Showing every spoken contribution, including 5,750 under 12 words. Hide short remarks

1. 1 Dec 2025·Parliament·Bob Blackman

   SEND: Specialist Schools

   I thank the Minister for that answer. The last Government approved the new SEND school in Harrow, which is supported on a cross-party basis and by all headteachers in Harrow. At the moment, young children have to travel an hour and a half each way to get to specialist schools, which is costing the taxpayer huge amounts of money, and that is unacceptable for those children with special educational needs. All we need is the Department to give its approval, and that school could go ahead and start almost immediately. If this funding is available, will she make it available to the London borough of Harrow to start the school that everyone wants?

   Hansard source
2. 1 Dec 2025·Parliament·Blake Stephenson

   Topical Questions

   My constituents want politicians to work on a cross-party basis to improve SEND education. Is the Secretary of State committed to working cross-party, and if so, what steps is she taking to do that?

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3. 1 Dec 2025·Parliament·Blake Stephenson

   Office for Budget Responsibility Forecasts

   The Chief Secretary to the Treasury failed to answer a critical question raised by my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor and a similar question raised by the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper), so I will ask the question in a slightly different way. Does the Minister agree that the FCA must urgently investigate whether conduct has fallen short of, in particular, part 7 of the Financial Services Act 2012 and article 12(1)(c) of the UK market abuse regulation, and does he agree that no stone should be left unturned in that investigation?

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4. 1 Dec 2025·Parliament·Andrew Bowie

   Budget Resolutions

   That is absurd.

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5. 1 Dec 2025·Parliament·Andrew Bowie

   Budget Resolutions

   Yes.

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6. 1 Dec 2025·Parliament·Andrew Bowie

   Budget Resolutions

   Yes.

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7. 27 Nov 2025·Parliament·Wendy Morton

   Right to Trial by Jury

   Another day, another leak from the Government. The Minister says that no final decision has been made—we just have speculation—and suggests that we wait, so why does she not use this time to reflect on the comments from Conservative Members and bring back the courts used during covid, to speed up the process so that people continue to have the right to a trial by jury?

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8. 27 Nov 2025·Parliament·Wendy Morton

   Business of the House

   A game of manoeuvres, tactics and at times outright brinkmanship —that might sound familiar to some members of the Cabinet, but I am of course talking about chess. Meadow View primary school in my constituency has qualified for the London chess classic on 2 December. Will the Leader of the House join me in congratulating them and wishing them the very best of luck?

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9. 27 Nov 2025·Parliament·Sir Mel Stride

   Budget Resolutions

   The film “Groundhog Day” sees Phil Connors go to a place where he wakes up every morning to the same DJ playing the same song: “I Got You Babe” by Sonny and Cher. We have a very similar situation with the Chancellor. It is groundhog day, with the Chancellor destroying the economy, putting up taxes, losing her fiscal headroom, and round and round it goes. That film was said to be a romantic comedy. Well, there has been nothing comedic about the results that this Chancellor has delivered in terms of increased unemployment, diminished living standards, higher inflation and so on. Whether the public were ever enamoured with the Chancellor, I know not, but they certainly are not now—according to the polls, she is apparently the least popular Chancellor in the history of polling on that question.

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10. 27 Nov 2025·Parliament·Sir Mel Stride

    Budget Resolutions

    That is absolutely true. Let us look at how we ended up at this sorry pass. In opposition, Labour assured the British electorate that they would not be putting up taxes left, right and centre, and when they got into power, what did they do within a few short months? They slapped taxes—£40 billion-worth—on the British people, £25 billion of that by way of national insurance increases on business alone. It is no surprise that that destroyed employment and growth. They talked down the economy. They came up with this confected £22 billion black hole. What an irony it was—[Interruption.] There may be chuntering from those on the Front Bench, but what an irony it was that it was at the behest of the Government themselves that the Office for Budget Responsibility was invited to look into this claim and said that it would not legitimise that figure. The damage was done. The animal spirits in the economy were extinguished. Of course, they did something else that socialists down the ages always do: they borrowed and borrowed and borrowed and spent and spent and spent until they ran out of other people’s money—

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11. 27 Nov 2025·Parliament·Sir Mel Stride

    Budget Resolutions

    The Minister is having trouble containing himself, such is the punishment that he is receiving at the moment. They borrowed all this money, and what did that do? It stoked inflation, and with inflation higher, interest rates have been higher for longer.

