Autumn Statement Resolutions

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Monday 21st November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

On Thursday evening I had the privilege of attending the Chemical Industries Association annual dinner, where the principal speakers were ridiculing the Government for their lack of action on education, training and support for the industry, particularly on regulation, including the REACH regulation, which the Government want to have their own version of. Those in the industry are frightened about what the future holds for them. They are not talking about expansion and innovation; they are talking about survival. Why is that?

[John Glen]

I very much recognise that this country faces very difficult headwinds, as I said in the opening of my speech. Obviously the extensive support package that we have put out there for consumers and businesses will offer some relief from some of those pressures, but the major challenge we face as a country and an economy is a level of inflation that we have not seen for 41 years. The measures in this statement are designed to tackle that and, as the OBR recognises, make this recession shorter and shallower than it might otherwise have been.

I will now turn to the armed forces and security. We already know that Putin’s aggression has piled pain on citizens across the free world, as well as brave protesters in Russia. As President Ronald Reagan once said:

“Optimism comes less easily today, not because democracy is less vigorous, but because democracy’s enemies have refined their instruments of repression.”

Today there is still nothing certain about democracy’s victory, but if one thing does give me optimism, it is the courage of our armed forces, so we will continue to maintain the defence budget at at least 2% of GDP, to be consistent with the enduring NATO commitment. Of course, we also stand up for what we believe in through overseas aid. The OBR’s forecast shows a significant shock to the public finances, as I have set out, so it will not be possible to return to the 0.7% target until the fiscal situation allows, but I want to reassure the House that we remain fully committed to the target, and the plans that I have set out today assume that official development assistance spending will remain at around 0.5% for the forecast period.

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[Jonathan Ashworth]

As always, the hon. Gentleman makes his point with force. The consequence of freezing the childcare element is that more parents working limited hours—it should not affect women more than men but does so disproportionately as they tend to do the childcare—will not be able to work extra hours because they will not be able to afford the extra childcare associated with working those extra hours.

[Alex Cunningham]

As I understand it, carers who are able to claim carer’s allowance can earn up to £132 a week, but the welcome increase in the national minimum wage means that many of them face a choice: they can either give up work or earn the extra money. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we need to extend the earnings limit for carers as well as for everybody else?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

My hon. Friend makes a point not dissimilar to that made by the former Leader of the House, the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire. All these things need to be looked at in the round, and the wider implications of tweaks here and there need to be properly assessed when making decisions. If the Treasury Minister is prepared to meet the former Leader of the House to discuss the impact on those who need childcare, I hope that he will also be gracious enough to meet my hon. Friend to talk about the impact of the changes on carers.

Let me move on to the Government’s proposal for another round of energy support, this time targeted at those on means-tested benefits only. Again, because this is a flat rate, families with children—they spend more because they are larger families—will get proportionately less. It is worth noting that, even with the inflation-proofed uprating of benefits, which we welcome, we will still have 4 million children growing up in poverty, and we will still have 500,000 children destitute, hungry, ill-clad, cold and often without a decent bed to sleep in. Tackling these shameful levels of child poverty is surely the obligation this generation owes to the next, but we still have no child poverty strategy from this Government. Tackling these unfairnesses is also key to unlocking growth, because an economy with so much poverty and so much inequality is a weaker, less-productive economy, which leads to a greater burden of ill health, forcing more people out of work against their wishes.

That brings me to the health announcements made by the Chancellor. He is of course a former Health Secretary—the longest serving Health Secretary, in fact—and he made great play of the increase in health spending. However, he knows as well as I do, both from the many exchanges I had with him across the Dispatch Box over many years and through his time as the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, that what he announced was an increase in NHS England funding. As the Chancellor well knows, and he probably produced reports on this when he was at the Health and Social Care Committee, overall health spending includes public health, capital and training budgets, which means that the uplift is 1.2%. That is below the 2% of the Osborne years and well below the historic 4% uplifts that health services enjoyed historically. This is at a time when the typical wait for treatment in the health service has doubled from seven to 14 weeks, when 400,000 people are waiting beyond a year for treatment, which is enough to fill Wembley stadium four and a half times over, and when 7 million are on the waiting lists. This is not just miserable for patients; it holds our economy back.

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[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

It is no longer surprising, really, that the Government will not recognise their failures. The Chancellor claimed that this is an international crisis caused by an unprecedented situation, but their tactic is to call unprecedented any problem that they are unable to tackle. That was seen, too, during the height of the covid pandemic. Above all, the Chancellor wants to avoid Conservative economic mismanagement being blamed for the cost of living crisis.

