Autumn Budget 2024

Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway Excerpts

Monday 11th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)]

My Lords, I add my welcome and congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Booth-Smith, on a very wise maiden speech.

In the lead-up to Budget Day, the new Chancellor faced big decisions about how to deal with the black hole she inherited. Those who criticise her Budget need to explain what alternative choices they would have made and how they would have made the sums add up.

First, do they agree with the Chancellor that the NHS and education in particular urgently needed funding, or would they have returned us to the false economy of austerity and cuts? Secondly, if they recognise that public services are on their knees and need fixing, who should pay—people who must work for a living, or business and the wealthy? Thirdly, what would they do differently to tackle the low-investment, low-productivity, low-growth doom loop the previous Government presided over and which, as the IMF noted recently, relegated the UK to the bottom of the G7 league?

The new leader of the Opposition has said that her party needs to be

“honest about the fact that we made mistakes, honest about the fact that we let standards slip”.

Perhaps there is not enough time to assess all those “mistakes” in this debate, but I highlight just one: the former Conservative Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s plans relied on cutting public investment from 2.4% to 1.7% of national output by 2028-29—the equivalent of £24 billion a year by the end of the current Parliament. That was a recipe for national neglect, decline and poverty.

In contrast, Labour has set out a plan for a fairer, more prosperous Britain: getting people into work and with a better NHS, skills and education system—a welcome boost for those who work for the minimum wage, especially young people; I remind noble Lords that workers are wealth creators too and deserve a fair share—and a commitment to invest, invest, invest.

Rachel Reeves thinks it makes sense to borrow to invest in transport and secure energy because this will lead to faster growth, higher tax revenues and scope to spend more on public services—she is right. We can discuss whether the Budget could have included more taxes on wealth and excess profits, but surely we can agree the principle that those with the broadest shoulders should contribute a fair share of the cost of rebuilding the UK’s vital national infrastructure, because we all benefit.

Like my noble friend Lady Liddell, I end by celebrating one Budget measure that may not have attracted many national headlines but speaks to Labour values. I should probably declare an interest as my own brother and friends have benefited from this. Rachel Reeves announced that the £1.5 billion mineworkers’ pension fund will be handed over in its entirety to former miners and their families, providing an average increase of £29 a week from November this year. Back in 2019, Boris Johnson promised pensions justice but miners never saw a penny of the money they were owed. Now, Labour has delivered. As the leader of the National Union of Mineworkers, Chris Kitchen, said:

“This is the change we voted for”.