Autumn Statement Resolutions

Keir Mather Excerpts

Monday 27th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Keir Mather (Selby and Ainsty) (Lab)]

I will make some brief remarks on the tone of the autumn statement and the expectations that it creates in contrast with the reality that so many face at home in Selby and Ainsty.

First, on wages and personal taxation, the Chancellor appears bullish that a 2% cut to national insurance or a £1-an-hour increase in the minimum wage is enough for a nurse in South Milford, a shop worker in Selby or a teacher in Riccall, but local people in my constituency need only look at their bank balances, mortgage rates or receipts at the till to see how empty those supposedly generous promises are. A £1-an-hour minimum wage increase will not touch the sides for families when food inflation remains at 10%. Parents will keep putting items back on the shelf at the supermarket, and shoplifting for staples such as baby formula will continue to rise—formula for which, incidentally, the price has risen by 45% in the past two years. A 2% increase in national insurance amounts to little when the Government have already implemented tax rises equivalent to a 10% NI increase since the last election.

The Government have presided over the largest fall in living standards since records began, and this is the first Parliament in modern British history where people will be worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. In the face of that damning context, the Government should come clean about the fact that their announcements will do little to offset the high-tax, high-interest-rate, high-inflation economic reality that the Conservative party has created.

Secondly, we should, it appears, be grateful for the hard choices that the Chancellor has made to create the headroom for these measures—as if decreasing inflation had been achieved by the party that wilfully endorsed the catastrophic mini-Budget of the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) last year, and not by the efforts of the Bank of England and the economic sacrifice of mortgage holders across Selby and Ainsty, and across the rest of our country.

The deeper point is that these tax cuts are not pain free. Instead, they will be financed by baking in an era of austerity that the Resolution Foundation has called “implausible”. This is an irresponsible Chancellor, dodging the hard choices and leaving a future Government to foot the bill. He said that

“borrowing is just a deferred tax on future generations.”—[Official Report, 22 November 2023; Vol. 741, c. 328.]

However, I need not remind one of the architects of the austerity agenda that spending cuts that are too deep will drain Britain of its productive capacity, continue to stifle growth, and cause the poorest in our society to suffer. Once again it will be my generation who are forced to pay the price for this decade of Tory recklessness.

The Secretary of State has announced that we are leaning into an era of “compassionate” government as a result of this autumn statement, so I turn to the work capability assessment and the reforms that will, in the words of an executive member of the charity Scope,

“ramp up sanctions and demonise disabled people.”

The Government have an obligation to solve the long-term labour shortages and economic inactivity that prevent economic growth. Instead, their reforms amount to little more than a transparent gimmick that will punish the most vulnerable in society while the Government do too little to address the sky-high waiting lists that hold back our labour market.

Despite their claims to be the voice of change, this autumn statement shows that we are dealing with the same old Conservatives. People in Selby and Ainsty pay more to get less, and the most vulnerable suffer along the way. My hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor said it best when she asked whether people would

“feel better off after 13 years of Conservative Government”—[Official Report, 22 November 2023; Vol. 741, c. 342.]

and another piecemeal autumn statement. The answer, for mortgage holders, business owners, young families, doctors, nurses, teachers and all those who rely on our public services, is a resounding no. As ever, we repeat the call for this Government to call a general election to deliver the Labour Government that the people of Selby and Ainsty so desperately need.

Oral Answers to Questions

Keir Mather Excerpts

Monday 13th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

8. What steps his Department is taking to reduce the number of children experiencing destitution.

[Keir Mather (Selby and Ainsty) (Lab)]

9. What steps his Department is taking to reduce the number of children experiencing destitution.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

23. What steps his Department is taking to reduce the number of children experiencing destitution.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mel Stride]

The common theme in all the questions that we have had on this substantive question is a lack of memory as to what happened under the previous Labour Government. Under that Government, we had 1 million more workless households and 680,000 more children in those workless households.

[Keir Mather]

In the past six months, the Trussell Trust has issued 769 emergency food parcels for children in my constituency. In some schools that I visit, teachers bring food from their homes to feed hungry kids. Will the Minister step up and take responsibility for this, or, instead, move out of the way for a Labour Government committed to making child poverty a thing of the past?

[Mel Stride]

Heaven forbid that we do have another Labour Government, Mr Speaker, because I have just set out the case against the last one and their appalling record on poverty. When it comes to cost of living payments, those went to 8 million low-income households and to 6 million people with disabilities. There will be further payments of £300 for pensioners alongside the winter fuel payment in the coming months.