Budget Resolutions

Adrian Bailey Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Lab/Co-op)]

This Budget will be remembered more for the OBR’s brutal demonstration of the failure of seven years of Tory-led austerity policies than for any of the policy announcements contained in it which were supposed to deal with the consequences of that austerity.

Having listened to Budgets since 2010, I find it remarkable that the date for the elimination of our public sector deficit, which we were told was essential for the country’s long-term prosperity, has been put back year after year. The latest OBR report demonstrates that the date has effectively been abandoned, which reflects official recognition of the consignment of the so-called long-term economic plan to a place where we all thought it was anyway—never-never land.

The report’s key finding is the damning demonstration of the decline in our growth and productivity. Growth was above 2% during the course of the Labour Government, and it is now much reduced—0.7%, if we are lucky. Productivity and economic growth are crucial to our future prosperity. They put money in people’s pockets and provide the tax payments to pay for our public services. It is not surprising that because of this Government’s failure to understand and generate economic growth over the last seven years, we are now really struggling.

This is not talking down, as the Chancellor says; it is a reflection of the experience that every MP finds in their surgeries. People come to our surgeries because they cannot get an operation in due time within their local health authority, or because they cannot get an appointment with their GP. Headteachers come to tell us of their funding problems, which are impairing the education of our children. A detective inspector came to me to say that his morale is so low that he is leaving the police: with reduced police numbers and rising crime he cannot face the fact that the police are not delivering the service he wants to provide. There is the housing shortage and the problems with the roll-out of universal credit. They are all consequences of the seven years of austerity with which we are being confronted almost daily in our surgeries.

We need a profound change in direction, which unfortunately was not evident in the Budget. That does not mean to say that I think everything in the Budget is bad. Indeed, a number of measures are to be applauded, but essentially they are too little, too late. They are not consistent; they are incoherent.

Skills are the sinews of our economy and society and generate improvements in productivity. Although the measures to improve maths teaching are welcome, the fact remains that the money taken out of the education service—money that is needed at all levels to ensure that we have a level of literacy and numeracy that enables students to make the most of the money put into maths teaching—is unfortunately not being replaced. Further education funding is peanuts compared with what has been taken out. For all the Government’s rhetoric on apprenticeships, companies are still telling me that they cannot recruit apprentices of the quality they need.

I do not have much time left but, briefly, not all the changes necessary to increase productivity involve a lot of money. We need a cultural change to oblige schools to work with industry to ensure that vocational training is much better recognised. The right hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Sir Michael Fallon) said that employee share ownership results in much higher productivity. Of course, we need change in our financial regulation to encourage long-term investment, rather than short-term investment.