Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Gerald Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)]

Let us be clear: the message from this Budget is that long-term growth is being downgraded, household incomes are falling, public services are on their knees and families are facing the biggest hit to living standards since records began. In fact, the only surprise was a massive handout to the richest 1% of pension savers. Once again, ordinary families and businesses across the country have featured at the back of the Chancellor’s queue. The very legitimate questions that those in ordinary families will be asking themselves after 13 years of Conservative Government are: are my family and I better off, and are our public services working any better? Clearly, the emphatic answer to those questions is no.

I am pleased that my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor has announced that Labour will reverse the changes to tax-free pension allowances. As has been said often this afternoon, this is the wrong priority, at the wrong time, for the wrong people. The OBR tells us that the Government still have £10.4 billion left on the table from the windfall tax last year and this year. We also know that plans for a windfall tax on oil and tax producers were announced by the Labour party in January 2022, while the Government announced their policy in May of the same year. A plan to cap energy bills was announced by Labour in August, and adopted by the Tories on 8 September. The Conservatives announced Budget plans recently to scrap extra charges for those on prepayment energy meters, but Labour first called for that in August 2022. The Government have taken a number of policies from the Labour party, so why not take this one? Put a proper windfall tax in place to ease the burden on families in Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney and across the UK who are suffering under crippling energy costs.

In my limited time, I want to highlight that this Budget will do very little to tackle child poverty. For the past 13 years, we have seen how the Conservatives have cut, cut and cut, and finally crashed our economy with a kamikaze Budget in September 2022. As Gordon Brown once said:

“Child poverty is the scar that demeans Britain. When we allow just one life to be degraded or derailed by early poverty, it represents a cost that can never be fully counted. What difference could that child have made? What song will not be written, what flourishing business will not be founded, what classroom will miss out on a teacher who can awaken aspiration?”

At Prime Minister’s questions recently, I highlighted the 800,000 children taken out of poverty by Labour Governments between 1997 and 2010, and contrasted that with the half a million children plunged into poverty since the Tories took office 13 long years ago. When I gave the Prime Minister the chance to apologise for his party’s failure, he could have jumped at the chance, but instead he gave us bluff and bluster. Compare this with the last Labour Government, who delivered Sure Start, record funding for schools, tax credits, increasing child benefit, child trust funds and introducing the UK’s first ever national minimum wage. These did not happen by accident; they happened because the people of Britain voted for a Labour Government, and those Labour Governments made eradicating child poverty a key priority, in stark contrast to what we have now.

I am also proud that the Welsh Labour Government are continuing to tackle child poverty in Wales through Flying Start, free school breakfasts, free school lunches, the pupil deprivation grant, Jobs Growth Wales and, of course, the groundbreaking Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. The Senedd is using the tools available to help mitigate child poverty in Wales, but to tackle child poverty in Wales and right across the UK we desperately need a UK Labour Government to get our economy back on track and give tackling child poverty the attention it so needs and deserves. So the next general election simply cannot come soon enough.