Budget Resolutions
Steve Barclay Excerpts(2 weeks ago)
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Steve Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
The Secretary of State opened this debate by saying that we should look at the backdrop of the general election, which was a surprising way for him to open discussion on the Budget, not least because a central theme of the Budget is Labour doing the very opposite of what it said it would do at the general election. That can be seen first and foremost with the £26 billion of additional tax—on top of the £40 billion in tax in the Government’s first Budget—when Labour said at the general election that it had fully costed proposals and that it would not need to tax working people. Indeed, Labour said at the general election that growth was its No. 1 policy objective, and yet what do we see in the official documents from the OBR? We see growth forecasts down every year of the forecast.
Even the topic of this debate—“bearing down on inflation”—is the opposite of what the OBR says is happening, with inflation staying higher for longer as a result of the measures the Government have taken. Labour inherited inflation at 2%, and yet it is now forecast to stay at 3.5% next year and to be at 2.5% the year after. Indeed, on the topic of the cost of living, nothing hurts people’s incomes more than inflation, which pushes up bills and the cost of food and erodes people’s income.
The Government also promised to deliver jobs, but we can see the consequences of their first Budget: the changes to national insurance—the jobs tax—have meant that unemployment has been up every month that the Government have been in office, and the graduate recruitment situation is the worst on record. In response to this Budget, the OBR forecasts that unemployment will be at 4.9% in 2026-27. This Budget is supposed to be “bearing down on inflation”, but inflation is up. The Government talk about addressing the cost of living, but people are being taxed more, and more people are unable to get a job. Graduates in particular are being hit. We can see the difference between what Labour said at the general election and what it is delivering.
That all matters, because away from the big numbers—the billions that get quoted in Budget documents—are a whole series of individual measures that will bear down on people’s incomes and prospects. The Government’s measures will bear down on the small business owner who does not have the same security as a big public sector organisation, and who has put their own capital at risk; they will see a 2% increase in the dividend tax, on top of the corporation tax that they already pay. The measures will bear down on the pension saver, through the changes being made to salary sacrifice. The Government are also freezing income thresholds.
It is interesting that Labour Members cheered a Budget in which the Chancellor did the opposite of what she said last year that she would do. Last year, she said that it would be a breach of the manifesto to extend tax threshold freezes, and that is exactly what she did this time. It is worth looking behind the headlines, and bearing in mind what the official data says this will cost: in today’s prices, by 2030, the measure will cost a higher-rate taxpayer £600 extra, and a basic-rate taxpayer £220 extra. Those decisions will have real consequences on people’s take-home pay.
I represent a rural constituency, but this Government seem to dislike rural communities. We saw that last year with the family farm tax, and we are seeing it with the electric car mileage scheme, which disproportionately penalises rural communities. Again, that change was not in their manifesto. Looking at the consequences of the last Budget, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that national insurance changes are costing the average worker £900. These policies have real costs.
The tax changes are being sold as raising more money for, among others, the NHS. At the general election, the Government said that they would end the resident doctors’ strikes, but another one has been announced today. The NHS Confederation has said that this is not a Budget for the NHS, and under the Budget, an estimated £3 billion extra in drug prices will have to be absorbed. An announcement has been made that standards may be changed so that real mental health funding is flat, and just goes up in line with inflation, which is not the change that the Government promised.
Steve Barclay
I am happy to; perhaps the hon. Member wants to come in on the Government’s pay offer.
Mr Charters
I wanted to come in on the right hon. Member’s point about inflation. I am sure that he will welcome a Budget that reduces inflation. If he looks at the Blue Book—[Interruption.] Hang on a minute. Look at the Blue Book. It says:
“Government policy measures announced since March are expected to decrease inflation by 0.3 percentage points”.
Does he welcome that, or is he staying silent on fiscal measures that reduce inflation?
Steve Barclay
Clearly the hon. Member has just had a text message from the Whips Office. The reality is that the Government inherited inflation at 2%, and it is currently at 3.6%, and the OBR—the independent forecaster—forecasts it to be 3.5% next year. It takes a certain genius to intervene to show that the Government are going in the wrong direction.
This Budget is presented as being transformative for the NHS and for other services, but take community services; community health services in all our constituencies are hugely important. Waiting lists have been at about 90,000 since the general election, particularly for children, but we do not hear too much about that from the Government. We have heard very little in this debate about productivity, so let me close with one example. Last month, the Health Foundation said that there was only a one in six chance of the Government achieving the 2% annual productivity growth target that they set. Members might wonder why that matters. If productivity growth is at 1%, it will cost an extra £9 billion a year for the NHS. There is only a one in six chance of delivery, but if the Government do not deliver, there will be a very significant cost to the NHS.
This Budget puts up tax on working people in order to pay more in welfare. We can see that in a whole series of measures. We can also see the gulf between what the Government said at the general election and what the Chancellor has delivered. She has not even been consistent with what she said in her Budget last year.
