Budget Resolutions
Debate between Keir Starmer and Eleanor Laing(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
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Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)
There we have it: the last desperate act of a party that has failed—Britain in recession, the national credit card maxed out and, despite the measures today, the highest tax burden for 70 years. This is the first Parliament since records began to see living standards fall, as confirmed by the Budget today. That is the Conservatives’ record, and it is still their record—give with one hand and take even more with the other. Nothing they do between now and the election will change that.
Over 14 years, we have seen our fair share of delusion from the Conservative party: a Prime Minister who thinks the cost of living crisis is “starting to ease”, an Education Secretary who thinks concrete crumbling on our children deserves our gratitude, and a former Prime Minister who still believes that crashing the pound was the right path for Britian. Today, we have a new entry into this hall of infamy: the Chancellor, who breezes into this Chamber—in a recession—and tells the working people of this country that everything is on track. Crisis? What crisis? Or, as the captain of the Titanic and the former Prime Minister herself might have said, “Iceberg? What iceberg?” Smiling as the ship goes down, the Chuckle Brothers of decline dream of Santa Monica—or maybe just a quiet life in Surrey, with the Chancellor not having to self-fund his election—while the crew behind them scramble around for a GB News lifeboat.
If only it were not so serious. The story of this Parliament is devastatingly simple: a Conservative party stubbornly clinging to the failed ideas of the past, completely unable to generate the growth that working people need, and forced by that failure to ask them to pay more and more for less and less. As the desperation grows, the Conservatives torch not only their reputation for fiscal responsibility, but any notion that they can serve the country, not themselves—party first, country second, while working people pay the price.
Food prices are still 25% higher than they were two years ago. Rents are up by 10%. It will cost an extra £240 a month for a typical family remortgaging this year, because the Conservatives lost control of the economy. They sent interest rates through the roof, and they made working people pay. They should be under no illusion: that record is how the British people will judge today’s cuts, because the whole country can see exactly what is happening here. They recognise a Tory con when they see it, just as they did in November—give with one hand and take even more with the other.
People have been living through this nonsense for 14 years. They know that the thresholds are still frozen, dragging more and more people into higher taxes. They know that a Tory stealth tax is coming their way in the shape of their next council tax bill. The Levelling Up Secretary has told not just this House but every house in the country that he is coming for their council tax—give with one hand, Gove with the other.
Most insultingly of all, the British people know the only cause that gets this lot out of bed is trying to save their own skin. Take the desperate move, after years of resistance, to finally accept Labour’s argument on the non-dom tax regime. Has there ever been a more obvious example of a Government who are totally bereft of ideas? If they are sincerely in support of that policy, the question they must answer is: why did they not do it earlier? Why did they not stand up to their friends, their funders and their family? If they had followed Labour’s example, 3.8 million extra operations and 1.3 million dental emergency appointments would have taken place by now, and there would have been free breakfast clubs for nearly 4.5 million children. If instead this is just another short-term cynical political gimmick, honestly, what is the point? What is the point of a party that is out of touch, out of ideas and nearly out of road?
We saw this last year as well, when only Labour’s policies on the cost of living made the difference. I say to those on the Conservative Benches who are now a little downbeat about another intellectual triumph for social democracy, I say, “Get used to it!” With this pair in charge, it will not be long before you are asked to defend the removal of private school tax relief as well. The harder they try with cynical games like that, the worse it will get for them, because the whole country can see exactly who they are. Fighting for themselves. Politics, not governing. Party first, country second.
Because we have campaigned to lower the tax burden on working people for the whole Parliament—and we will not stop now—we will support the cuts to national insurance. But I noticed that in 2022 when the Prime Minister was Chancellor, he made this promise:
“I can confirm that…in 2024, for the first time…the basic rate of income tax will be cut from 20p to 19p”.—[Official Report, 23 March 2022; Vol. 711, c. 342.]
Having briefed all week that an income tax cut was coming, that promise is in tatters. Of course we support the fresh investment in our NHS, although I have to note that the Chancellor, when he was Health Secretary 10 years ago, promised to make the NHS paperless by 2018. I know the Prime Minister’s fondness for Elon Musk extends to an enthusiastic embrace of his Community Notes on fact checking, so I will say this bit slowly: Labour supports the fuel duty freeze. That is our policy. I look forward to the Prime Minister’s acknowledgement of that in the coming days. We ask the Chancellor to set out how he will ensure that the policy gets passed on to hard-pressed families at the pump.