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12. 27 Nov 2025·Parliament·Sir Mel Stride

    Budget Resolutions

    The Minister says from a sedentary position that inflation is coming down. The International Monetary Fund says that inflation will be the highest in the G7 this year and next year. We know that with high inflation, interest rates are higher for longer. That means businesses’ borrowing costs are higher. It means that consumer sentiment is dampened. It means that the servicing cost alone on the burgeoning debt that this Government are constantly adding to is currently £100 billion a year—twice what we spend on defence. In fact, if debt servicing were a Government Department, it would be the third largest in Whitehall—not spending money on better public services, as we are often told by the Labour party, but simply paying for the profligacy of the Labour party when it comes to borrowing. The run-up to this Budget was a farce. We have seen weeks and weeks of uncertainty generated by the Treasury, which has leaked every possible combination of tax increases and then U-turned on some of them. It has flown so many kites that it has blotted out the sun, and a huge shadow has been cast across businesses, which have pressed pause on investment and hiring. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury should speak to Andy Haldane, who concludes that what I am saying is absolutely right. It has also weighed down on consumer sentiment. All this hokey-cokey around what is in the Budget has done real damage to our economy on this Government’s watch.

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13. 27 Nov 2025·Parliament·Sir Mel Stride

    Budget Resolutions

    My right hon. and gallant Friend is entirely right, as usual, and something else has also been going on. I have written to the OBR to ask Richard Hughes exactly what happened with the information that the Treasury appears to have leaked out about the forecasts during the run-up to the Budget. I say that in the knowledge that the OBR’s own guidance says that information exchanged with the Treasury during the build-up to a Budget is provided to Ministers in confidence. Why is it then that the Chancellor herself was on the airwaves before the Budget, opining on the apparent coming downgrade to productivity? I have written to the OBR to ask whether it feels that that was appropriate. I have also written to the permanent secretary to the Treasury to ask if he is implementing an investigation into the leaks coming from the Treasury. Interestingly, he has written back to me simply to say that in the event that there are suspected leaks, of course there is an investigation. He has not quite answered my question as to whether there is an investigation being undertaken at the moment, but I will be following up with him on that matter. What has happened in this Budget? The OBR forecasts tell a sorry story: unemployment is higher in every single year of the forecast than it was forecast to be back in the spring. Inflation is up—we have seen the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics. Labour is the party that talks about resolving poverty; it is a disgrace that food inflation in the last set of figures went up way above the headline rate, from 4.5% to 4.9%. That rise is being borne by some of the most vulnerable and some of the poorest in our society. On growth, of course the Chancellor tells a good story. She says that the growth forecast is up compared with spring this year, but, as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury will know, it is down compared with the autumn of last year, when the OBR said that growth would be 2% in this year; it is now forecast to be 1.5%. In in every subsequent year, growth is forecast to be lower than was forecast back at the time of the spring statement. That is the simple fact.

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14. 27 Nov 2025·Parliament·Sir Mel Stride

    Budget Resolutions

    We will come on to why that is the case momentarily. What has happened to borrowing? One might have thought that the Government would have learned the lesson that ever-increasing borrowing always leads to disaster, but no: there is £11 billion of additional borrowing on average in every year of the forecast. What has that done to living standards? Real household disposable income—the economists’ measure of economic wellbeing —is down in every year of the forecast compared to the forecast in the spring. The OBR says—the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury will like this one—that real income growth across this forecast will be well below the average of the last decade. So this Government should not point a finger at the last one when it comes to living standards.

