5,750 spoken contributions under 12 words (interjections such as “Will the hon. Member give way?”) are hidden. Show them
Older people and those in rural constituencies such as mine, which unfortunately still have unreliable broadband, rely on terrestrial television. The excellent Westminster Hall debate that I led demonstrated cross-party concern about this issue. Will the Minister meet me and other concerned MPs to discuss how we can safeguard terrestrial television?
I liked the introduction to the shadow Chancellor’s speech. Would a better film analogy perhaps be “The Nightmare Before Christmas”?
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Rochdale (Paul Waugh). I will be picking up on some of the points he made later in my remarks, but I will start by characterising the whole Budget in the way that we heard from the Leader of the Opposition, which is that this was the “Nightmare Before Christmas” Budget. After last year’s Halloween Budget, another Budget has come back for more and more tax on the strivers, the entrepreneurs, the hard workers and the pensioners across our land. In our scrutiny of the Budget as the Treasury Committee, we will be trying to draw out some of these decisions that the Chancellor announced yesterday from the Dispatch Box. It is clear that last year’s Halloween Budget was the biggest tax-raising Budget in UK history, and yesterday’s Budget was the third-biggest tax-raising Budget in UK history. It is an enormous burden that we have put on our country. What we saw in the run-up to the Budget was also extraordinary, including the fact that the Office for Budget Responsibility’s report was leaked during Prime Minister’s questions. Madam Deputy Speaker, you will be aware that the Chairman of Ways and Means was rightly outraged about that on behalf of Parliament. For the benefit of the House, I will outline the role that the Treasury Committee plays in relation to the Office for Budget Responsibility. It will appear before the Committee on Tuesday. We received a letter today from the chief executive, Richard Hughes, outlining the fact that he is undertaking an investigation. That has been published, but the House may not be aware that the Treasury Committee has a veto over the appointment of all three senior members of the Office for Budget Responsibility and, importantly, their dismissal. That is written into legislation. We take our responsibility to get to the bottom of what happened incredibly seriously, because on behalf of Parliament we have to find out. There was a lot of skulduggery in the run-up to this Budget, with all these kites being flown by the Treasury. There was possibly speculation by the media, but all these ideas culminated on the morning of 4 November with the Chancellor breaking into the nation’s breakfast with her doom-laden pronouncements about the upcoming Budget. It was extraordinary and unprecedented, and it was rightly the subject of an urgent question by my right hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon (Sir Mel Stride). After that, we had a story in the Financial Times on the evening of 13 November that moved the gilt market the minute it opened on the morning of the 14th. It was about the decision not to proceed with an income tax switch with national insurance. Extraordinary skulduggery has been going on somewhere in the Treasury. I hope that when the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury responds to this debate later, he can provide clarity on the instructions that the Chancellor has given to the permanent secretary to do a full skulduggery investigation of the Treasury. It should not just be a leak inquiry, as something significantly more widespread has happened in the run-up to this Budget, and I do not think that Parliament can accept it. We need to draw a line under this behaviour, and we need to get to the bottom of it. Apparently the Chancellor herself said to Labour Back Benchers that this decision—that she would not have to increase income tax—was going to be the rabbit she would pull out of her hat at the Dispatch Box yesterday. Some of the briefing that Treasury spokespeople did after this leak to the Financial Times related to the fact that the OBR had improved its economic forecasts, but we saw in its document yesterday that it had not changed its main economic forecasts since 31 October, so that cannot be right either. There has been some unbelievable leaking or briefing—“skulduggery” seems to sum it up—from Treasury special advisers, and the role of the Office for Budget Responsibility has been tainted. We as a Committee, on behalf of Parliament, take our responsibility in relation to the OBR incredibly seriously. I want to highlight a couple of the measures in the Budget, and the first relates to productivity. Both Front Benchers mentioned the importance of focusing on productivity and the impact that the downward revision in productivity had on the Office for Budget Responsibility’s forecast, but everyone knows that this country’s private sector has continued to become more productive, whereas the problem with productivity in the public sector was very much exacerbated in the last Parliament and during the pandemic. Public sector productivity has still not recovered to the kinds of levels that we had before the pandemic. There is some incredible productivity scarring in our public sector, and I think it would be welcome if the Minister could outline from the Dispatch Box how the Government plan to tackle public sector productivity. If productivity in the national health service returned to pre-pandemic levels, it would be worth £20 billion. Possibly all the tax rises in yesterday’s Budget could be removed if we got to that level of productivity again. I do not think that giving NHS doctors a 30% pay rise, with no requirement for them not to strike again, helps productivity. I do not think that the Government’s decisions align with getting better productivity out of our public sector, but I am sure that the Minister will be able to elaborate on that. Finally, I will pick up on the powerful speech that the hon. Member for Rochdale made about child poverty. He will be aware that over the last 14 years, absolute child poverty—not in his constituency, but in aggregate across the country—has fallen. That is largely down to higher employment but also, importantly, more help with childcare. Those are important things to focus on in terms of people’s ability to work and to earn more. Last week, the Treasury Committee asked experts what the child poverty line is in this country, and it is important for the House to understand the figures that we got back from the Institute for Fiscal Studies. After a household with two children and two adults have paid all their taxes and housing costs, the relative poverty line, which is what the Secretary of State mentioned earlier, is £24,650 a year. For a household with three children and two adults—again, after they have paid their taxes and housing costs—the figure is £28,176. We need to recognise that many people who will be caught by the tax rises in the Budget have much lower incomes than that. Widowers who have a small widow’s pension will pay more tax because of the decisions in yesterday’s Budget.
