Brian Leishman

There are pockets of Grangemouth with the deepest poverty in Scotland. Tonight in Clackmannanshire, 29% of children will go to bed living in destitution. Hunger and hardship are becoming more common. That is why I support the new clause tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell). It is obvious that four decades of de-industrialisation and the economic and social consequences that followed have been devastating for communities like mine. Of course, I understand that we cannot reverse 40 years of decline in 19 months, but we must be bolder than we have been so far, because delay will be lethal. Let us forget talk of stability. After 14 years of austerity, a global pandemic that exaggerated the inequality that austerity created, and a cost of living crisis that is making people poorer, stability just will not cut it. It is transformation we need. Truthfully, there is plenty of money in society; the problem is: who holds it? Through solutions like an annual wealth tax on the very wealthiest in society—those with assets of over £10 million—and the redistribution of that wealth into public services, education and health, we will improve people’s living standards and effectively tackle the scourge of poverty. Doing that will mean making very different political choices. Our Labour Government must meaningfully shift the dial on poverty in my constituency and across the entire country. We have to make those choices because, frankly, no one else will. There is no doubt that lifting the two-child cap will help many families in my communities, but we cannot stop there, as my hon. Friend the Member for Salford (Rebecca Long Bailey) said. Sadly, Labour Governments do not come round all that often. We have the chance to be a Labour Government who will transform Britain into a fairer, more equal place, which is what my communities, and others like them all over the country, so desperately need. Tonight, I urge the Government to do much, much more. I urge them to think of previous Labour Governments’ records on lifting people out of poverty, and the words of a previous Labour Prime Minister: we are a moral crusade or we are nothing. It is about time that we acted on those words.