09/03/2017 Thursday in Parliament

Hello and Welcome to Thursday in Parliament, our look at the best

of the day in the Commons and the Lords.

Labour call on Tory MPs to rebel against the Chancellor's

decision to increase National Insurance Contributions

And no-one will ever believe a Tory election promise ever again.

Opposition peers have advice for a Work and Pensions Minister

to make the introduction of Universal Credit fairer.

It will transform their opportunity to get the

money that that will help them back into the labour market as we all

want, and not instead have a lifetime of debt

And SNP MPs appeal for people to come to Scotland.

Scotland's population has been getting a raw deal.

Scotland needs to get out from under that and create a

welcoming, entrepreneurial environment.

But first, a key issue on the second day

has been Philip Hammond's controversial changes

to National Insurance for those who're self-employed.

The change, announced on Wednesday, would mean 1.5 million

self-employed people paying ?240 more on average every year

The Chancellor has faced claims that increase amounts to a breaking

of a Conservative election manifesto promise.

And, yes, it is a manifesto betrayal.

There was a promise in the manifesto and it read like this, it said this,

this means that we can commit to no increases in VAT,

income tax or national insurance, taxes on working people.

This would harm our economy, reduce living standards and cost jobs.

Not me, not Labour MPs, Tory manifesto.

We're levelling the playing field between employees

and the self-employed and 60% of the

self employed, that is the lowest earners,

We are continuing to reduce corporation tax on all profitable

companies, large and small, so that hardworking entrepreneurs

keep most of the fruits of their labours,

and we are taking a number of steps to make business rates fairer.

headlines have not gone the way the Chancellor would have planned. White

Van man gets battered by budget, that is just to name a view. It is a

good example of when you do things in a hurry, you get things wrong.

The Chancellor got things wrong yesterday and aesthetics anything

away from the last 24 hours is that he made the wrong choice at the

wrong time in the wrong way. -- takes anything away. We will be

opposing the increase in national insurance for the self-employed.

City of London and how the labour markets operate there.

I was thinking about my friend in Skye or some of my friends

in the Highlands and knowing their reliance

and the type who are self-employed there

They cannot choose to work for other corporations that might not exist.

They are what might be called necessity entrepreneurs.

They do not work in one sector either, they

have to job around and they have long travelling

I do think we need to look at this very,

very carefully because there was a a solemn promise

in the manifesto not to increase national insurance.

The reality is that I worry that the accusation could be made

that it is a bit like signing a contract but

failing to look at the fine print, the small print, that exists.

I do think we need to raise the issue of

the lack of parity between the way employed and self-employed

There are advantages and disadvantages to

right to make sure we have the right equitable treatment for both.

I happen to say for myself, I do not want to see

us penalising the entrepreneurial people in our society.

At the same time, I want to make sure we have a system that is

fair and we need to be extremly mindful that we do not just satisfy

the letter of our manifesto commitments but also the spirit.

The tax lock was torn up by the Chancellor and he can dance

on the head of a pin, he can claim that their lock did not

apply to class four national insurance contributions

But, Madam Deputy Speaker, that was not

No-one will ever believe a Tory election promise

People will think they cannot trust the Government on

anything in terms of their future economic security.

I think the honourable lady is making a typical lucid

points in her speech but is it not incumbent on her, given that

there is consensus that we need to fund social care better, that extra

2 billion that the Chancellor announced, that it is incumbent on

her party to identify where that money would come from and if she

does not want it to be raised by national insurance contributions,

That leads me very nicely to my next point, which is that the

Chancellor would claim that the Government has no choice

but to raise national insurance contributions, but he somehow has

managed to find ?70 billion in tax cuts for the rich

and corporations, including ?1 billion for the Government's pet

I have always believed in low taxes as a

When a Government inherits a deficit of

?100 billion, the greatest priority must be to return to sound finances

I believe that it is right that those

benefit from public services make an appropriate contribution

That is what this budget's changes to national insurance will do.

The latest day of debate on the Chancellor's budget.

