amendment of the law

Anas Sarwar Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central) (Lab)]

The Budget the Chancellor delivered was not the Budget that my constituents or the city of Glasgow needed. The Budget Glasgow needs is one that gets the economy moving, helps people back into work and looks after the most vulnerable in our society. Instead, the Government are willing to give millionaires a £40,000 tax cut at the same time as 17,000 Glaswegians will have to cope with the impact of the bedroom tax. Thousands more will have to mitigate the damage to their family budget of the cuts to child tax credits, cuts to working tax credits and drastic cuts to the local services that many people rely upon. Wages are falling, jobs are being lost, household budgets are being squeezed and there is still no sign of a rethink. Just when will the Chancellor wake up and smell the Starbucks coffee?

[Mr MacNeil]

rose—

[Anas Sarwar]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman. He has made many interventions, so let us hope that this one is sensible.

[Mr MacNeil]

Is the hon. Gentleman not disappointed, and should he not be ashamed, that he supports a Westminster Government over independence, so we have the bedroom tax imposed on Scotland? If he supported independence, we would not have the bedroom tax in Scotland at the moment.

[Anas Sarwar]

That shows us the myth of the Scottish National party. The hon. Gentleman says that the only way to stop the bedroom tax is independence; the bedroom tax will be introduced on 1 April 2013, but according to the SNP timetable, independence day will be 31 March 2016. Members can work it out for themselves.

Plan A clearly is not working. For some time, the Opposition have been calling for additional infrastructure investment to boost the construction sector and we have been urging the Government to act. The Chancellor could have used the funds from the 4G auction to build 100,000 affordable homes, stimulate the economy and help tackle the housing crisis, but instead he decided that public services and public sector workers should bear the burden. Not content with imposing a 1% pay freeze until 2015, he has extended it to 2016. Given the rate of inflation, that is an effective pay cut for hundreds of thousands of people across the country.

With 80,000 construction workers out of work, construction output has fallen by 8.2%. The Government announced an extra £225 million for affordable housing, but only £125 million of that will be spent before 2015 according to the OBR, and it is dwarfed by the £4 billion cut in funding for affordable housing that the Chancellor made in his first Budget. Even after that investment the coalition Government’s record will still be a cut of around £10 billion in infrastructure projects.

It says everything about the Government’s attitude that they cut real-terms pay for millions of public sector workers, while giving the green light to slash corporation tax for big business. Research by the House of Commons Library, published today, confirms that the reductions in corporation tax will cost £29 billion in total, £10 billion over the life of the current Parliament alone. That policy enjoys the full support of the Scottish nationalists, who want to see a future independent Scotland at the front of a race to the bottom, a low tax country with an economy like Iceland—or perhaps like Ireland. I have not seen the latest Scottish Government press release, so I do not know which country they are modelling their assessment on this week.

[Kwasi Kwarteng (Spelthorne) (Con)]

Am I right in assuming that the hon. Gentleman favours a high-tax economy for Britain?

[Anas Sarwar]

No, I am suggesting that while people across the country—especially the most vulnerable—see their household income slashed and the poorest people are having to live in more difficult circumstances, the Government see their priority as giving millionaires a tax cut and cutting taxes for the biggest businesses in the country. I know whose side I am on. I am sad to say that I know whose side the hon. Gentleman is on, and I am sure people will punish him appropriately come the next general election.

[Mr MacNeil]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Anas Sarwar]

I have given way twice already, but if I have any spare time at the end of my speech I might let the hon. Gentleman entertain the House.

The Chancellor claimed the Budget showed he was on the side of people who want to get on; instead it has shown just how out of touch this Government really are. The low-paid workers the Government say will pay less income tax will still be worse off at the end of the month, when that saving is clawed back many times over—clawed back through VAT, clawed back through cuts to tax credits and clawed back from thousands of my constituents through the scandalous bedroom tax.

Yes, the Liberal Democrats can celebrate lifting the threshold to £10,000, but household income for many families in that bracket will fall as a result of the Government’s measures. At the same time, the value of an average worker’s pay has fallen by more than £1,000 and persistently high inflation continues.

In these difficult economic times, the Chancellor should certainly accept our proposals for the funding for lending scheme to be enhanced to target small and medium-sized enterprises better by rewarding banks that expand SME lending regardless of their mortgage book. Now is the time when our banks should be supporting SMEs, not hitting them harder. Throughout my constituency, whether I am speaking to small or large businesses, they all make the same complaint: the banking sector is holding back investment in this country, not promoting it. If we can get our banks lending again and get people investing, we will get more people back to work and see growth and regeneration in some of the hardest-hit communities.

The Chancellor should seriously explore our proposals for new regional banks that are committed to their regions and in touch with local business, making it easier for firms to secure the capital investment they require to create the growth and jobs Britain needs. Sadly, my constituents continue to suffer, trapped between this coalition Government, who continue to look out for the wrong people, and a Holyrood Government, who are distracted by their referendum obsession and happy to double Tory cuts and pass them on to local government, washing their hands of all responsibility and removing £250 million from Glasgow’s economy. We heard earlier from one of the SNP Members that we should recognise that the fall in unemployment was thanks to action taken by the Scottish Government. It is amazing that when unemployment goes up, it is all Westminster’s fault but when it goes down it is all thanks to the Scottish Government. It cannot be both.

The reason why I and countless others in the House went into politics was to help build stronger communities, not to use the poorest and most vulnerable people as electoral or political dividing lines, writing off millions of people as a drain on the economy for electoral advantage. We want to help to create a sustainable economy to fund world-class public services, ensure that society’s resources are distributed equitably and protect the most vulnerable people in our communities.

Last Wednesday I sat and listened to the Chancellor lay out his vision for the coming years. It is a vision that I and, I am confident, the majority of people in Britain reject.