Several hon. Members rose—
Solar Farms
Steve Barclay Excerpts(7 months ago)
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Steve Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
To understand this Government’s approach to solar farms, one should start by re-reading the Labour manifesto —page 59 of the Labour manifesto to be more precise. I know that it was only a year ago, but in its solemn promise to the British people, it said:
“Labour recognises that food security is national security. That is why we will champion British farming”.
That may now seem a long time ago, because a succession of announcements from this Government have made it clear that there is no commitment to farming or to food security. Indeed, that applies to many of their other commitments—smash the gangs, council tax bills will not go up, or energy bills will come down. On food security and its importance to national security it is clear that it was a fake promise. Indeed, there is an irony here, because we still have the ongoing covid inquiry. I was Chief Secretary to the Treasury at the time of covid, and it was clear to me that at a time of national crisis, value for money changes; there is competing demand across nations for scarce resources. I assure Members that, at such a crisis point, food security becomes an issue of national security, which is why the carelessness of the current Government on their manifesto commitment matters so much.
David Davis (Goole and Pocklington) (Con)
My right hon. Friend makes a brilliant point. Does he also recognise that the way that this Government have set up the arrangements—they are guaranteeing 10% to 20% returns on investment on these farms—is in effect bribing farmers to move away from farming?
Steve Barclay
Indeed, the Government are creating an incentive to do the exact opposite of own manifesto pledge, which is why I started with that point.
Let me come on to the second place where we can see Labour’s approach—in the Cabinet. Of course, we cannot witness the Cabinet in action at first hand, but it is very clear—certainly to someone who has had the good fortune to sit in Cabinet—how marginalised the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has become. We see the Prime Minister announce things such as the compulsory purchase of farmland in order to support infrastructure schemes; we see the former Labour leader, the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, make a whole raft of decisions in his first few weeks of office on massive solar farms, overriding DEFRA; we see the Deputy Prime Minister riding roughshod over the DEFRA Secretary of State on housing schemes; and we see the Chancellor phoning officials at DEFRA the night before to say that the sustainable farming incentive had been reduced so quickly that the Government have now had to concede in a legal case that their approach was wrong and allow a further 3,000 farm applications to proceed—and that is without any clear commitments in this area.
When I warned at the election about Labour’s farm tax, the now DEFRA Secretary of State said that it was complete nonsense. Well, we have seen the Government introduce that tax and watched while the Treasury rode roughshod over the Department. We have a Department that is completely sidelined in the Government and failing to speak up not just for food security and farming, but for the very commitments that were made in the Labour manifesto.
We see a theme running across a whole range of policy announcements that shows the instinct, the values and the priorities of this Government, who always believe that top-down knows best. They do not believe in localism. The implication for solar farms can be seen in how the delivery of the policy is happening on the ground. We are seeing clusters in the east of England, as my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) would point out, in areas of the best food production. We are seeing a gaming of the system, where the developers bring in consultants to grade the land in ways that sit at odds with historic knowledge of the value of that land.
Sir John Hayes
I am delighted to endorse everything that my right hon. Friend and neighbour has said about national economic resilience. The point about grading land is critical. To be fair to the Government, they have said that land at grades 1, 2 and 3a at least should be protected, but the problem is that the solar developers deliberately attempt to distort those distinctions by regrading land using organisations that are part of their own corporations.
Steve Barclay
My right hon. Friend is completely right; the issue is hiding in plain sight. When I was in the Government and sought to strengthen the protections for farmland, changes to the guidance were made, including bringing forward independent certification for agricultural land classification in soil surveys. We know at a constituency level that malpractice is going on and is not being challenged. The point is that that is not by accident. This is not an error of delivery. This is by design, and we can see that design in the raft of decisions made by the Energy Secretary in his very first weeks in office. Indeed, close to our constituencies, just near to Cambridge, there was an important announcement on a mega farm, which was made by the new Secretary of State against official advice. This matters because it is related to wider trust in our politics. A clear commitment was given to rural communities by Labour in its manifesto that is being broken.
I will close, conscious that many colleagues want to participate in this debate, with this comment for Labour Back Benchers. It may be that Nos. 10 and 11 have simply decided that, with their majority, they can afford to sacrifice a number of their rural MPs who had not been expected to win the election, and it may by that they decided that those MPs were not essential, but it is baffling that there is so much silence. These MPs are voting for measures that are having such a harmful effect in rural constituencies, and those measures are so short term that they are putting our food security, which does indeed matter to our national security, at risk.
Oral Answers to Questions
Steve Barclay Excerpts(11 months, 4 weeks ago)
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Steve Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
The Grimsby to Walpole National Grid scheme will see pylons almost twice the height of the existing ones being placed across the flat landscape of the fens. Why does the Secretary of State think that the cost of chasing his unrealistic 2030 target should be disproportionately borne by rural communities?
Ed Miliband
I have great respect for the right hon. Gentleman. The truth is that we need to build the grid, regardless of whether the target is 2030 or 2035. This Government are being honest and open with people in saying that the grid needs to be built. If we do not build the grid, we will remain massively vulnerable as a country.