It's been a record breaking week in the House of Lords: on Tuesday

evening the largest number of peers ever to take part in a division

in the Upper House took part in a vote on the so-called Brexit Bill.

It resulted in a defeat for the Government.

Peers voted for Parliament having a meaningful vote on the final EU

Exit deal and for that measure to be clearly written into the Bill.

It was a proposal led by the crossbench peer Lord Pannick

and it was the government's second defeat on the Brexit Bill.

In the Commons, the Leader of the House set out

Monday 13th of March - consideration of Lord's amendments

withdrawal Bill, followed by a continuation of the Budget debate.

Tuesday 14th March, if necessary, consideration of Lord's amendments.

Mr Speaker, I note on the business paper there are three days set aside

for consideration of Lord's amendments if necessary, as this

Government attempts to ping that pong that is coming from those

heroes who are continuing to stand up to the Government.

I note that this only goes on until Wednesday.

What happens if we still have these paddles out

Is the Government going to enforce the Parliament act?

How does this impact on the Article 50

process and will he clarify what is going to go on?

But can we encourage the people's aristocrats to battle

It's perfectly routine for the Government to

announce provisional buisness in case there is a need

The House of Lords has a perfectly proper role as a revising

chamber, but it also knows that it is an unelected

house and I hope the

House of Lords will want to give very careful consideration to

whatever views this House takes on its amendments next week and to

accept that ultimately the view not just of the elected

House, but the view of the British people

expressed in a referendum, should prevail.

Mr Speaker, I note that the EU Bill will be

coming back to the Commons on Monday and once this Bill goes through it

will truly be the end of the Thatcher legacy

because the former Prime Minister signed up to, in 1981

EU enlargement Accession with Greece, 1983 Declaration

1986 EU enlargement accession of Spain and Portugal,

1987 Single European Act to create the single internal market

say, no, she could renegotiate the EU budget in 1984, say no to the

1985 Schengen agreement, say no to the 1999 social charter,

So we have Margaret Thatcher who was a Remainer and a

reformer, but you cannot say the same for this Government.

Well, earlier, the potential confrontation between MPs

and the Lords over alterations to the Brexit Bill surfaced

during question time to David Davis, the Secretary of State for Exiting

Labour wanted to know why the government was determined

The Prime Minister has said the approval of

parliament would be required for the final terms of our

The Prime Minister has also promised this will occur

before the withdrawal agreement is sent to the European

The House of Lords has now voted by a

large majority to amend the Article 50 Bill to reflect these

If the Prime Minister intends to keep her

commitments, why would the Government support this amendment

when it returns to this house on Monday?

Clearly, the Government wants to trigger Article 50 next

It will then have to set out its proposal in

For months it has hidden behind the bland phrases of frictionless

This is the last opportunity before triggering to spell out what this

I would have thought the honourable gentleman is a very

I would have thought he would have known what

frictionless meant, it means trade with the minimum of possible

barriers, the minimum possible impediment.

That is what we will seek to achieve.

From recent discussions with senior members of

the German parliament, it is very clear we are not going to get

barrier free access to the single market if we no longer operate free

Do Ministers yet recognise that reality?

That is not the response I'm getting from the

Ministers I've spoken to around Europe.

What they have come back with is that they want to see a

The only way to a constructive outcome is a free

Is not the case that at the end of the day when the

United Kingdom leaves the European union, we will be

Does he not agree with my favourite politician at the

moment Wolfgang Schaeuble, The Finance Minister of Germany, who

says that if we, the German and all the European union were to cause any

damage to the United Kingdom it would be increased tenfold for the

I'm sure the financial minister in question will

be uncontrollably excited to discover that the honourable

My honourable friend, Mr Speaker, makes

an extremely good point and that is that this market,

the UK market, will be the biggest export market

for the continuing European Union after we leave.

That is recognised not just by Herr Schaeuble but by the Belgian

chamber of commerce, with whom I spoke earlier this week.

The Prime Minister has said Britain will not

remain a full member of the custom union

but the Chancellor said it is

clear we cannot stay in the custom union.