    Hansard source
15. 27 Nov 2025·Parliament·Sir Mel Stride

    Budget Resolutions

    I will in a moment. It is there in black and white in the OBR’s report. The reason for that forecast is £26 billion of additional taxation in 2029-30, and, as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury will know, an additional £12 billion of tax take that will occur because of fiscal drag. Those higher inflationary numbers in the forecast are dragging ever more people into paying ever more tax.

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16. 27 Nov 2025·Parliament·Sir Mel Stride

    Budget Resolutions

    The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The income tax threshold freeze—which has been extended for three years, even though the Government briefed that it would probably just be two—means 780,000 more people paying tax for the first time, because the personal allowance will be frozen for longer, and 920,000 people going into the higher rate tax bracket. In fact, by 2029-30, around one in four workers in this country will be in the higher rate tax bracket. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that the measure is a clear breach of the Labour party manifesto. The Chancellor herself accepted in the autumn Budget last year, when she said that she would not come forward with the measure, that it would hurt working people. She repeated that yesterday. It is very clear that this is a breach of the Labour party manifesto. When it comes to young people, we hear that there will be a freeze to the student loan payment thresholds. Young people are already disproportionately impacted by the changes to national insurance, particularly the reduction in the threshold that means that lower-income earners, which include younger people, will be disproportionately impacted by those tax changes. The Employment Rights Bill, which is coming down the line, will make it far riskier to take younger people—[Interruption.] Government Members should be careful what they wish for. The Labour party speaks a lot about those who are not in employment, education or training, of which there are about 940,000; that Bill will do nothing to improve their life chances. It will make things worse. It will make it more risky to take those people on and employ them.

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17. 27 Nov 2025·Parliament·Sir Mel Stride

    Budget Resolutions

    The hon. Lady has been very patient, so I give way to her.

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18. 27 Nov 2025·Parliament·Sir Mel Stride

    Budget Resolutions

    I congratulate the hon. Lady on reading accurately from the Whips’ circular. The Opposition stand by our record—[Interruption.] Absolutely. When we were in government, we were a job-creating machine: there were 4 million more jobs under us than had been there before. When we left on the day of the general election, we had a near-record high level of employment and a near-record low level of unemployment. Unemployment is now at a five-year high—[Interruption.] The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury shakes his head, but it happens to be true. One of the results of the Budget for young people is that there will continue to be a lost generation of workers. What about those who want to save, do the right thing and provide for their future in retirement? Should we not be encouraging that? What has the Budget delivered on that front? Salary sacrifice has been savaged, the savings tax has been put up, and the cash ISA has been cut. We are punishing savers. We will see the reverberating effects of those measures for many generations and many years to come.

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19. 27 Nov 2025·Parliament·Sir Mel Stride

    Budget Resolutions

    My hon. Friend is precisely right. I have set out the iniquitous impacts of the reduction of the national insurance threshold on younger people, as well as the impact that the Employment Rights Bill will have by increasing the risks of employing younger people. That is self-evident and obvious, and businesses are saying it over and over again. If an employer is put in a position where he is faced with a young person who has no career track record, and the Government’s legislation says that on day one the employee can take that employer to a tribunal for unfair dismissal—a claim that may get clogged up for two years, and for which the lawyers advising the employer will probably conclude that he should give in and pay out, even if the merits of the case do not warrant it—that is a recipe for higher youth unemployment. It is simple; it is basic economics. Look at the taxes in the Budget placed on rental income. Do Labour Members not realise that that will lead to higher rents and fewer properties on the market? Do they not understand that if the family home is taxed, we will catch a lot of people who may be asset rich but are income poor? I suppose the solution will be to allow that liability to roll up and be paid on death—yet another death tax at the hands of this Government. What is all this pain and taxation paying for? In large part, it is paying for more welfare—it is as simple as that. Scrapping the two-child cap is a mistake and it is unfair, because those who are paying taxes, working hard and doing the right thing have to take tough choices as to whether they can afford a larger family or not. It is quite right and proper that those who are on benefits should face similar choices.

