Budget Resolutions

Jim Dickson Excerpts

Wednesday 26th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

Here we are three years on from the Tory Truss kamikaze Budget. It is worth recalling just how bad that was—absolute carnage, with interest rates rocketing and mortgage market mayhem, and people and businesses left to pay for the Conservative chaos. That 49-day con trick was an ideological experiment that will scar this country for many years to come. It is worth remembering that their catastrophic failure was hailed by the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) as

“the best Conservative budget since”

the 1980s. So much for economic illiteracy! There is clearly much to be done in our schools.

It remains for this Labour Government to clean up the mess of the last Conservative Government. It was not just the Truss Budget; successive Conservative Budgets failed the public, whether it was with the lowest investment levels in the G7 despite having historically low interest rates, or with stagnant wages and flatlining productivity.

[Jim Dickson (Dartford) (Lab)]

One of the things the Chancellor was clear about in her speech was the way we need to continue to build capital investment to improve the long-term growth rate of the economy. Does my hon. Friend agree that projects such as the lower Thames crossing, which will hugely reduce congestion and poor air quality in my constituency and create thousands of jobs and new opportunities for business, are great for our economy?