Budget Resolutions

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 28th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

On a positive note, I welcome the proposed tax on single use plastic packaging. We know the huge environmental damage that is being done and, at the moment, there is little pressure on producers to reduce resource use and to make their packaging recyclable. It is left to local councils to clear up the mess and to local taxpayers to foot the bill.

I am afraid that that is about the only thing in the Budget that I feel inclined to welcome. Figures show that the public sector pay cap has reduced the disposable income of workers in my constituency by more than £45 million since 2010. Last week, I met representatives from the Royal College of Nursing to hear how low pay is causing a recruitment crisis: applications to study nursing have fallen by almost a quarter this year, at a time of acute staff shortages in the NHS. For nurses, who have seen a real-terms drop in their earnings of 14% since 2010, this Budget offered nothing.

What I am hearing from those charged with delivering essential public services in Bristol is that we simply cannot go on like this any longer. Bristol City Council is having to find more so-called savings worth £100 million over the next five years. Non-statutory services are being cut to the bone. What was particularly shameful was the complete failure by the Chancellor to mention social care, which accounts for close to a quarter of the council’s budget.

Avon and Somerset’s police and crime commissioner and chief constable were in Parliament last week. They did all they could when faced with Government demands for savings worth £66 million: modernising the way they conduct policing and streamlining their operations. They have been widely commended for the way in which they went about making those savings. Despite the loss of more than 600 officers since 2010, because of the cuts, neighbourhood policing was protected. The police and crime commissioner and chief constable said that the reward for all their work was to be told by the Government that they needed to come up with another £17 million of savings. They were here to tell Ministers that it simply cannot be done. They will not be able to provide the police service that the public expect and deserve if these cuts go ahead, but the Government are not listening to them, and there was not one mention of policing in England and Wales in the Chancellor’s speech.

Another example is St Brendan’s, a sixth-form college in my constituency, which was commended for its financial management by Ofsted in February. The principal is now telling me that he cannot go on like this. Sixth-form funding has been frozen at £4,000 per pupil since 2015—a real-term cut of more than £200. He is determined not to cut the curriculum, as many school sixth forms have been forced to do. This Government pay lip service to social mobility, but in truth they are squeezing young people’s life chances and denying them educational opportunities and the extra-curricular support they need.

The economic picture revealed by the Chancellor in his Budget shows us that austerity is not working. A braver Chancellor would have acknowledged that, put up his hand and admitted that he had got it wrong and chosen to invest in our councils, in our schools, in our colleges and in our nurses and police. The Budget was a failure.