To ask if you were Prime Minister for a year, how would you combat the cost of living?

[MzGG]

To ask if you were Chancellor of the Exchequer, how would you combat the cost of living?

Build lots of cost neutral social housing, all must be disabled friendly with level access, widened doors, big enough bathrooms & kitchens to accommodate a wheelchair if needed, stairs wide enough for a stairlift, make sure they had the correct wiring for the stairlift, bathrooms must have a level access shower with seat. Make it the law that all current social housing stock must be retro fitted with solar panels & battery storage. Remove the standing charge on gas & electric. Massive windfall taxes on oil companies, water companies & energy providers. Allow kids to go part time at school providing they do a foundation level course in any construction vocations, brick laying, electricians, plumbing, roofing etc, just make them do maths, English & 2 more GCSE's, pay the companies who are building the social housing to employ the kids who started construction to do apprenticeships, if they don't keep them on for at least 5 years after the apprenticeship ends they pay back what they were paid to train them. Higher taxes for companies like Amazon, Starbucks etc. Re employ all the staff who have been finished at HMRC & DWP, reopen tax offices in every town & city to provide a proper service with face to face contact & a named person dealing with your case. Go through the entire NHS & get rid of anyone who doesn't change patient outcomes, employ more doctors, nurses, HCA etc. Bring schools back under council control, get rid of academies & their bloated executive staffing, use the savings to provide better SEN support & reduce class sizes, build smaller secondary schools. Bring all social care back under council control, no private care companies or private care homes & make social care free. Bring all dentists back to the NHS, expand the range of treatments provided by the NHS to include implants.

So my neighbour from years ago who was bornin Germany because his dad was stationed there in the British army shouldn't get anything? Also many people in the NHS are not British born, it's a bit churlish to not let them

NHS staff have better things to do than interrogating people about their origins.

I came across an idea which I'm just going to put out here.

The idea was that you are not taxed on the first £100 000 that you ern (in total, not annually). The reasoning is that when you are just starting out you are buying a house, having children, possible setting up a business and you will benefit most from having some extra cash.

Housing and energy are the big ones.

Deregulate planning, including removing affordable-housing requirements that often end up discouraging building. More supply is the way to bring down prices.

Divert net-zero spending to high-quality carbon offsets that allow us to do the same amount of good for lower cost. Optimise our energy supply for cost and security not carbon. This will reduce energy bills. Build more nuclear (which is great carbon-wise, but takes time).

The above will also spur growth.

Tax less to encourage growth. It’s tried, tested and proven.

He can't go home. This is his home.

Id sort out the stupid mess of tax at around 100k to 125k which makes peoole earn less.

Id lower inheritance tax to a smaller percentage that waa applicable to more estates and was less avoidable.

I would seperate the pension into two. A universal element as thats what people signed up for and peeled they are owed and then a means tested element that tapered very carefully so noone was penalised for saving small amounts.

I would make it impossible for parents (mainly dads) not to pay a sensible level of maintenance towards their children, if they choose to have more etc this will not be taken into account as that's their choice. If they think things will be tight for them, tough luck. No fiddling woth self employed status etc either, all would have to pay a minimum regardless of income.

I would also work on making sure people working are the ones who get most support, unless properly temporarily between jobs. I would make sure benefits are only usable for certain things- food, energy bills, some for toys. Not sure how but definitely not for drugs, cigarettes, Sky or anything not essential. Unfortunately, we don't have the money to give out for those things now.

I would invest in renewable energy as it will be cost efficient in the long run.

I don't care about legal immigrants getting the same as everyone else if they work, it seems to me that they often contribute more to society than many of the 'Reform' voters types.

Id finally scrap HS2, or sell it or something, the money wasted on that project is ridiculous and continuing to be.

I'd forgive all student loans, I think this would actually end up giving the economy a boost as there would be more money to spend.

I would tighten the regulations on places like Temu and Shein.

Oh and, tiny thing, but to show willing I would scrap MP expenses except for basic travel and staying in simple hotels. No second home or energy bill paying or free dinners.

I'd forgive all student loans, I think this would actually end up giving the economy a boost as there would be more money to spend.

@BewareoftheLambs would you also stop all future student loans so universities are free?

Good question, I think perhaps, or maybe for certain courses? Depending on societal needs? It obviously used to be, though unfortunately not for my generation.

Give everyone an annual "supermarket sweep". To be paid for by the Royal Family, Nigel Farage and the estate of Margaret Thatcher.

That’s essentially the U.K. benefit system you’re describing, paid for by a minority of hard working net tax payers . They get the ‘supermarket sweep’ every day.

I disagree. We need to rely on renewable energy and dare I say it nuclear power to offset all the reliance on the Middle East/ Russia and US. It’s only going to get worse as we go on. The renewable sector will have a bunch of jobs.

i would also look very seriously at AI and the impact to current and future employment. I would close the loop holes that make it possible for people like Richard Tice to avoid paying over £600’000 in corporation tax and others like Caffè Nero who pay no corporation tax in the U.K.

I would make it easier for small businesses to set up and even have pop up stores in the failing local high street to test their business model and have reduced business rates.