I am talking about yesterday’s Budget. The Chancellor herself announced that she was freezing the thresholds for a further three years, and I dare say that the hon. Gentleman will be asked to vote for that in the Aye Lobby next week. I disagree with him, because the Chancellor has just announced that the thresholds will be frozen for an additional three years. Another person who will pay more tax as a result of the Chancellor’s decisions is a single young person on minimum wage. I do not know whether hon. Members have seen the emigration statistics that were published today, which show that hundreds of thousands of our young people are fleeing this country. That is something that we should all be very concerned about. A single mother who has just received a lump sum in a divorce settlement will pay more tax as a result of yesterday’s Budget. A sole trader or entrepreneur who runs a business and perhaps pays themselves in dividends will pay more tax as a result of yesterday’s Budget. A driver in my rural constituency who needs to drive to go to work will pay more tax because of yesterday’s Budget. We can see that the choices made by the Chancellor punish the employers, the farmers, the family businesses, the workers, the savers, the pensioners and the drivers—everyone who tries to do the right thing and tries not to be a burden on the state. I will leave the House with one final point.
I am looking forward to the Minister’s winding-up speech at the end of the debate, and I will not give way at the moment. Given the skulduggery that the Treasury seems to have engaged in during the run-up to this Budget, the lingering impression will be that the spectre of further tax hikes looms. The floating of the income tax idea and all the other tax ideas, and all the taxes, will come back like a ghoul in Budgets to come.
11. What discussions she has had with the Chancellor of the Exchequer on gambling duties.
The Chancellor’s announcements in yesterday’s Budget in relation to gambling duty could cost the industry up to 16,000 jobs, largely in the high- tech part of that industry, and move £6 billion of gambling stakes into the black market. I know that the Secretary of State is a very reasonable individual—she would make an excellent future leader of her party—so does she agree that taxing something does not necessarily stop it from happening, and that this will move problem gamblers into a less regulated, illegal space?
5. What steps the Church of England is taking to increase the number of vicars in rural parishes.
I thank the Leader of the House for that answer, and please can he pass my best wishes on to the Second Church Estates Commissioner? In my area, 26 churches are covered by just five priests, and only three of those priests are paid, so I hope that the Leader of the House will join me in thanking all the regular churchgoers who do so much to ensure the maintenance and upkeep of the beautiful churches right across East Yorkshire. Will he do everything he can to ensure that the Church of England attracts more priests into the fold?
Order. In an attempt to get everybody in today, I am going to put an immediate six-minute time limit on speeches.
Order. You can refer to the Chancellor of the Exchequer as the Chancellor or by her constituency name, but not by her own name.
The Minister has spoken about the importance of swift and fair justice, but I feel this decision will set a very dangerous precedent that the state will become addicted to. I sincerely hope the Government do not go down this path, but if they do, I urge the Minister to ensure that this measure is in place only for the duration required to clear the backlog and is then abandoned. It must not become a central tenet of the justice system.
Far too many children face eating development issues and conditions, and they often feel that they do not get the relevant support from the NHS. Parents feel stigmatised, are told that their children will grow out of it, and often feel that their parenting is being condemned by healthcare professionals. The Feeding Trust in my constituency is doing excellent work to raise awareness of this issue. Will the Leader of the House endorse the representations I have made to the Health Secretary asking that the matter be a front-and-centre priority for the NHS? The Government must ensure a joined-up approach with the Department for Education, schools and the curriculum.
Does my right hon. Friend agree that in a world where capital and labour are highly mobile, and one that is increasingly pressured as a result of energy costs, the best thing the Government could do is pare back the regulation that inhibits manufacturers’ ability to compete competitively and prevents the UK from being a very attractive destination for that capital and labour?
Yesterday the Chancellor attempted to present the Budget as a bold plan to rebuild Britain, but when we strip away the rhetoric, we see a Budget that is unsustainable, unfair and damaging to the very foundations of our economy. Most importantly, it is bad for all our constituents. Last year, the Chancellor raised taxes by £40 billion and promised that she would not be coming back for more. Yet here we are, one year on, with another £26 billion tax raid. Credibility matters. When promises are broken so quickly, trust evaporates, and my constituents feel that betrayal directly. Families who believed the Chancellor’s assurances will now find themselves paying more tax, with less money left at the end of each month. The first duty of any Budget is to foster growth, yet the indicators all point in the wrong direction. Inflation is up, with food inflation at nearly 5%, so families in my constituency are paying more for their weekly shop. Taxes are up, and the OBR has confirmed that the UK’s tax burden is at a record high. It is projected to reach 38.3% of GDP by 2030. Our constituents are working longer hours, only to see more of their pay taken away.
