Budget Resolutions

Sarah Russell Excerpts

Thursday 27th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Monica Harding (Esher and Walton) (LD)]

I am sure that the Chancellor is sick of hearing her own words from last year quoted back to her:

“extending the threshold freeze would hurt working people. It would take more money out of their payslips”—[Official Report, 30 October 2024; Vol. 755, c. 821.]

Yesterday, she froze income tax thresholds, dragging one in four people into higher rate or additional rates of tax and pushing the tax burden to an all-time high of 38% of GDP. Today, she is refusing to rule out coming back for more. Blindly copying the playbook of the last Conservative Government, she is the continuity Chancellor. There is still no vision for growth, just that old-style Labour tax and spend. It is like new Labour’s wealth creation to pay for better public services never happened.

The Government may like to blame the Conservatives for the OBR’s downgrade in growth, but the OBR has said that none of the measures in the Budget will boost growth. In fact, the Budget may actively harm growth. The OBR has said that slower wage growth and higher taxes mean living standards will rise more slowly than expected. Take, for example, the raid on pension contributions: the OBR tells us that employers will pass on the cost of the £4.7 billion tax raid on pension contributions to employees through lower wages and less generous schemes. The CBI has data showing that three quarters of employers will decrease pension contributions as a result. It is a tax on those doing the right thing.

That comes after Government policies harmed businesses in their first Budget, including the national insurance increases that have put thousands of pounds on to a load of businesses in my constituency, causing them to hire less and cut hours for the very people that the Government say they want to protect: part-time, low-paid workers, often with caring responsibilities. Higher unemployment in turn means more spend on universal credit—indeed, £1.8 billion more, as estimated by the OBR, on unemployment. It is all the wrong way round.

Yesterday, one long-term successful business owner in my constituency said to me:

“The whole thing is just depressing. I could work for another 10 or 20 years creating wealth for the economy, but the Government is making it so hard I may as well retire. And if I was in my 30s, I wouldn’t choose to do it here any more—I would move overseas.”

She is one of our wealth creators—she creates the growth we need. Another large business in my constituency who once felt confident about investing in Britain, creating growth and hiring new staff is now telling me that it is scaling back plans, postponing projects altogether and contemplating offshoring.

Talking of supporting people trying to do the right thing, let us turn to landlords. One of my constituents, who is known as a decent landlord, told me yesterday:

“I may as well pull out—what is the point? I get 2% gain on my properties. I may as well put it in the bank and get 4%.”

The Government’s policy will take rentals off the market and increase rents. In Esher and Walton, where rental prices are sky high, that means more people will not be able to afford to live there.

The property tax will gum up the housing market and distort it by bunching properties for sale below the threshold. It is said that the surcharge will raise more than £600 million, but that will be offset by £200 million of behavioural impact, so the take-home is £400 million, which is a rounded-up figure. In London and the south-east, where the average price per square foot is higher, those properties might not be such big houses, and in them are likely to be pensioners. Public First has said that two fifths of homeowners in bands G and H are pensioners.

[Sarah Russell (Congleton) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Monica Harding]

I do not have the time.

Older homeowners who have watched their properties’ value soar over the years will be hardest hit by this granny tax. They are asset-rich but cash-poor. They may be forced to sell up—at reduced asking prices—and more properties will get dragged into the mansion tax net. As that happens, a proportion of terraced houses, flats and semis will join them.

Worst of all, this is not a serious attempt to reform property tax, including business rates, stamp duty and council tax. Like the Budget, it is tinkering and meddling around the edges. This is a patchwork Budget that does not take us much further forward. Where has the national mission for growth gone? This is a low-growth Budget from a low-growth Government who thumb their nose at the wealth creators. It does not tackle some of the big questions. Where is the money in the plan for adult social care? Where is the money in the plan for the £14 billion deficit in SEND provision to help local authorities that are about to go bankrupt? The Budget is a smorgasbord of contempt for aspiration and growth. The Government have not only abandoned working people in my constituency, but waged a quiet war on aspiration itself.

