Budget Statement

Viscount Hanworth Excerpts

Tuesday 21st July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, when one considers the Budget speech of George Osborne and the policies that it proposes, one is bound to wonder how much of what we heard was the product of an intentional bamboozlement and how much was the product of the Government’s self-deception.

The previous Budget speeches of George Osborne have been wilfully deceptive. As the leader of the Opposition has observed, they have been full of political traps, games and tactics, and we could have expected as much from the most recent Budget speech. But now there are indications of an undercurrent of a wholly misguided optimism regarding the prospects for the UK economy. We have been told that the British economy is growing faster than any other major advanced economy, that living standards are rising strongly and that the Government’s long-term plan is working. However, we know that growth is slowing, that unemployment has increased and that the rising value of the pound is threatening the viability of our export industries.

It is easy to identify the rhetorical passages of the Budget speech that are designed to mislead, because they represent the exact opposite of what most people recognise as the truth. How many people are liable to be deceived by the assertion that this was a Budget for working people from a one-nation Government, who have the intention of benefitting the whole nation? The Budget has been at the expense of the least favoured of our society—the unemployed, the young and the low earners. The current size of the welfare budget is a clear symptom of the Government’s failure to address the problems of unemployment and low pay. The Chancellor understood that he could not blatantly slash the welfare budget without resorting to a diversionary tactic. This tactic has been to promise to raise the minimum wage in a series of gradual increments. However, these increases will not compensate the low paid for the sums that they will lose from a much less generous tax regime. Nevertheless, the Chancellor has had the effrontery to tell us that those with the broadest shoulders are bearing the greatest burden, and that we are all in this together. This is utter bamboozlement.

We ought also to assess the Budget against the backdrop of the current fiscal and macroeconomic circumstances. A significant element in the fiscal equation is the sale of government assets, which this year will deliver privatisation proceeds higher than the previous record in 1987. The Chancellor’s fiscal strategy relies heavily on such fortuitous circumstances as the availability for sale of the Government’s large investment in the banks that were in danger of failing during the financial crisis. This is far from the judicious balance of taxation and spending to which the Chancellor has alluded.

The Government’s obsession with reducing the levels of taxation and state expenditure is accompanied by a serious dereliction in their duty to maintain the national capital infrastructure. We have seen endless deferments and cancellations of vital investment projects, to the extent that we can no longer claim to be a modern industrial economy capable of competing in the world’s markets. The catalogue of aborted projects is far too large to allow me to itemise it. The latest addition to the list has been the cancellation of the electrification of the Manchester, Leeds and TransPennine railway.

The other macroeconomic account that should command our attention is our external balance of payments, which is in a perilous state. Our current account deficit is now running at over £100 billion a year, which is over 6% of our GDP. The deficit on the current account is due largely to the implosion of our manufacturing industries. Manufacturing as a proportion of GDP is now barely above 10%, and we produce too little to sell to the rest of the world to pay for our imports.

We have been balancing our payments by selling our financial and capital assets to investors from overseas. This has stimulated the demand for the pound, which is responsible for the highly favourable rate of exchange that has made it virtually impossible to sell our products abroad. This circumstance cannot prevail indefinitely, and when it ends we shall be in deep crisis.

There is a delusion in the minds of many members of the Government that is well represented by the document entitled Fixing the Foundations that accompanied the Budget. We find it asserted in red lettering that Britain is:

“A trading nation, open to international investment”.

Being open to international investment implies that we are willing to continue to sell our national assets, including our ports, airports, public utilities and so on to foreign owners. While we continue to do so, there will be no possibility of increasing our exports of goods. While we continue to do so, which can be only for a limited period, the City of London, the bankers, the financiers and those who support them will continue to profit at the expense of the rest of us.

I assert that it is well within the powers of the Government and the central bank to lower the rates of exchange of sterling. They should be purchasing foreign currencies when they become too cheap vis-à-vis the pound. The Japanese, Chinese and Koreans are masters of this strategy, which we should also adopt and pursue vigorously.