Labour are already investing in the NHS. But I would like to offer a lifestyle sector in the NHS for those willing to pay. There are other companies out there that offer for payment more detailed lifestyle blood tests, DEXA scans etc which the NHS could offer for payment.

Renationalise the energy, public transport, and water sectors.
Change the law so that newspapers and other media can only be owned by people who are ordinarily resident in the UK for tax purposes. Install solar panels on every new building and subsidise fitting them to older buildings.
Scrap the nuclear deterrent and spend the money saved on building proper conventional defence forces.
Remove businesses like Crapita, PWC, and Palantir from public contracts.
Cut the Royal Family down to the same size as other European countries and it has to fund itself.
All politicians have to wear shirts like Formula One drivers showing the names and company logos of anyone who donates to them.
Disentangle from America as much as possible.
Change how foreign aid is spent. Aid is for people in war zones or who need food not for buying their governments new tanks.

Compulsory purchase all empty housing stock - no more homes as investments while people are homeless. Make the housing stock half protected social housing with HB rent rates with no right to buy, and the other half put on the market.

Use AI for good by automating enough that humans can work reduced hours on same pay. Those new free hours can be instead of paid for child care reducing costs for working parents.

Identify the sectors where AI cannot perform, encourage humans to train in those areas. Ensure human jobs are supplemented with a wage increase on a percentage basis in relation to the automation savings gained by a company i.e. if a company saves £500,000 through automation, at least £250,000 goes to boosting their human employees wages.

Community solar panel loans or grants, so that a street of housing can apply for solar panels and battery placed in the sunniest site, and can share the benefits and costs, rather than access to solar being per individual household and unaffordable cost. The right for that street to sell back any unused energy to the grid to either pay back loan quicker, and later to build a savings pot for maintenance of the equipment so that it is self-resourcing.

I love the community solar idea, that would make a lot of sense.

Mr Speaker, I propose to :

1, Cut taxes for low & middle income earners by restoring the personal tax allowances in real terms to where they were before they were frozen in 2021. This would increase the basic allowance to £16k & the higher band to £63k.

2, Keep the 2 child benefit cap & cut benefits overall by the amount required to pay for the above tax cuts.

3, Drill, baby drill. Make the U.K. self sufficient in energy again by allowing fracking, exploiting North Sea oil & gas to the max, more onshore wind, building new nuclear power stations etc etc. Remove all taxes, levies etc from energy bills for domestic & industrial users.

4, Introduce a mansion tax of 2% per year on the value of all residential properties worth >£2m & 5% on all properties worth >£5m.

5, Increase the minimum wage by 10% this year & again next year.

6, Build, baby build. Introduce a massive house building programme, made possible by planning reform, abolition of green belts & uncapped volume based tax incentives for house builders.

Together, these measures would cut the cost of living significantly, put money in the pockets of ordinary working people, increase the supply of & cut the cost of housing and massively increase incentives to work instead of choosing to live on benefits. I commend this statement to the house.

I agree but the government needs to seize empty properties which are unclaimed /unoccupied for over 5 years and bring them back into housing stock.

A few European countries already do this & then you won't need to build as much. The problem with building more houses is that they tend to be ££ executive homes that first time buyers can't afford. So you still have a housing crisis and foreign buyers snapping up ££ homes for investment.

There are ordinary homes which lie empty for years (10 in my area) where the owner has died/disappeared. After 5 years of being unclaimed, the council/housing associations should be able to refurbish and let out. The council housing list in my area is out of control and this would be a way of dealing with it.

Child maintenance - we should adopt the American system and penalise for non payment & take it directly out of wages. Men who father children shouldn't be allowed to get away with it because that's why our welfare bills are high. Lots of single parent families are reliant on UC & a significant number of those have absent fathers who don't pay maintenance. Don't cut welfare support but make the men pay so welfare support isn't needed as much.

Sending money abroad is a necessity in order to keep unstable countries in check and to keep problems there from escalating further (think huge amount of displaced people because of famine or war for example...). . It sounds like an easy fix but there are no easy fixes really. It would have been done already otherwise?and I'm not talking about Trump...)

Migrants not in work would be sent back from whence they came. 👋

Create a formula by which companies have to raise salaries for their employees in proportion to their profits thus capping the proportion of profits that can be paid to share holders or to executives as share packages. The biggest problem in our economy is wage stagnation. This has been exacerbated by UC and the old working tax credits whereby the tax payer has been subsidising multi billion companies by effectively allowing them to pay their workers below market salaries.

Reduce accessibility to benefits. Got anxiety or acne.. then you can still get a job.

How much tax did you pay to your home nation, before returning?

@SJone0101really? I’m 52 and have lived in the UK since I was 2 years old.
I've worked and paid tax for over 30 years but you think I shouldn’t access the NHS for free?
What utter nonsense.

Kick everyone who is under-occupied, or has the means to house themselves, straight out of their social housing. Ensure that people who actually need the housing, get the housing. We don't need to build more, we need to distribute better.
Ban owning a second home. Even for MPs. There's better ways to house MPs
If people are housed according to their needs, with rent they can afford, this will free up more money for bills and food.
That's where I'd start. But I'd struggle to get voted in with that policy 🤣