Spring Forecast

Mel Stride Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sir Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

Is that it? What utter complacency—a Chancellor in denial. She speaks of stability, but what planet is she on? She has lurched from putting up taxes to destroying growth and headroom, and then to coming back and putting up more taxes, with more growth destroyed. Round and round we go, like a fiscal twister, ripping up everything in its path. [Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I will hear the shadow Chancellor. People need to recognise that there are two sides—let us hear the other side now.

[Sir Mel Stride]

Thank you, Mr Speaker; they just do not like the truth—that is the truth of it.

As our economy bleeds out, what does the right hon. Lady do? She comes to this House with nothing to say and with no plan—unless, of course, doing nothing is a cunning plan to avoid those U-turns further down the line. She is weak. She has even stripped the OBR of its ability to assess whether she is meeting her fiscal targets. Let it be remembered that at this time in this Chamber, this weak and chaotic Government gave up on the British people.

The right hon. Lady has nothing to say to us today. This is not a spring statement—

[Barry Gardiner (Brent West) (Lab)]

More!

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Mr Gardiner, I expect better. We have to listen to you on a Thursday night; I do not need to hear you now.

[Sir Mel Stride]

No, they do not like it, Mr Speaker; they do not like the truth.

This is not a spring statement. It is a surrender statement. The Chancellor has the temerity to suggest that she is creating the conditions for renewed growth. She is rather like a dodgy estate agent standing in a crumbling building with the roof gone, the windows gone and the floor gone, saying, “Just think of the potential.” But that potential has been undermined by the terrible state of our public finances.

When it comes to the deficit, the right hon. Lady knows that borrowing this year is almost double that which was forecast at the time of the general election. She knows that the forecasts are predicated on the numbers that she has given to the OBR, which it has to accept. That includes squeezing spending at the end of the Parliament, and raising taxes and energy bills at the same time. We know that is unrealistic, and the reason we know it is because she and the Prime Minister have no backbone when it comes to taking difficult decisions. That is what we saw before the Budget: winter fuel payment—U-turn; welfare reform—U-turn; two-child benefit cap—U-turn. It is what we saw in a short period after the Budget: farm tax—U-turn; family business tax—U-turn; public houses—U-turn.

On the deficit, when the right hon. Lady rises again, will she tell the House how she will fill the £6 billion black hole in the special educational needs and disabilities budget? She mentions, quite rightly, the Iran war and the greater threats that our country faces, but could she explain how she is going to fund what we have been urging: 3% of GDP on defence by the end of this Parliament? How will she fund that—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Seriously, we need to hear this—[Interruption.] Oh, I can help hon Members if they do not want to hear it.

[Sir Mel Stride]

Thank you, Mr Speaker.

The right hon. Lady says the cost of borrowing is coming down, but does she not know that the cost of borrowing in this country has been the highest in the G7 —[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Somebody needs to switch their phone off; this is not acceptable.

[Sir Mel Stride]

Our borrowing is even higher than Greece’s. Indeed, if debt were a Department, it would be the third largest spending Department in Whitehall. That is money not going on the people’s priorities, but simply being flushed down the drain. The right hon. Lady puts great store in the latest forecasts on debt and says that it is coming down, compared with the forecasts back in the autumn, but if we strip away her dodgy definition of debt, we can see that it will be going up in just about every year of the forecast period.

The right hon. Lady has the audacity to praise her own performance. She points to growth, but does she not know that, only last month, the Bank of England downgraded growth for both this year and next year? A moment ago, she said that the Government had beaten the forecasts for growth from last year. The forecast at the beginning of last year was for 2% growth, but the growth outcome at the end of last year was 1.3%. By my mathematics, that is not an improvement. It should be of considerable concern to the entire House that the right hon. Lady clearly thinks that it is.

The right hon. Lady points to interest rates coming down, but does she not know that her ruinous inflationary policies have seen interest rates higher for longer, meaning more expensive mortgages for hundreds of thousands of people across our country? She was slightly coy about unemployment—because, of course, we know that it now stands at a five-year high. Under every single Labour Government in history, unemployment has risen, and this Government are no exception.

The right hon. Lady is fond of saying that she is simply asking people to pay a little more tax. Well, I do not remember the taxman phoning me up and asking me if I would awfully mind paying a little more tax. And what does it mean? It means workers struggling, employers laying off staff, and tens of thousands of the most talented people in our country going to other places, where they believe the opportunities are greater. That is what a little more tax means. And what has that tax done? It has destroyed and deeply damaged entire sectors of our economy. Hospitality has seen almost 100,000 job losses since this Government came to office, and that has particularly impacted our youngest people.

Youth unemployment is the highest in Europe for the first time in a quarter of a century. The dreams, aspirations and hopes of young people—of all those bright young faces—have been smashed on the altar of the right hon. Lady’s incompetence. What is her message to young people today? Her message today has been that her so-called plan is working, but what is the reality? Inflation? Up. Borrowing? Up. Spending? Up. Tax? Up. Welfare? Up. Unemployment? Up. All this speaks to the weakness and chaos of this Government. Is it any wonder that her so-called plan is not working? Our energy costs are among the highest in the world, and yet she is doubling down on net zero. Given where we are, the first thing that the right hon. Lady should do is get rid of those taxes on North sea oil and allow us to start exploiting those opportunities.

We have a welfare bill that is spiralling ever upwards, but what does the right hon. Lady do? She removes the two-child benefit cap. We have taxes heading to the highest level in history because of her choices, destroying the futures of men, women and children right up and down our country—and there is no contrition, no apology and no plan to do anything about it.

