Finance (No. 2) Bill

Mick Whitley Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 29th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

I rise to speak in support of the reasoned amendment tabled in the name of the Leader of the Opposition, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), and the shadow First Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner).

The amendment rightly raises the question of priorities. When the Prime Minister outlined his so-called five missions to the country early in the new year, he promised the British people that

“your priorities are our priorities”.

But the Bill put to the House today, just like the Budget from which it derives, is the work of a Government who seem to be fundamentally adrift from the needs and priorities of the British people.

Indeed, looking at the measures that have been outlined today, people could be forgiven for thinking that this country was not in the midst of the worst cost of living crisis in a lifetime, that the price of basic foodstuffs was not rising at the highest rate since the late 1970s, and that the dilemma of whether to heat a home or eat was still the preserve of a few households in crisis, not a choice that is now depressingly familiar to hundreds of thousands of families across the country.

My constituents desperately needed the Chancellor to step up with a plan for progressive tax reform that would boost their disposable incomes, secure their standards of living and guarantee additional investment in our ailing public services, by asking the wealthiest few to pay their fair share. They needed action to tackle the soaring costs of food and rent, including price controls if necessary, and to close at long last the glaring loopholes in the Government’s oil and gas windfall tax scheme, so that we can begin to move towards creating an energy system that serves the public need, not the greed of private shareholders.

They wanted Ministers to take inspiration from President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, to recognise the importance of public finance policy in acting as a catalyst for green growth, and to begin to make up for what the Climate Change Committee has described as a “lost decade” on climate action, presided over by successive Conservative Governments. But from what we have seen today, it is clear that the Chancellor is not listening.

On the most recent reforms to the tax regime for businesses, Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies has rightly said:

“There’s no stability, no certainty, and no sense of a wider plan.”

He could well have been speaking for this Government as a whole. This is a Government who do not have a plan, a vision for the future of our country or the appetite to make the meaningful changes that the British people want to see. After 13 long years in power, it is time they stepped aside for a party that does.