Budget Resolutions

Robbie Moore Excerpts

Wednesday 26th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)]

This Budget was dead on arrival. We were promised that the last autumn Budget was a once-in-a-generation event, but I suggest that the Chancellor may want to correct her record on that claim. Despite setting out to find growth, she has flatlined the economy and tanked employment. Indeed, we now know that Labour will raise taxes by more than any Parliament has raised them since the 1970s. All sectors are being impacted, not only those in hospitality but manufacturing and engineering—the sectors, and the organisations, that grow growth. Our hospitality sector and high streets are the backbone of my constituency, but the cost of doing business is spiralling out of control, not helped by the previous Budget, which hiked employer national insurance contributions and significantly reduced business rate relief, and by an energy policy that is crippling everyone from manufacturers to those in hospitality. Rather than helping businesses—for example, by axing business rates on our high streets, as those of us on the Conservative Benches are committed to doing—the Chancellor has offered them absolutely no ladder at all to get out of the hole that she has created for our small businesses.

A month or so ago, I held a roundtable at New Brook Street Deli in Ilkley in my constituency, when Ilkley Brewery, The Little Teahouse and many other businesses came along specifically to raise the challenges around increases in overheads, which they simply cannot pass on to their customers. This Budget does nothing at all to help them. Indeed, it almost seems like this Government look at those businesses as if they were separate from the families who work for them, but when we make it more expensive to employ someone, it is the workers who end up paying through lower wages, fewer hours or potentially having no job at all. Given that those in my area are subjected to council tax increasing by 10%, and that Labour-run Bradford council will increase it by a further 5% next year, there is less disposable income for people to spend.

This Budget has ignored the pleas of businesses to let them get on with the job that they want to do and achieve the growth that they aspire to achieve. The Chancellor has slashed investment allowances and pushed up fuel duty for every hard-working Brit in this country, and that is not the way forward for growth. Of course, the increase in fuel duty will negatively impact rural areas much more than others, because there are further distances to travel.

Then there is the challenge with inheritance tax, which has not really been addressed at all by the Chancellor today. Small family businesses, including family farms, got just one mention by the Chancellor today, despite the Government unleashing the most devastating tax changes in a generation on these businesses last year. The changes to agricultural property relief and business property relief are set to wreak havoc not only on big multinationals, but on small family businesses. Many farming businesses are going to be negatively impacted.

[John Lamont]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech about the flaws in this Labour Government’s Budget. Does he share my concerns about the many farmers who were outside Parliament today to express how strongly they are opposed to the impact of inheritance tax changes on their business? It is very telling. I know he was there as well, but I did not spot any Labour Members listening to the concerns that farmers expressed today. Does he also share my concerns about the ban that the Met police imposed on the rally, which had been planned for weeks? Last night they decided to cancel it.

[Robbie Moore]

I absolutely agree. The fact that the Met police cancelled today’s pre-organised Budget day protest and rally at the last minute is an absolute disgrace. I was proud to be out on Whitehall today with many of our farming community and my Conservative colleagues. We share their anxiety and concern that the changes to inheritance tax that this Labour Government are imposing will have a negative impact not only on our farming businesses, but on the wider supply chain. It is absolutely catastrophic.

However, it is not only our farming businesses that are being impacted but many family businesses, such as Fibreline in Keighley, which employs about 200 people. It has already worked out that its BPR liability will be in the hundreds of thousands of pounds. The options that many of these businesses have are to sell plants or machinery, or to lose control of the business for which they have worked for generations by selling shares. That is not progressive, and it does not give any hope to our family businesses. That is why it is absolutely devastating to see that the Chancellor could not even be bothered to engage with family businesses in the run-up to this Budget over the last year, so that they could get their viewpoints across. Yes, I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) that it was a disgrace that not one Labour MP was out in Whitehall today to stand side by side with the farming businesses that Labour Members claim to be representing. Many of them represent rural constituencies.

Today’s Budget is heartless. After a year of anxiety, uncertainty and desperate pleas, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor have shown pure ignorance today, and this while the Government are yet set to spend £1.8 billion on a digital ID policy that nobody I have ever spoken to wants. When it comes to aspiration, why on earth would any young entrepreneur looking at this Budget want to stay in this country, and create the growth that the Chancellor is after and the local economic activity that we desperately need across areas such as Keighley and Ilkley?

The message we have heard loud and clear from this Labour Government today is, “Don’t save for your future or for your pension, because Labour will tax it; don’t bother working hard to get that pay rise, because Labour will tax it; don’t take the leap of setting up your own independent business, because Labour will tax it; and don’t you dare die holding assets, because Labour will tax them.” In fact, just about the only thing this Budget does positively is not incentivise anyone to work, but how does that deliver for the economy?

Given the crippling, tax-raising Budget that has been put before us, how on earth is the Chancellor aiming to create growth? She still has not addressed the key issues that many of our constituents have been raising with this Labour Government. Last year’s Budget, delivered by this Labour Chancellor, walked the country up the fiscal plank, which was cheered on by many Labour MPs on the Government Benches. I fear that today’s Budget, again cheered on by many Labour MPs, will leave the whole country sinking into the sea.