PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES - United Kingdom Parliament

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627 Oral Answers 15 MAY 2013 Oral Answers 628 Mr Jones: What I would say is that those on higher earnings will be paying more tax under this Government than they did during any year of the last Labour Government. We are supporting families with lower taxation and we are reducing the tax burden progressively; it would appear that the hon. Lady’s party has no interest at all in supporting the interests of hard-working families. PRIME MINISTER The Prime Minister was asked— Engagements Q1. [154913] Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab): If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 15 May. The Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Nick Clegg): Ihave been asked to reply. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister—[Interruption.] Mr Speaker: Order. The Deputy Prime Minister must be heard—from the start of the session to the end of the session. The Deputy Prime Minister: I have been asked to reply. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is visiting the United States for meetings with President Obama, making the case for a transatlantic trade agreement between the United States and the European Union and chairing the high-level panel on development in New York today. This morning, I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today. Tristram Hunt: I thank the Deputy Prime Minister for his answer. If Conservative Members of Parliament do not have to support the Government on Europe, why do Liberal Democrat MPs have to support the Government on tripling tuition fees, top-down reorganisation of the NHS, the bedroom tax and all the other wretched policies of this Government? The Deputy Prime Minister: Liberal Democrats, and indeed Conservatives, are working together to clear up the mess left by the hon. Gentleman’s party. It is this Government who are delivering more apprenticeships than ever before, delivering a cap on social care costs, delivering a decent state pension for everybody and clearing up the mess in the banking system left by that man there—the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls)—and so many other people on the Labour Benches. Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con): Will the Deputy Prime Minister confirm that the only party in this House offering an in/out referendum is the Conservative party? The Deputy Prime Minister: I know the hon. Gentleman hates to be reminded of things that he and I have actually done together when we have been on the same side of the argument, but we spent 100 days in the early part of this Parliament passing legislation, opposed by the Labour party, that for the first time ever gives a guarantee in law about when a referendum on Europe will take place—when the rules next change or new things are asked of the United Kingdom within the European Union. The hon. Gentleman and his colleagues in the Conservative party are perfectly free for their own reasons to move the goalposts, but this legislation is in place and the people of Britain have a guarantee about when a referendum will take place, and that is what I suggest we should all go out and promote. Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab): I am sure that everyone is thrilled to see the Deputy Prime Minister and, of course, myself at the Dispatch Box today. This is meant to be Prime Minister’s questions, however, yet once again the Prime Minister is not here. Why is it that out of the last eight Wednesdays, the Prime Minister has answered questions in this House only once? The Deputy Prime Minister: I think that the Prime Minister is unusually assiduous in coming to the House to make statements. I think that the leader who should be relieved that there is no Prime Minister’s Question Time today is the leader of the right hon. and learned Lady’s party. I am still reeling with dismay over the fact that recently, on Radio 4, he denied 10 times that borrowing would increase under Labour’s plans. Who said that there is not enough comedy on Radio 4? Ms Harman: We have all seen what the Prime Minister has been doing in America. He has been on a London bus in New York—something, incidentally, that we do not see him doing a great deal when he is here. He has also been busy explaining to President Obama the benefits of Britain’s membership of the European Union. Why is he able to do that in the White House, but not in this House? The Deputy Prime Minister: To be fair to the Prime Minister—notwithstanding our other differences on this subject—I think that he has always made it clear that he believes in continued membership of the European Union, if it is a reformed European Union. There is a fundamental debate that we need to have in this country about whether we are an open or a closed nation, and about whether or not we stand tall in our European neighbourhood. That debate will continue, and the Prime Minister will continue to make his views known. Ms Harman: It is indeed an important debate, and we have an important vote on an amendment to the Queen’s Speech tonight, but the Prime Minister is out of the country. Can the Deputy Prime Minister help the House? If the Prime Minister were here today, would he be voting for the Government or against the Government, or would he be showing true leadership and abstaining? The Deputy Prime Minister: The right hon. and learned Lady has used three questions to point out that the Prime Minister is not here. That is a striking observation—a penetrating insight into the affairs of state today.
