Budget Resolutions

Kate Osborne Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kate Osborne (Jarrow) (Lab)]

It is an honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood).

This is a Budget that has nothing to do with levelling up or building back better; it is the same old Tory economic policy that will squeeze people on middle incomes while giving a tax cut to the super-rich. How can the Chancellor justify cutting taxes for the super-rich while increasing national insurance contributions? The consequence will be that a person on an average income can expect their real income to fall next year once tax increases and inflation are taken into account. Alongside falling incomes, there will be rising energy prices, rising council tax, the withdrawal of furlough, continued use of the disgraceful practice of fire and rehire, and the axing of the £20 universal credit uplift.

This Budget does nothing to mitigate those issues. It risks leaving the vast majority behind in pay and in the public services that we all rely on. We should have seen reforms in it to create a fairer tax system in which the wealthiest in our society pay a fairer share through a wealth tax that helps to fund public investment to create good green jobs and a net zero economy. Instead, we have seen no action on the climate emergency—in fact, the Chancellor has opted needlessly to cut taxes on domestic flights. In the week of COP26, that is just astounding, as is the Prime Minister’s decision to fly to Glasgow rather than use the rail network.

Although there are some changes in the Chancellor’s Budget—such as the reduction in the universal credit taper and the rise in the minimum wage to £9.50 an hour—that will have some impact on incomes, sadly they will not be enough. The public sector pay freeze should be truly ended with an above-inflation rise and the minimum wage should be lifted to the level of a real living wage that people can survive on.

Despite the claims of levelling up, this Budget offers nothing to get our key public services back to where they were before 2010. The Government have said that spending on schools will return to 2010 per-pupil levels by 2025. That means that there has been no extra investment in our children’s education for 15 years, despite what the Secretary of State for Education said earlier today.

Even the funding planned for the NHS falls well below what has been delivered in the past and what many believe is needed now. Since 2010, the Government have put in less than half of the NHS’s historic spending growth rate of 3.6% per year since its creation. After more than a decade of cuts and the pandemic, our services are under enormous strain, and it is showing. Our public services are crucial to improving people’s everyday lives, and they are key to creating a more equal and just society.

This Budget was a missed opportunity to increase living standards for the many, to improve our public services and to invest in our communities. It does very little for the north-east and for constituencies such as Jarrow, where levelling up is still something of which we have yet to see any evidence.