Amendment of the Law

Ed Balls Excerpts

Thursday 20th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)]

Yesterday’s Budget was the Chancellor’s last chance to make decisions and announce measures that will make a difference before the general election. For all his boasts and complacency, the Budget did nothing to address the central reality that will define his time in office—the fact that for most people in our country, living standards are not rising but are falling year on year, and that working people will, in fact, be worse off in 2015 than they were in 2010.

Yesterday the Chancellor tried to claim that everything is going well and according to plan, but millions of working people on middle and lower incomes are still not feeling any recovery. Young people stuck on the dole for months are not feeling it. Pensioners seeing their gas and electricity bills rise each year are not feeling it. Parents facing child care costs so high that it barely adds up for them to go to work are not feeling it. People aspiring to own their own home but finding that rising prices have put that beyond their dreams are not feeling it. Small businesses struggling to get a loan from the banks are not feeling it. Nurses who have been told that they will not even get the below-inflation pay rise they were promised certainly are not feeling it.

With wages still rising slower than prices, and working people worse off than they were when this Chancellor took office, the Office for Budget Responsibility revealed yesterday, in table 3.6 of its economic forecast, that real wages will be 5.6% lower in 2015 than in 2010. [Interruption.] I will tell the House what is awful—that people are not better off under the Tories; they are worse off under the Tories.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Does the shadow Chancellor agree with the former Labour adviser who said about pensioners last night that

“you can’t trust people to spend their own money”?

[Ed Balls]

I do not agree, but I will come on to that in a moment.

We will study very carefully the proposals put on the table for discussion. We have just had a statement. The proposals are important, and it is important to have more flexibility and choice. We have been calling for reforms of the annuities market: to be honest, the price of annuities and competition in the market have not been good enough over the past few years. I must say that we all remember the pensions mis-selling of the early 1990s, and we need to make sure that there is a tight grip on tax avoidance. That is why we will look carefully at the proposals.

I must tell the hon. Gentleman that if he looks at table 3.6 on page 87 of the Office for Budget Responsibility’s report on this so-called Budget for savers, he will see that the savings ratio was 7.2% in 2012 and 5% last year and—here is what will happen to savings in the next five years—then goes from 4.1% to 3.6% and down to 3.2%. The Budget for savers will see savings fall every year in the next five years, with each of the figures revised down by the OBR in its latest forecasts. I must say that I am not sure whether this is quite the Budget for saving that it is stacked up to be.

What we desperately needed was a Budget that delivered for the many, not just a few at the top. What a wasted opportunity it was. The annual increase in the personal allowance is outweighed completely by the 24 tax rises that we have seen since 2010. The Chancellor’s welcome conversion to the importance of capital allowances for business investment means that he has reversed the cuts to capital allowances that he made in 2010. Let me tell him what the OBR says in the Budget documents about the overall impact of all the Budget measures:

“The measures in the Budget are, in aggregate, not expected to alter the OBR GDP growth forecast.”

This Budget will have no impact on growth at all.

As for the Chancellor’s 1p cut in beer duty, welcome as it is, it means that people have to drink 300 pints to get one free. This morning’s Tory poster says:

“Bingo! Cutting the bingo tax & beer duty to help hardworking people do more of the things they enjoy”.

How patronising, embarrassing and out of touch that is. The Tory party calls working people “them”—them and us. Do the Tories really think that they live in a different world from everyone else? Does that not reveal just how out of touch this Tory Government are? It is no wonder that they do not understand the cost of living crisis and no wonder that the Chancellor did nothing in the Budget to tackle it.

We are told by the Chancellor that he did not know that the poster was coming out. The Tories’ chief election strategist did not know about the ad campaign that came out straight after his Budget—pull the other one! It gets worse. I hear that the Prime Minister did not properly understand what the Chancellor was saying. Apparently, when he told the Prime Minister that he wanted to cut taxes for Bingo, the Prime Minister thought he was referring to an old school chum: “Hurrah, another tax break for millionaires. Bingo, Bingo!”

