Budget Resolutions

Debate between Angela Eagle and Andrea Leadsom

Wednesday 27th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dame Angela Eagle]

While I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that benefit tapers have been a long-running problem for many Governments to solve, we know that the 63% fall in the Department for Work and Pensions’ costs has come about not because everybody is in work, but because benefits are some of the lowest in the developed world, causing huge hardship and poverty. The right hon. Gentleman needs to recognise that as well.

This is a Government who love power but are bored with the hard work of governing. They disdained to anticipate the problems their ideological obsession with a hard Brexit has created, choosing to believe their own propaganda instead, but the red book shows that, as a result, trade with the EU is sharply down and projected to reduce living standards by 4%, which is twice the OBR estimate of the cost of the covid pandemic. Underlying some of our difficulties are the problems of Brexit and the fact that the Government did not prepare for the trade disruption caused by their hard Brexit deal, which threw fishing, farming and peace in Northern Ireland to the wolves in pursuit of their own peculiar obsessions. They did not prepare for the supply chain problems caused by the shortage of HGV drivers, the vacancies in social care and the staff shortages in the NHS.

This is a Government who have been unwilling to offer short-term temporary relief to those who are suffering the growing cost-of-living crisis, as energy prices have rocketed and as inflation soars towards 5% this winter. Fuel and food prices are rising fast, and people are feeling the pinch. An end to the public sector pay freeze will not compensate unless it offers real increases in wages, which, taking inflation into account, have only just returned to their 2009 level. Let’s face it: whatever it says in the Chancellor’s latest propaganda press release, any pay increase below inflation is actually a pay cut on top of years of hardship, so we will have to await the detail.

A fair recovery would start with a Chancellor who had the humility to be honest about why these blunders have been made. Unfortunately, we do not have such a Chancellor; we have a Jekyll and Hyde Chancellor, with his eyes firmly on his own advancement and with a slick PR operation to match his vaunting ambition—a Chancellor whose persona depends a bit on his audience.

To the country at large, he is that nice Dr Jekyll, brandishing his public spending largesse in a blizzard of pre-Budget leaks, increasing the national living wage and announcing the end of the public sector pay freeze—he is hoping that we will not notice that it was he who froze pay last year, on top of a decade of previous Tory pay freezes that have seen real living standards fall more than at any time since the Napoleonic wars.

But when he is burnishing his leadership credentials with Tory MPs, he becomes the sadistic Mr Hyde, posing as a true low-tax, small-state Thatcherite, waxing lyrical about his

“sacred responsibility to…balance the books”,

because to do otherwise would be “immoral”—he is hoping that they will not notice that he has presided over the largest increase in the size of the state in peacetime and the biggest tax rises in 25 years. That comes the year after he borrowed an eye-watering £350 billion in a single year to pay for his covid response. The fraud, the waste and the graft to Tory donors have been an ever-present feature of the bonanza of state mis-spending that he has presided over. In fact, it has been the very definition of “immoral”.

[Dame Andrea Leadsom]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

No.

Does this Budget meet the formidable long-term structural challenges before us? In the short term, does it tackle the cost-of-living crisis now looming for millions this winter? No, it does not. Projections of 1.3% growth by the end of this Parliament are nothing particular to be proud of.

The Treasury-inspired blizzard of media propaganda announcing £30 billion of apparent spending commitments means that the Budget is really an afterthought. Closer inspection reveals many reheated announcements of previous Government press releases with one thing in common: despite being announced over and over again, few of them have ever actually been delivered.

There are some modest funding allocations that seek credit for restoring a minority of the huge cuts that have been inflicted in the past 11 years of this Tory Government —indeed, the Chancellor has openly boasted, over and over again, about taking spending back to 2010 levels. Having destroyed 1,000 of Labour’s Sure Start centres, this Government now expect credit for creating a pale imitation of them in just 75 places, 11 years later. Having cut skills funding by 50% since 2010, this Government now expect credit for restoring 42% of it, 11 years later. Having underfunded education for years, this Government now expect credit for restoring funding to levels that they inherited from Labour in 2010.

This is a cynical Budget of smoke and mirrors, aimed more at burnishing the Chancellor’s leadership credentials than at fixing the country’s growing challenges. As the challenges pile up like leaked Government announcements, it is becoming plainer by the day that this Chancellor is not going to be the one who meets them—and Britain will be the poorer for it.