Budget Statement

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Friday 12th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Andrews (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to join other noble Lords in congratulating both my noble friend Lord Khan and the noble Lord, Lord Cruddas, on their maiden speeches. We look forward to their many contributions in this House. I am sure that they will both be a great asset.

This Budget was more significant for what it left out than for what it contained. It was an opportunity to prepare for a future that would avoid the mistakes of the past, and which would prioritise public infrastructure and public service—but it has not. Yes, of course we face enormous, perhaps unique, challenges, but surely they can be faced down better with investment in the public services that make us resilient. Instead, austerity will inevitably be back—the same austerity that enabled the pandemic to prey on the poorest and the weakest of our communities, in this deeply unequal country.

The Chancellor has already tried and failed to justify the silence around these services in his Budget. There is nothing here about meeting the added cost to the health service, as it works through the huge backlog of diagnosis and treatment; or the unseen costs of the pandemic on mental health and family breakdown; or the future costs of staffing the NHS or funding affordable social care. There is nothing about nurses’ pay or rewarding and retaining their commitment and skills, and yet the Minister has an obligation to say whether he agrees with the Health Minister, who said in this House earlier this week that a 1% rise was all we could afford. These are the same people who do and did not count the cost of continuing to work, day and night, throughout the pandemic, as they do normally. The whole Government need to answer the question of why so much was spent on the wrong people and the wrong contracts.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the OBR has said that the potential legacy of the pandemic for spending on public services is one of the most significant risks to the medium-term fiscal outlook. When we think about preparing for the future, given all the warning notes from the scientific community about the persistence of Covid, new virus strains, and the need for continuing track-and-trace and vaccination programmes, it is astonishing that there is no provision for virus-related spending in 2022-23 and beyond. I have a final question for the Minister, which I hope he can answer when he winds up. Can he explain why this is the case, when we have so many lessons to learn from the initial failure to prepare and plan for Covid? The Budget is a failed opportunity. I regret that very much.