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Tag: Speeches

  • Kate Osborne – 2023 Speech on the Budget

    Kate Osborne – 2023 Speech on the Budget

    The speech made by Kate Osborne, the Labour MP for Jarrow, in the House of Commons on 16 March 2023.

    I start by welcoming my hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire (Ashley Dalton) to her place, and congratulate her on a fabulous maiden speech.

    The Government have spent 13 years failing the majority in this country, keeping us in a vicious cycle of economic and political failures. The spring Budget yesterday promised more of the same. With this Budget, the Government have failed my Jarrow constituents. The majority of people in this country know someone who is relying on a food bank or someone who cannot afford to pay their energy bills. The only people who do not seem to know anyone who is struggling are those sitting on the Government Benches. They cannot be listening to their constituents, even though some of them love posing for smiley pictures at food banks. The 40% of civil servants who are using food banks are not smiling. The nurses, firefighters, teachers, care workers and other key workers using food banks are not smiling. I say to the Chancellor yes, they can budget; they are much better at it than him, it seems.

    The 700,000 workers who took strike action over pay yesterday are also not smiling. In fact, very few people in the country are smiling. The falls in household disposable incomes this year and next will be the worst in a century. People across the UK are struggling to afford food, rent, heating and childcare. Mortgages are £2,000 a year higher than they were before the Government’s mini-Budget last September. These costs have escalated during the cost of living crisis, but these issues have been ongoing since long before inflation reached its highest point in 40 years because of their failure to govern.

    Under this Government, pensioner poverty is up, child poverty is up and fuel poverty is up, and public services such as the NHS, schools, local government and so much more are on their knees. Yet for workers, real wages are down. In fact, one in five pensioners—more than 2 million people—are living in relative poverty in the UK, an increase of more than 200,000 pensioners living in poverty in the last year alone. I have been holding cost of living advice roadshows, and at the event in Boldon in my constituency, my constituent Joan, who is 94 years old, told me that she is struggling and that living now is harder than it was for her family in the 1930s. This Government pretend to be on the side of pensioners, to get their votes, but they fail them again and again. The Chancellor attempted to make a thing of helping pensioners, but the reality is that his spring Budget helps only those who are already well off; pensioners in poverty will receive no help. As the shadow Chancellor said, this is a £1 billion pensions bung for the top 1%.

    People reliant on incapacity benefits could lose hundreds of pounds a month as a result of the Chancellor’s reforms to the welfare system; once again, the Conservative party attacks some of the most vulnerable in society. The Chancellor’s delivering for women has been much lauded, because of the provision of childcare, yet this Budget does nothing to tackle the financial discrimination women face on a daily basis, the gender health gap, the pay gap or the cost of living crisis, the burden of which falls in the main on women. As for childcare, the CBI has estimated that extending the free hours scheme to one and two-year-olds would cost £8.9 billion a year, more than double what the Chancellor awarded, so how will nurseries deliver it? Relaxing minimum staff-to-child ratios will not work and, yet again, less affluent parents will be affected the most. It is no wonder that so many people are saying that enough is enough, and that real change is needed. This Government, once again, failed to prioritise the majority or even those who need support the most, instead protecting the wealthiest in society.

    In Jarrow, 40% of constituents are unable to afford to turn on the heating. That comes as no surprise, as electricity prices in the UK have risen by 66.7% and gas prices have risen by 129% in the 12 months to January 2023. The so-called “price freeze” does not help the many who are struggling to pay the already high costs. After accounting for Government support, typical household net energy bills will be 17% higher again in 2023-24 than this year. This is just unsustainable; millions more will be driven into fuel poverty.

    Small businesses were once again neglected, and the Government’s false rhetoric on levelling up continues. More still goes to London and the south-east than the north will ever see, but I hope the promise for money for South Tyneside is actually delivered. It came as a surprise to the leader of South Tyneside Council, whom I spoke to this morning, that we were mentioned in the Budget; despite our bid being described as a strong bid with a very good-quality delivery plan and costs, it was rejected. The Government refused to provide the scores for the bid, even though the levelling-up Minister said that full feedback would be given. So can today’s Minister confirm whether the Chancellor’s announcement yesterday now means that the bid has been successful after all? Or is this money earmarked for something else? The town centres in Hebburn and Jarrow, and the redevelopment of our cultural centre, Jarrow Hall, is much needed. Will the Chancellor actually deliver this investment now or is this just more empty rhetoric?

    In conclusion, as we always see from this Government, in the main the Chancellor’s Budget serves the most wealthy in our society, with £9 billion in tax cuts to corporations and £6 billion in cuts to fuel duty—yet nothing from this Government for our teachers, lecturers, nurses, junior doctors, NHS staff or civil servants. Poverty is a political choice. This spring Budget has proved that the Tories will make that choice over and over, callously disregarding the devastating impact on communities. With this Budget, the Government have once again failed my Jarrow constituents.

  • Jackie Doyle-Price – 2023 Speech on the Budget

    Jackie Doyle-Price – 2023 Speech on the Budget

    The speech made by Jackie Doyle-Price, the Conservative MP for Thurrock, in the House of Commons on 16 March 2023.

    It is a pleasure to participate in the debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for West Lancashire (Ashley Dalton). I have to say that I like her style: I like people who can bring subjects to life and talk with real empathy about the experience of their constituents. I look forward to hearing more of her speeches, but I suspect that we will have a few more ding-dongs than the spirit in which I am addressing her now suggests.