My right hon. Friend is absolutely correct. The Government have a duty, in every single thing that they do and in their entire approach, to ensure that they promote the interests of the UK and of the businesses and farms that strive to keep us fed and prosperous. Unemployment is up and redundancies are rising. In my constituency, local employers are cutting jobs, leaving families anxious about their future. Spending is up, and borrowing overshot forecasts by £9.9 billion this year. My constituents know that every pound borrowed today is a pound that they will repay tomorrow. Confidence is down, with business surveys showing stagnation, and local shopkeepers tell me that they are holding back investment because they see no stability. Growth is also down, with GDP growing by just 0.1% in Q3 of this year. My constituents see stagnation in wages, stagnation in opportunity and stagnation in hope. This is Labour’s economic scoreboard: inflation is up, taxes are up, unemployment is up, spending is up, borrowing is up, confidence is down and growth is down. That is not rebuilding Britain; it is dismantling Britain’s prosperity, and all our constituents are paying the price. Two thirds of the British public now say that they want to see spending cuts. My constituents are tightening their belts, and cutting back on holidays and meals out. Some are even cutting back on heating. They expect the Government to do the same and to live within their means, yet Labour’s Budget expands spending recklessly. Businesses in my constituency are being hit hard. Last year, employer national insurance contributions were increased and business rates relief was cut, and businesses are struggling to survive. For savers, ISA allowances have been reduced, which undermines savings. Retail has lost over 100,000 jobs in the last year. With our high streets feeling the pain, shops are closing and livelihoods are being destroyed. The Budget offers no relief for small businesses in my constituency; it only offers more burdens. Labour claims that fairness is at the heart of the Budget, but fairness is not what families in my constituency are feeling. Income tax thresholds have been frozen, dragging more workers into higher tax bands, and savers have seen their allowances cut. Even electric car owners, who have been encouraged to go green and to do the right thing, are now being penalised. This punishes aspiration. Farmers in my constituency are among the hardest hit, and the family farm tax remains largely intact. The changes to inheritance tax threaten the survival of the family farm, and rising input costs and inflation are compounding the pressure. Farming is not just an industry; it is the backbone of our food security, as my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) pointed out, and the backbone of rural life, yet Labour continues to undermine it. We are seeing an exodus of capital and labour in a world that is highly mobile. Over the last year, we have seen an exodus of high-net-worth individuals. While Labour Members may scowl at and casually dismiss that, the reality is that the displacement of those individuals would require another half a million average earners paying tax to plug the gap of tax revenue lost. That is the scale of the hole that the Government have created. Who will fill that? All of our constituents will—ordinary families, ordinary workers and ordinary savers. Ambition without discipline is not a plan; it is a gamble. Labour’s Budget is a gamble with Britain’s future. Every £1 spent servicing debt is £1 not spent on public services, every broken promise erodes trust and every squeeze on families and businesses undermines the engine of our economy. Let us be clear: Labour spends until it runs out of other people’s money, and when the money runs out, our constituents pay the price. All of our constituents deserve better than what we have seen in this Budget. They deserve a Government who will restore fiscal discipline, encourage enterprise and deliver fairness for everyone. Yesterday’s Budget is not a plan for the future, but a blueprint for decline. It ignores the public’s demand for spending cuts and for the Government to live within their means. It presides over the loss of further jobs, and it drives away wealth creation, leaving ordinary taxpayers to pick up the bill. It squeezes families, undermines businesses and will devastate farmers. This is not rebuilding Britain; this is dismantling Britain’s prosperity. Labour spends until it runs out of other people’s money, and my constituents cannot afford that any longer.
The Minister rightly calls out the issues for rape victims, and she might want to have a word with her friend the Mayor of London, who is closing down police stations so that there is nowhere for people to report. I recently visited Harrow Crown court, which is temporarily placed in Hendon magistrates court while the building in Harrow is rebuilt. I asked the judge, “Why are the courts all empty?”, as only one court was operational. He said to me, “The biggest problem is finding lawyers for defendants to enable the trials to take place.” While the Minister is considering this issue, will she look at the investment that needs to take place to encourage lawyers to take on criminal justice cases?