For all the fanfare around the tax measures today, this straightforward story remains true: taxes at a 70-year high; the British people paying more for less; and an unprecedented hit to the living standards of working people. This is the first time the Government have gone backwards over a Parliament, and they were cheering that. The reason is equally simple: there is no plan for growth. How can there be? The Chancellor can say “long-term plan” all he likes, but—[Interruption.] Last year he announced 110 growth measures. He said that we had “turned a corner”, but where are we now? Britain is in recession, with an economy smaller than when the Prime Minister entered Downing Street—the textbook definition of decline. That is their record. After 14 years, who do they think feels better off?
Productivity is flat, mortgages are through the roof, house building is off a cliff, worklessness is rising and rising, homelessness has never been higher, crime goes virtually unpunished, children cannot see a dentist and there is sewage in our rivers. Billions and billions of taxpayers’ money has been wasted, including £7 billion by the Prime Minister on covid fraud alone and £500 million on the Rwanda scheme that has achieved precisely nothing. I can keep going. We have a railway line that will never reach our great northern cities. In fact, it might not even reach central London. Billions upon billions for a white elephant without a trunk, while today we learn that taxpayers are picking up the bill for the Science Minister’s libel. And all the time, one thing is growing: the waiting lists in our NHS, now standing at nearly 8 million.
The Government have had 14 years. They are running out of road. This is what decline looks like, and the complacency they have shown today takes your breath away. Britain deserves better than this. Britain deserves a real plan for growth; an end to 14 years of stagnation; wealth creation across the whole of the country; and higher living standards for working people. This is the mission we need, but yet again, what we got was the same tired old formula, the sticking plasters, the chopping and changing, and the party-first, country-second politics with no repudiation of the utterly discredited idea that economic growth is something that the few gift to the many.
Even then, the Chancellor’s Back Benchers are owed an explanation. He says that Britain has grown more quickly than countries such as Germany over the last 14 years, but I am sure they will be shocked to learn that this is a statistical sleight of hand. When it comes to GDP per capita—the growth that makes the difference to the pockets of working people—the Government’s record is much worse. Indeed, in per capita terms our economy has not grown since the first quarter of 2022—the longest period of stagnation Britain has seen since 1955. In fact, the Chancellor invited us to look at those figures. The Office for Budget Responsibility has said that GDP per capita will be 0.75% lower in 2028 than was forecast in November last year. That was the number he said we should watch: 0.75% lower in 2028. The Government can call this a technical recession, but there is nothing technical about working people living in recession for every second the Prime Minister has been in power. This is a Rishi recession.
If Conservative Members really want to know what hides in the Chancellor’s spreadsheets, they will see that it is only the record levels of migration they have delivered that have prevented an even deeper decline. That is the record they must stand on at the election. While we on these Benches do not demean for a second the contribution that migrants make to a thriving economy, it is high time that the Government were honest with the British public about the role migration plays in their economic policy, because right now, in terms of growth, that is all they have. There is nothing else. No plan to get Britain building again with a reformed planning system. No ambition to invest in clean British power for cheaper bills and energy security. No inclination to move away from insecure low-paid jobs and strengthen employment rights so that we can finally make work pay.
Where is the urgency on affordable housing? How can the Government look at Britain now and not see that as a massive priority? Never again will they be allowed to pose as the party of home ownership and aspiration, although I have to say, given the disaster that has befallen their childcare plans, perhaps that is for the best. The cost of childcare is a huge challenge for millions. Parents need the Chancellor to deliver on his promise. It seems that he has been taking lessons on marketing from the Willy Wonka Experience in Glasgow: all is not as it seems. With just over three weeks to go, he has to come clean, because up and down the country parents need to know: will they get their entitlement in April, or is this just another of the Government’s reckless promises on governing? Headlines over delivery. Promises without plans. Policies that unravel at the first contact with reality. The lesson is crystal clear that those who broke our economy cannot be trusted to repair it. The Tory credit rating is zero. It is time for change with Labour.
