Jim Shannon

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate; thank you for calling me, Madam Deputy Speaker. I wish to welcome some of the good things in the Budget, because it is not all bad news, by the way—[Interruption.] Members should not put their thumbs up just yet—I am coming to the parts about which I have important Northern Ireland-based concerns. I am concerned for the squeezed families of Strangford, who look at the Budget and have little cause for celebration. Look at the uncertainty facing the local business community in Northern Ireland. Standard small business rates relief is being permanently expanded in England, yet there is zero certainty that our small and medium-sized enterprises back home will see an equivalent benefit. Our highly capable SMEs, which form the bedrock of the Northern Irish economy, need iron-clad guarantees, not vague hopes. The working middle class go to work and pay their taxes. They try to build something for their children, yet they are treated like a bottomless well of revenue by the Treasury. Take, for example, a hard-working family in my constituency of Strangford—a schoolteacher and a mid-level nurse. They have managed to put away a modest amount of savings to help fund their children’s university education. They will get no help for their children’s education and future, yet they will be forced to work on past retirement to ensure that their child has a chance at a future. Nowhere is that clearer than in the cruel and punitive approach to family inheritance tax. Our agricultural sector in Northern Ireland is in a state of absolute panic. I have spoken with the Ulster Farmers’ Union, which tells me that generations of family farms—the very lifeblood of our rural communities—are now halting investment decisions because of inheritance tax fears. Passing a family business or a family farm down to the next generation is not a luxury; it is a way of life, and the Budget threatens to dismantle that. On the Barnett formula, let us be realistic: the Barnett consequentials are totally inadequate. Why is that the case? Throwing a general lump sum at the Northern Ireland Executive and hoping that it covers police, health and education is a failure of governance. We need an allocation method equivalent to that for Wales, not a funding system that is not fit for purpose. That must be sorted out. Funding must be based on genuine local need, not a rigid, detached mathematical formula. We must protect our middle class, safeguard our family farms, and give Northern Ireland the specific, targeted support that it desperately needs. Our hard-working middle class see no benefit for themselves, and even less for their children. When a parent works 50 hours a week, pays their taxes—big taxes—plays by the rules and still cannot see a path to a better future or a stable inheritance for the next generation, the social contract is broken. If the Government continue to bleed the middle class dry to paper over the cracks of their own fiscal failures, they will destroy the very aspiration that keeps this nation, this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, moving forward. The Budget offers no security on defence, and no reason to build a business and to work hard. It relies on the ethic of some to make up for the lack of ethic in too many. The Government must look closely at the people it punishes, because they need to breathe, and I do not believe the Budget provides that.