Charter for Budget Responsibility

Debate between Ed Balls and Lord Barwell

Tuesday 13th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Ed Balls]

When preparing an intervention it is always dangerous not to listen to the speech being given—I just did exactly what the hon. Gentleman requested. The interesting thing is—

[The Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty's Treasury (Gavin Barwell)]

Which taxes are you going to put up?

[Ed Balls]

We are going to put the top rate of tax back to 50% for people earning over £150,000, and if the hon. Gentleman wanted to win his seat, he would support it.

Instead this Chancellor is taking an increasingly unbalanced and extreme approach. Let us look at what he has failed to put in the charter. He has not included asking those with broader shoulders to make a greater contribution, as I just said. He has not said that we need to strengthen the underlying growth of our economy and improve living standards. Instead, he has made up for all that loss of tax revenue by imposing even bigger spending cuts in the autumn statement than he was planning.

Let me outline the facts to the House. More than 61% of planned departmental spending cuts are still to come in the next Parliament under this Chancellor. There is a further cut for unprotected Departments of 26.3% over the next four years, which is a third bigger than in the previous Parliament. There will be the biggest fall in day-to-day spending on public services in any four-year period since the second world war. That is what is in the Chancellor’s prospectus for his manifesto. We are talking about cuts that the Institute for Fiscal Studies has called “colossal” and that the OBR says will take spending on public services back to the level of the 1930s as a percentage of GDP. That is the Chancellor’s extreme and unbalanced plan, and that is what we are opposing.

Academies Bill [Lords]

Debate between Ed Balls and Lord Barwell

Monday 26th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Ed Balls]

The only similarity between our policy on academies and the new policy on academies is that the Secretary of State has pinched the word “academy” and attached it to the new schools he wishes to establish. Our academies were set up in the most disadvantaged areas, not the most affluent areas. They were set up with the agreement of local authorities rather than to avoid any role for local authorities. They taught the core parts of the national curriculum, including sex and relationship education, rather than opting out entirely from the curriculum. They had an obligation not just on looked-after children, but to co-operate to stop competitive exclusions in an area, and that has been entirely removed by this Bill. There was a requirement for our academies to have a sponsor, and that has been removed. We had a requirement for proper consultation with the community, also removed. Our academies programme was about tackling disadvantage. The new policy is about encouraging elitism and enabling the affluent to do better. That is why it is so deeply unfair.

[Gavin Barwell (Croydon Central) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman has just said that the academies that the previous Government set up were in disadvantaged areas. In the London borough of Croydon, he approved two academies in two of the most affluent wards in the borough.

[Ed Balls]

The fact is that our academies were disproportionately set up in disadvantaged communities. They disproportionately took in more children on free school meals than the catchment area required, and they achieved faster-rising results than the average. That was social justice in action; what we are seeing with this Bill is the opposite. The freedoms and the extra resources in the Bill are going to outstanding schools, not schools that need extra help. They are going to schools that have more children from more affluent areas, fewer children with free school meals, and fewer children with special needs and disabilities, even though they will get pro rata funding. That is not social justice being put into action; it is social injustice. That is why the Bill is deeply offensive to people on the Opposition Benches and, I think, probably to many on the Government Benches as well.