Speeches by Reeves.

“I happily join my hon. Friend in welcoming Mansfield’s success. We have launched a revamped fair payment code, under which signatories commit to paying their suppliers on time, and the disability finance code for entrepreneurship. That comes on top of reforms announced at the Budget to protect small businesses, such as…”

“We have published the detail of how that money is raised, but the numbers from His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs are very clear: only a quarter of estates will pay any additional tax. At the moment, the vast majority of agricultural property relief is enjoyed by a very small number of very large and very expensive esta…”

“I am happy to arrange a meeting between my hon. Friend and the relevant Minister.”

“At the Budget in October, we had to fill a £22 billion black hole left by the previous Government. We will never have to repeat a Budget like this one, because we will not have to clear up the mess of the previous Government ever again.”

“The hon. Gentleman talks about uncertainty, but he was a Minister in the Treasury under Liz Truss, when huge damage was done to families’ and businesses’ finances. Frankly, I will take no lessons from Conservative Members on how to run the economy. We have already done phase 1 of the spending review; phase 2 will begin…”

“The hon. Gentleman will know that there is more headroom in our Budget in October than was left by the previous Government. The lesson I have learned is that I will never play fast and loose with the public finances, as the Conservative party did, because when it did, interest rates went through the roof and inflation …”

“At the Budget, I wiped the slate clean after 14 years of chaos and mismanagement of our public finances, and I have brought stability back to our economy, so that we can get on with fulfilling our promise of delivering change. That means investing to fix the NHS and rebuild Britain, while ensuring that working people d…”

“As my hon. Friend will know, in the autumn Budget and phase 1 of the spending review, more than £1 billion was made available to local government, including £600 million for social care. The allocation of that money will be set out in the normal way over the next few weeks, so that local government is funded properly a…”

“I welcome the right hon. Member to his place, and look forward to many exchanges with him across the Dispatch Box. At the Budget in October, as he knows, we had to fix a £22 billion black hole in the public finances. Some of that black hole comes from the fact that we are the only G7 economy in which employment is lowe…”

“No Chancellor of the Exchequer would write five years’ worth of Budget in their first five months in post, but I can say that we will never have to deliver a Budget like that again. We took decisions in this Budget in order to wipe the slate clean after the mismanagement, decline and chaos of the previous Government. T…”

“The tax rises in the Budget were used to provide a £22.6 billion uplift in the Department of Health and Social Care budget to ensure that our NHS is properly funded. The NHS will ensure that important services are properly funded, and those allocations will be set out in the normal way.”

“I will head to the Great Northern conference in Hull later this afternoon to speak about the impact of this Government’s policies on Yorkshire and the wider north of England. We are supporting local leaders and communities through integrated settlements, are investing in the trans-Pennine route upgrade, East West Rail …”

“In the past four weeks since the Leader of the Opposition was elected, the Conservatives have made £7 billion of commitments to cut taxes, but with no idea of how they would cut public services to afford them. I do not know how they will vote on national insurance, but we can see pretty quickly how they ended up leavin…”

“We were really pleased to announce an R&D budget of more than £20 billion at the autumn Budget. This is important to funding and accelerating R&D not just in the hon. Lady’s constituency but across the country. Combined with the corporate tax road map, as well as the commitment to continuing funding for Horizon…”

“As I said to Dame Harriett, I am not going to write five years’ worth of Budgets—imagine if that had been done in 2019. We might not have had all the tax increases that we’ve had—”

“I think we did make the Budget announcements in the Budget. I think it was important in terms of the fiscal rules to indicate to markets how the investment and stability rules would work, but even those—the measure we were using, the timeframe to meeting our rules and all of that—were announced to Parliament.”

“I will write to you, Chair, with the information. We think we have the right balance, given the need to raise money, and given that all communities, including rural communities, rely on stable public finances, because of the cost of capital, and a well-functioning education and health system.”

“I am happy to write to you with more detail about the distribution—”

“In the last year that data was available, 40% of agricultural property relief went to 7% of estates, and 22% of relief went to 2% of estates—[Interruption.] Let me just finish this point. That was worth £119 million, and it went to just 37 estates. It is not possible to continue the rate of support that was previously …”

“Then let me come to the issue of the taxation of estates. In the last year that data was available—2021-22—the average claim for agricultural property relief was just under £500,000, and 73% of claims were for less than £1 million.”