Income Tax (Charge)

Mary Kelly Foy Excerpts

Thursday 4th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab) [V]]

Cutting through the fanfare, this Budget was devoid of imagination and substance. It may see Britain through to the end of the Prime Minister’s road map, but it does not come close to addressing the social, economic and climate crisis we face.

From this Budget, we can assume that the Conservatives intend to increase poverty, rather than end it. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation says that the Chancellor has created “a perfect storm” by planning to cut universal credit just as unemployment peaks, while he has also continued the Conservatives’ hostile environment for disabled people by ignoring legacy benefits. I dread to think what it will be like for the families who will be forced to use food banks because of his cruelty.

What was there for Durham’s NHS workers, teachers, prison staff and the rest of our public-sector key workers? There were a few claps and a pay freeze. That is not levelling-up; that is a slap in the face.

I cannot have been the only one who was shocked by the absence of any reference to our NHS and social care from the Budget speech. These sectors have been stretched to breaking point, held together only by the determination of those who staff them, yet instead of a recovery plan the Chancellor chose to slash NHS spending, with no strategy to tackle the backlog or the mental health crisis.

The Chancellor also seems to be clueless when it comes to the challenges facing our communities over the coming years, with a £14 billion cut to public services over this Parliament. In Durham, our council and schools have led the way in their pandemic support for residents, but they simply cannot continue on minimal funding. The Government’s council tax rise serves only to deflect blame for Tory cuts while making our local communities pay for the crisis. Durham’s public sector is desperate to lead our local recovery. The Chancellor just needs to give it the resources to do so.

The Chancellor’s remedy for businesses seems to be to help them to limp along until after the pandemic and then leave them at the mercy of the upcoming economic crisis. Durham’s high streets were struggling before the pandemic started. Where is our fightback strategy? This Chancellor is no friend of the independent businesses that are the heartbeat of our high streets.

This Budget called for vision and ambition that met the challenges of the pandemic head on with a bold plan for our recovery—a Budget that learned the lessons of a decade of austerity, deregulation and the eradication of workers’ rights. Instead, the Chancellor came up short yet again. Rather than rebuild, we got a sticking plaster designed to tide us over. Our health services were ignored, our key workers abandoned, our environment forgotten and our economy failed. Britain needs and deserves better.