Contribution
Today the Chancellor has announced a new tax raid of £26 billion, and Labour Members were all cheering. Household income is down. Spending policies in this Budget increase borrowing in every year. That smorgasbord of misery we just heard from her can be summed up in one sentence: Labour is hiking taxes to pay for welfare. This is a Budget for “Benefits Street”, paid for by working people.
This Budget increases benefits for 560,000 families by an average of £5,000. The Government are hiking taxes on workers, pensioners and savers to pay for handouts to keep their Back Benchers quiet. These are the same—[Interruption.] They can chunter all they like. These are the same Back Benchers who cheered last year when the Chancellor taxed jobs and left more than 100,000 people without an income. They cheered because they did not understand the consequences of what they were doing, and they still do not.
It has not been an easy time for the Chancellor. No one liked seeing her sitting on the Government Benches as it dawned on her that her own Back Benchers were going to do to her political career what she has done to our economy. She could have chosen today to bring down welfare spending and get more people into work. Instead, she has chosen to put up tax after tax after tax—taxes on workers, taxes on savers, taxes on pensioners, taxes on investors and taxes on homes, holidays, cars and even milkshakes. There are taxes on anyone doing the right thing. She and this Government have lost what little credibility they had left, and no one will ever trust her again.
What is amazing is that the Chancellor has the nerve to come to this House and claim that this is all someone else’s fault. She has a laundry list of excuses. Labour Members blame the Conservatives as if we have been sneaking into the Treasury under the cover of darkness to give pay rises to the unions. The Chancellor inherited an economy with inflation at 2% and record-high employment. She has tanked it in just over a year. She has endless excuses—she blames Brexit and Donald Trump, but she needs to blame herself.
I have some news for the Chancellor—she did not seem to understand what the OBR was saying. Inflation is up, not down, and that inflation was stoked by her tax and spend decisions. The economic and fiscal outlook says that the OBR expects inflation to stay higher for longer. Everybody else has read the OBR analysis, but she still has not. She blames higher than expected borrowing costs. Where does she think they came from? [Hon. Members: “You!”] Those borrowing costs are driven by the Chancellor’s lack of grip. Labour Members are saying those costs came from us, but she is paying more to borrow than Greece. She is paying more to borrow than at any point under the 14 years of Conservative government—perhaps if Labour MPs read a book sometimes, they would know something—which included an energy crisis sparked by a war in Ukraine and a global pandemic. What is the Chancellor’s excuse? She is taking the public for fools, but they are under no illusions about whose fault this is.
The fact is that the bad choices the Chancellor is making today—choices to break promises, choices to put up taxes, choices to spend more of other people’s money—are because of the bad choices she made at the last disastrous Budget. If you want growth, you need to start with knowing what kind of country you want to be and make a plan to get there. You need to create certainty for the people and businesses who will drive growth. There is no growth and no plan, because Labour focused on settling scores and scratching the itches it had while in opposition.
The Chancellor promised stability. She delivered chaos. Just look at the circus around this Budget: first, the leaks—then more leaks to try to undo the damage; calling panicky press conferences and U-turning on her U-turns; rolling the pitch one day only to plough through it the next. She had the cheek to talk about stability, but she has become the first Chancellor in history to release the whole Budget ahead of time. This is extraordinary, and it tells us everything we need to know about her grip on the Treasury. She is making the UK a shambolic laughing stock to international investors, and if she does not resign for breaking her promises, she should sure as hell go for this.
What have we got for all this chaos and disorder? There are 1 million more people claiming universal credit than there were at the time of the last Budget. Government spending? Up. Welfare spending? Up. Universal credit claimants? Up. Unemployment? Up. Debt interest? Up. Inflation? Up. And what about the things that we want to go up? Growth? Down. Investment? Down. Business confidence? Down. The credibility of the Chancellor? [Hon. Members: “Down!”] Not just down, but through the floor.
These figures are shocking. Does the Chancellor really think that anyone will be confused by the sleight of hand in her speech? Her speech today was an exercise in self-delusion. Today she had an opportunity to apologise and show some humility; instead, we have been fed puff pieces in The Times and the FT showing a woman wallowing in self-pity and whining about mansplaining and misogyny. Let me explain to the Chancellor—[Interruption.]