Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Baroness Winterton of Doncaster Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. To fit everybody in, I am going to reduce the time limit to four minutes after the next speaker.

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse).

We have had plenty of Budget debates, but this Budget has not fixed anything. The Chancellor stood here, in the middle of the strikes and the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank, and said nothing about those events in his speech—just like an avatar Chancellor. For months, the unions asked to meet, but the Government refused, hoping to break them. The unions were not moved, except to make a concession, but, like President Zelensky, their cause was right. Worst of all, as a former Secretary of State for Health, the Chancellor knows the cause of the junior doctors, because he picked a fight with them, allowing a few senior doctors to top up their pension while denying the many junior doctors a decent pay rise. We need to be able to recruit and retain our brilliant staff who take care of the country when we need it most: the public servants, like the late Ruth Perry.

I agree with the Chancellor on something—getting rid of local enterprise partnerships, which are totally unaccountable—but he is placing his faith in the Mayor, who is so far removed from my constituents. There was a press release in my inbox at 8.30 am on 14 March, the day before the Budget, crowing about the west midlands being an investment zone. I thought we had to hear about it here in the House first.

The Chancellor set out his Es. We know what happens to people who have too many Es, but this Budget was not hyperactive. It fixed nothing, not even the economic injustice of non-dom status. Nor did it impose a further windfall tax on the huge profits of energy companies while people need support with their heating bills. There is £10.4 billion on the table.

There was nothing about the problems that local authorities have faced over the years. In Conservative-controlled Walsall, we have an abandoned town hall with no one there. The former police station on Green Lane is a pile of rubble. Nothing has changed. Jack Lowe, who was 18, Bailey Atkinson and Akeem Francis-Kerr were murdered in and around the town centre. On Milton Street, there are prostitutes and drug dealing—shopkeepers are saying they are tired of seeing young people with money in their pockets. I thank the Police and Crime Commissioner Simon Foster and Chief Superintendent Phil Dolby for meeting me on Friday to discuss the situation.

Our Sure Starts, an important focus for families, are gone. Palfrey Sure Start was rated outstanding. There is a lack of health visitors to support families. There is no investment in schools; Blue Coat Church of England Academy is still waiting for money to fix its heating. There is no direct support for children or for those who have been excluded from school. The Chancellor talks about childcare, but his policy will not come into effect until 2024. And what about social care? There is nothing. This Budget fixes nothing. It does not invest in people.

The Chancellor wants to get people with disabilities back into work, but we cannot even get a lift to help people with disabilities or parents with pushchairs to access Bescot Stadium station. I wrote to the Minister, who told me to write to the Mayor; the Mayor told me to write to the Minister again. He said that there was no money, but he has £70 million of unspent Commonwealth games legacy funding. My constituents cannot wait until 2029 for access.

The Chancellor said that he wants us to be the best place to do business and work and the best place for research and development, but what about other research? It cannot all be about digital and computers. He truly is an avatar Chancellor. There was no explanation for the return to the Treasury of £1.6 billion that should have been allocated to Horizon Europe. Is that what is holding us back from joining Horizon? Will the Chief Secretary to the Treasury please ensure that it is paid over so our scientists can collaborate on their research?

There is a democratic deficit. I have outlined the stuff of life that keeps people in our communities going. The Chancellor missed out an E—E for excuses—but so far the country has given him an F for failure. He is failing our constituents, our communities and the country. There is an alternative. It is time for change, and only Labour can bring that change.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call Anthony Browne.

[Hon. Members]

Hear, hear.

--- Later in debate ---

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. There is absolutely nothing wrong with interventions, but we are so pressed for time that speakers should bear in mind that if they accept an intervention, I would appreciate it if they nevertheless stuck to the time limit. Those who intervene on others and who are still trying to catch my eye will move further down the list, because they will have had one chance already, and it means that someone else loses a minute, if not more.

--- Later in debate ---

[Angela Crawley (Lanark and Hamilton East) (SNP)]

The cost of living crisis is far from over and, sadly, this Budget offers very little to the people in Lanark and Hamilton East. Energy bills remain high, mortgage rates remain high and child poverty remains high, so if this is the best that the Chancellor can offer during a financial crisis of his own Government’s making, it demonstrates how perfectly out of touch Westminster is with the needs of Scotland.

The Chancellor spoke of ramping up welfare conditionality. This will only force more people into insecure work, offering no stability for future planning, and it is not enough to lift them out of poverty. The reality is that this has resulted in a series of punitive sanctions in relation to the administrative earnings threshold on universal credit. Does the Chancellor really believe that the solution to bringing about growth is to hammer down on sanctions?

The gender pay gap is still very much apparent, and this Budget will do nothing to address it. I fear that women are bearing the brunt of the cost of living crisis, and this is fundamentally unacceptable in 2023. Calls to reintroduce gender pay gap reporting and to include ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting have all but been ignored. So can the Chancellor really claim that this will achieve economic growth and be truly inclusive, as the Conservative Government appear to believe it will?

While I welcome an increase in the national minimum wage, it is not a real living wage. It will not be enough to cover the cost of living, and it will not be enough to lift people out of poverty. It will not be enough to give people financial freedom to meaningfully contribute to the economy. When will the Chancellor listen to the overwhelming calls from stakeholders to completely commit to fully implementing a real living wage?

The one policy I will welcome is on childcare. We all accept and understand that good-quality, well-funded childcare is imperative to drive the economy, to get women and parents back into work, and ensure that those who are in work stay in work, as well as to tackle things such as pregnancy and maternity discrimination and the bias against women within the workplace who are assumed to bear the brunt of childcare, but this is simply not good enough. I recognise that it enables parents, particularly mothers, to contribute to the economy, but lip service to childcare is not good enough. This could be a truly transformative policy: it could achieve real economic change, reduce discrimination, reduce in-work disparity and level the playing field for the gender pay gap, but this policy does not go far enough. I hope the Government will consider that it is a great policy, and let us drive it further.

I want to make a final point about the Government’s record in the last 13 years. Their dogmatic commitment to Brexit has cut Scotland off from our largest international trading partner. It has cut us off from access to the EU labour force, and businesses in Scotland can no longer afford the labour shortages they have been hit with in the last 12 months. The reality is that the cost of living crisis is not over. I am calling on this Government to listen to the SNP, accept the Migration Advisory Committee’s recommendations for a rural visa pilot, and allow those who want to come here to work and contribute to our economy to do so.

The reality is that this Budget has only further deepened the isolation that people feel. It has pushed low-income households into further poverty, created hardship even for those in well-paying jobs and forced people to sacrifice their basic needs to stay afloat. It has exacerbated the mental health crisis and pushed businesses to the brink of collapse. It has encouraged people into debt and forced pensioners to turn their heating and electricity off in the depths of winter. I know that this is the reality for many of my constituents across Lanark and Hamilton East and across the UK, and I am calling on the Chancellor to make—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order.