Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Monday 8th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

In three minutes, I can touch on only a handful of my serious concerns about this Budget. For NHS staff this year has been the toughest ever, yet the only reward and recognition in this Budget is a 1% pay rise, which is, in effect, a pay cut when inflation is accounted for. We now know that the Government are to cut health and social care by £30 billion, with yet another year of no plans to fix our social care crisis. There was nothing to help a couple in my constituency after she was discharged from hospital and they both now face astronomical costs to ensure she gets the care she deserves. What does this Budget offer them? It offers them nothing.

With the UK hosting COP26, we would have thought the Government would have a bold, ambitious and sustainable plan that both tackles the climate crisis and creates high-paid, secure green jobs, with the associated economic stimulus the UK economy so desperately needs, but they do not. They have just a green-focused investment bank, and the Chancellor did not mention that it fails even to plug the gap left behind by leaving the European Investment Bank, nor does it replace the green investment bank that the Conservative Government sold off. There was a £1 billion cut to the green homes grant, which was justified on that grounds that “too few applied”; it was not reformed so that it actually worked for homeowners needing to make their homes energy secure and efficient, while also ensuring there is work for small and local businesses in my constituency and across the country.

Again, there was nothing for aviation communities, which have been so badly hit and are dominated by a sector that will be the last to recover from the pandemic. This could have been an opportunity to make aviation more sustainable and more environmentally friendly, while sustaining jobs, skills and businesses, for example, in the areas around Heathrow and other airports. Unlike Governments in France, Germany, Spain and the US, our Government have chosen to do neither. Where is the promised sector-specific support for aviation? It should be led by a tripartite body of government, the unions and industry that could help shape the sector’s recovery. It is not there.

This is a Budget where the rhetoric simply does not match the reality. It fails to support the NHS staff and further extends the social care crisis. It is a Budget that bakes in the already huge inequalities in our society. It is a Budget that fails to invest in covid pandemic recovery and fails to address the economic hit we know our economy faces after Brexit. It is a Budget that neither meets the challenge of the moment we are in nor plans for the future, but it is a Budget that rewards political friends. This Budget is yet another missed opportunity.