Autumn Statement Resolutions

Andy McDonald Excerpts

Monday 27th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Ind)]

The Government have tried some sleight of hand with this so-called “autumn statement for growth” just as the OBR has revised its projections for the economy downwards. Indeed, the OBR’s figures for the coming years tell a very different story from the Chancellor’s: GDP growth was nil in the three months to September, while the OBR has revised growth for next year down by more than half from 1.8% to 0.7%, for the year after that down from 2.5% to 1.4%, and for 2026 marginally down as well. These figures are cause for alarm, signalling a potential economic downturn. In fact, retail sales are already falling and unemployment is rising. The OBR now forecasts that unemployment will go even higher than previously thought, reaching 4.6% by 2025.

If we have learned anything from the past 13 years of the Tories at the helm of the economy, it is that working people and the most vulnerable in our society are always the ones who are made to pay the price for their damaging decisions. A clear example is the Chancellor’s spin over the cuts to national insurance, which in reality will give back to workers less than a quarter of the £44.6 billion that will be taken away from them in frozen tax thresholds by 2028. As my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) advised, the 5% energy price cap rise will impact as well. These national insurance cuts will not do anything to help those earning less than the threshold, who are mostly low-paid, part-time workers and those in the gig economy lacking basic employment rights and protections, and they will disproportionately impact women.

Furthermore, the total absence of additional funding for public services will hit those most in need the hardest. Taking £1.2 billion out of the pockets of disabled people and affecting 700,000 people with a one-third cut in their benefits and increased conditionality, while handing businesses £12 billion in tax giveaways, is totally unconscionable. But it serves as a reminder, if we ever needed one, of whose interests the Conservative party serves. It is not its billionaire backers who will be impacted by the record waiting lists in the NHS, as they all have private healthcare, nor will it be their children whose education is negatively impacted by cuts to school budgets. How can the Government claim to be promoting economic growth when the very fabric of our society is fraying at the seams after more than a decade of crippling austerity?

At the local authority level, as well, we are seeing councils across the country teetering on the brink of collapse. They have enormous holes in their finances. What do we on Teesside get from the Government in response? We get the condescending slur of “holes” of a different variety.

Thanks to the Conservatives’ decision to slash local government funding, along with the disgraceful mismanagement of the previous administration in my town, Middlesbrough Council has been put in the unwelcome position of having to sell its major income-generating assets to try to deliver a balanced budget. While food banks creak under the strain and thousands of children go to school hungry, we have the farce of Members on the Conservative Benches blaming the newly elected Labour administration for clearing up the mess left by others.

Another matter that the Chancellor addressed in his statement that has a major impact on my constituency relates to freeports. The Government have announced their intention to extend the duration of the tax reliefs available in freeports from five to 10 years. The Chancellor explained that this decision was made in part thanks to “tenacious representations” by

“the unstoppable Mayor of Tees Valley”.—[Official Report, 22 November 2023; Vol. 741, c. 332.]

I must say that that description of the Mayor is not incorrect. He has certainly been unstoppable in locking the taxpayer into dreadful deals that set up private investors with all the reward but none of the risk, which is left to the public purse. In the latest edition of Private Eye we are told how the reckless boasting of Lord Houchen regarding the announcement of British Steel setting up an electric arc steel recycling plant on Teesside—on its own land—has left the Chinese-owned company with the British taxpayer over a barrel. Too eager to claim credit for something that has nothing to do with him and to present the deal as done while the company is still in negotiations with the Government over subsidies, he has potentially cost the public purse astronomical amounts of money. Such is the arrogance displayed by the Mayor, his office even put out a video showing him hand-signing a legal agreement with the caption “new electric arc furnace”, although on closer inspection the document turned out to be an old one for a solar farm.

This sums up how the Conservative party operates: all smoke and mirrors, when behind the façade its decisions only leave the British public worse off, much like this tawdry “autumn statement for growth”. The Home Secretary really let the Tory party mask slip with his foul-mouthed outburst last week, but he and his colleagues should be in no doubt that the people of Teesside and people across the country have long memories and will let their voices be heard at the ballot box as soon as they get their chance.

[Several hon. Members rose—]