Autumn Statement Resolutions - Energy (Oil and Gas) Profits Levy

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 7:00 pm on 21 November 2022.

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Photo of Andy McDonald Andy McDonald Labour, Middlesbrough 7:00, 21 November 2022

It is interesting to follow Sir Edward Leigh; I look forward to a conversation with him after Mass about how his speech accords with Catholic social teaching.

The Chancellor told us last week that,

“to be British is to be compassionate.”—[Official Report, 17 November 2022;
Vol. 722, c. 844.]

We as MPs are privileged to see compassion at work in our constituencies day in, day out—and my God, it is needed more than ever. What a demonstration of the compassion and care of the British people we have witnessed this past week, with the incredible Kevin Sinfield completing his back-to-back ultramarathons in aid of those suffering with the devastating motor neurone disease, and the outpouring of moral and financial support from the great British public.

On Friday, I visited the Genesis Project in Middlesbrough and met the wonderful deacon there, the Reverend Kath Dean, working out of St Oswald’s Church in Grove Hill. She is doing sterling work with an army of volunteers, many of them in the most difficult circumstances themselves, providing food, clothing, care and love to the hundreds and hundreds of people who are on their knees.

Take Pauline, for example. Pauline is a 94-year-old volunteer, but when she goes home, she warms herself sitting under blankets and reads by battery lights rather than turning on the heating and electricity. She was 11 years old at the outbreak of war, and she feels as though she has been transported back to those dark days in the air-raid shelters.

Another worker at the project—I will call her Gill—is there helping people, equipping them with warm clothing and bedding as the winter approaches. Gill has two children living with her, a teenage son who I will call Adam, and a little daughter who I will call Katie, aged 11—the same age that Pauline was in 1939. At the end of the school day, those children have to return to their damp, mouldy rented house. Katie has asthma and there is a huge fungus growing from her bedroom ceiling, so she is forced to share one bedroom with her mum and teenage brother.

Worse still, the house is infested with rats. Late last Thursday night, Gill had the nightmare of encountering a rat on the staircase. She showed me the photograph of a dead rat inside her own home, along with a mass of rat droppings. She and her family are scheduled to be rehoused later this week, but they will have to destroy their belongings and furniture, as everything is impregnated with rat urine. Their situation brings to mind the ugly, tragic death of Awaab Ishak in Rochdale in not dissimilar circumstances. The only solace I have is that we have succeeded in having the family moved to a hotel until alternative accommodation is available.

How does it come to this in the UK, in 2022? After 12 years of Tory rule and their cruel and unnecessary programme of continuous austerity, how do they and their latest leadership team dare to associate themselves with the compassion of the British people? This outrage was not caused by Putin or covid; it was the product of incompetence, appalling instincts and motivations, the failure to resource local authorities properly and the ongoing failure to address the housing and cost of living crises.

We have been slipping into this economic decline, which for too many is a living hell, for 12 long, miserable years. The root cause is the rotten and corrupting philosophy of neoliberalism that the Conservatives have promoted, some very proudly, for decades since Thatcher and Reagan: the obsession with cutting public services, privatising and outsourcing to the max to extract as much profit as possible; the exploitation of working people; deregulation; attacking and undermining trade unions; permitting bad employers like the winner of the worst boss in the world award, Peter Hebblethwaite, the lawbreaking CEO of P&O, to undercut good employers; and grinding down wages. The obsession with sacrificing decent working conditions, dignity and respect for all at the altar of private excess profit, where billionaires abound and prosper while grotesque inequality bites deeper and deeper into the lived experience of millions of our fellow citizens: that is what has caused this mess.

As we saw in last week’s autumn statement, there is no desire and no will on the part of the Tory party fundamentally to change the status quo, to stand by and with working people, to create a new deal for them and to create a new social contract for all, which is what is needed if the Government of our country are to match the life-affirming compassion of our sisters and brothers, UK-born or otherwise, in every village, town and city the length and breadth of this country. For that to happen, we need a Labour Government—one that is dedicated to the people, not to private, exploitative profit, and is dedicated to social justice, ending in-work poverty and dignity for all. We need that Labour Government now, as a matter of supreme urgency.