It is okay though, because we know that the job of the chair of the Conservative party is safe. No. 10 says that the Prime Minister has full confidence in the Tory party chair. That’s the end of him then! According to The Sun, the Tory party chair is currently on a tour of northern cities, presumably to see how the other half live. I wonder how it is going. Can you imagine, Mr Deputy Speaker? “Goodness me, the houses even have indoor toilets these days.” I wonder whether he is looking for pigeon fanciers up north. My advice to him is to change his name back to Michael Green. That was a bit safer.

The problem with the Budget was not what it did, but what it did not do. Where was the freeze on energy prices that Labour has called for? Where was the 10p starting rate to cut the taxes of 24 million working people? Where was the expansion of free child care to 25 hours a week for working parents? Where was the compulsory jobs guarantee, paid for by a tax on bank bonuses? Where was the cut in business rates for small firms? Where was the new investment in affordable housing? Where was the reversal of the £3 billion top rate tax cut to balance the books in a fair way? We got none of Labour’s cost of living plan to balance the deficit in a fairer way, just more of the same. Working people are worse off, while millionaires get a tax cut—just more of the same from the same old Tories.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

If I may gently return to the Budget, I understand that the Labour party accepts the welfare cap—that is fair enough—but that it wants to restore the spare room subsidy, which would cost £465 million. Will the shadow Chancellor explain to the House what other bit of welfare he would cut?

[Ed Balls]

I will. We have said very clearly that we would take the winter fuel allowance away from the richest 5% of pensioners, which would be a saving. We would also invest in affordable housing to get the housing benefit bill down. I do not know whether the Chancellor gets to read the OBR report. I think that he should listen to what it says:

“The rising proportion of the renting population claiming housing benefit may be related to the weakness of average wage growth relative to rent inflation. This explanation is supported by DWP data, which suggest that almost all the recent rise in the private-rented sector housing benefit caseload has been accounted for by people in employment.”

People in employment are seeing their wages fall and are having to claim housing benefit. It is no wonder the welfare bill has gone up by £13 billion since 2010.

It was not supposed to be this way. We all remember what the Chancellor promised in 2010: he would make people better off, balance the books by 2015 and rebalance the economy for the future. We know that people are worse off. We also know, after three years of flatlining growth, that his commitment to balance the books in 2015 is in tatters. He does not expect a balanced budget in 2015, but a deficit of more than £75 billion. It is all in the OBR report. There will be £190 billion more in borrowing than he planned in 2010. The national debt is rising this year, next year and the year after.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Ed Balls]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman would like to explain why the national debt is still rising.

[Mr Jackson]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his helpful suggestion, but I will ask my own question. As we are on the subject of history and mea culpas, would he like to apologise for running a structural deficit for the entire period of his Government’s administration?

--- Later in debate ---

[Ed Balls]

The Chancellor promised that he would abolish the structural deficit in this Parliament and he is going to fail absolutely. We went into the financial crisis with a lower national debt than America, France, Germany and Japan. The deficit went up because of a financial crisis and the failure of the banks. There was a recovery in 2010 and his failed policies choked it off. That is the reality. Let me tell the hon. Gentleman the facts. The Chancellor has already borrowed more in the three years of this Government than the last Labour Government borrowed in 13 years. Perhaps he should be apologising for his abject failure on the deficit, the debt and growth. That is what we should be hearing from him.

It will take the next Labour Government to clear up the mess left by this Chancellor. The Government have failed to get rid of the deficit. We will have to do the job. That is why we have been clear that we will balance the books in the next Parliament. We will have the current budget back in surplus and the national debt falling as soon as we can and before the end of the next Parliament. We will abolish his discredited idea of rolling five-year fiscal targets, which he never meets, and instead legislate for tough fiscal rules.

I will tell you what else we will do, Mr Deputy Speaker. I hope that the Chancellor will reflect on what I am about to say and think again.

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Sajid Javid)]

I don’t think so!

[Ed Balls]

I do not think he will either. May I ask the Financial Secretary how it is going since his comments on women and the Monetary Policy Committee? Is he still revelling in that? If things were done on merit, he would be out on his ear.

