Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Cat Smith Excerpts

Monday 20th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)]

I will keep my comments tightly focused on how I see the Budget impacting my constituents. When I hear from them in advice surgeries, I hear that their lives are not better now than they were 13 years ago. In fact, wages are lower now than they were then. It was telling that when the Chancellor stood up and delivered his Budget statement, it was against the backdrop of quite widely supported industrial action across many different sectors, so if he wants to see a high-wage, high-growth economy, perhaps the best place to start would be to give our public sector workers the pay rise they deserve.

I was pleased that a lot of emphasis in the Budget was on education. However, I want to make a few points about where I think the Chancellor may have been getting it slightly wrong. My constituency has two universities in it—Lancaster University and the University of Cumbria—but the Budget did not mention students. I am currently surveying students across my constituency, and I am hearing from them how they are struggling with the cost of living crisis. There was nothing in the Budget for students facing the cost of living crisis. Many of them are working two or three jobs in order to be able to live and to pay their rent. Many of them are in the private rented sector, but there was nothing in the Budget to improve conditions for people who are privately renting.

Looking at education for younger children, I am privileged and lucky to have so many wonderful rural primary schools in my constituency. I recently visited Scorton Primary School, whose headteacher is struggling because there is no school hall, which means that there is no space for the children to eat lunch, so they have to eat at their desks. There is no school kitchen, so the school lunches are brought in by taxi. The idea that a primary school such as Scorton is going to be able to make a decision to provide the wraparound childcare offer proposed by the Chancellor, when the school budget is so tight that it is having to look at making savings elsewhere, is frankly for the birds.

I also saw children from another fantastic primary school my constituency, Abbeystead Primary School. I was visiting it as part of a visit with a company called Broadband for the Rural North, which I am sure you are familiar with, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am delighted that its representatives are coming to Westminster in a few weeks’ time and I am glad that you will be able to meet them with me. This community benefit society was sick of waiting for the big players to deliver fibre broadband to our rural communities, and it decided in 2012 that it could wait no longer. Starting in Quernmore, a village I am sure many Members have not heard of, it started something big. It is now rolling out superfast broadband, including to very isolated farmhouses, which just goes to show that the standard size does not fit all.

I found the Budget to be quite deaf to a lot of rural issues. When it comes to things such as transport, I feel that my constituency is losing out. HS2 suddenly will not reach the north of England, and the money we have been promised to fix potholes is a fraction of what was taken away by the cut to the roads budget. Active transport has also been cut, even though it is good for both people and the planet. It is something about which many of my constituents feel incredibly strongly, but there was no mention of it in the Budget.

I spoke about the issues of poverty on a recent visit to North Lancashire citizens advice bureau. Poverty was not mentioned at all in the Budget, but it affects a growing number of our constituents. For people who are on the brink of homelessness, who are unable to feed their children or who are in constant fear of being evicted by their landlord during these cycles of poverty, there was nothing in the Budget to reassure them that they will be any better off.

Instead, people on universal credit were promised more sanctions. There is no evidence that sanctions have any impact on encouraging people. All they do is make life more difficult when people know they do not have the money, so they have to rely on food banks. I give credit to all the volunteers who work in food banks across my constituency, but why do we have to have food banks? Why are they now so accepted? I find it shocking. I support my local food banks, I ran the London marathon for them and I will do what I can to support my community, but food banks should not exist. It feels like they are now an established part of our society’s structure. We fundraise for them all over the place, and we have donation boxes in all our supermarkets, but I find it completely unacceptable that we have normalised poverty in that way. Poverty was not mentioned in the Budget. Frankly, I feel incredibly let down.

I would have liked to say more about childcare. Frankly, if we are increasingly to rely on private childminders without new state provision, prices will be pushed up and demand will outstrip supply, which could create a huge childcare crisis for many parents. People are already having to put their child’s name down before they are born in order to be confident of getting a nursery place. Without that supply, it is difficult to know how working parents will be able to rely on this measure.

Investment zones have been heralded as levelling up all parts of the United Kingdom, but how can the Government suggest they are doing that when there are only 12 new investment zones? There is nothing for Lancashire, as we do not fall into any of the zones.

Frankly, this is a sticking-plaster Budget that does nothing to address the needs of my constituents and does nothing to address poverty in this country. I think it is a terrible Budget, and I hope the Chancellor will look again at his priorities.