Budget Resolutions

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Monday 11th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

It is that we have once again won the argument. We have been arguing for some time that taxes on working people are too high. They have gone up time and again under this Conservative Government, and it is only because there is a general election around the corner that they have suddenly discovered a heart, and discovered Labour’s policy and raided our cabinet. Until now, the Conservatives have used working people as their first and last resort to raise money.

Whenever we have talked about fairer choices—whether on non-doms, on the oil and gas giants, on the carried profits loophole, or on the tax exemptions enjoyed by private schools—we get a howl of opposition from the Conservatives, telling us how difficult it is: “Oh, that won’t work, it won’t raise the revenue, it’s not fair, it’s so harsh on all these people.” They never say that about the people on low and middle incomes who are being absolutely clobbered. They never say that about the people who lie awake at night worrying about how they are going to pay their bills, do the shopping and pay their rent or their mortgage. Picking the pockets of working people is the first and last result of this Conservative Government, and it is only because there is an election around the corner and Labour is chomping at their heels that they have finally discovered the cost of living crisis.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is right to pick up on this unfunded £46 billion proposal to scrap national insurance. Just a quick glance on the gov.uk website shows, under the heading

“What National Insurance is for”,

that it is for:

“Basic State Pension, Additional State Pension, New State Pension, New Style Jobseeker’s Allowance, Contribution-based Employment and Support Allowance, Maternity Allowance, Bereavement Support Payment”.

If that £46 billion is going, how will all these be paid for?

[Wes Streeting]

My hon. Friend asks an excellent question, and it is one that the Government will have to answer, because we are not having this double standards in politics. If the Labour party had announced unfunded commitments of this kind, the Conservatives would be the first to howl and complain, and it would be the question confronting every Labour spokesperson on every broadcast platform and every national newspaper. This is the question that should be levelled at the Government, because this is not just hypothetical recklessness; we have seen where the Conservatives’ ideological recklessness led our country, through a disastrous mini-Budget, for which they have never apologised, never taken responsibility and apparently never learned the lessons. It is a disgrace.

If the money is not coming from the sources that my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) suggested, in terms of pensions and support, let us bear in mind the scale of £46 billion. It is a quarter of the NHS budget. Is that where the money for abolishing national insurance will come from? The Government would have to close 130 hospitals and sack 96,000 nurses, 37,000 doctors and 7,000 GPs. Will these cuts be evenly spread across the country, or will they just shut down the NHS in the west midlands and Yorkshire, leaving the rest of the country untouched? They are very welcome to tell us when this policy will be introduced, how they will fund it and where the cuts or the alternative tax rises will come from, because we will hound them with these questions every day of the general election campaign.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green), who always brings a sense of togetherness to these debates. Although, obviously, he said that he supports the Budget, he did so in his non-partisan way. I always enjoy listening to his contributions.

However, the Budget that the right hon. Gentleman painted a picture of is very different from the one that my constituents reacted to. They were left with an overwhelming sense of, “Is that it?” To be fair, when I looked over at Tory MPs after the Chancellor sat down, that was pretty much the expression on the faces of the majority of the parliamentary Conservative party. It would probably be unfair to name this friend from the Government Benches, but as we were walking back to Portcullis House, he said to me, “Thank…”—perhaps Hansard will insert an Anglo-Saxon expletive—“I wasn’t mentioned in the Chancellor’s roll call of doom! That probably means I stand some chance of coming back after the election.” He was only half-joking. The Chancellor thought he was doing the right thing in giving a roll-call of the names of all the Conservative Members with marginal constituencies, but all that did was highlight to Opposition Members just what a good job the Labour candidates are doing in those constituencies.

After 14 years of Conservative rule, we have had the very dregs of the barrel in this Budget. The everyday experiences of people outside the Palace of Westminster are quite different from the impression given by Government Members in three days of Budget debate. The reality is that taxes are still up; mortgages, for many, are up; bills are up; and prices are up. The Government’s response is a Budget with crumbs for working people that does nothing to fundamentally tackle the challenges facing our economy. One would think that this was the Budget of a country in its halcyon days, rather than a country now in recession.

Has the Chancellor fallen victim to the warnings of the Prime Minister who appointed him, and signed up to the “anti-growth coalition”? Far from pursuing growth, the Chancellor has delivered the worst Parliament on record for living standards, as confirmed by the Office for Budget Responsibility—giving with one hand, but taking more with the other. The Conservatives claim to be a party of low taxes, but thanks to the rate freezes, they will have created 3.7 million new taxpayers by 2028-29. The Budget is adorned with the white flag of surrender from a Government who have simply given up on the country and are now looking in on themselves.

The Chancellor’s suggestion of one day abolishing national insurance—an unfunded tax cut of £46 billion—leaves a gaping hole in the public finances. We know it, and they know it: that is nothing more than a gimmick. Otherwise, money for the list of things, on gov.uk, that national insurance pays for, which I rattled off earlier, not least the state pension, would have to be found from other sources. Transferring that list to income tax, raising VAT, or both, would mean taxes up; otherwise, there would be savage cuts to public finances. I, for one, thought that the Chancellor was appointed to clean up the mess created by his predecessor, not to follow his lead.

There are no quick wins. There are difficult decisions to be taken, and it will take time to undo the damage to our economy, yet the utterly reckless national insurance proposal shows that there is a fundamental lack of seriousness at the heart of Government. They simply do not get the scale of the chaos that they have created. Nowhere is that more patently obvious than in the dire situation facing local government. Section 114 notices are becoming frighteningly commonplace, and leaders from across the political divide are uniting in their call for help, but help came there none. Rather, we had last minute U-turns and more sticking plasters, straining to hold together an already broken system.

The issue is far from just being about the odd move to fortnightly bin collections; it is about local authorities with serious, statutory duties for children’s services and adult social care being forced to cut down to the bone—and, in some cases, into the bare bones. The Government say that local government can find more money by cutting “woke” jobs or finding other areas of waste, but after 14 years of financial decimation, there is very little if any waste in local government. Local authorities are struggling.

My local authorities’ finances have been decimated. Stockport’s budget is down by £90 million a year; Tameside’s is down by £200 million. Manchester’s budget is down by £450 million. These are ginormous amounts of money. The result is ever-deepening social and economic inequality. The areas that were already struggling are the ones suffering the most. Those who needed support are having the ladder pulled from beneath them. That is the hallmark of a Government who, far from bringing our country together, have sought to play divide and rule at every turn.

After 14 years of Conservative government, our country is less equal, less productive and less fair, and working people are paying the price. From the Chancellor’s tone last week, we might think that is a record he is proud of, rather than one of which he should be utterly ashamed. So low have the Government party sunk that no longer are they crying foul about Labour not having a plan; instead, they are stealing our homework and passing it off as their own.

The British people deserve more than a cheap copy job. They deserve the real thing, and it is about time they got the opportunity to vote for it. It is time for this era of chaos to come to an end. Let us have a general election now. Give this country the Labour Government—the fresh start—it so desperately needs. It is time for Britain to get her future back.