Budget Resolutions

John Redwood Excerpts

Wednesday 11th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

There is no doubt that this Budget has been framed against one of the most challenging moments in this country’s economic history. As the Chancellor set out, many fundamentals of our economy are strong: record levels of employment; the lowest level of unemployment since 1974; low and stable inflation; and real wages that have risen over a two-year period. Nevertheless, the Chancellor was equally right to point to the huge challenges that lie ahead. He did not mention the trade deal that we are negotiating with the European Union, or—at least explicitly—the many accelerating challenges around climate change. Instead, he rightly and substantially focused on the challenge of coronavirus.

These challenges often emerge without much warning. In 2013, the then newly appointed Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, was asked by the Treasury Committee about what he saw as the main challenges over the coming years, and he did not mention one of the three external challenges that I have just presented. These things come at us pretty fast and are sometimes very unexpected, and the Chancellor is to be congratulated on looking closely at those challenges, and coming up with robust responses.

None the less, at the heart of this Budget hangs an important question: are the fiscal rules to which we are working robust enough, and do the spending and taxation proposals in the Budget—we will, of course, pick over them in some detail over the coming hours and days— stack up in terms of maintaining the fiscal responsibility that the markets expect of us? I think the Chancellor said that he was fundamentally sticking to the rules in the Conservative party manifesto to ensure that day-to-day spending is in balance over a three-year horizon. I think the Chancellor also suggested that, given the OBR’s forecasts, in about 2022-23 the head- room around those rules would be something in the order of £12 billion. That is all well and good—that is a reasonable level of firepower—but he also pointed out that the impact of coronavirus will not, because the cycle of the Budget forecasting by the OBR will have had a cut-off about two weeks or more ago, have been taken fully into account. I suspect that one of the key questions we will be putting to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, when he appears before our Treasury Committee this time next week, will be to probe the figures around the headroom that is assumed in those particular numbers.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend not accept that in these very exceptional circumstances the rules have to be flexed for the temporary expenditure on the virus consequences, just as even the EU has said it to Italy, where Italy obviously has a very difficult problem?

[Mel Stride]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right that we flex the rules to accommodate the circumstances. My point is that when we talk about headroom within our fiscal rules, we have to make sure that the number we are focused on is as accurate as possible. Given what is happening with coronavirus and the fact that the OBR struck its forecasts some time ago, the current forecasts are almost certainly already out of date.

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[John Redwood]

There is a £6.6 billion saving this year on interest on Government debt anyway, but of course there has been another major collapse of interest rates since those figures were put together, so there is something on the other side of the account. I would therefore urge my right hon. Friend indeed to say that we need to spend what it takes.

[Sajid Javid]

My right hon. Friend is, characteristically, absolutely right to make that observation. I think he will also agree that while this is welcome, and will, absolutely, cut the cost of interest, it also reminds us that interest rates are incredibly volatile, and no Government should rely on interest rates remaining low for an incredibly long time.

I have often said that small and medium-sized businesses are the beating heart of the economy, and rightly where our focus should be. If SMEs are the heart, then cash flow is their lifeblood, and that is where we must focus our help most, so I very much welcome the emergency support package for SMEs that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor set out today. If I may, I will make three quick observations about what more can be done. First, on time to pay, I strongly welcome the announcement today to extend the existing HMRC scheme. While it is absolutely right that we carry out the fundamental business rates review that we set out in our manifesto, this will not happen overnight, as the Chancellor recognised, so we need to act now. I do welcome the announcements on business rates that he made today, but may I also suggest that the time-to-pay arrangement is extended to business rates too? Although they are collected by local authorities, not HMRC, it is possible to delay collection while making sure that no local authority loses out in terms of cash flow.

Secondly, on support for workers, firms should not have to shed workers because of temporary cash-flow problems. That is why I would like to keep open the option of a temporary cut in employers’ national insurance —perhaps over a three-month period—thereby relieving the cost of labour.

Thirdly, since the financial crisis, it is true that monetary policy has lost some of its potency. A decade ago, central banks were the star turn; now they are more like the supporting act, but they can help. That is why I strongly welcome the action by the Bank of England that was announced this morning, and I am pleased to see the co-ordination that has taken place with the Treasury. I am particularly encouraged by the restart of the term funding scheme, especially how the incentives have been set out to encourage an increase in lending to SMEs.

While the coronavirus has captured the attention of the front pages, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor is right not to lose sight of the long-term failures of UK economic policy under successive Governments—failures that have caused profound regional inequalities and a sense of anger and betrayal in many of our communities. We need to put people and place back at the heart of a more human capitalism. I therefore welcome the investment in skills and education, especially the £1.5 billion for FE capital. We should think about not only the flow of students but the stock of skills that we have in our country. There are talented individuals who have left full-time education and would benefit from retraining. That is why I am unapologetically keen on a long-term plan for skills, including the right to retrain for all working adults.