I thank the Leader of the House for announcing the business in the Chamber on Backbench Business days. Will he also confirm that we will have the pre-recess Adjournment debate on Thursday 18 December? In addition, the Backbench Business in Westminster Hall on Tuesday will be a debate on the adequacy of funding to support homeless people, and on Thursday there will be a debate on a comprehensive acquired brain injury action plan, followed by a debated on seafarers’ welfare. On Tuesday 9 December, there will be a debate on consumer-led flexibility for a just transition, and on Thursday 11 December, there will be a debate on the role of Fairtrade certification in UK business and trade, followed by a debate on the future of the oil refining sector. On Tuesday 16 December, there will be a debate on planning policy for quarries, and on Thursday 18 December, a debate on the literary and cultural legacy of Jane Austen, followed by a debate on community audiology. I join the Leader of the House in expressing horror at what has happened in Hong Kong. The fire has so far killed 59 people, with hundreds missing and firefighters killed. Three business executives have been arrested. This is not unique. There has been a similar fire in Spain at the Santa Lucia hospital, and, just a year ago, we had a fire in Dartford due to unsafe buildings. Across the country, there are unsafe buildings all over the place, including on Merseyside, where I read this morning that residents have had to be moved out of buildings renovated in 2007 because they are unsafe. In an adjacent constituency to mine, Ballymore is trying to put up a development that is denser than in Hong Kong, with more than 29 blocks of flats, of which 20 are above 20 storeys. The London Fire Brigade initially lodged objections. What is clear is that we in this country have to be wise to what could happen—another Grenfell. We must learn the lessons and ensure fire safety in our new and existing buildings is restored.
The Secretary of State talks about trying to ensure that cars available under the Motability scheme are made in the UK. I looked at the Motability website yesterday and some of the changes have already been implemented, but there are an awful lot of Chinese cars listed. Yesterday, Omoda and Jaecoo, two of the Chinese companies on that list, announced that they would be implementing a 20,000 mile rebate to individuals to pay for the electric vehicle tax introduced in the Budget. That will allow China to get an even greater foothold in the UK economy. Those cars are built with Chinese IP that sends information straight back to the state, allowing it to track where those vehicles are. What will the Government do to address the impact of the growing number of Chinese vehicles and about the fact that the Budget is, perhaps unwittingly, encouraging the use of Chinese cars in this market?
Tax increases of £26 billion and the tax burden rising to an all-time high of 38% of national income—this is a traditional, good old-fashioned high-tax, high-spend Labour Budget. It is a Budget that locks in a debt ratio of 100% and an economy with little or no growth. It effectively ends Labour’s pledge to grow the economy and raise living standards. The growth in real disposable incomes over this Parliament is now expected to be the second worst since records began in the 1950s. This is a Budget to appease the left of the parliamentary Labour party rather than the general public. It is a Budget to shore up the Chancellor’s weak position and that of the Prime Minister. We will see how successful that has been come May. Since Labour came to power, the Chancellor has raised taxes by £66 billion, which is more than any Government in the last 50 years. When the Chancellor proudly announced that growth had increased by 0.5%, there were cheers from the Government Benches, but she did not mention that that figure was a downgrade from the 1.9% forecast earlier in the year, nor did she make reference to the downgraded projections for the rest of the decade. The Office for Budget Responsibility has downgraded its growth forecasts for real household disposable income per person over the next five years. The OBR’s “Economic financial outlook” report states that growth will slump to an average of 0.25% a year over the forecast, “well below the last decade’s average growth of 1% a year”. The average household will be £850 poorer at the end of this Parliament than when Labour took office. The Chancellor said: “today £1 in every £10 the Government spend is on debt interest—not on paying down that debt, but just on paying the interest”.—[Official Report, 26 November 2025; Vol. 776, c. 389.] Some £113.7 billion is currently being spent on servicing that debt, and by the end of this Parliament that figure will reach £140 billion. For a working person on average earnings, the tax threshold is frozen and will be for the rest of the decade. Pensioners will be dragged into the basic rate of income tax for the first time; 780,000 people are going to be dragged into being a basic rate taxpayer, and nearly a million will become higher rate taxpayers. For people on benefits, those benefits are not frozen; they are index- linked to inflation. The OBR has forecast that over the next five years, welfare spending will rise by £73.2 billion to £406.2 billion. The U-turn on lifting the two-child benefit cap beggars belief. For it to go from a policy that saw seven Labour MPs lose the Whip, and that was effectively the catalyst for the creation of an entirely new political party on the left, to a totemic Labour policy is transparently a move to both appease the Labour Benches and shut the door on the surge in support for a Zack Polanski-inspired resurgent Green party and the stuttering Your party. By the end of this Parliament, lifting the cap will cost £3 billion a year. That is more than the total spend on fire and rescue services in England. The heavily trailed high value council tax surcharge is lacking crucial detail on how it will be implemented. Doing it properly will require a revaluation of every property in the country by the valuation office by April 2028 in order to understand which houses are in scope. What will the criteria for that be? How will the value of the house be decided if it has not been sold in recent years? Moreover, the revenue will go to central Government, not the local authority. It will disappear into general taxation, and those paying the tax will likely never see any local benefit from it. The decision to raise the minimum wage looks good at first glance.
