Tag: Anneliese Dodds

The comments made by Anneliese Dodds, the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, on 6 August 2020.

Today’s assessment by the Bank of England shows that this is a critical moment for our economy. A short-term, post-lockdown rise in spending sits alongside a much more uncertain long-term picture of very low levels of business investment and the prospect of a sharp rise in unemployment.

The Government has still not got a grip on the health crisis and we won’t recover from this economic crisis until it does. That means fixing test, trace and isolate to give people the confidence they need to go back out and get spending again.

And the Chancellor is still ploughing on with his one-size-fits-all approach to withdrawing income support, despite calls from businesses to think again. If he won’t, the recovery will be stopped in its tracks and the jobs crisis Britain faces will get much worse. It’s not too late to change course.

Comments made by Anneliese Dodds, the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, on 30 July 2020.

The Chancellor’s refusal to abandon his one-size-fits-all withdrawal of furlough is a historic mistake that risks a python-like squeeze on jobs in the worst-hit sectors. The reward for months of hard work and sacrifice by the British people cannot be a P45.

It’s not too late for the Chancellor to see sense, change course and support the businesses and sectors that need it most. But even if he does, there is still much to do.

That’s why Labour is today launching the Jobs Jobs Jobs campaign – to offer concrete, constructive proposals that would protect the economy and people’s livelihoods.

The government should back viable businesses that are still impacted by Coronavirus, support the self-employed and come up with a plan to drive job creation as we emerge from the pandemic.

And it must ensure our NHS and care services are fully prepared for a second wave – because we won’t recover from this economic crisis until the government gets a grip on the health crisis.

The comments made by Anneliese Dodds, the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, on 29 July 2020.

It feels pretty rich for the Prime Minister to talk of valuing the public sector when the Covid-19 crisis has shown just how starkly his Government has let down our NHS and social care workers.

Let’s not forget that the reason the Prime Minister needs to launch a recruitment drive is because Conservative governments have cut our public services to the bone.

If the Government is serious about attracting people to work in the public sector then he needs to show that he values those who already do, giving them the equipment they need and the pay talks they deserve.

Text of the letter sent from Anneliese Dodds, the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, to Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on 22 July 2020.

Dear Chancellor,

The Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) that you announced today takes place in extraordinary circumstances. The outlook for our economy, and our public finances, looks completely different today to how it looked even six months ago.

The CSR needs to reflect that. This is a moment to think boldly and strategically about the kind of country we want to be, and the public services we need, as we emerge from this crisis and prepare ourselves for the future. In particular, we need to ensure that a health emergency which has done so much to restrict economic activity is not compounded by political choices around public spending that weaken demand further. We must learn the lessons of the last crisis.

As things stand, however, it is not clear whether the instructions you have given to departments are more in line with the Prime Minister’s promise that “we are absolutely not going back to the austerity of ten years ago” or the intimations in your statement today that further – and potentially significant – cuts are on the way.

The messages are similarly mixed when it comes to paying the public workers who have done so much for us all throughout the crisis. Last night you announced that some would be receiving a pay rise and yet this morning you spoke of “restraint” and the prospect of cuts to come. That is not the right way to treat those who have contributed so significantly to tackling the coronavirus, often at great personal risk.

The CSR – and the context in which it is taking place – raises big public policy questions. They deserve to be discussed openly and publicly so that voters know whether this is genuinely an exercise in designing public services fit for the 21st century or if it just presages a return to an ideological approach to spending that gave us the slowest economic recovery in eight generations.

As such, I am calling on you today to publish the directions you have given to government departments so that everyone can see the context in which those departments will begin making critical choices about their spending plans and operations.

I look forward to hearing from you and engaging with this process, which comes at such a critical time for our country.

Yours sincerely,

Anneliese Dodds

Text of the comments made by Anneliese Dodds, the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, on 22 July 2020.

This has been the toughest of times for Britain’s workers, wherever they work. Even before Covid-19 hit, real terms wages were flatlining for many and even falling for others compared with a decade ago.

Yesterday there seemed to be light at the end of the tunnel for some frontline workers. But the language in the Chancellor’s announcement on the Comprehensive Spending Review suggests he might be giving with one hand only to take away with the other.

