Contribution
Before I begin, I must—as well as drawing the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests—draw its attention to the fact that I have a family member who works for Allied Irish Bank.
I have been looking forward to today. I feel honoured to have been chosen by this House, on a cross-party basis, to chair the Treasury Committee, and to be the first Labour Treasury Committee Chair to welcome the Budget of a Labour Government and our first female Labour Chancellor. I thought that, after a 14-year wait, this would be an exciting moment; and in a moment of sentimentality, realising that for the second time today I would be following the right hon. Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak), I was going to reflect on an interesting constitutional position. When I was in my former role as Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, there was common ground at times with the Prime Minister of the day. In private, when I had cause to meet the right hon. Gentleman, he was courteous, thoughtful and respectful, had the national interest at heart, and, when it came to constitutional matters, was in very much the same place as me. I was therefore very disappointed today by the cheek of the right hon. Gentleman in standing up and having the chutzpah to talk about fear, foreboding and uncertainty.
It was the 2022 mini-Budget that plunged the country into crisis, put up the mortgage rates of our constituents, and is still leaving people living in great hardship. It was on the right hon. Gentleman’s watch as Chancellor—although he did some things about covid that we would all recognise needed to be done, and we recognised it at the time—that the bounce back loans led to a significant amount of the fraud that resulted from covid. Now my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has stood up, and what has happened? The FTSE is up—and it has gone up by more since I stood up, by 1.6 percentage points, unless anyone can update me—and the OBR has said that this will add growth to the economy.
The right hon. Gentleman also attacked the Chancellor on fiscal rules. Let us be clear: fiscal rules are not a new thing. Since 2011 there have been seven fiscal mandates, five supplementary debt targets, two supplementary borrowing targets, and an investment limit. The rules set in 2011 lasted three years, but in the last three years we have had three different fiscal mandates, two different supplementary debt caps, and one supplementary borrowing target. I think the Chancellor knows that when she is in front of the Treasury Committee we may challenge her and ask her about her fiscal rules, but I have certainty—we all have certainty—that she will be in her post for long enough to stick to the fiscal rules that she has set. They will have a longevity beyond the previous Government. I welcome this Budget, and pay tribute to my right hon. Friend. The UK’s first woman Chancellor stood at that Dispatch Box, and another glass ceiling was shattered. She should be proud; we are proud, and I congratulate her on that achievement.
It is my first Budget as Chair of the Treasury Committee. I have spent 13 years examining public spending in enormous detail, including nine years as Chair of the Public Accounts Committee. Like me, the Chancellor was a scrutineer: she chaired the Business and Trade Committee, and she understands the importance of scrutiny. I am very clear that the Treasury Committee will not give the Chancellor an easy ride, because she is a highly capable woman who can come and explain all her decisions to us. She knows that it is our job to rigorously examine the detail of the Budget next Wednesday, when she will appear in front us. She will be getting a bit of what she dished out as Chair of the Business and Trade Committee. I know that she will expect nothing less than robust challenge—if she were not up to it, she would not be in her post.
I have to say that I am disappointed that so much of this Budget was revealed before today, which is not normal practice. Going forward, I hope that constituents and the MPs representing them will be the first to know about major issues, and that courtesy to this House and the Treasury Committee will be a hallmark of Treasury engagement.
This Budget comes at a very exciting time, but it is a difficult one for the Chancellor. She has made it very clear that she will deliver certainty, and she has inherited one hell of a mess. We have had a tumultuous period: Brexit, the pandemic, the mini-Budget, 14 years of austerity, delayed and failed decisions, particularly on capital spending—we have had three carbon capture and storage projects that have never come to fruition—the saga and cost of stop-and-start on High Speed 2, 700,000 pupils in schools that are not fit for purpose, public services on their knees, and public sector net debt at its highest rate since the second world war.