Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between Angela Eagle and Ian Paisley

Wednesday 15th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dame Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

I will go straight to the right hon. Gentleman’s website as soon as his analysis is up there.

Despite all the growth and back-to-work billing from Tory Central Office, this was a Budget that was treading water and going nowhere fast. There was nothing effective on falling real wages, which are now in a slump not equalled since the Napoleonic war. In fact, the OBR says that wages are expected to fall by 5.7% over the next two years—the largest fall since records began. After 13 wasted Tory years, we have a productivity problem so entrenched that the UK is now the only G7 economy that has not yet returned to its pre-covid pandemic levels of output, and the Bank of England does not expect that milestone to be reached until 2026 at the earliest.

Before Government Members start blaming global factors for this, global factors do not explain our alarming relative decline. They do not explain why, under this Government, the UK is stuck in the economic slow lane. All economies have had to deal with the impact of the covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine, but only the UK has managed to go from being one of the most robust economies in the G7 to one of the weakest. The decade of austerity that followed the banking crisis left us unprepared for future challenges, and Brexit has had a further dismal effect on our economic prospects. Both were deliberate Tory choices.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

It is important to recognise that Ireland has the highest rate of debt in all the EU. The UK does not have that. Does the hon. Member not recognise that the issues raised today with regard to fuel will help vast rural constituencies such as mine and will address, in a way that has not been the case before, the mobility of people who are poor?