Mike Wood

The disappointment of today’s Budget is that, having put on his running shoes for the media earlier this week, the Chancellor spent his statement running away from the big challenges facing the country and ducking each difficult decision. The first big challenge that he ducked was getting a proper grip on the public finances, so that we do not have to leave our children and grandchildren with spiralling national debt. He tells us that everything is under control because the OBR says that his fiscal rules have technically been met, but the public are not fooled by Treasury scorecards, and neither are the markets. Just like his predecessor, the Chancellor promises to bring borrowing down right at the end of the period covered by his fiscal rules, in this case with the hidden promise of 2.6% annual spending cuts, which includes those 2% a year cuts from mainstream schools every year, after the next general election. Those steep cuts will clearly never happen, and the markets know it. In the meantime, he did not say that he was increasing borrowing from 2.9% to 3.4% next year, and from 2.5% to 2.9% the year after—billions in extra borrowing. Like his predecessor, the Chancellor seems to take his inspiration from St Augustine: “Oh Lord, help me to be pure, but not yet.” Every year, the date for that fiscal restraint is pushed back another 12 months and borrowing revised up in the meantime. He speaks of fiscal discipline, but this is fiscal policy on the never-never. Nowhere is the reason for that fiscal timidity clearer than on welfare. All hon. Members know that public spending cannot be controlled and Britain cannot get back to work without proper structural reform to a ballooning welfare bill, but where we needed action, all we got were yet more taskforces, reviews and procrastination. That failure on welfare leads directly to the most sorrowful failure in the Chancellor’s entire Budget: national defence. The Chancellor knows the urgent need for an immediate plan to increase defence spending to 3% of GDP by 2030 better than anyone; it is why he said he resigned as Defence Secretary earlier in the year. He knew the Government were playing Treasury accounting tricks—tucking MI5, pensions, the Chagos Islands bills and even £200 million for doing up Barrow-in-Furness high street under the badge of “defence spending” to pad out a press release—but when we strip out those tricks, our armed forces are facing a real-terms cut in their day-to-day running costs over the next three years. Finally, the Chancellor had the chance today to undo the terrible damage done by his predecessor and inject real, sustainable growth into our economy. Business distress is at a 20 year high. High street names like Poundland are collapsing, and young people have paid the heaviest price of all, with surging numbers of NEETs and a genuine youth jobs crisis. Nowhere feels the triple whammy of high employment costs, punitive business rates and relentless regulation more acutely than our hospitality sector. Our pubs, bars and restaurants are the heart and soul of communities like mine in Kingswinford and South Staffordshire—