Budget Resolutions

Margaret Greenwood Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

This Budget was a big disappointment for the millions of people who are worried about the cost-of-living crisis. It failed to provide sufficient funding for public services that have been devastated by over a decade of Conservative austerity, and it failed to address the climate emergency.

The Office for Budget Responsibility warned that the cost-of-living crisis could rise at its fastest rate for 30 years, yet the Chancellor failed to raise the minimum wage to at least £10 an hour, which the Labour party committed to do by 2020 back in 2017. He could have kept the £20 uplift to universal credit in place, helping 6 million households across the country, but he chose not to. Instead, he gave a £4 billion tax cut to banks and a £12 billion tax cut to online giants. Numerous charities and civil society organisations, including the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the Child Poverty Action Group and Action for Children, campaigned for the £20 uplift to remain in place. Labour won two votes in the House earlier this year calling on the Government to cancel the cut. Shamefully, on both occasions, the Government whipped their MPs to abstain.

The Government will point to changes to the work allowances and the taper rate, but the Disability Benefits Consortium pointed out that

“nothing is done at all to help disabled people who are not in work”—

and this is

“particularly concerning, given that employment rates are much lower for disabled people than for the general population, while for many, their disability or health condition mean that paid work is not a realistic prospect.”

Let us not forget, too, that 6 million households have been hit by the Conservatives’ cut to universal credit, but less than a third of that figure—just 1.9 million households—will benefit from the changes to work allowances and the taper rate.

The Government are failing schools, too. The National Education Union has described the additional money for education recovery—just £1.8 billion of new funding —as “completely inadequate”, while the Government’s former education recovery commissioner, Sir Kevan Collins, called it “incredibly disappointing”. He said:

“The short-term saving offered by a limited recovery programme will be dwarfed by the long-term cost of successive cohorts leaving education with lower skills, an effect that will be most apparent in our poorest communities.”

The Chancellor announced that, coupled with spending increases announced in 2019, the extra money for school funding would

“restore per-pupil funding to 2010 levels in real terms”—[Official Report, 27 October 2021; Vol. 702, c. 278.]

However, as the National Association of Head Teachers rightly pointed out, this merely

“represents a failure to invest in children’s futures for over a decade.”

When it comes to local authorities and the provision of essential services, it is a similar story. Conservative austerity has taken its toll on Wirral. Between 2010-11 and 2019-20, it cut central Government funding for Wirral Council by 85%. According to the Local Government Association, the funding for local authorities announced in the Budget will not help councils to meet all the extra cost and demand pressures they face just to provide services at today’s levels. The LGA has also expressed disappointment that there is no additional funding

“to address existing pressures on adult social care services”

and that public health funding has not been increased. The LGA is among those to have pointed out:

“The potential rise in local government core spending power over the next three years will also be dependent on councils increasing council tax by 3% per annum”—

so local people will again feel the effects of central Government cuts, the burden of which the Government are passing on to councils.

The crisis in adult numeracy and literacy skills must be addressed as a matter of urgency. Although the Chancellor partially acknowledged that with the announcement of a new UK-wide numeracy programme to improve basic maths skills, the funding fell well short of what is needed. On its Twitter account, the Treasury posted that it would

“help up to 500,000 adults improve their numeracy”,

which falls far short of meeting the needs of the 17 million adults in the UK who the Government’s own figures suggest have the numeracy level expected of primary school children. And where were the funds to address the adult literacy crisis? The National Literacy Trust estimates that more than 7 million adults—16.4% of the adult population—have very poor literacy skills. Where is the Chancellor’s ambition to help them?

With COP26 under way at a critical moment for our planet, the Chancellor announced, astonishingly, that he would cut taxes on domestic flights—an irresponsible act that particularly insults young people and those who are most affected by climate change around the world. The OBR has estimated that it will result in 410,000 more passenger journeys a year at the very time when our Government should be showing leadership on the international stage. The Chancellor also failed to increase international aid to 0.7% of gross national income, once again letting down the world’s poorest people.

