Finance Bill

Debate between Jeevun Sandher and James Wild

Report stage
Monday 3rd March 2025 Commons Chamber

[James Wild]

My hon. Friend invites me to get inside the head of the Chancellor, but I am not sure I would be able to do that. All I know is that the other groups that he mentions should also be listened to. The Chancellor has shown herself to be particularly tin-eared on the impact of these changes on family farms and businesses, hence there is, tomorrow, yet another protest. I read over the weekend that another brave Labour MP has come out and said he opposes the changes and wants to see reforms—perhaps some of the other Labour MPs are here to speak to say that they too stand with the farmers in their constituencies.

To conclude, the Prime Minister and Chancellor set growth as the mission for this Government. They inherited an economy growing at the fastest rate in the G7, but the choices they have taken in the Budget and in this Finance Bill have stopped growth stone dead. They have hiked taxes, undermined business confidence, pushed up inflation and hit working people and pensioners. Later this month, we will get the economic and fiscal forecasts, but what we can already see is a Labour Government committed to higher taxes, higher spending and higher borrowing, and we are all paying the price.

[Dr Jeevun Sandher (Loughborough) (Lab)]

Economic growth is the ability to produce more with less. It is the foundation of all human progress. It is why we are not all scratching around in the dirt, desperately hoping something will grow. However, there is no economic law that says that when the economy grows, all must share in it. In decades past, it has not been shared. Growth has gone to high earners over everyone else, to the old rather than the young, to capital over labour and to London over everywhere else. This is tearing our democracy apart, and it is tearing other democracies apart. That is why I am so proud to speak in favour of this Finance Bill, which will help to ensure that economic growth is shared among all people and all places.

I worked as an economist before entering this place. As Members may know, my PhD was on the causes and consequences of inequality and particularly why, since the 1980s, people and places have not shared equally in growth. In my adult life, I have never known a growing economy, and now my beard is turning grey—[Interruption.] I will soon look like Gandalf. I want to see the dotted line on the GDP chart finally go up, but that is not enough. We have to ask whether all are sharing in that growth. Growth for where, and growth for whom? The only way to ensure that all share in growth is for this Government to act. When people do not share in growth, when their incomes do not rise and when life becomes worse, hope turns to cynicism, happiness turns to anger and peace turns to riots.

There are four ways in which growth has not been shared by all, and we are fixing all four in this Budget. First, across high-income nations, top earners have seen their pay rise far faster than the rest. Technological change destroyed manufacturing jobs and led to a divided labour market of high-paid and low-paid jobs. High-paid workers benefited from new technology—computers, Excel and PowerPoint—and they saw their wages increase 50% faster than the average. We are fixing that in this Budget by investing in the skills of non-graduates, with more money for further education colleges and apprenticeships.

Secondly, older generations have benefited from cheaper homes, while younger renters cannot buy a home because we have failed to build enough houses in this country. Twenty years ago, house prices were three times the average wage. Today, they are more than eight times the average wage.