Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts

Tuesday 9th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab) [V]]

Last week, the Chancellor spoke of being fair and honest with the public, yet 24 hours later it became very clear that he was doing neither. The worst example of that was the cowardly omission of the real-terms pay cut for our NHS heroes, people who have put their lives on the line day in and day out, who diligently turned up to save lives knowing that the Government had not provided them with PPE, and who have been the only comfort for strangers as they took their final breaths. They have been told that the public finances are under strain. This pitiful excuse might wash if they had not seen £37 billion wasted on failing test and trace, if they had not heard the Conservative head of that failed programme defending wasting tens of thousands of pounds per day on consultants to help run this shambles, if they had not seen nearly £2 billion given to Tory friends and donors for covid-related contracts, or the half a billion spent on the Nightingales that did little more than provide some good PR for a poorly performing Health Secretary.

The fact is that the Government do not value our NHS. Their Benches are filled with those who vote time and again to cut the NHS and its workforce to the bone, forcing local hospitals to downgrade and promoting a privatised system of health and social care. It is not just the NHS they show disdain for, however. It is also whole communities who do not vote for them or share their ethos. It was noticed by people in South Shields and our surrounding areas that last week’s Budget offered zero investment in our infrastructure, jobs, schools or high streets. Levelling up is already proving itself to be as vacuous as the northern powerhouse was.

We are smart enough to see through the soundbites, the slogans and the rhetoric. When it comes to the levelling up fund, typically there is a lack of clarity regarding the formula and criteria for making the awards. What is clear, however, is that these funds will pit communities and regions against each other. At a time when we should be coming together, the Tories are again sowing division and fostering competition for small pots of money that will see a piecemeal and unequal recovery across our country.

For our local economies to survive they need local people with money to spend, yet just as unemployment is due to peak later this year, the universal credit uplift will be scrapped. Legacy benefits remain static, the benefit cap and the two-child limit remain, council tax is rising and key worker pay is frozen.

Our communities will never forget that, in the middle of a pandemic, this Government presided over one of the highest death tolls in the world, led us to the worst economic crisis of any major economy and used it as an opportunity to make money for them, their friends and donors. We will all have to live with the scars of this Government’s recklessness for decades to come and I will never give them a minute’s peace over it.