Budget Resolutions

George Galloway Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[George Galloway (Rochdale) (WPB)]

As I was saying, Madam Deputy Speaker. Even in Parliament, you cannot be a maiden twice, but I hope you will permit me a moment of my eight minutes to pay tribute to my predecessor, Tony Lloyd—as he was when I first met him at the Labour party conference more than 40 years ago. He, a young, left-wing engineering union delegate; me, even younger, from the Transport and General Workers’ Union. We became fast friends then, and remained so through all the decades. We marched together against nuclear weapons and against the repeated massacres in Gaza at the hands of the Israeli occupation forces. We voted in the Lobby together against the renewal of Trident submarines. Tony Lloyd was a significant figure who should never be forgotten in this House, and certainly will not be forgotten in the Greater Manchester area where he was born and where he practised his sincere political artistry over so many years.

The Labour party, of course, is not the party today that it was back then, as I will say in this speech and, I hope, in later speeches—if God spares me and you allow me to catch your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker. The only thing that unites the entire town of Rochdale is antipathy towards the Labour council in the beautiful, new, refurbished town hall. That is something we intend to change just a few weeks from now at the local elections, but notwithstanding the poor odour of the Labour party in the town, everyone respected and admired Tony Lloyd—Sir Tony Lloyd, as he was to become. I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to begin my address in this way on the seventh time I have been elected to Parliament.

The Chief Secretary to the Treasury was bright and breezy, but frankly all the spices in Rochdale could not give flavour to what can only be described as an absolute nothingburger of a Budget, and the response from the so-called Opposition in this House was equally vacuous. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones), bridled when the SNP accused him of accepting the Tories’ spending limits, but he had no right to bridle, because everything that is being said by the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, the right hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), accepts the economic orthodoxies of the Conservative Government.

Look where those economic orthodoxies have led us. The Minister talked breezily about children getting help where they need it, and about busy doctors and nurses in the NHS. What about us in Rochdale? We have a new infirmary that is like a ghost town. In Rochdale, you cannot give birth; no one in Gracie Fields’s hometown will ever again be able to say that they were born in Rochdale, unless unfortunately they were born in a taxi on their way to Bury or Oldham. We do not even have a postcode; our postcode is OL, a subdivision of Oldham. This town, which was once one of the most prosperous in England, is now one of the poorest, abandoned not just by the Government but by the Mayor of Greater Manchester. I have no animus against the Mayor—quite the contrary, at least until recent weeks—but he has to understand that he is the Mayor of Greater Manchester, not just Manchester. What about the towns around Manchester that get a raw deal?

Imagine a town where you cannot be born and cannot die—they have also taken away the A&E service. My campaign, in which I garnered more votes than the Conservatives, Labour, the Liberal Democrats and Reform UK put together, proved my point, which is that out in the country, most people wish a plague on both their houses—on both the Conservatives and Labour. “Two cheeks of the same backside” is the most popular phrase I have ever coined, because it so aptly describes not just the general political situation, but the debate on this Budget. You cannot even be banged up in Rochdale; if a person gets arrested there, there is not even a police cell there that they can be taken to. In the campaign, an old lady in a care home fell ill—took a turn. The ambulance took 45 minutes to reach her, and then did not know where it was going to take her. Her relatives, gathered around anxiously, did not know where she would go. The ambulance driver had to find out which A&E in the Greater Manchester area they could take her to. What if it took her 45 minutes to get to A&E? I have no idea what might have become of her.

We are a town that has been abandoned by the state, and is increasingly abandoned by the Mayor of Greater Manchester. Half, or 50%, of the children in two of the biggest wards in the parliamentary constituency are officially living in poverty—half! What was there in the Budget for them, despite all the Government’s chuntering, joshing and japing, which was matched by that of the Opposition? What was in the Budget for those poor children who needed help, though no help was forthcoming? Levels of child poverty in Rochdale are among the worst in the entire country.

My goodness, I have 14 seconds left; how time flies. I just want to say that having given both parties a good spanking on 29 February, I have my boots on to give them a good kicking any time I catch your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker.

amendment of the law

George Galloway Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[George Galloway (Bradford West) (Respect)]

That speech, much of this debate and this Budget demonstrate the parallel universe in which the governing class in this country is living. Earlier in the debate, nearly four hours ago—it feels like four days—we had the full vaudeville, music hall treatment. They chuntered and they chortled and they laughed—how they laughed!—until their tummies wobbled about the state we are in.

But there were some genuinely funny moments, the funniest of which was when the Secretary of State said that the Budget had sowed the seeds of growth and jobs in this bleak midwinter, which has now frozen out the spring. In the very month in which 4,000 grandmothers and grandfathers froze to death in Britain—froze to death in Britain, in 2013—and the very month in which millions of our citizens had to make a choice between eating and turning on their heating, the Secretary of State believes that this Budget sowed seeds for growth and jobs. No seeds can grow in this climate; hon. and right hon. Gentlemen on the Government Benches should know that.

The truth is that this Budget, produced by a Cabinet of millionaires, governing in their own interests and the interests of a very narrow class, has lost the confidence of the country. Indeed, the political system and the political class as a whole have lost the confidence of the people, who see their own situation, with mass unemployment and poverty stalking the land. Bradford, my constituency, is an almost perfect example. Youth unemployment has tripled in two years; one in eight is unemployed; our child poverty statistics are the second worst in the country; our schools are the third worst in the country; our hospitals are the seventh worst in the country; our young people walk the shuttered-up streets without education, training or jobs; and the Government and others in the media cry surprise when the devil finds work for their idle hands.

The Government have done nothing for Bradford—the Budget does nothing for Bradford—because Bradford is entirely beyond their ken. [Interruption.] Do I know where Bradford is? I am the person who, just one year ago, won a landslide election result—a by-election of historic proportions. I defeated the Labour party and, the party of the hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill), precisely because it thinks that yah-boo politics of the type we have seen in the debate is sufficient to meet the gravity of this situation. He should come to his seat and join the debate.

Here is the truth of the matter: our country is in grave danger. It is a country on the slide, which cannot keep its pensioners warm in the winter time, but can fly around the world setting fire to other people’s countries, apparently at the drop of a hat. It is a country that cannot pay for its young people’s education without charging them £9,000 a year to take shelter from the economic winds and study at universities, thanks to the betrayal of the yellow Liberal Democrats.

I have only 15 seconds left. Do you know, Mr Deputy Speaker, how many times in this House just this afternoon the words “immigrant”, “foreigner”, “alien” and “foreign migrant” have been mentioned? There is no U-turn by the Government, but there is no deviation to the right so low that they will not make.