Kanishka Narayan

It is a privilege to speak in this historic Budget and on this historic day, and I start by congratulating my right hon. Friend the Chancellor and the Treasury team. For 14 years, the people of the Vale of Glamorgan and this country have carried the weight of hope, pent up inside. Today the Chancellor has weighed up their hopes, looked them in the eyes and lifted them. For that I congratulate her and the entire Treasury team. Government is supposed to be the means by which ordinary people exercise their collective agency to shape our communities. For 14 years, the Conservatives denied ordinary people their voice. They denied us collective agency and a sense of hope in our community. Per-worker productivity growth in the past decade was the weakest on average since 1850. That is the worst foundation for shared prosperity. Public services are on their knees. That is the worst foundation for shared dignity. Our Army has shrunk and our prisons are bursting. That is the worst foundation for shared security. And through it all, we have had the double whammy of high borrowing rates and low nominal growth, through which they punched into our weak foundations a further £22 billion fiscal black hole. As a side note, it is astonishing to me that the hon. Member for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire (Mike Wood) talks about fiscal responsibility and semantics. I do not think he was rising and talking about that during the sharpest spike in overnight gilt yields this country had seen in the 21st century. This is a national embarrassment for the Conservatives. They should be standing here and apologising. They should be pointing the finger down, as they ought to have been doing at the time, and apologising for what they were doing, but I see no contrition on that side of the House. There are those who ask why we talk about the £22 billion black hole the Conservatives left, and why we dwell on the past. I do so because, if we are to grip the urgency of where we must go, we have to know where we have come from. Even more, amid the worst foundation for prosperity, dignity and security and the final punch of their fiscal black hole, there is a deeper inheritance, which is one of diminished trust and diminished hope that we can get out of their hole. That is why the Chancellor’s Budget is not just good for our economy but essential for my community in the Vale of Glamorgan. It says with strong conviction, “That was them. This is now us.” It is the voice of ordinary people expressed in our collective agency. Foundations that were wrecked by them will now be fixed by us. The OBR that was trashed by them, and is still being trashed by them, will be affirmed by us. Investment in our future, our health and our jobs that was structurally slashed by them will be regained by us.