629 Oral Answers 15 MAY 2013 Oral Answers 630 Just two years ago, the right hon. and learned Lady’s party rejected an opportunity to vote on legislation that Government Members pushed through, giving the British people, for the first time, a copper-bottomed legal guarantee in relation to when a referendum would take place. Our position is perfectly clear; hers is not. Ms Harman: This is an extraordinary situation. The Deputy Prime Minister has not told the House how the Prime Minister would have been voting if he were here. Is it that he does not know, is it because he does not want to tell the House, or is it because he thinks that the Prime Minister would probably have changed his mind by the time we would have been told? While the Prime Minister is bogged down in confusion about Europe, people are suffering. Today’s figures show that unemployment is up. More people are out of work, and the number of people who have been out of work for more than two years is at its highest since 1997. So what is today’s excuse? The Deputy Prime Minister: The right hon. and learned Lady has commented on today’s figures. Of course when anyone is without work it is an individual tragedy, and we must always work to bring unemployment down, but I think that she is giving the House a somewhat partial snapshot. Full-time unemployment is actually up by 10,000 this quarter, more people are employed in the private sector than ever before, employment has risen by 866,000 since the election, and the number of women employed is the highest that it has ever been. Is that not something that the right hon. and learned Lady should celebrate rather than denigrate? Ms Harman: We see complete complacency while things are getting worse. The fact is that even those who are in work are worse off. Wages are falling behind prices, and figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies show that as a result of all the Deputy Prime Minister’s changes, families on lower and middle incomes are worse off. Will he own up to that? Will he admit it? The Deputy Prime Minister: Complacency? This from a party that crashed the British economy, went on a prawn cocktail charm offensive—sucking up to the banks—which led to the disaster in the banking system in the first place, and operated a tax system under which a cleaner would pay more tax on his or her wages than a hedge fund manager would on his or her shares? Under this Government, the richest are paying more in taxes every year than they did under Labour. Under this Government, 24 million basic rate taxpayers will be £700 better off next year than they were under Labour. Under this Government, as of next April, nearly 3 million people on low pay will be taken out of income tax altogether. How about that for a record to be proud of? Ms Harman: So the right hon. Gentleman votes for a tax cut for millionaires and then comes to the House and says the rich will be paying more. Three years into this coalition Government everyone knows that the country faces big problems, and what do we have? We have a Prime Minister who is not just indecisive, not just weak, but fast becoming a laughing stock. The Deputy Prime Minister: The right hon. and learned Lady mentions—as Labour party Members often do—the upper rate of income tax. Under us, it is 45p. Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD): It was 40p under Labour. The Deputy Prime Minister: Hang on; my hon. Friend is a great enthusiast. What was the rate under Labour? What was it for 13 years? Was it 50p? No. Was it 45p? No. The Labour rate was 40p, which is 5p lower. They let the richest in this country off the hook; we didn’t. Sir Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con): Given the Liberal Democrats’ commitment to a European Union referendum, will my right hon. Friend see fit to help facilitate Government time for a private Member’s Bill on the subject, should that become available? The Deputy Prime Minister: As my hon. Friend knows, my party has always believed there should be a referendum on Europe when the rules change and when new things are being asked of the United Kingdom within the European Union. That is what we had in our last manifesto, and that is what we have now acted on in government by passing legislation, together in the coalition, just two years ago giving an absolute legal guarantee in legislation for the first time ever that when the rules change, there will be a referendum. By the way, I think it is a question of when, not if, because the rules are bound to change. I would just simply suggest that we should stick to what we have done as a Government in giving that guarantee to the British people, rather than constantly shift the goalposts. Q2. [154914] Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab): Perhaps the Deputy Prime Minister shares my dismay at allegations of price fixing in the oil market. If so, will he explain why he has consistently opposed Opposition amendments for proper regulation of oil and commodity prices by the Financial Conduct Authority? Will he now accept that he was wrong, accept the amendments from this side of the House, and get petrol and diesel prices at the pump reduced? The Deputy Prime Minister: That is yet another example of astonishing amnesia. What happened for 13 years? Did the hon. Gentleman or any Labour Front-Bench Members do anything? The investigation into alleged price rigging—and, by the way, it is very important that the oil companies concerned should of course co-operate with a European Union institution that is doing very good work on behalf of British consumers—stretches right back to the years when Labour was in power. What on earth did it do? Once again, it was asleep at the wheel. Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con): I am sure the Deputy Prime Minister shares the widespread revulsion at the perpetrators of the crimes against the young and vulnerable girls in Oxford. Does he agree that we now look to the courts to impose the severest possible penalties against these evil men, so that those poor girls can get the justice they were denied by the police and the local authority?
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