Budget Resolutions

Debate between Toby Perkins and Wes Streeting

Monday 11th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and Government Members should not groan at him for raising a problem; they should be outraged at the misuse of public money. They should be as appalled as we are that in the midst of a national crisis, when so many people rushed to danger or played their part in a national response—those businesses that shifted from their normal activity to try to help, genuinely doing the right thing for the right reasons—there were others at the same time who sought to use the pandemic to make a quick buck at our expense. It is disgusting, and the fact that so many billions of pounds of personal protective equipment was wasted—much of it literally going up in smoke—should exercise all of us. Voters can make their own judgment on why the Conservative party is still so relaxed about that profligacy, waste and fraud.

I accept the point that the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) made about the importance and impact of financial events, because a narrative was spun after the 2010 general election about the global financial crisis. The Conservatives love to say it was all the fault of the last Labour Government, but I have bad news for them: the former Chancellor of the Exchequer—I had better name him, as there have been so many—George Osborne was talking recently in his excellent podcast about the late, great Alistair Darling, and he said:

“In the financial crisis, he was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who earned a lot of trust with the way he handled that crisis.”

Of course, it was politically expedient for the Conservative party at the time to pretend that the economy was going through so many challenges because a Labour Government had bailed out the banks, but when presented with a crisis, you do the right thing. We did the right thing then, and we would do the right thing in the future when presented with crises, as we expected this Government to do. In fact, we engaged with the Government in good faith throughout that crisis. We never imagined that people would use VIP lanes to rip off the British taxpayer. That is why, if she is the next Chancellor of the Exchequer, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) will go after those people to get that money back. We do not doubt her determination to do so.

The Budget was pitched as the Tories’ last roll of the dice before the general election. It was meant to be the one to bamboozle the Opposition and wow the public, but instead of starting the campaign with a bang, they are going out with barely a whimper. It was meant to bring millions of voters who have abandoned the Conservative party back into the tent. Instead, it has driven the former deputy chairman of the Conservative party out of the tent all together. After 14 years of Conservative Government, Conservative MPs are leaving because, to quote the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson):

“you can’t get a police officer to turn up to your house when it gets burgled…people are pulling their own teeth out, you can’t get a GP appointment.”

What a damning indictment of the Conservative party from a man who this Prime Minister chose to elevate to one of the highest offices in that party.

The claws came out as soon as today’s defection was announced, but they are not aimed at the hon. Member for Ashfield—no, Conservative MPs are begging him to come back. They have told “Channel 4 News”:

“The fact Rishi promoted him to Deputy Chairman and tells you all you need to know about his judgment.”

Even Conservative MPs admit in private that the Prime Minister is too weak to run his own party, let alone the country. As Lord Lloyd-Webber might have written if he were scripting a new musical for the Conservative party, they are past the point of no return and looking to Boris Johnson, saying

“Wishing you were somehow here again.”

I have to give credit where it is due: this is a Budget so bad that it has done what was previously unthinkable: it has united the warring factions of the Conservative party. They are united in agreement that it was a disaster. Before the Chancellor stood up, the leader of what is left of the Scottish Conservatives had already announced his opposition to it, soon followed by the Energy Minister, the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie), who exclaimed his deep disappointment with his Government’s own energy tax. Then, the Security Minister, the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) and a Foreign Minister, the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Anne-Marie Trevelyan), wrote a joint article opposing the Chancellor’s lack of investment in defence. The Energy Minister does not support the energy policy; Foreign and Security Ministers do not support the defence policy, and even the Chancellor says that he does not support the tax rises that he is imposing on working people. It begs the question: is there anyone left who believes in what this Government are doing? Government Members should feel free to intervene and leap to the Government’s defence but, sadly, they agree.

The Chancellor named several Members in his speech, presumably on the basis that misery loves company. I wonder if even the Members who made their way on to the Chancellor’s list of the damned will defend this Government’s dismal record. I extended an invitation to them earlier today, but they have not shown up. I am sure that they are busy back in the office or in their constituency writing leaflets extolling how great the Budget was.

[Mr Perkins]

Twenty-five MPs who will not be extolling how wonderful it was are the New Conservatives. The 25 Conservative MPs who support that organisation said:

“We cannot pretend any longer that ‘the plan is working’. We need to change course urgently.”

