Preventing Crime and Delivering Justice

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Wednesday 11th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

We meet during a cost of living emergency, which is why I am so taken aback that too many Tory MPs in this debate—though there are far too few here now—instead of calling for the action and support that millions of people across our country need, have resorted to Alf Garnett cosplay, ranting about so-called benefit cheats, ranting about asylum seekers and fixating on a single protester outside Parliament and how he annoys them.

Millions of people are having to choose between heating and eating. Pensioners are riding buses to keep warm. Parents are going a whole day without eating to keep the kids fed. It is a cost of living emergency and, if we recognise it as an emergency, the Queen’s Speech should have been used to implement emergency measures to help people now, yet the Tories offered nothing in the Queen’s Speech. The Government are sitting on their hands and refusing to act. They are standing idly by while others suffer. Why? Because, actually, it has not been a bad crisis for everyone.

I understand that not all Tory MPs realise this, but the Tory party exists to ensure that wealth is sucked from the many into the hands of a few. Like Robin Hood in reverse, they rob from the poor and give to the rich. British billionaires increased their wealth hugely, by £290 million a day, in the first year of the pandemic. We have seen billions of pounds handed out in crony Government covid contracts. We have seen multibillion pounds of tax cuts for bankers, even as banks are recording record profits. Some are doing very well at the moment.

Given all that wealth, and given that we are the fifth biggest economy on Earth, it is clearer than ever before that poverty is always a political choice, including during this cost of living emergency. The Conservatives are choosing to push people into poverty through this cost of living crisis so that more and more of the wealth in our society goes to the wealthy.

Take energy, for example. Bills are rocketing. [Interruption.] The Tories scoff, but millions of people in this country will not take kindly to having it explained to them by the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) that, actually, food banks exist because people do not have the cooking skills to feed themselves and because people do not know how to budget. That is completely out of touch, despite the Alf Garnett theatrics, and it is completely contemptuous of the reality faced by millions of people in our society.

The End Fuel Poverty Coalition is warning that the energy crisis could leave more than 8 million households, in one of the richest countries on Earth, unable to heat their home. At the same time, gas and oil giants are making £900 profit every second. Yesterday’s Queen’s Speech should have been the moment to make our energy system work for people, not for profit, by including a windfall tax to raise billions to lower the bills of millions. Not only that, it should have introduced the price caps we have seen in France, which have allowed bills to rise by only 4% and not by the 54% we have seen here, and we should have seen action to bring the energy system back into public ownership so that it works for people and not for profit. But the Prime Minister and his Government are willing to accept millions of people being forced into fuel poverty because that, to them, is more acceptable than the alternative of reducing the profits of the oil and gas giants. We often hear discussions about wage restraint; during a cost of living emergency we should be having discussions about profit restraint as well sometimes. But the Government are on the side of the oil and gas giants, not on the side of the vast majority of people in our society.

We need an emergency plan to tackle this social emergency—instead of doing nothing, the Government should be doing everything they can to immediately get money into the pockets of the millions of people hit hard by the cost of living crisis. That is why I have tabled an amendment to this Queen’s Speech calling on the Government to deliver a wealth tax Bill, which would introduce the best ways of raising taxes on the very wealthiest in our society. The tens of billions of pounds that would raise could be used to create a huge emergency fund to support people through the cost of living emergency. That is the job of the Government: people need security in their standard of living and to be able to pay their bills and have a roof over their head. The Government need to ensure that people get enough to eat, and have enough to heat their homes and to be treated with the respect that they deserve.

How obscene that we are having this discussion in one of the richest countries on earth and that the Government have deliberately squandered the chance to take the action needed to support people who are facing a cost of living emergency that they have never experienced before. It is at times like these that people look to the Government to do the right thing and support them through the toughest times. This Government, true to their political ideology, have chosen not to do that and instead to stand by and leave people to it, which is unforgivable. A wealth tax should be just the start of taking action to support people—the many in our society.