Pat McFadden
MP for Wolverhampton South East · Labour · United Kingdom
“In his review Alan Milburn considered that issue and said that, “the UK’s NEET crisis is much more long-term and deep-seated than any decisions taken in the last few years.” As I said earlier, 400,000 more people are in work this year than last year, and the number of young people in employment is up since the election.”
“Since our last DWP questions, both Alan Milburn and the Pensions Commission have published their respective interim reports on young people and on the current state of saving for retirement. I look forward to receiving their final reports later in the year.”
“As Alan Milburn pointed out in his recent report, the UK’s NEET crisis is much more long-term and deep-seated than any decisions taken in the last few years. There are 400,000 more people in work than last year. The number of young people in employment is up by 74,000 since the election.”
“I thank the right hon. Gentleman and send him commiserations for whatever has left him reliant on his crutches today. I am happy to congratulate the businesses he mentioned in his constituency. He raises a serious point: it is important not only to come up with the right policy, but to make it simple for businesses to use.”
“My hon. Friend is right, and I thank Cardiff football club for being a partner. We are supporting nearly 1 million young people and creating up to half a million opportunities for jobs and training.”
“We are making strong progress on expanding youth hubs, with around 130 already in operation across Great Britain. In March, I announced the locations that we want to open in this year, and I have just announced a further 180 locations for the following two years.”
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“Here we are a few days later and he is still in his post. That is a rare achievement among Conservative Chancellors of modern times. Outside this House—indeed, on the day that the Chancellor spoke—there is significant turbulence in the financial system. Even though we debate these measures, it is imperative that the Treasury and the regulators are alive to the risks elsewhere in the system and to what other risks may be there. The Budget was billed by the Chancellor as a Budget for growth. He opened his statement last week by asking us to give thanks that, this year, the economy is expected to shrink, but just not by quite as much as was previously thought. A flatlining economy is now defined by the Government as success.”
“Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Gerald Jones), talked about the number of Labour policies adopted by the Government in the Budget. My hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Janet Daby) and the hon. Member for Newbury (Laura Farris) talked about childcare. The hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) rightly warned the Government against being left behind by the measures being taken in the US and the EU to ensure the green transition. The right hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) urged us all to have more children. Perhaps when all other growth plans have failed, that is all that is left. The Budget is a critical part of our economic and political framework, and I congratulate the Chancellor on surviving long enough in his post to deliver one.”
“Let me begin by paying tribute to all the right hon. and hon. Members who have taken part in this Budget debate, not only today, but throughout its four days. Today, many Members from across the House, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz), and my hon. Friends the Members for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell), for Ilford South (Sam Tarry), for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) and for Leeds East (Richard Burgon), have raised the issue of the cost of living crisis. Other Members have spoken about individual measures in the Budget, such as investment allowances and devolution deals. Some Members, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi), called this Budget a missed chance, whereas others, such as my hon.”
“Is it the disastrous Tory mini-Budget last year, which they would like to bury under 10 feet of concrete, but which people will not forget? It caused borrowing costs to soar, put our pension system on life support and rocked international confidence in the UK economy. Is it the former Prime Minister’s Brexit deal, which was supposed to give us global Britain but instead gave us the problem of how to send a sandwich to Belfast? It could be all those things, but whatever the reasons, the overriding fact for our constituents is that they are still living through the biggest fall in living standards in living memory. Their money goes less far, their incomes have been squeezed and they are living in a country that is poorer than it was four years ago.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. After 13 years, there really is nowhere left to hide. Despite the Budget being billed as a Budget for growth, the UK is still experiencing the slowest recovery from covid in the G7. All the countries that make up this group had to cope with the pandemic. All of them have suffered the consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, yet Britain’s recovery is the slowest. What is it about Conservative stewardship of the United Kingdom that makes us stand out in this way? Is it the political chaos inflicted on the country by the Conservative party, which makes a Chancellor who gets to deliver a Budget such a rarity? Is it the fact that, since 2010, our productivity growth has been the second lowest in the G7?”