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20. 27 Nov 2025·Parliament·Sir Mel Stride

    Budget Resolutions

    I have already set out the fact that this Government’s ruinous taxation policy, including in the Budget yesterday, is to load up taxes on people who are in work, many of them not high earners. The impact of that tax is the reason why the OBR has concluded that for every year of this forecast, real household disposable income—in other words, the cost of living issues people are facing—will deteriorate compared with the forecast back in spring. The Labour party is making poverty worse by making sure that work does not pay to the degree that it should. The other point to make is about inflation. If the Government run a policy of borrowing vast amounts of money and spending half a trillion pounds over and above the plans that they inherited across this Parliament— that was added to by more than £100 billion just yesterday—we should not be surprised if inflation is the highest in the G7, or if the International Monetary Fund says that it will be the highest in the G7 next year. What does high inflation, particularly on food, do to poverty? It drives poverty up, and therein lie the answers that the Government need to think about. There is an alternative, which is to get on top of and control Government spending and to do the responsible thing. Our golden rules is that at least half of those savings should go towards driving down the deficit and the debt, but we would then have capacity to drive down taxes as well. That is exactly what we set out at our conference: £49 billion of savings, and £23 billion of savings on welfare. Thanks to the solid commendable work of my hon. Friend the shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, we have found those savings, and it is a tragedy that the Government—[Interruption.] The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury says, “What are the savings?” The savings are £23 billion on welfare—[Interruption.] It is a number. As a member of the Treasury team, he should be familiar with numbers, but clearly he is not. We will be bringing down the welfare bill, and the savings are clear. I direct the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury to the paper from the Centre for Social Justice, which makes it clear—[Interruption.] Well, it is rather better than the Resolution Foundation stuff that he produced, I have to say. The paper from the Centre for Social Justice makes it clear that by changing the gateways into longer-term sickness and health benefits, which we did when we were in office—[Interruption.] If the hon. Gentleman stops jabbering and starts listening, he might actually learn something, and that might be for the good of his party and this country. When we were in office, we made reforms to the work capability assessment that, according to the OBR’s own scoring, would have seen 450,000 fewer people going on to those benefits. We were making a real difference in arresting the rise of the welfare bill. What did the Government do on coming to office? They scrapped those measures on day one. They then came forward with their own proposals—[Interruption.] I hope that when the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury gets to his feet later he will address this, and talk us through what happened to his Government’s attempt to control the welfare bill. It got smashed into a million pieces on the rocks of his own Back Benchers—that is what happened. That is the tragedy of much of this Budget: the economics are being driven by the internal politics of the Labour party. We have a Prime Minister and a Chancellor whose position is now so precarious that they have to bob up and down like a cork on the tide when it comes to making policy at the whims of Labour Back Benchers. There is a certain melancholy about this Budget. It is like groundhog day; an old song, with the words seared into the collective mind. A socialist anthem for all time: “That for he who has, then that must be taken away. For he who has not, then to him must be given.” That is not on the basis of any measure of fairness, as suggested in the topic for debate today, but rather on a fundamental misunderstanding of basic economics. Economics is about resources, of course, but it is also about incentives. To he who has, I say this: if you work hard we applaud you, and we will incentivise you to work harder still, recognising your contribution to the common good. To the vulnerable we say this: we are there for you. But to others who have not we say this: here is not a hand out, but the means for improvement. For the socialist, Madam Deputy Speaker, distribution is all, and the means are never sufficiently willed. The eternal lesson—also the lesson of this Budget—is that that path leads all to be diminished. An economy laden with debt, with Government spending spiralling still and taxation touching skyward, will never burn bright. The whole will never grow. It is not enough—it will languish. That is how the dreams of millions perish. Yesterday, the lingering flickers of hope died.

