Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 15th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dame Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

I take a different view from the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier), for whom I have great respect; I feel that this is an excellent Budget and I would like to set out some reasons why, as well as some questions for the Chancellor and his team.

To start with, the cost of living is obviously the single biggest issue for all our constituents, and has been for some time. The fuel duty freeze is an excellent and essential decision, but again, like my hon. Friend the Chair of the Treasury Committee, I wonder why we continue to have that automatic fuel duty rise. It was introduced by the last Labour Government and is always costed into every OBR forecast, giving people concern; perhaps it needs to be scrapped altogether.

On energy bills, it is fantastic to be giving people that extra bit of support until the spring when it gets warmer, they are not using fuel so much, and it is widely anticipated that bills will come down anyway. Again, however, I would like to see the Chancellor giving thought to encouraging energy suppliers to offer term-fixed rates, as we have with a mortgage, so that people can have a fixed rate for their energy bills for the next one or two years.

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

I go back to the fuel duty issue, because I know the right hon. Lady has been concerned about climate change, at least in the past. The freeze in the fuel duty has meant that emissions have gone up by 5%, while the Treasury has lost out on billions in funding. If she really wants to help hard-pressed drivers and others, why not look at a wealth tax, for example? A wealth tax on the 1% richest people could raise up to £70 billion. She could then help not only those drivers, but public transport and the public sector people who are out on strike right now. They are out on the streets wanting more funding, so why is she not doing that?

[Dame Andrea Leadsom]

I agree with the hon. Lady that decarbonisation is vital, but where we part company is that I think people have to live in the meantime, and some of the ideas she puts forward are utterly unworkable and impractical.

The measure on childcare costs is fantastic news and will be transformational for so many families. I know that lots of colleagues across the House have been campaigning for that for a long time. I would, however, ask the Treasury team to consider going further by considering an attendance allowance for grandparents who look after their grandchildren. That is something that so many families would like to take advantage of, but too many grandparents simply cannot afford to do so because it means giving up their income; in fact, it will cost them money.

We also need a further look at childminder regulation. One regulation is the requirement for fire doors throughout the house, which is a huge expense for a childminder who wants to start up. Of course, that is a huge obstacle for people who want to offer flexible choice for families.

On quality of life, the Budget also goes a long way towards helping people. In particular, it will help into work people with disabilities and long-term illnesses. Some constituents who come to my surgeries are desperate and feel that they are on the scrapheap because nobody will give them a job—it is so difficult—so I really applaud the measures.

It is right to help people with up-front childcare costs when they are on universal credit. I had a Ukrainian family staying with me. They had an eight-year-old daughter and a two-year-old daughter, and helping my guest to apply for universal credit, and then for the childcare element, was a huge issue. Inevitably, I could lend her the money for childcare costs, but for somebody who cannot get that, the help in the Budget is absolutely essential.

On help for the over-50s, I absolutely applaud the Government for encouraging and providing support to get people back into the workplace, but again, I highlight the fact that it is often women over 50 who find that they are applying for job after job and getting nowhere. Often, it is because they have been out of the workplace for quite some time.

The pension cap and annual allowance measures are fantastic news. That is something on which I agree with the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch: this should have been done a long time ago. There is no question that the cap has encouraged people to think, “Well, there is no point carrying on working because I can’t improve my quality of life in retirement.” Although those sums sound like a lot, they do not actually deliver a decent pension, so I think that the measures are essential. Sadly for many colleagues in this House, that might even keep me working. [Hon. Members: “Hooray!”] Thank you! It is important that we continue to look at the issues for those who have already fixed their maximum pension cap in recent years. Some fixed it at £1.2 million or £1.4 million. What are we going to do about them? That will be an issue for some people.

The draught beer duty freeze is fantastic and will really help pubs—a great quality-of-life move—but in my South Northamptonshire constituency, which includes 92 villages, we need buses so that we can get to the pubs. There was nothing on buses, so that is another pitch.

The pothole news is fantastic, but let us see some innovative ways of fixing them. Too often, a pothole gets fixed but, a couple of weeks later, there is another pothole where it was, so we need to think about that. We also need to think about clearing litter from roads. We could do a lot more about such quality-of-life issues, which have badgered us in our constituencies for so long. On quality of life: great, but there is more to do.

The tax incentive to invest in new plant and machinery assets will be a massive boost for business. The Chancellor is absolutely right to focus on GDP per capita by improving investment and reducing lower-quality jobs. We have to move to more automation, more use of technology, and better quality, higher-paid jobs. It is absolutely right to do that.

The Chancellor is also absolutely right to focus on R&D and science. He gave very impressive statistics on the UK’s performance in a globally competitive environment. Certainly, our progress is strong. When I was Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, I met amazing businesses in space technology and cutting-edge life sciences, as well as in nuclear. I visited the brilliant fusion project at Culham, and worked with the Rolls-Royce-led consortium in small modular reactors. I absolutely applaud the Chancellor’s commitment to nuclear, as well as to carbon capture, usage and storage. The big challenge of our age is keeping the lights on, keeping the cost of bills down and decarbonising. We cannot do any one of those things on their own; we have to keep that energy trilemma in balance. That is the critical challenge of our age.

I think there is much more that the Government could and should be doing to build more electricity infrastructure, to promote more renewables with much better local payback and to make homes and businesses far more energy efficient. Too little work has gone into that. I commend to my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, who is on the Front Bench, the report of the 1922 Back-Bench committee that I chair on the future for energy. The report has a wealth of practical actions—29 of them, in fact—and I urge the Chancellor and the whole Treasury team to take a close look at it.

On finance, I was, like many, heartily relieved by the OBR’s revised forecasts today, but I wonder: does the Chancellor worry about the impact of forecasting on business and consumer confidence? I worry that some of the incredibly negative forecasting that we have seen recently can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I see the astonishment on the faces of some Opposition Members about the great achievements of the UK since 2010, from halving unemployment and reducing poverty to the huge growth in female entrepreneurship and the success of levelling-up right across the UK. There is so much to be proud of but, as many of my constituents ask me, what more can we do to get the positive messages across? The same is true of Brexit. From new trade deals to freedom on taxes and subsidies, to improved financial regulation and our influence in the world, how can the Chancellor ensure that we are getting the positive messages about Brexit across to our constituents?

Finally, I make a plea as an ex-City Minister and someone who sat on the Treasury Committee in 2010, when the last Labour Government wrecked our economy. Many good reforms have been made to strengthen the banking sector, and I urge the Chancellor to keep the ring-fencing in place.