But the public cannot be taken for fools. They know that the Chancellor is trying to rewrite history: not just the 12 years of Tory mismanagement of the economy but his own role in damaging our NHS when he was Health Secretary. The same public know that the global situation does not explain why the UK has been hit harder than most. The Bank of England’s recent monetary policy report confirmed that Tory economic failures—UK-specific factors—were adding to borrowing costs. The UK is forecast to have the highest inflation in the G7 in 2022 and 2023. Opposition Members know why: the Conservatives left us uniquely exposed to the inflationary shock, shutting down our gas storage, stalling our nuclear power investment and banning renewable technologies such as onshore wind. The Chancellor has been put to work to try to right the wrongs of his many predecessors, but his actions are not enough to overcome the now mounting pressures from all sides. It is too little, too late.

Too often Conservative Members have been fighting for survival and fighting among themselves. In that time, families have become worse off. The UK is forecast to have the lowest growth in the G7 over the next two years. Growth has been at best sluggish over the last Tory decade, and I get a wee bit fed up with Ministers trying to claim the contrary. As it stands, real household disposable income per person will be lower at the end of this Parliament than it was at the beginning. That means that our people will be poorer and that those at the bottom of the income scale, including millions in work, will be struggling. And that is before the full impact of energy is factored in.

Among those in poverty are the many unpaid carers in our constituencies. Other carers earn up to £132 a week and claim carer’s allowance. I welcome the rise in the national living wage to £10.42, but if the earnings limit for carers is not increased as well, their benefits will be severely impacted. I hope that the Minister will reconsider that issue.

Carers UK responded to the statement with concerns about the long-term sustainability of funding for social care. The chief executive said:

“Long term sustainable funding of social care must remain an urgent priority for Government, to provide a decent life for people needing care, to prevent carers from having to give up work in order to care and to stop their health and wellbeing from deteriorating”—

quite a quote. The modus operandi of this Government is short-term thinking for long-term challenges. A two-year delay to the social care reforms announced last year will only make things worse. Yet again, the Tories fail to deliver for social care.

The Chancellor’s statement also demonstrates a continued lack of action to address health inequalities. What is he really doing about that promise of 40 new hospitals? He gave them a mention, but we do not know whether they exist only in fiction or whether they might be just a few extensions and a couple of refurbishments. The Minister should be aware of the health inequalities in my community —I make enough speeches about them. The bottom line is that we need one of those new hospitals to replace the crumbling facilities at North Tees hospital in Stockton if we are to make any real progress on the blight that means that life expectancy in our area can vary by 16 years. While I am on about health inequalities, why on earth will the Government not put a levy on tobacco companies’ profits to fund a desperately needed tobacco control plan?

Unison, of which I am a member, is disappointed with the Chancellor’s statement, as are the other trade unions. Responding to the statement, Unison’s Christina McAnea said:

“The government acts like there’s no public sector pay or workforce crisis. Nothing was said today to change the minds of NHS staff currently voting on strike action.”

How can the NHS hope to improve waiting times for patients when it cannot hang on to experienced staff or halt the exodus of key workers? Our nurses are overworked and underpaid, and they desperately need a Government who recognise their contribution and understand that well-funded public services are a driver of UK economic growth.

The Federation of Small Businesses has said:

“Stealth taxes from fuel to freezing the National Insurance contribution threshold is a difficult pill to swallow when firms are battling for their futures.”

Furthermore, gutting the research and development tax credit scheme will crush innovation and growth, resulting in tens of thousands fewer R&D-intensive small businesses. That doom loop makes a mockery of plans for growth. The Chancellor has stewardship responsibilities to the next generation, but he has failed it with this move to kill R&D.

I wonder whether other Members of the House were as surprised as I was that the Chancellor failed to provide longer-term, appropriate support for energy bills. According to National Energy Action, changes to the energy price guarantee mean that the breathing space for households struggling with energy costs will now be shorter lived and less helpful. An average bill of £3,000 from spring will be an increase of 40% on the record levels today, given that the Government have ceased the support currently provided through the energy bills support scheme. Energy bills have gone up by a staggering 130% in 18 months. Sadly, that means there is now no end in sight to the energy crisis for struggling households. Even those who enjoy above-average incomes are feeling the shock.

The Green Alliance notes that, despite the continued cost of the energy price guarantee, there was no new money for energy efficiency in this Parliament. A further £6 billion was announced from 2025. There are three winters before then—three winters for the old and the vulnerable to die in. It strikes me that the Government are convinced by their own publicity, while everyone else—from the Office for Budget Responsibility to major industrialists—is not. The Government claim that growing the economy will provide more money for public services. Yes, but the Chancellor’s measures fail to do that, and it is our public services, our people and, above all, the most vulnerable in our society who are paying the price for 12 and a half years of Tory incompetence.