Income Tax (Charge)

John Slinger Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[John Slinger (Rugby) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend the Chancellor inspired many people last week, including girls and women. The unfortunate comments from the new Leader of the Opposition about the first Budget by a woman Chancellor are not shared by the young women I have spoken to. My right hon. Friend inspired us MPs too, not merely with big-ticket items such as the core schools budget going up by £2.3 billion, but with a more subtle form of inspiration about the long term. It would be more popular in the short term simply to spend money on public services, but our Government have made difficult choices, such as £5.5 billion-worth of savings and ensuring that public money is spent wisely through the new office for value for money. My right hon. Friend has made tough decisions on tax, spending and welfare to restore our economic stability, which helps my constituents.

Freezing the small business multiplier for one year will protect more than 1,000 small businesses in Rugby constituency from inflationary bill increases. Thousands of my constituents will benefit from the increases in the national minimum wage and national living wage, boosting incomes by up to £1,400, and 1,100 carers in Rugby who are in receipt of carer’s allowance will benefit from the working limit being lifted, allowing them to earn more and still claim. Rugby’s 19,000 pensioners will see the state pension increase by 4.1% with my right hon. Friend the Chancellor maintaining the triple lock—that is more than twice the uplift given to people receiving benefits.

Some in my constituency have expressed concern about local hospital health provision. Labour founded the NHS—we will fix it and we will fund it. It is because of my right hon. Friend’s decisions that this Government can provide an extra £25.7 billion in two years to help cut waiting times, and £1.5 billion capital funding nationally for new surgical hubs and diagnostic scanners. That much-needed investment could not have happened had my right hon. Friend chosen immediate popularity by making unfunded promises that raised perfectly legitimate hopes among the public, just as the last Government did when they promised 40 new hospitals without having funding streams in place. The toxic legacy of that false hope is felt by the public, and expressed to every one of us in our inboxes. This Chancellor, this Labour party, this Government will restore faith in the very concept that government can improve lives.

It would perhaps have been more popular to pretend that there were no difficult decisions, only sunlit uplands, or that green shoots do not require watering and that public services can improve without proper investment. But we do not seek short-term popularity. This Budget lays the foundations for long-term economic stability, growth, investment and fairness, and enables us to begin delivering much-needed change to improve our constituents’ lives. As we do that, we will have the opportunity to earn the trust of the public we serve.