Although there was extra money for the NHS, what the Chancellor failed to mention was that if the Government’s Health and Care Bill becomes law, from next April the structure of the NHS will fundamentally change. Instead of a national health service run as a public service in England, there will be approximately 42 local health and care systems, each based on a business model, with major opportunities for big business to take over the delivery of services instead of the NHS. If that is allowed to happen, we will increasingly see large amounts of public money that should be spent on public care going into the pockets of shareholders, as my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) expressed so eloquently. We will also see increasing numbers of health service staff no longer able to work for the NHS and thus ineligible for “Agenda for Change” rates of pay.

This Budget fails to give local councils the funding that they need to deliver crucial public services after over a decade of Conservative austerity. It fails to tackle the growing cost-of-living crisis and fails to address the urgency of the climate crisis. The Chancellor talked of

“a new age of optimism”—[Official Report, 27 October 2021; Vol. 702, c. 274.]

It might be, for him, but for far too many, this Budget fails to deliver.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Clarke]

Again, I thank the hon. Lady for raising that point. I do take this point seriously. We have committed in this Budget to the national living wage increase, which is a major increase—6.6%, rising to £9.50 an hour. That money comes as a complement to the extra funding that the Government have committed to help with labour shortages, and I believe it will make a real difference. Obviously we can continue to monitor the situation closely with the sector.

If I may make a little progress, I want to return to the core theme of today’s debate: our public services. As the Chancellor outlined last week, this Budget increases total departmental spending over this Parliament by £150 billion. That is the largest rise this century, with spending growing by 3.8% a year in real terms. We are taking forward plans to deliver more than £600 billion of gross public sector investment over this Parliament, meaning that public sector net investment will be at its highest sustained level as a share of GDP for nearly half a century. This is funding that can and will make real change possible for communities throughout the country.

Last week, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) reminded the House when talking about the NHS that increased spending is not enough on its own and that we must strive to deliver value for taxpayers. I could not agree more. The measure of a Government’s compassion is not how much they spend, but the outcomes they deliver. In making these investments, the Government are committed to ensuring that every pound is spent well and makes a difference.

To take healthcare, we are building 40 new hospitals and upgrading 70 more, as well as funding 50,000 nurses and 50 million more primary healthcare appointments. We are working closely with the NHS to roll out a stream of innovative developments that will reduce backlogs, help cut waiting times and transform healthcare for good. Some 100 community diagnostic centres, rightly praised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison), will help people to obtain tests close to home. New surgical hubs will cut waits for elective operations, and we are making a record investment in R&D to support the health technologies of the future.

[Margaret Greenwood]

I have listened with interest to the Minister’s points about the national health service. If the Health and Care Bill goes through, as the Government intend that it should, instead of having a national health service, we will have 42 independent systems that will all have to meet strict financial limits. The Bill also has provision to make things wide open for the private sector to start delivering care that the NHS currently delivers. What would the Minister say to those NHS workers who may not be able to secure a job in the NHS any longer, because that role has been taken over by a private company, thus losing Agenda for Change pay and terms and conditions?

[Mr Clarke]

This Government remain fully committed to great care, free at the point of need, which of course is the founding principle of the health service. We remain fully committed to working to ensure that our healthcare system and our social care system are properly funded and staffed for the future. Our commitment to providing world-class public services extends to people of all ages, and that is reflected in our wider work on social care.

We have pledged an extra £4.7 billion by 2024-25 for schools, and I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education on securing a good settlement that will include nearly £2 billion of new funding over the spending review period for education recovery. That brings total education recovery spending to almost £5 billion. We are also providing £500 million to support the very youngest and their carers and to invest in family help. Last week, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom), who has been such a brilliant advocate for this cause, described those measures as fulfilling

“a fantastic pledge for every baby.”—[Official Report, 27 October 2021; Vol. 702, c. 317.]

I could not agree more.