    That brings me to the speech from my former hon. Friend, the hon. Member for Bury South (Christian Wakeford). He paints a rather Dickensian picture, but that view is not widely shared—certainly not by my constituents, who are not without hope. They recognise that we are going through a challenging period and that it is incumbent on all of us as a nation to put our shoulders to the wheel and get on with it.

    The hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford), who is no longer in his place, talked about the level of earnings and economic growth today compared with 2007. In 2008, we went through a massive financial crisis that required significant taxpayer intervention, which reminds us that when the taxpayer has to intervene, it does not come for free—there are consequences for the wider economy and everybody in it. Just as having to deal with that financial crisis made us poorer in the long run, so too does fighting a fatal disease and defending freedom against the actions of a dictator.

    All those things that we collectively decide to take action on cost the taxpayer—every taxpayer in this nation—and have an impact on our economy, but those are the choices that we make, because they are the responsible and right thing to do. Nothing comes for free; everything has to be paid for by taxpayers. The more tax we take from them, the more we limit their ability to contribute to the economy.

    Every Budget is a balance of decisions about how best to support those who need it, of course, and how best to fund our public services, as well as how best to generate the revenue to pay for them. Sometimes, those policies pull in different directions, but we should never forget that all the money that we take from taxpayers is theirs. When we make a change to the pension tax regime, therefore, we are not giving money away to the rich; we are letting them keep more of what they earn, which is the right thing to do. The virtue of that is not only that they keep more of what they earn, but that we incentivise doctors to work for longer and address that capacity within the health service, and we incentivise everyone to work more and contribute to the economic life of the country.

    Collectively, we in this place spend an awful lot of time—I say this as somebody who spent their whole career in the public sector, which makes me somewhat unusual on the Conservative Benches—debating public services and how much we should pay public sector workers, because that is what we decide to fund from here. I often think, however, that we take for granted the private sector’s ability to generate the wealth that pays for those services.

    That is why yesterday’s Budget was important. Opposition Members can find ways to criticise it, but it focused on the need to tackle inflation, which we all know impoverishes people and kills jobs, so it is right to nip it in the bud. We also know that inflationary pressures are made not here but by global factors, which is why we need to ensure that we are not too short-termist in addressing some of those demands. If we agree to high wage demands for public sector workers, they will fall through to the private sector. Last week, I met a local employer who employs 200 people and, frankly, his business cannot sustain the wage demands he is facing from his employees without making job cuts. That is the reality of the situation. So the more we can do to combat inflation, the more we can restrict the damage it will do to our economy in the long run.

    As I said earlier, we really need to champion our private companies and make sure that we are providing the best possible conditions for them to flourish. I want to highlight a few success stories, because I am very proud of the businesses I represent in my constituency, and some of them are great British brands. Not many Members will know that the mayonnaise in their sandwich will have been made in Purfleet in my constituency. If they go to the opera, everything they see on stage will have been made in Thurrock. Every newspaper they buy has come through the port of Tilbury. These are the businesses that really keep our life going. We are looking to the future, too. We have a new investment in Tevva trucks in Tilbury, which is bringing the manufacture of hydrogen-powered trucks to this country.

    There is plenty to be hopeful about and plenty to be ambitious about. What we need to do is make sure that we are creating the best possible conditions for our businesses to flourish, to provide high-paid jobs and to generate the wealth of this country. That is what we are going to do on the Government Benches, and everybody will be better off if we succeed.

  • Christian Wakeford – 2023 Speech on the Budget

    Christian Wakeford – 2023 Speech on the Budget

    The speech made by Christian Wakeford, the Labour MP for Bury South, in the House of Commons on 16 March 2023.

    It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson), although he appears to have listened to a slightly different Budget statement yesterday.

    I would like to start by welcoming my hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire (Ashley Dalton) to her place and congratulate her on her magnificent maiden speech. It is certainly an achievement to not mention any roundabouts whatsoever when talking about West Lancs.

    This Budget was a huge opportunity for the Government to make amends for the previous Prime Minister they burdened us with and the kami-Kwasi Budget that they unleashed on the country. But it is an opportunity that the Government missed. This could have been a Budget for workers, but it was not. This could have been a Budget for health, but it was not. This could have been a budget for justice, but it was not. This could have been a Budget for growth, but it really was not. This could also have been a Budget for education, but guess what? It was not.

    What we got was a sticking-plaster Budget from a Government on life support. There was nothing for public sector workers, nothing to tackle court backlogs, nothing for dentistry and nothing for health inequalities. Growth has been downgraded and we have the biggest fall in living standards since records began. Is it any wonder that the proud people of this country are living without any hope, wondering how they will get by? They lie awake at night waiting for the next heating bill and are filled with dread as that brown envelope comes through the letterbox. They have no chance to save, their dreams of buying a home are dashed, the fridge grows ever emptier and they have no money to fill it. This is a Budget that lets the people of this country down. Quite frankly, they deserve better.

    I will, however, go on record to give credit to the Chancellor for the action on pegging alcohol duty to inflation. Having previously accompanied alcohol-related charities to a meeting with the Exchequer Secretary, I know that that is hugely welcome and I thank him for it. The action taken on prepayment meters will also help many of my constituents. Such actions can and will save lives, and I give credit where it is due on those two matters.

    However, among G7 countries we have the lowest rate of business investment and are likely to have the weakest economy and to be the only country with negative growth. The list of self-inflicted problems on the Chancellor’s desk must have been piling up so high that it was possible to see them from Trafalgar Square.