I hope that the Chancellor will think again and join me, the Chair of the Treasury Committee and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury in supporting reforms to allow the Office for Budget Responsibility to audit independently the spending and tax commitments in the manifestos of the main political parties before the next election. We know from the head of the OBR that that can be done. Let us be honest: it is all a matter of political will. The problem with the Chancellor is that he wants to set traps, but he cannot be transparent on the matter of OBR audits. Why does he not think again, join the cross-party consensus and do the right thing?

[Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con)]

Why was the right hon. Gentleman formerly so keen that the OBR should not do that? Why did Labour members of the Treasury Committee argue in 2010 that it should not happen?

[Ed Balls]

The irony is that back in 2011 the Chancellor was in favour of it, and now he has changed his mind. The OBR, which we supported from the outset in this Parliament, has established a good track record, and we are happy for our manifesto to be audited. What is it about the Conservative Front Benchers that means that they are scared of independent OBR audit of their manifesto? Who knows?

I return to the welfare cap, and I will give a bit more detail for Government Members. We have had a lot of tough and divisive talk from the Chancellor on welfare over the past three years, but it cannot hide the fact that social security is up by £13 billion compared with his plans, particularly because of his failure on housing benefit. We have called for a cap on social security spending, and we will support the welfare cap next Wednesday, but we will make different and fairer choices to keep the social security bill down. We will introduce a compulsory jobs guarantee to get young people back to work. We will scrap the bedroom tax, which is not only unfair but could end up costing more money, not less. We will also scrap the winter fuel allowance for the richest 5% of pensioners, get more houses built and tackle the low wages that have pushed up spending on housing benefit. That is the fair way to ensure we get people back to work and get welfare costs under control.

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

What I have heard from the shadow Chancellor reminds me of the words of Errol Flynn, when he said, “I find difficulty in reconciling my gross habits with my net income”. The right hon. Gentleman has just made promises to the tune of £465 million of spending. How is he going to find that money and still not breach his welfare cap?

[Ed Balls]

When the hon. Gentleman referred to my gross assets, was he making a personal point? I am running the marathon in four weeks’ time, and I was rather hoping the Chancellor might join me, but unfortunately his assets do not seem to be up to it.

The hon. Gentleman made an important comment just two months ago, saying to the Tamworth Chronicle:

“There are too many young people without employment and there are too many in longterm unemployment.”

I agree. Why will he not back our bank bonus tax to get young people back to work? That is what he should be doing. The Chancellor has failed on living standards growth and deficit reduction; he has also failed to deliver the balanced recovery that we need.

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman has just touched on banking. The Opposition constantly belittle our financial services industry. J. P. Morgan is an important bank, one of many in Bournemouth, with 5,000 employees who are not all millionaires. Every time Labour does that, all those companies think a little bit more about possibly leaving the UK and moving elsewhere, and that would be devastating for the economy.

[Ed Balls]

Jobs in our banking and financial services industry are very important indeed. We need to ensure that we have reforms that strengthen our banking industry rather than undermine it. Many hard-working people on ordinary salaries in our banks feel let down by the mistakes made in the banks and by the bonus culture. I have to say to the hon. Gentleman, though, that I have checked the figures in Bournemouth East. He opposes a tax on bank bonuses to get young people back to work, but in his constituency there has been a 1,000% rise in long-term youth unemployment since 2010. He is not willing to act.

[Mr Ellwood]

I am not sure where the right hon. Gentleman is getting those figures from. The figures released this week show that the number of people in employment has risen by 400 since a year ago. Employment is doing well in Bournemouth, as it is right across the country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ed Balls]

Can the hon. Gentleman tell me how many people are long-term unemployed in his constituency? No? If I were him I would not try, because he would almost certainly get it wrong.

The Chancellor has failed on living standards, growth and the deficit, and he has also failed on balanced recovery. When the country is crying out for reforms to our banks to balance the recovery, back wealth creation and get an economy that works for all, not just a few, all that he seems to do is say that we can wait for the wealth to trickle down. Why are apprenticeship numbers for young people falling? Why is bank lending to small businesses still falling? Why are the Government planning to cut infrastructure investment next year?

[Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)]

Is my right hon. Friend aware that today, Hitachi has announced that its global rail building capacity is moving to the UK? Is he aware that the factory where the trains will be built is in my constituency, and that it was a Labour Government who had the wherewithal to bring about the intercity express programme to ensure that Hitachi came to this country?

