Budget Resolutions

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Monday 27th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Emily Thornberry]

I am not going to.

In 2016 that section of the Red Book ran to a full 10 paragraphs, beginning with the boast that:

“Britain is forecast to grow faster than any other major advanced economy”.

Well, what a difference a year makes. Now that section runs to just one measly paragraph, on page 13, and it does not state how much Britain will grow compared with the rest of the world. For that comparison, we must turn to the OBR, which has stated:

“The pattern of strengthening growth across the other major advanced economies this year contrasts with the slower pace of growth in the UK.”

While it has slashed its forecast for UK growth up to 2022, it has upgraded its forecast for the rest of the world. George Osborne used to boast in every Budget that Britain was winning “the global race.” We now have a Government lagging along at the back of the global field and falling ever further behind. So much for global Britain.

If anyone thinks that growth figures are just numbers on a spreadsheet with no real-world implications, they should turn to two areas where the downgrading of Britain’s growth is already having direct and immediate effects: our spending on defence and on development.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

Is my right hon. Friend aware that in the past 35 minutes the Secretary of State for Exiting the EU has written to the Select Committee to say that the reports being provided are not complete and do not actually contain anything that might be commercially sensitive, thus adding very strongly to the point she is making? The Government are taking on the most significant economic challenge the country has faced since the second world war without a modicum of the basic detail they need to take on the task. Does it not shame the Government and Parliament that we are facing this kind of catastrophe without any serious information?

[Emily Thornberry]

My hon. Friend makes a very serious and important point. It is a shame that such an important and serious contribution is met by laughter on the Government Benches.

Let me turn to defence. It is not often that I find myself in agreement with the right hon. Members for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames) and for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), but I absolutely agree with them that the Government’s proposals to reduce the size of our Army to below the 70,000 mark, a cut of 12,000 from current plans, is nothing short of a scandal. Nor would it be acceptable to cut still further our naval capabilities by taking the amphibious ships, HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark, out of service.

We all heard the International Trade Secretary say yesterday that the Government would attempt to reach “some sort of compromise” on these cuts. Well, I have to say to the Government that there is no basis for compromise here. We should not even be having this discussion. Our armed forces are stretched to the limit as it is and they cannot take another round of cuts, so when we hear from the City Minister later on this, who himself served with such distinction as a young man in the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, I hope he will make it clear, on behalf of the Treasury, that there will be no cuts in the size of the Army and no cuts in the Navy’s amphibious assault ships.

--- Later in debate ---

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

This Budget was a huge wasted opportunity as well as an acknowledgement of failure. Those of us who listened to the Foreign Secretary’s speech today were staggered that he spent longer talking about penguins and plastic bags than he did acknowledging Brexit, the most serious threat to our economy. I was one of those MPs who campaigned for remain but found that their constituents voted leave. I am willing to go out there and say to my constituents that I will support their vote, but we need to have a sense from the Government that there is a plan and a basic competence in the negotiations that they are carrying out on Britain’s behalf. The Government need to seize the moment—as huge as it is—and show us that they are on top of the opportunities that exist. They are now making ludicrous claims, for example, that we could not nationalise the trains if we stayed in the EU. Such claims are utterly discredited and suggest that they have nothing left to say about how to make Brexit work.

I was elected in May 2010 on a programme that promised to halve the deficit by 2015 and to eradicate it by 2020. That plan was ridiculed by the Tories as inadequate—they said that it would consign our children to a lifetime of paying down debt. That now seems wildly optimistic compared with the performance of this Government. This evening, we heard the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) talking about debt as though he was not a member of a party that has increased our debt by half a trillion pounds since 2010. The Government have no credibility on the deficit or on debt. In 2010, they told us that it would be gone by 2015. By 2014, it was going to be gone by 2018. Now we are told that it might be gone by 2025. I am willing to bet my house that, by 2025, this country will still have a deficit. The Tories have no credibility when talking about the deficit. Now we have a Budget that fails to address any of the key questions that might see our economy moving in a more positive direction.

There was nothing in the Budget about social care, the local government crisis, and the inadequate investment in the NHS. Schools in deprived areas are facing a real funding crisis. This Budget could have championed a real growth programme, with infrastructure investment of the sort that we will need to make Britain a more attractive place in which to invest in future. We could have had that at a time when apprenticeship starts are collapsing. The Budget has failed the test of the moment.

There was also a failure to recognise the need to make universal credit work for people who are not close to work. I welcome some of the measures that have been taken to alleviate organisational failures, but universal credit does not work for the self-employed and it is positively cruel for the disabled. In questions last week, I heard the protestations of the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith), who recognises that his legacy is being tarnished. The actions on housing and homelessness were also utterly inadequate.

The tragedy of this Budget is the tragedy of this Government. They are out of ideas, more interested in their own survival than the national interest, and unable to grasp the size of the moment that a combination of the tides of history and their own ineptitude has brought upon us all. When we needed investment and innovation, we got obfuscation and confusion. When we needed decisive action to rescue universal credit, we got a partial tidy-up of failures that never should have happened. There was nothing on social care and nothing on the NHS. The Budget is a catastrophe for our schools and the deficit will now last till the end of never. This was a failed Budget from a failing Government who really have run out of ideas. It is time for them to step aside for a party that has not.