Spring Budget 2024

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Monday 18th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I too welcome the noble Lord, Lord Kempsell, and congratulate him on his maiden speech, which was concise and interesting. That bodes well for future contributions.

I recognise the scenario that the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, put forward. I did not really recognise the scenario that the Minister put forward. I think that we are in a terrible mess in this country, and this Budget does nothing for it. This is not really even a debate at all, because we have two parties arguing over the same set of policies, while the general public see their taxes misspent on a mix of corrupt contracts and privatised services. It does not seem very fair, really.

The reality of the UK today is that a lot of hard-working people will get paid less than they did a decade ago, while the very richest get even richer. There has been no austerity for Conservative Party donors or the friends of Cabinet Ministers; they came out of Covid richer, as a result of fast-track PPE contracts, and now of course they are paying less tax, with fewer regulations and with the ability to stow away their money in offshore trusts.

Brexit has failed to benefit Cornish fishermen or voters in Sedgefield, Wrexham or Leigh. Levelling up is an excuse that enables the Government to channel public money to marginal Conservative seats. The whole Thatcher project has failed, yet politicians of both major parties treat it as a sacred text. For example, North Sea oil and gas has made Norway one of the richest countries in Europe, from the 1980s onwards, with an oil fund worth approximately $1.4 trillion. Revenue from the fund accounts for one-fifth of government spending. The UK should be even better off, but we handed it all over to the private sector. The result is energy customers being ripped off in the past two years, with record high energy bills and record high profits for the oil and gas industries.

Instead of coming out of the last 50 years with a thriving economy, we live in a country where things are falling apart and nothing works. Anyone who walks around towns will see the lack of investment, as councils are struggling and going bust up and down the country. NHS waits are getting longer and dentists cannot be found. These headline tax cuts will do nothing to reverse the decades-long real-terms wage freeze that most workers have faced under successive Conservative Governments. You have to ask where all the money that we had when Margaret Thatcher took power went.

We have 171 billionaires now, which we did not have before and which is obviously something that we should all be proud of. Why is a wealth tax not the number one priority for both parties, especially the Labour Party, at the next election? It would enable this country finally to invest in large-scale renewables and the insulation of homes. A wealth tax could deliver cheaper energy and lower bills, which is exactly what the majority of us need.

Rail privatisation has led to far higher fares, at a time when the climate crisis dictates that we need lower fares, more trains and fewer cars. Water privatisation has given us sewage in our rivers, higher bills and a collapsing infrastructure. Water bills are due to go up another £125 on average this year to generate the £56 billion needed to fix our leaky pipes and overloaded sewerage system. Oddly, that is a very similar amount to what the water companies have paid out in dividends. They took the money and did not do the work, and I do not see any penalty for that from the Government. There have been a few fines, but they pay those happily. Instead of asking for fines, we should be taking shares. The solution to our economic decline is not privatisation, of the NHS or anything else; it is public ownership of railways, water and the NHS, and the end to taxpayers being ripped off by dodgy contracts.

The Green Party wants this country to have its future back, which means changing the way in which we manage our economy and the environment that we live in. It means clean water, clean air and clean politics. The Green Party is putting together a manifesto at the moment for the general election, which will have a fully costed budget, which I am happy to share with all political parties. We need a bit of forward thinking in all our decisions over the next few years. We are in trouble as a human race. Somehow, nobody seems to get this—they just do not understand the urgency of what we have to do. I would argue that this Budget is fairly useless. I look forward to sharing the Green Party budget with everybody, so they can see what good ideas look like.