Budget Resolutions

Mike Wood Excerpts

Wednesday 26th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris Evans]

If the hon. Gentleman asks me a specific question, I will answer it. What does he mean? This is what I am talking about—this is the reason we are where we are. We are sitting on a debt mountain and we have to pay the piper. [Interruption.] He says that unemployment is rising. In what specific sector? Give me a sector. No; so we are just talking in the abstract.

[Mike Wood (Kingswinford and South Staffordshire) (Con)]

The number of jobs lost in hospitality since last year’s Budget, just over a year ago, exceeds 110,000 as a result of the Chancellor’s choices.

[Chris Evans]

To be honest, it is a bit rich for the Conservatives to talk about job losses. In the 1970s—[Interruption.] Let me give the hon. Gentleman a history lesson. In the 1970s, they said that unemployment would never reach 1 million. Under the Tories, in the golden years of Thatcher and Major, unemployment reached 3 million—3 million people unemployed. Let us not forget that they also moved most of those unemployed people on to incapacity benefit. If we are talking about the benefit bill, it actually rests at the door of the party opposite—that is the truth. More people claimed incapacity benefit under the Tory Government. They failed to bring about an economic plan. Those people lost their jobs because of heavy industry leaving. They did not plan for that or bring anything about; they just put people on the scrapheap. That is why we have the problems we have today.

The fact is—[Interruption.] Sorry, I did not catch what the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) said. Does want to make an intervention? I do not mind. It is the third one I have taken.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Wood (Kingswinford and South Staffordshire) (Con)]

This Budget underlines the cost of a Labour Government who are making bad choices that are hurting working people. Once again, the Government talk about growth, but it is clear that the biggest growth that will come from the Budget is in people’s tax bills. This is a Budget that takes £12 billion from people who work or who have spent most of their adult lives working hard and doing the right thing, and gives it to people on benefits. It doubles down on the mistakes that the Chancellor made in last year’s Budget that have killed jobs, damaged our high streets and made our country poorer.

The proof is there for all to see in the OBR forecasts, which were helpfully published early. Unlike last year, when the Chancellor told the House that the OBR was going to back up her claims of a £22 billion black hole, but when we read the document it said nothing of the sort, today we could see the gaping chasm between the Chancellor’s claims and the reality contained in the report as she was delivering the Budget. The OBR is clear that it is downgrading growth forecasts not since Brexit or anything that happened under the last Government, but since March. These are downgrades under this Labour Chancellor, caused by this Labour Chancellor.

The Chancellor boasted that this year’s projections increase expected growth to 1.5%, which is still less than was being predicted at the time of last year’s Budget when she told us that 2025 would see 2% growth, but she was silent about the growth forecasts being slashed for every subsequent year of the forecasting period.

The OBR says that inflation will stay higher for longer. At a time when the cost of living is falling and inflation is at low levels in other countries, we are the outlier. That is the result of the Chancellor’s choices. It is clear that, despite the claims of the hon. Member for Rugby (John Slinger) a few moments ago, debt will rise as a proportion of GDP, not fall. That is a direct result of the Chancellor’s extra borrowing.

It is also clear that the OBR expects the cost of that borrowing to be higher—to cost the public purse more money each year. While long-term borrowing rates have fallen for most major economies since July last year, the rate that we must pay on UK Government bonds has risen.

[Yuan Yang]

Given the hon. Gentleman’s interest in the bond yields, will he celebrate with me and other Labour Members today’s rally in yields, as well as the increase in the value of sterling and in the FTSE?

[Mike Wood]

I think the hon. Lady is extremely brave to come to that point so early, given the levels that bonds are still trading at.

The OBR report is clear that the extra cost of borrowing, which is not replicated in other major economies, amounts to an extra £3 billion a year by 2030—more than the OBR expected just in March. In short, we are paying what I understand the markets call a “moron premium” because of the Chancellor’s choices.

[Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con)]

While we are talking about bonds, does my hon. Friend agree that, given the fact that we have an unusually large amount of index-linked gilts in the market and inflation is running at a higher rate than it was when Labour came to power, the cost of paying off the debt is going up at a disproportionately fast rate, thanks to Labour’s policies?

[Mike Wood]

My hon. Friend hits the nail on the head. I would go slightly further and say that it is not about paying off the debt; it is purely about servicing additional borrowing. That has real consequences for working families.

Perhaps the most concerning part of the OBR’s report is in paragraph 1.9, which says:

“Growth in real household disposable income per person is projected to fall from 3 per cent”

last year. It is falling not to 2%, or even to 1%, but to one quarter of one per cent on average for the next five years.

[Sam Rushworth (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mike Wood]

I will make a little progress; I can see the time.

The difference between 3% per year and 0.25% per year in growth in disposable income adds up to £2,700 less per family in disposable income because of the Chancellor’s choices.

We needed a Budget for jobs, but instead this was a Budget about saving the Prime Minister’s job by giving his mutinous Back Benchers the welfare rises that he forced them to vote against just last year. If the Government really wanted to support jobs, they would have undone some of the damage that the Chancellor did last year, particularly on hospitality.

A number of Members have raised the issue of hospitality and business rate reform. Before the election, the Chancellor was clear that business rates would be reformed, which meant that pubs, restaurants and cafés would have lower bills. Instead, the owners of cafés, pub landlords and restaurant owners saw their business rate bills more than double in April. We have heard today from the Chancellor that—because of the effects of revaluation and the fact that she has decided to go with a reduction of only 10p on the multiplier, instead of the 20p signalled when the Government introduced the legislation last year—when the new regime comes in, we will again see the bills for those pubs and cafés increasing, even though business rate bills have only just doubled.

This is a bad deal for hospitality. It will have a devastating impact on our high streets, and it is made only worse by the decision of the Chancellor to increase alcohol duties. That will hit pubs again, and make it more difficult for our pubs, our bars and our responsibly licensed venues to compete with supermarkets piling them high and selling them cheap.

[Lincoln Jopp]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that we have lost, I believe, 90,000 jobs from the hospitality industry just since the last Budget? While I do my bit to try to save the British pub industry on my own, does he worry, as I do, that today’s Budget will just make it harder and harder for hospitality?

[Mike Wood]

I do not think such declarations are in my current entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, but Members may wish to look at my historical declarations. I disclose that I have received some hospitality below the threshold from UKHospitality, the British Beer and Pub Association, the Campaign for Real Ale and the British Institute of Innkeeping. My hon. Friend is clearly right, although I think his figures are slightly out of date, because it is not 90,000 jobs that have been lost in hospitality; the latest figures from UKHospitality suggest that 111,000 jobs in hospitality have been lost since the Budget.

As the Safeguarding Minister, the hon. Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips), indicated earlier, these jobs ought to be an opportunity for social mobility. Instead, the Chancellor’s choices have been destroying those opportunities. The Budget, the measures that have been announced today and the taxes she has been piling on businesses and working people across the country will continue to destroy other opportunities, making our communities weaker, our economy poorer, and our families less well off.