Heidi Alexander

It is a privilege to respond to today’s debate on the Budget. We have heard some excellent contributions from many colleagues, particularly those on this side of the House, and I hope my hon. Friends will forgive me if I do not mention them all by name. I will respond in writing to the specific questions put to me by my hon. Friends the Members for Ellesmere Port and Bromborough (Justin Madders), for Bathgate and Linlithgow (Kirsteen Sullivan) and for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury). We have also had some thoughtful and measured contributions from Opposition Members, including the hon. Member for Dorking and Horley (Chris Coghlan) and the right hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson). It is a shame that some of the other contributions from those on the Opposition Benches can best be described as heavy on indignation and light on contrition. You would have thought that the right hon. Members for Salisbury (John Glen) and for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay), as well as the shadow Transport Secretary, had no responsibility whatsoever for the economic inheritance that the last Government passed on to this one. We all know that the last Parliament saw living standards fall, and it is not a record to be proud of. This Government were elected on a promise of change, which was the demand of a weary public. People were fed up with rising bills and falling real wages, fed up with schools and hospitals that had been cut to the bone, and fed up with trains and buses that they could not rely on. The economy—indeed, the country—felt broken in the very places that mattered most. In this Budget, I am proud that we are answering the public’s call for change, and making the fair and necessary choices to repair our public finances and deliver on the nation’s priorities. We are cutting the cost of living through cheaper energy bills, frozen prescription charges and frozen rail fares. We are putting record investment into our NHS, bringing waiting lists down and creating 250 new neighbourhood health centres. We are righting a moral wrong by lifting hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty, not just through school breakfast clubs and by lifting the minimum wage, but by scrapping the two-child universal credit cap. And we are doing all this while meeting our fiscal rules. After years of decline, this is what rebuilding our country looks like.