Budget Resolutions

Zarah Sultana Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I was a teenager when the Conservative party came to power. As that Government took office, they told us that they had to cut funding for public services, blaming “benefit cheats” and “welfare scroungers”, but they reassured us: “We’re all in it together”, they said. Of course, that is not how it turned out, as those paying attention at the time knew it would not. Fourteen years of Tory Governments and austerity have decimated our communities. Public services have been cut to the bone. Schools and hospitals are crumbling—often literally. Youth centres, women’s shelters and libraries have closed in their thousands. Local councils have lost billions in Government cuts, and dozens are now on the brink of bankruptcy.

Workers’ wages are lower than they were in 2008, and living standards are set to face the worst decline since the second world war; nurses are using food banks; teachers and doctors are leaving the profession they love in droves; the social security system has been gutted, and the number of children living in poverty is up 600,000 since the Tories came to power; and, while rents have rocketed, the number of people sleeping on the streets has increased by 120%.

Austerity was a political choice and we were never “all in it together”. Since 2010, the wealth of the richest has rocketed. In the last decade, UK billionaires have seen their wealth go up threefold. Fossil fuel giants have never had it so good. While the super-rich amass ever greater fortunes, people in my constituency are struggling. More than one in three children growing up in Coventry South are in poverty, with more than 3,000 affected by the cruel two-child benefit limit. The Central England Law Centre, which is based in my constituency, and Unite the Union warn that they are seeing increasing levels of conditionality being placed on people, including parents with young children and people with health problems. Over £1 billion has been cut from Coventry Council’s budget, with cuts filtering down and impacting services.

In particular, I want to highlight the impact on Coventry Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre—the only specialist sexual violence support service in Coventry—which has provided an invaluable service to Coventrians for more than 40 years. This year, strained budgets have meant that the council plans to end funding for the service, forcing the centre to close its waiting list, leaving survivors of sexual violence—overwhelmingly women—unable to access the support they need. That is just one example of the consequences of Tory cuts to local government. With this Budget, those cuts are set to get worse, because once the Government’s commitments to other areas are factored in, it entails yet more austerity. As the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said, this Budget means cuts worth £20 billion a year by 2028—again cutting local government, justice and Home Office budgets.

It is no surprise who benefits the most from the giveaways in this Budget: the national insurance change benefits the richest households 12 times more than it benefits the poorest, while cutting capital gains tax will help those with huge property portfolios but will do absolutely nothing for the parents in my constituency choosing between heating and eating.

Morally, politically and electorally, this should be the Government’s last Budget. The inheritance for the next Government will indeed be dire, but we should learn from the past and rise to the challenge. In 1945, when Labour came to power from the rubble of war, we built the NHS, we built the welfare state, and we built millions of council homes. We redistributed wealth and power and transformed our country for the better. That should be the lesson for the future: making the super-rich pay their fair share, investing in our communities and building the green infrastructure for the future. We have done it before. We must do it again.