It is clear from today’s Budget that my right hon. Friend shares my enthusiasm for the infrastructure revolution and my conviction that, with the right scale and the right mix of investment in roads, rail, digital, decarbonisation and flood defences, we can tackle our most significant economic challenges: low productivity and regional inequality. As I have long said, we should take advantage of record low interest rates to invest properly in our economic future.

I welcome the Chancellor’s indication that he will continue the work that was begun to rewrite the Green Book, so that we can better allocate investment across the nations. I hope that he will look carefully at what else we can do to help the infrastructure revolution, including looking at planning, especially reform of the compulsory purchase order regime; the infrastructure delivery model, so that we do not have a repeat of the overspending on HS2; and labour market requirements at a time of record employment.

I urge the Chancellor to consider in his next fiscal statement 100% capital allowances—in other words, full expensing for businesses, to encourage them to invest more in capital. I want to end by underlining the importance of fiscal responsibility.

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[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

I have declared my business interests in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, although I am of course not speaking for them.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Ilford South (Sam Tarry) on an excellent maiden speech. He was warm and informative about his predecessor, who was much respected on both sides of the House. He rightly drew attention to injustices and problems which he has a passion to solve. I would just like to reassure him that there is no monopoly on wishing to solve those problems on his side of the House. That is what we are all here to do.

It is a great pleasure, for the first time in about five years, for me to be able to welcome the actions of the Bank of England today. It is a pleasure to see the Bank of England and the Treasury co-ordinating their work, and doing things that are massively in the public interest. For the past five years, it has been my miserable task to be the one voice in this House pointing out that the Bank of England has consistently got its economic forecasts wrong and that it had made a number of very bad decisions. I have been particularly critical of the way it decided to tighten monetary policy and slow the economy from spring 2017 onwards, culminating in the very ill-judged decision it made at the end of last year to increase the counter-cyclical capital buffers, which meant denying loans to businesses that wanted to expand or to solvent people who wanted to buy a new car or a new home. It was a very bad policy and it is wonderful news today that the Bank of England, with its new Governor, has started off on a much better basis and has cancelled those counter-cyclical buffers. It is the single biggest amount of money we are talking about in this debate. As the Bank of England itself calculates, it means up to £190 billion more is now available for good projects, for business requirements and for individuals who want to borrow for big ticket items. Of course, banks must still be prudent and sensible in the way they advance that money, but the previous controls were too tight. Against the background of world downturn, it is very important that that firepower is made available.

Just to reinforce the position and to deal with the special problems that the virus is now likely to create, the Bank of England also put forward a new medium-term lending scheme for the banks, so they can get access to large sums of money—up to £100 billion in total—at the new very low rate of 0.25% to lend on to medium and small-sized enterprises. Again, that was something I was very keen for it to put forward. I am delighted that it has returned to this idea. It is much needed, I fear, because we already see the virus having a very negative impact on certain businesses, most obviously in aviation and other transport, but now also in events and some other tourism-related activities where we see the pinch already being established by the virus. If, as we fear, it spreads more, that is going to get rather worse, so I welcome the double set of actions by the Bank of England. I am not sure that 50 basis points off the interest rate makes very much difference. It is not something I would have done myself, but I can see that it was well intentioned and it sends a very clear signal that borrowing should not only be available but cheap in these very extraordinary times.

I also welcome the fiscal stance the Government have adopted in the Budget. If anything, it is on the prudent side of what one might have expected in the current circumstances. Some of my colleagues will find that curious coming from me, a former hawk, on how much this country can afford to spend and borrow. However, in these circumstances, and against the massive monetary and fiscal tightening we have experienced for some three years and the very noticeable slowdown or faltering of the world economy, it is obviously sensible to have a fiscal stimulus. The £18 billion underlying stimulus is definitely at the bottom end of the kind of range that many people were thinking about.

On top of that, there is the £12 billion package which the Government have wisely put forward. They stated that if the virus problem gets worse there will be more. I hope it will be the case that the virus problem does not get that bad and we do not need to spend the £12 billion or anything like it, but I am pleased the £12 billion is there by way of additional resource for the health service should the need arise and as additional money available particularly for the business sector, which, in certain circumstances, if we have anything like the experiences of some other countries abroad have now had, would need cash injections. I am very pleased that thanks to the Bank of England it will not just be a question of lending at cheap rates through the commercial banks, but that in some cases, particularly in hospitality and tourism-related areas that are already being fairly badly hit, it will be a reduction in their bills.

I listened carefully to the very long address by the SNP spokesman, the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford). I cannot see how that party’s VAT proposal would help, because VAT is turnover-driven and we are talking about businesses that lose much or all of their turnover, so it would not deal with the problem. The Government have a much better answer: to take a cost that businesses cannot get out of quickly or avoid—their property cost—and say that the Government should not be charging them for using property when no money is coming in, because there is no turnover as they have lost their customers. I agree with the Government.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I was not allowed to intervene on the leader of the SNP, but surely any sensible person would come to the conclusion that when faced with an existential threat to our country, such as the coronavirus, we are much better dealing with this together, as a United Kingdom, than as separate nations.