“Are our public services in better shape now than when the Tories took office in 2010? Time after time, once again, the answer is no. When he made his statement last week, I thought there was one significant thing about the way the Chancellor spoke: he was happy to own the whole 13 years that his party have been in office.”
“I understand why people regret the result. What I do not understand is why the response to that should be to erect even more trading barriers inside the United Kingdom, as the hon. Member wants to do. Even if the fall in living standards is at its most severe this year and next, it is not just a short-term dip, because since the Government took office, real-terms wages have not risen and are not expected to get to their pre-2010 levels until 2026. That is what people feel in their lives—that year after year, it gets harder to make ends meet and harder to pay the bills. The question that people are asking themselves is the one that has been posed by the shadow Chancellor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves). Are my family and I better off? The answer is no.”
“They can own the mortgage rate rises faced by hard-working families this year and next, which were driven up by their own reckless economic irresponsibility. They can own the whole cycle of low growth, increasing taxes, declining living standards and creaking public services. I am grateful to the Chancellor for his honesty and candour in embracing his party’s 13 years in power. That is a rare thing in politics these days and he deserves credit for it. There were measures in this Budget that we liked and supported—those were the Labour bits. The extension of the energy price cap, the freeze in fuel duty, the investment allowances for industry and more help for childcare were all called for by Labour. Of course we welcome them, and we knew they were coming because most of the Budget was leaked in advance.”
“He confirms that now—he is proud of it. He obviously did not get the memo that says every time the Tories ditch a leader, they are supposed to pretend it is year zero. Not for him the pretence that this is a brand-new Government. Not for him the pretence that whatever was inflicted by his predecessors had nothing to do with him. I welcome the Chancellor’s honesty about that, because that means the Tories can own the annual tax rises faced by every taxpayer over the coming years. They can own the 24 tax rises they have imposed in the last few years. They can own the NHS waiting lists of 7 million people. They can own the biggest drop in living standards on record. They can own all the waste and all the fraud.”
“His report said: “The government must act swiftly to reform the NHS pension scheme to prevent senior staff from reducing their hours and retiring early from the NHS.” That is exactly what the shadow Health Secretary proposed.”
“I am not going to give way; I am going to proceed. One thing was not leaked, however, and that was the Chancellor’s plan to abolish the pensions lifetime allowance—a £1.2 billion policy that will benefit those with the biggest 1% of pension pots. Let us be clear: there is a problem facing doctors, and it has existed for years. In the run-up to the Budget, my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), the shadow Health Secretary, called for a special scheme to deal with the issue facing doctors, which is forcing some of them to retire early. That call was supported by the Chancellor when he was Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee.”
“It needs a Government who will break with, not continue, the last 13 years, and who will break with the whole pattern of low growth, high tax and creaking public services. That is what we need, and that is what we did not get from the Budget last week.”
“Why not in Britain when we have a tradition of innovation and creativity that is second to none? Why not in Britain? Because we lack a Government with the ambition to make it happen. In the end, that is what was missing from this Budget. The Chancellor and the Prime Minister want to project themselves as the adults in the room, but with the challenges that the country faces, that is not enough. It is not enough just not to be reckless and ideological; it is not enough just not to subject the country to another giant juvenile experiment with real-world consequences; it is not enough just not to degrade the idea of public office itself; it is not enough for them not to be their disastrous predecessors. The country deserves a lot more than that.”
“Right now, in the United States, growth is being driven by the Inflation Reduction Act sucking in investment in new technologies and the green transition, and creating jobs right across the country. Europe is responding with incentives of its own. What is the Government’s position? It is that this is “dangerous”, as the previous Business Secretary said. Other countries are on the pitch; they are using the power of government to crowd in private investment. That is exactly what we should be doing. This is not about the state doing it all; it is about setting a clear, long-term direction, and asking business and employees to be partners in making that work. Those investments will happen somewhere. The question we pose is: why not in Britain? Why not in Britain when we have some of the best researchers in the world?”
