Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Derek Twigg Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

I am going to make some progress.

In order to make these investments, we need to continue to make savings. The failure to control current expenditure means not just more borrowing, but that less is available for capital expenditure—a double dose of debt for our children and grandchildren, with financial debt compounded by infrastructure debt. The decisions that we make must be for the long-term good of the nation. This Government are therefore determined to draw upon the very best advice available, including that of Lord Heseltine, who will chair the Thames Estuary 2050 Growth Commission, and that of Lord Adonis, the chair of the National Infrastructure Commission, whose excellent work has informed many of the decisions made in this Budget.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

Further to the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), on which page and in which paragraph is the compensation issue referred to?

--- Later in debate ---

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

If we go back to 2010, when Labour left office, the economy was growing and unemployment was falling. Unfortunately, the Chancellor’s inept handling of the economy meant that we had a longer recession and lower growth for quite some period after that. In terms of his record in the last Parliament, he failed on his borrowing target and he failed on his deficit target. In this Parliament, he has missed his debt-to-GDP target and his welfare cap target. His surplus forecast for 2019-20 will be achieved only with some very creative accounting and sketchy assumptions. In fact, Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that the chance of the Chancellor hitting his target was

“only about a 50-50 shot”,

and that he would need to impose “proper” tax rises or spending cuts if there was any further downgrade in public finances.

In relation to today’s discussion about cuts for the disabled, we have already heard that there have been £24 billion of cuts for disabled people since 2010. Under cuts to the ESA work-related activity group, which were forced through Parliament recently, 500,000 disabled people will lose £1,500 a year. The real reason why the Government have today backtracked on their further cuts, particularly to PIP, is that they were going to lose the vote. A number of their Members were already rebelling, and they have also been hammered by what the Labour party and the public have said in recent days and over the weekend. I cannot believe that the Government actually had the face to try to push through the cuts in the first place. It is quite incredible that they thought they could get away with it.

One thing the Government failed to address in the Budget is the Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign for women born in the 1950s and the disastrous way in which the Government have handled raising the retirement age. The Government should go back and look further at that.

The Government have once again left the future of local government very uncertain. The Budget announced £3.5 billion of efficiency savings in non-protected areas. It is unclear whether this will fall on local government. We also want to know whether the £4 billion that was going to come from cuts in PIP will fall on local government.

The total reduction in Government grant funding for Halton Borough Council in my constituency is £59 million, or 57%, between 2010-11 and 2017-18. Halton has a very low tax base, with 68% of properties in bands A and B. Only 1,629 properties have been built in the past five years, despite the fact that many more have been given planning permission, against a housing requirement of 2,700. There is little scope to grow the borough’s tax base in the near future. A shortfall of £4.2 million in adult social care funding has been identified, compared with only £800,000 per annum that the new 2% social care precept would generate. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) asked, where is the compensation for the business rate changes? The council in Halton is not an inefficient council; it is a very efficient council. In its last external audit report by Grant Thornton, the auditors assessed the council’s financial performance as showing strong financial management and delivering value for money.

In the few seconds I have left, I want to turn to the NHS. The Budget said nothing about, and had no answers for, solving the growing crisis in the NHS. Doctors’ leaders have accused the Conservatives of deceiving the public by giving the NHS less than half the extra £10 billion that Ministers regularly cite as proof of their support for the service. The fact is that the Government have no answers to solve the crisis in the NHS. The former Liberal Democrat Minister, David Laws, said on Sunday that those in Downing Street dismissed NHS boss Simon Stevens’s bid for the £15 billion to £16 billion more because they believed he was mad and that it was unaffordable, and they told him to make do with much less instead. The Government are not looking at the real crisis in the NHS, which includes the payment by results mechanism, with ridiculous demands for efficiency being made of the NHS and hospitals. There are no answers in this Budget for the NHS.