Budget Resolutions

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Wednesday 6th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

This Budget was overshadowed by the news that the Chancellor had done a fairly rare thing for a politician: put his hand in his own pocket. Was this for a youth club in Hounslow or perhaps a new high-tech hospital scanner? No, it was for his own party association. Meanwhile, my constituents have to live with yet another Budget from yet another tired Conservative Government. After 14 years of their Government, our economy is in recession, living standards are falling, public services are in crisis and our country is desperate for change. We have had 22 fiscal statements since 2014 that promised higher wages, higher skills and higher growth, yet they have delivered none of these.

Today we have had another statement promising dollops of jam next year at the earliest. My constituents, like all our constituents, are seeing their bills rise, their weekly shop get more expensive, their rents and mortgages skyrocket and their debts pile up. So what does this Budget offer them? The OBR figures show that under Sunak’s tax plan, working people are, on average, £870 a year worse off. The Government have given 5p for every 10p taken away from our constituents. This included the OBR’s revised estimate of the impact of tax threshold freezes that raise £31 billion over the forecast period and create 3.7 million more taxpayers.

This Budget does nothing to tackle the housing crisis, as many Members have said. This is the biggest crisis facing my constituents. Families locally cannot afford to rent, let alone buy. Key workers are being priced out of the area and home ownership is but a distant dream. Hundreds of children in my constituency are—I want to say living, but frankly they are existing in insecure, often dangerous, temporary accommodation, which is costing Hounslow Council and the benefits budget millions of pounds each year. That is money that could be spent on building new homes.

It is no wonder that more and more lifelong Conservatives I have met in recent months, whether in Chiswick or in by-election campaigns in Bedfordshire and Kingswood, have told me that they are no longer going to vote Conservative. This is probably why I was seeing so many glum faces on the Conservative Benches while the Chancellor was speaking, and that has been followed today by many of his party criticising his statement in their contributions, including the hon. Member for Dover (Mrs Elphicke), who has just spoken. Talk about a divided party!

This Budget fails to deliver not only for working families and people seeking accommodation, but for businesses. I think of the businesses I have met across Hounslow: pubs struggling with soaring energy costs, corner shops facing a crime spree, and manufacturers and exporters facing barriers to trading with Europe. This Budget offers them nothing—nothing on business rates, on improving trade or on skills. My constituents, taxpayers and users of public services as they are, assume that the Treasury understands basic economic concepts, including the concept that higher taxes for them mean more money for the Treasury and public services. Today, however, the Chancellor joked about coming late to discovering his inner Laffer curve, which means that raising some taxes sometimes results in less tax revenue. Is this why he is cancelling the alcohol duty rise due next year, as he has been told that he has lost a couple of billion in tax revenue since last year’s rise? That is a couple of billion that our public services desperately need. This is basic stuff; it is basic economics that is even covered in the GCSE economics syllabus.

My constituents, from Chiswick to Hounslow, deserve better than this Budget. This growing economic mess is what happens when a Government are obsessed with headlines, with the short-term win and with focusing on the politics rather than on the long-term investment that our economy needs. It is no wonder that we are trapped in recession, trapped with low growth, trapped with decimated public services and trapped with a weak economy. The tax burden on our constituents is higher. The cost of the weekly shop is higher. Rent, mortgages and energy costs are higher. Most people are worse off. After 14 years of Conservative rule, it is clear that my constituents and people across the country deserve better. It is time for change.

Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.—(Aaron Bell.)

Debate to be resumed tomorrow.