Happy new year to you, Mrs Harris, and to everyone else at this important debate, which was ably introduced by the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone), the Chairman of the Petitions Committee.
It is an extraordinary thing that we are debating a petition calling for a general election, barely six months from the previous election. It is even more extraordinary that that petition generated over 3 million signatures in just a few weeks. It is also highly noteworthy that of the 650 parliamentary constituencies in the UK, six of the top 10 by number of signatures are in the county of Essex. That includes my constituency of Rayleigh and Wickford, which is at No. 8. I do not see an Essex Labour MP here. Having spoken to my constituents at surgeries and out and about in my patch, and having seen their emails, perhaps I can suggest some reasons why.
The first reason is the economy. In late May, during the general election campaign, Labour’s then shadow Chancellor gave a major speech on what Labour’s economic policy would be if it won. In that speech, famously, she promised that all Labour’s policies were “fully funded and fully costed”. She said that as a result there would be no need for any further tax increases if Labour won in July. Then, within four months of the Budget, the very same person announced a gigantic £40 billion of tax increases, on everything from national insurance to inheritance tax, stamp duty, capital gains, farming, landlords, pubs, school fees and even, potentially, service widows.
The Chancellor’s justification for one of the largest tax increases in British peacetime history was this supposed £22 billion black hole, even though £9 billion of it was caused by a combination of public sector wage increases, including for junior doctors and train drivers, made after Labour came to office, as the public were all too aware. Labour’s central economic proposition—the need to fix this supposed black hole—was a sham from the start. That is why it has never been taken on by the public, who saw right through it from the start.
Labour gave the same justification for withdrawing the winter fuel allowance from up to 10 million pensioners. That option, long favoured by Treasury mandarins, was one that Labour often accused us of being willing to implement, although we never did. It was a Labour Chancellor who eventually did so, supposedly to save £1.5 billion in a full year. However, such has been the subsequent shift among pensioners to sign up for pension credit, largely in order to keep getting the allowance, that a large part of that £1.5 billion has effectively already disappeared and could be negated entirely, thus proving the withdrawal of the allowance to be a total own goal, not just morally but financially. My hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris), my neighbour, reports that more than 20,000 pensioners in her constituency have had their winter fuel allowance withdrawn. As she puts it, they and their families are furious with Labour.
Then we have Labour’s plan for so-called devolution, as outlined in a White Paper before Christmas. In Essex, it would replace a two-tier system of local government with another two-tier system of local government that would take decisions even further away from local people. It is a Trojan horse designed to concrete over our green belt in Essex and is based largely on Sadiq Khan’s systems, as is clear from reading the White Paper. I can tell the House that the last thing we want in Essex is another Sadiq Khan.
There is also great frustration about the small boats. Labour promised to “smash the gangs”. That was its slogan, and that is what it was: a slogan, not a policy. The smuggling gangs remain decidedly unsmashed. Instead, without any credible deterrent, the small boats keep coming: they are up by a third since Labour took office. Labour clearly has no plan whatever, so the boats are going to keep coming while the Government look on.
So many of Labour’s plans were based on economic growth. From us, they inherited the fastest growing economy in the G7. [Laughter.] It was! And it is now flatlining under Labour. That is why we had the five missions, and now we have the six milestones; soon we will have the seven wonders of the world. We cannot increase growth by whacking up taxes across the entire British economy.
There are 7,287 people in my Rayleigh and Wickford constituency who have signed the petition. We cannot know why every one of them signed it. Perhaps they were enraged that Labour promised no new tax increases and then put taxes up by 40 billion quid. Perhaps they are among the up to 10 million pensioners who have had their winter fuel allowance taken away by the Chancellor. Perhaps they are among the 3.8 million WASPI women who were led up the garden path by Labour, from the PM downwards, prior to the general election and were dumped unceremoniously thereafter. Perhaps they believed Labour’s promises to smash the gangs, only to see arrivals increase by a third since Labour took office. Or perhaps they have just realised that when Labour promised change, what it really meant was more taxes, more bureaucracy and even more boats.
Whatever it was, we now have a Labour Government who, by breaking so many of their promises so early to those who elected them, have already all but surrendered their moral right to govern. The British people want change all right: they want a change from Labour, and the sooner the better.
5.5 pm