I do welcome parts of the Budget, but I do not welcome a party fighting an election on a platform of denouncing one set of policies and then adopting them right after the election.
To continue with my list, the Chancellor’s most blatant example of shopping around was lifting wholesale the plan to deal with the tax status of non-doms—something that was never mentioned by the Conservative party until we raised it in the election campaign. Fifthly, we fought the election on a plan for a staged increase in the national minimum wage over this Parliament—another policy that has been adopted by the Conservative party.
There are parts of the Budget that I welcome, particularly those that the Conservative party roundly denounced when they were being voiced by someone else before the election. However, it is not all agreement, because we have to consider the Budget in the round rather than just individual measures that we agree with. We cannot agree with a Budget that has been denounced as regressive because it attacks the incomes of the working poor, leading 3 million families to lose £1,000 a year. That will cause real hardship for families in my constituency and in many others like it. We cannot agree with priorities such as increasing the inheritance tax threshold for people who already have assets, while at the same time abolishing student grants, which are targeted at low-income families, making it harder for young people to pursue higher education and gain the opportunities that they deserve.
We also have to question the abolition of housing benefit for people under 21. I recently met the YMCA in Wolverhampton, and many similar charities deal with the most vulnerable young people. How will the Government ensure that those young people are not forced into destitution, and that the work of such excellent charities is not destroyed by the change?
Overall, the Budget is regressive. It is not just a march on to Labour territory, as we have read in recent weeks, but a plan that will attack the working poor and hurt incentives to work rather than increasing them. As we have heard, being in opposition is not just about blanket opposition. Shouting “Fight the cuts” is not enough. If we did not learn that over the past five years, we should certainly learn it now. Our attitude to the Budget should be to welcome the parts of it that are stolen from us and that we can agree with, but to oppose firmly the parts of it that are not in the interests of the country and our constituents.
Looking forward, the next few years will not just be about the fiscal path. They will be about equipping young people for the future, because too many of them are denied opportunities; about making sure that an economic recovery can be shared by every part of the country, not just based on a property-fuelled boom in one part of the country; and about our place in the world. On all those issues, we will be a sensible Opposition. We will not abandon the ground that we hold because the Conservative party walks on to it, but we will stick up for what we believe in and oppose firmly and with determination where it is deserved.
5.22 pm