Budget Resolutions

Nadia Whittome Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely). I echo his support for comments from those on the Opposition Benches condemning private ownership of our public services.

For my generation, this Budget offers little hope. It fails to address the climate emergency, the effects of which we must endure; it fails to tackle the poverty pay that means wages do not pay the bills; and it fails to get a grip on the housing crisis, consigning people of my generation to live in their childhood bedrooms or fork out half of their income in rent.

We are a generation that has grown up under austerity. Our entire teenage and adult lives have been lived in its shadow. The Chancellor talks about restoring spending, but the cuts continue to bite. In all but a few Departments, increases in his spending review only partially reverse cuts made since 2010. The people of Nottingham now receive more than £100 million less each year to fund local services. Thanks to Government cuts to local authorities, our city’s youth services have been cut by over 90%. When will Nottingham get the money we need to truly level up? Will the Chancellor answer honestly on why his seat, among the most affluent in the country, has been prioritised in the levelling-up fund, while 38% of children in Nottingham East are living in poverty?

The Chancellor may have ended the public sector pay freeze, but there is no certainty that wages will rise above inflation or even with inflation. The tax hikes he is implementing and the price rises he is failing to control mean that families face a cost of living crisis. Public sector workers cannot continue with more years of below-inflation pay increases, which are, in real terms, pay cuts. The Chancellor must guarantee a proper pay rise for those workers and, indeed, for all workers, whether they are care workers, shop workers or cleaners—the people who got us through the pandemic.

Days before COP26, the Budget could have announced an ambitious spending plan for a just transition to a low-carbon economy, creating thousands of jobs in the process. Instead, the Chancellor cut taxes on domestic flights and pledged just £7.5 billion of new money for climate and nature, which leaves a £55.4 billion gap in the investment we need to hit our net zero and nature targets.

Shell and BP paid zero tax on North sea oil in the last three years, and the Government have backed them with tax breaks and subsidies worth billions. Instead of bankrolling polluters, we should invest those billions in a green new deal. The Budget gives banks a £4 billion tax break while hiking taxes for working people to the highest level in 70 years.

The Budget also keeps the universal credit cut. Even with the changes to the taper rate, about 75% of the 4.4 million households on universal credit, including 14,250 in Nottingham East, will still be worse off. After more than a decade of austerity, the Budget fails to restore spending on public services to the level that we need and does not deliver the “new age of optimism” that the Chancellor promised. The glass is not half full. After 10 years of brutal Tory austerity and Government cuts, it is completely empty.