Budget Resolutions

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 1st November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. At the heart of levelling up is a recognition, as he rightly reminds the House, that while talent is spread equally across this country, opportunity is not. There is a series of measures in the Budget statement designed to specifically attack the problem of child poverty. The creation of new family hubs is specifically designed to address that, as is the additional investment in the supporting families programme, the successor to the troubled families programme.

I should add that the changes to the taper on universal credit will also ensure, allied to the changes in the national living wage, that someone who is on the minimum wage, who is therefore in work, and who is receiving universal credit will receive at least £250 extra a year as a direct result of the national living wage increase and an additional £1,000 a year as a result of the associated changes to the taper. I recognise that eradicating poverty is not the work of one Budget, but it is only fair that everyone across the House recognises that there are measures in this Budget statement—measures being taken by this Government—directly to address the problems that the hon. Gentleman raises, because they are a scar that needs to be healed.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State tell us whether the number of family hubs will match the number of Sure Starts that have been cut since 2010? Does he regret the loss of so many Sure Starts and recognise the serious damage that has been done to a generation?

[Michael Gove]

The right hon. Lady is right to point out that the Sure Start programme was always intended to help those who were most in need, but it was also intended to provide a universal offer. Inevitably, during the difficult period that we had after the 2008 financial crash, we had to make sure that we targeted resources accordingly, but after a period of retrenchment, we are now entering a period of renewal and reform. The family hubs are targeted not just at those who have children in the first 1,000 days of their life, which reflects superbly on the work of my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom); they are there to ensure that we have a comprehensive nought-to-19 offer. They go further than Sure Start children’s centres originally did—that is no criticism of Sure Start children’s centres—providing services that they did not.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

This Budget should have been first and foremost an opportunity to address the very serious cost-of-living crisis that is now affecting an increasing number of families across the country. Instead, the Government’s decisions have made things worse. There is now immediate pressure on all our constituents from rising energy bills, fuel bills and food prices.

[Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

Last month, I launched a cost-of-living survey in my constituency. Three quarters of my constituents told me that their wages have either flatlined or fallen in the past two years, and that their main concern is the spike in gas and electricity bills. Does my right hon. Friend agree that a much-needed solution in these difficult circumstances is to cut VAT on gas and electricity bills this winter from 5% to 0%? Surely that is a glaring gap in the Chancellor’s Budget.

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right that there was action that the Government could take to address the cost-of-living crisis. Instead, the Resolution Foundation has said that we have the weakest pay growth since the 1930s, with little prospect of things improving.

The Government have failed to take action to ease the bottlenecks that are pushing up inflation. They have failed to boost the productive capacity of the economy, so that when demand rises, prices rise too. Even worse, they are still going ahead with the £20 cut to universal credit and are increasing national insurance contributions and tax on low-paid workers at a time when costs are going up.

I am glad that campaigning pressure has forced the Chancellor to change the taper rate and take some measures on universal credit, but the reality is that that is not enough to stop people facing huge pressures this winter. It is not enough to stop many families losing hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds. A constituent of mine who has got in touch is in his mid-60s. He has just lost his job and is struggling to find new work: because he is so close to retirement, he cannot find an employer to take him on. He has paid taxes for nearly 50 years and has worked all his life, but is now worried that he will not make his remaining mortgage payments. He is seeing his income hugely cut this winter at a time when he is worried whether he will be able to pay his fuel bills. It is deeply unfair.

Underpinning the cost-of-living crisis is the fact that the Government could have taken other decisions. They could have cut VAT on fuel, as my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi) says; they could have raised national insurance thresholds to ease the pressure on lower-income workers; they could have gone further in increasing the minimum wage—but they chose not to.

It is not just about the choices that the Government have made. Underpinning those choices is the real story of the Budget, which is that the Conservatives have become the party of low growth. We have had a decade of weak growth in national income, in productivity and in real wages, which is why the Government are now putting up taxes.

It will get worse, too. The OBR forecasts growth—once we come through the bounce-back from the pandemic—of 1.3%, 1.6% and 1.7%. For all the warm words in the Budget, and for all that Conservative Members seize on particular phrases of the Chancellor’s, that is the underlying reality that they should be most worried about: weak economic growth for the future. That is what will hit our future public services and hit future living standards. We do not have the investment in regional economies, in jobs of the future or, particularly, in tackling climate change and the environmental challenges that have been highlighted so heavily this week at COP26.

Perhaps the greatest travesty of all is the lack of funding for our children’s education. Sir Kevan Collins has warned that we will pay the costs of lost learning in lack of productivity growth and lack of economic opportunity for many years to come. Not restoring the funding for our schools to the levels that we had under the last Labour Government for several more years will mean 14 years of lost investment in our schools. That is an entire childhood—a kid’s entire childhood in schools lost. The cost in lower productivity will be felt for very many years to come.

If we want an age of optimism, we have to be able to be optimistic for our kids’ future, optimistic for our towns’ future, and optimistic that our children will have a fairer, better and more sustainable future than we have. That optimism is missing; that optimism was not in the Budget; and until we can invest in our kids’ future, we will not see that optimism come back.