Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Tahir Ali Excerpts

Monday 8th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Tahir Ali (Birmingham, Hall Green) (Lab) [V]]

The Budget announced on 3 March left a lot to be desired. While there were certainly some welcome measures, it is astounding that so little was said about the NHS and social care, public sector pay, legacy benefits, schools, or what those families relying on universal credit will do once the uplift is phased out in September. Yet those are the issues that so many of my constituents in Hall Green regularly contact me about.

At the front of people’s minds is the NHS, yet here we heard nothing of substance from the Government—no new funding announced for the NHS in the midst of one of the biggest public health crises we have ever faced. To add insult to injury, the Government are now saying that they can afford only the derisory sum of a 1% pay increase for nurses. I direct them to the Royal College of Nursing on this issue and recommended that nothing less than a 12.5% pay increase is satisfactory for our nurses, who have worked hard and risked their lives to keep us safe and healthy over the course of the pandemic.

Also notable by their absence from the Budget were children and parents. In my constituency, nearly half of all children live in poverty—twice the national average—which is completely unacceptable in a country as wealthy as ours. While the Budget gave sorely needed certainty to businesses, children and parents were given none whatsoever. As the Child Poverty Action Group has argued, the temporary uplift to universal credit only delays an inevitable and considerable fall in income for many families living in poverty. This is simply not good enough. The uplift should be permanent.

Finally, there was nothing on public sector pay. Many of our key workers in the public sector now face squeezed incomes as lockdown eases and the economy returns to normality. After all they have done for this country, to keep their pay frozen is a disgrace. This pay freeze must be abandoned, and decent pay rises must be granted to all public sector workers.