Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Monday 8th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

It is the greatest crisis that this country has faced since the second world war, and the Chancellor offers us a partisan and peripatetic Budget—partisan because it seeks to shore up the majorities of Conservative MPs, regardless of need or national benefit, and peripatetic as it jumps from area to area and sector to sector, giving and taking with no vision and little ambition, with nothing on social care, nothing for our key industries, nothing for Newcastle and almost nothing on climate change.

There is an infrastructure bank with one 20th of the funding for the failing test and trace system. This should have been the moment to light up the road to recovery; instead, it is a mean and limited mates’ rates economic sticking plaster. There is the super deduction capital allowance, which treats jacuzzis the same as manufacturing lines and rewards Amazon for investing in surveillance technology but not companies for investing in people.

After a decade of the Tories religiously repeating that cutting corporation tax increases the revenues brought in, apparently raising corporation tax now increases the revenues brought in. It really is the Tory magic money tree, is it not? It shows that all the years of austerity were driven by Tory ideological fantasy, even though they were a horror story for the communities that suffered, the public services that were cut and the jobs that were lost.

What about small businesses? For a year now I have heard from the wonderful, vibrant businesses in Newcastle Central that are trying so hard to keep going in this pandemic. They have shown amazing resilience and dedication to the protection of customers and jobs. They have invested thousands of pounds in making their premises covid-secure, in the technology to move online if they can, or in diversifying the services that they offer. Some are paying the costs of staff furlough from their own pockets and borrowing against their homes to do so. One pub owner told me that if he gets through this pandemic, he will be working for the bank for the rest of his life.

I wrote to the Chancellor about the town hall that I held last month for Newcastle Central businesses that have been excluded from covid-19 support because they were started a week too late, earned a few pounds too much or do not have business premises. There are thousands of them in Newcastle Central—what did the Budget do for them? There was the continuation of existing schemes, but nothing for those who fall through the existing gaps.

The Government say that local authorities have funds for discretionary grants—which is true, and Newcastle City Council has worked incredibly hard to distribute them—but it is a cowardly and base attempt to dodge responsibility. The Government know that they have not offered anything like the funding necessary to fill the gaps in support which they have created. If the Government allow our small businesses to go bankrupt, the demand we will see after this pandemic ends will be met by big national or international chains and fire-sale venture capitalists, not the local businesses that our economy and communities need.