I wholeheartedly agree. I have spent the last year talking to small businesses in my constituency that have been crippled by the measures in the last Budget. When this year’s measures come in as well, some of those businesses will struggle desperately to keep on lower earners, particularly young people. My first job as a 16-year-old was working in a supermarket, and I am sure many Members had a similar experience. Those opportunities are going to disappear for young people as a result of these measures. What this Labour Government have not taken into account is that every above-inflation wage increase leads to higher business costs, lower investment and fewer opportunities for those we represent. Many businesses that want to employ people will now find themselves unable to take on staff or to take the risks that the Chancellor mentioned, meaning that businesses cannot grow. We are very likely to see the wage compression effect, whereby the gap between those on the minimum wage and those in more skilled or experienced roles becomes smaller. That, yet again, leads to a lack of incentive to develop skills and opportunities for those with them. The Government must address that, as it will curtail opportunities for young people and lower earners. Unemployment is now set to peak at 5% and the number of economically inactive people will also rise. The pay-per-mile tax on electric vehicles will surely disincentivise the switch to EVs before the ban on new petrol and diesel vehicles kicks in, and the OBR estimates that there will be 440,000 fewer EV sales over the next five years because of the tax. How much tax revenue will be lost because those sales never happen? Then there is the plethora of other taxes that are part of the smorgasbord: the tourism tax, the NI raid on pension contributions, the reduction in the tax-free cash ISA allowance and even a milkshake tax. We have not even touched on the absence of the commitment to 3% of GDP on defence anywhere in the Budget. There is not a single reference to it and I do not understand how. We saw today that the service chiefs will write to the Defence Secretary to tell him that it will not be possible to deliver the strategic defence review. I would love to hear from the Minister how Labour will facilitate defence in this day and age. The OBR has stated that not a single measure contained in the Budget will improve growth, which has, in fact, been downgraded from the figure forecast in the summer. Taxes on working people have been increased by stealth to pay for welfare. That will be Rachel Reeves’s legacy, and this is quite possibly her last Budget—
I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker. I shall draw to a close. It comes to something when the Chancellor can stand at the Dispatch Box to deliver her Budget, make a boob joke and that not be the most offensive thing she says.
Trial by jury may be more expensive than trial by judge and magistrates, but does the Minister agree that, as we have heard today, this decision goes beyond just finances? The right to a fair trial by an impartial jury is fundamental and essential to safeguarding justice, and it must be protected for all cases.
May I also wish you a happy Lancashire day, Mr Speaker? I thank you for ensuring that the historical county flags are flown from New Palace Yard. It is great to see the Lancashire flag flying today. If I may go on to an Essex question, the Leader of the House should be aware that the Metropolitan police are reducing the opening hours of 25 police stations across Greater London. Romford police station’s opening times will be cut to four hours. That comes on top of the closure of all other functioning police stations throughout Havering, leaving my constituents with limited access to local police stations, and limited opportunity to meet a constable face to face to seek advice or report a crime. That is unacceptable. Once again, Havering is getting an unfair allocation of police resources, thanks to the Mayor of London, who seems to have no interest in our borough. Will the Leader of the House make time for a debate in the House on the detrimental policy of closing police station front desks across the London region?
It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West (Dame Chi Onwurah), but I am afraid that I have to disagree with what she has said this afternoon. I am sorry to say that this Budget will not improve the lives of my constituents in Romford, who are hard-working people who pay their taxes and contribute to society and who do not want the state to take money out of their pockets in the way this Government are doing. The people of Romford are market traders, small businessmen, shopkeepers, entrepreneurs, City workers and company directors. They are the kind of people who will set their alarms early each day to get up for work to earn an honest living to support their families. Yet this Budget will hold my constituents back, stifle growth, increase the burden on hard-working families and demonstrate what seems to be a complete disregard by the Chancellor for supporting the genuine aspirations of the British people. The Government are taxing people beyond that which is reasonable or sustainable, while showing no serious attempt to reduce the size of the state, cut back the over-bloated public sector or get people off a life of benefits and back to work. This Budget has radically increased taxes on working people and the freezing of the income tax threshold is, I am sorry to say, nothing but an underhand method of taking yet more tax from my constituents. In fact, 800,000 pensioners will be put into the 40% tax bracket. Pensioners in my constituency will be poorer, and I can tell the Minister that they will resent that. The tax burden is now the highest it has been since the second world war, and my constituents will rightly ask what they are getting in return for this additional payment to the state. The truth is Britain is spending way beyond its means, and our Government appear incapable of making the serious cuts that are essential to restore our finances. The Conservative Government before should have done a lot more as well, but this Government are compounding the problem and making things far worse. If we carry on taxing and spending like this, our economy will continue to fall into a downward spiral. We need a radical change of approach, or I fear Britain will face bankruptcy. Margaret Thatcher rebuilt our economy in the 1980s based on sound money, living within our means, cutting taxes for hard-working people, reducing the size of Government, reforming the labour market and making it flexible, curtailing the power of the trade unions, abolishing exchange controls, and creating an enterprise culture that generated prosperity and incentivised wealth creators for many years to come. That approach led to decades of economic prosperity, which was inherited by the Governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown only for it to be mucked up by their Labour policies, leaving the Conservatives to start to rebuild the economy once more. The first woman Prime Minister got it right, and the first woman Chancellor of the Exchequer should now take a leaf out of Mrs Thatcher’s book. It makes no sense whatsoever for the Chancellor to freeze rail fares and give bumper pay rises to the public sector while raising taxes to the highest level in living memory to pay for them. This is economic illiteracy. Then, there are the millions for electric vehicles, representing yet more subsidies for the green agenda and more money thrown at the failed ECOS—employee car ownership schemes—experiment. The British people are no longer willing to fuel the fantasy of net zero to the detriment of our British industry. This is not economic ambition; this is an ideological obsession which now has little support. My constituents of Romford have no time for the net zero agenda any more. They can see that it is only making Britain poorer, with much pain for little gain. The Government’s social engineering taxes are without doubt what Winston Churchill described as the philosophy of envy. VAT on private schools has added additional pressure to the state sector and has been the cause of the closure of large numbers of private schools. It has been so harmful to children and to the standing and success of our education system at home and abroad. The family farm tax is another example of how the Government’s policies are causing misery and harm to our rural communities and to families who for generations have farmed the land to feed the nation. It should be cancelled, and the Government should apologise to our farmers. We now have a new wealth tax disguised as a levy on property, which represents a dagger to the heart of private property. This is an attack on the very notion of ownership. The truth is we have a massively bloated welfare state, and I have no confidence that the Labour Government will seriously tackle that issue. It is time to get back to common sense and sound economic management, so let us remember what Margaret Thatcher achieved for our country.
