Budget Resolutions

Debate between Graham Stuart and Kanishka Narayan

Wednesday 30th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kanishka Narayan (Vale of Glamorgan) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to speak in this historic Budget and on this historic day, and I start by congratulating my right hon. Friend the Chancellor and the Treasury team. For 14 years, the people of the Vale of Glamorgan and this country have carried the weight of hope, pent up inside. Today the Chancellor has weighed up their hopes, looked them in the eyes and lifted them. For that I congratulate her and the entire Treasury team.

Government is supposed to be the means by which ordinary people exercise their collective agency to shape our communities. For 14 years, the Conservatives denied ordinary people their voice. They denied us collective agency and a sense of hope in our community. Per-worker productivity growth in the past decade was the weakest on average since 1850. That is the worst foundation for shared prosperity. Public services are on their knees. That is the worst foundation for shared dignity. Our Army has shrunk and our prisons are bursting. That is the worst foundation for shared security. And through it all, we have had the double whammy of high borrowing rates and low nominal growth, through which they punched into our weak foundations a further £22 billion fiscal black hole.

As a side note, it is astonishing to me that the hon. Member for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire (Mike Wood) talks about fiscal responsibility and semantics. I do not think he was rising and talking about that during the sharpest spike in overnight gilt yields this country had seen in the 21st century. This is a national embarrassment for the Conservatives. They should be standing here and apologising. They should be pointing the finger down, as they ought to have been doing at the time, and apologising for what they were doing, but I see no contrition on that side of the House.

There are those who ask why we talk about the £22 billion black hole the Conservatives left, and why we dwell on the past. I do so because, if we are to grip the urgency of where we must go, we have to know where we have come from. Even more, amid the worst foundation for prosperity, dignity and security and the final punch of their fiscal black hole, there is a deeper inheritance, which is one of diminished trust and diminished hope that we can get out of their hole. That is why the Chancellor’s Budget is not just good for our economy but essential for my community in the Vale of Glamorgan. It says with strong conviction, “That was them. This is now us.” It is the voice of ordinary people expressed in our collective agency. Foundations that were wrecked by them will now be fixed by us. The OBR that was trashed by them, and is still being trashed by them, will be affirmed by us. Investment in our future, our health and our jobs that was structurally slashed by them will be regained by us.

[Graham Stuart]

The hon. Gentleman talks about investment for our future. What is he going to say to the farmers of the Vale of Glamorgan who fear that they will no longer be able to pass on their farms to the next generation, as each generation before them has been able to do until this black day of broken promises in this Budget?

[Kanishka Narayan]

I will say to them what I said during the campaign, which is that I see the pain inflicted on them over the past 14 years. The fact is that the animal welfare and environmental standards of our proud Welsh and British farms were sold down the river in trade deals negotiated by Conservative Ministers while the right hon. Gentleman laughed along. It was absolutely unacceptable. That is what I will say to them, and I will confirm that we will not allow any of it to happen again.

Structural investment in our future was slashed by the Conservatives, but it has been restored by us. Borrowing rates shot up under them, including the biggest overnight spike in short-term gilts in the 21st century, but they have been brought back to par with the United States by us. The markets were decried as conspiracists by them, but those same markets now hail the return of British fiscal credibility due to us. Wales was denied a voice by them, but it is now front and centre again thanks to this Budget and this Government. Real wages were squeezed by them, but the national living wage is now rising again. Fuel duty has been frozen, carer’s allowance has been increased and, much to my heart’s delight, 1p has been taken off the price of a pint in pubs in Vale of Glamorgan and across the country. At the heart of it, trust, the most critical foundation of my community, ripped up by them, and now, brick by brick, rebuilt by us.