That is what today’s Budget should have been about: a last chance for the Government to show that they understand the economic reality of our volatile world, that global supply chains can be weaponised by tyrants like Putin, that a sticking-plaster approach to public investment will cost Britain more in the long run, and that trickle-down nonsense means that working people pay the price. It could even have been a moment of contrition, a reflection on their fiscal recklessness or perhaps an apology for the ridiculous chaos that they have inflicted on businesses, communities and investors in this country. And yet there is still no stable industrial strategy, still no national wealth fund to crowd in private investment, still no urgency on speeding up critical infrastructure projects and no recognition that they have left in tatters our standing as a country that always keeps its promises.
And if they do not like that accusation, they should look no further than the grotesque spectacle of the Government ducking their responsibility to the victims of the infected blood and Horizon scandals.
“This is one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in our nation’s history.”—[Official Report, 10 January 2024; Vol. 743, c. 288.]
Those were the Prime Minister’s words just two months ago. Today, justice has been kicked beyond the general election. Britain can see exactly who they are, and the reality is that there is no path to economic stability and no way to a calmer, less chaotic politics with the Conservative party in power, because chaos is now their worldview.
It is a mindset that sees Britain’s problems as opportunities that the Conservative party can exploit, whether, like the Chancellor, it is out of desperation because they cannot solve them, or whether, like the right hon. and learned Member for Fareham (Suella Braverman) and the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), it is because they have no intention of solving them. For a party this weak and divided, the end result is always the same: a vicious downward spiral with chaos feeding off decline and decline feeding off chaos, while working people pay the price.
The British people know that this will not stop. Five more years and it will only get worse. There will be no change of direction without a change of Government, and that leaves Britain as a nation in limbo, unable to shake off the Tory chaos that dragged us into recession, loaded the tax burden on to the backs of working people and maxed out the nation’s credit card.
Britain deserves a Government who are ready to take tough decisions, to give our public services an immediate cash injection, to stick to fiscal rules without complaint, to fight for the living standards of working people and to deliver a sustainable plan for growth. We say to the Chancellor and the Prime Minister that it is time to break the habit of 14 years, to stop the dithering, the delay and the uncertainty, and to confirm 2 May as the date of the next general election, because Britain deserves better and Labour is ready. [Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I will not demand silence now, as this is the moment for cheering.
I call the Chair of the Treasury Committee.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Keir Starmer and Eleanor Laing(4 months, 3 weeks ago)
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The Prime Minister
I have slightly lost the thread of the question. The simple point is that if you believe in stopping the boats, as we on this side of the House do, you need to have effective deterrence and a returns agreement. It is as simple as that.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman is not interested in stopping the boats, which is why he is not interested in the Rwanda plan. In fact, we know they do not want to tackle this issue, because even when this Government were trying to deport foreign national offenders from this country, they opposed it. Multiple shadow Front Benchers signed a letter to me to that effect, but I do not need to tell him that, because he signed it too! [Interruption.]
Keir Starmer
I would say that this treaty has more holes than a Swiss cheese, but I do not want to wind up the Prime Minister by talking about a European country again.
I have to give credit to the Rwandan Government. They saw the Prime Minister coming a mile off. I can only imagine their delight and sheer disbelief when, having already banked £140 million of British taxpayers’ money without housing a single asylum seeker, the Prime Minister appeared again with another offer they cannot refuse—a gimmick will send taxpayers’ money to Rwanda and refugees from Rwanda to Britain, and will not stop the boats. There was mention of Margaret Thatcher earlier—[Hon. Members: “More!”]
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. There is understandable excitement about the mention of the name, but the House must listen to the Leader of the Opposition.
Keir Starmer
How did the Tory party go from “Up yours Delors” to “Take our money, Kagame”?
Keir Starmer
Forget the private jet; the Prime Minister is obviously on a private planet of his own. Daily Mail readers learned this week that he has begun to feel sorry for himself. He has even been heard comparing his plight to his beloved Southampton football club. I think that is a bit harsh, because the Saints have been on an 11-game unbeaten run while, as the song has it, the Prime Minister gets battered everywhere he goes.
If we want the perfect example of how badly the Tories have broken the asylum system, last week the Home Office admitted that 17,000 people in the asylum system—[Interruption.]
Keir Starmer
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
If we want the perfect example of how badly the Tories have broken the asylum system, last week the Home Office admitted that 17,000 people in the asylum system have disappeared. These are its exact words, and they are hard to believe:
“I don’t think we know where all those people are”.
