Budget Resolutions

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

Wednesday 26th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell). She caught my eye earlier when she was cheering the Chancellor with great enthusiasm, even more so than her colleagues who were making a pretty good fist of it. I recall cheering a Chancellor during a Budget speech—

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge) (Con)]

Did you get a job?

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

Notwithstanding the misgivings that I had, I cheered with gusto. Somewhat later, I found myself on a train to Oxford to defend the Government in the annual Oxford Union debate of no confidence. While on the train, I received the news that the Chancellor who I had been cheering had been sacked—not a particularly good wicket to go out to bat on.

I am confident that those hon. Members who cheered today will fare no better, because the economy is still reeling from the last Budget that the Chancellor delivered, with her wholesale assault on enterprise, family undertakings, initiative and every employer in the land. In fact, business confidence had collapsed significantly before that Budget. It had collapsed in the summer, when the Government warned everyone that things were so bad that they were going to have to get very, very much worse. As a consequence, when the Budget was delivered, we discovered that things were even worse than we had imagined. The Government then announced after that Budget that they had stabilised the economy. It was over; they were not coming back for any more. They trumpeted throughout the past year the fact that we had the highest growth rate in the G7. That is what they inherited, but as their monstrous regiment has proceeded, that growth rate has become more and more anaemic. There is no getting away from the fact that last month the economy shrank.

This summer, the Government repeated the mistake. All we got throughout the summer was horror story after horror story and kites being flown about ghastly taxes that might be imposed on us. That was most unwelcome for businesses planning investment and for anyone planning to take on workers; these interventions move some markets and make others absolutely sclerotic. It is a disaster. When I challenged the Chief Secretary to the Treasury last week with the example of Hugh Dalton, who properly resigned over a Budget leak, I was astounded that he admitted at the Dispatch Box that he had no idea what I was talking about. That is extraordinary. Against that background, there is always the chilling presence of the huge increase in trade union power that is part of the Employment Rights Bill currently before Parliament.

However, the Government’s anti-growth agenda is only half the story. The other half of the problem was expounded excellently by the Father of the House, my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh). The Government’s bloated expenditure plans have overshot by 4%, and we have this enormous, growing benefits bill. The disaster was that the Government withdrew from their attempts to provide some mild or modest restraint to the growth of that bill, and as my right hon. Friend said, we now face a bill that is running annually at £300 billion—£212 billion of which is for the economic inactivity of 4.3 million people who are under no obligation to work. That number of people is growing at a rate of 130,000 per month. That is completely unsustainable, and it is to be paid for by increasing taxes that disproportionately attack those people who are already contributing the most—the entrepreneurs, the investors and the very people who can take their investment, vision, skills and employment to where the business environment is rather more friendly. They are doing that in droves and to such an extent that even the Business Secretary has remarked on and spotted it. We increasingly face a situation in which fewer and fewer people will be able to pay for the bills of the increasing burden of people who are economically inactive.

As we approach—

[The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Torsten Bell)]

Your ending.

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

I do wish the hon. Gentleman would be quiet. He is insufferable.

As we approach Government activity accounting for 45% of the economy—

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

I will not give way; I have reached my peroration. I have always thought that the result of that would be the totalitarian hand clenched in anger. I have read “The Road to Serfdom”, and things have actually turned out very differently. It is not the totalitarian hand clenched in anger; it is the Minister’s hand, open, dishing out largesse. It has turned out to be not so much the road to serfdom as the road to penury.