Peter Dowd

The motto of my constituency —the old Bootle county borough—was “Respice, Aspice, Prospice”. In English, that means reflecting on the past, considering the present and looking to the future. I want to look a little to the past. In 2010 David Cameron said, “I’ll cut the deficit, not the NHS.” Well, that did not age well, did it? In 2010 the national debt was 64.7% of GDP; by 2024 it was 96.5% of GDP. What about the NHS? Waiting lists in 2010 stood at 2.4 million; in 2024 they stood at 7.6 million. Satisfaction ratings were down. Rough sleeping was up. Wage growth was down and did not recover for many years under the Tories. On food bank use, there were 100,000 food parcels in 2010, and more than 3 million by 2024. Some 3.6 million children were in poverty in 2010, and 4.3 million by 2024. There were 168,000 zero-hours contracts in 2010; by 2024 there were more than 1 million of them. Let us look to the present. We have more than 4,500 more secondary, further education and special school teachers. More than 1,300 schools have joined the free breakfast club programme. That impacts on my constituency in a very practical and positive way. Waiting lists are down. The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 protects 11 million renters. We have created Great British Energy—cutting bills for schools and hospitals, and planning clean power for 10 million homes. We have raised the national minimum wage to £13.21, which is a 3.9% increase. We have a £100 discount on energy bills for homes in council tax bands A to D, which impacts 20 million households, and 99.8% of homes in my constituency will be affected by that. Standing charges on household gas have been scrapped. The list goes on. What about the future? We are decreasing annual borrowing, with borrowing forecast to drop from £134 billion to £67 billion by 2031. On the share of GDP, annual net borrowing is expected to decline from 4.2%. We are on track with the fiscal rules. We have real wage growth—and so on, and so on. Child poverty is down. That is what we get from a Labour Budget. That is in addition to the impact of devolution in all our communities, which will be of great benefit to my constituency.