Autumn Statement 2022

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I too welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Lea. Her speech was indeed uncontroversial; it is quite possible that we need more of that in this House. I certainly do not subscribe to that other view.

I want to condemn the Chancellor’s austerity Budget in the strongest possible terms: to excoriate it; to revile it. I will explain why. The spending cuts of £30 billion have left people paying the price for a decade of Conservative economic mismanagement. They will impact the poorest the hardest, while those profiteering from the crisis—we know who they are—have been let off the hook.

The Chancellor announced that he would be sticking to his cash spending plans for the next two years, meaning public sector pay rises of just 2% with inflation at 7% next year, which would result in a 5% real-terms pay cut for public sector workers across the country. Whatever Jeremy Hunt claims, this amounts to taking £30 billion away from people who need it during a cost of living crisis, both directly and through cuts in services. The cuts will force local councils and national public services to deny people vital support.

Yet we know that there is enough wealth in this country for us to avoid the dire economic situation that this Conservative Government are forcing us into. The problem is that wealth is concentrated in too few hands when it should be spread throughout the economy to the benefit of everybody. I can tell you what the Green Party would do: we would introduce a 1% wealth tax on the super-rich—obviously, that is nobody in your Lordships’ House— and increase taxes on unearned income to ensure sufficient money to fund the public services that we need and deserve.

That brings me to two questions that I really would like answered by the Minister today. She talked about a stronger NHS. Does that have a privatised element or is it still completely public? If she could tell me that, it would be fantastic. Also, she mentioned new hospitals. I really would like to know where, when and how many. It must be possible to tell us.

The Green Party would also close the loopholes in the windfall tax to enable investment in green solutions to the energy and climate crisis—not schemes like Sizewell C, which will cost a fortune to build, will come onstream far too late to make a difference and will be incredibly polluting during its construction phase. These measures would put an end to the spiral of Conservative chaos and guarantee investment in the green infrastructure and world-class public services that our country hopes for.

Several noble Lords have mentioned how good—how necessary and stabilising—growth is. That is complete nonsense, I am afraid. Growth destabilises the planet. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, very kindly covered the issue of climate change being completely absent from the Autumn Statement so I do not need to go into that; but I can tell your Lordships that growth is not necessarily good.

Why on earth did the Government cancel the green stuff and leave tens of thousands of people with draughty homes and huge energy bills? Why do we not save everyone money and tighten up the standards for new homes so that they are all net zero? We should not even be going for net zero; we should be going for carbon negative. That can be done; it is more expensive but it saves money in the long term. It saves home owners money, it saves the Government money in terms of health and illness, and it will help to deal with the climate emergency. The only people who will be put out are the developers who quite possibly donate to the Conservative Party.

The Green Party proposals also include taxing the wealth of the richest 1% of households to raise at least £70 billion; and imposing a dirty profits tax, without any loopholes, on the oil and gas companies currently making huge sums from fossil fuels and the energy crisis. That, of course, is extremely damaging to our planet and to our future security on all sorts of fronts. We would provide increased funding for the Environment Agency and Ofwat to ensure proper enforcement of privatised water companies so that they invest in the infrastructure needed to end the scandal of sewage being poured into the rivers and seas. I have been highly amused by the number of MPs who rush to say, “Nothing to do with us,” in spite of the fact that they voted it through in the other place.

Money raised from the wealth tax and the dirty profits tax would help fund: a new green skilled workforce; a dash for renewables to bring down bills; a national home insulation programme to keep people warm; free childcare to ease the cost of living burden; reducing the cost of travelling by train and bus to make public transport cheaper than travelling by car; an end to the sewage scandal; a national minimum wage of £15 an hour; and decent pay increases that reflect rising inflation for public sector workers.

More Tory austerity will create fear in communities across the country. Services are already facing extreme pressures, and the country cannot stand billions more pounds of public spending cuts. While the Government seem belatedly to have acknowledged the importance of driving down our use of gas through energy efficiency, the measures announced in the Statement go nowhere near far enough to help people who need their homes insulated right now.

Our tax-raising alternative would mean that polluting companies and the very richest households contribute more while our investment in a rapid move to a net-zero economy would fund the new skilled, sustainable, well-paid jobs that will be needed to replace those reliant on fossil fuels. Our plans ensure that those most able and most responsible pay, while the vast majority reap the rewards of a rapid move to a green economy.

While I am laying out our measures, I mention also that we ought to have an immediate freeze on rent rises and a ban on evictions by landlords who simply want to increase rents between tenancies. The Scottish Government have done that; I cannot see why we could not do it here. It would be a very quick measure and would make people feel a lot safer.

I do not want—please—to hear any more of Ministers in your Lordships’ Chamber saying, “Well, nobody has come up with other ideas.” We have; lots of people have better ideas and we need to think about them. Of course they are better ideas, because this Government are themselves washed up and out of ideas.

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[Lord Skidelsky (CB)]

Before the noble Baroness sits down, could I ask a question, please?

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

Excuse me, but before the noble Baroness sits down, she did not answer my questions, unless I fell asleep, which is quite possible because it is past my bedtime. I asked two specific questions about NHS funding and hospitals.