    The problem that persists is that of childcare. One third of parents who use formal childcare say that they have to rely on some form of debt just to pay for it. One in four parents also say that childcare costs now account for more than three quarters of their take-home pay. Although action is welcome, without any new investment I am afraid that it is doomed to fail. It does not benefit people who have children now, and there are so many questions about whether it will benefit them at all. Will it cut the cost of childcare? Will it deliver high-quality childcare for every family? Will it deliver the growth that our country needs?

    But not to worry, because the Budget had some of the tax cuts for which Government Back Benchers have been begging. To be fair, the Government have borrowed the money—£1 billion, to be precise—from the magic money tree. I am afraid, however, that this is not good news for nurses, junior doctors or people who work in retail, and it is definitely not good news for posties, firefighters, teachers or cleaners. In fact, it is not really good news for anyone other than the Government’s friends in the City, who they seem to care about so much. Yes, abolishing the lifetime allowance and increasing the annual allowance paid into pensions will affect about 1% of people in this country, but they happen to be the wealthiest 1%. That is the Chancellor’s answer to the cost of living crisis—giving more bankers a tax cut.

    I heard the Chancellor this morning trot out the line that this is to help doctors, but that gives rise to a question. If this really is about doctors, why not introduce a bespoke scheme similar to that suggested by the shadow Health and Social Care Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting)? A conscious and political choice has been made to ignore the people of this country who are struggling to make ends meet, while at the same time giving all higher earners the benefit of a further tax cut.

    If the Chancellor wanted to help the NHS, he would have found the money to pay for nurses and junior doctors, and to bring down waiting lists, but they were not mentioned in the Budget statement. Right now, a junior doctor on the lowest band level in Bury earns less per hour than a barista in Pret. They have also experienced a wage decrease of more than 14%, while nurses have experienced a decrease of more than 10%. People in Bury South are waiting on average eight weeks for a mental health appointment, 28 days for a GP appointment and over a year for an operation. That is before we get to the complete impossibility of accessing a dentist. In 2023, this is the Government’s legacy for the NHS, and it is not one that anyone is proud of.

    Let me be clear: only a Labour Government will improve the NHS, reform the justice system, raise education standards and provide growth to the country. Only a Labour Government can protect the country from this reckless Conservative party, which is increasingly out of touch and out of ideas, and thankfully, running out of time.

  • Peter Gibson – 2023 Speech on the Budget

    Peter Gibson – 2023 Speech on the Budget

    The speech made by Peter Gibson, the Conservative MP for Darlington, in the House of Commons on 16 March 2023.

    Let me begin by congratulating the hon. Member for West Lancashire (Ashley Dalton) on her maiden speech, and on her warm tribute to her predecessor.

    I welcome this Conservative Budget, and commend the Chancellor for the measures that he has announced. He is delivering on the Government’s priorities: to halve inflation, grow the economy and reduce debt, so that we can create better-paid jobs and opportunities across the United Kingdom. I know that this Budget for growth will guarantee a better future for the people of Darlington, and for people up and down the country.

    The focus of today’s debate is employment. At the outset, I want to highlight the fantastic new data which shows that the claimant count in Darlington has decreased by 11.3% in the past year, and is now below the point where it was before the pandemic. This is good news for Darlington, because it means that the Government are helping to get more of my constituents back to work and my plan to deliver more jobs as the MP for Darlington is delivering also. This Conservative Government, working with our Conservative council—led by the fantastic Jonathan Dulston—and the Conservative Tees Valley Mayor, the amazing Ben Houchen, have ensured that Darlington and the wider region are blessed with new opportunities for local people to build their careers in the town where they grew up, championing our ambition to allow people to stay local but go far. Nothing can demonstrate that better than the delivery of the Darlington Northern Economic Campus, thanks to my honourable friend the Prime Minister. With civil service jobs from eight different Government Departments, there are fantastic job opportunities—more and better opportunities than we have ever had before—enabling people to play a real part in shaping the future of our country. Indeed, I regularly look to see which civil service jobs are being advertised. As of yesterday, there were 314 jobs advertised that are potentially based in Darlington. In addition, with 80% of those jobs at the northern economic campus in Darlington going to local people from our region, we are truly empowering our community.

    We know that employment is the best route out of poverty and this Budget is delivering on removing barriers to employment that have prevented many of my constituents from continuing their working lives. I warmly welcome the announcement to extend childcare, enabling parents to return to work, and also the further support that we see for disabled people. Abolishing the work capability assessment will ensure that we make the system better for disabled people and that they find the job that is right for them. I know from my own constituency casework that many disabled people want to work and to contribute to society, and these steps will help with that.

    I have welcomed the unprecedented investments that this Government have made in the Tees Valley on many occasions in this House, such as the £14.6 million awarded to Darlington-based engine maker Cummins to develop a hydrogen combustion engine. Cummins is a fantastic local employer, and these investments will allow it and other such businesses to continue to deliver high-skilled jobs for local people in cutting-edge green technologies well into the future. With that in mind, the £20 billion investment to develop one of the first carbon capture and storage clusters in the north-east is also hugely welcome, putting us well on the way to making net zero Teesside a reality.

    Investment zones are another hugely welcome step. The Tees Valley Combined Authority has been one of the areas identified for this policy, which would see the Tees Valley potentially getting a further £80 million over the next five years. This will be a great boost to our economic growth, bringing in more jobs and more investment. I welcome the measures in this Budget to encourage further investment in the Tees Valley and the continued transformative impact that that will have on the region.