It is clear that if we are to seek free

world, we will not be able to remain in the customs union as it currently

Having said that, what we do seek, that will be able to construct

customs arrangements that are as frictionless

as possible for the benefit of both the EU and the UK.

You're watching our round-up of the day in the Commons and the Lords.

Peers have been told by a Welfare Minister that

Universal Credit has been "deliberately" rolled out "slowly"

to make sure there's time to eliminate problems.

Universal Credit, or UC, will wrap together in a single

monthly payment the different benefits people have

In the Lords, Lord Henley responded to criticism about the way

First, a Labour peer spoke about one of the problems

In 2013 the Government introduced a rule that when you first claim

benefit you're not entitled to any money for the first seven days.

The problem is when universal credit came in because it is paid monthly

in arrears it means you get no money at all for six weeks.

And although that doesn't sound very long, the

typical family in social housing has only got ?200 in savings and some

Social landlords are now saying tenants are getting

big arrears, they're seeing people turning

to payday lenders, and even

to loan sharks, even the noble lord, Lord Freud, recently told the work

and pensions select committee that the seven-day waiting

There are safeguards in place and we introduced the universal

Claimants can apply for an advance immediately if they are in need and

can received up to 50% of their ward soon afterwards.

I go back to the original point, the important point

is to make sure we are mirroring the world of work, where 75% of

My Lords, in the last three months I've visited a large number of food

banks across the dioceses of Oxford, exceedingly affluent communities,

building on my experience of food banks in the dioceses of

And all I've had underlined to me is the most common

reason people interact with food banks is delay in accessing welfare

It is clear from the Government's own figures that too

few people are aware of or receiving the emergency payments intended for

It's not just the architecture of universal credit that is creating

problems, but the administration of universal credit, as the select

committee in the other place determined.

I understand that when asked about the sometimes fractious

relationship between the DWP and Treasury

noble lord's predecessor said there were times

when one's views of the

Can I ask, does the current Minister have any such inhibitions?

LAUGHTER My Lords, we have all on occasion

had moments where we have doubts about what goes on in the Treasury.

Most of us, I'm sure all of us in this

house, want universal credit to work.

Lady Hollis said three things needed to happen.

The first is to get rid of the seven-day waiting period.

The second is to pay people for likely as well

of a monthly in advance if they so wish.

And thirdly is to pay housing benefit if tenants so wish direct to

All of those three things together would transform the

ability of people who are not particularly sophisticated about the

It would transform their opportunity to get the money that would help

them back into the labour market as we all want

and not instead have a

I am very grateful that the noble Baroness offers support for

universal credit and, like her, we wish to see

That is why, as my noble friend, Lord Freud, always made

clear we want to see a very slow roll out of universal credit.

And the noble Baroness will be aware just how slow that roll out has been

Deliberately so, before the noble Baroness giggles too much.

Deliberately so, so that we can learn as this goes along.

The Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has said NHS hospitals in England must

get back to meeting the target for seeing patients swiftly

85% of patients were admitted, transferred or discharged

within four hours in January, compared to a target of 95%.

This week the Chancellor announced an extra 2billion pounds for social

This week the Chancellor announced an extra ?2 billion for social

care and 100 million pounds to place more GPs in A E departments.

The head of the NHS in England said the money would be used

to "kick-start a turnaround", so that the NHS went into next

In order to do that, we've got to help at

and E departments and we've got to help at the back end, in terms of

delayed discharges for frail, older patients.

And this money's for the front end, is it?

The Chancellor's announced that it is both.

Obviously the ?100 million capital is to help

ensure that A departments can make the space available to put in place

GP streaming on the model that has been successfully adopted in places

like Luton and Dunstable Hospital, one of our top performing A

departments in the country, and have those in place by next Christmas.

And then on the back end, obviously, the extra one billion pounds for

adult social care, as the Chancellor said yesterday, will be very

I was really asking about the, I was asking about the capital

funding particularly because the social care

bit, we won't want to get into that whole debate today.

We'll see what the announcement says.

On this A end of it, how many hospitals are going to get

money to put in effectively a walk-in triage approach at their

We want all hospitals to have comprehensive front door streaming

And have you costed what that would cost?

