The World Health Organisation pronounced today that the coronavirus is now a pandemic, so it is not surprising that the Bank of England and the Government have together issued a big joint package of economic stimulus, which is to be welcomed. The question is: is it the right size? The truth is that we do not know. The levels of uncertainty are extremely high, and we will need to keep this under review. I hope that the Government stand ready to come back to the House if the economic downturn that will be caused by coronavirus spirals further.
I particularly hope that the Government will keep under review the support for people on low incomes who have to self-isolate. People working in the gig economy, people on zero-hours contracts and the self-employed are particularly vulnerable, and the Government need to ensure that the measures they have announced today go far enough. It would be completely wrong if we gave tens of billions of pounds to the banks during the 2008 financial crisis but were now not able to look after people working hard on low incomes. That has to be a priority.
When I look at this Budget today, I am deeply alarmed: I am alarmed by the growth figures. I have looked at Budgets over 30 years, and I have rarely seen a Budget where the growth forecast for the British economy for the whole forecasting period is less than 2%—and that is before coronavirus is taken into account. This year, with poor world economic growth, it is 1.1%, before coronavirus, but at the end of this forecasting period, in 2023 it is just 1.3%, and in 2024 it is just 1.4%. That is a disastrous performance.
These figures are from the independent Office for Budget Responsibility, and the of course the question is: what is lying behind those figures? If it is a forecast for four or five years’ time, it is not the coronavirus and it is not the world economy; it is something that is going wrong in our economy, and it is the Government who must take the blame. So what is it? When we read the OBR report, and I have been flicking through it, it suggests that—guess what?—it is the impact of Brexit and the Government’s new immigration system.
The Conservative party may not like the fact, but it is there in the OBR report. On page 8, it says that the UK’s output has already fallen by 2%, thanks to the Brexit uncertainty, and the future loss will be at least 4% of national income. This will hit the living standards of all our constituents. That is why productivity performance is down, and when our small companies are faced with a barrage of red tape at the borders, not surprisingly exports will go down and we will see small companies go to the wall. I do not see in these Budget proposals anything to help those small businesses.