Budget Resolutions

Richard Holden Excerpts
Monday 1st November 2021

(2 years, 4 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Steve Reed Portrait Steve Reed
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Given the Government’s announcement of their intentions to level up the country, the interesting thing will be whether those people feel that they have been levelled up at the next general election and the next set of local elections. That is the only test of what this Government are announcing that will really matter.

The Conservatives have broken the link between work and reward with a decade of stagnant wages and a tax raid on working people; they have undermined families by pushing half a million more children into poverty and refusing to invest properly in kids’ catch-up; they have ripped the fabric out of our communities instead of harnessing the innovation, creativity and compassion that they have to offer; and they have weakened our country with an economic model that has deepened the divides between regions and within communities. That is the polar opposite of levelling up.

Richard Holden Portrait Mr Richard Holden (North West Durham) (Con)
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I am listening to the hon. Gentleman’s speech and I am really interested in what he has to say, but I cannot determine from what he has said so far whether he thinks that the Government are spending too much or too little. Perhaps he could be clear with the House and let us know.

Steve Reed Portrait Steve Reed
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What the shadow Chancellor, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West, said—and I agree—was, wouldn’t it be nice if the Government asked everyone to bear their fair share of the tax burden, rather than, as this Government do, always going first and foremost to working families and clobbering them, but letting people who own assets, such as bankers and landlords, off the hook, absolutely scot-free? That is not fair. We want to see fair models of taxation.

What we need to do now is to remake our politics by tackling the power inequalities that allowed all this to happen in the first place. Labour would open up power across the country with a radical model of devolution that gets power out of Whitehall. We would give people a voice and the power to use it in the workplace, in their community and over the public services that they use. Instead of undermining work, we will respect the hard work and sacrifice that people make for their families, re-establish the link between hard work and fair pay, and invest fairly across the whole country. We will establish clear measures for levelling up to hold the Government to account for what they do or do not deliver.

This Budget is not about levelling up; it is about covering up the damage that the Government have done in the past 11 years. By deepening the divides across this country, the Government have closed down opportunity and made Britain weaker. Only Labour will bring Britain together, so that every British person, wherever they live, can reach their true potential—for themselves, their family, their community, and this country that we love.

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Richard Holden Portrait Mr Richard Holden (North West Durham) (Con)
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I want to reflect on what I think was a great speech from the Chancellor last week, and another fantastic tour de force from the levelling-up Secretary today.

It is important for us to see everything that the Government are doing in context—the context of the hundreds of billions of pounds that they are putting into supporting the economy during the pandemic. We have had the furlough scheme and grants for business, support that has only been possible because of a decade of sensible financial management by the Conservative party. That is something on which Opposition Members should reflect, and it is something that they could not do after the financial crisis of 2008-09. However, as the Chancellor said in his statement, we should look more broadly at value for money in public spending, and that is certainly something that I shall be doing on the Public Accounts Committee along with the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant).

I disagreed with the hon. Member when he said that the House was only about party politics. I have worked closely with the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) on policies of hers. I have worked with her on, for example, the Menopause (Support and Services) Bill, supported by the Government last week, and the all-party parliamentary group on gambling-related harm. There is more to this House than just party politics, and we can work together on certain important matters. I hope that the hon. Member will reflect a little on his earlier comments.

Some Members, in particular my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond) and my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox), spoke of what extra borrowing at this time would mean. That was all I could really hear from the Opposition, who seemed to be saying, “We want this extra spending, but we do not want the taxes to pay for it.” Those on the Government side of the House are prepared to be honest with the British people; those on the Opposition Benches clearly are not. We should bear in mind that a 1% increase in interest rates that the Government have to pay would be the equivalent of a huge chunk of the defence budget being wiped out in interest alone. We need to think about that in a wider context, and about the sound management that the Government are delivering.

As for levelling up itself, one element in the Budget that has really hit home is the taper rate. Labour Members have said that it is not enough, but they talked about wanting to get rid of universal credit, which was introduced to stop taper rates of over 100% for working people. Now the rate is down to 55%, about half what it was for some workers before. Ours is the party that is delivering for working Britain, and we are also delivering more vacancies and more full-time jobs than ever before: even now, there are more full-time jobs than ever before in the UK. This is the party of work. Whenever Labour has been in government, it has left unemployment higher. I am delighted to support what the Government are doing.

More broadly, we are being honest with people. We are saying, “If you are to have good public services, you must be able to pay for them.” That is why I support what the Government are doing. Opposition Members all say that they want more money and more investment, but none of them can say where they would raise that money. These are the two wins of levelling up: good jobs, better paid, with people being taken out of unemployment and into work, and the delivery of great public services funded by that.

In my own constituency, I welcome the excellent news about the Weardale railway line, which I will say more about in the Adjournment debate—the House is safe for the time being—and the money for Shotley Bridge Hospital, as well as the feasibility study on reconnecting Consett and the Tyne. I thank, in particular, the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury for the draught beer relief, and the 107 Conservative Members who supported it. However, as we are seeking to level up, I ask her to look a little at a campaign that I will be pressing on pensions. I want to see our pensions system levelled up across the country. However, I will leave that for another day, and simply thank the Government for everything that they have done so far to help level up our country.

