Budget Resolutions

Lucy Powell Excerpts

Monday 1st November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

In the days since the Budget, we have seen it unravel. The Chancellor tried to bury the reality—or should I say Burnley?—[Interruption.] You will get that one in the end. It is less levelling up and more hiking up: hiking up taxes, hiking up the cost of living, hiking up interest rates and inflation. The only thing it is not hiking up is growth. After 10 years of stagnant growth and stagnant wages, the forecasts for the next few years make yet more sober reading, with growth downgraded to a meagre 1.3% in 2024. Taken together, the rising cost of living, along with rising taxes, inflation and interest rates, mean that families will be worse off to the tune of £3,000 a year. You simply cannot claim an agenda of levelling up while presiding over an era of no growth and ordinary working people becoming worse off. A few tiny, piecemeal pots of cash to various places will not even remotely make up for that overwhelming tidal wave hitting those on modest and low incomes. This is

“not a set of priorities that is consistent with…levelling up”.

Those are not my words; they are the verdict of the IFS. This was

“an acid test for the government’s flagship levelling up agenda—and the Chancellor has fallen short... The country is no more on track to level up than it was yesterday.”

That is not my view, but the view of the IPPR North.

As is becoming the theme with this Government, they will the ends but they have no plan to will the means —that is otherwise known as rhetoric not matched by reality. That view was echoed in excellent speeches by my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge); my hon. Friends the Members for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma), for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock) and for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater); my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne); my hon. Friends the Members for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd), for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) and for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe), my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper); and my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith), for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery), for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western), for Slough (Mr Dhesi), for Lewisham East (Janet Daby), for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter) and for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy).

A plan for real levelling up begins with a plan for real and sustainable growth, disproportionately focused towards the people, places and industries most in need of it. That means a programme of real investment and a strategy. I know that the Secretary of State is not here this evening, but I am pleased that, in lauding the spending increases, he has finally accepted our view that we cannot cut our way out of a crisis. If only he had realised that before 10 years of austerity, which have left a million more people in poverty and the fabric of our public services in tatters. But it is obvious from today’s debate that most behind him have not had the same epiphany.

Given that the Resolution Foundation says that this must be a decade of high investment as we transition to net zero, it is astonishing that in the Chancellor’s flurry of giveaways there was almost no mention of green investment. The huge upheaval and change that meeting our net zero targets requires is the once-in-a-generation opportunity to truly level up and to create a fairer, better distributed economy—it is an opportunity this Government are frittering away. This is about winning the green global race in the sectors that power our regions, such as steel, aerospace, wind and wave, but there was not a single mention of that in this Budget. It is also about reducing demand and, in so doing, reducing the cost of living crunch through a major drive to retrofit homes and switch to green energies, but there was not a flicker about that in this Budget. It is also about investing in people, especially those who need it the most. The Government’s own report on lost learning during the pandemic, published just last week, shows the stark regional inequalities, with children in the north-east and Yorkshire and the Humber losing 15 times more learning than those in London, but that was not referred to in the Budget. Its stark findings should be at the heart of any Budget that claims to be levelling up. The Government cannot level up without a serious programme of catch-up.

On transport, at last we see some recognition for buses, but a major test of levelling up will be the Government’s commitment to Northern Powerhouse Rail and the eastern leg of HS2, neither of which was mentioned at all by the Chancellor. The Government should listen to the excellent speeches today from my hon. Friends the Members for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane), for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) and for Bradford South (Judith Cummins), and my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) on this topic.

Key to addressing the deep divides in Britain is tackling the housing crisis, which was so brutally exposed during covid. Yet again, we see lofty ambitions not met by any kind of real plan. If the Chancellor’s announcements on housing sounded familiar, that is because they are: we have heard them all before. That £5 billion to address the building-safety crisis was announced back in February. It is a lot of money, but it is not working. The huge bills for leaseholders keep rolling in, insurance costs are soaring and mortgages are still virtually impossible to get. It is not about the cash; the fundamentals need to be fixed and the Government are not doing that. It is no surprise, then, that the Secretary of State did not even mention that today.

The funding for so-called affordable housing was another recycled announcement. The Government’s spin cycle goes round more often than a Hotpoint spin dryer—

[Mr Holden]

Oh God.

[Lucy Powell]

The hon. Gentleman might groan, but he was not here for the better jokes at the beginning of my speech. In future, he needs to be here at the beginning of the wind-ups—that is one of the rules of this place.

If the Government’s record is anything to go by, they will deliver neither truly affordable homes nor levelling up. Their house building targets look dead in the water. Their definition of affordable is anything but, aligned with overheated markets, not with what people can actually afford. The Secretary of State made no mention of social housing in his speech; perhaps that is because he is projected to build only 6,000 new ones a year—far fewer than the number lost through the right to buy. The Secretary of State heralded the brownfield sites fund, yet he did not mention the fact that more than three quarters of that money currently goes to the south-east. That is hardly levelling up. Without reform of the arcane compulsory purchase order laws, too much of that cash will end up in the hands of the speculators who buy up land on the cheap.

For hard-pressed renters hit by the pandemic, we heard the Chancellor take credit for a small relief fund, but he failed to mention that he has also frozen local housing allowance again. Add that to the cut in universal credit and the almost 1 million renters who already face a gap between their income and housing costs now face real hardship. It is no wonder that we have seen homelessness rise on the Government’s watch—

[Bob Blackman]

indicated dissent.

[Lucy Powell]

I am afraid we have.

We heard nothing in the Budget about stamp duty—perhaps because the last stamp duty cut drove house price inflation and volatility, according to the OBR. [Interruption.] Government Members should look at the figures. The Chancellor fuelled a buy-to-let and second-home bonanza while first-time buyers lost out. The Government’s disastrous starter homes pilot scheme—non-starter homes, more like—promised 200,000 homes for first-time buyers and cost £170 million, yet it did not build a single starter home. The Government’s new pilot for first-time buyers, the first homes scheme, is not working, because as house prices rocket, the discount is all but wiped out. It is no wonder we have seen home ownership fall under this Government. Do Government Members want to say anything about that? No, because it has. The Conservatives can no longer claim to be the party of homeowners, nor of renters, because they have become the party of landowners, landlords and speculators.

The Government might have the soundbites, the slogans and the Instagram posts, but they do not have a plan. They cannot level up while they are scaling back; they cannot level up while growth forecasts are so down; they cannot level up while hiking up taxes and cutting universal credit; they cannot level up without addressing the housing crisis; and they cannot level up while denying children in the midlands and the north the chance to catch up, which is what they have done. Government Members might laugh about it this evening but it is absolutely shameful. Although the Government might talk the talk, time and again they do not walk the walk. Levelling up is fast becoming a rather empty campaign slogan, and this bitty, piecemeal Budget does not amount to more than the sum of its parts.