Budget Resolutions

Clive Efford Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

I welcome the opportunity to respond to the hon. Gentleman. What we have said very clearly is that under our fiscal rule, unlike that of this Government, we will borrow not for day-to-day expenditure but to invest. That investment will grow the economy, and, as a result of that growth, we will cover any need to borrow. That is what any sensible Government is doing right the way across the globe, right the way across Europe. It is that attitude displayed by the hon. Gentleman that has caused our economic problems. The lack of investment over seven years has affected our productivity.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Many of the things that have been welcomed in this Budget—and some things have been welcomed—by people outside this House are measures that we have been calling for since the downturn in 2008. If those measures are right now, they were right back then, which means that it is a consequence of austerity and the economic policies followed by the Tories that has made our economy flatline for virtually seven years.

[John McDonnell]

The issue is that whatever was put forward in the Budget yesterday was so trivial that it will not have the effect that is required.

Investment by businesses is the lowest in the G7 countries. The few measures announced yesterday just will not address that. They will not close the gap between the south and the rest of the country by investing in a rail project in the north-east that will receive just 2% of the total cost of Crossrail in London. Our economy and our people will only reach their potential when there is real new investment brought forward by Government on a scale that is needed to meet the opportunity. The right approach from 2010 would have been to target the real economy and real investments to produce growth and so bring the deficit into line. Because the investment that was needed then did not materialise, productivity growth has stagnated, and because productivity growth has fallen away, the forecast deficit has been widened by the OBR to some £30 billion by 2021. The Government know that austerity is not working. They have now been reduced to fiddling the figures to meet their own targets.

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[Sajid Javid]

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman raises the issue of council houses, because it gives me another opportunity to remind the House that in 13 years in office, Labour built fewer council houses than have been built since the return of a Conservative-led Government. Yesterday’s measures, which I will come to in a moment, are ambitious and will lead to more council houses, which we welcome.

[Clive Efford]

Can the Secretary of State explain how it is logical to cut stamp duty on houses worth less than £300,000, which will increase the price of properties, cut the tax coming in and benefit not first-time buyers but only those selling properties?

[Sajid Javid]

I think the hon. Gentleman should speak to the leader of his own party, who stood at the Dispatch Box yesterday claiming that it was his policy from his manifesto. The hon. Gentleman needs to go and do some homework.

When Labour came to power in 1997, the average home cost three and a half times the average wage. By the time it slunk out of office in 2010, it was nearly seven times the average wage. As for the neediest in society, Labour cut the number of social homes for rent by more than 420,000 units. That is its track record.

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[Sajid Javid]

This is a timely point at which to remind the hon. Gentleman that when a Government leave this country with the biggest budget deficit of any industrialised country, there are consequences, and Labour Members have not once—I repeat, not once—got up at the Opposition Dispatch Box to apologise for what they did to this country in their 13 years in office.

The Chancellor has also promised to provide additional funding for a future NHS pay settlement, so that our nurses are properly rewarded without taking money out of patient services. We are investing more in our schools: they will get £600 extra for every pupil who takes A-level or core maths; £27 million will help to improve how maths is taught in 3,000 schools; £49 million will go towards helping students resitting GCSE maths; and £350,000 of extra funding a year will be given to every specialist maths school that has been set up across the country. That is a massive investment in numeracy—sadly, it comes too late for the shadow Treasury team—that will help to ensure our young people have the skills they need to compete in the future high-tech jobs of the 21st century.

Not all public services are the responsibility of central Government; many are delivered by our brilliant local councils, whether parishes, districts, counties, metropolitans or unitary authorities. I am well aware of the pressure that local authority budgets are under, particularly with regard to social care. That is why this year’s spring Budget provided an extra £2 billion to help to meet the immediate needs in this vital area. I remain totally committed to delivering fair, effective funding for councils at all levels, and we will obviously return to this in next month’s local government finance settlement.

In the meantime, we are pushing ahead with our pilot schemes for 100% local business rate retention, including in London, and we are reforming business rates themselves. Revaluations will switch from every five years to every three years, avoiding the cliff edge that currently confronts many businesses, particularly smaller ones. We are changing the law so that businesses affected by the so-called staircase tax decision can have their original bills reinstated and backdated. We are bringing forward the change in uprating from RPI to CPI, which will now take effect from next April, saving businesses £2.3 billion over the next five years.

One council, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, has had to deal with an unprecedented tragedy this year. The fire at Grenfell Tower should not have happened, and it should not have been possible. Since the blaze, the people of north Kensington have shown themselves to be remarkably resilient, courageous and proactive, and they deserve the full support of this Government and this House. We have already provided financial support for the victims of this terrible tragedy. This Budget sets aside a further £28 million to pay for community mental health support and to provide regeneration support for the area around Grenfell Tower and a new space for the local community to come together.

[Clive Efford]

Will the Secretary of State clarify what the Chancellor said yesterday about funds for fire safety precautions? Did he say that, where local authorities are told by an independent fire safety officer that sprinklers should be retrofitted in tower blocks, the Government will assist with paying for that to happen?

[Sajid Javid]

I thought the Chancellor was clear, but I am happy to help the hon. Gentleman by providing clarification. The Chancellor said that all local authorities need to do whatever is essential to keep their residents safe, which includes fitting sprinklers and anything else. If they receive such professional advice, they should of course follow it. If in doing so, they need to approach the Government for financial support, they should do so, and we will provide support.