Budget Resolutions

Bob Seely Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

I will take some interventions, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I am cognizant of what you have said about the need to ensure that everyone can speak.

On the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), we all knew that the election of a Tory Government would set us back; what we did not appreciate was that it would set us back a century.

Average annual pay is now projected to be £1,030 lower in 2022 than was forecast in the March 2017 Budget. It is those delivering our key services—the nurses, midwives, firefighters and teachers—who are worse off than they were a decade ago. There is nothing here that could remotely be considered strong. This is a weak economy. In terms of growth, it is now the weakest in the G7.

Let us remember that we are in this mess because for the past seven years the Government have implemented policies that have undermined and weakened our economy. The Chancellor was a key figure in all those policies. He and his colleagues were warned that austerity spending cuts would fail to bring the debt or the deficit under control, and that instead they would undermine the real economy. We were promised in 2010 by the Chancellor’s predecessor that the deficit would be cleared by 2015, yet today the debt burden is still rising. The Chancellor borrowed more in his first year in the job than any Chancellor in history.

[Mr Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

The shadow Chancellor paints a very negative picture, but can he explain why patient satisfaction in the NHS is at its highest for 20 years, why we have the lowest unemployment for 43 years, and why we have the highest employment in our history?

[John McDonnell]

There are now waiting lists of 4 million in the NHS, predicted to rise to 5 million because of the lack of investment. We welcome the increase in those in employment, but 800,000 are zero-hour contracts, and we now have more than 2 million people in insecure work. It is no wonder that people are anxious about their futures.

As I have said, the Chancellor has borrowed £145 billion —more than £5,000 per household—which is more in his first year in the job than any other Chancellor in history. The OBR now expects the deficit in 2021 to be almost three times higher than it forecast in March. It blames this deterioration on the collapse in productivity growth, but productivity growth has collapsed because investment has fallen. Government investment is £20 billion less in real terms today than it was in the last year of the previous Labour Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[John McDonnell]

I know that the hon. Lady is well intentioned, but she has displayed ignorance of what large numbers of people are experiencing. May I suggest this to her—[Interruption.] I do not wish to be patronising. [Interruption.] If that is the way it is interpreted, it is not how it is meant to be. I just say that all of us, who are on relatively high wages, need to be very careful when talking about levels of income and levels of wealth because many people, including 4 million of our children, are actually living in poverty. Two thirds of those children are living in households where someone is in work, which says something about low pay to me, as it should do to all of us.

[Mr Seely]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[John McDonnell]

I will come back to the hon. Gentleman.

The number of people sleeping on our streets has doubled since the Conservatives came to office in 2010. More than 3,500 people were forced to sleep on the streets last year. Some 80,000 households are living in temporary accommodation because councils simply do not have anywhere to house them. I repeat: in the sixth richest country in the world, there are more than 120,000 children without a home to call their own, living in temporary accommodation. That figure is up 60% since this Government have been in power. That means children are being brought up in places that are often not safe, having to share communal bathrooms and kitchens, and being robbed of a normal family life and childhood. We have seen this in our constituencies. Ministers do not seem to understand the strength of anger felt by many on the Labour Benches at the fact that our constituents are being forced to live in overcrowded, unsafe and inadequate housing.

The Government had the opportunity to deliver the funding that would build the homes we need. Only a third of the £44 billion announced yesterday is genuinely new, and there is no extra Government investment in new affordable homes. This Government’s record of failure on housing will continue to blight the lives of hundreds of thousands of people trapped in overpriced, inadequate housing.

[John McDonnell]

I ask the hon. Lady to re-examine the history of that period. I point her to the Kickstart programme, which was developed by the Labour Government to enable building to happen in the public and private sectors. I understand what she is saying; she is right that that time was an immensely difficult period for the economy, and that many people suffered, but her party supported the policies to deregulate the banks that brought about the speculation that resulted in the economic crisis in this country and elsewhere.

Thousands of people are trapped in poverty. The Child Poverty Action Group estimates that as many as 1 million children could be pushed into poverty as a result of cuts to universal credit. The introduction of universal credit has been a disaster that has pushed many thousands of people into despair and, in many cases, outright destitution. Food bank charities have reported that they have gathered an extra 2,000 tonnes of food to cope with demand as a result of the introduction of universal credit. The Trussell Trust reports that the use of food banks is up 30% in areas where universal credit is being rolled out. Yet the amendments offered by the Chancellor yesterday and mentioned in the statement today are so feeble as to strongly suggest that he and this Government simply do not grasp the scale of the problem.

