent to which the 16-hour job has already become a trap. I think we all know people who have been trapped in one. I am proposing that when people move on to that slide and have greater support in those initial steps into work, they will become much more familiar with the world of work. When they move into taking on more hours and so on—let us not forget that once somebody has moved into the workplace they often find themselves eligible for a promotion or for the next move up the employment ladder, which might coincide with their children rising five and going to primary school—the fact that they are on more of a slide will mean that because they have extra work they will be able to share more of the cost of their child care.”
“My hon. Friend highlights the complexity of this area, not just because of the formulae and the mathematics but because of the financial behaviours of individuals who are making the choice between working and not working. This is an important behavioural area for people who are not in the benefits system. We all know people who have left work, had a baby and taken time out of the workplace. They make the trade-off and ask whether it makes sense for them to go back to work and pay for child care or not. That happens outside universal credit, in the world of people who are not touched by the benefit system in any way. This is a complex area.”
“I vividly remember going back into full-time work after maternity leave—and on that first day back, frankly, one is amazed that one’s child is still alive at the end of the day for which they have been left with someone else. The psychological transition is very important, and taking it in smaller incremental steps—perhaps with more generous support—is extremely important, because it builds up trust in the alternative child care while also allowing the child to get used to it in small steps. I urge the Minister to suggest that the Department consider some other iterations along those lines. My other point concerns the review of the consultation put forward by the Secretary of State.”
“I would like the support that the state gives to encourage people into work to be concentrated on those first few hours of child care.”
“I suggest some form of annual review of child care support that takes into account the age of the child or children. We should also consider this in terms of the annual envelope, because that would address the issue raised by the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) about the predictable fact that holiday cover is an annual challenge for working parents, and reflect the fact that there is that fluctuation for parents of children at school. I wanted to outline why I do not agree with new clause 2 and why I welcome the fact that the Government are having an open dialogue about the £2 billion that they are putting into child care support, and to emphasise that all families, whether they are on universal credit or not in the benefit system at all, have to make behavioural and financial choices about the world of work.”
“My point is that we should try to concentrate the support that the taxpayer gives into the early hours of going back into work. I would like the taper, and what can be afforded, to be announced annually by the Chancellor at the Dispatch Box, just like the overall taper in universal credit. The country’s potential to support people in those choices would go along those lines. My second point about the alternatives to new clause 2 that the Department might consider concerns the need to recognise that the cost of child care varies greatly with the age of the child—although I acknowledge this goes somewhat against the simplicity of universal credit. Of course when children go to school the cost of child care out of hours drops dramatically from the cost of providing child care for an 18-month-old child.”
“Will the right hon. Lady confirm that the numbers she is citing include the £3.75 billion from the child benefit cuts for higher rate taxpayers such as me, who obviously are predominantly women?”
“Is the right hon. Lady saying that she would like my child benefit of £81.20 every four weeks to be reinstated, despite the fact that I make more than £65,000 a year as an MP?”
“I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. I was going to make exactly that point: we have heard today that for someone like me who is making £65,000 a year, it is Labour party policy to restore my child benefit after 2013.”
“How is it good for families and women if Opposition Members put their heads in the sand and refuse to identify a single cut or alteration that they support? This Government are introducing welfare reform that will incentivise the economic choices of women in recognising that at the end of the day only additional work will help them to address the earnings gap and the asset gap. As someone who has fought all my life for greater equality for women in the workplace, I feel somewhat differently about pensions. I think that we should welcome the fact that men and women will be retiring at equal ages and that women and men will be treated equally as regards pensions.”
“Members for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) and for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) will stand on a platform of restoring their household’s child benefit, which is worth £2,400 a year tax-free, despite their combined income being well into the hundreds of thousands of pounds. That will be a difficult message for them to sell on the doorstep, but it was certainly a fascinating insight into planet deficit-denial on the Opposition Benches. I also thought that I was living on a different planet when we heard no acknowledgement of the fact that over the past 12 months more than 530,000 jobs in the private sector have been created, with 400,000 more, net of the necessary reductions, in public sector employment. How is it good for families and women to be paying £120 million a day in interest?”
“The hon. Member for Leicester South (Jon Ashworth) is no longer in his place, but I too pay tribute to him for a very assured and interesting maiden speech. It was a privilege to be in the Chamber to hear it. I had not planned to speak today until I saw this patronising and paternalistic motion on the Order Paper—this drivel that we have had to debate all afternoon. I am absolutely incensed by it, because the way in which we address the fact, which we all acknowledge, that women earn and own less on average is not by ensuring that they continue to receive a stream of benefits throughout their lives or only state-sponsored child care options. From some interesting points that Opposition Members made, we learned that at the next general election the right hon.”
