Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between Alison McGovern and Angus Brendan MacNeil

Wednesday 18th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Alison McGovern]

I bow to no one in my applause when unemployment falls, but to say that Wirral, Merseyside and the rest of the north-west have not suffered from huge cuts to local government is to ignore the facts. I know that that is an argument that almost everyone in the north-west—perhaps with the exception of members of the Tory party—will recognise.

We need not just the right investment but the right protections. We have seen family budgets hit radically and hard, we have seen child poverty rise and, on the relative measure, we have seen people in the middle of the income distribution fall back towards the bottom. That is not offering families in our country the right protections—

[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Alison McGovern]

I will not take any more interventions, because I might be here for a long time if I did.

We need a bank levy to fund 25 hours of free child care for working families with three and four-year-olds. That pledge alone will help 51,000 children in poverty and will be a real boost to their families’ incomes, which have been hit hard. Whatever the Chancellor says, and whatever the Tories try to convince themselves of, it is not only the London School of Economics and its analysis of the past five years that shows that the incomes of the bottom half have fallen while those of the top half have risen; the Treasury’s own figures now say that the bottom fifth has done worse. We need the right protections to ensure that when economic growth happens, it is not just for the few but real growth for the many. Rather than failed austerity, we need a truly progressive Government in favour of the many, not the few, and more than anything else we need a Labour Government.