Sir Mel Stride
MP for Central Devon · Conservative · United Kingdom
“May I welcome the Chancellor to his position and thank him for his kind remarks earlier? May I also wish him every success, because I am afraid that under this Government we need some? He will know that if we are to fix the economy, we have to fix the welfare bill.”
“Given all that is going on, this could be the last time. The legacy of this Chancellor has been the highest taxes on record, a benefits bill spiralling out of control, and unemployment 300,000 higher than it was at the last general election. The right hon.”
“The right hon. Lady cannot bring herself to answer the simple question I asked. I will tell her: she is borrowing one quarter of a trillion pounds more than the plans that she inherited—that is her legacy. We hear that the right hon. Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham) is considering borrowing even more.”
“May I begin by agreeing with you, Mr Speaker, and saying how disrespectful it is that this U-turn on fuel duty has already been released to the media earlier this week?”
“Today’s announcements will bring little comfort to the hundreds of thousands of people who have lost their jobs, the countless businesses that have folded and the high streets that are now hollowed out.”
“The Conservative party has been campaigning for a fuel duty freeze for months. The Chancellor repeatedly rejected those calls, creating unnecessary uncertainty for motorists and businesses. Why did it take her so long to realise that putting up fuel duty during an energy crisis is a bad idea?”
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“She said she would not tax farmers, but she did, and she said she would not move to more than one fiscal event a year, and she just has. Now we are all paying the price of her broken promises. Today’s numbers confirm it. We are poorer and we are weaker. To govern is to choose, and this Chancellor has made all the wrong choices.”
“The forecast for growth is down, the forecasts for borrowing costs and inflation are up, and business confidence has been smashed into a million pieces. This Chancellor is constantly trying to blame forces beyond her control. The right response is not to duck responsibility, but to build a resilient economy. The right hon. Lady would have us believe that that is what she is doing, but how can we believe this Chancellor? How can we trust this Chancellor? She is the Chancellor who said she would not increase borrowing, but she did. She said she would not change her fiscal rules, but she did. She said she would not put up national insurance, but she did. She said she would not cut the winter fuel payment, but she did.”
“There have been more changes to this policy than there were at the last minute to the right hon. Lady’s LinkedIn profile. The result is the worst of all worlds: a wholly inadequate level of savings on welfare, with welfare costs spiralling ever higher, and changes that are likely to harm many vulnerable people. May I ask the right hon. Lady: when the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions came to the House last week with these changes, she did not provide an impact assessment, but was this because the OBR had not signed off the numbers, was it because the Department did not have enough time to produce one, or was it only provided today, as many of us suspect, because this was thought to be a good time to bury bad news?”
“We would have gone further—much further—and we set out a clear plan in our manifesto to do exactly that, but those in the party opposite rushed their changes. They had no plan. There was not a single mention of the personal independence payment in the Labour party manifesto, and when they got into office, the Labour Government pussyfooted around and dithered. Why? Because it is deeply divisive within their rank and file. Then suddenly, when the Chancellor decided that she had run out of money, out went the word to find some savings in welfare, to scrabble around, to yank every lever possible. Then there was the spectacle, frankly, of what the OBR has said about the simply shambolic changes that were announced only last week by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. We have gone from incompetence to chaos.”
“It was the privilege of my life to serve as the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, and when it came to welfare reform, with that privilege came a deep responsibility: the responsibility for welfare reform to be properly thought through, with a very clear plan— [Interruption] —I know that Labour Members do not like it, because it is an alien idea to their party—so that we could be fair to the taxpayer, but equally fair to the many people up and down the country, some of whom are highly vulnerable. That was an approach, on our watch, that led to £5 million of savings across the forecast period, and 450,000 fewer people going on to long-term sickness and disability benefits as a direct consequence.”
“Lady: given the geopolitical tensions that she has raised, what provision she has made in her headroom, in her fiscal plans, for increasing defence spending more quickly in this Parliament, if that proves necessary? May I also ask her this: would she scrap the absurd Chagos deal, and put that money behind our armed forces? The economy is in a perilous state, but there was a different way. There were different choices on taxing and spending and borrowing, and on productivity, and on welfare. Let me just say a few words about welfare.”