“We should bear in mind what these women are preparing for. An average 55-year-old woman today will live to 88, on average, and many more women will live to see their 100th birthday. Having the extra year to prepare for saving for that very old age is not at all a bad thing. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt), I have absolutely no intention of retiring in my early 60s, and I welcome the fact that men and women will be treated equally regarding pension age.”
“I am sorry—I do not have enough time to give way. I acknowledge that equalising the pension age means that there is a group of women who are disproportionately affected, but I would like to hear proposals on how we could avoid that and still end up in what we all agree is the right place, where we have longer to prepare for a much longer old age.”
“Will the hon. Lady confirm that the restoration of tax-free child benefit of £2,400 for the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) and the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) will be in the Labour manifesto?”
“T4. One of my constituents, a vulnerable young adult with complex needs, was recently sectioned under the Mental Health Act 1983, taken from the family home, and placed in Winterbourne View. The mother was very concerned about her child’s care there, and contacted me. However, I was told by adult social services that I could not know the details of the case because of data protection. When reviewing the regulations involving vulnerable adults, will the Minister ensure that questions from Members of Parliament about such cases can be answered, so that they can stand up for even their most vulnerable constituents without their express written permission?”
“7. What steps he is taking to ensure that the Financial Services Authority exempts from new domestic regulation businesses employing fewer than 10 people and new businesses for the next three years.”
“In his testimony to the Treasury Committee, the chief executive of the FSA said that up to 10,000 jobs—in many cases, those of small independent financial advisers—could be lost as a result of the retail distribution review. Will the Financial Secretary meet the chief executive of the FSA as a matter of urgency to discuss ways in which the impact could be mitigated?”
“May we have a debate in Government time on the Winsor review? Like many other hon. Members across the House, I have received letters from serving police officers, and such a debate would help to clarify the situation. I understand that all parties agreed that it was appropriate to consider police overtime and shift patterns.”
“A crucial front-line service is the provision of stroke care. Can the Secretary of State confirm that under his proposed reforms, local clinical practitioners will have much more influence over the location of those stroke services than in the current situation, when management can make somewhat arbitrary changes?”
“In welcoming the Green Paper and particularly the emphasis it places on removing means-testing as a deterrent to saving, will the Minister confirm how he intends to treat caring responsibilities and their role in contributing towards the build-up of a pension?”
“I welcome all those measures, but spin-offs and start-ups in West Worcestershire are discovering that in order to win Government procurement contracts they need to have accounts for the past two years, and I wonder whether the Secretary of State would urgently review that.”
“T5. The funding for technology innovation centres is extremely welcome. Will the Secretary of State update me on any representations he has received on a bid from Malvern to the Technology Strategy Board?”
“In his statement last Wednesday, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor said that he was hoping for “a new, more automatic mechanism for future increases in the state pension age based on regular, independent reviews of longevity.” —[ Official Report , 23 March 2011; Vol. 525, c. 961.] With longevity increasing by about a year every year, that brought to my mind the vision of a cohort of people who might never actually reach pension age. Will the Pensions Minister comment?”
“Again, I realised quite early on that the problem with such a strategy is that before long the marginal impact of increased Government spending decreases, and one runs out of money. We therefore need to focus on private sector growth, which is why this Budget is so pivotal. A lower tax rate for businesses will bring in higher tax returns.”
“I vowed, as a mother, that I wanted to ensure that my children did not grow up in a country that was facing bankruptcy, and yet I failed to get here soon enough to stop the rot. I am therefore very grateful to the Chancellor for having finally set out a path that will enable my children—and one day, I hope, grandchildren—to enjoy opportunities of the kind that I enjoyed when I left university. Enough of me; I think I should talk about the Budget. I welcome the Budget’s focus on growth and the private sector. When the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) was an adviser to the previous Prime Minister, he set out something called a neo-endogenous growth strategy.”
“I think I am probably somewhat different from other Members of this House in that I did not aspire to come here when I was a student. Indeed, I managed to survive the first 40 years of my life without it ever crossing my mind that I should stand for Parliament. Shortly after Tony Blair’s second election victory in 2001, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) gave another historic Budget in which he departed from Conservative spending plans for the first time. At the same time, that Government were beginning to evaluate whether the conditions might be right to enter the euro. Those two horrors were the impetus for me to seek election to this place.”
“I rise to speak in support of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor’s historic and pivotal Budget. Today we have heard Conservative Members give examples of what a difficult hand the Chancellor has been dealt in producing a Budget. We have heard about the £120 million a day—£840 million a week—that the Government have to pay in interest. We have heard that interest has, in effect, become one of the biggest Government Departments. That is why it is so important to point out the difference between the deficit and the overall debt. In setting out the path that he did, my right hon. Friend still has to live with the fact that debt will be rising in every year of this Parliament until the last one. That means that the debt interest bill is still growing, despite the tighter economic conditions that he has imposed.”
