Josh Simons MP: speeches

Speeches

• 19 Mar 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. Conveniently, I shall be responding to exactly that point in a few minutes, but if he feels that I have not done so, he is welcome to intervene again. Given that the state pension has risen by £900 and will rise again by as much as £1,900 over the course of this Parliament, the Government’s changes target the winter fuel payment on the basis of the principle of need. That is the right principle. I do not believe that taxpayers should foot the bill for pensioners with millions of pounds to receive winter fuel payments. It is true that some donate the money to charity, but many do not. According to the columnist Fraser Nelson: “A millionaire I know has a tradition every year: he buys a bottle of vintage wine with his winter fuel payment and invites friends to drink it.” Targeting the winter fuel payment is not just about the public finances; it anchors and preserves the policy in the right moral principle—the principle of need. It protects the winter fuel payment for those who need it most. Some object that although the principle of need is the right one, the changes set too low a threshold. That has not been my experience, and here I come to the point made by the hon. Member for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford). I represent more people of pensionable age than most Members, and many of them are struggling.

• 19 Mar 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  I will not give way at this point. In towns such as Hindley Green and Hindley, Abram and Platt Bridge, Ashton and Orrell, pensioners who have worked all their lives are facing acute and sometimes painful challenges.

• 19 Mar 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  In politics, in my opinion, it matters hugely how we make arguments. My generation of politicians, many of us newly elected, have grown up in an era of ceaseless turbulence. Our world has become more insecure, our economy has flatlined, and our democracy is sometimes strained. That means we have responsibilities as elected politicians in how we make arguments, and that matters for this debate. First, over several decades this House has ceded too much power to unelected and sometimes unaccountable bodies—agencies, quangos and administrators. Elected representatives must have the power to change the things for which the public holds them accountable. Secondly, the public are tired of being told that we have no choice, that our hands are tied and that we must do this because lawyers or economists said so. Our job is to make arguments to the public on the basis of principle and not solely of necessity. After all, why vote, if the people we vote for are not in charge, but lawyers, economists, quangos or agencies are? What is democracy for, if the people we elect do not control the things that affect our lives? To restore trust in politics, we must show that politics matters. That is why it is vital that we articulate our choices in terms of principles.

• 19 Mar 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  If the hon. Gentleman will allow me a few more minutes, I will come to the exact question of the threshold at which pension credit is awarded and at which, therefore, someone is eligible for the winter fuel payment. In order to reach the most vulnerable people, who are often the hardest to reach because they are not on Facebook and are not coming to my coffee mornings, I wrote to more than 5,000 pensioners to ensure that they received the support they deserved. Let me end by making a broader point. Today’s debate has underscored a simple truth about Conservative Members. Theirs is no longer the party with the strength and courage to lead, whether in asserting the sovereignty of this place or in making arguments with principle.

• 19 Mar 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  I will not give way, as I am coming to the end. Today’s debate is another reminder that Conservative Members are growing comfortable with opposition. They prefer shouting, stomping and shaking with outrage to running the country, and that is the difference between us and them. We believe in calmly but doggedly driving the change this country voted for. We believe in standing alongside working people, and delivering change that benefits them. Conservative Members can put on their Britney mics and prophesise about abstractions, they can stomp their feet, they can wave bits of paper and they can get buzz cuts in a bid to convince working people that they have changed, but they have not. We are the party of working people and of change, and change is what we will continue to deliver.

• 19 Mar 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  I will not. The Conservatives knew that the winter fuel payment needed to change—they said so in their manifesto in 2017—but they did nothing about it. They knew that NHS England was duplicating, wasting taxpayers’ money and failing to drive up standards, but they did nothing about it. They knew that flooding was getting worse in places such as Platt Bridge, Ashton and Abram in my constituency, but they did nothing about it. Let me give an even more egregious example from this week. The shadow Secretary of State for Justice, the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), has stomped his feet and shaken his head about new guidance issued by the Sentencing Council. The Lord Chancellor has been clear that independent agencies should not make policy; this Chamber should. However, what the shadow Secretary of State for Justice is unwilling to confront is the fact that his party welcomed that guidance. The unequal treatment in the guidance has not changed, and he knows that. The shadow Secretary of State for Justice typifies what the Conservative party has become, and that has been exemplified in this debate. Conservative Members come to this Chamber shaking with outrage and spoiling for a spat, but they forget that they have been in charge.

