Steve Rotheram
Main Page: Steve Rotheram (Labour - Liverpool, Walton)
Stewart Hosie
Not at the moment.
Budgets can sometimes be assessed more by what is omitted than by what is included. I thought there would have been more reference made to the city deals and how important they are for the areas that are negotiating them.
Stewart Hosie
I shall give way in a moment.
Although in passing the Chancellor mentioned fairness and, indeed, living standards, he did not dwell for very long—in fact, not at all—on the counter-analysis to his assertions, which is that child poverty will increase by 30% by 2021-22. That is entirely explained by the direct impact of tax and benefit reforms. He spoke about an increase to the minimum wage, which is of course welcome, but ignored the assessment that says that real average earnings are forecast to rise by less than 5% between now and 2020-21. In essence, that will mean more than a decade without real earnings growth.
Stewart Hosie
The final omission is any redress for the WASPI women. That is absolutely correct.
Stewart Hosie
Not at the moment.
It is worth reminding ourselves how we got to where we are today. It is not all the fault of this Chancellor, but the Tory targets on debt, deficit and borrowing that were promised in 2010 simply were not met. I shall demonstrate the scale of the failure. We were told that debt would begin to fall as a share of GDP in 2014-15, that the current account would be in balance the following year, and that public sector net borrowing would be barely £20 billion in that same year. Of course, as many of us warned it would not at the time, that did not happen. Debt will not begin to fall as a share of GDP until 2018-19, the current account will not be in the black until the same year, and public sector net borrowing in 2015-16 was not the barely £20 billion promised, but £72 billion. In short, the Scottish National party argues that the first five years of Tory austerity failed, and we have little confidence that the second five years will be any better.
I turn to the present, and then the future. Last autumn, the Chancellor told us that net debt would peak at 90% of GDP, or £1.84 trillion—that is 12 zeros. Today, he gave us the startling news about the huge progress: it will now peak at £1.83 trillion. Borrowing is down a few hundred million for 2017-18, and the current budget, due to be in surplus by £18.5 billion in 2019-20, has barely changed. The forecasts are as bad as they were promised to be in the autumn and have barely changed from last spring.
What growth there is seems to be driven in large measure by an assessment of increased business investment of around 4% over the next few years. The Office for Budget Responsibility says that there will be
“a 0.1% fall in business investment in 2017, before uncertainty begins to dissipate”.
We are about to have article 50 invoked, followed by a tortuous 18-month to two-year negotiation, and the OBR and the Treasury are telling us that the uncertainty will dissipate sometime at the back end of this year. That almost beggars belief.
Stewart Hosie
I will not give way for the moment, because I want to make a little progress.
The Chancellor also announced some £350 million for Scotland. [Interruption.] I thought that he might want me to welcome that. The problem is that it is all smoke and mirrors. Even after today’s announcement, Scotland’s discretionary spending will still be down £1 billion between this year, 2016-17, and the end of this Parliament, and more than £2.5 billion down in the Tory decade since 2010. Every little helps, but we will not be putting out the bunting to celebrate the Chancellor’s largesse.
The key point I want to make is about Brexit. The hard Tory Brexit—the elephant in the room barely mentioned by the Chancellor—is approaching quickly. It means that we will revert to WTO rules, with all the tariffs and other regulatory barriers, if a better deal cannot be struck, and I have no confidence at all in this Government’s ability to deliver that deal.
Stewart Hosie
Not at the moment.
There is no guarantee that a deal will be done. If the Chancellor expects that the plans outlined today can cope with the consequence of a cliff-edge Brexit, which the Prime Minister plans, then the whole Government are in for a very rude awakening.
Let us look at some facts. The economic value of EU citizens working in the UK is enormous. PricewaterhouseCoopers told us last year that the impact of migration restrictions alone due to Brexit could lead to a loss of over 1% of GDP. That 1% fall would more than halve the Government’s GDP growth forecasts for every single year of this forecast period, rendering them meaningless.
Just to put some colour into that, my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee West (Chris Law) today met representatives of the computer games industry, who said that 98.4% of the companies that responded to them had said that the Government should immediately guarantee the status of EU nationals working in the UK. That would have been, if not a fiscal measure, an active and positive economic one for the Chancellor to have announced today. It would have been an active and positive economic measure to guarantee that the UK would fully replace lost EU funding post-2020, specifically the less favoured area support scheme, particularly if the UK leaves the EU before the closure window in 2019. It would have been a positive economic measure today to confirm the UK’s intention to negotiate substantial and long transitional arrangements for the financial sector, to avoid the loss of jobs, income, headquarters and tax.