    As we are discussing employment, it is important to remember that there are limited levers the state has to control the ability of people to get into work. In my own constituency of Darlington, we have a number of organisations that work with local people to ensure that their potential is not wasted. Let me take the opportunity to praise the work of the Morrison Trust and the Conservative-led Darlington Borough Council’s youth employment initiative, which has done such an amazing job. By recognising individual needs and targeting support, both have been hugely successful in supporting people in Darlington into work—people who had been finding it hard to get a job for a variety of reasons.

    I also pay tribute to First Stop, which, through work that I have done with it, has secured £50,000 of funding from the Harrison Centre for Social Mobility. First Stop provides information, advice, guidance and support to people who are experiencing difficulties in their lives that may make them vulnerable to a range of outcomes. In addition to providing one-to-one sessions, it also provides workshops, training and activities, including job clubs each week.

    There are a couple of things that I would have liked to have seen in the Budget. First, I would have liked the enhancements that we have seen in the west midlands and Manchester devolved areas to be applied to the Tees Valley—I hope that they will come in due course. I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and to my role as co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on hospice and end of life care, and I would have liked to have seen further specific support for this sector, but I will maintain the pressure on my local integrated care boards to deliver what is needed for our local hospices.

    In conclusion this is a Budget for growth. This Conservative Government have set out a plan to meet the real challenges faced by our country, boost economic growth and continue our commitment to our ambitious levelling-up agenda. This Budget is good for the country, good for the Tees Valley and good for the people of Darlington.

  • Andrew Western – 2023 Speech on the Budget

    Andrew Western – 2023 Speech on the Budget

    The speech made by Andrew Western, the Labour MP for Stretford and Urmston, in the House of Commons on 16 March 2023.

    I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire (Ashley Dalton) on her outstanding maiden speech. Having known her before her election to this place, I knew she would quickly make an impact and she certainly did that with her contribution today.

    In his Budget speech yesterday, the Chancellor said:

    “In November we delivered stability; today it is growth.”—[Official Report, 15 March 2023; Vol. 729, c. 847.]

    That is a bold statement, and upon closer inspection one may even say a brazen one: brazen not only because that stability was required because of the Conservative Government’s kamikaze Budget and their crashing of the economy, but more pertinently because on this Chancellor’s watch our economy will not grow, but will shrink, by 0.2% this year. In fact, we only avert technical recession this year because the pain is distributed in such a way that it avoids two successive quarters of output decline—not because this Government have averted economic shrinkage, and not because they have delivered the laser-like focus on growth that our economy needs. Far from it, the evidence tells us that this Government have been asleep at the wheel: while we in the UK see economic contraction this year, every other G7 country is forecast growth. While we in the UK see an economy that is still some 0.8% smaller than before the pandemic, every other G7 economy has grown to be larger than it was before the virus intervened.

    Conservative Members tell us to look at the longer-term picture: they say that this was always going to be a difficult year and their action has lessened the blow. That is nonsense, because this claim fails to take into consideration that growth projections for years three to five of the forecast period are revised down, and at the same time our underlying debt is set to increase from 92.4% of GDP this year to 93.7% of GDP next year. This is Tory Britain: they crashed our economy last year, and they have no plan to put it right this year.

    But let me turn to what this Budget says about the Conservative approach to basic fairness. The uplift in the annual tax-free allowance on pension contributions, from £40,000 to £60,000, benefits only those whose retirement funds constitute the largest 1% of pension pots in the country. Alongside lifting the lifetime allowance, that amounts to a huge tax break for some of the wealthiest people in the land. That this announcement came on the very same day that the OBR informed us we will have the lowest real living standards since records began speaks volumes about the appalling priorities of this Government.

    I have said before in this place that politics is ultimately about choices, and this Tory Government have made the wrong choices yet again. Not once in his speech yesterday did the Chancellor mention the words “fair” or “fairness,” and I cannot say I am surprised. They have form on fairness, and time and again they show us whose side they are really on.

    I accept that we need to address the shortage of doctors somehow, particularly as the Government continue to reject Labour’s fully costed proposal to scrap non-dom status and fund the largest workforce expansion in NHS history. So while I welcome the pension changes as they pertain to NHS staff, this should have been a bespoke offer available only to them, and in my view it should initially have been a pilot so that we could assess its future impact. Moreover, although the Government claim to want to help over-50s back to work, their unfair tax break for the wealthiest 1% has created a perverse situation whereby some over-50s may well be able to retire sooner, because their pension pots will have grown large enough for them to do so at a younger age than they had planned. Joined-up government? Don’t make me laugh. We have a Government at sixes and sevens, and a Chancellor without the clarity of purpose that is needed to turn our economy around.

    How do we know this? Well, let us recap. The Government want to level up, but we have the lowest investment in the G7. The Prime Minister wants debt to go down, but debt as a share of GDP will be up next year. The Chancellor wants to help with living costs, but we have the worst real living standards since records began. The Health Secretary wants to fix the NHS workforce, but the Prime Minister will not scrap non-dom status to fund it. The Work and Pensions Secretary wants to get over-50s back to work, but the Chancellor has just given a huge tax break to the richest, which means that they may well retire earlier than ever. It is preposterous. You could not make it up.

    We have had 13 years of this grotesque contradiction between words and action, this lack of vision, this fundamental mismanagement. The Government have no idea, no clue, and no plan for economic growth. They have crashed our economy, they have undermined our standing in the world, and they have decimated our public services. We are seeing sticking-plaster politics time and again, rather than the long-term solutions that our country needs. Because they are unable or unwilling to unleash the ambition of the British people to realise the fastest growth in the G7, we languish at the bottom of the pile.