“May I just point out that all the Chancellor’s fiscal headroom disappeared, not just some of it? In fact, she went underwater to the tune of £4.1 billion. Reeling from one fiscal event to the next is not a way to run the public finances, and breaking your fiscal rules to the extent that the right hon. Lady has in just six months is a public humiliation. May I now focus briefly on defence spending? We on this side of the House welcome the fact that the Government will reach 2.5% of GDP by 2027, as we pressed them to do, and we note the stepping stone along the way that the right hon. Lady has just announced, but we should go further than that. The 3% target should be brought forward to this Parliament. So may I ask the right hon.”
“I am surprised that the right hon. Lady did not reference the fact that the OBR also said that there would be 50,000 fewer jobs as a result of the NICs increase; indeed, Bloomberg put that figure at 130,000 jobs. It does not need to be that way. On 26 March, the right hon. Lady should come to this House with a spring statement containing a clear plan around welfare savings, which we had when we were in Government. Will she now confirm that she is prepared to do that with our support and put an end to the pernicious tax increase?”
“The Bank of England tells us that the economy will grow at half the rate it had originally suggested. It is no wonder that all the business confidence surveys show confidence crashing through the floor as a result of what this Government are doing. Businesses are laying off jobs, businesses are putting up prices, businesses are reducing investment, and businesses are sometimes having to put themselves up for sale or, even worse, are going under.”
“At the last general election, the Labour party—now the Government—told us that it aspired to become the natural party of business, which is an absurd suggestion given what has happened over the past seven short months. It is as absurd perhaps as the Business Secretary claiming to be a qualified lawyer, as absurd perhaps as the Attorney General claiming to be a patriotic lawyer, or as absurd perhaps as the Prime Minister claiming to be anything other than a lawyer. The economy has tanked. Inflation recently spiked at 3%, and it is to go still higher; it was 2% on the day of the general election, a legacy that we bequeathed to the Labour party. Borrowing is up—substantially up—on the forecasts that the Office for Budget Responsibility produced at the last Budget, and growth has been killed stone dead.”
“I beg to move, That this House regrets the Government’s decision to introduce a cap on Business Property Relief, meaning that some family businesses passed down upon death will face Inheritance Tax for the first time in 50 years; further regrets the Government’s other economic policies that will damage family businesses, namely raising employers’ National Insurance contributions, reductions to business rates relief, making employers potentially liable for third-party harassment, the powers in the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [Lords] that would allow the Government to ban pubs from selling pints, and the provisions in the Employment Rights Bill for guaranteed hours which will make flexible working harder to achieve; and therefore calls on the Government to support family businesses which provide employment for almost 14 million people, and contribute more than £200 billion in taxes each year, by lifting the cap on Business Property Relief, not implementing the increases to employers’ National Insurance contributions and business rates, and powers to change units of measurement, and to stop the progress of the damaging Employment Rights Bill.”
“Take the national insurance measure, which, despite having not yet commenced—it comes in in April—is already driving down employment and driving up prices and inflation. It is a ticking tax time bomb waiting to go off in early April. It will affect the lowest paid the hardest, with those in part-time work bearing the brunt of this measure, and it will impact those in labour-intensive sectors. UKHospitality found that three quarters of a million more jobs will be subject to national insurance as a direct effect of this Government’s plans. According to Young’s, the brewer, the policy will add an extra 20p to the price of a pint.”
“Trust was destroyed, and the wrong decisions were taken. Why? Because those on the Government Front Bench have not a jot of real-world business experience. In fact, fewer than half of those around the Cabinet table have any experience in the private sector whatsoever. Far from being the natural party of business, this is the most anti-business Government in modern political history. Surveys by the British Chambers of Commerce show that tax is now the No. 1 concern of businesses. According to the Federation of Small Businesses, in the last quarter of last year, business confidence hit the lowest level ever recorded in its surveys, save for the pandemic. It is almost as if the only way that small businesses are created today is through the shrinkage of larger ones. Firms are being crushed by the wrong policies.”
“My right hon. Friend is absolutely right, and we see that in the surveys to which I referred; business confidence is at virtually an all-time low. Before this whirlwind of disaster visited us, we had a calmer time during the general election. It was a Labour party on best behaviour with business, a Labour party with a manifesto that sought to reassure business—indeed, it explicitly ruled out the possibility of an increase in national insurance—and a Labour party on the prawn cocktail circuit, countenancing canapés and calm, with the breathy seduction of the former shadow Chancellor and the now Business Secretary hopping about in the background dispensing free legal advice to whoever cared to listen. With Labour, everything seemed possible; business would be safe in its tender hands—but it was not.”
