Spending Review 2020 and OBR Forecast — House of Commons, 2020-11-25
Topic: Labor
Alison Emily Thewliss (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): This spending review was an important opportunity and an important test, and instead of posing for photographs in his favourite hoodie, the Chancellor should have been listening to those who are struggling. Spending £29 million on a festival of Brexit while they let weans go hungry at home and abroad just about sums up this tawdry Government. Reneging on the 0.7% aid commitment while the world struggles with a covid pandemic is just cruel. He says he has come to talk about jobs, but how many jobs has this Chancellor cost? Last month, the Office for National Statistics reported that since March 2020 the number of payroll employees has fallen by 782,000, and how many job losses could have been avoided if the Chancellor had not wound back furlough and threatened to cut it short? With a reported £1.4 billion for Jobcentre Plus, will he restore the job centres in Scotland that were closed by his Government What about those who have been ignored, patched, and blanked by the Chancellor at every turn—those excluded from his support schemes altogether, many of them limited company directors, freelancers, short-term PAYE workers, new starters and those on maternity leave, who have had absolutely nothing at all from this UK Government? He knows this and it is unjustifiable. He might have had some excuse back in March and April, but we are now in November, so I ask him: what does he expect these 3 million people to live on this winter? Will he look at the proposals for the directors income support scheme and the Equity creatives support scheme? Many of those excluded are in jobs in sectors that cannot safely restart due to the public health restrictions, so he must apologise and he must take action to put it right. The Chancellor has spoken of the importance of getting young people into jobs, but he has utterly failed to address the reality of low-paid, part-time, precarious work. The Young Women’s Trust says that a staggering 1.5 million young women have lost income since the start of the pandemic. Many of them are in sectors such as retail and hospitality that have been clobbered by covid. What he should be announcing today is a real living wage: £9.50 an hour, as set by the Living Wage Foundation, not his pretendy living wage. I am glad to see that over-23s are eligible, but he said nothing about those in the 21-to-24 bracket, who are on £8.20 an hour, the 18-to-20s, on £6.45 an hour, the under-18s, on £4.55 an hour, and apprentices, on merely £4.15 an hour. What about them? Young people do not get a discount on their rent or their bills due to their age, but this Chancellor continues to short-change them in wages. A fair wage for a day’s work is the very least young people should expect from their Government. In not acknowledging the injustice, the Chancellor fails to protect the rest of our young people We need fair wages, too, for public sector workers. It feels like the Government are punishing people for working in the public sector. The absolute heroes who saw us through this pandemic have more than earned their pay. A public sector pay freeze takes £4 billion out of the economy, squeezes living standards and starves the economy of investment at the very worst possible time. These are the hospital porters, the teachers, the jannies, the police officers and the firefighters: those who kept our streets clean and our public services going. All of them—all of them—deserve better than applause on the Chancellor’s doorstep in the summer and a pay freeze in the depths of winter Not content with short-changing young people and public sector workers, the Chancellor wants to change RPI in a move that will impact about 10 million pension incomes and cost retirees over £100 billion. SNP Members urge him to see sense and not to pick the pockets of our pensioners. He must also use this spending review to make the £20 uplift to universal credit permanent, scrap the benefit cap and extend the £20 uplift to legacy benefits and those with disabilities—who, for unfathomable reasons, he seems to have forgotten even exist—and to increase the pitiful level of statutory sick pay Businesses across the country have been racking up debt while their incomes have not been there. Businesses are terrified by business rates relief coming to an end next year. Will the Chancellor look at this issue so that we can also act in Scotland? Will he make the VAT cut for the hospitality sector permanent to see it through this crisis We still await proper details of the shared prosperity fund and what it will mean for Scotland. The Scottish Government have done their part in preparation, and the Chancellor needs to bring forward proposals as a matter of urgency so that we can spend this money properly in Scotland rather than having it hived off to Tories in key seats in England The spending review is only for one year, and I appreciate why that is, but this failure to plan effectively for the future is why the UK is doing worst in the G7. What are the Chancellor’s plans for next year if things do not go as he expects? There is nothing in his statement about Brexit and the cost that that will bring, when we see lorries queuing all the way through Kent. We call on him also to make a £98 billion stimulus to invest in a greener, better future for us all. None of this really has anything to do with the strength of the Union; it is merely a reflection of the powers that he has as Chancellor that the Scottish Government do not. So if he will not do these things—if he will not act—he must devolve the full financial powers and let the Scottish Government get on with the job.