Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2020-03-11
Topic: Macroeconomics
Stephen Crabb (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a privilege to conclude the first day of the debate on the Budget, and it is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West), who always makes thoughtful speeches I would like to start by putting on record my congratulations to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, who presented a strong, future-facing Budget. Before I say more about that, I would like to put on record a tribute to my very good and right hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid), who was his predecessor. His tenure as Chancellor of the Exchequer might not have been long, but I believe he was part of the change of mindset at the Treasury that the Chancellor spoke about today. He said he recognised much of what was in the Chancellor’s Budget statement, and well he might, because he contributed to some of the new thinking. Indeed, back in the summer of 2016, he and I presented a plan for a growing Britain fund—a £100 billion fund to invest in long-term productive infrastructure, taking advantage of record low borrowing rates at the time. It is encouraging to see some of those ideas come to fruition in the Budget statement we heard earlier this afternoon If the Budget was about looking to the future, it was also about facing up to the very real challenges of the present. It was a Budget delivered in the shadow of the growing coronavirus crisis. All Governments around the world are trying to wrestle with this problem. All Governments are trying to work out the science and what the correct balance and trade-offs are between measures and tactics to contain and delay the virus and not imposing excessive economic cost on their citizens. Every Government is working out these decisions for themselves, but the challenge is considerable We should all be encouraged by what we saw today in response to the growing crisis. We saw the United Kingdom able to take a strong set of measures and communicate them to international and domestic markets through a strong set of co-ordinated messages from different branches of government, starting with the Bank of England this morning and followed up by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his Budget this afternoon The platform for that strong, co-ordinated response to the coronavirus has come from two things: a broadly sound set of public finances after 10 years of responsible decision making by successive Conservative Administrations; and a banking system that is far safer than it was in the previous crisis of 2008. Together, this action has created a strong framework for protecting our economy, our businesses and our citizens from whatever the coronavirus may throw at us Like many hon. Members who have spoken this afternoon, I, too, strongly welcome the balanced, sophisticated package of measures to support business at this time of crisis. My constituency, as you know well, Mr Deputy Speaker, is a coastal, beautiful and peripheral constituency with a great many businesses in tourism, hospitality and leisure that are looking forward to the start of the new season in just three weeks’ time Like many hon. Members, I have spoken to a lot of businesses in recent days that have expressed a growing sense of concern and fear about their business prospects this year. Many of them lose money during the winter months and earn their money during the strong summer season, and they are already reporting to me that bookings are down. Where bookings have been made, they are secured only by 30% deposits. The fear is that this will prove to be a very challenging few months An idea put to me by one business is that the Government should delay implementing the increase in the national minimum wage. My view, which I communicated strongly to the business, is that that would be the wrong thing to do. We are proud of our track record of increasing the national minimum wage, putting more money back into the pockets of those on the lowest incomes, but it is a measure, a sign and a signal of just how fearful many small businesses are about their cash-flow prospects in the weeks and months ahead. The measures set out by the Bank of England and the Chancellor today provide a measure of resilience for many of our small businesses.