Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

David Linden Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

The Scottish National party has spent months calling for the Chancellor to make permanent the £20 uplift in universal credit and indeed extend it to claimants on legacy benefits. By announcing a six-month extension while ignoring those on legacy benefits the Chancellor is essentially just kicking the can down the road, and we all know that that is only to get the Conservatives through the May local and national elections. Let us be clear: the Chancellor is proposing to swipe away the £20 uplift just when the furlough scheme will end, when unemployment will peak and energy levels will start to go up again. For those who most need the safety net of social security, this Budget will see them teetering on the brink of an autumn knife-edge.

Removing the uplift in the autumn will cut over £1,000 a year from household budgets, and this announcement will not protect those who need our help the most. That is why the Trussell Trust has said that today’s Budget

“fails to give families on the lowest incomes the ongoing protection they need. The six-month extension to the UC uplift only delays the hardship people will face in the year ahead.”

The Women’s Budget Group says:

“Extension to the #UCUplift is welcome but it confirms what we all know. UC is not enough to live on. We need a #SocialSecurity system that is a true safety net and reflects the needs of those who rely on it.”

Meanwhile, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has said:

“It is also totally indefensible that people who are sick, disabled or carers claiming legacy benefits continue to be excluded from this vital support.”

The Poverty Alliance echoes this call, stating:

“The decision should not have been between ‘hardship now or hardship later’. It should have been a simple decision to say ‘hardship never’ and to make the increase permanent.”

Out of work support will be at its lowest ever level since 1990 when universal credit is cut in six months’ time. The universal credit uplift should have been seen not as an emergency measure in response to the pandemic, but as a reversal of the long-standing cuts that bring it back in line with its original intended value. In essence, the uplift reverses cuts to universal credit over the past eight years and brings it back in line with rises in the cost of living. Indeed, if the uplift is removed, 2021 and 2022 universal credit rates will be 11.5% less in real terms than in 2013.

A thread of inequality runs through this Budget like a stick of Blackpool rock. There are 4.2 million children living in poverty across the UK, and hundreds of thousands of people rely on food banks and struggle to pay essential bills. The Chancellor’s Budget falls short on every measure to protect household budgets and family incomes, but once again we see the tale of two Governments: the Tories look to cut welfare support, while the SNP Government invest in game-changing policies such as the Scottish child payment and receive praise for their budget from anti-poverty campaigners.

It is clear that Scotland faces a choice of two futures: the long-term damage of Brexit and Tory austerity cuts at Westminster, or the opportunity to protect our place in Europe and build a strong, fair and green recovery as an independent country. With two votes for the SNP in May, we can put Scotland’s future in Scotland’s hands, not Boris Johnson’s.