Budget Resolutions

Marie Rimmer Excerpts

Monday 27th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Ms Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)]

As I listened to the Chancellor talk about driverless cars in the Budget speech last week, what struck me was how few of his measures will help the residents in St Helens, Whiston and Prescot in my constituency. He said nothing about the fact that we are facing the longest fall in our living standards on record. A reasonably waged family in my constituency with two children will be £800 worse off every year after 2021.

There was nothing in the Chancellor’s speech about securing a long-term solution for funding care for our older and vulnerable people. There was no additional funding for care packages, and our elderly and disabled still face savage cuts from the £10 million general grant reduction announced in previous Budgets. Despite the council raising the social care precept of 3% for this year and next year, with £2.5 million from previous years, there was no additional funding to meet the ever growing demand for social care year on year. The slight increase in funding to help cope with the annual winter crisis at A&Es was welcome, but even with the pioneering work of St Helens Council and St Helens and Whiston Hospitals, it will not ward off the increase in the number of elderly and infirm people at A&Es.

I asked the Prime Minister how she would use the Budget to address police funding, but the Chancellor said nothing about funding for the police—he did not mention the police—or about how to fight the 20% rise in violent crime given the 22% cuts to frontline policing in Merseyside. He ignored the increases of 19%, in domestic abuse, of 20% in violence and of 26.5%. in rape. There are outstanding prison recalls, and gun and knife crime is increasing. There have been two candlelit vigils for murdered young people in my constituency this weekend. Merseyside exports more organised crime groups and county line issues than any other area in the country. Merseyside police dealt with 8,729 missing people, of whom 64% or 5,601 were aged 16 and under. These children and vulnerable adults are at high risk of extreme physical and sexual violence, gang recriminations and trafficking. My constituents fully support our police and are trying to rebuild their communities as safe places free of knives, guns and exploitation, and my constituents are petitioning for more police.

We need a Government who support the public and public services—a Government who care. The Chancellor said nothing about the ongoing 3% real annual cut in benefits. Of course, nothing was said about replacing the eye-watering £94 million funding taken from St Helens Council services by 2020. Yes, there is some hope for those poor individuals sleeping rough on the streets, although the money will not go that far.

The help for a few young people to buy homes is welcome, but we need to be clear that the Chancellor’s housing proposals will not work in St Helens and Knowsley. None of my people earns anything like enough to buy a property worth £300,000. The stamp duty cut for first-time buyers only works if they are one of the small number of households who can afford such a property. Help with the deposit for a mortgage is no use to people who have already bought a small terraced house that their growing family can no longer fit into. The stamp duty change will channel much of our hard-earned income to those in the south. Less than 0.5% of my constituents would be able to buy a property at £300,000, and because the Chancellor has abolished brownfield land regeneration funding, the Government are not acting now against companies that hoard building land and their advisers.

The Budget feels a bit like the Government’s new cars: driverless and heading down the wrong road and on to reckless destruction—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order.