I am interested to hear the hon. Gentleman using the figure of £70 billion, and I agree with him. He knows that £30 billion of that results from the rise in the triple lock, so does he agree that the triple lock is simply not affordable?
It is somewhat depressing to speak after this Budget, which has basically picked the pocket of anybody who is trying to earn any money in this country. It has sent a very clear message to everybody in our country—a message that many people are hearing—which is, “This Government are not on your side. This Government will do everything they can to keep you where you are. They will encourage you to leave the country, rather than invest in it.” We can see that in the numbers. There is £26 billion in extra taxes, and 800,000 people are paying more. This is a welfare Budget, not a work Budget. Sadly, though, the issue is not just those bald figures; it is what they will do to so many citizens in our country. Among the most tragic bits of this Budget is the £7.5 billion extra tax on the young people who have got themselves a university degree—that is hidden nicely and quietly in the OBR report—but there are also the 1 million young people who will not end up in work. Let us just think about that. It is 1 million young people who will not end up in work for another year, or another year after that. Those 1 million young people, in a few years’ time, will not have a choice, because businesses will not hire them, and the world will not be one that they are adapted to. Worse than that, they will have become, quite literally, slaves of the state, waiting for the man or woman in Whitehall to decide what they get each month and year. They will have become totally dependent. It is a crime to leave our fellow citizens dependent on the state.
Forgive me; I am going to make a little progress. That is not all of it. This Budget looked hard at fixing the very real political problems faced by the Chancellor and the Prime Minister today, admittedly, but it also looked hard at how they can simply inflate the balloon today; there was nothing about tomorrow. We can see that in the way that farmers are being taxed; it is deliberately punishing investment. We can see it in the investment figures; despite the hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) claiming that there has been investment in this country, the investment figures in the UK per capita show a 4% increase. Okay, that is an increase, but the figure is 22% in Canada and 79% in the United States. This is not real growth or serious investment. Sadly, we see the knock-on effects. The right hon. Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North (Liam Byrne), the Chair of the Business and Trade Committee, said that there was investment in start-ups. Well, I wish there was, but all the decisions made by this Government have convinced anybody with any entrepreneurial spirit to go either to Abu Dhabi, where they are filming some new version of “Auf Wiedersehen, Pet” with British workers who have fled this country, or to the United States, which at least has the capital to invest in start-ups. All we see is a continuation of the Blair-Brown model of increasing nationalisation of savings—that creeping control that we see spreading over pensions and the insurance market. It has left 60% of our savings in bonds, and only about 40% in equities, which contrasts remarkably with Australia, Canada and the United States, which have 20% in bonds and 80% in equities.
I will tell the hon. Member the honest truth: Liz Truss was wrong, and I made a mistake. That is the reality; that is what happened. But here is the difference: it is true that what she did put pressure on the economy, but this Chancellor has increased debt to the highest-ever levels and the cost of borrowing to the highest in the G7.