[John Redwood]

My right hon. Friend and I think that, but more importantly, that is what the Scottish people voted for just a few years ago, when we very wisely and democratically said, “Yes, let the Scottish people decide.” They did decide and I wish their elected representatives here would understand the result of the referendum and remember that their colleagues told us at the time, when asking for it, that it would be a once-in-a-generation matter. While I am a democrat who thinks that these things occasionally need exploring, we cannot explore them every five years. These are fundamental things that are very disruptive if we keep going into them. I had to wait many years to get an EU referendum—rather longer than I wanted—but I do not think we should have one every five years. That would be quite inappropriate.

To go back to the Budget judgment, I was interested to see that quite substantial increases in spending, which we need in health, education and police, for example, have been relatively easily accommodated. It is good to see already in the first-year figures—for 2020-21— £4.6 billion of Brexit savings coming through. It is very good to see that there will be another £10 billion on top of that by the end of the forecast period, so the Brexit bonus is available and is beginning to come into these figures.

It was also good to see the £6.6 billion of interest cost reduction, thanks to the quite substantial falls in interest rates that had occurred before this month. The point that I was making to my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid) is that those savings would be considerably bigger if we forecast them at today’s interest rates, because interest rates for Government borrowing have fallen even further. He countered and said, “Yes, but you still have to be very careful because you can’t necessarily assume that that will go on into the future.” The bad news is that interest rates are going to stay low for a bit, but the good news is that the Government can borrow for 30 years for practically nothing, so now is surely a very good time to lock those interest rates in so that the future interest rate programme is very cheap, as well as the present one. It is something the Government need to think about. I know they have issues about how long they fund, but this is surely a time to move in the direction of longer funding so that we lock the very low rates in.

[Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

On the very low costs of borrowing, does my right hon. Friend recognise that there is enormous demand in the City of London for long-dated assets? There is a lot of money looking for long-term investments that will provide secure returns, which is ideal for long-term infrastructure spending.

[John Redwood]

Let us hope that that is right, yes. We hope that the City gets better at managing the gap between those who say they have all this long-term money and the projects that are available. We seem to need a bit more work on that. I am very keen that more of it is privately rather than publicly financed, so that we can get more investment for less strain on the public finances.

The Government, looking at their forward budgets, have rightly said that they wish to increase public sector infrastructure investment. In principle, I agree, but I urge one thing on the Government—I wish that they would look at a large number of smaller, quicker schemes, because what we need to deal with transport problems, in particular, is quicker-acting, smaller schemes that we can get up and running and that will have some tangible results. On the railways, we could have short sections of bypass track on existing main lines to get express trains past stopping trains when the timetable falls over, and digital signalling on a very widespread basis, which could give us something like a 25% capacity increase much more quickly and cheaply than some of the rather big schemes that we have been looking at in this place recently, but I will not be dragged down that particular avenue today.

On roads, the immediate priority is the digitalisation and rephasing of the many traffic signals in this country, because they are not optimised, meaning that junctions restrict traffic much more than they need to. Roundabout substitution, right filters with right lanes and junction remodelling are also possible. We need to get people on the move, and junctions are often a cause of tension and delay. Junctions would also be safer if we optimised them and had less frustration and conflict between vehicles at those junctions. I hope the Government will look at that. We also need lots of bypasses and other local roads to relieve the main motorway system, which is a fixed entity; nobody is suggesting building a new motorway any more, so we need to relieve the pressure on the motorway network with more local road projects. I want to see those projects going in and some concentration on that in the investments we will see in that programme.

I hope that we will look at water management on both sides: we probably need to store more water for water use—there is plenty of it around at the moment, and it will be galling if we have a long hot summer and then discover we are short of water, given what we have just been through—but we also need that accelerated development of drainage projects and probably more pumps, more dredging and more routes to take water safely away from areas of habitation. It is not good in a first-world country to see the kind of scenes we have seen this winter, with this prolonged period of excess rainfall.

The Budget is going in the right direction. The Bank of England has joined in and is doing the things it ought to be doing—we hope we will not need all that credit, but it is important that those facilities are available against a possible worsening of the virus situation—and I am glad we are making down payments on what we need to do on health and education spending. I have said how I would like the infrastructure money to be accelerated and developed into smaller projects that will really work. We also need more tax reform. My one worry about the Budget is that it does not cut taxes enough; I would like to see more tax cuts. We only have five years to show how fast this economy can grow before the electorate will judge us, and the more the Government cut taxes, the more the economy will grow, and the more we trust people with their own money, the better they will spend it and the better the economy will do. I say to the Government: trust the people and cut taxes more, and then it would be an even better Budget.