    The Chancellor said yesterday that this Budget showed that his plan was working, but the reality is that this tired, out-of-touch, failing Government have no credible plan at all. It is time for a change. It is time for a Labour Government. For me, the next general election cannot come soon enough, and given this half-hearted attempt at a Budget for growth, it cannot come soon enough for the Conservative party either.

  • Iain Stewart – 2023 Speech on the Budget

    Iain Stewart – 2023 Speech on the Budget

    The speech made by Iain Stewart, the Conservative MP for Milton Keynes South, in the House of Commons on 16 March 2023.

    May I start by warmly congratulating the hon. Member for West Lancashire (Ashley Dalton) on a fine maiden speech? Many issues divide us in this House, but one that unites us is the utter apprehension that we feel before making our maiden speech, and the enormous relief we feel afterwards. She did her family and her constituency proud. I echo her comments about her predecessor Rosie Cooper, who I enjoyed working with on many issues. I hope, similarly, to have a collegiate working relationship with her successor. Let me give the hon. Lady a little friendly advice: after a Budget, she should take time to read through the detail of the Red Book, because sometimes we find unpleasant surprises but sometimes we find very welcome announcements. That is what happened to me yesterday afternoon.

    As Chair of the Transport Committee, it will probably not surprise colleagues that I will start by talking about transport matters. A very welcome announcement in the Red Book was the Government recommitment to the next stage of East West Rail, which goes through my constituency. When fully opened, it will create a really important rail transport link connecting Oxford, Milton Keynes, Bedford and Cambridge. It is not just a transport link; it will help unlock enormous economic developments in the area and create the jobs of the future in many of the high-value clusters that we have along there. As well as the announcement that details will be coming out soon, there is the additional investment for local authorities to plan for developments around the new stations. That is an important part of putting in new transport infrastructure. It is not just about the line itself, important though that is in aiding modal shift, but how it helps much wider economic growth.

    On a local basis, I welcome the excess of £1 million to fix potholes in Milton Keynes—I can tell those on the Front Bench that we sorely need it. Also on the transport front, but looking more widely across the country, it is a positive step that additional powers and funding are going to the mayoral combined authorities to develop integrated transport solutions for those cities and towns across the country. In particular, I welcome the ability to develop cross-modal ticketing options. Access to good transport underpins the economy and people being able to attain new jobs, and I very much welcome those announcements.

    Looking longer term at transport, the Budget included some significant measures to help underpin future investment, looking not just at what the Government are spending, but how that can work in tandem with the private sector and institutional investors to help give us the assets we need in the longer term. In particular, there were the measures to extend the remit of the UK Infrastructure Bank.

    Many Members have commented on the changes to pension funds. I add this point: the ability of institutional investment funds to help support the development of our infrastructure is an enormous opportunity. On the insurance side, the Association of British Insurers has identified that the post-Solvency II changes could unlock an additional £100 billion of investment for our infra- structure over the next 10 years. Similarly, there is great opportunity with pension funds. Encouraging people to save more into their pension funds does not just help retain people in the workforce; it helps create those institutional funds that can be invested to all our advantage.

    The other welcome development that I will touch on is the creation of the new investment zones, which is another step in the right direction along with measures such as freeports, innovation accelerators and the various levelling-up funds. It will help stimulate partnership working between the public sector, the private sector and academic research and development. The principal of Strathclyde University, Sir Jim McDonald, has a great phrase—“the triple helix”—about combining those three and unlocking their potential to develop new technologies and how that then spreads out into the wider economy.

    The one bit of advice I give to my hon. and right hon. Friends is that these schemes are great in themselves, but more can be done. When I was a Minister in the Scotland Office, my portfolio of responsibilities included growth deals in Scotland, which have proved to create effective partnership working among the public, private and academic sectors. Some of those deals are coming to their planned end and some of the levelling-up funds will conclude in the next year or two, so there is an opportunity to look at what comes next and to combine these different types of Government investments, institutional investments and working with the private sector to let local areas develop their economies to thrive in the future. I should declare a little interest: I am writing a paper on this for the think-tank Onward. It is still in production, and I doubt it will ever hit the bestseller shelf at Waterstones, but I hope it will contain some useful ideas, and I think it will probably command cross-party support because there is a growing consensus that the right way forward is to unlock and help realise locally generated ambitions. Central Government do not always have the answers; I am not breaching any confidences in saying that, and it applies to Governments of all political stripes.

    The steps the Government have taken thus far with the investment zones, accelerators and so forth are good in themselves, but there is an opportunity to blend them so that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. I look forward to contributing to the debate on that, but this is a Budget to be welcomed for the measures I have outlined and many others as well.

  • Ashley Dalton – 2023 Speech on the Budget and Maiden Speech in the House of Commons

    Ashley Dalton – 2023 Speech on the Budget and Maiden Speech in the House of Commons

    The maiden speech made by Ashley Dalton, the Labour MP for West Lancashire, in the House of Commons on 16 March 2023.

    Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to make my maiden speech in this debate. It is a particular honour to be called to do so by a fellow Lancastrian and my constituency neighbour.

    I take my place as my predecessor, Rosie Cooper, leaves frontline politics. A servant to West Lancashire for over 17 years, Rosie conducted herself with the utmost dignity and respect throughout her tenure as a Member of Parliament. Despite facing some of the most heinous and challenging circumstances anyone in this place could face, Rosie displayed great resilience and continued to serve West Lancashire with grace and diligence.