There is no debate about that, so I will not give way on that point. The reality is that we are looking at the politics of today and forgetting about tomorrow. We are seeing people left on welfare and not helped into work. We see a pretence at kindness that is actually long-term cruelty. We are failing to recognise that it is not the state, the Government or the civil servants, and certainly not the Minister, who employs people or creates any work, but free individuals freely associating and freely structuring their lives in order to create opportunity for themselves, their family and their community. But guess what? This Government do not believe in that. That is why we now see taxes at their highest-ever level at 38%—the highest since the second world war. This is a remarkable theft of liberty from the British people. Forget about digital ID, which is insane in its own right; this is a genuine theft of the liberty of free citizens to choose what to do with their resources. It is an appalling decision. We need to look very hard at what the choices are. We can already see where the cost is going. Despite the Home Office estimates a few years ago that asylum seekers would cost £4.5 billion, this OBR report tells us that it will be £15.3 billion. That is a multiple of more than three. We are seeing any number of different areas where the costs are rising. All this would be bad enough in a normal situation where, with a bit of adjustment, we could get back to normal, but the truth is that this is not a normal situation. This is a situation that demands frank honesty. Let me be honest and lay it on the line. The demographics of this country are going against us. We do not have enough young people for an ageing population. That means, I am afraid, that we do need to look at the triple lock. I know that those on my party’s Front Bench do not agree with me, but I have been clear that we simply cannot afford the level of welfare payments we are making. We need to be clear that health and pensions are now costing too much. We need to be clear that the security situation has changed. I have heard that we are now raising more for defence—gosh, have I heard that?—but the reality is that it is all on the never-never. The Army is even now talking about cutting the number of soldiers, the Navy is talking about cutting the number of ships, and the Air Force is talking about cutting its numbers too. I have heard that from friends who are serving today, so I look forward to seeing what comes out of the Budget round for them. The reality is that while our enemies are arming, we are talking. It is simply not serious. For all that I have said, there is one thing that is going so far against us that we are not even on the same field, and that is technology. Looking at the rise of AI across the world, there are only two countries that are serious players: the United States and China. The Unites States is heading for the exquisite, while China is heading for the quotidian. We are seeing a radical change in the way the economy is working, but here we are defending old jobs, punishing ideas and keeping back growth. We have a Government who simply do not understand that we have only a few years in which we can get back into the game. If we miss this chance, we will be like the old Chinese empire: we will have missed the boat, we will have burned our ships, and we will be replaced, as happened after European expansion to the Americas.
I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way. As we are going down memory lane, I cannot resist reminding him that when we came to power in 2010, we had a youth unemployment crisis. Youth unemployment plunged when we were in office; now, with Labour back in office, the Government have imposed a national insurance contribution tax and youth unemployment is soaring again. Is that not a damning indictment of Labour?
I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, including my position as chair of the United Arab Emirates all-party parliamentary group. It did not have to be this way. The roots of this Budget and its failure are in the last one. It began with the unnecessary delay and scaremongering before that Budget, which frightened consumers and scared off businesses from investment. Then, when the Budget was announced, the Chancellor made three key errors. She chose to do probably the worst thing for jobs and growth: she put up national insurance contributions. She chose to drive human and financial capital away from the United Kingdom through the abolition of the non-dom tax status, and she chose a totally unrealistically low level of fiscal headroom. By the time the Chancellor sat down, markets were already preparing for the next round of tax rises, and the sense that there would be tax rises only grew with the U-turn on welfare reforms. The problem is that the Government are making exactly the same mistake all over again—and there was a litany of leaks, culminating, extraordinarily, in the OBR publishing the entire content of the Chancellor’s Budget before she even stood up, which rendered the entire speech meaningless. This Budget makes a simple and clear choice: there will be higher welfare spending, paid for by higher taxes. For my constituents, that means higher income taxes, higher taxes on their savings, and higher taxes on their dividends. Further, in constituencies like mine, house prices have soared over the past 30-odd years to astronomical levels, and there is a real risk that older people in family homes that they bought for a very low price will have to scrimp and scrape to find several thousand pounds every year, just to stay in their family home, which they so love. That is a real problem that will emerge from this Budget, and I urge the Chancellor to look, at the very least, at ameliorating measures to stop older people having to sell their home to pay their council tax bills. Behind this decision lies a strategic choice, and we all know exactly what has happened. The Labour leadership has watched in fear as its vote haemorrhages to the left, and this Budget is all about shoring up Labour’s tax base. The taxes of the residents of Bushey, Radlett, Potters Bar and Borehamwood are being hiked to pay for higher welfare costs, in order to appease Labour’s Back Benchers.
The problem with that analysis is that many people on the same street will think to themselves, “I chose not to have another child because I could not afford to have another, but my neighbour is now able to have more children, paid for by the taxman through welfare.” That is the fundamental unfairness at the heart of this Budget announcement. Worse than that, this failure to grasp welfare reform risks neglecting a whole generation. Already, young workers’ prospects are under threat from artificial intelligence, and employment prospects are being hit by Labour’s jobs tax and labour market regulation, which is discouraging hiring. Now the message seems to emerge from the Government: “Don’t worry: abandon ambition. There is ever-higher welfare spending under Labour. That is the reason why you should vote for us.”
As ever, my hon. Friend is totally correct. Of course the welfare state should be there for those people in temporary difficulty, but it cannot be a lifestyle, which is what ends up happening.
I will give way to the Chairman of the Treasury Committee, then I must make some progress.
