Budget Resolutions

Stephen Crabb Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to be called on the final day of the Budget debate. I thought it was a good Budget; not only was it a responsible and appropriate response to the economic challenges created by the pandemic and the lockdowns, but it took major steps forward to tackle some of the longer term, more deep-seated issues that have at times held our economy back in recent years. It was a Budget that is good for the whole of the UK, and especially good for my constituency. I should start my remarks by thanking the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who is in his place, for including the Haverfordwest town centre improvement project in the first round of successful bids to the levelling-up fund. The bid put together by Pembrokeshire County Council, with my support, seeks to use regeneration of Haverfordwest castle and the riverside area as a catalyst to bring new opportunities and activity into the historic heart of the town.

In welcoming that project, I wish to take a moment to say something about the horrific and tragic events that happened in Haverfordwest town centre on Saturday morning, when three paddleboarders lost their lives on the river. I pay tribute to the emergency services and the speed of their response, and I wish to put on record my sympathies for the families of the victims, who are still coming to terms with the enormity of what happened at the weekend.

The project, which has the potential to renew Haverfordwest town centre, is not about nostalgia and looking to recreate a time, long since passed, when the town centre was full of shops and shoppers on a Saturday. The levelling-up fund is not about turning the clock back. We cannot turn the clock back on enormous economic forces shaping our town centres and retail environment. The levelling-up fund is all about intelligent, targeted investment that, together with harnessing local effort and determination, can make a difference in our communities, recovering some of the economic activity and civic pride that we need in all the communities we represent.

Levelling up is a mission written into the DNA of this modern Conservative party, and a continuous thread that we see throughout the Budget. Some of the criticisms of the levelling-up fund that I have read in recent days from Opposition Members have staggered me. The cynicism and churlishness about the fund shown by some demonstrate that they neither understand nor support the vision of creating a fairer economy throughout the whole country; nor do they understand this Government’s scale of ambition in terms of making a success and a reality of levelling up.

Levelling up is also about tackling poverty in this country—it has to be. If we look at the way deprivation and poverty are spread unevenly across this country, we see that levelling up has to mean tackling poverty as well. Our Government rightly emphasise the role of work and employment in tackling poverty, with work as a route out of a poverty, creating sustainable pathways to improving life chances. That approach is absolutely correct, so of course I welcome the enormous steps taken by the Chancellor in this Budget, including increasing the minimum wage, boosting the universal credit work allowance, and significantly cutting the UC withdrawal rate—the money people lose from benefit withdrawals when they move from unemployment into work. Together, those measures really improve the attractiveness of work in our economy; they strengthen the incentives for unemployed people to find work, and for people already in work to increase their hours and improve their earnings.

We have more than 1 million job vacancies in our economy, with employers in every one of our constituencies telling us that they need more staff and asking where they can hire them. With the tight labour market and the improvements to work incentives that the Chancellor has led with in his Budget, we have the best opportunity in more than a generation to really make a difference in tackling long-term unemployment in this country. About 350,000 people are long-term unemployed, and this is a great opportunity to reduce the number of children growing up in long-term workless homes. Almost 1 million children are growing up in a home where nobody goes out to work and brings home a wage. In the current circumstances, we have a great opportunity to make better efforts to reach those who are furthest from the labour market and put them on a pathway to sustainable employment. I am thinking about disabled people, lone parents, and others with caring responsibilities, many of whom want to work and to take on more hours. We have a good opportunity, if we can join up some of the initiatives in government, to really make a difference.

Of course, our Government are rightly emphasising that the days of relying on a continuous stream of migrant labour, particularly for lower skilled positions, are over. I am open-minded about people coming to this country, bringing their talents and work ethic, but given the changes that have happened post Brexit, we are in a new reality where there will be less migrant labour, so we have to find more workers from within our own potential workforce. The imperative is on the Government to make progress in improving the disabled employment rate and helping more lone parents and those with caring responsibilities into work. This is not an option any longer; it is imperative that we do it. The measures taken in the Budget provide important tools to help do it.

I welcome the Government’s recognition of the role of social security in supporting people into work. The last time we debated UC in this Chamber, on 15 September, we were debating the removal of the £20 uplift. I concluded my remarks by saying that we could not leave the issue at that point, and that we would need to come back to it and make further changes, so I am pleased that the Government have done some fresh thinking on UC and made these changes, which are absolutely welcome.

I say gently to my Front-Bench colleagues that a strategy for employment and work is not exactly the same thing as a strategy for tackling poverty. With the shadow of inflation hanging over the economy and many families on low incomes having to bear increasing living costs through this autumn and winter and into next year, we must have an honest discussion about the adequacy of welfare in this country. The £20 uplift brought in at the start of the pandemic was kind of an admission that basic levels of working-age benefits were too low. The measures we have more recently introduced to support families on the lowest incomes, and the moneys to be distributed via local authorities, are also kind of an admission that levels of welfare, particularly for working-age people, are too low. We have to come back and discuss that further, because the changes announced in the Budget do not cover everybody who was on UC. I will finish my remarks there, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am grateful to have been given time in the Chamber to make them.