Government's Management of the Economy

James Murray Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[James Murray (Ealing North) (Lab/Co-op) [V]]

Across this country, we have all felt the pain of missing our family and friends, and we have all longed to go about our lives as we could before, but we have also seen the pain of this crisis fall unevenly, with some people facing greater difficulties and hardship than others. The virus has exposed weakness and unfairness in the foundations of our economy, and what unites so many people now is a determination to learn from what covid has exposed and make the UK a fairer place to live.

Going into this crisis, as the shadow Chancellor, my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds) pointed out, one in four UK households had less than £100 in the bank, while 3.6 million people were trapped in insecure work. A decade ago, the Conservative Chancellor stopped investing in new social housing, and now we see families told to stay at home in overcrowded flats.

Social care workers, delivery drivers, shop workers and others have all been on the frontline, but many are on such low incomes that if they are asked to self-isolate, they have a choice they should never be forced to make: doing the right thing or putting food on the table. We were on shaky foundations going into the crisis, and once it hit, the Government have been too slow to give people the support they need, with millions falling through the gaps altogether. Business closures are up by more than a third, yet the self-employed are left in the dark over what help might be on offer from one month to the next. Parents are struggling with the difficult job of home schooling, yet the Treasury refuses to heed our call to give working parents the legal right to request paid flexible furlough.

As many of my hon. Friends have set out today, the UK Government have left people exposed throughout this crisis. My hon. Friends the Members for Jarrow (Kate Osborne), for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy) and for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) set out how the Government’s choices over the past 10 years left us ill-prepared. My hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) spoke of the struggle that so many people face making ends meet, while my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Zarah Sultana) spoke about children going hungry and having to rely on food banks. My hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Christina Rees) set out the different, fairer choices that the Welsh Government have taken.

The truth is that the state of the economy we had coming into covid, and the Chancellor’s irresponsible choices throughout the crisis—both to wind down support and to lift restrictions too soon—have undermined efforts to protect people’s health and left us suffering the worst economic crisis of any major economy. Time and again, businesses, workers and the self-employed have anxiously faced the looming end of support schemes, only for new grants to be introduced in a last-minute scramble as the public pressure to avoid the next cliff edge becomes overwhelming. People might have forgiven this early on in the outbreak, as the Government adjusted to the new challenge we all faced, but a year later that argument holds no water. What we have seen instead is a pattern of the Chancellor’s behaviour, and we should continue to question his judgment as our thoughts turn to what comes next. Ten years of the Conservatives has undermined the foundations of our economy and hollowed out our public services. We must not let the country suffer the same mistakes again.

We heard from many of my hon. Friends today about the damage to our economy and our public services over the past decade. My hon. Friends the Members for Liverpool, Wavertree (Paula Barker), for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi) and for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) spoke about the rise of insecure working while wages have been falling. My hon. Friends the Members for Enfield North (Feryal Clark) and for Easington (Grahame Morris) spoke about the impact of cuts on local government, while my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) spoke of cuts to social security.

My hon. Friends the Members for Slough (Mr Dhesi), for Wallasey (Dame Angela Eagle), for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) and for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson) all reminded us of the ideological drive and dogma—not economic necessity—behind the cuts of the past 10 years, while my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) spoke of the importance of an active state working in partnership with enterprise and business. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome) spoke of the need to rebuild our country with secure housing and secure jobs at its heart.

My hon. Friends are not alone in warning the Government to take a different path. In fact, the IMF’s head of fiscal policy has said that Governments should now use fiscal policy to not just beat the virus but stimulate the economy by reducing unemployment and restoring economic growth. As the shadow Chancellor set out, the path the Government should take is one that puts jobs and investment at the heart of rebuilding our economy. That is why we want to see start-up loans for 100,000 new businesses employing people across the country. It is why our approach would view public finances over the next 20 years, so that we can finally get on top of the long-term challenges our country faces. People are tired of the Government ducking big decisions, from social care to the housing crisis to climate change, and they want to see a fair, modern, robust approach to the future. Our responsible approach to the public finances—an approach in line with the IMF’s and OECD’s recommendations—would make sure that we could always protect people and businesses during a crisis and make crucial investments in our future.

We know that the impact of this crisis has played out very differently for people in different situations. Many families have had to take on worrying levels of debt, while other households have been able to work from home and save. That will result in highly concentrated household savings, forecast to reach £250 billion by the end of June, and what happens with those savings will have a big impact on the economic recovery. The Chancellor is betting everything on people spending those savings, but the Bank of England evidence suggests that only around 5% of the money will be used in that way. The rest will remain in bank accounts or be invested in assets, which we know, among other things, will push up house prices. That is why we are proposing a new British recovery bond, which would give millions of people security for their savings while raising billions to invest in businesses, jobs and infrastructure for the future. That approach would bring people together, united around a common determination for us all to feel more secure and to live in a fairer country.

Today we have heard a string of tired claims from the Chief Secretary to the Treasury that the record simply does not reflect. He said that the economy was not growing when Labour left office, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) made clear, the truth is that it was. Government Members make claims about unemployment when Labour is in power, but if they looked at the last 40 years of unemployment data, they would find that unemployment was lower on average in the years when we were in power compared with those when they were.

Over the coming months, we may well hear the Chancellor repeat his flawed economic ideology around the need to cut people’s livelihoods, to cut support for businesses and to cut investment in the public services and infrastructure that we need. Will we hear him apologise for mismanaging hundreds of millions of pounds throughout the crisis and outsourcing projects that should have been delivered by public servants? Will we hear him explain how people with no income or savings can spend money in the economy or how a country with businesses closing, public services run down and infrastructure lacking is expected to grow? I doubt it. If he will not listen to us, he should listen to the fears of people in the country. He should use this Budget to reverse the planned £20 cut in universal credit, to reverse the key worker pay freeze and to provide councils with the funding they need to prevent huge increases in council tax. Then, he has the chance to listen to economic institutions around the world and follow their urging of him to invest in jobs and growth.

After a decade of the Conservatives, our economy was already weak when covid hit, and their irresponsible decisions since then have weakened it further. That is why we have had the worst economic crisis of any major economy. It does not have to be this way. We should come out of this crisis determined not to go back but to build an economy with fairer, more secure foundations. We should focus relentlessly on jobs and growth across the UK and on the long-term investment we need to meet the challenges we face. We need to change our economy for the better, and this is a chance to do so.