Budget Resolutions

Anna McMorrin Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 28th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)]

This was not a serious Budget—and I am not referring to the bad jokes that littered the Chancellor’s speech and which were as weak as the Tory Government of the man who delivered them. Last Wednesday, my Opposition colleagues and I waited desperately for an hour to hear something that would help the people we represent to live a decent life. Instead, we got a Budget that includes more spending on an ultra-hard Brexit to appease the Conservative party, which will harm the country, than there was spending on the NHS. The improvements to universal credit were welcome, but they are too little, too late. The relief from the reduction in the six-week wait is only minimal when compared with the thousands of pounds that many of the families dependent on benefits are set to lose.

The Government’s worst legacy by far must be the public sector pay cap. Cardiff North has 19,000 public sector workers—the highest proportion in Wales—and they really hoped that the Budget would end the disgraceful pay freeze that has seen nurses using food banks and care workers struggling to make ends meet. One thing we have learned to appreciate since the spring Budget is how desperately dependent we are on public services. The Chancellor’s Budget leaves public sector workers worse off than they were seven years ago. Austerity is not a policy choice: it is political.

Yesterday, the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy launched his industrial strategy to address weaknesses in the economy. The UK’s economy has been systematically underperforming on almost every key measure. Our productivity is down and we have the most geographically unbalanced economy in Europe. Part of the boost to productivity should be investment in renewables, which are set to be the backbone of our modern energy system. The plummeting cost of wind power means that onshore and offshore wind can help to improve the UK’s competitiveness and productivity. It is therefore hugely disappointing that the strategy does not set out how we can continue to support onshore wind, which is the cheapest of the new generation of energy production. We have yet to see an announcement on the Swansea tidal lagoon. That was a missed opportunity to invest in infrastructure for the future. With a cap on funding for renewables until 2025, the Government have shown they have a long way to go before they can deliver on clean growth.

Finally, I am frustrated about and fearful of the prospect of the financial impact of a shambolic Tory Brexit on the British and Welsh economy. The Budget includes £1 billion of additional capital funding for Wales, but more than half that must be repaid. The Budget is a missed opportunity. We needed to see one that truly transformed the economy, not more of the same.