Budget Resolutions

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi Excerpts

Monday 1st November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak in the Budget resolutions debate. Most of the time, debates in the House serve to illuminate a topic and make it clearer. The debate so far has had the opposite effect. What has become increasingly clear is that no one agrees what levelling up actually means. There are fundamental differences on the Government Benches on what levelling up is. The fact is, so much of the Chancellor’s Budget was about not levelling up but repairing damage done by the Government, replacing some—but not all—the money squeezed from public services since 2010.

Take my Slough constituency as an example. I asked the ever-excellent House of Commons Library for the facts about Slough council’s budget since 2010. The Library informed me:

“we can see that Slough’s spending power—broadly speaking, the money that the council had available for making decisions, i.e. excluding ring-fenced funding—decreased by 28.9% in real terms between 2010-11 and 2020-21.

The part of core spending power that came from central Government funding—listed by the National Audit Office as ‘Government-funded spending power’—fell by even more in the same period, with an overall 53.8% real-terms decrease.”

I am going to repeat that because it is staggering—a 53.8% real-terms cut for Slough since the Conservatives came to power.

While issues with Slough Borough Council’s finances undoubtedly extend beyond this, councils have been increasingly forced by the Government to seek more creative ways to bring in income in the face of such cuts. Councils have undertaken governance of complex company groups and investment portfolios to make up for the shortfall and protect frontline services, but they are not geared up to take such risks and operate like property development companies; they are there to provide much-needed public services within communities. In a borough where 30% of children live in poverty, the Government’s callous £20 cut in universal credit will hit those with disabilities and poor families the hardest just when fuel and food prices are soaring, taxes have been increased and winter is coming. That is the reality of the Budget: giving with the hand that has already taken away so much.

No opportunity was more missed in the Budget than investing in UK railways. I share the Rail Industry Association’s disappointment. There was no guarantee of the long-term day-to-day investment that the railway needs to survive after the pandemic; still nothing on the integrated rail plan for the midlands and the north; continuing uncertainty about the eastern leg of HS2, Northern Powerhouse Rail and the midlands rail hub; no update on the rail network enhancements pipeline two years after it was published; and still no announcement on when the western rail link to Heathrow will finally be built. With COP26 now in session, Ministers could have announced plans for a net zero railway with a huge rolling electrification programme and significant investment in developing battery and hydrogen technology, but no.

The Budget and spending review needed to do two things: give help to the poorest and most vulnerable right now, including in my Slough constituency, with real levelling up for people facing tough times rather than more meaningless slogans; and invest in a green economy, with the railway at its heart. It failed miserably on both counts.