I have spent time in my hon. Friend’s Slough constituency talking to working people and businesses. On the most recent couple of visits there, I do not remember anyone saying, “The big priority for families and businesses in Slough is a tax cut for the 1%.” Instead, they were saying, “Let’s have a targeted scheme for the NHS, as Labour has called for, instead of this blanket approach for the top 1%.”
The Government have, to be fair, given us some growth: growth in stealth taxes, growth in mortgage costs and growth in NHS waiting lists. There is no plan
for the future, just a Tory legacy of pain. It will take a Labour Government to spark and sustain growth, lift people’s living standards in every part of the country, meet the challenges of the future and achieve the change that our country desperately needs.
When I meet people in industry, I hear frustration from employers who cannot get and retain the staff that they need. It is a feeling the Tories know all too well, with three Prime Ministers in one year, and the current Chancellor the fourth in that role since just last summer. Yet somehow, it is the same Tory Government. It is a bit like Trigger’s broom in “Only Fools and Horses”, with its 17 new heads and 14 new handles, only much less useful.
After his five months as Chancellor, the right hon. Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt) might feel that he should qualify for a Conservative party long-service award. In fact, of the past three Chancellors, he is the first to deliver a Budget, although the last Chancellor did last long enough to deliver a mini-Budget that crashed our economy—an extreme experiment in ultra-Tory ideology, using Britain’s economy and people’s livelihoods as their laboratory. It must never happen again.