Claire Coutinho MP: speeches

Speeches

• 10 Feb 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  That is frankly another patronising non-answer from the Secretary of State. I am not sure whether he got the memo, but his party is fed up with the sexist boys club. What is crucial is that the public have lost faith in the Labour party. This is a serious moment. Does he accept that when he stands at the Dispatch Box and tells the public that by his calculation their bills are falling, not rising, they simply do not believe him? Does he also accept that when he does not set out what any of his plans—such as doubling the carbon tax or clean power 2030—will do to bills, he makes a mockery of his party’s pretence that it cares about the cost of living? Does he not reflect on all this—the £300 nonsense pledge, the Great British Energy fig leaf—and realise that when it comes to loss of trust, he is not their salvation but their problem?

• 1 Dec 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  We have a fundamental difference in belief. Labour Members believe the best way out of poverty is welfare; I think the best way is jobs and growth, but the Government are killing those things. The problem with the Labour party, as we can see from its policies, is that it clearly thinks the only answer to the cost of living is redistribution, even past the point at which there will be no one left to redistribute from. Conservative Members know that jobs, low taxes and low costs improve the quality of life, but the Government are killing those jobs—every month under them, parents are losing their jobs. What do Labour Members think the cost of living is like for those families who have lost their salaries under this Labour Government? There are 170,000 fewer people on the payroll since the election. Young people cannot get a foot on the jobs ladder—because of this Government, the cost of hiring a young person has gone up by £4,000. They say they are raising the minimum wage, but they are crushing businesses’ ability to pay for it. The result is hiring freezes and redundancies, and for all those people just above the minimum wage who are also struggling, there will be no money left for wage progression. The best way to improve living standards is growth, but this was not a Budget for growth; it was a Budget for Labour Back Benchers. That is why it did not contain a single growth measure. Labour’s entire approach to the economy has been to raise the cost of basic goods, to raise taxes, and to crush wages and employment. The Government are expecting a shrinking group of hard-working taxpayers to pay for more redistribution, to cover the costs that they are choosing to impose on the public. In the words of one Labour Cabinet Minister, this Budget has been a “disaster”. Those are not my words—according to a No. 10 source, they think they are the words of the Secretary of State. Labour will not be known as the party helping people with the cost of living; it will be known as the party that has broken its promises to working people, broken its promises on tax and on bills, and broken the social contract that sees work pay more than welfare.

• 1 Dec 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  The public are thinking of a phrase that ends in “you”, but the first word is not “thank”. The Government want to talk about the cost of living, but they are clobbering low and middle earners with tax rises and higher bills. That is why the majority of the country says that this Budget will leave their family worse off. The majority of the country has also said that they think the Budget is unfair. The Secretary of State talked about fairness, but the public do not feel that it is fair, and they are right. All the things that hurt disposable income are up: inflation, bills and taxes are up. The things that help—growth and employment—are down. Household disposable income has been revised downwards because of this Budget.

• 1 Dec 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  That was a fine performance, but anyone listening to it out there will think that the Secretary of State is in cloud cuckoo land. The Government have taxed working families up the wazoo. They have taxed tens of thousands of people out of their jobs. They are clobbering them left, right and centre with rising bills, and for what? It is not for growth—no, there is none of that coming—but so that they can go on a welfare spending spree. In the election, Labour promised the public that it would not lift the two-child benefit cap, just like it promised that it would not raise taxes on working people. It has broken promise after promise, and it has fudged the reasons why, to say the least. In this debate, the Government want a thank you from the public because they have handed them back a tiny fraction of the money that they took from them. I can tell you that the public are thinking of a phrase that ends in “you”—