Budget Resolutions

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Monday 1st December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

I congratulate everyone in this House and outside it who fought to scrap the two-child benefit cap and to make the wealthiest pay more. The positive steps in the Budget in that direction, such as the mansion tax, are a real credit to that campaigning.

On the scrapping of the two-child benefit cap, I voted to add that to the Government’s programme last year, and I did so because all the experts said, correctly, that it would be the best way to immediately lift hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty. I am delighted that the Government have got the message and done that. I am proud and delighted that thousands of children in my Leeds East constituency will benefit from this, in Gipton and Harehills, in Garforth and Swillington, in Killingbeck and Seacroft, in Cross Gates and Whinmoor, and in Whitkirk and Colton. It gladdens my heart to see that injustice righted.

[Mr Adnan Hussain (Blackburn) (Ind)]

Over 45% of children in Blackburn live in relative poverty. I congratulate the hon. Member on taking a principled stance. He has been proven right, so I thank him on behalf of the children of Blackburn.

[Richard Burgon]

I thank the hon. Member for his kind words. It is important that we all see our time in Parliament as being part of a crusade against child poverty and to make child poverty history, because no child is responsible for their own poverty. It sickens me to hear some of the talk from the Opposition on this.

Budgets are always followed by days of detailed coverage, but the simple truth is that the Budget and the Government’s whole record will be judged on whether living standards rise. Living standards have been stagnant for well over a decade, since the bankers brought the economy to its knees. Pay has been flat while the price of every essential has increased, and millions struggle with skyrocketing rent, energy and food costs. No wonder the cost of living crisis remains the No. 1 concern for people in the polls.

There are more welcome moves in the Budget to address that—the £150 off energy bills, the freeze on rail fares and the boost to the national minimum wage, to name just a few—but the scale of the cost of living crisis demands far bolder action. As it stands, this Parliament is on track to be the second bleakest for living standards since world war two—the worst being the previous Parliament. People are being asked to take more and more pain. That is why, before the Budget, I called for a package of emergency cost of living measures to give people the urgent relief they need. From cost of living grants to universal free school meals, there are so many ways in which we can take pressure off people who have been really struggling through no fault of their own. All that can be funded by raising tens of billions of pounds in taxation from the very wealthiest and those who are making super-profits by ripping people off, as the banks are doing.

Tens of thousands of people backed my call—such calls will continue to grow as this crisis persists—but I am afraid to say that, instead of going down the road of wealth taxes, the Government have chosen a stealth tax on ordinary people. Millions will face an income tax hike from the extension of the income tax threshold freeze, including 780,000 people who will have to pay income tax for the first time. Putting aside any debates on manifesto promises, that move will squeeze ordinary people even further at a time when they simply cannot afford it. The good news is that the extension will not kick in for another two years, so there is still time for the Government to think again and do the right thing by ditching it.

Just as I did with the two-child cap, winter fuel and disability benefit cuts, I will do everything I can to ensure that that regressive policy is overturned. There are much better alternatives. In 2010 the combined wealth of UK billionaires was £250 billion. Now it is more than £600 billion. Their combined wealth has more than doubled since 2010. How many of our constituents can say that their wages, standards of living or wealth have doubled in that time? We need to push for fairness in the taxation system. We should tax extreme wealth, not load stealth taxes on to working people in the middle of a cost of living emergency.

We all know that much of the economic weakness driving the crisis in living standards is the result of 14 years of terrible decisions by the Tories, but people expect this Government not only to sort that out but to protect them in the here and now. Not doing so will pave the way for the first far-right Government in our history. It is in this context of the cost of living crisis that the siren voices of Reform and the far right get an easier hearing. We must all avoid that. We do not want to end up with the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) —the UK’s own version of Donald Trump—as Prime Minister, so let us work together to lift living standards and stop that.