“As the party that increased the personal allowance, doubling it between 2010 and the present day, taking millions of people out of tax altogether, and that brought in the national living wage, we have done a great deal to support the lowest paid in our society in particular.”
“We know that this will increase the risk of employing people at a time when the employment market itself is softening and putting an end to flexible working practices, which not only benefit many businesses but suit many people, particularly younger people and those who are more elderly. Given that, it is astonishing that the Chancellor has launched a tax raid on family businesses.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is not as if the Government were not warned about these issues. In its reports, the OBR made it extremely clear that while the headline figure to be raised through the national insurance contribution changes is £25 billion, the net figure will be far less because of the behavioural impacts that necessarily follow when jobs are taxed—one does not need to have spent a decade at the Bank of England to know that. National insurance increases lead to fewer jobs, lower wages and higher prices. Of course, this Government are piling on the regulation with their Employment Rights Bill.”
“The hon. Gentleman asks a very fair question. The Bill will create a situation where employers are fearful of taking on new hires because of the consequences that may follow, where trade unions are advantaged in the way the Bill suggests—the trade union paymasters who may, perhaps, support the hon. Gentleman, but who certainly support many of his colleagues—and where the minimum service standards legislation that we brought in will, as I understand it, be overturned. None of those things will be good for jobs, for people searching for employment, for businesses or for the UK economy.”
“William Lees-Jones of JW Lees, the long-established family brewery and pub operator in the north-west, has said that the family business tax would “inevitably reduce future investment in the company.” Importantly, he goes on to say: “It would also place our business at a considerable disadvantage to our competitors who tend to be listed or owned by private equity, sometimes overseas.” So it is that British institutions, which, in some cases, have been in the same family for decades, or even centuries, may end up shutting down or being forced to sell to foreign buyers as a result of this single reckless policy.”
“We also know that the changes will damage businesses’ ability to borrow against assets when there is a sword of Damocles hanging over their head by way of a potential future inheritance tax liability. Research by CBI Economics for Family Business UK suggests that this policy may not even raise any money. The firms that will be impacted have said that on average, they will invest 17% less in their business as a consequence of this measure; in fact, 15% of those businesses have said they would sell their business altogether. Of course, the rules will be complex. There will be plenty of red tape and legal advice to be taken from solicitors—real ones. Some people will pay through dividends on which they have already been taxed, so they will be taxed twice. Tax on tax, as we know, is the Labour party way.”
“To paraphrase the leader of the hon. Gentleman’s party, I have already answered his questions. I do note his serial offence of being a member of several trade unions at the moment—it is good of him to disclose that. The changes to business property relief will see the break-up of many family firms. Of course, the Government will say that it will have an impact only on the wealthiest estates because of the £1 million threshold, but how many of those companies will have the cash available to settle those liabilities? The value of many businesses, of course, lies in their assets. Liquidating those assets to pay those kinds of liabilities, given that the assets are often instrumental to the effective working of the firm, is an absurdity.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is where the dearth of experience of entrepreneurship on the Government Front Bench really shows. We see this not just with BPR, but with agricultural property relief. Family farms will be broken up, with years and generations of people struggling and working hard, whatever the weather, to grow businesses and provide the food that we need torn asunder with a stroke of the Treasury’s pen.”
“The treatment of our farmers by this Government has been utterly atrocious. Right before the general election, the shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs—now the Secretary of State—looked the NFU in the eye and told them that, at least on inheritance tax, farmers had nothing to fear from a future Labour Government. The point that my hon. Friend makes is telling: they cared nothing about any of them. Within a matter of months of coming into office, they had brought in their agricultural property relief changes to the detriment of thousands of hard-working farmers up and down our country.”
“Madam Deputy Speaker, I think that I should put it on the record that you have always been very pro-farmer, and that should never ever be brought into question by anybody in this Chamber. I have always been extremely proud of our record of supporting farmers up and down the country. That has been the case ever since I first came into the House in 2010, representing a highly rural constituency right in the middle of beautiful Devon. This party should be very proud of the many schemes, financial support packages and so on that it introduced while in government.”