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21. 27 Nov 2025·Parliament·Sir John Whittingdale

    BBC Charter Renewal

    10. What discussions she has had with the BBC on renewal of the charter.

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22. 27 Nov 2025·Parliament·Sir John Whittingdale

    BBC Charter Renewal

    The Secretary of State will be aware that, as the Public Accounts Committee has pointed out, last year the BBC lost more than £1 billion as a result of evasion and households declaring that they no longer need a licence. That figure is going to grow over the course of the next charter, so will she look at finding other ways in which we can close the funding gap?

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23. 27 Nov 2025·Parliament·Sir John Whittingdale

    Topical Questions

    T3.   Yesterday I had a roundtable meeting with a number of UK-based AI firms that have reached licensing agreements with owners of rights in the creative industries and publishing industries. Rather than just talking to big tech, will she and the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology meet those UK-based companies that are trying to do the right thing?

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24. 27 Nov 2025·Parliament·Sir John Hayes

    Business of the House

    Budgets are often about what is not in them, as well as what is; no doubt we will debate that later. A glaring omission from this Budget was a settlement for the women of the Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign. We had a statement in which the Government, presumably fearful of the court case that they are about to lose, said that they would do more, but will the Leader of the House recognise that these women, whom the ombudsman has acknowledged were so badly treated, deserve better? Will he arrange for a statement on when there will be further Government action?

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25. 27 Nov 2025·Parliament·Sir John Hayes

    Budget Resolutions

    My right hon. Friend did a service to the House a week or two ago when he drew what he is describing now to the attention of this Chamber. He told the Government that these leaks were not only doing damage to the economy, in the way he has just described, but were a discourtesy to this House. Many times, Madam Deputy Speaker, you and Mr Speaker have said that announcements should be made to this House first. It is fundamental to this place that what the Government announce is brought here for scrutiny, not the public realm.

    Hansard source
26. 27 Nov 2025·Parliament·Sir John Hayes

    Budget Resolutions

    I am very interested in that part of the Budget and I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for setting it out in more detail. One part of the youth guarantee is the boost for apprenticeships, particularly in small and medium-sized enterprises, but looking at the fine print, is that not already supplied by the apprenticeship levy? What small and medium-sized enterprises need, as I learned when I was the apprenticeships Minister, is some grant funding to get them started in the process. Does the Government have that in mind or is this simply a rehash of the apprenticeship levy?

