Budget Resolutions
Julie Minns Excerpts(1 year, 4 months ago)
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The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Tulip Siddiq)
It is an absolute honour to make the closing speech on this historic Budget. It is historic for two reasons. First, it is the first ever Budget to be delivered by a woman—the first female Chancellor of the Exchequer after 800 years. She has smashed the glass ceiling, and I hope all the women and young girls watching know that they can be in the driving seat of a Labour Government. Secondly, it is historic because we are finally wiping the slate clean and turning the page on 14 years of Tory incompetence, chaos and outright instability. This Budget will make meaningful change by focusing on the fundamentals.
Ms Julie Minns (Carlisle) (Lab)
Does the Minister agree that one of the best ways of celebrating this Budget is with a pint of locally brewed beer? Does she agree that the consultation on the pubs code announced by the Government in the Budget statement will be joyful to the ears of local, independent breweries in all our constituencies?
Tulip Siddiq
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. I know that she is a doughty champion of the pubs in Carlisle. The pubs in my constituency are celebrating the penny off pints.
Let me get back to the previous Government, who were wrong when they claimed that they would fix the roof while the sun was shining. While chasing a budget surplus— for which, 14 years later, all they had to show was catastrophic public finances—they merely painted over the ever-growing cracks in the bedrock of our society and our country. That is why this Government are right to focus on fixing the foundations of our economy, because that is the only way that we can change the country, deliver for working people and rebuild Britain. Of course, buying a home is harder if the seller has misled us about its true condition by underestimating the size and cost of any required repairs. In that sense, rebuilding our economy is no different, because the previous Government’s public spending plans existed only on paper; there was no real allocation of money to back up any of the spending plans. They behaved no better than some huckster trying desperately to sell a flat that they know will never be built.
That is why the OBR has said that, had it been made aware of the scale of the spending pressures during the spring 2024 Budget, its assessment of the previous Government’s spending plans would have been “materially different”. That is why it was right that we took our time to conduct a full survey of the economic inheritance that they left us.
Pub and Hospitality Sector
Julie Minns Excerpts(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Ms Julie Minns (Carlisle) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz. May I also add my thanks to the hon. Member for Mid Leicestershire (Mr Bedford) for bringing this debate?
As the Member for Carlisle, I can make a unique claim in this debate: the pubs and breweries of Carlisle were, for a period of 50 years, nationalised. What people drank, where they drank it, and when they drank it were determined just up the road from here, in Whitehall. Understanding that rather unusual state of affairs means returning to 1916: war is raging in Europe and just across the border, in Gretna, lies Europe’s largest munitions factory. Meanwhile, down the road in Carlisle lies one of the finest collections of pubs and breweries. Sadly, the bounteous supply of both beer and ordnance was not a match made in heaven, and the Government nationalised the pubs in 1916, and so that remained until 1973.
The reason that is relevant today is that when those pubs were privatised, they were sold off in large job lots, which means that, even to this day, the majority of our pubs in Carlisle remain in the ownership of the large breweries. What that means for the independent breweries, such as Great Corby, the Carlisle Brewing Company, West Walls Brewing Co. and the Old Vicarage in Walton, is that getting their product into our pubs is difficult. I therefore urge the Minister to raise with his colleagues the application of the pubs code, so that we can ensure that more of our independent breweries have access to the customers in pubs in all our constituencies.
The final point I would like to make, again, to support our wonderful independent breweries, is that we should consider increasing draft beer relief to 20%, which the Society of Independent Brewers and others estimate would be a huge boost not just to our local businesses but to the whole economy.