I am pleased that the Government have lifted the two-child benefit limit. [Hon. Members: “Ah!”] My party laid out how we would do that, but Government Members know as well as I do that poverty does not end there. To tackle poverty, we need to create growth.

There is an alternative, which the Liberal Democrats have laid out in our plan to turbocharge economic growth by repairing the £90 billion Brexit black hole caused by the previous Conservative Government. The UK needs to negotiate a new bespoke customs union with the European Union: a modern arrangement designed around the needs of British businesses and workers, which would raise £25 billion a year. Instead of that we have a Budget that taxes work, punishes investment, stifles aspiration and still fails to deliver for public services; a Budget that tells wealth creators—

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Russell (Congleton) (Lab)]

My constituents may recall that I once started a speech in this place with the words “Potholes, potholes, potholes”—I thank the hon. Member for North Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) for that glance of recognition. No one will be more delighted than the people of Congleton with the Chancellor’s announcement in the Budget that we will double the road maintenance budget over the course of this Parliament. The road safety Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood), is in her place, so I will take this opportunity to ask that she makes sure my constituents get their fair share of that money. As she has heard me say before, my roads are dark, fast, dangerous and poorly maintained, so I look forward to us bringing that money through progressively over time.

The cost of living crisis is another major issue for my constituents. The £150 off energy bills will be extremely welcome for families in my constituency, as will the freeze on prescription charges and the freeze on rail fares—something that has not happened for 30 years. I am proud that we have put up the minimum wage, because work should pay, and families working very hard every day should be able to afford the things they need.

With regard to pensioners, we have maintained the triple lock, and the average pensioner on the full state pension will get another £575 next year. Nationally, three quarters of pensioners will remain eligible for the warm home discount, which is very important.

I understand that removing the two-child benefit cap will be contentious for some people, but it will instantly take 1,310 children out of poverty in our local area. The widening of free school meal eligibility has also given 2,000 extra children a warm meal every day. Of course, we all want to see children thriving in our community. The reality is that we are exceptionally affluent in our constituency. I know that for many people it does not feel like it, but we are one of the top 20 most affluent places in the country.

Nationally, we are spending £2.2 billion on temporary accommodation. There are 174,000 children in temporary accommodation, 80 of whom died in that temporary accommodation last year. We have to spend money on relieving poverty for our poorest children and households, because that is the only way that these shameful figures will change. Our children are becoming shorter compared to their European counterparts, because of malnourishment in our communities. There is a moral case to do this, and in all likelihood there will be savings from this investment as well.

I know that local infrastructure concerns many of my constituents. Some of the figures I will give have been provided before, but they bear repeating. We are spending over £1 billion on rebuilding Leighton hospital. We are spending £60 million on rebuilding Sandbach school. We are spending £740,000 on improvement’s to the Ashfield Medical Centre. We are spending the best part of £1.5 million across three local hospices that serve my community, following lobbying from me and other Labour MPs in the Cheshire East area. I am extremely proud of the things that this Budget and the previous one are delivering for my constituents.

On local high streets, we all value our independent businesses, so I was proud to see the permanent reduction in business rates for small independents, whether they are pubs, restaurants or shops. I was also pleased to see that small and medium-sized enterprises, of which there are many in my constituency, will get the training costs fully reimbursed for their apprenticeships. That is good for local young people and for businesses.

I am also extremely proud of the British industry competitiveness scheme, which will allow businesses in energy intensive industries, such as Diamond Electronics, which I visited in Smallwood, and CLD Systems in Sandbach, to be able to reduce their energy costs and improve their competitiveness in the long term. There is a consultation now open on how we do that, and I encourage local businesses to engage with it.

Lastly, I alongside other colleagues called for a gambling tax, and I was very pleased to see it included in the Budget. I have spoken to constituents who are really struggling with online gambling problems. That industry needs to pay for the problems it is creating. I also very much support the mansion tax—this is the way to a fairer society. The Budget has brought economic stability, fair taxes and high-quality public services, and I truly believe in it.