Does my hon. Friend question, as I do, whether those 25 MPs who want to change course urgently will vote for this Budget? If they will, how can they possibly suggest that they are changing course?

[Wes Streeting]

Who knows? I must confess I do not even know who the New Conservatives are, there are so many warring tribes and families involved every week. It is a level of reproduction that even the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson fails to match.

Turning to the list of the damned who made their way into the Chancellor’s Budget speech, the hon. Member for Dudley North (Marco Longhi) was identified as pushing the Government to give into the shadow Chancellor’s call to cancel their planned rise in fuel duty. Where Labour leads, the Tories follow. I wonder if he will defend his Government making pensioners in Dudley £1,000 a year worse off. The hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory) was singled out by the Chancellor. Does she think her constituents earning £15,000 a year will forgive her for voting to pinch an extra £580 from their pockets in tax rises?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Perkins]

I would not want my hon. Friend to miss out the consultation on banning water bosses’ bonus, which was also nicked from us.

[Wes Streeting]

The list is inexhaustible, is it not? It is just one thing after another, and then they have the audacity to say that Labour does not have any plans. If that is true, why are they swooping in like magpies every five minutes, ready to pick the next cherry from Labour’s tree?

It is just a shame that the Conservatives did not see the light earlier. Had they abolished non-dom tax status when Labour pledged to do so in 2022, 4.5 million children could be enjoying free breakfast clubs today. They could have funded an extra 3.6 million NHS appointments and operations, hundreds more artificial intelligence-enabled scanners, and 1.3 million more urgent and emergency dental appointments. The Prime Minister would have delivered on his pledge to cut waiting lists, if only he had listened to Labour. What stopped him? Why was the Prime Minister so wedded to the non-dom tax status?

NHS: Long-term Strategy

Debate between Toby Perkins and Wes Streeting

Wednesday 11th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

The hon. Gentleman has got some brass neck. I have already given him figures showing that per capita funding increased by 5% under the last Labour Government—[Interruption.] And as for GDP, perhaps he should look at growth figures and ask why the economy is so much smaller than it would have been if we had had a Labour Government managing the economy well. That is the truth; it is a simple fact. If not, perhaps he wants to explain how his Government will put more money into the NHS, but I did not hear that commitment.

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for his excellent speech. I do not quite know why I have intervened, because I am very much enjoying watching him flay the bowling to the boundary when he gets questions from Conservative Members. He is absolutely on to something in relation to the money that has been wasted in our NHS by the failure to plan for NHS staffing. Is not the reality that far too much money is being spent on agency workers because there is no long-term strategic plan for NHS staffing?

[Wes Streeting]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We are spending £3 billion on agency costs that would surely be better spent on ensuring that we have a serious workforce plan, and on hospital departments that are staffed by regulars who get to know their shift, get to know their colleagues, and get to know their patients and communities.

Let me turn to what the Secretary of State for Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said about ambulance staff, because I think he irresponsibly suggested that ambulance staff have not committed to minimum service levels for category 2 calls today, which is just not true. I think he ought to apologise to ambulance workers.

Public Health

Debate between Toby Perkins and Wes Streeting

Tuesday 14th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

I will outline our position on that, but the hon. Gentleman will have to be patient because I will come on to that later in my speech.

We need to buy the NHS and its helpers some time. The measures put forward for consideration today are an attempt to do just that by slowing the spread of the virus whilst trying to protect Christmas so that people can enjoy the festive season safely, by limiting our interactions in the workplace, by wearing face coverings in settings where the virus finds it easier to spread, by testing before we attend large indoor gatherings, and by getting behind the booster roll-out to ensure that everyone is protected.

[Mr Perkins]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we are all very conscious of how important this time of year is to the hospitality sector, but does he agree that the greatest threat to the hospitality sector is not restrictions of the type that are before us today, but the sense that the virus is out of control, and widespread cancellations across the sector? So these restrictions enable the hospitality sector to survive in this really difficult time, but also enable us to take proportionate steps to ensure that the spike does not get out of control.

[Wes Streeting]

I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend. Indeed, one of our primary reasons for supporting the measures for consideration today is that we on the Labour Benches support business, and we want to support it through a particularly difficult time, when normally trading would be at its busiest.