    Hansard source
27. 27 Nov 2025·Parliament·Sir John Hayes

    Budget Resolutions

    G. K. Chesterton said: “It is human to err; and the only final and deadly error, among all our errors, is denying that we have ever erred.” Yesterday’s Budget brought into stark relief the fact that the Chancellor and this Government have erred and, worse, are in denial about their error. The UK faces a twin-pronged fiscal crisis. Public debt is at around 100% of GDP and rising, with debt interest making up about three quarters of the deficit. Public spending, at close to 45% of GDP, is near to a high in the post-war years. Much of that failure is systemic—Governments of all colours have failed to address some fundamental macroeconomic challenges—but yesterday’s Budget not only failed to fix that entrenched mess, but did not even acknowledge that it is happening. As the global liberal order decays, we face global economic challenges on a scale we have not seen for 100 years. Artificial intelligence risks transforming the jobs market. A recent study by the National Foundation for Educational Research forecast that up to 3 million jobs could disappear by 2035. Employment in sales and customer service occupations has fallen by more than 10% since 2021, and around 12 million people in England currently work in occupations deemed to be in decline. That requires Government to play a role. Government can be a force for good. This House took far too long to recognise the damage that would be done by the internet, and finally, when those horrors were obvious, it legislated. We need to restrict AI where it does similar damage, rather than indulging this naive faith in technological change at all costs. The old, comforting bourgeois assumptions about the benign nature of globalisation and the faith in technological change risk endangering many of the jobs I have described, and the purpose and pride they fuel. The US President was right to impose tariffs on cheap goods that were destroying vital US industries. In response, China is dumping surplus goods in Europe, and it has been estimated that 3 million industrial jobs in the EU are at risk from that surge of subsidised imported goods. In response to these existential threats, the Government seem frozen in time. Too much of the establishment remains wedded to dysfunctional orthodoxies. We are playing by the rules of the game when the important players have left the table. We cannot continue to proselytise for unbridled free trade when the two biggest economies in the world, China and America, have given up on it. We have to protect those industries that are critical to our national economic interests, building greater economic resilience by reindustrialising and by manufacturing again, so ensuring that more of what we consume is made here in Britain, with the jobs, skills and reassurance that provides. An economy can nourish communal health, but it cannot do so in a world that is wedded to globalised, multinational, corporate companies that are careless of the difference they make to communities such as mine in Lincolnshire and those across the country. Here in Britain, and across the western world, living standards are stagnating, productivity growth has all but disappeared, and the state grows ever bigger in the face of rising poverty and worklessness. Why, then, does the political class continue to profess a blind faith in an economic model that has delivered record levels of state dependency? The assumption that little can be done to reverse the inevitable process of industrial decline is simply wrong, as the experience of the United States suggests. Once we tune out the noise surrounding President Trump’s on-and-off tariffs, we can hear the faint stirrings of industrial revival. A detailed study of the impact of tariffs during the President’s first term found that once the pre-existing decline in manufacturing employment was accounted for, tariffs contributed to rising employment in areas with a large presence of protected industries. Neither did consumer prices surge in the United States, despite the predictions of liberal economists. Just imagine the potential benefits of a consistent and coherent trade policy that puts the needs of British industry first.

    Hansard source
28. 27 Nov 2025·Parliament·Sir John Hayes

    Budget Resolutions

    My hon. Friend makes a valuable point. Both Governments and these big corporates welcome a regulatory system that disadvantages small and innovative companies. Big organisations quite like regulation, for they can cope with it because of their scale; small organisations struggle with it, because they simply do not have the resources to deal with it. In 1979, manufacturing accounted for 30% of GDP in Britain; today that figure is just 8.5%. Manufacturing employed 21% of the workforce in 1982; by 2023 it employed just 8%. By some measure this is the greatest deindustrialisation of any major nation. We can and should build a different economic model—a new order. We need a fundamental rethink of our economic model, breaking from the failed orthodoxy that currently prevails and moving towards what Hilaire Belloc and GK Chesterton called “distributism”, where local economies —introspective, feeding communal health, with shorter supply chains—mean that we can make more of what we need here in the UK, fuelling skills and nourishing communities. What Chesterton and Belloc intuitively understood was that the excessive concentration of economic power harms society and fuels the discontent that many people in Britain feel today. Real wages have stagnated, while those at the top—large corporations in particular, often based overseas—accumulate huge wealth and power. We can build that new order. Small family businesses enrich the places in which we all live. Mutuals and co-operatives sustain communal and economic health in localities. We can do this, but it requires a radical rethink of the economic orthodoxy. The Budget does not suggest that rethink. All parties must step up to the mark and understand that we live in a post-liberal age where a new order is possible. Let us together build that new order, to deliver the common good by sustaining our national interest.

    Hansard source
29. 27 Nov 2025·Parliament·Sir John Hayes

    Budget Resolutions

    Food production in this country is critical to my constituency, my hon. Friend’s and others’, yet public procurement still does not prioritise British goods. Might he invite the Government to look at that again? It is absolutely right that this House, the Government and the public sector should support British-made goods, and British-made food in particular.

