Budget Resolutions

Ian Byrne Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley). Unsurprisingly, I have a slightly less rose-tinted take on last week’s Budget than Conservative Members. I see a Budget constructed by a Government who do not care about the hardships that the 15 million people and rising in poverty face.

This Budget comes from a multimillionaire Chancellor with a personal housing portfolio so large that he could potentially solve the country’s housing crisis. To him, the word “hardship” means not having a pool in his country mansion, something that he took decisive action to fix over the summer. Unfortunately, he failed to take similar decisive action for the nation in the Budget. He did not fix the issues facing millions: insecure work, an insufficient welfare safety net, low pay, a lack of safe and affordable housing and rising utility bills. They are fuelling the huge inequalities that we see in 2021.

Let us look at what the Budget means for my constituents. The average state pension is £8,000 a year, which is the lowest in the industrialised world. With the suspension of the triple lock, it is expected to rise by 3.1% from April 2022—an increase that is wiped out by inflation. The Government have refused to honour the triple lock, and the old adage “Never trust a Tory” will ring true for many pensioners.

A 1.25% increase in national insurance from April will remove between £16.7 billion and £18.2 billion a year from household budgets. The universal credit cut will leave 4.4 million families worse off by £4 billion a year, and there is still no justice for the people receiving legacy benefits who were denied the £20 uplift. The people who can least afford it will bear the brunt of the Budget while the bankers receive £4 billion in tax cuts.

My city of Liverpool continues to suffer from £500 million of cuts since 2010, which the Budget does nothing to address. Tory austerity has caused real misery in my city. A £2 million empty trinket thrown to tee up a hollow PR exercise by the Minister for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport means nothing to the many in my city who see it for what it is and who remember what the coalition Government started in 2010.

Professor Ian Sinha, a paediatrician from the fantastic Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in my constituency, points out that a train journey of 15 minutes on Merseyrail through our city region represents a 15-year difference in life expectancy. That encapsulates the inequality and its consequences that we saw even more starkly in the teeth of a pandemic. The Budget does nothing to fix them.

There are no long-term funding promises to help to combat those inequalities; indeed, further austerity is being forced through by the Government, with another £33 million of savage cuts mooted in Liverpool. Austerity is a Tory decision and a political choice that keeps people in poverty—and poverty kills. More than ever, post covid, we need the ability to invest in our infrastructure and in our social care, mental health and domestic abuse services to rebuild our communities. To tackle the health and social economic inequalities we face, we need council housing, Sure Start centres, libraries, leisure centres and education facilities fit for the 21st century, not further austerity. We need a real levelling-up, not weasel words.

Why did the Chancellor, in his much-lauded levelling up agenda, not choose a different path? Lord Prem Sikka, my good friend in the other place, has outlined an alternative vision. By taxing capital gains at the same rate as earned income, some £17 billion a year could be raised. By extending the 12% rate of national insurance to incomes above £50,000, £14 billion could be raised. Of course, a wealth tax could also raise up to £304 billion over five years. What a difference a Chancellor who followed that ideology would make to so many lives and to the future generations of our nation.

Last Saturday marked five years of Fans Supporting Foodbanks collecting food outside football stadiums in communities across the UK.

A fan who donates religiously asked me to pass on this message to the Chancellor:

“Seeing as he likes quoting the Beatles, how about this from the great John Lennon? Imagine a country where no child goes hungry. Imagine a country without food banks. Imagine a country with fairness at its heart, not inequality. Imagine a country governed for the many, not the few.”