Taxes

Debate between Julian Lewis and Joe Robertson

Wednesday 12th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Joe Robertson (Isle of Wight East) (Con)]

Too many of my constituents know 26 November 2025 already. Usually, Budgets come and go without making a huge impact on the public consciousness of people living their daily lives, but this year is different. It is different because businesses and families are terrified about what the Chancellor is cooking up for them.

What the Chancellor and the Prime Minister could have done a couple of weeks ago—indeed, a couple of months ago—is to put their fears at rest, confirm the Labour manifesto and confirm the promise not to increase tax on income, national insurance or VAT. The Prime Minister was prepared to do so in the summer; he did not revert to this absolute nonsense that he is not going to write the Budget. No one is asking him to write the Budget, and no one is asking the Minister to write the Budget from the Dispatch Box today. What we are asking for is confirmation of a manifesto promise that he and others got elected on less than 18 months ago. The Prime Minister committed to that promise in July, but failed to do so two weeks ago. Either he and his Government are indifferent to the worries of my constituents and the British people, or they are cooking up plans to tear up their manifesto and increase taxes they said they would not. I suspect that it can only be the latter.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

There is, of course, a third possibility, which some people with twisted minds have been suggesting: that the Government plan to do some pretty terrible things in the Budget but are setting up a strawman that they are going to break their manifesto promises. Then, when they do not do so, everybody will swallow those other terrible things. Is that too Machiavellian?

[Joe Robertson]

My right hon. Friend, whose constituency is just across the water from mine, is far more experienced in this place than I am. I admit to a certain naivety in not imagining that Machiavellian intention within the Government to set up such a strawman, but the point remains the same. If they are doing so, they are indifferent to the economic worries of my constituents and others, particularly hard-working families and businesses.

The question that we as the Opposition have raised today is what the Chancellor is going to do with the situation that she has created. Having sat through this debate, it is surprising to have heard so much deflection from Government Members—so much determination, in November 2025, to talk about previous Budgets under previous Governments. It is an obvious deflection technique, but in so doing, they speak against their own Chancellor. In November last year, she was very proud of herself in saying that her previous Budget had dealt with the black hole—a mystery black hole that she had identified, but let us take her at her word—and she wanted credit for having closed it off and wiped the slate clean. Her actual words to Sky News were “It’s now on us”, meaning that from that date, any problems in the economy and in future Budgets would be hers to deal with, and would have been caused by her decisions.

Last year, the Chancellor blamed the Conservatives for a £22 billion black hole. On a political level, one can understand that—why would she not? She had just come into government; she felt she could get away with it. This year’s black hole is bigger. It is £30 billion, and it is on her. That is why she is faced with the choice of raising money from hard-working families. What she could do is seek savings from the ballooning disability welfare bill, which, according to the OBR’s figures, is set to reach £100 billion by the end of the decade. She tried to do that earlier this summer, but her Back Benchers were not having any of it, so she and the Prime Minister had to shelve those plans.

We learn today that not only have the Prime Minister and the Chancellor lost the confidence of many of their Back Benchers, they have also lost their grip on No. 10, with its staffers briefing out against the Health Secretary. Today, the Prime Minister has had to admit to this place that he did not authorise any of that. In so doing, he has demonstrated that he has lost control of No. 10, his own operation. He is now having to suck up to the Health Secretary, the man who wants his job, in order to try to hold his operation together. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor could try to make savings—the shadow Chancellor has very kindly identified £47 billion of savings for them.