The goal in the end must of course be to learn to live with the virus. That means effective vaccination, antiviral treatments, and public health measures that have minimal impacts on our lives, our jobs and our businesses. So let me take each of the measures in turn and explain why Labour supports them, and no doubt take interventions.

First, on mask wearing, no one enjoys wearing a mask—I certainly do not, but it is nothing compared with the costs that more draconian restrictions have on our lives, livelihoods and liberties. Masks are simply a price worth paying for our freedom to go out and live our lives during this pandemic. They are proven to be effective, and not only that, but in times of rising infections, when people are feeling increasingly cautious, it is vital to our economy that people feel safe boarding a busy bus or entering a crowded theatre. In our view, the Government should never have got rid of the requirement to wear masks in those settings, but we know why they did. We have counted, in recent weeks, hon. Members on the Government Benches not wearing masks. I am glad to see that compliance has risen somewhat considerably. We know that the Prime Minister no longer has the authority to lead his own party, but I am grateful that Members on the Government Benches have at least listened to their Health Secretary.

Turning to the vaccine pass, and testing to enter nightclubs and large events, I welcome the fact that the Government have listened to representations from Labour and responded. The Labour party has argued consistently against vaccine passports and insisted on people having the option of showing a negative test. Further, we argued that such passes should not be required for access to essential services. On both counts the Government have listened and amended the proposals, and we can support the measure before us today. It is not a vaccine passport. It is, in effect, a default requirement to show a negative test to enter venues where the virus is most likely to spread, with an opt-out available to those with an NHS covid pass.

Scotland: General Election and Constitutional Future

Debate between Toby Perkins and Wes Streeting

Wednesday 17th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to speak in this important debate. It is a debate that people in England and right across the UK need to start paying greater attention to, because while I fully respect that the future of Scotland is one to be determined by the Scottish people—indeed, the Labour party’s position on Scottish independence and the Union is one that is determined and led by the Scottish Labour party—the decision that is taken by the people of Scotland will have ramifications right across the rest of the Union.

The argument I want to make on the part of the Union is both pragmatic and principled. The pragmatic argument is, “Why now?” Why now, in the midst of a global pandemic of a type we have not seen during most of our lifetimes and when the challenge is not simply to roll out the vaccine but to build the recovery? Why now would we plunge not just Scotland but the entire United Kingdom into a constitutional row consuming all the focus and all the resources when the focus must be on rebuilding our country? Why now, in the midst of extracting ourselves from one sophisticated political and economic alliance, which we have already seen has caused real challenges and broken promises, would we seek to repeat the same exercise again the very future of our own country?

Then, of course, I look at the record of the Scottish Government, and it becomes perfectly clear why independence will be on page 1 of their manifesto. The alternative is that their record will be on the front cover: 182,000 children left in poverty, even in households where one person is in work; a quarter of all households in fuel poverty, and that was before the pandemic; the NHS 12-week waiting time guarantee not met since 2012 and breached 360,000 times; the four-hour waiting time target not met since 2017 until the pandemic hit; 18-week mental health waiting times; and an employment rate that is actually lower than the United Kingdom rate. That is a record that we would see in the UK Government, too.

[Mr Perkins]

We have heard criticism of the SNP for picking this subject for this debate, but at least this matter is the responsibility of the UK Parliament. Many of the issues that my hon. Friend is raising are the responsibility of the Scottish Parliament, and so would be sensible things for the SNP to be spending the Scottish parliamentary elections debating.

[Wes Streeting]

Indeed—and that brings me to education, which is my hon. Friend’s passion, and mine. The number of teachers in Scotland is down by 1,700 since 2007; the promise to cap class sizes is broken; spending per pupil is down; and on the Scottish Government’s central challenge—to close the attainment gap—they are failing. Indeed, the First Minister herself said:

“Let me be clear—I want to be judged on this. If you are not, as First Minister, prepared to put your neck on the line on the education of our young people then what are you prepared to. It really matters.”

It is time for the First Minister to account for the record of educational failure in Scotland, because on class sizes, standards and the attainment gap, the record in Scotland is as abysmal as that of the Tories in the United Kingdom.

Social Care

Debate between Toby Perkins and Wes Streeting

Wednesday 16th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

rose—

[Toby Perkins]

rose—