Autumn Budget 2024

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Monday 11th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to be able to participate in today’s debate. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Booth-Smith, on his maiden speech; he is not in his place right now but I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, will pass on those good wishes.

The problem with having been on the Front Bench for the best part of the last 16 years is how rarely one has been able to participate in these great set-piece debates. I thank my noble friend the Minister, who did his usual brilliant job in opening the debate today.

After every Budget, I always look to see what the Women’s Budget Group has to say about its contents. In recent years, in government the party opposite has not scored too well at all, it has to be said. The WBG’s gendered impact assessments have become increasingly important. I invite my noble friend to join me in congratulating the group on the important work that it does.

The first Labour Government Budget in 14 years is very important and marks a shift in the UK’s economic direction, with more resources for public sector spending and investment. This change of direction is welcome news, particularly for women, who have borne the brunt of the austerity-driven public service cuts since 2010. I agree with the Women’s Budget Group when it says that the Budget offers “some promising green shoots” for women through

“additional investment in the NHS and schools and … additional spending for local government and social care. Women and those they care for rely more on these services and are more likely to work in them”.

Indeed, the above-inflation increase in the national living wage was very welcome and will particularly benefit women, who make up the majority of low-paid workers.

I hope that we can look forward to the child poverty review, led by my right honourable friend Liz Kendall, and the spending review next spring, as an opportunity for the Chancellor to build on what she has started with this Budget. I seek assurance from my noble friend the Minister that this is but the first step in helping the poorest in our society, and those women.

I turn to early years provision, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill. If my great friend June O’Sullivan, chief executive of the over 100 year-old social enterprise, the London Early Years Foundation—which, of course, provides the nursery here in Parliament—says that she is concerned about some aspects of the Budget’s impact, then so am I.

Childcare is part of our national infrastructure; without it, many people simply cannot work. Social enterprises, charities and small businesses running nurseries, whose largest cost is staffing, may be taking a hit from this Budget. This will have a detrimental effect on the 28,000 nursery owners. Given the Government’s commitment to getting people back into the workforce, can my noble friend help me in squaring this circle? We need sustainable childcare, of course, to get people back to work.

When my right honourable friend Bridget Phillipson said that early years education is “more than just childcare” and is about giving every child the “best start in life”, it was a profound moment of recognition of investment in early years. Given the effectiveness of early years professional development programming, giving practitioners the skills they need to help our young, can we have some reassurance that there is a commitment to continue to fund this work post March 2025 and into the future, in the light of the commitments the Government have made? If my noble friend the Minister does not have this information, I would be happy for a letter to be placed in the Library.

This leads me to my last point, which concerns the social enterprise sector providing public services such as healthcare, social care and children’s services. The Department of Health and Social Care, which is responsible for this, said: “In line with precedent from the Health and Social Care Levy, the Department of Health and Social Care is working through the implications of the Chancellor’s tax announcements with the Treasury. We hope to provide further information soon”. The last time this happened, it came good for social enterprises and charities. I hope it will do so this time, too.