Economy: The Growth Plan 2022

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

The noble Lord says from a sedentary position that it has nothing to do with Brexit—

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

Of course it does.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

I thank the noble Baroness. There was a suggestion by those who were arguing against Brexit that it would have catastrophic economic consequences. We will never know fully what the implications of Brexit would have been had it not been for the Covid pandemic and a whole range of other issues, but it is absolutely clear that we are in an economic situation that was unforeseen five years ago and which very clearly started at the time of Covid and was exacerbated by the war in Ukraine.

Had I not been heckled from a sedentary position, I was going to say that today a miracle has happened—I agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Lilley. Before the Whips in my party get too worried, I say that it is over something with which I hope perhaps all Members in your Lordships’ House can agree: that we should not want a Government to fail. It must be of considerable interest to us all, as citizens of the United Kingdom and Members of your Lordships’ House, that our country should be respected globally and that our economy should be as strong as possible. I therefore do not seek to talk down the Government, however much I might like to see them defeated at the next election.

The noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, raised the question of whether the Prime Minister had too many Ps in her PPE. I was more concerned that she had missed Politics 101: as Prime Minister, there are certain people you want to have in your Cabinet, so do not kick to the Back Benches those people who do not agree with you. The Prime Minister might like to rethink that a little bit. But did she really learn the lessons in Oxford PPE that some of the rest of us did? There seem to have been so many decisions in the last four weeks that are not about strengthening the economy; some of them stand to weaken the economy.

The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, is right that cheap money is no longer available, but those decisions that the Chancellor put forward two and a half weeks ago led to a set of consequences that is going to increase borrowing. Can the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, in his response tell the House what calculations the Government have made around the impact on the economy and our borrowing of the Government’s mini-Budget; the amount of borrowing the Government are having to do; the intervention of the Bank of England; and the long-term consequences this will have on young people and their mortgages, and on those who are repaying their student loans? The youngest are among those who are going to suffer most from many of these changes.

Cutting energy prices is right. Borrowing for tax cuts most certainly was not.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Sikka. When the Tories took over in May 2010, the national debt was at £845 billion, which sounds quite a lot—but now, in 2022, the UK has a £2.5 trillion national debt and, obviously, no national assets. So what has happened in the past few weeks? In a few short days, our Chancellor and Prime Minister enabled the following: our economy tanked, and we went billions of pounds further into debt—and many of those billions went into the pockets of the Conservative Government’s sickeningly rich friends and donors. The Government promised the massively unpopular measure of fracking, and they have managed to show the nation that they are morally empty, by coming up with increasingly inane and very damaging ideas—and, of course, we did not vote for a cut to benefits. In fact, most of us did not get any sort of chance to vote for any of the policies coming out of the Government at the moment. Certainly, no one wants to trash nature. As the Government are finding out, they have lost middle Britain over that.

It has also been demonstrated that a Conservative Government cannot be trusted with our money and have no fiscal nor monetary talent. In fact, this Government have used their power to make the country worse—poorer, more divided and more corrupt. Then they have made up a spectre of anyone who opposes them being an enemy, labelling that spectre the anti-growth coalition. I am going to out myself: I am part of that anti-growth coalition. That does not mean that I do not support any sort of growth, but it means that I am pro the right growth in the right place.

I want change—I absolutely want change—and I want a greener and more sustainable economy. I know that the Government do not understand what a green economy does; they think that it is all hardship and about being stuck in the middle ages. That is absolutely not what it is about. In fact, I would call this Government, and quite a lot of noble Lords on that side of the Chamber who have spoken today, the anti-renewables coalition, and possibly the anti-science coalition.

What we should see is growth in all sorts of ways—in renewable energy projects, building healthy zero-carbon homes, local sustainable economies and increased support for education, clean transport and the NHS. Economic growth on its own tells us very little of value: cutting down a forest would give us economic growth, yet we would lose absolutely everything that the forest does in providing oxygen, water, flood management, recreation and habitat. The Government should look to an emergency universal basic income to tide us through this winter; it would have a much greater impact than any tax cuts and would improve people’s lives much more effectively than handing hundreds of billions of pounds straight to the energy companies. We need a wealth tax to fund insulation, which is just one method of transferring wealth from rich to poor, rather than pretending that you can grow the pie at the expense of the planet. We must develop green sectors urgently. We would already need so much less energy if David Cameron as Prime Minister had not said to cut the green stuff. We must put a windfall tax on the fossil fuel industry and not on renewables. Probably most of all, we need a responsible and caring Government who are actually capable of spending our money properly and wisely and planning for a safe, sustainable future—and you are not it.