• 10 Mar 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  In Ashton, Orrell, Platt Bridge, Hindley and Hindley Green, one issue dominates life for so many: antisocial behaviour. For months, I have been promising my constituents the measures in the Bill, and I thank the Home Office team for the hard work required to bring it to the House so quickly. To my mind, the Bill is one of the strongest examples of this Labour Government delivering for working people on the issues they care about. The Bill takes tough action against serious crime—drugs, knife crime and terrorism—but I want to talk about a different, more everyday type of crime. These are the crimes that make life demoralising and sometimes frightening for many people, and that shape how people feel about their town centre, community and security. It is the fly-tipping in Bickershaw that makes parents stop their kids playing outside. It is teenagers throwing mud at cars in Hindley, and groups intimidating people by the shops in Winstanley. Some of the toughest calls I have received in this job have been people ringing to tell me that thugs have destroyed a local sports club: Ashton Town—an arson attack—Hindley FC, and Wigan Cosmos, as well as St Jude’s pitches being destroyed in minutes by vandals on dirt bikes. Those clubs are great community assets where kids that I represent learn to become Wigan Warriors, or the elderly play walking football—places where people feel pride in their communities. I have supported fundraisers to help those clubs, working with local councillors and Warriors players to help St Jude’s build a fence to keep the bikes out, but local residents should not have to reach into their already stretched pockets. Our streets should not feel so unsafe that people resort to self-protection. We are one of the world’s largest economies and greatest democracies. That is why I welcome the measures in the Bill, such as new powers to seize bikes that wake people up at night, as they did to me this Saturday. Every time one of those bikes tears past me in the town centre, I hold on to my kids that bit tighter. The Bill matters because it is about standing up for the good, hard-working people who love their towns and want to feel pride in them again. It is about what it means to feel respect for those who we stand by and live near, and it shows that the Labour Government will not tolerate those who make others’ lives a misery. The respect orders, for example, are wisely named, because vandalism, thuggery and mindless destruction are about a lack of respect for our public spaces and for each other. The Bill empowers groups in society—police, councils, housing associations—with restoring that respect, asking them to say, “Enough is enough” and to take control of their communities. I want to make a wider point about respect in our society. Often when I am travelling on the bus or train, someone is playing videos loudly on their phone without headphones. That is not illegal, but it is off-putting, because it forces whatever that person is doing on to everyone else, as if they somehow own our shared public space. It demonstrates a lack of respect for our public realm and for those around us. In the end, the strength of our communities and our country depends on the respect, and even the love, we have for one other. That is what resilience is in a community. Over the last 14 years, the Conservative Government have allowed that respect to erode. Too many no longer trust that the law will be upheld and applied equally and fairly to everyone, and that erodes people’s trust in one another. That is why antisocial behaviour is significant: it is about treating one another with a lack of respect, as if we do not care about the things we have in common. Only by rebuilding and reinvesting in our public realm, and restoring the strength and integrity of institutions such as the police, will we rebuild that respect and trust. The Bill takes a vital step. It shows that we stand with law-abiding, hard-working people. It sends a strong message to those who fail to recognise their responsibility. Respect must return to our streets, and this Bill will start to make that happen.

• 6 Mar 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Mr Speaker, rugby league fans like you and others in the Chamber will know and love my most famous constituent, Billy Boston. Before I came into the Chamber, I was informed that Billy is not well. Local councillors in my constituency have started a petition to ensure that he receives a knighthood while that is still possible. It is a scandal—and one that we must recognise—that for over a century no rugby football league hero has received a knighthood. Does the Leader of the House agree that Billy Boston should be Sir Billy Boston while that is still possible?

• 3 Mar 2025 · Ukraine · Hansard source

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  In recent months, the Conservatives, who apparently lack the stamina that the Prime Minister displayed over the weekend, have confidently and repeatedly pronounced to the Prime Minister what the President of the United States will and will not do, all of which has turned out to be bluff and bluster. Does the Prime Minister agree that the UK Government have the best intelligence to support the UK national interest, and that the UK national interest would be better served with a bit less bluff and bluster, and a bit more optimism about what this great country can do to lead the way to make our world and our people more secure?