It does not have to be this way. At our conference, we set out how we can control public spending with £47 billion of savings, especially on the welfare bill, with some £23 billion of savings. We are a party that believes in work, rather than benefits. We are a party that will do something about it. We are a party of work; Labour is the party of “Benefits Street”. We will bring taxes down to kick-start the economy, abolish stamp duty, scrap business rates for businesses on our high streets, and give our young people a £5,000 tax cut. We have a cheap power plan. We will fix student loans and invest in apprenticeships. Though our golden rule, we will get on top of the deficit and, by doing that, grow the economy.

That is our plan. What is the right hon. Lady’s plan? The truth is that she has no plan, or, as her Health Secretary said, there is

“no growth strategy at all”.

Even if she did have a plan, she would be too weak to deliver it, given the psychodramas swirling around No. 10, the almost daily scandals visiting the door of the Prime Minister, the sight of a person once at the highest level in the diplomatic service being carted away in a car by the police, and Back Benchers calling the shots. The Chancellor’s credibility has gone. The Prime Minister’s chief of staff has gone. His Cabinet Secretary has gone. But somehow the Chancellor hangs on.

Through the chaotic fog, the drums are drawing ever closer. The British people deserve so much better. So, for the hard-working people in our country crushed by taxes, for those denied employment, for the farmers and the family business owners who have suffered in fear for too long, for every hollowed-out high street, for every young person robbed of their future, for every elderly person struggling to survive and for the generations yet to come, we say: go!

[Rachel Reeves]

I know that the OBR did not publish the forecast until I sat down, but I still think the shadow Chancellor could have done a little bit better than that. To be honest, I was hoping that the Leader of the Opposition was going to respond today; after that performance, I expect she does, too! [Hon. Members: “More!”] Don’t worry; I’ve got more.

The right hon. Gentleman said that the Conservatives set out their economic policy at their conference a few weeks ago. Well, they had 14 years to set out their economic policy, and it is because of their economic policy that they are now sitting on the Opposition Benches. Today’s performance is yet another reminder of how irrelevant the Conservative party now is. I hate to break it to the shadow Chancellor, but people stopped listening to the Conservatives a long while ago. And we can see why: because whether it is in office or in opposition, the right hon. Gentleman’s party and his leader have been wrong about the economy time and time again. They opposed economic responsibility and backed Liz Truss—wrong. They opposed closer ties to Europe and backed Brexit—wrong. They opposed cuts in child poverty and want to repeat austerity: wrong values, wrong economics—they are just plain wrong.

After last year’s Budget, the right hon. Gentleman’s leader predicted with characteristic foresight that borrowing would increase every year. She was wrong: borrowing is now coming down faster. That is faster than under the Tories—well, that is not difficult, because under them it went up—it is faster than forecast in the autumn and it is faster than in any other G7 economy. Last year, the Leader of the Opposition told us that energy bills would rise. She was wrong; they are coming down by £117 next month. She also told us that there would be no more Tory defections to Reform. How is that one going?

Let me let me return to the substance of the shadow Chancellor’s remarks—although I have had to reduce this section somewhat! He mentioned student loans, but he neglected to mention that he was in the Government who tripled university tuition fees, froze thresholds and oversaw higher interest rates, which led to the problems we are in today. On special educational needs, the Conservatives left a system in utter crisis, as every parent, every child and every school will tell you, so we will take no lessons from them. But in terms of where the money is coming from, that is set out today in the documents. Of course, the shadow Chancellor does not know that because he did not even bother listening to my statement.

The shadow Chancellor mentioned defence, but he neglected to mention that it was his Government who left office without any plan to fund their pledge to spend 2.5% of GDP on defence. It is this Government, with me as Chancellor, who are delivering the biggest increase in defence spending since the cold war.

The shadow Chancellor mentioned the welfare bill. I have to say that that was a little bit rich, because he neglected to mention that the welfare bill rose twice as fast in the last Parliament and that he was Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. His Government broke the welfare system, and it is this Government who are fixing it.

The shadow Chancellor mentioned youth unemployment. As I said, there is more that needs to be done, after the Conservatives increased the number of young people not in education, employment or training by 113,000 and slashed the number of young people starting apprenticeships by 40%. We will take no lessons from them. They are the arsonists, not the fire brigade, and if they cannot be honest about the mess they made, no wonder they cannot recognise that we are fixing it.

Today’s forecast shows that debt is down, borrowing is down, inflation is down, and interest rates are down from 5.25%, where the Conservatives left them, to 3.75% today. And what about investment, living standards and growth? They are all up. Let me break it to the shadow Chancellor and to his leader: there is no blank page for the Tory party—no year zero. They gave us chaos and instability; Labour is fixing it. They gave us austerity; Labour is investing in Britain. They gave us 14 years of barely managed decline, and we are reversing it. We know that if they ever get the chance, they will do all of the same again: more chaos, more kids in poverty, and more and deeper cuts. It would be terrifying if there was any prospect at all that they would ever win an election again.

The Leader of the Opposition can keep turning up every week, but it is a total waste of time. Her party is the past and not the future. I do not know what is more pathetic: the culprits who jumped ship and joined Reform and its Russian mates, or the culprits who stayed in the Conservative party and pretended that the last 14 years never happened. Either way, the choices are clear: investment with Labour or austerity with the Conservatives; stability with Labour, or more chaos with the Conservatives—wrong leader, wrong choices, wrong plan. Only Labour has the right plan for our economy and for our country.