“The hon. Gentleman may or may not be aware of this, but, at the time of the mini-Budget, I was the Chair of the Treasury Committee. I had a lot to say about what was being proposed before it happened, I had a lot to say at the time that it happened and I have had a lot to say since then. All of that is a matter of public record. [Interruption.] If the hon. Lady wants to intervene on me, I am very happy to give way.”
“The OBR recorded over 400,000 fewer people going on to long-term sickness and disability benefits as a result of the reforms that we brought in. There was, however, more to be delivered. We went into the last election with a clear plan to save a further £12 billion every year as a result of our welfare reform. Where has the zeal for welfare reform gone? It has evaporated entirely under the Labour Government—in fact, it was never there. Simply, if the Government have the backbone to come forward with some serious proposals to deal with the welfare budget, such that the Chancellor says at the Dispatch Box on 26 March that she will unwind the national insurance increases, the Opposition will support her.”
“We would do things very differently, because we recognise that small businesses and family businesses are the backbone of our economy. They are the life and fire of our economy, but there is no life or fire in the Chancellor—just tragic mistakes and miscalculations. The sugar rush of borrowing and spending that we saw in the last Budget further bloated the size of the state and forced taxes ever upwards. We have seen the Government failing to grasp the nettle of productivity, giving into those trade union paymasters, and awarding above-inflation wage settlements with no strings attached whatsoever. They have had absolutely nothing to say on the issue of welfare, the budget for which has been ballooning out of control. When we were in government, we reduced the welfare budget on my watch by £5 billion.”
“I have made the position extremely clear. What is very clear is that we actually left the current Government with an excellent inheritance— [Laughter.] Well, where has it all gone now? We left the Labour party with the fastest growing economy in the G7. We left the Labour party with a near-record level of employment. We left the Labour party with a near-record low level of unemployment. We left the Labour party with 13 consecutive months of real wage growth. And we left the Labour party with inflation figures, which had gone up to over 11% in October 2022 due to the Ukraine war, of just 2%—bang on target—on the day of the general election. That is a decent inheritance. It has taken the Labour Government seven short months to completely trash it, so we will take no lectures from them.”
“With great respect, I think the hon. Gentleman should get out a bit more and speak to some of those businesses. Politics is about priorities. For all their talk of being the natural party of business, the Government are instead simply reaching for the socialist comfort blanket of tax, spend, borrow and regulate. It has not worked before, it is not working now, and it will never work. The truth is that this Government are totally out of their depth, businesses are reeling, and we are all paying the price.”
“Even in this area, though, we must wait and see before passing judgment, because this Government have shown that we simply cannot trust their word. They promised not to raise taxes, but they did. They promised not to cut winter fuel payments, but they did. They promised not to borrow more, but they did. We need to see action, not just words. The Chancellor talks about removing barriers to growth—oh yes, she talks about it—but that talk comes from the same person whose Budget killed the economy and growth stone-dead. If we are looking to remove the greatest barriers to growth in this country, perhaps we should start with the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer.”
“The Government’s failure to act means that businesses and millions of people are paying the price, so can the Chief Secretary to the Treasury commit today to matching that £12 billion, or can he at least tell us the scale of savings that we can expect from his promised reforms? Some of the announcements made today are of course welcome. The role of the Opposition is not to oppose for opposition’s sake, not least because many of the measures announced are reheated from the previous Conservative Government. The plans on pension investment, for example, seem oddly familiar to us, probably because they are simply to continue the reforms that I was bringing in when I was Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.”
“Does he agree with the Business Secretary’s extraordinary utterance on the media this morning that the Government have not hammered businesses? The Chancellor claimed this morning that she has seen no alternative suggestions from the Opposition, so let me give her one now. Last year, the Conservative manifesto included £12 billion in welfare savings. At the time, the Labour party said that the money simply was not there. Now we are told that the Government will shortly be coming forward with plans for welfare reform— another damascene conversion. If they had grasped this issue when they came into office, they could have tackled the rising welfare bill, rather than taxing jobs and killing growth.”
“Is the truth not that the damage is already being done? Even before Labour’s tax rises bite in April, the economy is flatlining right now, so will any of the announcements have an impact within this Parliament, and what—if any—impact are they likely to have on the OBR’s forecasts in March? Incredibly, the Chancellor said in her speech that businesses are what drive growth and that the Government should support them, yet this is a Government who have driven business confidence off a cliff. They have taxed businesses to the hilt and, through their upcoming employment legislation, will be hitting them still further with ever more job-destroying red tape. Can the Chief Secretary to the Treasury set out what the overall impact of Government policy decisions since July has been on regulatory costs for businesses?”
