Autumn Budget 2026

Baroness Ussher Excerpts

Thursday 12th November 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ussher (Lab) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, it is with great humility that I rise to give this, my maiden speech; humility not just because of the occasion, and the privilege of following the noble Lord, Lord Lamont of Lerwick, but because, as someone whose career has spanned macroeconomics, financial services, public policy research and, of course, politics itself, many of those speaking in this debate have been my personal inspiration over many years—I thank them for that.

I am grateful to your Lordships and to the doorkeepers, police, Black Rod and his team, and all the staff and officers of this place, for the courtesy, welcome and, most of all, patience that has been granted to me as I find my place in your Lordships’ House. I thank also my introducers, my noble friend Lady Hodge of Barking, who I had the honour of serving as PPS some 20 years ago, I believe, and my noble friend Lord Khan of Burnley, who I have been proud to call my friend from the time that I served as Burnley’s MP in the 2005 Parliament.

Although as the first ennobled Ussher my formal title takes no place, I chose to link my peerage to Burnley after the comma, to recognise the truth that representing that town was the honour of my life. My perspective as a constituency MP, and before that as an elected councillor in Lambeth, has had a profound impact on my parallel career as a macroeconomist, because what is the economy except the aggregate result of the individual decisions of millions of households and businesses, based on the stories that we all tell each other?

As chief economist of the Institute of Directors, for example, I helped build the UK’s most timely indicator of business sentiment, using our member surveys. This enabled us to be ahead of the Bank of England in predicting the inflationary surge of late 2021 and the first to call for an interest rate response. As a current member of the Times Shadow Monetary Policy Committee, I find myself acutely sensitive to the consumer viewpoint to inform the likely effect on overall demand, and so future price pressures.

This way of thinking has also driven my passion to explore wider public policy issues through the prism of market research, to ensure that the inferences we draw are driven by the behaviours of those whom we serve. I found deep intellectual fulfilment over many years in research projects across a wide range of policy areas, variously as chief economist of Demos, running my own research company, Tooley Street Research, and, most recently, as group head of policy development at Barclays, leading its global policy thought leadership team.

By calling a relatively early Budget to update the official forecasts, and by championing everyday measures to support households and the high street, the Government have, as we saw from the GDP data this morning, mitigated the risk of fear creeping into the economy, which must always be a top priority. In this regard, I am an unapologetic Keynesian, but being an unapologetic Keynesian does not mean being an apologist for profligacy. In fact, it is the opposite. I am Keynesian in good times as well as bad. It is imperative that government debt is sharply reduced in normal times, so as to give room for manoeuvre in a crisis. As Economic Secretary to the Treasury during the global financial crisis, I witnessed at first hand how it was precisely because debt levels were then at a historic low that it was possible to intervene to the magnitude that was required. I am therefore glad to see that the OBR now projects a primary budget surplus in a mere two years’ time, an outcome not achieved in this country since 2002.

Finally, my other perspective is around the need for strong yet supportive financial services regulation, a view that has only strengthened as a result of my practitioner experience, not just at Barclays but having served on the UK board at Revolut and in my current role as a non-exec director of the local government pension pooling asset management company for London, as well as through my time as a member of the FCA’s consumer panel.

I end as I began, with a sense of humility at the opportunity I now have to bring this experience to bear in a new way, as I take my place in your Lordships’ House. I look forward to the other contributions to this debate.