GP funding for 2025-26 will be confirmed by the Department for Health and Social Care in the usual way as part of the GP contracting process, and it will consider all the pressures on GPs in the round.
I will make some progress, because the points we have made are clear. It is important for me to look also at what the Opposition might do, given the important vote today on these tax changes, which are necessary to raise funding for the NHS and other public services. I would like to think that the Opposition might join us today, back our plans to provide extra funding for the NHS and support this Bill to help pay for it. It seems though, from an article in The Sunday Times in the name of the shadow Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride), that that may not be the case. In that piece, he wrote that the Conservatives apparently
“want to provide further funding for the NHS.”
Sadly, they refuse to take the tough decisions to pay for it.
I note that in that article, the shadow Chancellor rehashed the discredited pledge from the recent Conservative manifesto to make £12 billion of welfare savings, which the Institute for Fiscal Studies politely described at the time as being “difficult in the extreme.” Perhaps he missed the admission from his predecessor, the right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash (Jeremy Hunt), during the election campaign that those welfare cuts were in fact not new, and the money had already been spent. Either way, it is hard to fathom why the new shadow Chancellor would rest his first intervention on a pledge from a manifesto that led to his party losing nearly 250 seats. It only serves to underscore the fact that the Conservatives are getting further and further away from being a credible Opposition by the day.
We recognise that the decision to increase employer’s national insurance will have impacts. Although measures in this Bill will help to protect small businesses and charities, other measures mean that larger businesses and organisations will have difficult decisions to take. Let me be clear, however: the Budget was a one-off and a once-in-a-generation event. The difficult decisions we took meant that we were able to wipe the slate clean of the previous Government’s fiscal irresponsibility and economic mismanagement. Public services now need to live within their means and the means we have set them for the rest of this Parliament. The Budget delivered
stability and fiscal responsibility, meaning that our focus can now be resolutely on boosting investment and growing the economy. That fiscal responsibility is possible only when we take tough decisions. This Bill makes it clear that this Government will not shy away from tough decisions and that we will do what is right in the circumstances we face. I commend it to the House.
3.30 pm