Adam Jogee

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate. Many of the measures announced yesterday will make a real difference to the lives of the people I represent back home in Newcastle-under-Lyme. To whom much is given, much is expected. The Labour party received a mandate and the trust of the people last year, so we must get on with the job of getting our country back on track, and this Budget helps us do that. Communities like mine in the industrial heartlands believe that hard work should always pay off, that people should contribute their fair share, that nobody should walk by on the other side, as Holy Scripture tells us, and that everyone in our United Kingdom should be able to live with dignity and opportunity and to get by and get on. Nobody in a country like ours, rich in people, ambition and potential, should ever be forced to choose between heating and eating. Nobody should be left living on social security when they can and should, if able, be at work, benefiting from the dignity and power that work provides. I am grateful for the announcement on the BCSSS. That change is something that I have campaigned hard for, alongside colleagues such as my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris), and my Staffordshire colleagues and neighbours, my hon. Friends the Members for Stoke-on-Trent North (David Williams), for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury), for Burton and Uttoxeter (Jacob Collier) and for Lichfield (Dave Robertson)—and yes, my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and Dollar (Graeme Downie), and many others. Men and women from Newcastle-under-Lyme who worked down the pits in our coal industry, fuelled our economy and kept the lights on, will now finally get the justice that they deserve. They will get the money that they are owed, and it cannot come fast enough. In our United Kingdom, no child should grow up in poverty. That is why I welcome the decision to tackle real injustice and inequality, and lift 1,770 children out of poverty in Newcastle-under-Lyme. I am glad that two local schools back home—the Meadows school and Langdale primary school—have already received funding for breakfast clubs. I look forward to more local schools benefiting, so that no child goes to school hungry. Newcastle-under-Lyme is home to many wonderful family farms and the farmers and families who live on them—people who tend to our land, feed us and keep our country going. I have raised their concerns, which I share, about the proposed changes to APR for farmers. I welcome the sensible concession in the Budget that will allow for a clearer and smoother transfer of reliefs between married couples and civil partners, but I urge colleagues on the Front Bench to consider the threshold. Going for the baddies who land bank is the right thing to do, because those who should pay must be made to pay, but we must not allow an unintended impact on small family farms.