Now, you might lose your car keys, you might lose your headphones, you might lose your marbles, but how do you lose 17,000 people?
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation
Debate between Keir Starmer and Eleanor Laing(1 year, 1 month ago)
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Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. May I say that it is good to see you back in the Chair?
For all the hype, this is a Budget for growth that downgrades the growth forecast. The Chancellor’s opening boast was that things are not quite as bad now as they were in October last year after the kamikaze Budget. The more he pretends everything is fine, the more he shows just how out of touch the Government are. After 13 years of his Government, our economy needed major surgery, but this Budget leaves us, like millions across our country, stuck in the waiting room with only a sticking plaster to hand. Our country is set on a path of managed decline, falling behind our competitors—the sick man of Europe once again.
This was a day for ambition, for bringing us together with purpose and intent, for unlocking the pride that is in every community and matching their belief in the possibilities of the future, but after today we know that the Tory cupboard is as bare as the salad aisle in our supermarkets. The lettuces may be out, but the turnips are in: a hopelessly divided party, caught between a rock of decline and a hard place of its own economic recklessness, dressing up stagnation as stability as the expiry date looms ever closer.
The figures published today spell it out: a year of stagnation, with growth non-existent. According to the International Monetary Fund, we are the worst-performing country in the G7 this year—a prediction today confirmed by the Office for Budget Responsibility, with growth downgraded in the years to come. This is a failure that can be measured not just by the figures, but by the empty pockets of working people right across the country: 13 years without wage growth, 13 years no better off, 13 years stuck in a doom loop of lower growth, higher taxes and broken public services.
The OBR makes it clear today that things do not look any better in the long run. A broken labour market is holding back our prospects. There are 7 million on NHS waiting lists. Ill health and disability are on the rise, and the consequences, as we have just heard, have been deferred to the future. It is the classic short-term, sticking-plaster cycle: decisions cynically ducked today; pain for working people tomorrow.
It does not have to be like this. Britain has enormous potential. In science, innovation and technology, we should be leading, not lagging. We need an industrial strategy that removes barriers to investment, but the announcements today are nowhere near the mark. The lowest investment in the G7: that is the Government’s record. All our competitors know this. They are gearing up for an almighty race, for the opportunities of tomorrow, and we have to be on the start line, not back in the changing room tying our laces.
The Chancellor mentioned the war in Ukraine. Of course the Opposition stand with Ukraine, and we stand with the Government’s response to Putin’s brutality. We will look carefully at the details of the military spending announced, and we will support them, but what we cannot accept is the use of the war as a blanket excuse for failure.
Our economy has weak foundations. Global crises hit Britain more than other countries. Wages in this country are lower now in real terms than they were 13 years ago. The average French family are a tenth richer; the average German family a fifth richer. Those countries faced the same pandemic and those countries face the same war. The war did not ban onshore wind, the war did not scrap our home insulation scheme, the war did not run down our gas storage facilities—the Government did, with decisions that hurt working people battling the cost of living crisis right now. It has been the same story for the whole 13 years: always the sticking plaster, never the cure, and today’s Budget does nothing to change that. Again, we see a failure to grip the long-term challenges—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. People should not be speaking while the Leader of the Opposition is delivering his speech. They should be listening. We will now listen to the Leader of the Opposition.
Keir Starmer
Today’s Budget changes nothing. Again, we see a failure to grip the long-term challenges and no determination to create growth, which unlocks the potential of the many. Working people are being made to pay for Tory choices and Tory mistakes.
These are the organising principles of Conservative economics, and we should judge them by their choices: the running down of our public services, paid for by working people; the disaster of the Tory mortgage premium, paid for by working people; the opportunities still missed for a proper windfall tax, paid for by working people. That is what makes the Chancellor’s boasts about lower inflation so ridiculous—the idea that it is a tax cut. British people can see through that. They see their tax burden at its highest level for 70 years, and they know it is not the Government who are lowering inflation. It is working people, earning less and enjoying less. It is their sacrifice that is helping to bring inflation down, and they deserve better than another cheap trick from the Government of gimmicks, making them pay while trying to claim the credit.
Even with the price guarantee, the average energy bill has doubled in 18 months. Because of the Government’s recklessness, the average mortgage payment is up by £2,000 a year—a massive hit to living standards, however they cook the books. And yet there is still no real ambition on industrial strategy, no real ambition on the clean energy that will give us cheaper bills, no real ambition on house building. We are seeing the same old Tory choices, with sticking-plaster politics, no growth for the many, and working people paying.
