It is a privilege to bring the past four days of Budget debate to a close. Over that time we have heard dozens of excellent speeches from across the House. I echo
what the shadow Chief Secretary said in thanking all those who contributed. I express my deep gratitude to the civil service and the wider Treasury team, who have devoted long hours to preparing this Budget, working closely over the course of the spending review with all other Government Departments. I am immensely grateful for their hard work.
I also pay tribute to the Chancellor for his third Budget in 19 of the most challenging months in living memory. Winston Churchill once told this House:
“The first Budget of a Chancellor is often well received, but the third Budget is the most critical of all, because it is the heir of previous decisions”.—[Official Report, 22 September 1943; Vol. 392, c. 212.]
Well, this third Budget is a vindication. As Members will recall, over his first two Budgets, the Chancellor developed our plan to protect jobs and livelihoods and to safeguard the economy from coronavirus. In the words of the Office for Budget Responsibility, that plan has proven “remarkably successful”. The OBR’s forecasts show that our economy returned to its pre-pandemic size around the turn of the year, several months earlier than previously expected. Wages are rising, growing in real terms by 3.4% compared with February 2020. More people are in work and literally millions fewer people than anticipated last July are unemployed. Our public finances are under control and debt is under control. To echo the Chancellor: growth up, jobs up, debt down.
Just because disaster has been averted does not mean that we should take that for granted. It is the result of conscious policy decisions that have steered our nation to a safer place. Now is the time to carry this momentum through into building the economy this Government were elected to deliver, with a future of higher wages, higher skills and rising productivity, no longer based on Labour’s and the SNP’s model of low-skilled migrant European labour, but based on training and equipping our own people to succeed; and a future where our businesses flourish and drive growth and that growth is shared more evenly across the United Kingdom. We will have a greener economy. Multiple Opposition speakers, such as the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome) and the right hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz), seemed to forget the £30 billion net zero strategy announced just a fortnight ago. It will be a future where our citizens benefit from world-class public services at every stage of their lives.