Budget Resolutions

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Monday 27th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

The future of global Britain will start with Britain facing greater isolation in the world. We are taking a begging bowl around the world and pleading for trade deals to give our nation a future beyond Brexit, and it is not going well. Sadly, the Chancellor’s Budget has nothing to ease the way. Yes, he has set aside £3 billion to help us over the shock, but I remind him that it cost £1 billion just to buy off the Democratic Unionist party to prop up a weak Government. No one should be in any doubt that, although countries may want special trade deals with Britain, they will exact a challenging price. Two examples: the USA wants us to drop our food safety standards, and India suggests that the UK must be prepared to allow more immigration if it is to agree a deal.

The Government must change course. They must end the public sector pay cap, introduce further controls on high interest, bring forward investment in infrastructure, reverse the planned tax giveaways for the super-rich and reject a deregulated, no-deal, race to the bottom Brexit.

Living on industrial Teesside, I am well aware of the international status of many of our companies, from CF Fertilisers, Lotte and Chemoxy to Quorn, Fujitsu and Greenergy—they are all striving to be internationally competitive while sustaining investment and jobs. They have done a grand job until now, but the uncertainty surrounding them has resulted in very real concern that frustrates local managers as they compete with their international owners’ other plants abroad for investment in the UK.

Those companies are anxious about Brexit, and they are looking for even greater Government assurance that they will not simply be left to wither but will have a business environment in which to thrive. They want to see the retention of the regulations on the registration, evaluation and authorisation of chemicals for British companies post-Brexit, as exercising common standards with the EU will ease their ability to trade on the continent. I see nothing of that in the industrial strategy.

A few weeks ago, the Government woke from their deep slumber on carbon capture and storage with much trumpeting of the £100 million to be invested in demonstrator projects. That is a positive step, but it is only a tiny step when we need huge leaps to make Britain a world leader.

Teesside got a specific mention in the Budget speech, in which the Chancellor appeared to announce a major investment in the former SSI site in Redcar. He announced £123 million of funding, but the reality is that the Government are giving themselves the cash to fulfil a funding commitment that had already been made to keep the site safe. That means we will get just £5 million.

I share the deep disappointment that there is nothing to improve public sector pay. Replacing Conservative Members’ heartfelt and passionate speeches in support of our police, our health staff, our council workers and our prison officers with hard cash to give them a pay rise would go some way to helping those people to meet increased inflation.

The Government cannot starve a system of funds, watch it start to crumble and then half-heartedly try to inject some money and claim they are rescuing it. The NHS asked for an extra £4 billion a year, and instead it got a promise of £350 million for this winter and £10 billion over the course of the Parliament for capital projects.

This is my seventh speech after a Budget, and it is the seventh time that I remind the House that in 2010—seven years ago; three sevens, maybe my luck will be in—the hospital for Stockton was cancelled. Ever since we have faced the looming threat of the closure of the accident and emergency department either at North Tees or Darlington, which will force people to travel further for emergency treatment. I represent an area where unemployment remains more than double the national average, where health inequalities are part of everyday life and where our businesses seek real assurances from the Government that there is a future out there. I still feel pessimistic after this Budget.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Robert Syms (Poole) (Con)]

I sat in this House for 13 years when the Labour party was in government and listened to many speeches by the right hon. Gordon Brown, including a number in which he said he would abolish boom and bust. That was before we had the most almighty bust in 2007-08—

[Alex Cunningham]

Thanks to the banks.

[Sir Robert Syms]

Well, you were the people who regulated the banks and you were the people in charge for 13 years. Before we hit the crisis, you had a 3% deficit and you were too reliant on bankers’ bonuses and the City to provide money. The problem with that was that the deficit spiralled up to £160 billion. The then Labour Chief Secretary to the Treasury left a note saying that there was no money—and there was no money. When I look at the Red Book today, I see that the deficit for the foreseeable future is less than £50 billion. That means we have reduced it by well over £100 billion, which is a remarkable achievement. While doing that we have upped the income tax allowances from £6,000 to £11,500; increased the minimum wage and the living wage; kept up our commitments to the third world with the 0.7% foreign aid commitment; kept the economy growing; taken 4 million people out of tax; and created more than 3 million jobs. What’s not to like about this Government’s progress over the past seven or eight years?

In 2009, Eddie George, the then Governor of the Bank of England, said that whoever takes over this country’s economy will be ruined for a generation, yet my party has won two general elections—I admit that the 2017 one was on penalties. The reality is that this Government have been elected in 2010, 2015 and 2017, and I think that if there was a general election today, we would win, because we are more realistic and optimistic about the nation’s prospects. The country has made a decision. History will tell whether it is the right or the wrong one, but the country wants optimistic politicians who are going to go out and make a success of the decision the people have made. There is a big wide world out there. We need to have a decent relationship with our European partners, and I hope and believe we will have a decent negotiation. But it is right and proper that the Government make preparations so that if things do not work out properly, we can continue to manage our affairs.

The OBR has come up with some forecasts that are not as optimistic as they were, but throughout the time the OBR has done this, its forecasts have gone up and down and have never been right. That is because they are forecasts, and events come in. My view of life in the world over the next four or five years is a rather more optimistic one. We have relatively full employment, business is going to have to invest if it is to increase productivity, and I believe it will, and I think we are going to do well as the years go by. Clearly, there are uncertainties, and changing our relationships will cause short-term problems, but over five, 10 or 15 years, I think Britain is going to be a great success story. And I believe the United Kingdom is going to be a great success story, because the Union that is the great success for our nation is that of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. I am therefore optimistic because the Government produced a good and balanced Budget, which has given a little bit of a tax cut and a little bit of increased spending, but which, broadly speaking, sticks to the financial plan. At the end of the day, sound finance is the only way of being a caring Government.