• 24 Feb 2025 · Breakfast Clubs: Early Adopters · Hansard source

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  As a newly elected Member of this place, I try to visit a school in my constituency every week. Time and again, parents tell me, as they did last week at Hindley All Saints primary, that having a child in this country is too expensive and too exhausting, which is why I really welcome the programme that the Secretary of State has set out today. In a few weeks’ time, I am hosting a coffee morning at the family hub in Hindley, where parents are coming to discuss the issues that they face, particularly dads, who often do not show up to these things. Will the Secretary of State assure the House that she will tightly monitor the timeline for rolling out this fantastic programme beyond the early adopters and to other schools that will benefit, including those in my constituency?

• 12 Feb 2025 · Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  It is an honour to follow that great contribution from the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone), much of which I will echo. Like him, before I was elected to this place I worked a lot with data—understanding it, using it, deploying it—in tech companies, academia and then politics. I am a huge supporter of the Secretary of State’s and the Minister’s agenda, and broadly of the enormous potential for data and data-driven tools such as AI and machine learning, because they can drive productivity growth, boost earnings and, crucially, save constituents’ time and money—whether it is registering the birth of children, kids going through school, accessing a GP or entering the workplace. I would like to underscore a few aspects of the Bill that have not been spoken much about, but I would also like to make a wider argument about the importance of this agenda and about going further in some areas in the years to come, particularly in the connection between data and risk. So, Madam Deputy Speaker, I hope you will forgive a slight and quick diversion. The word “data” has its roots in the word for “fact”, but in the world of machine learning and AI it means something broader—the information we choose to record about our world to analyse and use to make decisions. Data began as demographic information, because a state that wanted to build an army or fight wars wanted to know what kinds of people comprised its populace. Now we collect data about driving, sleep and clicks online to help us navigate or get fitter, but also to push us mindless advertising. What data we collect depends on what we want to use data for, and that requires constant judgments about risk: where we are willing to take risks, how much risk and what kinds of risks. In many ways, we have become a society and a country too averse to risk—to failure. We create new regulators and give them enormous discretion because we want to minimise risk. We create new tsars for this, that and the other, and give them broad powers because we want to minimise risk. The effect is that we avoid failures on 1,000 small things, but we also lose the opportunity to maximise our output and our success, because success requires risk, and data often forces us to make clear and confident judgments about risk. The topic of this Bill is an opportunity to begin to shift our culture in our economy and, crucially, in our state too, but also for politicians like us in this House to be clear about where we welcome and embrace risk and where we do not, and to take responsibility as elected Members for failure. I will focus on two areas in this Bill where I believe data is forcing to the surface different appetites for and judgments about risk: healthcare and social media. Briefly, I will say something about copyright, which has been well covered in powerful contributions by others. I am pleased that the Secretary of State said that he is looking at this area in the AI consultation, and I look forward to hearing more about the details of that consultation and what comes from it. We should be optimistic. It is possible to do what others have argued for and place our creative industries on a secure and stable footing, while also ensuring that AI is unlocked in this country. I hope that the Secretary of State will hear the powerful contributions of my colleagues today. The two examples I will focus on are those that matter to many of the working people in my constituency of Makerfield. As the Secretary of State said, data is at the heart of how this Government must break through barriers and inertia to deliver for working people. That is why I am so glad that this Bill is not about killer robots or space-age AI, but is focused on the transformation of Government and services that impact my constituents every day. The first example is healthcare, and this is an area where we should embrace more risk. Systematising the collection and recording of data in healthcare unlocks the possibility of using data to spot patterns, of contacting people ahead of time—instead of fining them if they miss their appointment, as they do in my borough of Wigan—and of saving people time that they do not have. To unleash the full potential of data in healthcare, we need to be confident about building population-level datasets controlled and owned by the public, anonymised through tools such as encryption, and then using those datasets not just for academic research, but to improve services and delivery. This Bill takes initial steps in that direction, which I welcome. In Greater Manchester, my constituents benefit already from a shared patient care record between primary and secondary care, and a data science platform that brings in data across local hospitals. Patients already feel the benefit of that every day. In healthcare, we can go further and faster. We must be cautious about inadvertently slipping into risk aversion, caution and stagnation, particularly in relation to concerns about privacy. For much of the past 20 years and the period I have been involved in this debate, debates about data have been dominated by concerns about privacy, but whose interests does the privacy lobby serve? Often, think-tanks and NGOs fight in the name of working people to stop data being used to do things that working people want done. There is a lot of good evidence that the public are relaxed about population-level anonymised data being used to save them time and money and improve the services they use, especially in healthcare. Does the elderly woman I saw in my constituency surgery last week, who has been struggling to see her GP for weeks now, care if her data sits in an anonymised database and is used to unlock more facetime for her GP to see patients and to make it faster for her to get an appointment? I do not think she does. I therefore welcome the changes in this Bill to the EU’s sprawling GDPR framework. If one of Brexit’s much-famed opportunities is to lead the way in diffusing the collection and use of data, we should embrace it wholeheartedly, subject to the data adequacy requirement. More generally in healthcare, we must ensure that we do not inadvertently build barriers that block the collection and use of data controlled by those accountable to the public for the public good, where data can drive better outcomes and improve experiences. The second case I will consider is social media. Social media collects data about our unthinking scrolling to build highly optimised engagement algorithms that rake in advertising revenue. That contributes little to growth, national security or, indeed, the welfare of humanity. The digital verification market that this Bill creates will be vital. Digital age verification is central to protecting our children, especially once the Online Safety Act 2023 is in force. I want my young kids to grow up in a country that protects them from harmful content, such as sexualised violence, and from spending hours mindlessly scrolling through content, wasting their time and corroding their minds. I also welcome the Bill’s provision to allow researchers to access online safety data held by technology companies, and I hope that we will continue to deepen those provisions. This is one area where I actually think we should be more worried about risk—a rare exception to my general view that we have become too risk-averse—because it is about the minds and character of our citizens and the strength of our democracy. At present, the information environment of our nation is being polluted, sometimes deliberately and often by foreign adversaries. Governments communicate with citizens, and citizens with each other, in spaces designed to drive them apart. As we have seen in past months, knowing what is circulating online, and how, is in the public interest. I hope that the Bill is just the beginning of our Government using every possible lever to rebuild the fabric of trust in government, politics and each other in this new digital environment. Historically, states collected data to wage wars and raise taxes. This Government should harness data to put money in the pockets of working people, to make public services more efficient and easier to access, and—crucially—to rebuild our public realm and restore trust in our great democracy.

