Budget Resolutions

Roberta Blackman-Woods Excerpts

Monday 27th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Emily Thornberry]

I simply refer the hon. Lady to the Red Book, where she will see that there is less money being spent on international development. It is a great worry to us all and I know it will be a great worry to her. I therefore hope she will join us in speaking to the Chancellor about our responsibilities, because we are at a time of great difficulty internationally. As I have been attempting to outline, there are cuts not only from the United States but the EU. If we are, in effect, spending less money, too, at such a precarious time, that should cause us all concern. It was extraordinary that the Chancellor of the Exchequer chose not to mention it at all in his speech.

[Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that what the Government and the Conservative party do not recognise is that the commitment is to 0.7% of GDP, so when GDP falls, as we learned it did in the Budget, the amount of money going to international aid also falls? The Chancellor should have made that clear last week. [Interruption]

[Emily Thornberry]

So in conclusion, here we are debating Britain’s place in the world, in respect of a Budget that could not bring itself to mention how we are ranked globally on growth; here we are debating defence, in respect of a Budget that did not once mention defence spending or armed forces pay or disclose the Government’s secret plans to cut the size of our Army to below 70,000; here we are debating international development, in respect of a Budget that is scandalously silent on the issue, even while raiding almost £1 billion from its budget.

If that is what the Government mean by “global Britain”, I would hate to see their vision of isolation. We might see it soon enough, however, because there is one thing that sums up the Budget and the giant mess the Government have got us into: the great flourish with which the Chancellor turned, for approval, to the Foreign Secretary and announced that he would be spending £3.7 billion on preparing for a no deal Brexit—£3.7 billion of taxpayers’ money just to prepare for failure. That is exactly 100 times what the Foreign Secretary wasted on his ludicrous vanity project, the garden bridge, and 110 times what the Chancellor set aside to help the NHS cope with the upcoming winter crisis.

That is the price we are all now paying—literally—for a Government who have spent the 17 months since the referendum fighting among themselves and fighting for position, instead of fighting to get the best deal for Britain—17 months in which, as the OBR report said, we have been given absolutely no detail of the Government’s plan for trade, migration or EU finances; 17 months during which the prospect of no deal has gone from a straw man used to threaten the EU in negotiations to a realistic and increasingly inevitable outcome. And all this is because of the Government’s utter failure to agree on what they want and the Prime Minister’s total inability to show any leadership, whether to her Cabinet or her Back Benches. That is why we are in this mess, why our growth figures are in the global toilet, and why we are wasting £3.7 billion preparing for failure and short-changing the NHS, threatening to cut the Army and raiding the budget for the poorest in the world to pay for it.

The Government are not turning us into a global Britain; they are turning us into a global laughing stock—a global example of bad government, hopeless leadership and a useless Budget. For all their talk of a global Britain, the Government are driving the country at breakneck speed off a cliff, at the bottom of which lies ever greater isolation and ever deeper economic misery. The Budget was one of the Government’s final chances to apply the brakes, but instead they are spending £3.7 billion simply greasing the wheels. It might have saved the Chancellor his job, but it was a shameful dereliction of his duty.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

The Chancellor spoke for more than an hour last Wednesday, but he did not mention several of the most pressing issues for my constituents. Particularly notable was the lack of any mention of additional money for social care, despite the Government’s saying in the general election that they would fix social care. The Care Quality Commission has said the system is at “tipping point”, yet the Government did not allocate any more money to social care through the Budget. Funding an additional amount through council tax is simply not enough. Nor was there any mention of help for the many WASPI women in this country.

[Maggie Throup (Erewash) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

I apologise, but I am short of time and lots of people want to speak.

The theme of this debate is the UK and the world, which is apt, because the Chancellor was unable to hide how badly the British economy is doing, especially compared with the economies of our global competitors. The most recent OECD forecasts have UK GDP growth as the third lowest out of the 35 member nations. Our productivity is among the lowest, too, and that is stifling our economic growth. In recent years, productivity growth has underperformed every forecast made by the Office for National Statistics and the OBR, and last Wednesday the Chancellor was forced to admit that it has been flatlining for years. The Trades Union Congress put it really well when it said:

“Our workplaces are not fit for the future: UK productivity has flatlined for a decade, and we are ill-equipped to take advantage of new technological developments. Poor quality employment practices, weak enforcement of labour rights and low investment in training leave British companies lagging behind.”

We know what the Government should be doing to tackle the productivity crisis. They need to invest in skills and education, in technology and digital services, and in infrastructure right across the piece—everything from roads to ports to airports and housing. They also need to get companies to invest more in research and development. However, the Budget was weak on several of those issues. It is unclear whether the £20 million announced for further education colleges is new money and we do not know when they will get it. We all know that apprenticeships are a great way to upskill the workforce, but the Government’s record on them is poor. Statistics from the Department for Education show that there has been a 60% drop in the number of people starting apprenticeships.

Little new money was announced in the Budget for transport and infrastructure, especially in our regions. Most of the money is still concentrated in London and the south-east. Although we do not want to take money away from those areas, we do want the Government to recognise the very real need for additional investment in infrastructure, particularly in the north-east, so that businesses can continue to grow.

We also know that the money that was announced for housing—£7 billion of new funding—is massively short of the £50 billion that the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government said was needed. This Budget continues the Government’s failed austerity policy and does nothing for my constituency.