Spending Review 2020

Lord McNally Excerpts

Thursday 3rd December 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord McNally (LD) [V]]

My Lords, this spending review comes as the country faces a spaghetti junction of serious challenges. There is the Covid pandemic, where even our Panglossian Prime Minister warns that we must not get carried away by over-optimism. There are some difficult days still ahead with Covid. Then there is Brexit. Let us be clear that, whatever the outcome of negotiations, Brexit is not done, it is about to begin, and the true costs of our leaving will become clearer than what was ever put on the side of a bus. Then there are the challenges brought about by climate change, the digital revolution, the need for sustainable plans to give care to our elderly and their carers and, at the same time, to give a road map of hope to those born in this century.

I have time to make only two pleas to the Chancellor. I urge him to give further immediate and longer-term relief to workers in the creative and leisure industries, many of them freelance. Pre-Covid, these were the fastest growing sectors in our economy, and they can be so again, given the necessary support. I support the call from the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, for us to continue to associate with Erasmus. I urge the Government and the Chancellor to look again and abandon the cut in the aid budget. Theresa May once warned that the Tory Party must not become the nasty party. This is a decision by the nasty party, for the nasty party, and the Chancellor’s smiling photoshoots will not remove this stain from his record.

Finally, I again urge the Chancellor to listen to the advice of my noble friend Lord Razzall, which can be summed up in the advice from the late Lord Healey: when you are in a hole, stop digging.