• 10 Feb 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill · Hansard source

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  As others have spoken about the specific measures in this Bill, I will take a step back and talk about the ideas that underpin it. There have been grumblings tonight that we are aping Conservative Members and that we are being asked to pretend, to delude ourselves and to dupe the public somehow into thinking that we support strong and controlled borders as a precondition for managed migration. I support this Bill, but I am doing no such thing. For one thing, we have no need to ape Conservative Members. Their continued smug self-satisfaction smacks of their refusal to reckon with the magnitude of their failure, including to secure our borders. We also have no need to emulate the tub-thumping, NHS-destroying five musketeers who seem to be enjoying flying around the world, raking in cash and occasionally representing their constituents. Only one of them has bothered to show up tonight. We should worry less about those people and more about the force of our own arguments—the arguments of those who believe in progress and fairness, and who seek to represent the interests of working people in this country. So often I have been told by people who live in wealthier, educated, cosmopolitan cities that support for strong borders and for the right of a public to choose who joins its ranks is an unenviable moral compromise. They say that open borders are the natural state of things, and the use of force to control them is a regrettable, if sometimes necessary, feature of the modern world. Those who think that do not understand the history of our democracy. I hope the House will forgive a short detour. In the first great democracy in history—ancient Athens—about half the residents were migrants, or metics. Metics were subject to different rules; who joined the city was controlled and the bar was set high for who could become a citizen and vote. If metics broke Athenian laws, they were expelled from the city, and sometimes thrust into the blazing Greek sun. It is a fundamental principle of democracy that people who govern themselves control who they are and who becomes a member of the demos, but in recent decades, some in this country seem to have forgotten that principle. For instance, I was enormously frustrated by the remain campaign’s failure to acknowledge that the EU alters that fundamental principle. We might argue that control is worth giving up for some other reason, such as economic growth or reducing red tape, but without acknowledging that it is given up, we lack the credibility to make the argument. This is something that my constituents understood perfectly well: control over who joins our self-governing nation is not a moral compromise; it is the heart of what makes us a free people and a strong democracy. The upshot is simple: control over the borders of this country is a precondition for a serious moral debate about who we should allow to join, on what terms and for what reasons. Unless elected Governments can demonstrate to their people that they have control over admission, we cannot seriously debate the trade-offs in who we admit and why. The public rightly judged my party to have lost credibility on this issue in recent decades. In 2004, we chose not to put the brakes on and opened our labour markets to new EU members. At times, we openly mocked those concerned about migration, but we are not that party any more. I was not elected to this Chamber to espouse those views; in fact, I promised hundreds of my constituents that I would not rest until we gripped our borders, restored control, and yes, as the Home Secretary said, brought down the number of legal migrants entering this country each year—and I meant it. For me, this is not a regrettable moral compromise—a pact with the devil in which we hold our noses and ape Conservative Members to win votes—it is about a deep belief in what it means for our country to be strong, and our democracy respected. Elected politicians do not just follow the polls; they explain and defend their convictions, and ours are these: the Labour party exists to represent working people. We seek to win power and use it to represent people outside the establishment who do not usually sit in the rooms where decisions are made. At the heart of that is the simple idea that elected people like me should take responsibility for deciding who gets to join our country. Parliament controls our borders, not Brussels or, after this Bill, smuggler gangs. We in the Labour party believe in control and order. The Opposition do not. I welcome the Bill unequivocally. Those who abuse vulnerable people to threaten the order of our borders should be treated like terrorists, and I am glad that under this Government they will be. In doing so, we are not aping anyone; we are doing what Labour exists to do: take back control to represent the working people of this great country.

