Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Tuesday 9th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab) [V]]

Last week, the Chancellor spoke a lot about fairness and levelling with the British public, but does the Budget actually pass the fairness test? Even before the challenges of covid and Brexit, Hull had been hit hard by a decade of austerity after the global banking crisis, and that is why it was disappointing to see no real green industrial strategy, where the Humber could be central, and that the universal credit uplift was not made permanent to help hard-pressed families as council tax and other bills soar. There was also another real-terms pay cut for NHS staff, a £30 billion cut in day-to-day NHS spending from April, and still no sign of the Prime Minister’s talked-about clear plan for social care.

Hull is the fourth-most deprived local authority area in the UK, always high in social and economic indices measuring disadvantage, so how is it fair, consistent or logical that Hull is excluded from the list of 100 priority places for the community renewal fund while it achieves priority 1 status for the levelling-up fund? The Government say that they look at measuring unemployment, household income, productivity, skills and population density, but the criteria have not been published, and perhaps are still being cobbled together in Whitehall.

This unfairness runs riot again with the towns fund. Of 45 towns and some cities chosen for funding, a disproportionate number—40—have a Tory MP. Hull was told that we are not eligible as we are a city. However, the city of Wolverhampton was awarded £25 million after electing two Conservative MPs, and last Thursday the Leader of the House confirmed that Hull, with three Labour MPs, will not be considered by Whitehall decision-makers even if we make a bid. That is not fairness. However, the winners from this gerrymandering should not celebrate too much as the towns fund is worth less than half the £2.4 billion that the Government had cut since 2010 from the funding of the 45 local authorities receiving it.

Even for the north’s favoured areas these pots of levelling-up funding will not be transformational. The infrastructure bank in Leeds will only provide loans and finance on a scale two-thirds smaller than the £5 billion per year from the European Investment Bank that it replaces, and there is growing doubt about whether Transport for the North will have the finance and clout to deliver on its promises.

There is just not enough pork in the barrel, and nothing like the sustained public and private investment that is needed for the real regeneration that we have seen over the last 40 years in places such as London docklands—all achieved without Whitehall insisting on permanent local government reorganisation. This was not a fair Budget for my constituents. Real investment in the Humber docklands seems no nearer.