UK politics live: MPs question Rishi Sunak on spending commitments announced in the budget

More from the PA on the Treasury Committee:

Sunak said it was “a bit unfair” to focus on fraudulently losing taxpayer cash during the emergency rollout of plans during the coronavirus pandemic.

Labour’s Angela Eagle raised concerns about £37bn spent on the test and trace scheme and a potential £27bn loss to fraud under Covid support schemes.

Sunak replied: “People should expect and demand that their money is spent properly.

“I think it is a bit unfair to focus on covid plans implemented at a massive pace at a time of national crisis.

“On the Covid side, it’s the same, and I said it at the time when you’re in a crisis, you’re going to be casting wider than the net in peacetime.”

But “we’re through it now”, he said: “the state is taking a lot of money from the people, we’ve talked about the tax rate being higher, we’ve talked about the state doing a lot, it’s absolutely Well that money gets really well spent.”

The European Commission has convened a meeting involving officials from Britain, France, Jersey and Guernsey as Emmanuel Macron’s deadline for action to resolve the dispute, PA reports.

A spokesman said: “A meeting convened by the Commission is taking place this afternoon, bringing together senior officials from the Commission, France, the UK as well as Jersey and Guernsey, in order to expeditiously resolve outstanding issues could.”

Downing Street said the talks were part of a “regular, technical, ongoing engagement”.

“We will continue to work with them to provide licenses where evidence and data can be presented to back up an application for a license,” said a No. 10 spokesperson.

Asked if he raised taxes to cut taxes shortly before the next general election, Sunak said: “The last thing I would do is voluntarily raise taxes.”

Instead he said it was done to fix the damage caused by Covid, solve the NHS backlog and fund “historic reforms” for social care.

More from PA on Committee:

Sunak stressed that he would aim to reduce taxes in the future.

He said: “That’s my goal, my mission, on the remainder of this Parliament, and we took a step in that direction in the budget.”

After giving an example of the new tapering rules for Universal Credit, Labor MP Siobhan McDonagh interrupted: “It’s not a tax cut, it’s a benefit change.”

Sunak said it was a “combined approach,” but McDonagh added: “It’s not really a tax cut. You’re desperate to find a tax cut.

“We’re sitting in Margaret Thatcher’s room and you expect to emulate her. But the British Prime Minister and the British Tory government you’re most emulating at the moment is Ted Heath, low growth and therefore high taxes. Isn’t that the case?”

Sunak replied: “Indeed, we anticipate recovering from the pandemic this year at a much higher rate than what has historically been.”

Sunak said a VAT cut on energy “would not be a sustainable thing” to help ease the increased cost pressure on households.

“That means the bulk of that very expensive tax cut will go to the rich,” he said.

He said the £500m domestic support fund for the most vulnerable families was a “better use of cash”.

Downing Street said “robust” measures were taken to meet its threats to the French authorities over the fishing dispute.

A PA No. 10 spokesperson told reporters: “As you’d expect, we have strong contingency plans. I’m not going to go into their details here.

“It is the French who made these threats and we are calling on them relentlessly to back down from those threats.”

The spokesman said it was up to France whether they carried out their post-Brexit fishing rights threats.

He added: “It is entirely up to France whether they choose to proceed with the threats they have set. We hope that they will walk away from the threats they have made.”

The spokesman said meetings are ongoing with officials in France and Jersey and Guernsey on the issuance of personal licenses.

“We are delighted to continue working to help them obtain the evidence they need as they seek more licenses,” the spokesperson said.

More on the Treasury Committee from PA:

Other organizations and government departments are interested in moving to the Treasury’s northern center in Darlington, the chancellor has said.

Rishi Sunak told the Commons Treasury Committee that his department was “ready to be joined by several other departments … either those belonging to the government or other bits of government”.

But he said the names of the organizations have not been made public yet.

The report also quoted Sunak as admitting that hitting the targets in his new financial regulations would be a challenge, but saying it was “better than a heck of a chance”.

Mel Stride, chairman of the Commons Treasury Committee, said the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) chart left Mr Sunak’s financial headroom looking “rather pale” than that of his predecessors.

Stride said that while OBR didn’t say “a heck in a hell’s chance” of hitting its targets, it appears there is a strong risk that “those targets won’t be met”.

The Committee heard that the OBR modeling has given a 55-60% probability of meeting the target.

Sunak said, “I probably describe it better than a heck in a hell of a chance, but numbers are numbers.”

The Education Secretary, Nadim Jahvi, has resolved to prolong the school day.

The PA reports that Nadim Zahavi told lawmakers that there were some “excellent examples” that he would investigate, before urging all schools to ensure they went through an average school duration of 6.5 hours.

It has been suggested that increasing the school day will help children prosper and make up for lost education in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic.

When asked about the tax hike resulting from the budget lowering the standard of living of the people, Sunak said, “The quality of life is affected by the quality of public services”.

He said the government has adopted a “highly progressive approach” in which “the lowest income earners are benefiting more than others”.

Asked how the government plans to address stagnant real wages, which are being further dampened by rising inflation, Sunak said the government’s focus was on improving the “lower end of the spectrum” because The “very high wage growth” in previous years was “not shared equally”.

However, he acknowledged: “Here and in other countries since the financial crisis with wages generally higher, it has been a struggle to reach the growth rates seen earlier.”

He said the government is of the view that the best way to tackle this is to improve skills and re-training opportunities, including those outlined in the budget.

Asked whether social care schemes have progressed significantly given rising levels of demand, Sunak said the £1.6bn that was allocated was “historically higher levels of social care spending than usual”. describes the reforms as “historic”.

To address the recruitment and retention challenges in the social care workforce, there needs to be a real sense of “career advancement and qualifications people can get”, he said, adding that £500,000,000 will go towards “improving the quality of training”.

Asked why the government did not cut taxes further, Sunak said he was lagging behind due to lack of fiscal headroom as well as the government’s comprehensive plans to invest in future growth, skills and infrastructure. were forced to level the areas.

“We have a set of commitments that we want to meet and we’ve done that across the board with historically generous settlements in all departments,” he said.

The Education Secretary, Nadim Zhawi, said “there is no room for anti-Semitism to harass school leaders or come anywhere” as he stressed that the vaccination program for secondary school pupils “continues at pace”. .

The PA told Zahvi to MPs: “It was the Joint Committee on Immunization and Immunization”. [JCVI] Who initially did not take the decision and then went ahead and asked the four Chief Medical Officers to take this decision.

“So, as we have done throughout the immunization programme, we have operated on the advice of the Chief Medical Officers, with the advice of the JCVI, and we moved quickly from the moment the advice was provided for 12- to 15 vaccinations. -year-olds, and of course through the vacation period that was extended out-of-school to vaccinations and now as they return to school that momentum continues.”

Responding to Labour, he said: “They are right to highlight the dangerous behavior of some anti-vaxxers, school leaders have nowhere to come or harass anti-vaxxers and I have to be the Home Secretary.” assures that he will provide the region with any resources it takes to ensure that those in our schools are safe and able to carry on with the work of teaching and protecting children.”

Asked why the government abandoned its £2bn target for science and research spending, Sunak said: “It’s a balance between all these things.”

He said the government has spent “the largest amount of money any government has ever spent on key priorities of the science and innovation community”. This includes ensuring the UK can remain part of the EU’s Horizon funding programme, a “generous agreement” for core research and £1bn of Innovate UK funding to fund later-stage research and development Doubling up to

He said the reason Britain compared poorly with similar countries on science spending was that it funded more research through tax credits than other countries that rely more on direct investment.