Budget Resolutions

Debate between Monica Harding and Sarah Russell

Thursday 27th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Monica Harding (Esher and Walton) (LD)]

I am sure that the Chancellor is sick of hearing her own words from last year quoted back to her:

“extending the threshold freeze would hurt working people. It would take more money out of their payslips”—[Official Report, 30 October 2024; Vol. 755, c. 821.]

Yesterday, she froze income tax thresholds, dragging one in four people into higher rate or additional rates of tax and pushing the tax burden to an all-time high of 38% of GDP. Today, she is refusing to rule out coming back for more. Blindly copying the playbook of the last Conservative Government, she is the continuity Chancellor. There is still no vision for growth, just that old-style Labour tax and spend. It is like new Labour’s wealth creation to pay for better public services never happened.

The Government may like to blame the Conservatives for the OBR’s downgrade in growth, but the OBR has said that none of the measures in the Budget will boost growth. In fact, the Budget may actively harm growth. The OBR has said that slower wage growth and higher taxes mean living standards will rise more slowly than expected. Take, for example, the raid on pension contributions: the OBR tells us that employers will pass on the cost of the £4.7 billion tax raid on pension contributions to employees through lower wages and less generous schemes. The CBI has data showing that three quarters of employers will decrease pension contributions as a result. It is a tax on those doing the right thing.

That comes after Government policies harmed businesses in their first Budget, including the national insurance increases that have put thousands of pounds on to a load of businesses in my constituency, causing them to hire less and cut hours for the very people that the Government say they want to protect: part-time, low-paid workers, often with caring responsibilities. Higher unemployment in turn means more spend on universal credit—indeed, £1.8 billion more, as estimated by the OBR, on unemployment. It is all the wrong way round.

Yesterday, one long-term successful business owner in my constituency said to me:

“The whole thing is just depressing. I could work for another 10 or 20 years creating wealth for the economy, but the Government is making it so hard I may as well retire. And if I was in my 30s, I wouldn’t choose to do it here any more—I would move overseas.”

She is one of our wealth creators—she creates the growth we need. Another large business in my constituency who once felt confident about investing in Britain, creating growth and hiring new staff is now telling me that it is scaling back plans, postponing projects altogether and contemplating offshoring.

Talking of supporting people trying to do the right thing, let us turn to landlords. One of my constituents, who is known as a decent landlord, told me yesterday:

“I may as well pull out—what is the point? I get 2% gain on my properties. I may as well put it in the bank and get 4%.”

The Government’s policy will take rentals off the market and increase rents. In Esher and Walton, where rental prices are sky high, that means more people will not be able to afford to live there.

The property tax will gum up the housing market and distort it by bunching properties for sale below the threshold. It is said that the surcharge will raise more than £600 million, but that will be offset by £200 million of behavioural impact, so the take-home is £400 million, which is a rounded-up figure. In London and the south-east, where the average price per square foot is higher, those properties might not be such big houses, and in them are likely to be pensioners. Public First has said that two fifths of homeowners in bands G and H are pensioners.

[Sarah Russell (Congleton) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Monica Harding]

I do not have the time.

Older homeowners who have watched their properties’ value soar over the years will be hardest hit by this granny tax. They are asset-rich but cash-poor. They may be forced to sell up—at reduced asking prices—and more properties will get dragged into the mansion tax net. As that happens, a proportion of terraced houses, flats and semis will join them.

Worst of all, this is not a serious attempt to reform property tax, including business rates, stamp duty and council tax. Like the Budget, it is tinkering and meddling around the edges. This is a patchwork Budget that does not take us much further forward. Where has the national mission for growth gone? This is a low-growth Budget from a low-growth Government who thumb their nose at the wealth creators. It does not tackle some of the big questions. Where is the money in the plan for adult social care? Where is the money in the plan for the £14 billion deficit in SEND provision to help local authorities that are about to go bankrupt? The Budget is a smorgasbord of contempt for aspiration and growth. The Government have not only abandoned working people in my constituency, but waged a quiet war on aspiration itself.

I am pleased that the Government have lifted the two-child benefit limit. [Hon. Members: “Ah!”] My party laid out how we would do that, but Government Members know as well as I do that poverty does not end there. To tackle poverty, we need to create growth.

There is an alternative, which the Liberal Democrats have laid out in our plan to turbocharge economic growth by repairing the £90 billion Brexit black hole caused by the previous Conservative Government. The UK needs to negotiate a new bespoke customs union with the European Union: a modern arrangement designed around the needs of British businesses and workers, which would raise £25 billion a year. Instead of that we have a Budget that taxes work, punishes investment, stifles aspiration and still fails to deliver for public services; a Budget that tells wealth creators—

Sentencing Bill

Debate between Monica Harding and Sarah Russell

Committee of the whole House
Tuesday 21st October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Russell]

The hon. Member appears to be ignoring the entire recruitment process for the judiciary, which fundamentally, at its heart, emphasises the independence of those people from political interference, and also the fact that the application of the law should not be subject to political interference in this place. That is absolutely fundamental. Judges are not getting up every morning and just coming up with ludicrous leftie positions. The picture that is sometimes painted by those on the Opposition Benches is just fanciful. It bears no relationship to my experience of engaging with the actual judiciary on an ongoing basis.

[Monica Harding (Esher and Walton) (LD)]

Would the hon. Lady agree that it is outrageous that Members of this House should hold up a judge’s wig at a party conference, and that judges therefore have increased security risks?

[Sarah Russell]

The members of the judiciary that I have spoken to have very genuine concerns about their personal security, particularly immigration judges. They are genuinely frightened of doing their jobs, and that will be affecting judicial recruitment. We need immigration judges to be able to stand up and serve the judiciary. Many judges take a pay cut to become a judge, and they deserve our genuine respect. They work very hard in a system that has been grotesquely underfunded for 14 years.

Lastly, I would like to mention new clause 40, which was tabled by the Liberal Democrats. I have referred to cross-party working elsewhere. I understand that it might not be in the exactly right format for the Government to it take forward today, but I hope that the Minister will consider how we will deal with the fact that people are not receiving training when they are on remand and are often released at the end of that time. It is a serious issue that deserves serious consideration.

I have asked previously in the Justice Committee about what work is done with people on remand, particularly in respect of domestic abuse offences. In my opinion, we are missing an opportunity for people, without accepting any sort of guilt, to engage in services that many would benefit from, considering their general behaviour, irrespective of whether their original offence was related to domestic abuse. In fact, all of us could benefit from those opportunities for reflection. People spend a lot of time in prison, and at the moment it is not being used as effectively as I and many others would like it to be. That brings me back to my original point. Government Members absolutely believe in punishment, but fundamentally we also believe in rehabilitation, and the emphasis on that in this Bill is very much to be welcomed.