Of course there will be the occasional person who falls on hard times, but the hon. Lady should try saying what she did to the many of my constituents who are unable to have more children. They took the choice not to have them, but that option is now there. There is an imbalance between the situation that my constituents faced and the approach taken on welfare. At a time when the United Kingdom is embracing higher taxes and an ever-greater role for the state, lower-tax dynamism abounds beyond Europe. We can see the US surging, with freer markets and a tech and energy bonanza. We need only look to the Gulf, where states like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia embracing tech, finance and alternative energy. A generation ago, this would have mattered less, but labour and capital are now highly mobile, and more and more people are voting with their feet. They are leaving the United Kingdom in their tens of thousands. This tide is washing the very brightest and best away from our shores, and I fear that once those people leave, it will be very hard to get them to come back. The sadness of all this is that the United Kingdom remains a wonderful country. It is a beacon of stability, and we have the rule of law, the English language, our time zone, great research universities and a highly talented workforce. Indeed, having criticised the Government a lot, I pay tribute to them for successfully concluding a number of free trade agreements, including with India and the United States, and I hope that others will follow, including with the Gulf Co-operation Council. At a time when other countries present challenges—whether we are talking about the security situation in China, the unpredictability of the United States or stagnation in Europe—the United Kingdom has a golden opportunity to be a magnet for investment from businesses and entrepreneurs around the world. However, we risk consigning ourselves to what a Scottish entrepreneur described to me a couple of days ago as a “why bother” economy. What he meant was that of course people are not going to disinvest, but they will not actively choose to invest in the United Kingdom, because we are not creating an environment that rewards risk-taking and entrepreneurship. There are a few simple steps that we could take to seize this moment, and I urge the Chancellor to take them and light the fire of competitiveness. First, instead of trying to drive away the wealthiest and biggest global investors, as we have done with the abolition of the non-dom status, we should welcome them and gain more revenue at the same time. One need only look at the Italian model; they have imposed a relatively high fee, but have in return exempted wealthy mobile people from paying further taxation. As a result, investment in Italy is surging, as is the number of wealthy people choosing to locate there, with all the opportunities that brings for growth and investment. Secondly, instead of obsessing about policing social media, we should be aggressively policing the sort of low-level crime that drives people away from locating in this country, whether it is phone snatching, shoplifting or the general sense that the streets of this country have become less safe than they were a few years ago. Thirdly, instead of clobbering entrepreneurs, wealth creators and hard-working Brits with ever-higher marginal rates, we should have confidence that lower marginal rates generate higher revenues in the long run and benefit absolutely everyone. Fourthly, and most importantly of all in relation to this Budget, instead of consigning a generation to welfare, we should aggressively reform the welfare state to create opportunities for all. It really is not too late for the Government to seize this opportunity, but sadly, I fear that only a change of Government, and a Conservative Government, will be able to deliver those things.
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. This morning we have seen an unprecedented leak of the Office for Budget Responsibility’s “Economic and fiscal outlook” report before the Budget. The report contains market-sensitive information. It is utterly outrageous that this has happened, and the leak may indeed constitute a criminal act. In Prime Minister’s questions, the Leader of the Opposition asked the Prime Minister about this leak, but he refused to answer her question. Please can you advise this House on the steps at its disposal to force a leak inquiry into this matter? Would it be possible to ask the Table Office to distribute copies of the report to the House, given that everybody outside the House has already had the opportunity to read it?
I have a history with this story. Back in 1999, the late Lord Chalfont and I tried to draw attention to the fact that even at the time, the rules said that only if there was no doubt whatsoever should dead airmen be blamed for gross negligence. Since this case, under no circumstances are dead airmen blamed for gross negligence. That should be some comfort to the families, at least those of the airmen, because there have since been cases in which the Chief of the Air Staff has rightly ordered records to be changed retrospectively to clear airmen in other crashes who were unfairly blamed. That is a result of the furore about this terrible case—it is something for which the relatives of those who died can take credit. It will never happen again to any other airman who dies in the course of fulfilling his or her duty.
I apologise for intervening after having stepped out for part of the debate—this may already have been covered. Has any consideration been given to possible embarrassment over the decision to put so many staff, in so many sensitive positions, into a single aircraft? Despite my past interest in this case, I am not sure that I have ever heard that rules have been changed so that so many precious resources are not put at risk all in one single vehicle.
Budgets are not easy for Chancellors, because there are so many things beyond their control, but being forced to make trade-offs reveals priorities. I am afraid today’s priority was not economic growth, but political survival. That is because there was one central call the Chancellor had to make today: do we reform welfare, or do we raise tax? Getting our welfare bill down to pre-pandemic levels would save about £47 billion a year within five years. It would not have been easy, but it would have meant no tax rises and plenty of headroom in public finances. Instead, welfare spend is going up, and jobs and growth are going down. In every single day of the Government’s first year, around 2,200 people have been signed off not just work, but from even having to look for work. That is 1 million more people on universal credit just in the last year. Most of those claimants cite mental ill health, but every doctor I spoke to as Health Secretary said that people with anxiety and depression need social contact. That means being at work, not being at home.