Contribution
I thank the Chancellor for advance sight of her statement.
The right hon. Lady comes to the House with an economy in tatters. She would have us believe that she has delivered the stability and resilience that can weather the storm ahead, but she has done nothing of the kind. When she came to office, she ramped up borrowing and spending and hiked taxes to record levels. She was warned at the time, by the Office for Budget Responsibility and others, that her policies would mean higher inflation, higher borrowing costs and higher interest rates, and that she would destroy jobs. All of that has come to pass. Her mismanagement and foolish choices have given us the highest inflation in the G7, the highest borrowing costs in any major advanced economy—with gilt yields higher than those of Greece and Morocco—fragile fiscal headroom, the highest unemployment since the pandemic and rising, and GDP per capita falling. Under this Government we are getting poorer, and our economy is increasingly fragile and far from secure and resilient.
Despite what the right hon. Lady has said about tiebacks, nothing exemplifies this Government’s economic folly more than their approach to oil and gas. The utterly misguided net zero obsessions of the Energy Secretary have led to the absurdity of reduced extraction, while we see jobs destroyed, tax revenues forgone, and energy security smashed. The greatest tragedy of all is that in Jackdaw and Rosebank we have fields ready to go. In just months, they could be pumping vital relief to millions. Jackdaw alone has enough gas to supply more than 1.5 million homes, yet the right hon. Lady has nothing to say on that matter. Less oil and gas extraction means greater dependency and less security: this road leads to ruin. On energy, on the cost of living, on jobs, on growth, on public finances, on every measure that matters, the Chancellor has left us weak, weak, weak, and in the face of this energy shock, millions are about to suffer as a result.
With respect to her statement, may I ask the right hon. Lady the following questions? How many fuel retailers have yet to engage with the new fuel finder service, and can she comment on the widespread reports of technical glitches and out-of-date price information? She mentioned the small modular reactor planned for Wylfa, but given the need, can she explain why she has chosen not to go ahead with the large-scale nuclear site that was signed off by the last Conservative Government? On the specific subject of energy cost support, may I ask what fiscal capacity she believes she has to support those in need, and what plan she has to ensure that any targeted approach truly reaches all of them?
In her statement, the Chancellor criticised the last Conservative Government’s support package for not being targeted, but what she failed to mention was the fact that the present Prime Minister was then urging for support to be universal. Indeed, he said at that time that Labour’s approach would ensure
“that no household would pay a penny more on their bills.”—[Official Report, 8 September 2022; Vol. 719, c. 404.]
We have had no consistency from the right hon. Lady. How is she going to ensure that support for people depending on heating oil reaches those who need it most? Of course, that support, under this Government, will be funded through the taxes of hard-working people. Indeed, the reduction to energy bills this April is simply being taken from bills and dumped on to the shoulders of hard-pressed taxpayers.
It does not need to be this way. Is not the critical question this: where is the control of public spending? Where is the renewed resolve to grasp the welfare bill to get people off benefits and into work? I will tell you, Mr Speaker: it is nowhere, because the right hon. Lady is a captive of her own Back Benchers and has brought our economy one step from its knees. She knows it, the country knows it, and now we must all brace ourselves for what is to come—not from a position of strength, as the right hon. Lady is so desperate to have us believe, but from a position of weakness of her own making.