    Everyone in this place entered politics to make a difference. As Rosie leaves to take up a new role in the NHS, which I know is so important to her and her politics, she can genuinely say she made a difference. Through the British Sign Language Act 2022, which was brought about by her private Member’s Bill, Rosie secured equitable recognition for people who use BSL as their primary language—a group of people that in the most recent census was 22,000-strong. I know that they and many others are truly thankful for her hard work and unwavering commitment.

    You will know, Mr Speaker, that on the way into my constituency you pass a road sign that reads simply “In West Lancashire we’ve got it all”, and it is no exaggeration. With a Roman market town, villages recorded in the Domesday book, the growers and farming communities of the Lancashire plain, and a 1960s new town, West Lancashire truly does have it all.

    Look back at the gingerbread women of Ormskirk—women in the 1700s who knew their own worth, and with a recipe so successful it is still used today, took their place in Ormskirk’s economy; and look forward to the innovators and community builders of the future being moulded by the thriving Edge Hill University. West Lancashire’s story is one of making your mark.

    For me, West Lancashire’s best asset is its people. The people of West Lancashire represent what it means to be British. They are hard-working, innovative and, most of all, ambitious. But all too often, their ambition is frustrated by a lack of opportunity. I hear stories from my constituents in Skelmersdale—Skem—that they feel trapped and confined by their circumstances. It is a great sadness that for many people in Skelmersdale, their ambition for their children is that they leave Skem—that they get out to get on. Opportunities that exist in Manchester or Liverpool are opportunities that should be accessible to folk in West Lancashire, but they simply are not. West Lancashire is brimming with potential but is literally being left behind.

    During the by-election, while I was out campaigning, Sandra stopped me in the street to talk about what is important to her. She probably recognised me from the hundreds of leaflets that she had had through her door. Sandra was really proud of her grown-up children working hard to provide for their own families, but she told me that they were each working two or three jobs and were barely able to just get by. As proud as she is of her children, Sandra told me that getting by should not be this hard. When the best that hard work can deliver is just getting by, something has gone wrong.

    Yet, like the gingerbread women of the 1700s, West Lancashire still dares to succeed. There are people like Paula and Maureen, who started the Sewing Rooms in Skelmersdale, a social enterprise to tackle social exclusion and train and employ women in the textiles industry. In the face of a global pandemic, they made masks. When faced with a cost of living crisis, they developed, made, and sold thermal cooking bags that use little to no energy to cook hot food. On the back of that success, they have won the contract to design and make the kit for the Great Britain gymnastics team at the Special Olympics world games in Berlin this year. There are people like 19-year-old Rossi Forrest, who sold me my Christmas tree last year from the new nursery and garden centre in Bickerstaffe that he started from scratch. And people like Jo, who sells pyjamas and underwear on historic Ormskirk market, and whose thermal vests and long johns kept me warm during a long—very long—winter by-election.

    Across West Lancashire, people are working hard and daring to succeed. But in the face of a cost of living crisis and a stagnating economy, it is too often an uphill struggle. It should not be this hard. This Budget was an opportunity for the Government to show that they believe in West Lancashire as much as I do. Instead, it is another sticking plaster on 13 years of economic failure, with small businesses and sole traders once again expected to fend for themselves. The people of West Lancashire are ambitious, but their ambition is not being matched by government. While wages are down, mortgage repayments are up. Whilst living standards are down, the tax burden is up. When my constituents need an economy that is moving, we are at a standstill. This is not a Budget for Sandra. It is not a Budget for Paula and Maureen. It is not a Budget for Rossi, and it is not a Budget for Jo, either.

    Politics is often spoken about in abstract terms, as though it is something that happens to someone else, somewhere else, separate from our communities. When I stand to speak, 100 years since the first women were elected to this place and nearly 300 years since the gingerbread women of Ormskirk made their mark, I speak with the voices of Sandra, Rossi and Jo, and all the other people of West Lancashire, because the politics in here must meet the ambition of the communities out there. What we choose to do shows where our priorities lie. Our priorities are born out of what we stand for. On the Labour Benches we stand for meeting the ambition of the people of West Lancashire and beyond, not for getting by but for getting on.

  • Richard Drax – 2023 Speech on the Budget

    Richard Drax – 2023 Speech on the Budget

    The speech made by Richard Drax, the Conservative MP for South Dorset, in the House of Commons on 16 March 2023.

    I welcome the hon. Member for West Lancashire (Ashley Dalton) to the House, and I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

    We are the party of low taxes, or we are nothing. It is a core Conservative value that we believe people should keep more of their money. In that regard, I commend the Chancellor for scrapping the pensions allowance. It is rather strange that the Opposition are wailing about it when they themselves wanted to remove it, albeit just for doctors. This reform will not just help doctors, but help to retain headteachers, police chiefs, senior officers in the armed forces, air traffic controllers, prison governors and many others.

    However, what concerns me is the tax pressure on those who receive less. We are still facing the highest burden of taxation since the end of the second world war. I fear we are falling into the socialist trap of raising expectations that the Government will provide all the answers; they cannot, and should not try to. The consequence is higher and higher taxes to pay for services such as extra childcare. I entirely endorse the excellent speech by my right hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) on the problems that this policy could raise. While welcomed by many, it fails to recognise that if families paid less tax, they would have more disposable income to pay for services such as childcare, rather than relying on the Government. Raising the tax threshold, especially at the higher rate, would help in that regard. The insistence that the Government can spend people’s money better than them is not our philosophy.

