Amendment of the Law — House of Commons, 2015-03-23
Topic: Macroeconomics
Christopher Michael Leslie (Labour, Centre-left): Perhaps we can ask Hansard for a transcript later. I would certainly be interested to read that When we look at the Chancellor’s plans—and those of the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions—we see that he is thinking about cutting for the next three years at twice the level we have seen over the past three years. The Chancellor realised how toxic his plans were shortly after the autumn statement, when he published the trajectory that showed he would take Britain back to 1930s levels of public investment as a share of national income. In the days running up to the Budget, we were therefore told that he had had a change of heart on public spending—coincidentally, it was just weeks before an election campaign. Sure enough, the figures for 2019-20 were shuffled around in the Budget. However, in the end, he just could not fight his gut instinct, so all he did was to front-load the cuts on to the first three years of the next Parliament and hope that nobody would notice Unfortunately for the Chancellor, the Office for Budget Responsibility did notice. It said that his plans will mean "a much sharper squeeze on real spending in 2016-17 and 2017-18 than anything seen over the past five years" and "a sharp acceleration in the pace of implied real cuts to day-to-day spending on public services" That will create what the OBR calls "a rollercoaster profile for implied public services spending through the next Parliament" We remain with a path of public spending that is based on ideology and political game playing, rather than a Budget for our public services based on what the economy requires and what our country needs I ask my hon. Friends to imagine the impact these extreme plans will have, especially on the public services that the Government say are unprotected—the police, bus and rail services, the Army and our defences—and on all those who depend on tax credits to make ends meet. I encourage my hon. Friends to take a moment to look at exactly what those extreme cuts will mean. They are not just statistics in the Red Book; they will have real consequences for real people’s lives To take social care as an example, in the past five years, the number of vulnerable people who receive social care support has fallen by 500,000 and the number of home-delivered meals—meals on wheels—has fallen by 59%. Of course, there has also been a rise in the peremptory 15-minute visits. That is just what has happened so far, before the Government tip social care over the precipice of the rollercoaster. Just imagine what the next three years could bring. Care cuts like this are health service cuts. As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) said, our health services will be placed in real jeopardy in that scenario. It says everything one needs to know about this Chancellor that the battle of Agincourt got twice as many references in the Budget speech as the NHS. When I look at the Government’s Budget, it is not so much "Henry V" that comes to mind as "The Comedy of Errors" This path of spending—extreme and unnecessary, going way beyond tackling the deficit—is why we will vote against the Budget resolutions tonight. This is a Budget that delivered little, but revealed much. It revealed the Conservatives’ ideological obsession with shrinking public services in preparation for a privatised society. There is no support for those struggling on low incomes and in insecure work, no credible action to tackle tax avoidance and close the tax gap, nothing to reverse their tax cut for millionaires and no help for the NHS. We have a Chancellor who is full of spin but is fooling no one, and a Chief Secretary who is enjoying his final days in office but not in power What we need is a Labour Government who will put the interests of the British people first; who will balance the books in a fair way; who will help small businesses with a cut in business rates, rather than simply helping the largest corporations; who will raise living standards by raising the minimum wage and expanding free child care; and who will govern for the many and not for the few, because Britain succeeds when working people succeed. That would be a better plan and a better Budget. That is why I urge my hon. Friends to reject the Budget of this failing Government