Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Rosie Duffield Excerpts

Tuesday 9th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Rosie Duffield (Canterbury) (Lab) [V]]

For that last 10 years, we have been told that austerity was the only way: local governments operating on a shoestring budget, services cut to the bone, councils managing on the bare minimum, charities closing, no money available for specialist women’s refuges, and mental health provision at crisis point, with children waiting up to two years for even the most basic initial assessments. During that decade, child poverty soared, homelessness stopped being noticed, widening gaps just kept on widening, and public sector workers suffered from a pay freeze that never seemed to start to thaw.

We know that the majority of people using food banks are actually in work—the working poor. Many of those are the nurses who, by this Budget, have once again been insulted. When our frontline NHS workers urgently needed protective equipment, did the Government respond by quickly securing it from tried and tested suppliers, or did they award contracts to those with absolutely no previous experience, wasting huge amounts of taxpayers’ money and leaving those frontline workers without adequate protection? When hundreds of nurses and doctors lost their lives, and many thousands of lives had been saved by their colleagues, the Government made sure they were clapping. They said some nice words and thanked them, but as our nursing force start to emerge from the real trauma they have faced this year, where is the Government’s respect? The insulting offer of a 1% pay rise, said to be the equivalent of £3.50 per week, does not even honour the basic starting point, which is legislated for, of 2.1%. So those nurses, who are literally making the difference between life and death for so many people, will be going back to food banks in between their gruelling shifts.

Those of us with many local hospitality businesses welcome any help available, and those of us able to bid for the levelling-up funds urgently to support our high streets, creative sector and tourism industry will gladly do so. However, we also note the opportunities lost to level up for the self-employed, the millions excluded and the public sector workers, and, yet again, the social care sector and our unpaid carers are left out. Women are also, yet again, at the bottom of the pile. The Women’s Budget Group can advise the Chancellor on how to change that with its expert knowledge. Those glossy photos of swish new Downing Street makeovers are a kick in the teeth to those excluded—the wedding industry, unpaid carers, and the very people who put their lives at risk to save ours. I urge the Chancellor to listen to the public outrage and think again about the insulting 1% pay rise for nurses.