“However, that was not always the Tories’ view. They used to think that, “we must demonstrate that we are all in this together. When looking for savings, I think that it is fair to look at the tax relief that we give to the top 1%.” —[ Official Report , 5 December 2012; Vol. 554, c. 878.] Who was the ideologically suspect pinko who said that? Who was that anti-aspirational enemy of enterprise? It was, of course, George Osborne. That is how far they have moved. They used at least to claim we are were all in this together; now they do not even pretend. Growth is the essential challenge facing the country. We need better growth to make the country more prosperous and its people better off.”
“I am going to proceed. Such a scheme already exists for judges, but when the shadow Health Secretary made that call, he was attacked by the Tories, who said it was financial profligacy and unaffordable—and let us remember that that was only a scheme directed at the NHS. A Conservative spokesman said: “Now they announce an expensive pensions policy without pointing to how they would fund it”, adding that the shadow Health Secretary should think about the impact on the public finances. And what did the Tories do then? They said, “Wes, hold my beer.” Just days later, having denounced a smaller NHS scheme as being completely unaffordable, they proposed to abolish the entire lifetime allowance for everyone. According to the Tory argument, it is completely unaffordable for doctors alone, so we are going to propose it for everyone.”
“Following the recent levelling-up round 2 announcements, in which all five bids from Birmingham were refused, as were both bids from the great city of Wolverhampton, but, miraculously, the one from the Prime Minister’s constituency was approved, the Conservative Mayor of the West Midlands Combined Authority, Andy Street, said: “Fundamentally this episode is just another example as to why Whitehall’s bidding and begging bowl culture is broken”. What is the Chief Secretary’s response to the Conservative Mayor’s comments?”
“Right now in the United States, job opportunities and investments throughout the country are being driven by the Inflation Reduction Act. The European Union is responding with an incentive package of its own. But the new Energy Secretary describes both those policies as “dangerous”. Does the Chief Secretary agree that the Inflation Reduction Act is dangerous? Or does he think that the UK needs a response that makes sure that we do not lose out on the green transition and that we, too, need a Government who want to see investment and jobs from the green transition in every part of the UK?”
“There really is a gulf—one the size of the Grand Canyon—between the statements of fiscal probity and sound financial management, and the reality of the economic performance. When we look to the future, we see that this Government have earned the very dubious distinction of the UK being downgraded by the International Monetary Fund in its growth forecast, while the rest of the world has been upgraded. It is one thing to move in line with others, but to move in the opposite, downward direction is an achievement we should not want.”
“The trouble for Ministers is that since this exercise was first conceived over a decade ago, there is now a long economic record for everyone to see and, perhaps even more seriously, a bitter economic reality and present that people are living through. The UK is the only G7 country not to recover its pre-covid economic position, under the stewardship of the Conservative party. Controlling debt was supposed to be a big part of this exercise. Debt used to be numbered in the billions. It now stands at £2.4 trillion. So successful has this exercise in controlling debt been that we need a whole new word to describe it; it is now counted in trillions. Of course covid added to this, as it did in all countries, but lest Government Members claim this is all about covid, let us remember that most of the increase was built up before the pandemic.”
“May I begin by echoing the Chief Secretary’s condolences to the family of Robert Key, his predecessor as MP for Salisbury? It does feel like this is the time of the year when we have the annual George Osborne tribute debate. This exercise began in his period as Chancellor, but little did we know—and, I suspect, little did he know—that when he started this exercise more than a decade ago, he would end up being denounced as part of the left-wing economic establishment. The purpose of the exercise has always been more political than economic. It was to show that no matter how much the Government had set everything on fire, they could turn up here and portray themselves as paragons of fiscal rectitude—a little bit like angelic choirboys smelling strongly of petrol.”
