Budget Resolutions

Munira Wilson Excerpts

Monday 11th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

The list is inexhaustible, is it not? It is just one thing after another, and then they have the audacity to say that Labour does not have any plans. If that is true, why are they swooping in like magpies every five minutes, ready to pick the next cherry from Labour’s tree?

It is just a shame that the Conservatives did not see the light earlier. Had they abolished non-dom tax status when Labour pledged to do so in 2022, 4.5 million children could be enjoying free breakfast clubs today. They could have funded an extra 3.6 million NHS appointments and operations, hundreds more artificial intelligence-enabled scanners, and 1.3 million more urgent and emergency dental appointments. The Prime Minister would have delivered on his pledge to cut waiting lists, if only he had listened to Labour. What stopped him? Why was the Prime Minister so wedded to the non-dom tax status?

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman has mentioned schoolchildren a couple of times in passing. It was hugely disappointing to me that there was absolutely nothing in last week’s Budget about schools or colleges. Today’s theme is growing our economy, which starts in our classrooms. Investing in education is an investment in this country’s economy and society for generations to come, yet there was nothing for day-to-day spending, even though schools in my constituency and across the country are having to make cuts every day. Shockingly, the small print revealed that next year we will see a real-terms cut of £200 million in capital investment in school buildings, while hundreds of thousands of children learn in crumbling classrooms. Does he agree that the Conservatives have no clue about growing the economy if they will not focus on children and young people?

[Wes Streeting]

I agree with the hon. Member. Politics is about choices, which is why we choose to end the tax breaks enjoyed by private schools, which are attended by the 7%, in order to fund more teachers and education for the 93%. The Conservatives have not nicked that policy yet—it could be any day now—but it does say something about choices.

There is something else that I found really galling. When the Government appointed Sir Kevan Collins as their catch-up commissioner, they could not have found someone better to advise on education, life chances and how to correct the obvious damage that had been done to children’s education as a result of successive lockdowns. Most of us in this House—on both sides—felt that the lockdowns were necessary, given the scale of the virus, but we ought collectively to acknowledge that there was a consequence and a debt to be repaid to that generation. When Sir Kevan Collins published his report, which was commissioned by the Government, the Prime Minister decided that he could not do any more. If the Prime Minister’s children attended state schools and he understood the challenges that such schools were facing with recruiting teachers and providing the wide range of extra-curricular opportunities that so many independent schools offer, I wonder whether the Prime Minister would have made the same political choices—or is it just for other people’s children that this Prime Minister and his Government have low aspirations?

I think it is fair to say that we know why the Prime Minister was so wedded to the non-dom tax status. In fact, the only way the Chancellor could have upset his neighbours more was if he had raised taxes on helicopter rides and heated swimming pools too. But at least the Prime Minister can now look the British people in the eye and honestly tell them that we are all in this together. In fact, we have to pity poor non-doms—they cannot even look to their friends, or indeed their husbands, in the Conservative party to defend them any longer. Nor can pensioners, incidentally, because 8 million pensioners will see their taxes increase as a result of this Chancellor’s decisions. I do not think that is right or just, and I do not think people will forget it come the general election.

I turn to the Prime Minister and how he evaluates his own performance. At a Wetherspoons in Maltby last week, he told the public that at the start of this year we “turned a corner.” He is right: at the start of this year the economy turned the corner from flatlining and entered recession. Rishi’s recession is taking a heavy toll on working people. Labour’s candidate for Rother Valley, Jake Richards, told me about John from Maltby, who lives just down the road from what was probably the first ’Spoons the Prime Minister has ever been in. John is a veteran of our armed forces. He served his country and now, thanks to the recklessness and incompetence of this Government, he cannot make ends meet. That is the price that people are paying, and it is why this country is crying out for change.

Having crashed the economy just two years ago, the Conservative party is at it again with a £46 billion unfunded tax plan. Can any Conservative Member explain how on earth they are going to pay for the abolition of national insurance? This is a bigger unfunded commitment than the “kamikwasi” Budget of the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss). Mortgage payers are still paying the price for that grotesque act of economic self-harm, and the Conservatives are at it again—