    Hansard source
30. 27 Nov 2025·Parliament·Sir John Hayes

    Budget Resolutions

    Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

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31. 27 Nov 2025·Parliament·Sir John Hayes

    Budget Resolutions

    I support the minimum wage. It is important that working people, particularly less well-off working people, are adequately rewarded. Does my hon. Friend agree that the real impact will be on small and medium-sized businesses? Those businesses are already dealing with increasing cost burdens. When the Minister sums up, he might want to reflect on the effect that that may have on the creation of employment in those kind of businesses.

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32. 27 Nov 2025·Parliament·Sir John Hayes

    Budget Resolutions

    I notice that the Minister is wearing a William Morris—or William Morris-esque—tie, and what Morris understood was the importance of craft and skills. The Government addressed apprenticeships in the Budget in a minor way, but does the Minister know that simultaneously the skills White Paper envisages downgrading apprenticeships by diluting the competencies they confer, thereby undermining their reputation with learners and employers?

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33. 27 Nov 2025·Parliament·Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown

    Budget Resolutions

    The sad fact is that youth unemployment—that is, unemployment among 16 to 24-year-olds—is at a staggering 15%. Given the national insurance hikes and the rise in the minimum wage, employers are unlikely to consider taking young people on, which could have the disastrous effect that people who graduate from university or from an apprenticeship will emerge having done a lot of work, but will not be able to get a proper job.

    Hansard source
34. 27 Nov 2025·Parliament·Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown

    Budget Resolutions

    Madam Deputy Speaker, thank you for allowing me to speak in this debate. I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi), and I agree with what she said about farmers. I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. This Budget was an omnishambles. Not only have the Government being dripping leaks for the last month, which undermined market and business confidence, but the OBR, in error, yesterday published the Budget on its website 45 minutes before it was given at the Dispatch Box. This is unprecedented. The pound went down, and some of the hedge funds, which were already betting against the market, made millions. This does not provide confidence and stability in our public finances. It is undeniable that the financial position is much worse than it was when we were responding to the Budget last year. Put simply, the Government are spending more than this country can afford. Last year, the Chancellor announced £40 billion in tax rises. We were promised that this would be a once-in-a-lifetime increase and would have filled the so-called black hole, so why has the Chancellor come back this year with another huge tranche— £26 billion—of tax rises? This tax burden will be equivalent to 38.3% of GDP by the end of this Parliament, and staggeringly, tax in this country is at an all-time record high. Interestingly, spending will go up now, but many taxes will not go up until 2028-29, around the time of the next election, so Labour MPs should take careful note of the measures that the Government introduced yesterday. A growth rate of 1.5% per annum is lower than forecast, and growth per head is at the bottom of the G7 league. However, for the OBR to downgrade productivity rates to just 1% by 2029-30 is alarming, because it implies that growth will continue to flatline. Staggeringly, the chairman of the OBR has said that nothing—I repeat, nothing—in the Budget will score towards increased growth. The Public Accounts Committee, which I have the privilege to chair, has been banging the drum for putting more money towards digital skills and the use of AI in all Departments and agencies. In the spring statement, most Departments were allocated more money for new technology. The PAC has heard time after time that old legacy IT equipment needs to be replaced, because new digital technology is needed to accommodate AI such as large learning models, and old analogue systems are much more prone to cyber-attacks. Yet any improvements in efficiency are offset by the debt and the interest to service it. Last month, the UK national debt reached a staggering record £2.6 trillion, and the debt interest alone will be £136 billion a year by 2029-30. That would be the third largest Department if it were a Department, and it does not treat a single child or educate anybody. One thing I can say about this Budget is that it is not discriminatory in whom it hurts. Working people, savers, pensioners, drivers, farmers, homeowners and businesses— I could go on—are all being taxed more to pay for this out-of-control spending. This is not a Budget for working people; it is a Budget to pay for the massive increase in the welfare state. Indeed, as a stark example, the Government announced yesterday that they would increase the help to save scheme for universal credit claimants, which of course is tax-free, whereas ordinary working taxpayers will see the tax on their savings increase by 2%. Where is the fairness in that? The OBR has forecast that the welfare state is going to rise by a staggering £73.2 billion to £406.2 billion over the next five years. One aspect of the economy at the moment is that the unemployment rate has increased to 5.1%. At the end of last year, it was 4.3%. Sadly, we now have 1.79 million people out of work, and I suspect that everything announced in the Budget yesterday will only increase that figure. As I said in an intervention on my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor, what is really sad about those figures is that the unemployment rate for 16 to 24-year-olds is nearly 5%. On the two-child benefit cap, in April 2025 there were 37,020 households in the UK on universal credit with exactly five children and an additional 18,260 households with six or more children. As a father, I know how much it costs to bring up children. It is the best decision I ever made, but I know the costs associated with childcare. Many parents up and down this country, including my constituents, are taking tough decisions about not having any more children, and they are paying out more and having to work harder to afford their existing children. Where is the fairness in this system?