“The idea for this charter was born in another political time, as I said at the start, and if it did have a purpose, events since have rendered it an unconvincing exercise to say the least. It certainly has not kept the Government to their fiscal rules, which have been broken many times, and it is unlikely, particularly after recent months, to convince anyone outside this Chamber that the Government have got the economy back on track.”
“Most of all, in a knowledge economy like today’s, growth has to come from everyone, not just from a tiny proportion of people at the top. Fiscal stability is an essential foundation for what we have to do—I agree with the Chief Secretary on that—but it is not an end in itself. It has to be the foundation for meeting the challenges the country faces and for giving people a more prosperous future. After many years of this debate, we look less at the latest version of the rules and more at the gap between claim and reality, because after crashing the economy and leaving the British public to pay the bill, the Government have no credibility to come forward and claim to be the champions of fiscal stability.”
“Growth is the right question for the country, but it does not come from the discredited idea of trickle-down economics. It comes from the efforts of all of us—from every businessperson with a new idea and the drive to make it happen, and from making sure we use the UK’s strengths to make the most of the green transition that is coming, rather than standing back and allowing those investments to go elsewhere. It comes from every teacher equipping a pupil with new skills and knowledge, and from not having 7 million people on NHS waiting lists, keeping many of them out of the labour market. Talking of former Prime Ministers, it does not come from saying “F*** business”, but from a modern partnership with business that brings in the long-term investment the country needs.”
“What, after all that, has this been for? We have record waiting lists, trains that people cannot rely on, and delays and backlogs everywhere. In fact, there is not a single public service that runs better now than it did 13 years ago, when the Tories took office. Low growth and high tax for a worse outcome—that is the record. When people are faced with the question, “Are you and your family better off?”, the answer is no. Two weeks ago, we had the Chancellor’s speech on the way forward. He had four Es, and more than one person said that the biggest E was for empty, because the real problem for the Conservatives is that, when it comes to growth, the only policy they reach for is unfunded and untargeted tax cuts, and when they tried that in September, it blew up in their faces.”
“But tonight, even after that experience with chapter 4 of the charter, we are back to a hymn of praise for the OBR. The real problem here is not just inconsistency, but credibility. I am afraid that the many-year record since the idea of this charter was first conceived a decade or more ago has meant that the Conservative party has now forfeited the right to call itself the party of sound management; it has forfeited the right to call itself the party of growth, because the record on growth has been abysmal; it has forfeited the right to call itself the party of low debt, because debt has rocketed; it has forfeited the claim to careful stewardship of the public finances, with billions lost in bounce back loan fraud, personal protective equipment waste and tawdry stories of one dodgy contract after another; and it has forfeited the right to call itself the party of low tax, because the tax burden is at its highest for decades.”
“Indeed, when it was first launched, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury of the time set out the benefits of the OBR, making clear the value of its “strong, credible, independently conducted official forecasts” —[ Official Report , 14 February 2011; Vol. 523, c. 747.] She said that the establishment of the OBR and its independence from the Treasury meant that “Governments will be reticent about introducing policies that seem to take them off course” —[ Official Report , 14 February 2011; Vol. 523, c. 749.] Well, there was not much sign of that reticence last year as the Government crashed the economy, caused a run on the pound, caused mortgage rates to rise and put pensions on life support. Indeed, we had a real-time lesson in the cost of disparaging our institutions—institutions that the Conservative party used to care about.”
“They have had even more sets of fiscal rules than they have had Chancellors and Prime Ministers over the past year. If you don’t like one set, don’t worry—there will be another one along in a while! The Chief Secretary himself outlined how these rules were different from the ones we debated this time last year in the George Osborne tribute debate of 2022, and each time we are expected to treat the new rules as though they were the ten commandments. The second part of this is about respecting the role of the Office for Budget Responsibility. The document before us is very clear about that. It talks in great detail about the importance of that role.”