Hon. Members need to know what this poverty means for children in our society. It means not having a winter coat this winter and being left behind when the rest of the class go on a school trip. Last year’s reports showed that thousands of children are going hungry during school holidays. The Chancellor did nothing yesterday for self-employed people, second earners, lone parents or disabled people, all of whom have seen their living standards suffer particularly acutely under universal credit. He failed to mitigate the £3 billion a year cuts that were slashed from the universal credit programme by his predecessor, and he failed to address the impact of the social security freeze in universal credit, due to push millions into poverty.

[Mr Seely]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[John McDonnell]

I will come back to the hon. Gentleman.

The additional funds put in place amount to £1 returned for every £10 that the Government are cutting from the system. This means that those claiming universal credit will now have to take their first payment as a loan, so they will face 12 months of reduced payments. What has the Chancellor offered to some of the most desperate people in the country—those who are already drowning in debt? More debt. The Chancellor had nothing to say for the people who are newly registered for universal credit and who face destitution this Christmas. Not a single extra penny, however inadequate, will be available for the new year. Some 59,000 families will be left without any support over the Christmas period. Those families include 40,000 of this country’s children. The percentage of children living in relative poverty is the highest since records began in 1961—in the sixth richest country in the world.

Local councils are being starved of the funds they need to protect the most vulnerable children in society. Charities on the frontline are clear and report solidly that cuts to parenting classes, children’s centres, substance misuse prevention, teenage pregnancy support and short breaks for disabled people risk turning the current crisis into a catastrophe for the next generation of children and families. A record 70,000 children have been taken into care this year. One in 64 children in England is at risk of abuse or neglect. There are 1,200 fewer children’s centres than in 2010, eight in 10 schools have no funding to support children with special needs and funding for early intervention to protect children is down by 55%. There was not a single penny extra in the Budget to address this emerging crisis in our children’s services. The Chancellor and the Government are failing some of the most vulnerable children in society, and I urge the Government to look again at this emerging crisis.

It goes on. Schools are facing the first funding cuts per pupil in real terms since the 1990s. Headteachers are being forced to go begging to parents for funds to pay for basic supplies. Five thousand headteachers have written to the Government, asking just for the return of the funds that have been cut. One headteacher in the Prime Minister’s constituency is asking parents for £1 a day to help to pay for stationery.

The National Audit Office says that schools face a £1.7 billion real-terms funding cut by 2020. For younger children, there are 1,000 fewer nursery places and childminders. Eight in 10 schools have been left without the funding to provide adequately for special needs pupils. This means that our most vulnerable children are deprived of the counselling or support they need, and spend break times away from their friends, alone. Their education is being discriminated against.

--- Later in debate ---

[John McDonnell]

Under the figures that have been announced this week in the Budget, there will be more of this. There will be more rationing. There will be more people suffering. There will be more people’s lives put at risk.

Under this Government, 4 million people are now waiting for care—the highest level in a decade. More than 100,000 patients were left waiting more than two weeks to see a specialist after being diagnosed with cancer, and more than one in 10 did not start treatment within 62 days. Only three in 10 of the most urgent 999 calls for help are answered within the targeted time. Yet, the Government have brought forward less than half the amount that is needed and that professional, sober assessments say is needed. The claim in yesterday’s Budget that £10 million in capital funding is available is totally misleading. The Government will provide less than half of that. The remainder will come from selling off NHS estates or from the private sector.

Nor has the pay cap that has driven hard-working public sector workers to despair been tackled. The dedication of the staff is extraordinary. There are nurses waiting behind after 12-hour shifts to give care to keep the system from imploding. These are the same NHS nurses who have seen their pay fall so much in real terms that one in four must take a second job to make ends meet. The Royal College of Nursing reports that nurses are even visiting food banks, such is their desperation. It is not possible to run a health service worthy of the name on the unpaid and underpaid dedication of its staff alone. The Chancellor is able to offer nothing for them.

[Mr Seely]

Will the right hon. Gentleman way?

[John McDonnell]

I have given way to the hon. Gentleman, and I am worried about making sure, as you said, Madam Deputy Speaker, that other people are fully involved.

The Chancellor was able to offer nothing for these staff. The cap is not being removed, because, as the Treasury briefed once the Chancellor sat down, any pay rises the pay review boards offer above 1% must be taken from existing budgets. It is a derisory offer to make after seven years of real-terms pay cuts. Worse than that, for NHS nurses, any additional pay will be linked to “Agenda for Change” modernisation, which really means threatening their working conditions—tearing up their terms and conditions of pay.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I congratulate the Chancellor on a good Budget, elements of which may encourage more housing development. I wait with interest to see how the Government’s detailed plans will affect housing on the Isle of Wight. Although I welcome much of the Budget, I want to take this opportunity to explain why I feel that housing policy has not helped the Island and why I look forward, perhaps in hope, to this Budget encouraging a better system.

