Budget Resolutions

Emma Foody Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Emma Foody (Cramlington and Killingworth) (Lab/Co-op)]

For too long, my communities in the towns and villages across the Cramlington and Killingworth constituency felt the full force of Conservative cuts and lived with the consequences of austerity. This Budget is the end of that chapter, because growth only means something when communities right across the country feel it. This Budget invests in communities, in jobs, and in the people who make every part of Britain thrive.

One of the great ambitions of this Government is to tackle child poverty wherever it exists. That child poverty was allowed to grow under the previous Government should be a source of immense shame for the Conservatives. There was a 44% increase in child poverty among working households—a tragedy for each child, for each family and for society. That does not just mean missing the additional extras in life; it means going to school with holes in your shoes, being hungry at home, being cold at night and being excluded from everyday opportunities. Ending the two-child benefit cap will lift almost half a million children out of poverty in one action. In the north-east alone, it will impact 70,000 children, including 1,750 in my own constituency. Those children will now have healthier lives, achieve more at school, and go on to earn more throughout their lives. This Budget will protect the children who are most in need—those who most deserve our support.

Other measures in this Budget will address the cost of living. It will cut energy bills, bring inflation down, freeze rail fares and prescription prices, support the lowest paid through increases to the national living wage and the minimum wage, and provide an extra £575 a year to those on the new state pension. As a Labour and Co-operative MP, I am also delighted to see measures to support communities and co-operatives across the country and to deliver on our commitment to double the size of the co-operative sector, because communities deserve to build and share in their own wealth.

We are backing devolution in my region and backing emerging industries in the north-east investment zone, enabling new technologies to thrive. We are getting public services back on their feet, with an extra £15 billion for the NHS to cut waiting times. We are tackling health inequalities, including by creating 250 new neighbourhood health centres.

I want to touch on one issue before I finish my speech: Moor Farm roundabout in my constituency. Locally, some Conservatives have sought to make mischief by claiming that the Budget means that there is no funding for vital upgrades. The Tories never were ones for letting the truth get in the way of a good story. As they well know, there were never going to be any announcements in the Budget about whether the upgrades were going ahead or not; that will be announced in the first quarter of next year, as part of the road investment strategy.

With this Budget, the Government are continuing to fix the foundations following 14 years of mismanagement from previous Conservative Governments, helping to renew our economy and our communities. It is a Budget of Labour values, fairness and justice.