Contribution
Our borrowing is even higher than Greece’s. Indeed, if debt were a Department, it would be the third largest spending Department in Whitehall. That is money not going on the people’s priorities, but simply being flushed down the drain. The right hon. Lady puts great store in the latest forecasts on debt and says that it is coming down, compared with the forecasts back in the autumn, but if we strip away her dodgy definition of debt, we can see that it will be going up in just about every year of the forecast period.
The right hon. Lady has the audacity to praise her own performance. She points to growth, but does she not know that, only last month, the Bank of England downgraded growth for both this year and next year? A moment ago, she said that the Government had beaten the forecasts for growth from last year. The forecast at the beginning of last year was for 2% growth, but the growth outcome at the end of last year was 1.3%. By my mathematics, that is not an improvement. It should be of considerable concern to the entire House that the right hon. Lady clearly thinks that it is.
The right hon. Lady points to interest rates coming down, but does she not know that her ruinous inflationary policies have seen interest rates higher for longer, meaning more expensive mortgages for hundreds of thousands of people across our country? She was slightly coy about unemployment—because, of course, we know that it now stands at a five-year high. Under every single Labour Government in history, unemployment has risen, and this Government are no exception.
The right hon. Lady is fond of saying that she is simply asking people to pay a little more tax. Well, I do not remember the taxman phoning me up and asking me if I would awfully mind paying a little more tax. And what does it mean? It means workers struggling, employers laying off staff, and tens of thousands of the most talented people in our country going to other places, where they believe the opportunities are greater. That is what a little more tax means. And what has that tax done? It has destroyed and deeply damaged entire sectors of our economy. Hospitality has seen almost 100,000 job losses since this Government came to office, and that has particularly impacted our youngest people.
Youth unemployment is the highest in Europe for the first time in a quarter of a century. The dreams, aspirations and hopes of young people—of all those bright young faces—have been smashed on the altar of the right hon. Lady’s incompetence. What is her message to young people today? Her message today has been that her so-called plan is working, but what is the reality? Inflation? Up. Borrowing? Up. Spending? Up. Tax? Up. Welfare? Up. Unemployment? Up. All this speaks to the weakness and chaos of this Government. Is it any wonder that her so-called plan is not working? Our energy costs are among the highest in the world, and yet she is doubling down on net zero. Given where we are, the first thing that the right hon. Lady should do is get rid of those taxes on North sea oil and allow us to start exploiting those opportunities.
We have a welfare bill that is spiralling ever upwards, but what does the right hon. Lady do? She removes the two-child benefit cap. We have taxes heading to the highest level in history because of her choices, destroying the futures of men, women and children right up and down our country—and there is no contrition, no apology and no plan to do anything about it.
It does not have to be this way. At our conference, we set out how we can control public spending with £47 billion of savings, especially on the welfare bill, with some £23 billion of savings. We are a party that believes in work, rather than benefits. We are a party that will do something about it. We are a party of work; Labour is the party of “Benefits Street”. We will bring taxes down to kick-start the economy, abolish stamp duty, scrap business rates for businesses on our high streets, and give our young people a £5,000 tax cut. We have a cheap power plan. We will fix student loans and invest in apprenticeships. Though our golden rule, we will get on top of the deficit and, by doing that, grow the economy.
That is our plan. What is the right hon. Lady’s plan? The truth is that she has no plan, or, as her Health Secretary said, there is
“no growth strategy at all”.
Even if she did have a plan, she would be too weak to deliver it, given the psychodramas swirling around No. 10, the almost daily scandals visiting the door of the Prime Minister, the sight of a person once at the highest level in the diplomatic service being carted away in a car by the police, and Back Benchers calling the shots. The Chancellor’s credibility has gone. The Prime Minister’s chief of staff has gone. His Cabinet Secretary has gone. But somehow the Chancellor hangs on.
Through the chaotic fog, the drums are drawing ever closer. The British people deserve so much better. So, for the hard-working people in our country crushed by taxes, for those denied employment, for the farmers and the family business owners who have suffered in fear for too long, for every hollowed-out high street, for every young person robbed of their future, for every elderly person struggling to survive and for the generations yet to come, we say: go!