Let us turn to “his” policies on the cost of living. I say “his” policies because there is a history to this—a pattern. Over the course of the whole cost of living crisis, time and again it is Labour who brings the Government not just to their senses, but to our position. Who first pushed for the energy price guarantee? Labour. Who first called for a proper windfall tax? Labour. Who first stood by people on prepayment meters? Labour. Who first said we should freeze the price guarantee this April? Labour. And we can go on, because it is also Labour that first committed to extending the fuel duty cut—a policy that, in January, the Chancellor dismissed, as part of a dossier that he published. So for one poor soul in their research team at least, this really is a back-to-work Budget. I have a word of advice for the Chancellor as he promotes this policy in the coming days: use your own car, and for heaven’s sake make sure you know how to use a debit card. I look forward to the Prime Minister promoting the swimming pools policy. He will not have to borrow one of those—unlike the car.
The cost of living crisis is not over, and once again the Government have left money on the table when it comes to oil and gas companies—money that could have been better spent on working people. Politics is about whose side you are on. There are loopholes that urgently need closing. Even the former CEO of Shell admitted that the companies should be paying more. The long-term plan just is not there. We are seeing the same old Tory choices and the same three principles—sticking-plaster politics, no growth for the many, working people pay—and we are seeing those principles at play in our broken labour market.
Much of what the Chancellor said today focused on that, as well it might. The figures announced in this Budget show how damaging the current situation is to growth—a long-term drag on our ability to create more wealth. Our inactivity levels are particularly shocking, up by half a million since the pandemic, and ours is the worst jobs recovery in the G7. More people are unable to work because of ill health than ever before.
We will look at what the Chancellor has announced today, because we on these Benches have long called for reform of the work capability assessment, and for a welfare system that supports people with disabilities and long-term health conditions and helps them to thrive at work. The universal credit system must help people into employment, and childcare is a huge barrier to that. We have made the case for reform.
When it comes to childcare, of course more money in the system is obviously a good thing—[Interruption.] They obviously were not listening when he told us when he was actually going to do it. We have seen the Tories expand so-called free hours before. As parents up and down the country know, it is no use having more free hours if you cannot access them, and it pushes up the costs for parents outside the offer. That is what we have seen before.
On pensions, the Chancellor made a big spending commitment that will benefit those with the broadest shoulders when many people are struggling to save into their pensions. We needed a fix for doctors, but the announcement today is a huge giveaway to some of the very wealthiest. The only permanent tax cut in the Budget is for the richest 1%. How can that possibly be a priority for this Government?
The truth is that our labour market is the cast-iron example of an economy with weak foundations. Our crisis in participation simply has not happened elsewhere—not to this extent. It is a feature of Tory Britain, and global excuses will not wash. We need a wider reform agenda. Instead of making working people pay, we need to make work pay. We need to move on from growth that is based on insecure, low-paid jobs to growth that comes from good work and strong employment rights and can deliver higher productivity: growth from the many, for the many, that makes people better off in all parts of our country.
I welcome the Chancellor’s announcements on devolution deals. The principle that we should push power out of Westminster is fully supported on this side of the House. In fact, we want him to go further: communities beyond Birmingham and Manchester deserve the right powers, and the same powers, to drive growth as well.
But the Chancellor is a former Health Secretary, and a published author on health, no less—he gave me a signed copy of his book. He knows that growth needs an NHS fit for the future, and no country can be fit for work when there are 7 million people on hospital waiting lists. So I was waiting for him to match Labour’s ambition—waiting for him to match our plan to train more doctors and nurses and to tackle the capacity crisis, a policy that he publicly praised just 15 days before becoming Chancellor. And yet it never came. If ever there was a symbol of the poverty of ambition, that is it, because the reality is that a country getting sicker is a country getting poorer, and a country getting poorer is a country getting sicker. Health and wealth must go together. Britain cannot afford to be the sick man of Europe. Britain cannot afford the Tories.
And there is another way. On these Benches, we understand that institutions must be respected, that constraints must be accepted, that fiscal rules should be sound and followed rigorously, and that every pound is precious and must not be wasted. The Tories want to shout about their record, so let them shout. Wages: lower. Taxes: higher. Borrowing: higher. Debt: higher. Their chaos has a cost.