“The Prime Minister, demonstrating the sureness of touch with which we have come to associate him by now, has labelled those on the Government Benches calling for tax cuts “idiots”. That is his phrase, not mine—about those on his own side. And yet today, fearful of them, the Prime Minister now says he will listen. Which is it? Are they idiots or is he listening? This weekend’s intervention, and those who cheer its argument, will have the Prime Minister and the Chancellor looking over their right shoulders every day between now and the election, when they should be focused on the needs of the country. This debate is supposed to be about all of us swearing fealty to fiscal rules, but there is another problem: since this Government came to office, they have broken their fiscal rules 11 times.”
“In what world are we expected to believe that the former Prime Minister, her Chancellor and the Government would have listened to a word those civil servants said, when all along she defined them as being part of the problem and not part of the solution? The real problem for the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the Treasury is that this is not going away. The last Prime Minister is not a lone voice, and the more that Conservative Members realise the Government have nothing left in their tank and are resigned to managing decline, the louder the drumbeat will become; and it will be cheered on by the same newspapers that gave such a warm welcome to that mini-Budget in the first place.”
“Just when the Government were trying to bury the memory of that mini-Budget under 10 feet of concrete, up she pops—like one of those hands coming out of the swamp at the end of the film—to tell us it was all someone else’s fault. For me, the best bit in the article was when, in a long list of culprits, other than the Government that actually introduced the mini-Budget, the former Prime Minister blamed the Treasury civil servants for not warning her about the impact on pension schemes. I had to ask myself, were these the same Treasury civil servants that she had spent the whole summer scorning and disparaging? Were they the same Treasury civil servants whose boss was shown the door on the first day of her premiership?”
“What better time to write an article saying that her mini-Budget was right all along than the day before the Chief Secretary has to come here and stand up for the Government’s fiscal stability record? What better moment for her to say to members of pension schemes that had to be put on life support as a result of her mini-Budget that it was not her fault? No contrition for trying to borrow from my constituents in Wolverhampton South East in order to pay for a tax cut for people earning over £150,000 a year; not a word of apology to the millions of mortgage holders left paying a Tory mortgage penalty because of the reckless irresponsibility of the Conservative party.”
“I suspect that the Bank of England will not be the only institution attacked by the right hon. Gentleman tonight, but I remind him that part of the purpose of the charter is to restore our faith in the economic institutions, after what happened less than six months ago. The IMF has forecast that the UK will have the lowest growth among developed countries for the next two years: bottom of the league on the record and bottom of the league on the forecast. And yet still the Government come along tonight and table a debate supposedly designed to enhance their economic credentials. Well, what will the effect on those credentials be of the re-emergence of the former Prime Minister at the weekend? I have to give her 10 out of 10 for timing.”
“I echo the good wishes to you, Mr Speaker, to the Minister and to the whole House for a very happy Christmas. Last year, the then Prime Minister and the then Chancellor, who is now the Prime Minister, announced a star chamber to crack down on waste and fraud in public expenditure. How often has the star chamber met, and how much of the £6.7 billion estimated to have been lost to covid fraud and error has been recovered?”
“The Minister could not tell us whether the star chamber has met at all. On top of all the examples that have been cited today, the rescue of the energy company Bulb is estimated by the Office for Budget Responsibility to be costing another £6.5 billion, partly as a result of our hedge fund Prime Minister’s failure to hedge against rising energy prices. Why do the Government not show more respect for public money and chase down every penny of these losses before putting up taxes for 30 million people at a time when the public already face the biggest cost of living crisis for generations?”
“The end of the year is a moment for reflection, so let us look at the Government’s report card: a Tory mini-Budget that crashed the economy, waiting lists and times at record highs, trains delayed and cancelled all over the place, billions wasted on dodgy contracts, and a reshuffle policy that means everyone in the Conservative party gets to be famous for 15 minutes. Why is it that when nothing is working under the Tories, even at this time of seasonal gift giving, they still insist on making everyone else pay the price for their Government’s failures?”
