Budget Resolutions

Beth Winter Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Beth Winter (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

Diolch yn fawr, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Cuts for Wales, cuts to services, cuts to pay and cuts to living standards, and absolutely no mention in the Budget of the most pervasive threat and greatest existential crisis facing every one of us—the climate crisis—all to fund giveaways to a few of the Government’s friends at the top. There was absolutely nothing in this Budget for Cymru—for Wales. The Welsh Government, backed by the Senedd, called last week for greater fiscal flexibilities. They sought investment in coal tip safety and the allocation of the billions of pounds owed to us in consequentials from HS2, but the Chancellor chose to ignore those requests.

I listened with some amazement to the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds), who was lauding the merits of the free market and capitalism. That could not be any further from the truth for my community, Cynon Valley, and for others across the south Wales valleys, whose history is one of extraction. This year marks the 40th commemoration of the miners’ strike, which sounded the death knell for the industry, with the decimation of communities across south Wales and other coalfield communities. That is the legacy of neoliberalism and the capitalist state in the UK.

The Budget brought cuts to services, with Departments losing £20 billion in the coming years, which almost matches the cuts of the 2010 coalition. That means fewer youth clubs, fewer bus services and fewer bin collections, while local authorities are on their knees. Such cuts can only damage the fabric of society and risk further alienation of the public from politics. There were also more cuts to pay. This is the Tory low-pay agenda. The public have seen well-paid Ministers restricting strike action to deal with the myth of wage-led inflation, and the Government continue to make late submissions to the public sector pay review bodies, despite people being are unable to keep up with the cost of energy bills or food shops. This is shameful.

Who gains from the tax cuts? We saw £10 billion spent on cutting national insurance, when nearly half of the benefit of doing so goes to the richest fifth, but only 3% go to the poorest fifth. This is the Tory agenda to reward a few at the top while public services are disappearing and people’s incomes are stagnating, including in Cynon Valley, where we have seen an exponential growth of food banks and food bank usage. In recent months, there has been a huge surge of people coming to my office asking for fuel vouchers because they cannot afford to heat their homes. Only last month, alongside trade union councils in south Wales, I arranged a hunger march—a hunger march—to commemorate the 97th anniversary of the first hunger march in the UK from the Rhondda up to London. It is an indictment that we now have more food banks than McDonald’s restaurants. Shame on this Government that that has become normalised.

This Government’s approach is testing not only the social fabric, but the future of our planet, and the British people will not accept the continued destruction of public services and people’s pay. The next Government have no alternative but to find the funds to increase public sector pay, fund public services and invest in the future of our public sector. That includes ending the unequal and unfair low levels of taxation on wealth, which is surely now inevitable. We need a wealth tax now more than ever. The Chancellor should have confirmed a commitment to public sector pay restoration to its real level in 2010, starting with an above-inflation rise this year. He should have committed to lifting the minimum wage to £15 an hour at the next opportunity, and we will keep demanding that.

As I have said, our social fabric is under threat. We need an economy that puts people and the planet first, before profits and for the benefit of all. We must be arguing not for growth for growth’s sake, but for growth for prosperity for all. That is enshrined in the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, which we are fortunate enough to have in Wales. I would encourage the Government to look at that Act, and ideally to adopt it here in England and across the UK. This means enabling and supporting local communities not only to generate wealth, but to invest it in their own communities. That community wealth-building initiative is called cymunedoli. It is only by redistributing wealth that we will be able to tackle inequality, to transform society and to secure a just future—not only for current generations, but for future generations.