Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Jeremy Hunt Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr McFadden]

I understand why people regret the result. What I do not understand is why the response to that should be to erect even more trading barriers inside the United Kingdom, as the hon. Member wants to do.

Even if the fall in living standards is at its most severe this year and next, it is not just a short-term dip, because since the Government took office, real-terms wages have not risen and are not expected to get to their pre-2010 levels until 2026. That is what people feel in their lives—that year after year, it gets harder to make ends meet and harder to pay the bills. The question that people are asking themselves is the one that has been posed by the shadow Chancellor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves). Are my family and I better off? The answer is no. Are our public services in better shape now than when the Tories took office in 2010? Time after time, once again, the answer is no.

When he made his statement last week, I thought there was one significant thing about the way the Chancellor spoke: he was happy to own the whole 13 years that his party have been in office.

[The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Jeremy Hunt)]

I’m proud of it.

[Mr McFadden]

He confirms that now—he is proud of it. He obviously did not get the memo that says every time the Tories ditch a leader, they are supposed to pretend it is year zero. Not for him the pretence that this is a brand-new Government. Not for him the pretence that whatever was inflicted by his predecessors had nothing to do with him.

I welcome the Chancellor’s honesty about that, because that means the Tories can own the annual tax rises faced by every taxpayer over the coming years. They can own the 24 tax rises they have imposed in the last few years. They can own the NHS waiting lists of 7 million people. They can own the biggest drop in living standards on record. They can own all the waste and all the fraud. They can own the mortgage rate rises faced by hard-working families this year and next, which were driven up by their own reckless economic irresponsibility. They can own the whole cycle of low growth, increasing taxes, declining living standards and creaking public services. I am grateful to the Chancellor for his honesty and candour in embracing his party’s 13 years in power. That is a rare thing in politics these days and he deserves credit for it.

There were measures in this Budget that we liked and supported—those were the Labour bits. The extension of the energy price cap, the freeze in fuel duty, the investment allowances for industry and more help for childcare were all called for by Labour. Of course we welcome them, and we knew they were coming because most of the Budget was leaked in advance.