Budget Resolutions

Nadia Whittome Excerpts

Wednesday 6th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)]

The mission of any Budget should be to ensure that the needs of all people in this country are met and to shape our economy towards that end. After 14 years of Conservative-led Governments, working-class people do not have the standard of living they deserve. The Tories have pushed children into poverty, normalised low-paid, insecure work and increased economic inequality. Meanwhile, the public sector has been decimated by austerity. While the rich pay to go private, millions of people are stuck on NHS waiting lists, their pain increasing and their quality of life diminishing.

So I welcome a Budget that includes higher spending for public services and that funds our NHS and our schools. The increase to the minimum wage and carer’s allowance will make a tangible difference to many people’s lives. The injustices of the mineworkers’ pension scheme will finally be rectified, benefiting thousands of former miners across Nottinghamshire. And there is more—but there are also elements of this Budget that worry me.

Disabled people fear that the target of delivering savings through reforms to the disability benefits system will mean that people are excluded from the support they need. It is shameful that people have been forced into poverty by the welfare cuts of previous Governments; some have even lost their lives thanks to a system that, all too often, seeks to punish rather than to help.

We must do things differently. We must fund a social security net that gives everyone, whether in work or not, the resources they need to live a decent life. We must also prioritise ending child poverty, as previous Labour Governments have, so I am disappointed the Chancellor has not moved to scrap the inhumane two-child benefit limit.

Meanwhile, the richest 1% of Britons have £2.8 trillion between them. Although the Budget will modestly increase their contribution to our public finances, we must go further to make the super-rich pay their fair share. We should introduce a wealth tax, taxing earnings from wealth at the same rate as wages.

I am confident that this Budget takes important steps to deliver change, but is it at the scale we need after the devastation caused by the Conservative party? I am not so sure. I say that not to undermine the Budget, which stands in welcome contrast to the last 14 years, but to push for even greater ambition, because the job of a Back-Bench Government MP is to tell their party when it needs to go further.

Trump’s election is a warning to us here: if people do not see their lives improve, the populist right stands to benefit. So let us build on the good work our Government have started in the first 100 days, ensure that every person has a decent standard of living and tackle the inequality that continues to blight our society.