Achieving Economic Growth — House of Commons, 2022-05-18
Topic: Macroeconomics
Alison Emily Thewliss (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Today is National Numeracy Day and there will be a lot of figures flying about this afternoon. It often makes me think that it would be helpful in this place if we were allowed to do as they do in the US Senate and have great big charts we can point at to make these debates easier for people to follow. But the Bank of England’s predictions on GDP growth, thankfully for the Government, are quite easy to illustrate—they are pretty much a flat line. The cost of living crisis and Brexit continue to hold back growth, and opportunities for more sustainable, inclusive growth, conscious of our climate obligations presented at the COP26 summit in my constituency last year, are being squandered. It is not so much a Union dividend as a stagnant economy. It does not have to be this way We need to recognise that the endless pursuit of GDP growth at any cost destroys communities and the planet. Growth should be inclusive and should prioritise policies that tackle inequalities, contribute to net zero and provide high-quality jobs. Investing in green technologies, in insulating and retrofitting homes, and in improving public transport would all be a good start, but no Bills in the Queen’s Speech get close to that ambition. In Scotland, the SNP has put wellbeing at the heart of our economic strategy. It is through wellbeing and fair work that we can deliver higher rates of employment and wage growth, reduce poverty, and improve outcomes for disadvantaged families and communities I was proud to serve on the Scottish Government’s Social Justice and Fairness Commission, which, prior to the pandemic, set out some of the direction of travel. Last week, the Scottish Government announced the establishment of a new centre of expertise in equality and human rights, which will see the Scottish Government working with leading experts to address economic inequality, building on the principle that a fairer economy is a stronger economy Post pandemic, we are presented with a clear choice over whether to lead or to lag behind other successful and more equal economies while we recover from covid, deliver net zero, tackle structural inequalities and grow the economy. The UK Tory Government have chosen to ignore the problems and to lag. The UK economy is now forecast to be the worst-performing G7 economy next year. This week, we had more of the Chancellor’s sleight of hand on Twitter, in using a scale on a graph that makes less than 1% in GDP growth look good. It is not that good, so the Government should stop pretending that it is, and it is in no small part a consequence of their policy choices There has been no clear economic strategy from the UK Tory Government, yet the policy choice that looms over all things, from the Northern Ireland protocol disputes to manufacturing and labour supply, is Brexit. There is no doubt that global forces are posing huge challenges now, but these have been compounded by Brexit, the daftest of all economic policies. By December 2021, leaving the single market and customs union had reduced UK goods trade by 14.9%. Analysis by the Centre for European Reform shows that UK exports have taken a larger hit than imports. Pushing through that Brexit cliff edge in the middle of a pandemic, and masking the economic damage regardless of the economic cost, is an act of great economic self-sabotage. GDP growth in the UK is only about half the EU average since the Brexit referendum.