[Ed Balls]

The site for that new and welcome investment was designated under the last Labour Government as a result of my hon. Friend’s campaigning. We all want manufacturing investment to rise, but what worries me is that over the past two years, since the Chancellor’s “march of the makers” speech, manufacturing output has actually fallen by 1.3%. That is the reality.

As for house building, it is at its lowest level since the 1920s. We believe that the new Governor of the Bank of England is right to be worried that the recovery is not yet secure or balanced. That is why it is vital that the Chancellor does more to get more homes built for millions who aspire to get on to the housing ladder but find it hard at the moment. I have to say to him, we backed Help to Buy, but he should have reduced the limit from £600,000. There should not be a taxpayer guarantee for people buying homes for £500,000 or £600,000. We also need to do more to invest in affordable housing. That is the only way to avoid a lop-sided recovery, demand running ahead of supply and rising prices, putting pressure on the Governor of the Bank of England to slow the housing market through higher mortgage rates earlier than we need in the recovery. That would put business investment at risk and undermine the budgets of hard-working people across our country.

The Chancellor should have listened to the CBI, the International Monetary Fund and the Opposition and acted more boldly to boost investment in housing supply. He should have listened to Labour, and he should have listened to the Business Secretary, too. We have both warned of the danger of lop-sided and unbalanced growth. Like us, the Business Secretary was right to warn back in 2010 that the pace of deficit reduction risked choking off recovery. The Prime Minister was wrong last autumn to dismiss the Business Secretary as a Jeremiah when he warned about the unbalanced nature of the recovery by saying:

“We mustn’t now settle for a short-term spurt of growth, fuelled by an old-fashioned property boom…there are already amber lights flashing.”

I also remind the House of what the Business Secretary said about unbalanced growth just a few weeks ago:

“The shape of the recovery has not been all that we might have hoped for”.

He was right to make those warnings, but time after time over the past few years when he has publicly made such warnings about the risks, he has been ignored. The problem is, the Business Secretary is a member of the Cabinet that is doing the ignoring. How can he keep on ignoring himself again and again?

As for the top-rate tax cut, which I know a number of Government Members have criticised, I remind the Business Secretary that he said at the weekend:

“I don’t understand why people need a million quid a year.”

What we do not understand is why he has given people on a million quid a year a tax cut of £42,500 each and every year. He asks for sympathy—he told The Guardian a few weeks ago that

“since being in government I have become much more enslaved these days”.

I say “Free the Cable One”. Is it not the sad truth that he is not enslaved but in hock? He is not captive, he has capitulated. It is a Tory agenda, and he is part of it. He knows it, and he should get out of it before it is too late.

As for the Chancellor, he has certainly been busy in recent weeks, and not just preparing his Budget. The manifesto is being written, the team is being assembled, the campaign is under way. But the enemy is not called Ed, and it is not the general election that is preoccupying him. He has his eyes on a different prize. This is what his new best friend, the Education Secretary, said to The Mail on Sunday—[Interruption.] Government Members do not want to hear what he said, do they? [Interruption.]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I think we do want to hear what the right hon. Gentleman has to say.

[Ed Balls]

They do not want to hear this, so before I remind people of what the Education Secretary said, let me tell the House what was said yesterday about the cost of living, the Budget, and all those matters, by the outgoing Conservative hon. Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price): “The biggest impediment”—[Interruption.] I really think that hon. Members, especially those with small majorities, should listen to what she said.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

That’s you!

[Ed Balls]

I have read it, and I think maybe you should too, my son—[Interruption.] I think they should listen. The hon. Member for Thurrock stated:

“The biggest impediment that this Party has when trying to secure a majority at the next election is that on one key question we constantly perform badly. That is on the issue of whether the Party is in touch with ordinary people.”

That was before the poster. She said that

“while people are worrying about whether they are keeping their jobs, whether they will be able to afford the electricity bill and how much it costs to fill the car these days,”

all the Tories seem to be doing is “talking about Boris.” She went on:

“We need to stop talking about ourselves and talk about the things that really matter to people. Otherwise we will be seen as out of touch, and Labour’s message will resonate.”

