Budget Resolutions

Debate between Andrew Gwynne and Wes Streeting

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.