Julia Lopez

My right hon. Friend tells us a terrible story that is unfortunately being played out in constituencies across this country. People are having their buffer eroded and then they are simply not able to invest in their businesses in the way that they would have hoped. It was all so predictable. Let me close by reading out what I said to my constituents immediately after the 2024 Budget: “Labour said in the election they did not need to hike taxes to pay for their plans, beyond those they had already announced. We now know this was not true—they have gone on a borrowing and spending spree that makes a mockery of the idea that they are concerned about the state of public finances they inherited.  Many of the taxes on ordinary working people have been disguised by heaping pain on business. Labour may think it’s clever politics. But the result will be job losses, higher prices and closures…this approach is all wrong, warping the incentive structure in our economy. It won’t work and as they come back for more taxes, the number of people willing to take the risk of starting a business or save for their families will simply get smaller and smaller.” We are now living that future. Have these tax rises given us robust public finances? Have they delivered better public services? Do people feel better off? On all counts, the answer is no, yet this new Prime Minister believes that the solution to the resulting welfare crisis is to give Labour more taxes to spend. It does not work. Employers are the funders of services, the drivers of growth and the engines of opportunity. Many are not just working people themselves but working people on steroids, and they are fed up of being the cash machine for Labour’s faux benevolence. Their requests are simple: give us the chance to grow our businesses and build a future pipeline of young people to whom one day we might well pass our life’s work. It is time for this Government to start undoing the damage they have wreaked and halve the jobs tax on the young people whose aspirations Labour is burying right now.