    I accept in full that we are paying a heavy price for locking the country down during the pandemic, and now dealing with a major war in Europe, but this is not the time for faint hearts and overcaution, especially with a general election looming. For we know—we have just heard—where Labour will take us: myriad new taxes, a rise in existing ones, and a party driven sadly by the few, not the many, and by envy, punishing those who work hard and want to provide for their families. Let us stop reinforcing Labour’s values and start reminding the country of ours.

    On that note, despite the many calls for corporation tax not to be raised from 19% to 25%, the increase will go ahead. Despite being mitigated by some capital allowances, it is a regressive and regrettable move. This after the Chancellor pledged to reduce corporation tax to 15% last year when he stood for the leadership of our party—how right he was then. Yesterday’s Budget rightly placed great emphasis on growth, and while I am all for getting people back to work, I am not in support of a tax hike on those who create the jobs in the first place. Beyond that, the increase will be a major and negative factor for companies deciding where and how much to invest. Let us not forget that the corporation tax of our nearest competitor, the Republic of Ireland, is a meagre 12.5%. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) said of an earlier Chancellor:

    “Lawson brought intellectual self confidence and energy to the task of being Chancellor. He fearlessly slashed income tax and corporation tax rates. Extra revenue poured in as growth improved.”

    Surely that is what business needs: a visionary Conservative Government committed to creating an environment that gives wealth creators the incentives to take risk and create the prosperity and jobs that all of us in this House want. Unfortunately, that is not evidenced when we look at the oil and gas industries.

    Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)

    Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

    Richard Drax

    I will not, because we do not have time and others wish to speak.

    Because of pandering to the green lobby and unachievable targets, oil and gas companies face punitive tax rates such as the 50% corporation tax rate and a 35% windfall levy. As the war in Europe has reminded us, energy security is paramount. Over-reliance on supply from overseas has left many countries—not just us—vulnerable to fluctuation in prices and supply. Regrettably, we are a long way from ending our reliance on fossil fuels, so surely it is common sense to encourage investment here at home, not to increase our carbon footprint by importing from abroad.

    Before I conclude, I must mention defence. While the extra £11 billion over five years is to be welcomed, it is not nearly enough, with little—if any—of that money going to our conventional forces. This at a time when the world is increasingly unstable. Arbitrary figures for defence spending plucked out of thin air by both sides demean our armed forces and us in the House. In the face of some very real threats, a thorough appreciation needs to be undertaken and the defence budget set accordingly. To be an effective NATO partner, we need the mass to sustain a prolonged and major confrontation. Right now, we do not have it.

    I conclude on a point of caution. As I hinted strongly at the start of my speech, this over-reliance on Government to provide the solution to everything must stop. It is simply unsustainable. Our Conservative Government would do well to recall the words of JFK in his inaugural address:

    “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”

  • Clive Efford – 2023 Speech on the Budget

    Clive Efford – 2023 Speech on the Budget

    The speech made by Clive Efford, the Labour MP for Eltham, in the House of Commons on 16 March 2023.

    When I looked at the clock as the Chancellor finished speaking yesterday, I was shocked that his speech had been only an hour. The speech was well padded out. I thought at one stage that he was going to tell us how much the Government planned to spend on paper clips in the next year. He started by announcing that we were not going into a recession, expecting praise for not taking us into a recession that the Conservatives had brought us to the brink of in the first place. It was a bit like an arsonist asking to be thanked, having set light to your house, for then ringing the police. Average energy bills have doubled in the past 18 months, the average mortgage is up by £2,000, and household incomes are lower in real terms than 13 years ago. Those are the worst figures since records began.

    We have had 13 years of cuts to our public services, leaving them in a parlous state, and we went into covid with record numbers on NHS waiting lists—2.5 million people. We now have an estimated 7 million people waiting for hospital appointments. According to a Nuffield Trust report published last year, our NHS is short of 12,000 doctors and 50,000 nurses and midwives, and we will need over 500,000 more NHS and care workers by 2030. Where was anything in the Budget to deal with that crisis? Oh, we did have one thing; we had a tax cut for the wealthiest 1% to keep doctors in the NHS. Only the Tories could turn a crisis in the NHS into an excuse to cut taxes for the wealthiest 1% in this country.

    Someone with a £2 million pension pot will get a tax saving of £275,000. How is that justifiable? Yet next month the tax thresholds will be frozen. For a basic rate taxpayer, that is £500 a year, for a higher rate taxpayer, that is £1,000, but in this Budget it is somehow justifiable to make that tax cut to the richest 1%. It is just not fair. In the past decade, we have seen the Conservatives stand by while a disproportionate share of national income has gone to the wealthiest. The OBR has confirmed that the cost of living crisis means that living standards will fall by 5.7% over the next two years. Average real-terms household incomes are at a 50-year low due to a decade of consistent low growth. The Resolution Foundation’s “Stagnation nation” report, published late last year, shows that in each decade since the 1970s, average household incomes rose by 33% until 2007, but since the Tories took power, weak productivity growth has fed directly into flatlining wages and sluggish income growth, with real wage growth falling below zero in the 2010s.

    The Government’s own figures show that incomes have grown by an average of 9% since 2008—0.7% a year—having grown by an average of 2.2% in each of the previous 20 years. Their excuse is to blame everyone else, but everyone else internationally has been through the same shocks as us. How do the Tories explain the fact that average household incomes in the UK are 16% lower than in Germany and 9% lower than in France, having been higher than both in 2007?