“It is hard to escape the conclusion that these announcements have been hastily cobbled together by a Government who are under increasing pressure to change course but are seemingly incapable of doing so. Why have these announcements come only now? The Labour party had years in opposition and months in government leading up to its first Budget. If the Government really wanted to unleash investment, innovation and the private sector, they should not have decided in the autumn to increase substantially the tax burden and the size of the state. By doing so, far from encouraging private investment, they are actively squeezing it out. Will the Chief Secretary to the Treasury reassure businesses right now that there will be no further growth-destroying fiscal measures in the spring statement, including tax rises?”
“The Chief Secretary told us that growth is the No. 1 mission of this Government and added, “Now we must go faster”, which I have to tell him suggests a certain lack of ambition. What we do not need is some hasty mañana moment of unquantified, vague promises of a better tomorrow; we need action now to reverse the grievous damage that this Chancellor has wrought in just her first six months in office. Why did the Government deliver a Budget that the independent Office for Budget Responsibility said would lead to lower growth, higher inflation and higher interest rates and would cost jobs? I have to tell the right hon. Gentleman that “going for growth” in the 2030s means nothing to the businesses that have already stopped hiring, shed workers and put up prices thanks to Labour’s ruinous policies.”
“A moment ago, the right hon. Lady spoke about the importance of spending money wisely, so in the light of the Treasury Committee’s conclusion that her new Office for Value for Money is a waste of money, does she agree that one of its early actions should be to abolish itself in order to save money?”
“The Chancellor’s answer was an answer, but I do not think that it connected in any way with my question. Could I perhaps ask her about national insurance hikes? A full two thirds of the revenues raised through Labour’s job tax is simply going on servicing the additional debt being run up by this profligate Government. Given that, does she really believe that the catastrophic effects of that tax on businesses right up and down the country are a price worth paying?”
“This whole sorry tale is nothing short of a Shakespearean tragedy being played out before our eyes. This is the Hamlet of our time. Labour promised the electorate much, while pouring the poison into their ear. And the end—you can feel the end; the Chancellor flailing, estranged, it seems, from those closest to her; those about her falling; the drums beating ever closer. To go, or not to go, that is now a question. The Prime Minister will be damned if he does, but he will surely be damned if he does not. The British people deserve better.”
“Forget those billions going towards better public services; they are going on paying the price of Labour’s mismanagement. We on this side of the House know how this sorry story goes. We have seen it all before: socialist Governments who think that they can tax and spend their way to prosperity; Labour Governments who simply do not understand that if you tax the living daylights out of business, you will get stagnation. They do not understand because there is barely a shred of business experience on the Government Front Bench. May I ask the right hon. Lady which of her promises she will break if the OBR judges in March that she is now in breach of her own fiscal rules? Will she cancel promised spending, will she ramp up borrowing, or will she raise taxes yet again?”
“The deal that the Chancellor has announced amounts to £120 million a year. The rise in our borrowing costs, due to her disastrous Budget, has added about £12 billion to our annual spending on debt interest alone: literally 100 times what she says she has brought back from Beijing. That is money that cannot now be spent on the public’s priorities. That £12 billion is enough to pay for 300,000 nurses or to cover Labour’s pernicious winter fuel payments cut for eight and a half years—and, of course, even before this latest market reaction, the Budget meant spending tens of billions more on servicing our debt. According to the Office for Budget Responsibility’s forecast, two thirds of the money raised from the Chancellor’s jobs tax will be swallowed up by additional debt interest.”
“Her trip to China had not even begun when my urgent question was taken in the House last week. She was still in the country, but she sent the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, rather than facing up to her failures. May I ask her why she chose not to respond herself? The Chancellor, of course, ducked the difficult questions by jetting off to Beijing. I believe that in Labour circles they are calling it the Peking duck, but whatever was on the menu in China, was it really worth the unedifying sight of an increasingly desperate politician scampering halfway around the world with a begging bowl? The Chancellor’s deal pales in comparison to Labour’s black hole, which opened up in the public finances while the right hon. Lady was absent from her station. Let me give the House a sense of scale.”
