Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Families struggling with the cost of living crisis; businesses hit by a supply chain crisis; those who rely on our schools, our hospitals and our police—they will not recognise the world that the Chancellor described. They will think that he is living in a parallel universe.
The Chancellor decided in this Budget to cut taxes for banks, so at least the bankers on short-haul flights sipping champagne will be cheering it. And he had the arrogance, after taking £6 billion out of the pockets of some of the poorest people in this country, of expecting them to cheer today for £2 billion given to compensate. In the long story of this Parliament, never has a Chancellor asked the British people to pay so much for so little. Time and again today, he compared the investments that he is making to the last decade, but who was in charge in that lost decade? They were.
Let us just reflect on the choices that the Chancellor has made today. We have the highest sustained tax burden in peacetime—and who is going to pay for it? It is not international giants such as Amazon; no, the Chancellor has found a tax deduction for them. It is not property speculators; they have already pocketed a stamp duty cut. And it is clearly not the banks, even though bankers’ bonuses are set to reach a record high this year. Instead, the Chancellor is loading the burden on working people, with a national insurance tax rise on working people, a council tax hike on working people, and no support today for working people with VAT on their gas and electricity bills.
And what are working people getting in return? There is a record NHS waiting list with no plan to clear it, no way to see a GP, and people are still having to sell their home to pay for social care. We have community policing nowhere to be seen, a court backlog leaving victims without justice, and almost every rape going unprosecuted. There is a growing gap in results and opportunities between children at private and state schools, a soaring number of pupils in super-size classes, and no serious plan to catch up on learning stolen by the virus. The £2 billion announced today is a pale imitation of the £15 billion catch-up fund that the Prime Minister’s own education tsar said was needed. No wonder he resigned.
The Chancellor talks about world-class public services. Tell that to a pensioner waiting for a hip operation. Tell that to a young woman waiting to go to court to get
justice. Tell that to a mum and dad waiting for their child to get the mental health support that they need. The Chancellor says today that he has realised what a difference early years spending makes. Has he ever heard of the Sure Start programme that this Tory Government cut?
Why are we in this position? Why are British businesses being stifled by debt while Amazon gets tax deductions? Why are working people being asked to pay more tax and put up with worse services? Why is billions of pounds in taxpayers’ money being funnelled to friends and donors of the Conservative party while millions of families are having £20 a week taken off them? Why can’t Britain do better than this?
The Government will always blame others: “It’s businesses’ fault”; “It’s the EU’s fault”; “It’s the public’s fault”; “They’re global problems”—the same old excuses. But the blunt reality is this. Working people are being asked to pay more for less, for three simple reasons: economic mismanagement, an unfair tax system, and wasteful spending. Each of those problems is down to 11 years of Conservative failure. Government Members shake their heads, but the cuts to our public services have cut them to the bone. While the Chancellor and the Prime Minister like to pretend that they are different, this Budget will only make things worse.
The solution starts with growth. The Government are caught in a bind of their own making, because low growth inexorably leads to less money for our public services unless taxes rise, and under the Conservatives Britain has become a low-growth economy. Let us look at the last decade. The Tories have grown the economy at just 1.8% a year. If we had grown at the same rate as other advanced economies, we could have had an additional £30 billion to invest in public services without raising the taxes that the Tories are raising on working people today.
Let us compare growth under the last 11 years of Conservative government to that under the last Labour Government. Even taking into account the global financial crisis, Labour grew the economy much faster—by 2.3% a year. If the Tories matched that record, we would have £30 billion more a year to spend on public services.
It could not be clearer: the Conservatives are now the party of high taxation, because the Conservatives are the party of low growth. The Office for Budget Responsibility confirmed that today. We will be back to anaemic growth—[Interruption.] Conservative Members might not like this, but the Office for Budget Responsibility said that by the end of this Parliament, the UK economy will be growing by just 1.3%. That is hardly the plan for growth that the Chancellor boasted about today; it is hardly a ringing endorsement of his announcements. Under the Tory decade, we have had low growth, and there is not much growth to look forward to.
The economy has been weakened by the pandemic, but also by the Government’s mishandling of it. Responding to the virus has been a huge challenge. Governments around the world have taken on more debt, but our situation is worse than in other countries. It is worse because our economy was already fragile going into the crisis, with too much inequality, too much insecure work and too little resilience in our public services. And it is worse because the Prime Minister dithered and delayed against scientific advice, egged on by the Chancellor, and we ended up facing harsher and longer
restrictions than other countries. So as well as having the highest death toll in Europe, Britain suffered—[Interruption.]