Certainty is vital for the growth that we need, essential for businesses and investors in our country. As we have spelt out, compared with a blanket cut in corporation tax, investment allowances are the right approach, but the question that many businesses will ask today is this: how long before the wind blows again, and we all go through this again? That is what the Tories do not understand about business investment. Their endless fighting on tax is bad for growth, in and of itself. Real stability means that taxes do not go up and down like yo-yos, and the R&D tax credit regime does not get overhauled twice in six months. [Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. Okay, that is enough. I now cannot hear the right hon. and learned Gentleman at all—and it is nothing to do with being old. Now, be quiet.
Keir Starmer
Let me give an example of that instability. It is a bit of a fraught subject at the moment, but when the Chancellor was Culture Secretary he apparently took some lessons on the rules of football. Let me provide a refresher. The number of times his Government have broken their fiscal rules: 11. That is one football team. The number of times they have changed corporation tax policy: 22. That is two teams—you have got a game. But if he wants the post-match analysis, he will have to consult the experts, who will be back on his screens and ours this weekend. I know that the whole House will want to applaud that.
But a Budget is about not just the choices made but the choices ignored. Britain needs more than certainty for growth; that is the least we should expect. We need change, stability and success. Anyone listening to this who is worried about NHS waiting lists or about crime going unpunished—[Interruption.] They do not want to hear about the waiting lists. They do not want to hear about crime going unpunished. Housebuilding rates are falling. I suppose they do not want to hear about that either. They will have heard very little that makes them feel hopeful about our future.
The Government could have used sensible taxation policies on non-doms or oil and gas companies and made the money work for working people. They could have tackled the vested interests that gum up our planning system and shown real ambition on the investment we need to turn us into a green growth superpower. That was the test today: could we move beyond the usual sticking-plaster solutions and set a new direction for growth that serves the interests of working people?
I am afraid that the verdict on this Budget is clear: they will not offer change because they cannot. And so our course is set: managed decline, Britain going backwards, the sick man of Europe once again. That is the Britain they have created and they should look it in the eye, because today’s figures on growth put their failures up in lights. After 13 years of Tory sticking-plaster politics, 13 years of no growth for the many and 13 years of being asked to pay, working people are entitled to ask, “Am I any better off than I was before?” After 13 years, with no excuses left, nobody left to blame, no ambition or answers, the resounding answer is no, and they know it.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. We will just let things settle down a bit. If people are leaving, please will they do so quickly and quietly, out of consideration for everybody else who is still taking part in the debate? Get a move on. I call the Chair of the Treasury Committee.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation
Debate between Keir Starmer and Eleanor Laing(3 years, 1 month ago)
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Keir Starmer
The Prime Minister says, “Rubbish.” That is no doubt because the kickstart scheme is helping only one in 100 eligible young people—rubbish is the right word, Prime Minister. In six months, it has supported just 2,000 young people, yet youth unemployment is set to reach 1 million. Like so much of this Budget, the Chancellor’s offer is nowhere near the scale of the task.
Of course, the biggest challenge for this country is the climate emergency. The Chancellor just talked up his green credentials, but his Budget stops way short of what was needed or what is happening in other countries. This Budget should have included a major green stimulus, bringing forward billions of pounds of investment to create new jobs and new green infrastructure. Instead, the Government are trying to build a new coalmine, which we now learn might not even work for British Steel. If anything sums up this Government’s commitment to a green recovery and jobs for the future, it is building a coalmine that we cannot even use.
If the Government were serious about tackling insecurity and helping those most at risk from covid, this Budget would have fixed the broken system of statutory sick pay and, at the very least, filled the glaring holes in isolation payments. This is not difficult to fix. The Government should just make the £500 isolation payment available to everyone who needs it. That would be money well spent, and, a year into the pandemic, it is a disgrace that it is not made available.
If the Government were serious about fixing the broken housing market, they would have announced plans for a new generation of genuinely affordable council houses. Instead, 230,000 council homes have been lost since 2010, yet the Chancellor focused today on returning to subsidising 95% of mortgages. I know what Members are thinking: “I’ve heard that somewhere before.” Perhaps it was because the Prime Minister announced it five months ago in his conference speech? No, I do not think anybody heard that. I remember now: it is what Osborne and Cameron came up with in 2013. What did that do? It fuelled a housing bubble, pushed up prices, and made owning a home more difficult—so much for generation buy! I have been saying for weeks that this Budget will go backwards, but I did not expect the Chancellor to lift a failed policy from eight years ago.
