Budget Resolutions

Chris McDonald Excerpts

Wednesday 6th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Chris McDonald (Stockton North) (Lab)]

Several of the previous speakers, including the hon. Members for Solihull West and Shirley (Dr Shastri-Hurst), for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger) and for Witney (Charlie Maynard), expressed concerns about growth and productivity and I hope to draw on my previous experience working in industry to set their minds at rest, but we first need to acknowledge the dire starting point and the damage done both to our economy and to business confidence by the last Government.

I know from my time spent in industry that over the last decade and a half our country has lost out in the race for international investment from a combination of political uncertainty and a long-standing indifference to industrial policy. I listened carefully to the words of the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe) and I think he must have read a different Budget from me. The Budget I read committed us to public sector investment of over £100 billion over five years, which along with our modern industrial strategy sets the scale of the Government’s ambition for increasing prosperity and security across the whole of our country.

Several Members, including the hon. Members for Wimbledon (Mr Kohler), for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) and for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover), mentioned small businesses. These are the very businesses which stand to benefit from our industrial strategy as our new approach to industry and manufacturing sees the private sector crowding in investment, producing well-paid jobs and exports that will support our small businesses in supply chains. This will also reverse the tide of deindustrialisation, a frankly bizarre policy of inaction enacted by Conservative Governments over many years that has left much of our industry, including steel, chemicals and ceramics, mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (David Williams), at a serious disadvantage.

It seems clear that to grow our economy we need to boost productivity and simply build more factories, but I know as an advocate of industrial strategy that this position is not a settled one, particularly in the party opposite. That is in big contrast to the collaborative approach of this Government, who work pragmatically with business leaders. We have heard some warm words from Conservatives about industrial strategy, including from Opposition Front Benchers, but they perhaps have not had time to consult with their new leader, the right hon. Member for North West Essex (Mrs Badenoch), who has described such policies as part of the law of diminishing returns.

Having seen my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business and Trade secure £63 billion of private sector investment, we can be sure, to borrow a metaphor from the right hon. Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison), that had their goose not been cooked at the last election, returns would most certainly have been the diminished.

This Budget will be of benefit to my constituents in Stockton, Billingham and Norton who value well-paid industrial and manufacturing sector jobs. I can understand the confusion of the right hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart)—he is not used to a Government who deliver on their manifesto—but this Government are determined to do that. We will release the finances required to restore the public services that the people of Britain deserve and only a Labour Government can deliver.