Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Monday 8th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

I have three tests for this Budget. The first is: does it leave anybody behind? If someone works hard and plays by the rules, they should be able to expect to get on in society. People who are unable to work should be protected and expect to have benefits that secure a decent life, and public services should be universal, properly financed and available to all. By those standards, the Budget fails.

Government Members argue that there is not enough money in Britain. This is one of the richest countries in the world. The problem is that the wealth is located in a handful of large corporations and a few thousand very wealthy people. In the last six months, during the pandemic, the stock exchange increased in value by £630 billion. Since the banking crash, the 1,000 richest people in our country have increased their wealth by £400 billion. There is almost £1 trillion in unspent corporate liquidity in the banks. There is a large amount of wealth available in our country. The problem is that it is held in a very few hands, and the Chancellor failed to touch it. At the same time, working people, who have sustained our country through the pandemic, are facing a disgraceful situation. We have £8 million being taken by stealth because of the income tax changes. We have a third of key workers now paid less than the living wage. Ten million people are currently working in precarious employment and 14 million people are living in poverty in our country today, alongside the vast wealth I have just spoken about.

It is true that the Budget envisages expenditure on infrastructure, but it is £2.4 billion a year. That is a large amount of money, but it is 147 times less than the amount of money that Germany is spending on infrastructure and it is 15 times less than what the Government are spending with their Tory chums on the track and trace system, which is not working very well. All those things mean that one has to worry about the chronic nature of the problems facing working people in our country. A towns fund has been created, but it has already been cut, actually, through austerity and it is not going to the towns in most need. It is going to those that are most convenient to the Tory party. As for housing, of course they are giving more money to buy houses, but they have done nothing to build more houses, thereby contributing to the chronic problem of housing facing our country.

This is not a Budget to build back better. This is a Budget that sustains everything we have seen—unemployment, poor work, precarious employment, poverty, cuts to the public services and austerity. It should be rejected tomorrow night. The Chancellor needs to go back, with a new calculator, to bring a new Budget back in due course.