Budget Resolutions

Debate between Tom Hayes and Desmond Swayne

Wednesday 30th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

It is an enormous pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Motherwell, Wishaw and Carluke (Pamela Nash). Until recently, my cousin was a minister in Carluke.

Let me give the House a piece of Swahili wisdom. Howezi kuwafukuza swala wawili: you cannot chase two antelope. That, however, is exactly what the Government have been doing since they were elected. They announced immediately after the election, and repeated today, that their overriding priority was to secure economic growth by investing, investing, investing, but in reality their main effort was elsewhere. Their main effort was a creating a narrative in the public mind that they had inherited a wasteland, the worst inheritance of any Government since kingdom come: that the wicked Tories had operated a scorched earth policy leaving absolutely everything broken, nothing working, and a huge black hole. As a consequence, things would have to get worse before they could get better, and there would be implications for tax in the forthcoming Budget—and, of course, we have discovered that today.

The reality is that investment requires an optimistic outlook. By pouring such a bucket of cold water on the British economy, what the Government achieved was to reverse what was soaring business confidence and turn it into absolutely collapsing business confidence; and business confidence is the key to investment, not the great binge of borrowing that the Government are about to enter into.

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

Would the right hon. Gentleman welcome the £63 billion of investment that came through the international investment summit as a result of the election of a Labour Government? That money had been held back until the election, and the election led to the investment of those billions of pounds. Is that not a sign of significant business confidence in our country?

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

Much of it reannounced, and much of it put at risk by the behaviour of the Transport Secretary, but nevertheless an achievement. Of course I welcome any inward investment. What I think is a huge risk is a great borrowing binge for exactly the sort of investment that we saw throughout the 1960s and 1970s, which never delivered. Real investment—investment that improves productivity—is that which is undertaken largely by medium and small firms to invest in their own enterprises, but it is crowded out by the increased costs that are entirely a consequence of the Government’s great borrowing binge. On that basis, this Budget is a disaster.