Income Tax (Charge)

Lilian Greenwood Excerpts

Thursday 4th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab) [V]]

When people ask me why I became an MP, I explain that I got tired of shouting at the radio. This morning, I found myself shouting at the Chancellor on Radio 4, so this afternoon, I am speaking up for my constituents, because the Government’s decisions are failing them. They have been failing them for more than a decade and it has to change. After all the pain and sacrifice of the last year, we cannot afford to go back to austerity and insecurity.

As the shadow Chancellor, my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), said in opening the debate, the OBR has confirmed that this Government’s failure on the covid crisis has left our country facing the worst economic crisis of any major economy. They have been too slow to act, they have wasted billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on contracts with their cronies that did not even deliver, and they have failed to put in place the financial support that is needed to help people to self-isolate.

Now, instead of putting the UK on the road to recovery and fixing the mistakes of the past, they are repeating them. There is nothing in the Budget for the NHS, even though we know that extra resources are desperately needed to tackle the waiting lists that have grown during the pandemic. There was not even a mention of social care in yesterday’s speech, and the Chancellor’s claim that he is pursuing cross-party consensus is not credible. There was no extra money to help children to catch up on lost schooling, and we know what that means: widening inequalities, hitting kids from low-income families hardest. Yes, there was finally that uplift in universal credit, but the Chancellor is still not helping those on legacy benefits and the cliff-edge cut will hit precisely when unemployment is expected to peak.

And there is worse to come. Now is not the time to raise taxes or cut household spending power, but that is precisely what the Chancellor is doing, forcing councils to implement a 5% hike in council tax, freezing the pay of key workers, taking money out of people’s pockets, cutting the money that they have to spend with local businesses and on our high streets, damaging the recovery. There are further tax rises to come next year alongside £14 billion of cuts to public services.

Local government has already been hit by 10 years of cuts. Adult social care makes up nearly half of Nottingham City Council’s budget. Demand for services is rising and, in more deprived cities such as ours, the social care precept leaves a growing gap. Will the Chancellor apologise to my constituents who have seen their much-needed local services under threat, the families who rely on Summerwood day centre, those who use John Carroll leisure centre and those whose local bus service is set to disappear? Where is the investment that we need to support the recovery and set us up for a successful green future? It simply is not there.

This a terrible Budget. It is a shocking indictment. None of it was inevitable; it is the result of Tory mismanagement. I will not shout, but it makes me want to scream.