Contribution
Madam Deputy Speaker, on 4 July, the country voted for change. This Government were given a mandate: to restore stability to our economy and to begin a decade of national renewal; to fix the foundations and deliver change through responsible leadership in the national interest. That is our task, and I know that we can achieve it.
My belief in Britain burns brighter than ever, and the prize on offer is immense. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said on Monday, change must be felt: more pounds in people’s pockets; an NHS that is there when we need it; and an economy that is growing, creating wealth and opportunity for all, because that is the only way to improve living standards. The only way to drive economic growth is to invest, invest, invest. There are no shortcuts, and, to deliver that investment, we must restore economic stability and turn the page on the last 14 years.
This is not the first time that it has fallen to the Labour party to rebuild Britain. In 1945, it was the Labour party that rebuilt our country out of the rubble of the second world war. In 1964, it was the Labour party that rebuilt Britain with the white heat of technology, and, in 1997, it was the Labour party that rebuilt our schools and our hospitals. Today, it falls to this Labour party—to this Labour Government—to rebuild Britain once again. And while this is the first Budget in more than 14 years to be delivered by a Labour Chancellor, it is the first Budget in our country’s history to be delivered by a woman. I am deeply proud to be Britain’s first ever female Chancellor of the Exchequer. To girls and young women everywhere, I say: let there be no ceiling on your ambition, your hopes and your dreams. Along with the pride that I feel standing here today, there is also a responsibility to pass on a fairer society and a stronger economy to the next generation of women.
Madam Deputy Speaker, the Conservative party failed our country: its austerity broke our national health service; its Brexit deal harmed British businesses; and its mini-Budget left families paying the price with higher mortgages. The British people have inherited the Conservative party’s failure: a black hole in the public finances; public services on their knees; a decade of low growth; and the worst Parliament on record for living standards.
Let me begin with the public finances. In July, I exposed a £22 billion black hole at the heart of the previous Government’s plans—a series of promises that they made, but had no money to deliver—covered up from the British people and covered up from this House. The Treasury’s reserve, set aside for genuine emergencies, was spent three times over just three months into the financial year. Today, on top of the detailed document that I provided to the House in July, the Government are publishing a line-by-line breakdown of the £22 billion black hole that we inherited, which shows hundreds of unfunded pressures on the public finances this year, and into the future too.
The Office for Budget Responsibility has published its own review of the circumstances around the spring Budget forecast. It says that the previous Government
“did not provide the OBR with all the information to them”
and that, had the OBR known about these
“undisclosed spending pressures that have since come to light”,
then its spring Budget forecast for spending would have been “materially different”.
Let me be clear: that means that any comparison between today’s forecast and the OBR’s March forecast is false, because the previous Government hid the reality of their public spending plans. Yet at the very same Budget, they made another £10 billion-worth of cuts to national insurance. It was the height of irresponsibility, and they knew it. They had run out of road, and they called an election to avoid making difficult choices. So let me make this promise to the British people: never again will we allow a Government to play fast and loose with the public finances and never again will we allow a Government to hide the true state of our public finances from our independent forecaster. That is why I can today confirm that we will implement in full the 10 recommendations from the independent Office for Budget Responsibility’s review.
The country has inherited not just broken public finances, but broken public services. The British people can see and feel that in their everyday lives: NHS waiting lists at record levels; children in portacabins as school roofs crumble; trains that do not arrive; rivers filled with polluted waste; prisons overflowing; crimes that are not investigated; and criminals who are not punished. That is the country’s inheritance from the Conservative Government. They had no plan to improve our public services and they had no plan to put our public finances on a sustainable footing—quite the opposite.
Since 2021, there have been no detailed plans for departmental spending set out beyond this year, and the previous Government’s plans relied on a baseline for spending this year, which we now know was wrong because it did not take into account the £22 billion black hole. They also failed to budget for costs that they knew would materialise, including funding for vital compensation schemes for victims of two terrible injustices—[Interruption.]