Autumn Budget 2025

Baroness Noakes Excerpts

Thursday 4th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, it is good to see so many on the Government Benches here to support their failing Chancellor and her miserable Budget. They are in a very small minority. In polling after the Budget, only 10% thought Labour were the best party to run the economy. That is lower than the score achieved after the Truss-Kwarteng mini-Budget.

The run-up to the Budget was chaotic. Whatever the Chancellor intended with the constant press briefing and that excruciating early morning Downing Street speech, the fact is that pretty well everyone was misled about what was going to be in the Budget. This chaos was then followed by a Budget designed to please fractious Labour Back-Benchers rather than sort the economy out. The gilt markets were unimpressed and maintained our position as the advanced economy with the second-highest borrowing costs. Since the Chancellor has been appointed, the gap above the average advanced economy borrowing cost has been growing.

The Budget confirmed that this is a tax-and-spend Government. The tax burden will be a record 38.3% of GDP by the end of the forecast period, while public expenditure will be more than 44%—way above pre-pandemic levels. The Minister claimed again today that growth is the number one priority, but the OBR has pointed out that there is nothing for growth in this Budget. The Minister bragged about growth in the first half of this year, but he knows that a large chunk of that is down to one-off factors. The outlook for growth is at best lacklustre.

Businesses are in despair. We have a tax system that is ranked 32nd out of 38 countries in the tax competitiveness index, 1960s-style employment laws are about to be imposed on business, and taxes and inflation are sucking demand out of the economy. It is no surprise that the OBR sees business investment falling away. Working people too are in despair. Their taxes are rising—by stealth, largely—to fund an increasing number living on state handouts. The rich and the young are leaving the country every day, which simply compounds the problem.

The Budget dodges some tricky issues that may well derail the Budget arithmetic. I have some questions for the Minister. Like the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, I want to know when the 3.5% committed to defence will be achieved. It certainly is not showing up in the current Budget numbers. Like my noble friend Lady Barran, I ask the Minister to say how much will be spent on SEND after 2027-28, which budget will pay for it and what will happen to the accumulated local authority deficits that have been growing while they have been funding the rising SEND bill over recent years. In addition, how many billions of efficiency savings after 2028-29 are still to be identified? How will the £1.8 billion bill for digital ID cards be paid for? Whose budget will that come from? One thing is clear: we need a change of leadership in the Treasury if the UK is going to have any chance of economic success.