It certainly will, Mr Deputy Speaker.

In the light of the advice from the hon. Member for Thurrock about the cost of living, let me remind Members what the Education Secretary said over a wine-fuelled dinner with his old boss, Rupert Murdoch. He said that Boris Johnson “has no gravitas”, that the Home Secretary “has no friends”, and that only Osborne is “fit to lead.” Only Osborne is fit to lead? How did the Education Secretary explain his comments? He said he was “tipsy”. Tipsy? He must have been completely legless.

[Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)]

rose—

[Ed Balls]

Does the hon. Lady want to intervene? Does she think the Education Secretary was tipsy, legless or just deluded?

[Penny Mordaunt]

If press reports, which are what we are talking about, are to be believed, the right hon. Gentleman was critical of the Leader of the Opposition and his speech yesterday for not responding to a single measure in the Budget—there was nothing on support for manufacturing or reforms to pensions. The right hon. Gentleman is well into his speech, which is incredibly amusing, but does he realise that he is in danger of doing exactly the same thing?

[Ed Balls]

It was very interesting because we scoured the Chancellor’s speech and all the documents for one mention of the cost of living and living standards, and there were none at all—none! Conservative Members say that we are not talking about what is in the Budget, but they are not talking about what is undermining the living standards of people up and down our country.

Last year, the hon. Lady said:

“If we do not believe that the poorest are best served by our policies, we might as well give up and go and do something else.”—[Official Report, 20 March 2013; Vol. 560, c. 1023.]

I am afraid we are going to ensure that she has to give up and do something else.

It has been hard to understand what has been going on, but it is starting to make sense given all the Chancellor’s rebranding of recent weeks and months: the new less foppish hairstyle, the 5:2 diet, the new estuary accent, even photo opportunities down a coal mine—all part of his leadership business; the new working-class hero, not Gideon but George these days.

This weekend the Education Secretary took a further step in the Osborne rebranding. He said that it is “ridiculous”, and “preposterous” that Downing street is governed by a tight clutch of Etonians, and that that has got to change—we say “Hear, hear” to that, Mr Deputy Speaker. However, we all know what he was really trying to say through the pages of the Financial Times. He was saying, “Boris is a toff because he went to Eton, but George is a pleb because he only went to St Paul’s.” The Tory party is having a class war with itself. An Etonian elite has grabbed hold of the commanding heights of the economy, opposing the masses of Tories who went to lesser public schools. Old boys from Harrow and St Pauls, throw off your chains. What are they going to call themselves? The Bullingdon Bolsheviks? The Trust Fund Trots? Posh boys of the world unite?

In all seriousness, does the Chancellor really think that he can stand up for the interests of the energy companies, the hedge funds, Tory donors, deliver a massive tax cut to people earning more than £150,000, and then claim to be on the side of hard-working families—the party of the workers—just because he did not go to Eton? Posing as the posh boy proletarian will not wash when his own Budget ad campaign refers to working people as “them”, and when he will be remembered only as the Chancellor who cut taxes for millionaires while everyone else was worse off.

I know that many hon. Members wish to speak so I will conclude my remarks.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

I do not think this clownish class warfare is fooling anybody, but does the right hon. Gentleman welcome the fact that 472 of his constituents will no longer pay income tax as a result of yesterday’s Budget?

[Ed Balls]

The problem is that they are all worse off because VAT went up to 20%. Is the hon. Lady worried that in her constituency there has been a 600% rise in long-term youth unemployment since 2010, which she is doing nothing about? As for the idea that class war will not wash, if I were the Chancellor I would try to find a different way to take on Boris, as I do not think this way will work.

There is a cost of living crisis, we do not have a balanced recovery, and all this complacent Chancellor does is play party politics in the Tory party. What a mess—a right old Eton mess! Surely we can do better than this. This was the Chancellor’s last chance, his final opportunity to tackle the cost of living crisis and make decisions that will directly affect people before next year, and he has blown it. Working people will be worse off in 2015 than they were in 2010, and the country now knows, especially after today’s patronising “them and us” advert for the Conservative party, that it will take a Labour Budget to put things right.