Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green) [V]]

This is the last Budget before the UK hosts the COP26 climate summit in November, before it presides over the G7 and before it takes part in the global biodiversity summit. In that context, the Chancellor should have embraced the enormous potential for a fair and green recovery, to create hundreds of thousands of jobs and to shift our economy on to new sustainable foundations.

Climate leadership means deeds, not words. It means following the science on the speed and scale of the investment required to meet climate goals and halt the loss of biodiversity. The question is not whether we can find a climate initiative here or a mention of green spaces there—I welcome the progress on green bonds and the investment bank. The question is whether, as a whole, this Budget addresses the climate and ecological emergency with anything approaching the ambition or urgency required, and it gives me no pleasure to say that it does not. It is alarming and disappointing to see the Chancellor doubling down on economic dogma that is fuelling the fires of the climate crisis and making our society more unequal and less resilient. Because the Chancellor has failed to make space for nature in his Red Box, we are missing out on thousands of jobs that a national nature service could create, for example. More fundamentally, as the Treasury’s own Dasgupta review, “The Economics of Biodiversity”, explains, bio- diversity loss is

“undermining nature’s productivity, resilience and adaptability …fuelling extreme risk and uncertainty for our economies and well-being.”

I say in all seriousness that our nation’s health and prosperity would be better served by a Chancellor who cared rather more about hedges and hedgehogs and less about hedge funds.

I would like to highlight three big omissions from this Budget. First, we needed a climate and nature test so that all spending and fiscal measures could be aligned with limiting global heating to 1.5° and with the UK’s other environmental goals. The idea that the Treasury already accounts adequately for nature is farcical. If that were the case, the Chancellor would at the very least be restoring funding for the green homes grant. It is shameful that this scheme is being allowed to wind down. We need it.

Secondly, we need transformational investment to create green jobs. With unemployment rising and so much needing to be done to create a fair and green economy, we could have been investing millions. For example, £48 billion over 18 months could have created over 1 million good green jobs. In the US, Joe Biden has a $2 trillion plan to address the climate emergency. Maybe there has been some kind of spreadsheet error here in the UK.

Finally, in this Budget and beyond, the Chancellor must act on the conclusions of the Dasgupta review. He must respect the fact that we should be having a wellbeing Budget and shifting towards an economic approach fit for the 21st century that is not fixated on GDP growth but properly puts wellbeing and the health of people and the planet at the heart of the Budget.