“How many other British companies are still operating in Russia and why are they still operating? What is the Government’s position on money they could be making there, which could also be described as the windfalls of war? We are united across this House in our support for Ukraine and for the incredible bravery shown by both its armed forces and its people. The question the House poses today is how will the Government make sure that British companies are not profiting from the appalling Russian aggression we have seen in Ukraine?”
“And other businesses are paying higher energy costs as a result of the war. But some companies either continue to operate or have not fully divested themselves of their interests. The excess profits made by energy companies have rightly been called the windfalls of war. Energy is the central pillar of the Russian economy and the profits from it fuel the Russian war effort. My right hon. Friend the Member for Barking has told the House today that the dividend due to BP as a result of its stake in Rosneft is worth about £580 million. Those funds may be frozen at the moment, but what do the Government believe should happen to those funds when they are eventually released? Do the Government believe that those funds should be used for the welfare and benefit of the people of Ukraine, whose country is being devastated by Russian aggression?”
“I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) for tabling this urgent question. Right now in Kyiv, the temperature is around freezing. Putin aims to weaken the resolve of the Ukrainian people by freezing them over this winter. But with every Russian missile that falls on energy infrastructure, he does not weaken the resolve of the Ukrainian people—he strengthens it. The resounding answer to the question posed by President Zelensky—without electricity or without you?—should be heard loudly and clearly in Moscow. To support the efforts of the Ukrainian people, many British companies have ceased their Russian operations and divested themselves of their interests. Those decisions have cost businesses money, orders and jobs, but they have made them because they want to do the right thing.”
“Member for South Cambridgeshire (Anthony Browne) said: “I strongly welcome this radical and generous package of measures”. —[ Official Report , 23 September 2022; Vol. 719, c. 947.] The hon. Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) said: “How refreshing it is to hear some Conservative policies at last.” —[ Official Report , 23 September 2022; Vol. 719, c. 950.] The hon. Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith) said: “I warmly welcome…the return to the low-tax free market principles that we on the Conservative Benches know will lead to growth and prosperity for everybody in our country.” —[ Official Report , 23 September 2022; Vol. 719, c. 954.] The hon. Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) declared how “refreshing” it all was and said to us, “I am excited.” All of this was days before the whole thing drove the UK economy off a cliff.”
“It is here in Britain, under this Government, that we had a mini-Budget resulting in carnage, causing a run on the pound, the IMF to hit the panic button, emergency interventions from the Bank of England and rocketing mortgage rates for our constituents. This country was used as a giant experiment by a Prime Minister and Chancellor desperate to enact the pamphlet fantasies of their dreams. This month’s crop of Ministers—in today’s Tory party, everyone gets to be famous for 15 minutes—would like to tell us that it was all a bad dream and it fell from the sky, and they want to bury it under 10 feet of concrete, but it was a Conservative mini-Budget delivered by Conservative Ministers, voted in by Conservative party members and cheered on by Conservative MPs. I have some of the quotes. The hon.”
“All major countries have had to borrow money to help their businesses and to support their citizens—no one is denying that—but only in Britain, which is among the largest economies of the world, and under the stewardship of this Government, have we failed to recover our pre-covid economic position. The Governor of the Bank of England last week described the difference between our recovery from covid and that of our peers as “dramatic”. The Office for Budget Responsibility’s report—it was allowed to issue one this time—suggests that it will be another two years before we even recover our pre-covid position.”
“Try as it might, when a party have been in office for 12 years, there is no one left to blame. Let me address directly the subject that has been at the heart of today’s debate: the balance of global and national factors in all of this. Of course, the Chancellor tried desperately last week to claim it was all about global factors—a plea for the defence that was repeated yesterday by the Chief Secretary to the Treasury in his opening speech. There is no doubt that the experience of covid and the consequences of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine have been very costly for many countries.”