“It is good to see the Chancellor in her place, and I thank her for advance sight of her statement. I know that she has been away, so let me update her on the mess that she left behind. The pound has hit a 14-month low; Government borrowing costs are at a 27-year high; growth has been killed stone dead; inflation is rising, impacting millions; interest rates are staying higher for longer; and business confidence has fallen through the floor. The Labour party talked down the economy and crippled businesses with colossal taxes, breaking all their promises. This is a crisis made in Downing Street. It should hardly surprise the Chancellor that international markets are uneasy. The UK’s long-term borrowing costs have risen to their highest in almost 30 years. But while the Government were losing control of the economy, where was the Chancellor?”
“(Urgent Question): To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if she will make a statement on the growing pressure of borrowing costs on the public finances.”
“Far from this Government laying the foundations for a stronger economy, the Chancellor is squandering the endeavours of millions of hard-working people up and down our country, who are now having to pay the price for yet another socialist Government taxing and spending their way into trouble. Does the right hon. Gentleman not now accept that it is time to change course?”
“There are media reports that the Chancellor will make an emergency intervention to soothe markets, but with no confirmation that such a statement will occur in this House. Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that any such statement will be made first to Members in this House? Rates on Government bonds ultimately feed through to the broader credit market, so what estimates has the Treasury made of how recent market movements will impact mortgage costs and lending across the economy? I will make one final point, Mr Speaker. Every pound that we spend on debt interest is money that we cannot spend on the public’s priorities. The Government’s decision to let rip on borrowing means that their own tax rises will end up being swallowed up by higher borrowing costs, at no benefit to the British people.”
“Higher debt and lower growth are understandably now causing real concerns among the public, among businesses and in the markets, and despite what the Chief Secretary has said about international factors, the premium on our borrowing costs compared with German bonds recently hit its highest level since 1990. With those rising costs, regrettably, the Government may now be on course to breach their fiscal rules. The Chancellor has committed to no further tax rises, so does the right hon. Gentleman stand by her commitment not to increase taxes even further? If so, does that mean that the public should expect cuts to public service spending if the OBR judges that her fiscal headroom has evaporated?”
“The performance we have just seen was a slightly anxious and breathless one, which leads me to the question: where is the Chancellor? It is a bitter regret that at this difficult time and given these serious issues, she herself is nowhere to be seen. In the last 48 hours, borrowing costs have reached a 27-year high, and it is the Chancellor’s decisions that have led us here. Before the election, the right hon. Lady promised that Labour would get debt falling, would not fiddle the figures, would not raise taxes and would grow the economy, but the economy is now flatlining. Survey after survey is showing that business confidence has simply evaporated, and at the Budget, the Chancellor hiked up taxes, increased borrowing by an average of £32 billion a year across the forecast, and conveniently adjusted her fiscal rules to allow her to do so.”
“This is a far cry from our record when we left office, with employment at near record highs, unemployment at near record lows, the fastest growing economy in the G7 and real wages growing in every month for 13 consecutive months. We brought inflation down from over 11% in October 2022 to exactly the target of 2% on election day. The Bill is a calamity for businesses up and down our country. We are the party that understands that we only get good public services with a strong economy and strong businesses. The Labour party is consigning people up and down this country, plunging them into the tepid bath of managed decline over which it has presided. Question put, That the Bill be now read the Third time.”
“This is not a Bill, but a Shakespearean tragedy. It is the “Hamlet” of our age. While the Labour party was tipping the poison into the ears of the electorate, it was assuring them in its manifesto that it would do nothing with national insurance. Look what it has done. This will hit inflation—all forecasts show it higher every year than it would have been under us back in the spring. Mortgages will be higher, living standards will be lower, wages will be driven further down and there will be a £770 reduction in the standard of living by October 2029, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. We will see 50,000 jobs destroyed, particularly among our younger people. We will see growth impacted—lower across the forecast period than it would have been under ourselves back in the spring.”
“For all the fantasy in the manifesto, they might just as well have spoken “Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax— Of cabbages—and kings— And why the sea is boiling hot— And whether pigs have wings.” Because what happened to growth? The Office for Budget Responsibility tells us that the Budget will lead to less growth across the forecast period than was the case back in the spring under the last Government. The Office for National Statistics tells us in the third-quarter GDP data that the economy grew by 0.1%—one seventh of the growth in the United States. In the third month of that quarter, which was September, growth was actually negative. That is the record of this Government.”