This Budget fell far short of the transformative change that we need to turbo-charge our recovery for the decades to come. There was no credible plan to ease the burden of debt hanging over so many businesses, which is estimated at £70 billion. This Budget asks businesses to start paying that money back whether they are profitable or not. That affects millions of businesses. It will hold back growth, because businesses will have to pay back money they never wanted to borrow, instead of being able to invest in their futures and create jobs in their local areas. It is both unfair and economically illiterate.
This Budget also falls far short of what was needed to support the self-employed and freelancers, unless, of course, they are one of the Chancellor’s photographers. After a year of inaction, we will look at the details of what the Chancellor announced, but, from the figure of 600,000 that he mentioned, it certainly looks like millions will still be left out in the cold.
The Chancellor’s one nominally long-term policy was in his references to levelling up, but what does that actually look like? It is not the transformative shift in power, wealth and resources that we need to rebalance our economy. It is not the bold long-term plan that we need to upskill our economy, to tackle educational attainment or to raise life expectancy. It certainly is not a plan to focus Government resources on preventive services and early years. For the Chancellor, levelling up seems to mean moving some parts of the Treasury to Darlington, creating a few free ports, and re-announcing funding. That is not levelling up; it is giving up.
Instead of putting blind faith in free ports, the Chancellor would be better served by making sure that the Government’s Brexit deal actually works: for Britain’s manufacturers, now facing more red tape when they were promised less; for our financial services, still waiting for the Chancellor to make good on his promises; for the small businesses and fishing communities, whose goods and produce are now left unsold in warehouses; and for our artists and performers, who just want to be able to tour.
Turning to other parts of the statement, we will wait for the detail about the so-called super deduction, but it is unlikely to make up for the 10 years when the levels of investment growth have trailed so many other countries. Of course we welcome the creation of the national infrastructure bank, which is something for which we have called for years, although it would have been better if the Government had not sold off the Green Investment Bank in the first place. We also welcome the introduction of green saving bonds. I have to say what a good idea it is to introduce a new set of recovery bonds.
The trouble is that the scale of what the Chancellor announced today is nowhere near ambitious enough. The long-overdue commitments to extend furlough, business rate relief and the VAT cut on hospitality are welcome, but there is no excuse for holding the announcement of that support back until today, and of course we will look at the detail.
There are very few silver linings in this Budget. The IMF and the OECD have said that now is not the time for tax rises. We are in the middle of a once-in-300-years crisis. Our economy is still shut and our businesses are on life support, so it is right that corporation tax is not rising this year or next. In the long run, corporation tax should go up. The decade-long corporation tax experiment by this Government has failed, but no taxes should be raised in the teeth of this economic crisis, so it is extraordinary that the Chancellor is ploughing ahead with a £2 billion council tax rise affecting households across the country. Why is he doing that when every economist would tell him not to? Perhaps we find the answer in this week’s Sunday Times, which quoted a source saying that the Chancellor’s argument was:
“Let’s do it all now as far away from the election as possible.”
The Telegraph on 27 January reported:
“Raising taxes now means they can be reduced ahead of the next election, Rishi Sunak tells Tory MPs”.
The Mail in September reported that the Chancellor was to hike taxes and then lower them before the next election. Let me be crystal clear: the proper basis for making tax decisions is the economic cycle, not the electoral cycle.
Behind the spin, the videos and the photo ops, we all know that the Chancellor does not believe in an active and enterprising Government. We know he is itching to get back to his free market principles and to pull away support as quickly as he can. One day, these restrictions will end. One day we will all be able to take our masks off, and so will the Chancellor, and then we will see who he really is. This Budget sets it up perfectly, because this is a Budget that did not even attempt to rebuild the foundations of our economy or to secure the country’s long-term prosperity. Instead, it did the job the Chancellor always intended: a quick fix, papering over the cracks.
The Conservatives spent a decade weakening the foundations of our economy. Now they pretend they can rebuild it, but the truth is that they will not confront what went wrong in the past and they have no plan for the future.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
We now go by video link to the Chairman of the Treasury Committee.