• 10 Feb 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T6. Last month, I hosted the annual dinner for former servicepeople in my constituency, where I met scores of people who served our country proudly and bravely, like Councillor Clive Morgan. I will ask the Secretary of State the question they asked me, which becomes ever more urgent by the day: what are the Government doing to boost the resilience of the general public in this country in an ever-more hostile world?

• 29 Jan 2025 · Growing the UK Economy · Hansard source

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  I was proud to set up the Labour growth group, now ably chaired by colleagues, to demonstrate that we on the Labour Benches are the party of builders, not blockers. I was struck to hear the Leader of the Opposition say it herself today: she said, almost mockingly, that the Conservatives could have taken all the decisions the Chancellor made today, but they did not. Does the Chief Secretary to the Treasury agree that that about sums it up? In the end, they always put their party management before the national interest.

• 27 Jan 2025 · Early Learning Goals · Hansard source

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  As a Jewish person, Mr Speaker, may I take this opportunity to thank you for everything you have done to help the House to remember my ancestors and those of other Jewish people whom we remember today? Welcome funding was announced for Abram Bryn Gates school in Bamfurlong, in my constituency, in the last free school funding round, but the school has just been told that that funding has been paused, possibly until 2028. It is a really important school, because it provides support for kids to stay in mainstream education even when they have left. When can my constituents expect a decision to be made on the funding for this school?

• 27 Jan 2025 · Early Learning Goals · Hansard source

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  18. What steps she is taking to increase the number of children achieving the early learning goals.

• 27 Jan 2025 · Fiscal Policy: Defence Spending · Hansard source

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  I am a strong supporter of making sure that we reach 2.5% of GDP on defence. However, may I remind Conservative Members that one of the first things this Government did was to scrap a £40 million contract with a helicopter company that transported Conservative Ministers around the country? Does the Minister agree that that will help to ensure that our defence spending goes on defending the nation, not on assuaging the egos of Conservative Members?

• 21 Jan 2025 · Southport Attack · Hansard source

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  I thank the Home Secretary for updating the House, and welcome the uncompromising inquiry that she and the Prime Minister have announced. I would like to ask about social media and the digital information environment. I worked in a technology company for a long time, and I concur with the Home Secretary’s comments: the companies that we are talking about know what is circulating online and what is getting virality. After last summer, does she feel that she and the Prime Minister have the information that they need to make decisions in real time in order to secure our online information environment?

• 21 Jan 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T7. On new year’s day, hundreds of my constituents woke up not to hangovers and warm homes, but to floodwater rushing into their houses. I watched as families with young children were pulled from their homes in Platt Bridge, and there was flooding in Ashton and Bickershaw. I welcome the £2.4 billion that the Government have committed to flood defence schemes, but will the Minister commit to protecting funding for flood victims and flood defence schemes?

