Budget Resolutions

Adam Dance Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Adam Dance (Yeovil) (LD)]

The topic of today’s debate is investment and renewal, but that is not what people in Yeovil are thinking about after this Budget. For my constituents, including many local business people who came to meet me yesterday, this is the “Why bother?” Budget. “Why bother?”, people in Yeovil ask after the weeks of leaks, briefings and flip-flopping on the Budget. As David, who supports small and medium-sized business in my constituency, said, all it did in Yeovil was create uncertainty and damage investment. Once we got the Budget, people in Yeovil were left asking, “Why do we bother to trust this Government?”

There were some welcome but long overdue measures, such as those that make online gambling companies pay their fair share, which is good; reduce energy bills, which is good; and lift children out of poverty. However, the Government promised to grow our economy without taxing working people, and the OBR is clear that the Budget has almost no meaningful growth measures at all. What it has is a freeze on income tax thresholds, which is a stealth tax on working people in Yeovil. Similarly, a 3p a mile tax on electric cars will have a disproportionate impact on drivers in my rural constituency, leaving them thinking, “Why bother going electric at all?”

From speaking to business people across my constituency over the last few days, it is clear that so many are left asking, “Why do we bother at all?” Gareth, who owns the Cow and Apple, told me that he asks himself why he bothered battling to keep his business going over the last five years, just for the Government to take and take without even listening, let alone supporting businesses like his. Businesses such as the Cake Box in Yeovil are left in an impossible position. Last year, its business rates went through the roof, and it had to make staff redundant. Because of this Budget, it may have to make more redundancies or increase prices, both of which would damage business. While the Government want to introduce lower business rates multipliers, that is not enough, particularly if higher valuations just cancel out those lower multipliers.

Ultimately, people in my constituency are left asking, “Why bother with a Budget that doesn’t deliver what this country really needs?” What we really need is growth in the economy, and we needed some ambition from the Chancellor, so here are some policies the Government should have bothered with: a windfall tax on the quantitative easing parts of the profits that big banks have received, raising £30 billion for taxpayers over five and a half years; an increase in the digital services tax on social media giants; replacing the broken business rates system with a commercial landowner levy; a reversal of the damaging national insurance and family farm tax rises; and a 5% reduction in VAT for businesses in the hospitality sector over the next 17 months to keep them afloat—that is it: to keep them afloat. Finally, we need a better trade deal with the EU, as Liberal Democrats have been calling for, which could raise more than £25 billion.

The Government have failed to deliver any new ideas just when we need them most, so they should please just steal ours. Our communities need more and they deserve better.