Budget Resolutions

Peter Dowd Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 28th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)]

As the Chancellor gave his Budget speech last week, there was a collective groan across the country not just at the bad jokes, but at the content of the most uneventful Budget speech of recent times. There was no game-changing investment announcement and no lasting solutions for the growing difficulties facing our country. The Chancellor’s speech personified this Government: out of touch, inconsistent and directionless.

The Cabinet is morbidly and irrevocably split on Brexit and, rather than focusing on their individual briefs, Ministers now spend their days attempting to steal each others’. The International Trade Secretary wants to run Britain’s foreign policy. The Environment Secretary is learning all about hypothecation, apparently fancying himself as Chancellor, and The Times reported that he is busy researching the difference between a J curve and a J-cloth. Meanwhile, the Foreign Secretary continues to scheme for the top job. He is the first to praise the Prime Minister, while constantly plotting to undermine her—Iago on steroids. Ironically, the only person who does not want to be in No. 10 is its current occupant. She remains, as in the Monty Python parrot sketch, nailed to the perch and “off the twig”. The Prime Minister’s metabolic processes are, politically speaking, history.

The most important announcements made last week were not the Chancellor’s recycled policies, but those from the Office for Budget Responsibility. The OBR lowered UK growth forecasts, business investment, productivity rates and wage growth for the next five years, blowing a hole in the Government’s economic credibility. As for balancing the books, under the Government’s current projection, the UK budget will not be in surplus until 2030 at the earliest—a full 15 years after the former Chancellor said that the deficit would be eradicated. Workers who have already endured a decade of stagnant wages and lost earnings will not see their pay return to pre-crisis levels until 2025. And there is more. UK households face the biggest squeeze in disposable income since records began. The message from the OBR is clear: Britain under the Tories is now facing a record 17-year downturn in pay.

The Budget did nothing to eradicate the impact of austerity on women, who have disproportionately borne the brunt of it. The abolition of stamp duty for first-time buyers is of course welcome, but the OBR rightly points out that the move will increase house prices. Many Government Back-Benchers called for action to help the next generation, but the best the Chancellor could muster was a millennial railcard that young people cannot even use to commute to work and that will not even cover the cost of the 3.6% rail fare increase next year.

On universal credit, the Government finally listened to Labour and scrapped the seven-day waiting time, but they have done nothing about the roll-out.

The Government once again ensured that the NHS and its staff will remain underfunded and underpaid, and the extra money announced in the Budget does not even meet NHS England’s call for extra funding. Far from being dead and buried, the public sector pay cap remains alive and well. Public sector pay is now set to fall to its lowest level by comparison with the private sector, and the Chancellor is trying to divide public sector workers.

As I have said so many times at this Dispatch Box, the UK’s economic growth wholly depends on our ability to raise productivity rates, and there was nothing of any substance whatsoever in the Budget to help that. The Government continue to fail in delivering the infrastructure and investment that the regions so desperately need. Like so many of this Government’s policies, their industrial strategy White Paper released yesterday is thin on details and thinner on ideas—another damp squib. It is about time that this Government went. They should pack their bags, get the Prime Minister out of No. 10 and hand things over to the Labour party to do the job properly and get growth back for this country.