“But for all the individual parts of last week’s autumn statement, in the end the Chancellor’s speech was an hour-long reckoning with the Conservatives’ 12 years in office. It was not meant to be like this. The promise was of a better tomorrow; the good times were supposed to be coming. Instead, there was a more bitter conclusion: the Government have failed. They have failed over 12 years, and the autumn statement sent the bill for that failure to the British people. With every measure, every leak and every warning of the decisions in the weeks beforehand, all the Chancellor and the Prime Minister were doing was confirming the weakness of their record and the destruction of the Conservative party’s reputation, such as it was, for sound economic management.”
“I am grateful for the opportunity to wind up on behalf of the Opposition. I welcome the new Minister to her place and wish her well. I also thank all right hon. and hon. Members who have contributed to the debate. We have heard many passionate speeches, appeals for different sectors—from cockles to hospitality, and from the gaming sector to many of the industrial sectors that make Britain great—and appeals for different areas. People spoke passionately about how the cost of living crisis is affecting their constituencies. We heard discussion of individual measures in the autumn statement and, of course, we have had lively debate on how we got here in the first place. This debate, like the autumn statement itself, has covered a lot of ground.”
“The fundamental difference between Labour and the Conservatives is that they believe that growth comes only from unleashing the animal spirits at the top, while we believe that growth comes from the efforts of each and every person who goes to work every day, from the entrepreneurs who start a business to the teachers who equip children with new skills. That is the point of financial stability; it is not an end in itself but a platform for a better tomorrow. Maybe that is the lasting verdict on this autumn statement: it was an admission that not only have the Conservatives failed in the past but they now have nothing to offer for the future.”
“This country can do so much better through the skills and talents of our workers; through modern supply-side economics that supports help to get the hundreds of thousands of people who have left the labour market since covid back into work, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) said in his opening speech yesterday; through making the transition to cleaner energy a UK industrial and economic success story; not through rerunning the Brexit argument, but by having an adult and responsible relationship with our neighbours and allies; through making this country the best place to start and grow a business—the home of enterprise and wealth creation; through the reform of business rates; and through making sure that when we get economic growth, every part of the country can be part of it.”
“The previous Prime Minister talked about an anti-growth coalition—it is sitting there on the Government Benches. On trade, the Prime Minister wants to tell the European Union that the grown-ups are back in charge and, at the same time, convince his Back Benchers that he is really a true believer—well, good luck with that. The Chancellor, who loves all things Swiss, is going to buy them all cuckoo clocks for Christmas. The point of financial stability is that it has to be a platform for better growth in the future. Financial stability has to be a platform for hope. It has to be the basis for wealth creation, for better long-term growth and for a way to escape the doom loop in which the Conservative party has left us. That is what we must secure to make the country more prosperous and our citizens better off.”
“Once again, the British people are being asked to pay the price. The point of all this, according to the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, is to restore financial stability, but the UK only needs to restore its financial stability because the Conservative party destroyed that financial stability. If that is all the Conservatives have to offer, then all they have to offer is managing decline. The weakness of the Prime Minister in trying to build a platform for growth was also laid bare in the autumn statement. They persist in a ban on onshore wind when the country urgently needs a transition to cleaner power in the interests of both our energy security and lower bills for consumers. They fight plans to build more houses —indeed, they might have to pull their own legislation on this—because Government Members always want them elsewhere.”
“What will the Government do to recover as much as possible of the estimated £6.7 billion lost to fraud and waste in the covid loan schemes? Why is the unit set up to chase that money, announced with great fanfare by the current Prime Minister and established in HMRC, being closed down? The Government’s own former fraud Minister described the controls as being like a “Dad’s Army operation” and said it was a “happy” time to be a crook, and still the Government are asking people to pay more. Should as much of that money as possible not be recovered before asking our constituents to pay more? What of the figure in the OBR report showing that the administration of the energy company Bulb will now cost the taxpayer £6.5 billion? Why is that cost to the public so huge? Is the Prime Minister really the hedge fund manager who forgot to hedge?”