Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2021-11-02
Topic: Social Welfare
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Labour, Centre-left): While the Chancellor presented his Budget as the best Budget in 10 years, he seemed to forget what party has been in control of the country for 10 years. The reason why this miserable Budget is the best of all the miserable Budgets of the last 10 years is that a miserable party has governed our country for the last 10 years. It has cut, cut and cut every time We have seen £1 billion of cuts in youth services since 2010, when the Liberal Democrats brought the Conservatives into power, and we see further cuts to youth services in this Budget. I know from my work on the all-party parliamentary group on youth affairs that many Conservative Members think youth services should be invested in and that the failure to invest in them, and cuts to them, have caused many social problems in their communities. It is a shame that the hon. Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) is not in his place. We have done much work on youth services in his area, where I have seen really good projects. I am sure, though of course he will not say it publicly, he is disappointed that there is a real-terms cut for youth services—and if he is not, he should be looking at the small print, because that is the reality Even when there is investment in youth services, it is in buildings. I love a new shiny building; there is nothing better as the local MP than going to cut the ribbon, getting a nice photoshoot for our next political leaflet. However, the reality is that we do not need large numbers of new youth centres. There is a need for some to be refurbished; there is a need for some to be returned from use as government offices, because they ended up being glorified council offices rather than active youth centres. That has happened because we do not have the operating costs for those youth centres up and down the country When I speak to housing associations, they say, "Well, if you really need a youth centre, we can probably build that within the framework of the local housing budget we have, but we can’t pay for the day-to-day costs." Have the Government provided any support for that? No. We see in my constituency, for example, the Conservative-controlled council writing a press release in the middle of the night to say it is going to close the 1,000 square metres main library in Peacehaven and replace it with a 35 square metres facility, because of budget cuts and other changes that the council says are unforeseen That is not unique. It is a great shame, of course, that a Conservative-controlled council would do that, and particularly that it would do so without speaking to the local Labour councillors, or to the local town and parish councillors who wrote to them asking for a dialogue on the matter. However, I will ignore the snub from the Conservative county council leadership and the officers there, who have shown complete disregard for Peacehaven time and again. Only last year, in the dead of night, the council filled in the local primary school swimming pool—a pool paid for by the local community. During covid, the council sent in the bulldozers and bulldozed it up, saying that it cost too much to run. We said, "Surely it costs more to bulldoze it over than to keep it and mothball it?" But that is enough about the dangers of the Conservative council in East Sussex abandoning Peacehaven. The reason the council has to do those things, even though they are the wrong choices, is that its funding has been cut to the bone time and again by this Government That is why I tabled an amendment today. It was quite rightly not selected, and I did not expect it to be, but I tabled it to say that the upper earnings threshold on national insurance should be abolished. That would mean that everyone who earns over the primary threshold should just pay the same percentage, which to me seems fair. Someone who earns £40,000 should pay the same percentage as people earning £60,000. At the moment, people earning £60,000 can pay 3%, while someone earning below the upper threshold has to pay 13%. That does not seem fair to me. Abolishing that upper threshold would raise between £15 billion and £20 billion. We have to put a range on these things, because of course with tax funnelling and so on, we do not know what we will actually get, but the lowest estimate is £14.5 billion. The precept, the Government’s measures and the measure I have proposed would cover almost all the costs of adult social care that local authorities up and down this country are having to pay. That would free up our councils to do what they should be doing, which is providing libraries and youth services, and not feeling that they have to provide adult social care. That is a plan for adult social care, not the mysterious plan involving money that might come down the line in a few years that we heard from the Chancellor. That is why I tabled my amendment It is also important to realise that in this Budget there are tax giveaways. Who are those tax giveaways to? Not the ordinary person. There is £4 billion in tax cuts for banks in this country—banks that have made record profits in this period. We see no real action on companies such as Southern Water, which keeps pumping pollution, filth and sewage into our seas and rivers. When I met the chief executive officer of Southern Water, he said, "I don’t understand why my staff are getting such a bad time." I said, "It might be because you’ve just awarded yourself half a million pounds in bonus while also being fined for illegal activity." Did this Budget tackle any of that? Did this Budget support money going in to transform our Victorian sewers or measures to repatriate the excessive profits of corporations? No, it did not. It left our seas dirty, our libraries closed and our youth services abandoned. What a shame; what a missed opportunity—but what did we expect from them?