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Lucy Powell Portrait Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)
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In the days since the Budget, we have seen it unravel. The Chancellor tried to bury the reality—or should I say Burnley?—[Interruption.] You will get that one in the end. It is less levelling up and more hiking up: hiking up taxes, hiking up the cost of living, hiking up interest rates and inflation. The only thing it is not hiking up is growth. After 10 years of stagnant growth and stagnant wages, the forecasts for the next few years make yet more sober reading, with growth downgraded to a meagre 1.3% in 2024. Taken together, the rising cost of living, along with rising taxes, inflation and interest rates, mean that families will be worse off to the tune of £3,000 a year. You simply cannot claim an agenda of levelling up while presiding over an era of no growth and ordinary working people becoming worse off. A few tiny, piecemeal pots of cash to various places will not even remotely make up for that overwhelming tidal wave hitting those on modest and low incomes. This is

“not a set of priorities that is consistent with…levelling up”.

Those are not my words; they are the verdict of the IFS. This was

“an acid test for the government’s flagship levelling up agenda—and the Chancellor has fallen short... The country is no more on track to level up than it was yesterday.”

That is not my view, but the view of the IPPR North.

As is becoming the theme with this Government, they will the ends but they have no plan to will the means —that is otherwise known as rhetoric not matched by reality. That view was echoed in excellent speeches by my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge); my hon. Friends the Members for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma), for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock) and for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater); my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne); my hon. Friends the Members for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd), for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) and for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe), my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper); and my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith), for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery), for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western), for Slough (Mr Dhesi), for Lewisham East (Janet Daby), for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter) and for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy).

A plan for real levelling up begins with a plan for real and sustainable growth, disproportionately focused towards the people, places and industries most in need of it. That means a programme of real investment and a strategy. I know that the Secretary of State is not here this evening, but I am pleased that, in lauding the spending increases, he has finally accepted our view that we cannot cut our way out of a crisis. If only he had realised that before 10 years of austerity, which have left a million more people in poverty and the fabric of our public services in tatters. But it is obvious from today’s debate that most behind him have not had the same epiphany.

Given that the Resolution Foundation says that this must be a decade of high investment as we transition to net zero, it is astonishing that in the Chancellor’s flurry of giveaways there was almost no mention of green investment. The huge upheaval and change that meeting our net zero targets requires is the once-in-a-generation opportunity to truly level up and to create a fairer, better distributed economy—it is an opportunity this Government are frittering away. This is about winning the green global race in the sectors that power our regions, such as steel, aerospace, wind and wave, but there was not a single mention of that in this Budget. It is also about reducing demand and, in so doing, reducing the cost of living crunch through a major drive to retrofit homes and switch to green energies, but there was not a flicker about that in this Budget. It is also about investing in people, especially those who need it the most. The Government’s own report on lost learning during the pandemic, published just last week, shows the stark regional inequalities, with children in the north-east and Yorkshire and the Humber losing 15 times more learning than those in London, but that was not referred to in the Budget. Its stark findings should be at the heart of any Budget that claims to be levelling up. The Government cannot level up without a serious programme of catch-up.

On transport, at last we see some recognition for buses, but a major test of levelling up will be the Government’s commitment to Northern Powerhouse Rail and the eastern leg of HS2, neither of which was mentioned at all by the Chancellor. The Government should listen to the excellent speeches today from my hon. Friends the Members for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane), for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) and for Bradford South (Judith Cummins), and my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) on this topic.

Key to addressing the deep divides in Britain is tackling the housing crisis, which was so brutally exposed during covid. Yet again, we see lofty ambitions not met by any kind of real plan. If the Chancellor’s announcements on housing sounded familiar, that is because they are: we have heard them all before. That £5 billion to address the building-safety crisis was announced back in February. It is a lot of money, but it is not working. The huge bills for leaseholders keep rolling in, insurance costs are soaring and mortgages are still virtually impossible to get. It is not about the cash; the fundamentals need to be fixed and the Government are not doing that. It is no surprise, then, that the Secretary of State did not even mention that today.

The funding for so-called affordable housing was another recycled announcement. The Government’s spin cycle goes round more often than a Hotpoint spin dryer—

Richard Holden Portrait Mr Holden
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Oh God.

Lucy Powell Portrait Lucy Powell
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The hon. Gentleman might groan, but he was not here for the better jokes at the beginning of my speech. In future, he needs to be here at the beginning of the wind-ups—that is one of the rules of this place.

If the Government’s record is anything to go by, they will deliver neither truly affordable homes nor levelling up. Their house building targets look dead in the water. Their definition of affordable is anything but, aligned with overheated markets, not with what people can actually afford. The Secretary of State made no mention of social housing in his speech; perhaps that is because he is projected to build only 6,000 new ones a year—far fewer than the number lost through the right to buy. The Secretary of State heralded the brownfield sites fund, yet he did not mention the fact that more than three quarters of that money currently goes to the south-east. That is hardly levelling up. Without reform of the arcane compulsory purchase order laws, too much of that cash will end up in the hands of the speculators who buy up land on the cheap.

For hard-pressed renters hit by the pandemic, we heard the Chancellor take credit for a small relief fund, but he failed to mention that he has also frozen local housing allowance again. Add that to the cut in universal credit and the almost 1 million renters who already face a gap between their income and housing costs now face real hardship. It is no wonder that we have seen homelessness rise on the Government’s watch—