Anna McMorrin
Main Page: Anna McMorrin (Labour - Cardiff North)
Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)
Hard-working people and families across this country look to a Government to show leadership and direction. Never has this place shown such irresponsibility and ineptitude. This was a fantasy Budget today. It lets our communities down, it lets the people down and it lets our country down. The Government are scrambling around for any figures they can find to deceive us into thinking that austerity is ending, but thousands of families and cash-strapped councils up and down the country know that austerity is still alive and strong.
In my constituency of Cardiff North, I spoke just last week to a single mother who works eight hours a week for the NHS and has a son with disabilities. She came to me because she has been underpaid, through universal credit, again and again, which has left her penniless and in debt. She has spent hours on the phone in tears, month after month, trying to resolve these errors time after time. She has had to consider leaving work because universal credit leaves her worse off, and she has come to me for help. Will the Chancellor tell her how this Budget is going to help her and others like her? We know that embedded deep in the universal credit system are deliberate and unfair cuts, so austerity is far from over. Will the Chancellor send another constituent to bed cold or hungry who came to me? That is her choice because she cannot afford both bills and food. Austerity is far from over.
While this Government tell us they are ending austerity, they seek to continue their chaotic Brexit negotiations, risking crashing out with no deal and irresponsibly pitching that against the Prime Minister’s miserable deal. We are giving the people a false dilemma, but there is a third way that would avoid Brexit’s hit to our public finances and our economy: a people’s vote. The referendum two years ago was a protest vote against austerity—against the poverty we all see in our constituencies up and down the country. Let me be clear: there will be no Brexit dividend. Whatever the deal, we will be worse off outside the EU. The Government’s own analysis shows that. We know that Brexit is causing uncertainty for businesses, people and communities up and down the country.
For me, also striking is the failure to make decarbonisation and clean growth absolutely central to this Government’s economic plans. The Budget comes less than a month after the world’s climate scientists firmly told us that the global economy has just 12 years to almost halve greenhouse emissions if dangerous, potentially catastrophic, climate change is to be prevented. In this Budget statement, not one mention was made of climate change. If the UK Government want to protect future generations, as they say they do, that must be put front and centre. Instead, energy efficiency funding has been cut, green levies politicised and prevented, and the cheaper forms of green energy—onshore wind and solar—locked out of Government funding. The UK’s recycling infrastructure is struggling badly following under-investment.
On climate action, the UK Government come up short time and again. The token plastic tax goes only a small way to stopping the devastating tide of plastic in our oceans. The Chancellor bottled out of a tax on disposable coffee cups. Unless the whole waste and recycling system is reformed, plastic waste will continue to pollute, yet there were no timescales and no definitive action was outlined. This is clearly a Government who do not care about future generations.
The Government are in a state of paralysis. They have spent more time arguing with themselves and in their party than negotiating with the European Union. Brexit has swallowed up the Tories’ capacity to plan for the future or even to acknowledge that people are struggling because of the Tories’ cuts and cock-ups. No one voted for that two years ago. No one voted to be poorer in the referendum two years ago. The truth is that, whatever the deal the Prime Minister comes back with, it will be devastating. It will damage my constituents, and local businesses, communities and people not only in Cardiff North but throughout Wales and up and down the country. This was a fantasy pre-Brexit Budget. It is clear that the Government are unable to cope. There is only one thing left to do, and that is to put the decision back to the people for a final say.