This is not the time to fall back on policies that delivered the slowest economic recovery in eight generations. And it’s not the time for the government to keep the public in the dark about its fiscal plans.

It’s time for the Chancellor to come clean and explain how he plans to delivers growth across the country and rebuild the vital public services we all rely on.

The text of the comments made by Anneliese Dodds, the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, on 21 July 2020.

The Conservatives froze public sector pay for seven long years, and the rises they introduced after that failed to plug the gap.

A pay rise for our police, nurses and teachers now is good news, but for many frontline workers it still won’t make up for a decade of real terms pay cuts.

And many other public sector workers – including those working on the front line in social care – won’t get a pay rise out of this at all because the Tories haven’t made good on their promises to boost local authority funding.

That’s not fair – and it’s no way to reward those who’ve been at the forefront of fighting this pandemic.

Text of the letter sent by Anneliese Dodds, the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, to Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on 17 July 2020.

We are writing to urge you to step up and show leadership at the forthcoming G20 Finance Ministers’ meeting this weekend.

The world now faces a serious threat of international contagion from financial problems caused by the Covid-19 crisis. Unless a number of fragile economies are able to restructure their existing debt, there is a risk they will be unable to contain the spread of Covid-19 and a second global wave becomes more likely. Given their links to other emerging economies – and indeed to our own – without concerted global action the impact on our economy and our health may be severe.

We are calling on you to show leadership on two critical issues.

Firstly, we need clear action to ensure that private creditors cooperate with internationally-coordinated debt restructuring by governments. The global community has been slow on this and it is right and proper that the UK leads the way now given that much of the legal activity concerning debt agreements with poorer nations is located in the City of London. We urge you to act to ensure that private lenders restructure debts where needed, including through making this part of IMF loan programmes and passing legislation to make it easier for countries to suspend and restructure debts governed by English law.

Secondly, we are calling on the UK government to co-ordinate global action to enable fragile economies to make use of ‘Special Drawing Rights’ to help them deal with liquidity pressures. Under the current arrangements, the countries that most need help now are the least likely to get it. We have raised this with you previously. At the beginning of May, the Chancellor assured us that he had ‘called on the IMF to keep a possible SDR allocation on the table’. This is insufficient. We need a global agreement that avoids the contagious effects of even more severe liquidity shocks for fragile economies, with all the knock-on impacts these would have. The UK must ensure this is on the agenda on Saturday and that an agreement is reached.

The world was slow to come together to tackle this pandemic and has been slow to take co-ordinated global action to deal with the economic crisis that followed. People across the world, including here in the UK, will suffer as a result. During the 2008 financial crash, the UK led the global response to protect us from economic haemorrhaging and action was taken within days. We need comparable leadership now.

The UK is uniquely placed within the international community to lead the global response to the Covid-19 pandemic. To date, however, that leadership has been sorely lacking, to the detriment of both UK and international efforts to tackle the spread of the virus. This crisis has shown that we are only as strong as the most vulnerable. The UK must now play its part, or we will all continue to suffer the consequences.

The text of the comments made by Anneliese Dodds, the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, on 14 July 2020.

While it is encouraging to see that the economy started to slowly grow back in May, these figures show the scale of the challenge ahead of us.

Labour pushed the government to do more protect and create jobs. While we have concerns around the implementation of the Kickstart scheme, we are pleased to have seen some action in this area. But ministers must do much more to prevent people becoming unemployed in the first place, such as a flexible Job Retention Scheme for badly-hit sectors and areas affected by additional lockdowns.

Above all, the government must focus on getting the Test, Track and Isolate system working properly, which is vital to help build consumer confidence.

The text of comments made by Anneliese Dodds, the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, on 14 July 2020.

This OBR analysis is very worrying. Unless the Government takes urgent action, the UK’s unemployment crisis is going to get much worse.

The Chancellor must now listen to calls from Labour, business and trade unions and make the Job Retention Scheme live up to its name. Instead of withdrawing support across the piece, he must target it to sectors where it’s needed most.

If he doesn’t act, even more people run the risk of being thrown into the misery of unemployment and our economy will continue to suffer.