Autumn Budget 2024

Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke Excerpts

Monday 11th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke (Lab)]

My Lords, listening to the Benches opposite, from the comedy turn at the beginning and onwards, there is no recognition of how they managed to get the worst result in the party’s history at the last general election. It is because they crashed the economy; that is, purely and simply, at the core of things as we discuss this today. This was always going to be a difficult Budget, the first for a new Government and Chancellor after 14 years out of power. I can remember going into the Treasury in 1997 to find a bank of paper in the gloriously grand office that I was given. It was the identification of all the things that we did not know about. You do not know what you do not know until you walk into that office; that is the challenge the Chancellor has had to face in putting together this Budget.

The Budget’s understanding of the need for investment across both the public and private sectors is reassuring. The changes to the fiscal framework might not get people terribly excited, but that is a framework to encourage investment to modernise our country and make life easier for our citizens. It also sets out to match the modernisation that we have seen among our international competitors. Even before the Budget, the changed relationship with business leaders unlocked more than £60 billion of investment.

Turning around the economy comes at a cost, and sometimes it is painful. The alternative is to blight the future for so many of our citizens, and that is not acceptable. We have to ensure that the most vulnerable are protected. Like others, I want to see the “Get Britain Working” White Paper. Along with a number of Members in the House today, I serve on the Economic Affairs Committee. Some of the stuff that it is unveiling now in relation to poverty and people’s inability to get back into the labour market makes for very difficult reading.

Within the Chancellor’s Budget, we have seen an allocation of £240 million for 16 new trailblazer projects, aimed at getting people into work and in so doing reducing the benefit bill. I can remember something similar to that from when I was a Member of Parliament under the previous Labour Government. One of the changes made by the Chancellor is very special to me: keeping the promise to transfer the investment reserve fund into the Mineworkers’ Pension Scheme. I come from a community of miners; I lost my grandfather and two of my uncles to disease caused by working in the pits, so I was over the moon when I heard about that.

I turn to the situation in Scotland, where £3.4 billion is going to the Scottish Government through the Barnett formula. That was introduced in 1978 by Labour’s Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Joel Barnett, who went on to join this House. Now, all these years later, it has delivered to Scotland a record £47.7 billion from the Westminster Government. That is a sign of partnership. The First Minister was all lined up to condemn the Budget, wanting an end to austerity, and what did he get? The biggest bonus in history—and that is not the end of the story. An SNP-led committee has reported that it is deeply concerned about how Scottish Ministers are spending the country’s money. The lack of the medium-term and long-term planning that we are beginning to see here in the rest of the United Kingdom has never managed to surface in Scotland.

I can see why people are concerned about some of the measures in the Budget. They probably would not have been in it, had it not been for the state that the Chancellor acknowledged. That was at the heart of what had to be sorted out. We are at the beginning of a five-year term, and I can see the commitment of the Chancellor to things that I am interested in. Carbon capture and storage has always been very close to my heart. I am the president of the CCSA; we are promised increased investment in CCS and many other schemes.

This was going to be a difficult Budget. We know that we have to deal with some of the downsides of trying to get the economy right, but we have a Chancellor who is courageous and that gives us an opportunity to get this economy right.