Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Darren Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 9th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)]

The reality of this Budget is that the Government have no credible plan for long-term economic growth that will meet the required scale of ambition for the net zero transition, that will mean real change for workers in every community across the country or that will really help businesses to grow and make a profit. There is no denying that the extension of covid support was welcome, and I am pleased that the Chancellor agreed with my Committee’s assessment that premature end dates had caused unnecessary redundancies and harm to business, but that was the least that we could have expected. On a longer-term vision for our country, I cannot find very much at all. The OBR has concluded that Brexit will shrink our economy by 4% and covid by an additional 3%. After the initial year of reopening post-lockdown, our expectations for growth still hover around only 1.5% a year, and in the face of a decade of failed austerity, the Chancellor has still cut billions from day-to-day spending.

There is a reason that Labour in government was able to invest in our nurses and teachers—something this Government are not willing to do. There is a reason that Labour in government was able to take millions of pensioners and children out of poverty. This Government did not mention child poverty once in the Budget. That reason was sustainable, long-term economic growth. The one major piece of Government policy that attempted to take a longer-term view of the economy was the industrial strategy—a strategy that after only four years was cancelled via a footnote in the Budget and a leaked letter sacking the national Industrial Strategy Council. That is not how you announce major changes to Britain’s industrial policy. The Secretary of State said today that the industrial strategy was a “pudding without a theme”. With respect, he has not just withdrawn the pudding; he has failed to serve the starters and the main course as well.

The so-called plan for growth generates more questions than answers; it is essentially of no use to business. The national infrastructure bank was also supposed to be about long-term growth, but it has been given public funding of only £12 billion, which is £8 billion less than the amount recommended by the National Infrastructure Commission and a whopping £23 billion less than the European Investment Bank used to invest in the UK alone, when the UK was a member of the European Union.

The Budget also fell short of the required ambition to deliver on our net zero commitments, with no real increase in infrastructure spending and the Chancellor sticking to his previous position of only 3% of GDP. That is, I am afraid, a continuation of Ministers announcing targets with no plan or finance to allow them to happen. The Government cannot just announce a green industrial revolution and hope for the best. A failure to stimulate the growth of the green economy is just part of their failure in the Budget to meet the scale of the unemployment challenge. According to HMRC data, 782,000 fewer people are on company payrolls since October 2020, yet does the Government’s job and skills programme meet the scale of the challenge? No, it does not.

For all the failures by the Government in the Budget, I want to end on a positive note. Throughout the pandemic, both as a constituency MP and Chair of the Business Committee, I have seen the remarkable abilities of the British people to adapt to the challenges that we face: the researchers and innovators that led the world in genomic sequencing in vaccine development; the engineers who pivoted from aircraft wings to ventilators; and the small businesses that transformed themselves by moving online. Our key workers—carers, nurses, shopworkers, truck drivers, teachers, police officers and many more—kept our country moving when we all had to stop, reminding us of our sense of national duty, and the volunteers, churches, food banks and resident groups renewed our sense of community. Behind every business and public service is a worker, a business owner, a leader, an innovator, a public servant, a citizen of our United Kingdom. Brexit, technology, climate change and the legacy of covid are all like tectonic plates, slowly reshaping the British economy.

We need every person who can to roll up their sleeves and contribute to the national effort of recovery and change, where each country in our Union depends on each of the others for our collective national success. However, we also need a Prime Minister who has a bolder vision for modernising Britain in the post-covid world—a vision of a modern Britain that not only meets our ambitions as a country, but recognises and rewards the enormous potential of the British people.

Last week’s Budget could have been something special. It could have been the start of a new chapter for a more sustainable, inclusive and successful Britain, meeting the challenges of reshaping the British economy and providing work for people in every community; a Budget that showed the British people that we could be excited by the future and proud of our country once again. Instead, it had no credible long-term plan for growth and no credible long-term plan for the future. It was, unfortunately, a return to the failures of the past.