• 17 Dec 2024 · Mineworkers’ Pension Scheme: Living Standards · Hansard source

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  16. What assessment he has made of the potential impact of changes to the mineworkers’ pension scheme on the living standards of recipients.

• 17 Dec 2024 · Mineworkers’ Pension Scheme: Living Standards · Hansard source

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  In my constituency of Makerfield, more than 500 people stand to benefit from changes introduced by this Government to the mineworkers’ pension scheme. For years, those people and their families stood by and watched as the Conservative Government stole their pensions and disrespected their work. I want us to celebrate our industrial past and those who made this nation wealthy and powered our industrial revolution. Does the Secretary of State agree that we need to do more to remember the legacy of mining as well as to drive up the living standards of those on the mineworkers’ pension scheme?

• 16 Dec 2024 · United Front Work Department · Hansard source

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  Can I ask the Minister about the integrity of our democracy? In particular, what steps is he taking to ensure the integrity of the processes and institutions of our political process, especially but not only with regard to China?

• 4 Dec 2024 · Employer National Insurance Contributions · Hansard source

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  The economic arguments in this debate will be well covered by other Members, so I would like to make a brief point about choices and political leadership—about having arguments, rather than ducking them. For a decade, as low growth placed an ever-greater burden on the public finances, Conservative Members fiddled and fudged, choosing stealth taxes such as fiscal drag that they hoped nobody would notice. Between 2010 and 2021, Conservative Governments introduced 1,651 tax changes. They changed vehicle excise duty 258 times and alcohol duty 125 times. The last Parliament saw the largest set of tax rises since the second world war, leaving the tax burden at a third of national income. When a Government are frightened of their own shadow, as well as their own divided Back Benches, it is easier to fudge and fiddle than to face up to hard choices. Conservative Members lacked the courage and unity to tackle the great problem this great nation faced, but not us—not this Government. When we see something fundamental that requires courage and leadership to address, we square up to it and confront it. That is why we immediately undid the fiddles and fudges, ending the freeze on income tax that has burdened working people in this country. It is why we ended the hidden theft of money from working people and fixed the injustice of the mineworkers’ pension scheme, and it is why we boosted HMRC compliance, because there is no point in creating a tax behemoth that cannot be enforced. It is also why we made a big, clear choice to close the gaping hole in the public finances left by Conservative Members. Britain’s economy has run a tight labour market alongside stagnant productivity growth for decades. In that context, national insurance rises are a sensible, balanced and transparent way to incentivise business investment that will boost productivity while filling the £22 billion black hole. That is what courage looks like: squaring up to the challenges our country faces, instead of running scared and leaving working people to pay the price. We have fronted up to set this great country back on a secure path. If the Opposition wish to show the nation that they are a responsible party ready to govern this great country, they must have the courage to tell us whether they would scrap this measure, and if not, which of the challenges we face they wish to ignore. Do they want to cut off the electrification of the Wigan-Bolton train line? Do they want to get rid of the experts working with the Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh NHS trust in my constituency to bring down waiting lists? Perhaps they want to cut back once again on the neighbourhood police officers who we are getting back on our streets, or perhaps they want to cut the £150 million investment in Border Security Command. I do not think so.

• 27 Nov 2024 · Finance Bill · Hansard source

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  If the hon. Member is so concerned about inequality and poverty in this country, why does he refuse to support the building of pylons, thereby adding about £4 billion to the cost of increasing electricity production in this country? Those costs will, above all, go on to the bills of working people. Is that not a measure to reduce inequality and poverty in this country that the hon. Member would support?

• 27 Nov 2024 · Finance Bill · Hansard source

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  Not only do I agree with my hon. Friend’s point about the carer’s allowance, which will benefit 8,000 people in my region of the north-west, the increase demonstrates a wider point about respecting those who provide care in our society and economy. For too long, we have thought the profession to be unskilled, and have undervalued it as a path of work. In several of the measures that the Finance Bill will pay for, the Government have demonstrated that caring is a vital part of the economy that we wish to build. I have said this before, and will say it again: higher productivity and more technology mean more care. We must respect and value that most human of professions if we are to build an economy in which we all want to live in the future.