Helen Goodman
Main Page: Helen Goodman (Labour - Bishop Auckland)
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
The fundamental problem that the Chancellor faced this afternoon was that the Government have completely mishandled the Brexit negotiations. Instead of seeking to build a cross-party and national consensus, the Prime Minister has constantly pandered to the extreme, hard-right members of the European Research Group, and as a consequence, no deal now looms over everything.
The OBR said, more than two years since the referendum, that there is “no meaningful basis” on which it can make a forecast about the impact of Brexit. That uncertainty has produced lower growth in GDP, in investment, in exports, in productivity and in wages. Many Government Members say that there has been fantastic employment growth, but, I am sorry to say, that has not been the case in my constituency, where unemployment is now higher than it was a year ago. The Chancellor did not have a great deal of room for manoeuvre.
The Chancellor said that he wants to reduce debt as a percentage of GDP. Obviously, he could do that in two ways: he could take steps to increase growth in the economy, or continue with the failed Tory austerity policies. That is really the path that he has chosen. Meanwhile, everybody in this country is suffering from crumbling public services. He has borrowed a little more, although not as much as many of us would like, and he has also turned down the option of raising taxes.
If we say we can raise more money in tax to protect our public services, we need to answer the question of who should pay these taxes and whether it is reasonable that they should go up. Let us look at the international comparators. We are slap-bang in the middle of the OECD range. We pay 35% of our national income in tax. Obviously, we do not want to be Mexico, which pays only 20%, and people would probably not want to be Denmark, which pays 45%, but let us take two other countries at random that we might choose to follow.
If we followed the Canadian model, the Prime Minister would not be able to finance her £20 billion for the NHS. However, were we to choose the Norway model, we would be able both to increase money for the NHS and to end austerity. I think that the Chancellor should have chosen the Norway model. He could perfectly well have stopped the next reduction in corporation tax from 19% to 17%—there is no need for us to have corporation tax below the international average. He should have reversed the cuts to tax for top earners, and reversed the measures on inheritance tax and on pensions relief for millionaires. And, I ask those on the Treasury Bench: where is the dividend from the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018, which we supported the Government in passing to increase the tax take from the money stashed away in the Caribbean by the rich and powerful?
Why did the Prime Minister make this absurd claim that austerity is over? Did she think that by saying it she would make it true? Austerity is not over for my constituents when ward six of Bishop Auckland Hospital is under threat. Austerity is not over when there are seven food banks in Bishop Auckland. Austerity is not over when people come into my office weeping with anxiety because they do not know how they will feed their families. Austerity is not over when Shildon and Sedgefield, which are 11 miles apart, share one police sergeant. And austerity is not over when the local further education college has a 30% cut in its budget, so that we are not even investing properly in our young people.
The Government have protected health spending, but demographic change means our constituents are seeing a reduction in the quality of their services, and the welfare cap means that the increases to universal credit that the Chancellor announced, which anyway are coming very late—in 2022 and 2023, not this year—are dwarfed by the £7 billion he is taking out through the freeze in the real level of benefits. Meanwhile, unprotected spending areas, such as police and education, are seeing devastating reductions. In Durham, the number of police officers and support staff has reduced by 500. A modern country needs proper public services if it is to sustain a civilised life for its citizens, but I am sorry to say the Chancellor has failed to turn the corner tonight.