Budget Statement

Lord Haskel Excerpts

Friday 12th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Haskel (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, as well as welcoming the maiden speakers, I welcome the Chancellor’s short-term methods to deal with the immediate effects of the pandemic on jobs and businesses. But that is the easy part. As other noble Lords have mentioned, the harder part is to deal with our longer-term needs of productivity and growth, Brexit and our future trading relationships.

Where there was some action, it seemed to be prompted by a rather old-fashioned view of business; we tried freeports and closed them. Modern firms are defined by capability, much of it resulting from intangible investment. This is how we developed the new vaccines. In this modern world, fiscal allowances are less of a consideration. Capital expenditure and investment is, more and more, investment in transport, water, power and systems of payments. But it has to go hand in hand with investment in education, welfare and public health. This is what helps to create the work which builds value, improves productivity and raises GDP—working together in this modern economy. The Budget hardly recognised this. The Budget was also weak on decarbonisation. Freezing fuel duty does not help achieve carbon neutrality, and there was silence on carbon border taxes.

In spite of today’s advancement, there is a distinct lack of trade strategy, and industrial strategy was hardly mentioned. Where there was a strategy—such as levelling up—it was clearly political, not economic, as the methodology published yesterday demonstrated. This is a short-term Budget neglecting our long-term problems.