Cost of Living Increases

Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

My constituents in Bolton South East, the 38th most deprived constituency in our country, need a Government and a council that will take the necessary steps to support them through the cost of living crisis.

The record of the Government of the last 13 years is clear. They are forcing through a 5% rise in council tax this spring; real wages have been squeezed since 2010; families are poorer than our European neighbours; the chaotic mini-Budget in September 2022 added £500 a month to first time buyers’ costs; food prices in the United Kingdom are up 50% faster than elsewhere in the G7; and we have had 24 tax rises since 2019, meaning the burden on working families is now the highest in 70 years.

Then there is the record of the Conservative council in Bolton, which has been in control since 2019. It failed to even apply to the levelling-up fund and we missed out on the opportunity of £40 million in investment; the urban redevelopment of Crompton Place has been cancelled and housing development on Moor Lane has been downgraded; and Marks & Spencer, a huge employer in Bolton, has announced that it will be leaving our town as it is not feasible for it to continue because of the stalled regeneration.

Meanwhile, the Labour party has a real plan for Bolton South East and for the country at large. We will freeze council tax this year and cut energy bills, paid for through a proper windfall tax on the gas and oil giants that have made billions of pounds in profits. A Labour Government will support small businesses, paid for by an online sales tax, allowing them to lower prices for customers on the high street. Our Treasury team will reverse the Conservative decision to hand the richest 1% of pension savers a £1 billion pound handout. Those are our immediate plans.

This afternoon, we have heard many Members on the Government Benches talk about the financial credibility of a Labour Government and of the Labour party, so I want to take a little journey through time. In 2006, nine years after Labour came into power, the GDP-to-debt ratio was 40.5%. Germany’s was 66.7% and France’s was 64.6%, so we were still doing better than those two countries. In 2008, as everyone knows, there was an economic crash that started with the Lehman Brothers collapse in the USA, and there was a global recession. The then Labour Chancellor borrowed money to save our economy, and everybody knows, if they put their hand on their heart, that he did: he stopped about half a million people losing their jobs and avoided the banking crisis.

Between 1997 and 2010, we also made a record investment in health, in education and in police numbers. Some £19 billion was spent on renovating council homes that had been left in an appalling situation because of years of Conservative government. Let us have no lectures from Government Members about who is financially prudent, bearing in mind that last year their Prime Minister collapsed the entire economy.