Autumn Statement Resolutions

Rachel Maclean Excerpts

Monday 21st November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)]

I would like to start by talking about wealth. Being a Conservative means that we have a strong and principled belief in equality of opportunity, which does not exclude the need for public money to be spent levelling up the playing field to help those who work just as hard as their peers, but are held back by factors not under their own control. To achieve that important and just mission, we need wealth. That means money, funding, investment, support, education, healthcare, lifelong learning grants to small businesses and scientists, and much more. We Conservatives must relentlessly back the wealth creators. That is why I welcome the Budget while still being ambitious and restless for a greater push for growth, low taxation and wealth creation once the immediate issues of stability and inflation have been rightly addressed.

We must keep the focus on incentives, rewards for additional effort, self-reliance and hard work. We are the only political party that understands that wealth is created by individuals, not the state—by entrepreneurs and hard workers taking risks and enduring huge sacrifices and setbacks. Before I came into politics, I worked for 30 years in my own business—one that I helped to start—so I know what I am talking about.

Our opponents will cynically criticise this. The media and the commentariat will twist these words beyond all recognition into a hostile characterisation of what the vast majority of the British people know and believe in their bones, which is that we do not help the weak by pulling down the strong. We help the disadvantaged more by enabling the talented, privileged and successful to thrive, start more businesses, pay more salaries to their employees, put more tax into the Exchequer and earn more profit. The Government ask for a share of that, which we willingly give to help the vulnerable and level up our great country. I believe that this Budget was, on balance, one for business and wealth creators, providing a degree of stability and a strategy to face the global economic headwinds.

I will focus my remarks on a couple of key priorities for my constituents. The engine room of our economy is the industrial midlands, one part of which—Redditch in north Worcestershire—I am privileged to represent. The war in Ukraine, through sky-high energy costs for energy-intensive industries, threatens the success of our cluster. I hear concerning reports from some manufacturers that, even after the welcome support of the energy bill relief scheme, energy companies are cynically profiteering from their UK customers while providing much lower, subsidised costs to their German customers. There is a real risk, therefore, that businesses are left with no alternative but to consider offshoring manufacturing to Germany or China, with hugely detrimental impacts. I ask the Chancellor, through those on the Treasury Bench, whether he has looked at the impact of that across our manufacturing base. Will he consider further legal or regulatory steps to prevent those suppliers from charging excessively in this country?

I turn now to the NHS. Naturally, I welcome the increased spending of £3.3 billion committed by the Chancellor, but it must be well spent. I have a number of questions to ask Health and Social Care Ministers, as well as the Minister on the Front Bench. Alex Hospital in Redditch is my top priority, and I have never stopped fighting for it since I became the local MP. The Conservative Government are devoting record amounts of funding to the broader NHS and to the Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust. I am afraid, however, that the trust is still not responding to the healthcare needs of our population, despite stating numerous times that services for children and maternity have not been removed because of funding cuts. The Garden Suite chemotherapy unit was moved to Kidderminster, 40 minutes away, at the start of the pandemic. I was assured that that was a temporary decision, but the trust is yet to bring it back, even though the pandemic is over. I pay tribute to Kirsty Southwell, Adele Jackson and the other members of the group campaigning to bring back services, who have worked tirelessly and persistently, and there have been some welcome commitments to improving local health services.

My previous discussions with the trust have come back time and again to workforce problems, yet across the country the Government have supported funding for greater workforce recruitment across the NHS and our trust, and there are more staff in our trust than there were under the last Labour Government. The Chancellor spoke about the importance of a long-term workforce strategy and committed to publishing one. When will the strategy be published, when will our local trust be consulted on it, and what impact will it have on the capacity of the trust to provide vital services such as the Garden Suite and enhanced support for women and children at the Alex site?

Finally, I will address illegal migration. We are a generous, open and tolerant nation, blessed with a keen sense of fairness. We welcome refugees—just look at how we have opened our homes to those fleeing war in Ukraine and Syria, as well as to those from Hong Kong—but our asylum system is being undermined by mass economic migration from safe countries such as Albania. I would like to have seen more in the Budget on resources and the plan to help the Home Office, the National Crime Agency, law enforcement, Border Force and intelligence services join together in tackling the issue. There is no single solution. The work that the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary are doing to reach agreements with France and Albania in particular can only be helpful. However, as a former Home Office Minister who led on violence against women and girls, I met the genuine victims of modern slavery, sex trafficking, and child and forced labour, whose stories are appalling and heartbreaking, and I am disgusted that our taxpayer-funded support systems are being hijacked by cynical smuggling gangs and an army of legal aid lawyers to allow Albanian men to seek a better life in our country by claiming to be modern slaves. By any measure, that is a grotesque abuse of our compassion and our scarce and finite public resources.

The figures are astronomical: there are currently more than 37,000 asylum seekers in hotels, costing the UK taxpayer £5.6 million a day. That dwarfs the entire budget of Worcestershire County Council, the acute trust and Redditch Borough Council. Surely we should be diverting that funding to the frontline public services that my constituents rely on daily.

I welcome the Budget, which gives additional certainty to businesses and enterprise. The Chancellor stated that the measures he has introduced mean that the forthcoming downturn will not be as severe as it otherwise would have been. As a country, we must continue to give our wealth creators every support to continue doing what they do best. It is their creativity and determination that will keep businesses and jobs going for everyone, protecting the vulnerable and giving us the best possible chance to have a competitive, growing economy as we emerge from these difficult economic times with more hope for the future.