This is going to be probably 50 to 100

hospitals that need a bit of remedial work or extra capacity

So this money will be for 50 to 100 of the hospitals that need it.

So how much in total will it cost to deliver what you've

outlined, and what percentage of that has been contributed in the

We are setting a requirement that all hospitals have

GP streaming in place by this coming Christmas,

incremental capital required to do that is consistent with the funding

we've got from the Chancellor yesterday.

Simon Stevens was speaking to the Commons Public

Accounts Committee - which is investigating

access to GPs - an inquiry which raises a number of issues.

We've got about 300 million consultations

a year in GP's surgeries and we've got a differentiated group

of reasons why patients are consulting with their GP.

And it's tended to be seen as a one-size

approach when looked at nationally, whereas we've got to differentiate

the person with multiple chronic conditions who might require more

First is the same-day appointments needed. The reason it is so

important that the GP system is functioning well is not just for the

long-term condition management but also because of the availability of

same-day urgent care because if you think about 23 million any

attendances versus 85 million same-day GAAP appointments is

obvious that if you under source primary care and spills into other

parts of the NHS. The fast fantastic efficiency that primary care

represents 90% of patient contact

it's worth reminding us of that a year's worth of GP care costs

Simon Stevens, with an interesting fact there

Now, Scotland is a different place from England.

Nothing like a statement of the obvious.

But how different is the profile of the population between Scotland

SNP MPs have used a debate in Westminster Hall to highlight how

Scotland has an older population than the rest of the UK and is keen

to attract young people from Europe and elsewhere to live and work north

And they're asking for the Scottish Parliament to have

We'll always be fighting a losing battle, if we cannot grow our

And this report calls for the Government to consider, give

us a chance, give us a break, consider devolving some immigration

powers to Scotland, to let us grow our population.

If the minister doesn't and the UK Government

doesn't it is holding Scotland's hand behind

its back, cause we know that

population gap between us and the rest of the United Kingdom will have

massive implications for our economy and our ability to provide proper

The UK Government's immigration policy in no way recognises

Scotland's needs or serves our economic and societal interests.

They continue to exist resist pragmatic change which would not

only support the impact of Scotland's ageing demographic but

also help Scotland attract international students.

What would really benefit Scotland is the full

So we can ensure Scotland's prosperous future.

If the UK Government is unable to tailor its immigration needs to

Scotland then Scotland's independence will be the only

So Scotland's whole population, as my honourable friend alluded to,

has almost one fifth over retirement age

and we need the supply of young, energetic workers from the EU that

is now under threat from a Brexit which might

only mean Brexit to the

Prime Minister but means potentially a major economic threat to Scotland.

From the clearances, through Margaret Thatcher to Brexit,

Scotland's population has been getting a raw deal.

Scotland needs to get out from under that and

create a welcoming, entrepreneurial environment

to grow our economy and

We need, as my honourable friend said, and open

door for immigrants, and immigration policies

unlike the policies touted in this place by this Government.

We can't be left subject to this frankly

xenophobic regime if we are to build the population and the economy that

There's one thing that striving this Government in terms of immigration,

and that is to get the numbers down, to get the numbers down below an

Something they have failed to do, miserably, and still they are

We've got to accept the reality - the different nations,

different regions, different countries and cities of the United

Kingdom have different immigration needs.

The needs of northern Scotland are different than the

People will migrate to Scotland if the

conditions are right and there are a good job opportunities.

significant policy levers to shape and secure its economy.

It has the power to make Scotland the most

competitive part of the UK, to encourage and support more people

to move to Scotland from other parts of the UK or the EU or indeed

They have levers over economic development and support for

enterprise, education and workforce training,

health and social care, digital connectivity and transport.

In addition, the Scottish Parliament has recently taken on new

tax-raising powers which have the potential to be used to make

Scotland more competitive and a more attractive place to live, or

Do join me for the Week in Parliament , when we not only

look back at the last few days in the Commons and the Lords

but also assess how the current clash between the two Houses over

Until then, from me, Keith Macdougall, goodbye.