Budget Resolutions

Baggy Shanker Excerpts

Monday 1st December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Baggy Shanker (Derby South) (Lab/Co-op)]

I welcome this Budget as it cracks on and delivers for our kids, for our NHS and for hard-working families up and down the country. Importantly, it also delivers for Derby. It is no wonder the Tories do not like it.

I have said it before and I will say it again: in Derby, we are proud to be a city of makers. What we build in Derby keeps our country and beyond powered, but for far too long, people in our city from Alvaston to Arboretum have put in a shift but still are left struggling and find it hard to make ends meet. For years, they have been left to face the grinding reality of Tory austerity, and it is hurting. They are left to pay sky-high energy bills, left waiting for their kids’ education, health and care plans in a buckling special educational needs system, and left out of our city’s success as a manufacturing powerhouse.

It is not right that families are turning to food banks because their pay packet does not cover the essentials any more. It has left Derby telling a tale of two cities. Whether it is raising the minimum wage, freezing train ticket prices, freezing prescription fees or knocking £150 off energy bills, this Budget is cracking on with tackling the cost of living crisis for families in Derby and across the country—not sometime in the future, but now.

Instead of accepting that in some parts of our city the majority of kids will live in poverty, the Labour Government have said enough is enough: enough of families paying the painful price of Tory austerity, and enough of kids going to school on empty stomachs. By scrapping the two-child benefit cap, we will give 5,500 kids in Derby South a better start in life. Nationally, we will lift 450,000 kids out of poverty. That is the difference a Labour Government make.

That is not all. The Budget also delivers for young people as they take their next steps in life, because university is not for everyone. It was not for me, and I want every young person in Derby to know about the opportunities that apprenticeships can offer them in getting on. To take up the opportunity and run with it, apprenticeships need to be available for them in local businesses and in the local area. This Budget delivers exactly that. It commits £725 million for the growth and skills levy to help support apprenticeships for young people. They are this country’s future. That funding includes fully-funded SME apprenticeships for eligible under-25s. We know that when we back our fantastic young people, the whole community benefits.

This Budget delivers for the whole of our city by backing the Team Derby initiative. The Tories underestimated and undervalued Derby for years locally and nationally, and that left our community feeling locked out of our city’s success as a manufacturing powerhouse, but I have always been on Team Derby, and this Government are, too. We are committed to making sure that record investments in our city’s industry also work hard for our community, delivering the change that residents want and that they can see. I thank my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer and my right hon. and learned Friend the Prime Minister for backing families, backing business, backing our young people and, importantly for me, backing Derby.