    Hansard source
35. 27 Nov 2025·Parliament·Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown

    Budget Resolutions

    It is always possible to find cases that are very difficult to deal with. In government, we have to make decisions about the totality of the population. I think it is up to parents on benefits to think very carefully about how many children they have and the circumstances in which they may find themselves.

    Hansard source
36. 27 Nov 2025·Parliament·Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown

    Budget Resolutions

    No, I have already given way once on this subject. Our wealth creating sector is shrinking, whereas the public sector is ballooning, yet the Government’s policies are punishing businesses and wealth creators. The freezing of tax thresholds is a tax rise, as the Chancellor has confirmed many times at the Dispatch Box, but she has now confirmed that they will be frozen for another three years. Every time they are frozen, that brings more people into the tax net. In this case, it is forecast to bring another 750,000 into the tax net. The 2% increase on savings and dividends is another penalisation of those working hard to save their money. Where are the incentives to save money if the Government are taking more of their savings? Finally, hospitality businesses are going to be hit hard by this Budget. In North Cotswolds, they are at the heart of the community, yet nationally one pub is closing its doors every day at the moment. I do not see any pub landlords welcoming this Budget—

    Hansard source
37. 27 Nov 2025·Parliament·Sir Edward Leigh

    Occupied Palestinian Territories: Support for Christians

    I agree with everything the Leader of the House has just said. The fact is, the pressure by illegal settlers on Christians and Muslims in Jerusalem and the west bank is absolutely appalling, particularly in Taybeh, the last Christian town on the west bank. I have been to the west bank and have seen for myself what is going on. The pressure on the Armenians in Jerusalem and the raising of the issue of the church property tax by the Mayor of Jerusalem —this has to stop. The whole country and the Church—all the Churches—must speak out and say that Palestinian Christians and Muslims have a right to live in peace, justice and security in their homeland.

    Hansard source
38. 27 Nov 2025·Parliament·Sir Edward Leigh

    Right to Trial by Jury

    I served as a young barrister in criminal courts, and I have served on a jury, and I can say that I was deeply impressed by the care that people on the jury, from all walks of life, took to consider the evidence—actually, they were better than the barristers in many ways. I can understand where the Minister is coming from, but covid was a one-off event. I say to hon. Members that if someone of previous good character is accused of what might seem to be a minor crime such as shop- lifting, having wandered out of a shop—years ago, one of our colleagues was accused of shoplifting—their whole career and whole reputation could be destroyed. Surely the Minister must accept that a person of previous good character must have a right to jury trial. This is 1,000 years of history and the greatest defence against totalitarianism. We must never throw it away. We should consider that carefully before we proceed.

    Hansard source
39. 27 Nov 2025·Parliament·Sir Edward Leigh

    Right to Trial by Jury

    I feel so strongly about it.

    Hansard source
40. 27 Nov 2025·Parliament·Sir Desmond Swayne

    Right to Trial by Jury

    Quod erat demonstrandum. Yesterday, it was made abundantly clear that the Government’s priority is the recipient of benefits, way ahead of any consideration of victims, was it not?

    Hansard source