    Wealth inequality in this country has grown under the Conservatives, and a failure to tax the assets of the super-rich is leading to widening inequality. The more wealth someone accumulates, the less tax they pay. The Government should be looking at how we tax wealth and tackle that growing inequality. Since the banking crash in 2007-08, it has become easier to borrow money, which has meant that the wealthiest people have been able to buy assets, and we do not tax those assets. I would like to see a discussion about a tax on wealth above £10 million. A 1% tax on that wealth would raise £11 billion. I have spoken to many people who are in that tax bracket, and they say that a 1% tax on their wealth at that level would not cause them to take flight and go abroad—they would not notice it. No one is going to up their family and their children’s future because they would pay 1% tax on their wealth above £10 million.

    We could equalise capital gains with income tax rates. There is cross-party support for this measure, which could raise £15.2 billion. It is not a radical suggestion, because it is what Nigel Lawson did back in the 1970s. I welcome the fact that the Government are offering tax relief for investment in R&D, because that could reward people who pay their tax in that way.

    It is not fair that people who pay rent to somebody who has bought properties pay national insurance contributions on their wages, but the person they pay rent to does not pay national insurance contributions on the income from that rent. We should look at expanding the range of national insurance to make the system fair. The Labour party supports reform of non-dom status, which would raise £3.2 billion.

    There is money in the system that we can use to resolve many of the problems we face with the crisis in our public services. It is a travesty that, given the strikes we are facing and the crisis in the national health service, there was nothing about that in the Chancellor’s statement yesterday. It is time for a new form of government. It is time for a Government who will tackle inequality and create a fairer taxation system that will benefit the whole country, not leave people to sink or swim. We need an active Government who will be on people’s side, intervene when necessary and do what is necessary to create a fairer and more equitable society.

  • Theresa Villiers – 2023 Speech on the Budget

    Theresa Villiers – 2023 Speech on the Budget

    The speech made by Theresa Villiers, the Conservative MP for Chipping Barnet, in the House of Commons on 16 March 2023.

    The worst health emergency for 100 years and the worst energy price shock for 50 years have done severe damage to our economy in the last few years, but the Budget has demonstrated the positive impact of the difficult decisions taken in the autumn statement to repair the public finances and restore stability after the damage done by global economic turmoil. As we have heard, unemployment is near a 50-year low, productivity is higher now than it was before the pandemic, and the OBR predicts that we will not go into recession, that inflation will fall and that growth is returning. That means we are on track to meet the first three of the Prime Minister’s five priorities, which are to halve inflation, grow the economy, reduce debt, cut NHS waiting times and stop the boats.

    At the heart of the Budget and the Government’s wider economic policy is helping people with cost of living pressures. Taken together, the measures in the Budget and those previously announced are worth £94 billion over this year and next—one of the largest support packages in Europe—which is an average of more than £3,300 for every household in the country. In advance of his statement, I asked the Chancellor for the continuation of Government support for energy bills. I also made the case for families struggling with childcare costs, raising the issue alongside others in Parliament just a week or two ago, so I am really pleased with the plan to extend the 30 hours of free childcare for working parents to cover children from the age of nine months to four years. It is also very welcome that the childcare component of universal credit can now be paid up front.

    This package is a truly radical set of changes, and investing in early years education and childcare is a sound economic move. Not only will it bring more parents back into the workplace to help address labour shortages; high-quality early years provision can also be an engine of social mobility, helping children to get the best start in life in order to enable them to realise their potential and succeed in their aspirations. The increase in the rates to be paid to childcare settings for delivering the free entitlement is a crucial part of this endeavour. It has been a key ask of the sector, but what is now proposed is still a very big change and implementation will not be easy, so I will be scrutinising progress carefully as a member of both the all-party parliamentary group for nursery schools, nursery and reception classes, and the APPG on childcare and early education.

    I welcome the changes to the pension tax rules, which have been pushing experienced GPs and hospital doctors to cut their hours and retire early, just when we need them most. I have raised that problem with successive Health Secretaries and Chancellors of the Exchequer. The lifetime allowance is, I am afraid, a classic example of where taxes get so high that they deter work and depress economic activity. It is not just about the very high taxes paid if a person hits the lifetime allowance limit; it is also about the uncertainty, which means that doctors have cut their hours even if they have not hit the limit, because they fear reaching it. Both are causing problems with the retention of our hard-working doctors, so I believe that the changes announced by the Chancellor yesterday will play an important part in reducing those NHS waiting times in the way that we all want. I hope that it will also mean that my constituents have faster and better access to GP appointments.

    Finally, I want to highlight some areas where further action is needed in relation to Budget matters. Implementation of reforms relating to the regulatory climate for artificial intelligence and the approval of medicines, as announced yesterday, are welcome, but I would like to see a more concerted push to improve regulation to make it more targeted and more agile and to ensure that it keeps up with technological change. This area can play a crucial role in raising productivity, boosting growth and making this country the science super-power that the Prime Minister wants it to be. It is also crucial to raising living standards in the long term.

    The taskforce on innovation, growth and regulatory reform set out a blueprint for starting this reform process, and I would ask the Minister to report back on progress in implementation of the taskforce’s recommendations. I welcome the indication by the Chancellor that he will come back with a plan for one of TIGRR’s key proposals —to unlock productive investment from pension funds—but we do need to get on with this. The freedom to make our own choices on regulation and design these rules according to our own national interest is a key benefit from Brexit, and we need to grab the opportunity that it presents.

    Lastly, I fully back, of course, the caution shown in this Budget on the public finances. Bearing down on inflation and getting debt under control must be our top priority. But as the economic situation, I hope, continues to improve, I would ask my right hon. Friend the Chancellor to strive to find the room for further pay increases for the public sector and, of course, for wider tax reductions in the longer term.