Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Kim Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab) [V]]

Today, we needed to see a Budget fit for the crises we are facing, one which fundamentally reshapes the foundations of our economy and delivers an ambitious programme to provide better living standards, protect jobs and livelihoods, and deliver strong public services, but it falls short of a long-term recovery plan and investment in our public services, including the NHS, schools and particularly local councils.

The Chancellor’s speech today included a lot of cheap headlines and stolen rhetoric, but no substance. Still deep in the throes of a public health emergency and staring down the barrel of a recession and an unemployment crisis on the scale of the great depression, tinkering at the edges just will not do. The gloss and spin do nothing to hide the fact that this Budget has done little to address the vital issues of deepening poverty, inequality and insecurity at work. Instead, it does the bare minimum to prop up the current system and kick the can down the road on the jobs and debt crisis.

It is indefensible that the Chancellor has only extended universal credit by six months. A lifeline for millions of the most vulnerable will be wiped out at the same time as furlough ends, and this will push hundreds of thousands of people deeper into poverty, including the 14,000 people on universal credit in Liverpool, Riverside. With 4.2 million children living in poverty in the UK today—many of them in my own constituency, which has a high of 30.4% compared with a national average of 18.4%—this Budget should have taken steps to tackle the child poverty crisis by making the universal credit uplift permanent, extending it to apply to legacy benefits, abolishing the cruel benefits cap and ending the two-child limit.

While the extra measures that have been announced to support people and retain jobs during the pandemic are of course welcome, including the extension to furlough, we need to see steps taken in relation to the existing gaps, including support for the 3 million excluded, who have been systematically abandoned by this Government and left to survive the crisis without support. We know that the inability to self-isolate for many workers has been a key driver of covid, due to the low rates of statutory sick pay, precarious contracts that prevent workers taking time off and the no recourse to public funds policy that prevents most migrants from accessing state support. Instead of raising SSP, the Chancellor has chosen to cut it in real terms at the height of a pandemic by raising it by just 50p. Let us call it what it is: an utter failure of public policy and leadership.

I am a very proud Scouser, and I am privileged to represent such a resilient city, which always fights back to protect its people, but let us have a fair fight. Give us the money we need to protect jobs and livelihoods and keep our economy growing, and we will respond by supporting our businesses and our workforces to come back much stronger.