“I suggest that he take this opportunity to suggest that small IFAs employing fewer than 10 people might be exempt from the increased regulation in the retail distribution review. In conclusion, I believe that this Budget will be seen as historically pivotal, because it will create real jobs, real growth and real prosperity. Such real prosperity can come only from investment in business and from exports. There will be exogenous growth—the exogenous growth of the private sector. I look forward to supporting the Budget in the Lobby tomorrow.”
“The sooner we get rid of the state’s ownership of so much of the banking sector, the better it will be for the health of the economy. Given that the Financial Secretary is on the Front Bench, I will take this opportunity to read a passage from the Budget speech: “from April, we are going to impose a moratorium exempting all businesses employing fewer than 10 people, and all genuine start-ups, from new domestic regulation for the next three years.” —[ Official Report , 23 March 2011; Vol. 525, c. 956.] I ask the Financial Secretary to raise this point with the Financial Services Authority, which we know is the regulator of many small, independent financial advisers.”
“Those sentiments were echoed by businesses in my constituency, where entrepreneurs welcomed and cheered the measures set out in the Budget. I also received a communication from a non-dom in west Worcestershire—I did not think we had one, but we do. He is so pleased with the clarity of the Budget that he is going to bring lots of money in on a remittance basis to invest in businesses in the UK. I have a couple of questions for those on the Front Bench. I do not think that we can enjoy sustained economic growth until we resolve the problems with our banks. I agree with the hon. Member for Telford (David Wright), who said that Japan suffered from slow growth for many decades because it did not do anything about its banking sector.”
“The House holds the principle of one person, one vote to be absolutely sacrosanct. Will the Government find time between now and the referendum on 5 May to hold a debate in the Chamber on the referendum question?”
“Many churches in west Worcestershire have fundraising thermometers to monitor how much progress they are making on their fundraising. In light of next week’s Budget debate, could we discuss installing similar thermometers on either side of the House so that we can keep track of the spending commitments, and in particular of how many times the one-off bankers’ bonus levy can be spent?”
“In addition to those reforms, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly has the capacity to help with democratic institution-building in countries such as those in north Africa which we hope are emerging into stronger parliamentary democracies. Did the Minister’s discussions with NATO involve those capabilities?”
“The Deputy Prime Minister told us that the commission would be established by the end of 2010, then the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), told us that it would be established in the new year. Does the Minister know on what date in 2011 the commission will be established?”
“I thank the hon. Lady, who is such a marvellous Chair of the Select Committee, for giving way. Does she agree that it is disappointing that the Labour party is not supporting Second Reading of this Bill, because the points that she rightly raises are the sort of detailed issues that could addressed in Committee?”
“The Bill removes the barriers that the welfare system puts in the way of people working their way out of poverty, which is important. We must recognise—this is why I am so disappointed that Opposition Members will not support Second Reading—that there are many barriers in the system’s construction that prevent people from getting the important message that they need to go out to find a job and to work, and that that is how they will improve their economic circumstances.”
“This is a profoundly important Bill. It is born out of the Secretary of State’s deep passion for helping people to get out of poverty—he has spent the last decade looking at that. There are few ways in which people who are born and grow up in poverty can find a way out. I can think of some, but winning the lottery does not happen very often and it is unlikely that someone will get a surprise inheritance from a relative whom they did not know existed. Marrying a top footballer is rare, and it would probably be quite hard work. The hon. Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) spoke of work as “a” route out of poverty, but it is “the” route out. If Opposition Members have alternatives to work as a route out of poverty, I would be interested to hear of them.”
“I hope that everyone in the House will welcome the fact that the Bill gives the Chancellor in future the ability to stand at the Dispatch Box and say that he is making a change in the marginal withdrawal rate, because we would all like it to be reduced over time.”
“I am sure that Opposition Members will welcome the fact that the distributional analysis of the universal credit shows that the vast proportion of additional money in the system will go to those in the lowest income deciles, with 85% going to those in the four lowest-paid deciles. I should point out, however, to the Secretary of State that it was still a shock to realise that even under the changes that we are discussing today, the benefit withdrawal rates for those going into work will still be 65p in the pound. That is still a shockingly high marginal deduction rate, when our higher-rate taxpayers are on 51% or 52%. The Child Poverty Action Group, the Centre for Social Justice and Family Action have all argued for a withdrawal rate of 55%, with Save the Children arguing for a 50% withdrawal rate.”