Bradley Thomas

Absolutely not. I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman. Under the previous Government, the NHS received record levels of funding. The Government have committed additional funds to the NHS, but they have not put forward a productivity improvement plan. The Government are unable to deliver structural reforms because they are in the pocket of their union paymasters. They have zero incentive at all to structurally reform the public services that they claim to care about so dearly. I touched on covid and the financial climate that this Government inherited. Over 14 years, the previous Government delivered 800 jobs per day. The previous Government also delivered a direct cut of £900 in national insurance to the pocket of every “working person”. Governing is about choices. In this Budget, the Government are borrowing £40 billion of additional spending. In reality, we are seeing the same old tax-and-spend Labour. Let us look at some of those choices. National insurance contributions are up. The Chancellor said that NIC increases for employers would be a jobs tax. The Institute for Fiscal Studies said that would be a straightforward breach of the manifesto. Rate relief is down. A typical pub is paying £6,000 more in business rates per annum. There is the family farm tax, which I desperately hope this Government will do a U-turn on, and the education tax. Let us look at the impact of all those decisions. The economy is flatlining—there was 0.1% growth in quarter 3. Inflation is up, from 1.7% to 2.3%. There was a 64% increase in business closures the week after the Budget. Asda has said that the Government’s decisions in the Budget risk price rises. John Lewis has said that it is worried about the impact of the national minimum wage increase. Two thirds of businesses claim that they are looking at freezing recruitment or making job cuts. We have already heard hon. Members talk about the impact on the charity sector. In fact, during this debate, I received an email from YMCA, which said that because of the increase in national insurance that it will have to pay in Worcestershire, it will look to freeze all recruitment and probably make redundancies. It will not be able to give a pay award to any of its staff, and it will look at cutting services. That is damning. We see from the Government an ideological pursuit of a policy that is really a false economy. Labour is failing the very working person that it claims to be protecting.