Jerome Mayhew

I will go out on a limb and say that this is a terrible Budget. It is not just a “steady as it goes” Budget, because everyone in this Chamber knows that we have got some serious problems that have to be addressed by this country, both politically and economically. This will be known as the “kick it down the road” Budget. It has its eyes covered and its fingers in its ears, pretending that these problems are not real and are not now, and that we can afford to push them all down for another 12 to 18 months. Look at national debt. We have already peaked above £3 trillion of national debt in the past couple of weeks, yet this Parliament is now on course to increase borrowing above what was planned in 2024 by £308 billion. That is an increase of more than a quarter of a trillion pounds in borrowing, with no plan to get it down and no credible plan to reduce welfare spending, which is the next major issue that we have to address. Welfare dependency now makes it reasonable for 1,000 people a day to apply for the personal independence payment, because they know that they will get paid more on benefits than if they got a job. The Government recognised that needs to change and tried to make a very modest change last year, but that was voted down by Government Members, and it led to the defeat of the previous Prime Minister. What was the Government’s answer? The Timms report, which was created out of the failure of the debate last time round, and part of its objective is not to reduce spending—[Interruption.] I would be grateful if Members listened to the speech being made, rather than making their own from the Government Front Bench. Welfare dependency has to be addressed, yet we are waiting for a report, and then a response from the Government, and then a White Paper sometime next year, apparently. Then, after that, there will potentially be legislation to go through this House. That is no way to address this issue. This country faces a key and present economic, social and moral danger, and this Government are pretending that it is not there. Then we come to defence. We are told by this Government that we must prepare for a war within 1,000 days, but do we have a plan to get to spending 3% of GDP on defence by 2030? Not a bit of it. We have a plan for next year, so we are supposed to be satisfied with a plan to get to a plan. This is ridiculous. We have Ministers telling us that we have to stockpile food, but we have capital expenditure that is due to take place after that 1,000-day period. This is back-to-front government, and it is a negligent Treasury that is imposing this on our defence sector. We have a plan that reduces next year’s economic growth from 1.6%, which is pretty anaemic, down to 1%, and at no point during the forecast period does it get as far as 2%. This is outrageous.