Budget Resolutions

Alex Norris Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 28th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

This is my first Budget, so I was geared up for tweeting furiously, poring over Budget papers and analysing it in the local media, but it is striking how little of any of those things I have had to do, because the Budget represents an incredible lack of anything at all for my city of Nottingham and my constituency.

The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), who is no longer in the Chamber, termed the Budget as “not exactly a non-event”, and he meant that as a compliment: there was just above nothing in the Budget, and that for him was a good thing. For my constituency, only a grade above a non-event is not good enough. On the issues that really matter to us, such as decent wages, a fair benefits system, healthcare, schools, transport, community safety and so on; on the things that are making people’s everyday lives more difficult than they ought to be; and on the issues leaving children in working families in poverty with no way out —on all these things—we feel let down by the Government, and the Budget is emblematic of that failure.

Another incredible omission was the fact that the east midlands was not referenced at all. Treasury stats show that, whether it is transport investment or infrastructure investment in general, the east midlands will always come last, and once again the Budget and the industrial strategy do nothing to fix that. After the cancellation of the midland main line electrification, we are in desperate need of more money for our transport links, but that has not come. It is not just for getting to and from the capital that we need midland main line electrification; this is also about east-west connectivity. Both those things have excellent business cases and are crying out for a bit of vision to support them.

It is not a coincidence that today’s Social Mobility Commission report has the east midlands as the region with the worst outcomes for those from disadvantaged backgrounds, but we know that that is not inevitable. The poverty profile of my constituency is similar to a number in London, but while 17 out of 20 mobility hotspots are in London, none is in the east midlands. My area is one of the coldspots, and that is because of the level of investment into the community. I say that not because I want London’s investment for Nottingham; I want investment levelled up, because it works. It is good for society and for the Exchequer. That shows what we should expect from the Budget, but instead we have something that is not quite a non-event which, frankly, is not quite good enough. In fact, it is not good enough at all.