Connor Naismith

I thank the hon. Member for that intervention. Look, we will await the Budget to see the OBR’s forecasts, but I will take no lessons from the party opposite on economic credibility. They are the party of Liz Truss, which dragged this country into the economic abyss. We know that Tory austerity and a lack of investment in our country’s infrastructure are part of the story of why our economic growth and productivity have never recovered since the financial crash in 2008. It seems like the Conservatives want to take us right back to the beginning of that 14 years of chaos, failure and decline. I think my constituents would say no, frankly. What is worse, the Conservatives cannot even tell us with any credibility where the cuts would fall. We have seen this playbook before. They have no credible plan to pay for their promises, just vague talk of savings from the very services that our communities rely on—our schools, NHS and local infrastructure. The Tories have some cheek to come here and talk about home ownership when they manifestly failed to build the homes that our country needs because they presided over a broken planning system that they did nothing to reform. As I mentioned earlier, my constituents have not forgotten what Liz Truss’s mini-Budget did to their mortgage payments. During the election campaign, I spoke directly with families in Crewe and Nantwich who had seen their monthly costs soar overnight. I distinctly remember speaking to a man who told me that his mortgage payments had risen by £1,000 a month and that he had been forced to sell his home as a result. If we want to examine the reality beyond the rhetoric of the modern day Conservative party’s record on home ownership, it is that: failure to deliver, soaring prices and broken dreams.