My constituency of the Isle of Wight needs intelligent, sustainable and sensitive regeneration to drive economic and social development, much of which is supported in this Budget so I thank the Chancellor. However, the system of developer-led housing is flawed. It fails to deliver the right type of housing, specifically housing for young people and people of working age on the Island, and it also fails to deliver for older Islanders. It eats into greenfield sites, damages our tourism economy and quality of life, and forces communities to accept divisive and unpopular developments. In many ways, our system is the definition of unsustainability.

I hope that the Budget will encourage the right sort of housing to be built. Too much housing being built is financially out of reach of Islanders, particularly young Islanders. Housing associations tell me that we urgently need one-bed housing, starter housing and social housing; I would add key worker housing to that list. We also need housing for older Islanders—extra care accommodation that allows people to move out of housing and, therefore, to free it up. But those are not the houses that the developer-led system wants to build. And that, combined with Island economics, means that we have to build a lot of housing that we do not want in order to get a little bit of housing that we do want. That system is not right.

As a result, young people are forced off the Island. Even so-called affordable housing is, in reality, unaffordable. I am delighted that the Conservative Isle of Wight Council is trying to ensure a change to the system, and I congratulate Councillors Dave Stewart, Chris Quirk, Barry Abraham, Stuart Hutchinson, Tig Outlaw and others for trying to improve a highly flawed system. The Island needs a different form of social regeneration—one that invests in people, not just land. The overdevelopment we face causes many problems. It is worsening our quality of life and eating into greenfield sites. We do not have the infrastructure to afford it, and we are unlikely to get that significant infrastructure because we are an Island. We have about 600 metres maximum of dual carriageway and, frankly, we are unlikely to get more. So I am waiting to find out the details of how this extra money can help us.

I am very uncomfortable with the Government’s target of over 6,000 homes in a decade. I do not believe that is sustainable, and I cannot think of any way in which I will support anything like that number, because so many of those homes will not be built for Islanders. The only target I am looking at is something possibly around half that figure, but it would be focused on the people who need those homes. I want these homes to be largely built by housing associations. Why can we not have schemes whereby housing associations can buy back property from older sellers to repurpose it? A housing association could buy back a bungalow, repurpose it, put on a first floor and create two homes, developing the homes the Government want, without eating into new land.

As part of our commitment to the future, I will seek to work with partners to develop a sustainable model of development. I hope very much that the Government will work with me on this so that we can get sustainable models of development that meet the needs of the Island as well as the needs of Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Karen Lee (Lincoln) (Lab)]

This Budget offered the majority of my constituents very little hope, and hope is what is missing in our society. I am not talking it down; the grim truth is that our economy has flatlined. The cut in stamp duty is of no use to my constituents on low wages who cannot afford a mortgage, and the OBR says that without an increase in supply, the stamp duty cut will drive prices up. The public sector pay cap is alive and well for our firefighters, police, teachers and local government workers, and there is a deafening silence about the 14% drop in wages that nurses have suffered since 2010. All healthcare workers—porters, healthcare support workers and housekeepers—do a vital job, and they have all suffered under the pay cap.

What about social care? There was another deafening silence about that yesterday. Although I welcome the news that people will no longer have to wait a whole week before being allowed to claim universal credit—I think that they were meant to starve for that week—the extra money that the Government boast about putting into universal credit will not replace what has already been taken out. In Lincoln, the use of food banks has increased since universal credit was partly rolled out, and the measures in this Budget do little to reassure me that my constituents will not suffer further from the full roll-out next March.

If I look across the House, I see that some Conservative Members cannot even look at us because they know that what we are saying is true. Indeed, 25% of children in Lincoln live in poverty, and this Budget has done nothing for them. This Government boast about having a low-tax economy, and the Paradise papers a couple of weeks ago put that statement in a very clear light. If we had a fair taxation system, we would not be talking about properly resourcing public services.

[Mr Seely]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Ms Lee]

No, I will not; I am going to make some progress.

This Budget has done nothing to challenge or address the unfairness in our society, and people will feel poorer for longer. It is most definitely not a Budget for the many, and those who benefit are, without doubt, the very few. As a newcomer to the Opposition, I think that Government Members ought to hang their heads in shame, and they ought to wake up and realise what is really going on in this country. I can promise them that things are very different in Lincoln from how they are in Taunton.