It is always a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne). Since the Chancellor delivered his sprightly Budget, promising a real-terms rise in overall spending for “every single Department”, the emerging details have given us no cause for optimism. More money for public investment, for which my Labour colleagues and I have been asking for over a decade, is welcome. However, that every announcement was for the biggest sum in a decade only exposes how the Tories have starved every element of the public sector every year since they came to power.
My constituents have not forgotten the decade of Tory decimation of our public services. Although the Chancellor may finally have come around to Labour’s way of thinking, all his funding announcements have achieved in real terms, whether on education, local government or justice, is to take us back to pre-Tory Government spending levels. Despite his promises, public services will still be underfunded and under pressure. Given the Government’s habit of handing out profitable contracts to the private sector with little, if any, scrutiny or accountability, we cannot assume that any increases will ever reach frontline services.
The pandemic exposed how fragile local government services have become since 2010. From the public’s perspective, every public service is in crisis. Whether someone is trying to get a doctor’s appointment or a hospital appointment, trying to access the courts system, trying to get the police to come out to a burglary or anti-social behaviour in their community, or trying to access social care or council housing, the lack of investment in local government and public services has decimated communities and damaged the social contract between government and citizens. Taxes continue to rise, and people know that they are getting less in return.
The Chancellor promised bold action to address some of the problems caused by his Government, but the £5.4 billion from the health and social care levy will not kick in for three years. The social care crisis needs addressing now. The end of the public sector pay freeze is totally offset by the spectre of rising inflation and the looming cost-of-living crisis, with tax hikes for workers and tax cuts for banks and big business. What the Chancellor gave with one hand, he took away with the other, and the majority of us will take the hit for both.
One of the most astonishing aspects of the Budget was that, just days before the most important climate conference in a generation, the Chancellor failed to mention “climate” or “environment” once. Green transport is key to reaching our net zero targets, and a green rail network must be part of that ambition. The Treasury will continue to plough billions into the UK’s rail network to help train operators to cope with a fall in passenger numbers because of covid-19, but the funding falls way short of what is needed to level up local economies and decarbonise the transport system.
What a wasted opportunity it is that the Chancellor refused to commit to electrifying new rail infrastructure such as East West Rail from day one. Instead of encouraging domestic clean-energy rail use, he cut passenger duty on domestic flights and froze fuel duty. The Budget was a wasted opportunity to build a truly optimistic, sustainable future and meet the future needs of the country.
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