Budget Resolutions

Debate between Wes Streeting and John Baron

Monday 11th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

I would have raised this as a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker, but, given that we are here, before I get right to the heart of the debate, I want to place on the record the revulsion that Opposition Members feel at Frank Hester, a Conservative party donor who has given more than £10 million to the party in the last year, saying of the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) that she makes him

“want to hate all black women”

and that she

“should be shot”.

That is utterly revolting, racist and inciteful language, which has no place in our politics and public life. Given the vast sums that he has given not just to the Conservative party but to the Prime Minister, if they have any integrity whatsoever, they will give every single penny piece back and apologise to the right hon. Member for those appalling comments. I am sure that, at some point in the debate, those on the Treasury Bench will want to confirm both those things.

Turning to the Budget, the Government have summed up what is obvious to everyone in Britain: 14 years of Conservative incompetence has broken Britain’s economy. It is all there in black and white. The economy is back in recession. We have the highest tax burden in 70 years, a record tax-raising Parliament, wages lower today than in 2010 and households worse off than at the last election. We have a fall in living standards over an entire Parliament for the first time in history. From next month, we have a real-terms cut per person in NHS funding, when the NHS is going through the worst crisis in its history. What did this Budget contribute to that appalling record? We have

“millions of low and middle-income workers being dragged into paying higher tax. And unprecedented levels of low-wage, low-skilled migration are damaging the economy. The government could have fixed both problems today but did not.”

That is not my conclusion, but the words of the former Home Secretary and next leader of the Conservative party, the right hon. and learned Member for Fareham (Suella Braverman).

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Wes Streeting]

I am sure the hon. Member would like to leap to defend the current leader or his future leader—which is it?

[Mr Baron]

The shadow Secretary of State underplays the strength of the British economy, with record employment and an unemployment rate one third below the EU average. I put this to him: the tax take is higher than we on the Conservative Benches would like, but the key reason is that in the pandemic, it cost a lot to make sure we left nobody behind. We had one of the most generous furlough schemes in the western world, for example. Would he have done anything differently?

[Wes Streeting]

We have never doubted the challenges that the pandemic has placed on the public finances or our public services, but that does not explain the fundamental weakness of the British economy going into the pandemic or the fact that NHS waiting lists were at record levels before the pandemic. Nevertheless, it is good to see the Conservative party at least acknowledge that major crises do have an impact on public finances.