“symbolic flights…will not provide a credible…deterrent”.
We know the Prime Minister himself thought it would not work. If the people selling this gimmick do not believe in it, why should the country?
]]>Let us just take the Prime Minister’s Rwanda policy. When the Tories first announced this gimmick, they claimed it would settle tens of thousands of people. The Home Office then whittled it down to a mere 300. Four times that number have already arrived this month, and the backlog stands at 130,000. Can the Prime Minister see any flaw in his plan to deport less than 1% of that backlog?
]]>With violent prisoners released early because the Tories wrecked the criminal justice system, 3,500 small boat arrivals already this year because the Tories lost control of the borders, the NHS struggling to see people because the Tories broke it, millions paying more on their mortgages, a Budget that hit pensioners and a £46 billion hole in his sums, why is the Prime Minister so scared to call an election?
]]>Two weeks ago, the Prime Minister promised to crack down on those spreading hate. Today, he has shrunk at the first challenge. Last week, he promised fantasy tax cuts. Now he is pretending that it can all be paid for with no impact on pensions or the NHS. All we need now is an especially hardy lettuce and it could be 2022 all over again. Is it any wonder that he is too scared to call an election, when the public can see that the only way to protect their country, their pension and their NHS from the madness of this Tory party is by voting Labour?
]]>Mr Speaker, national insurance contributions fund state pensions and the NHS, so is the Prime Minister’s latest unfunded £46 billion promise to scrap national insurance going to be paid for by cuts to state pensions or cuts to the NHS?
]]>Mr Speaker, this week we lost the formidable Tommy McAvoy, who served his hometown of Rutherglen and the Labour Government with loyalty and good humour. We send our deepest sympathies to his wife, Eleanor, and their family.
We also learnt that
Is the Prime Minister proud to be bankrolled by someone using racist and misogynous language when he said that
“makes you want to hate all black women”?
]]>Over 14 years, we have seen our fair share of delusion from the Conservative party: a Prime Minister who thinks the cost of living crisis is “starting to ease”, an Education Secretary who thinks concrete crumbling on our children deserves our gratitude, and a former Prime Minister who still believes that crashing the pound was the right path for Britian. Today, we have a new entry into this hall of infamy: the Chancellor, who breezes into this Chamber—in a recession—and tells the working people of this country that everything is on track. Crisis? What crisis? Or, as the captain of the Titanic and the former Prime Minister herself might have said, “Iceberg? What iceberg?” Smiling as the ship goes down, the Chuckle Brothers of decline dream of Santa Monica—or maybe just a quiet life in Surrey, with the Chancellor not having to self-fund his election—while the crew behind them scramble around for a GB News lifeboat.
If only it were not so serious. The story of this Parliament is devastatingly simple: a Conservative party stubbornly clinging to the failed ideas of the past, completely unable to generate the growth that working people need, and forced by that failure to ask them to pay more and more for less and less. As the desperation grows, the Conservatives torch not only their reputation for fiscal responsibility, but any notion that they can serve the country, not themselves—party first, country second, while working people pay the price.
Food prices are still 25% higher than they were two years ago. Rents are up by 10%. It will cost an extra £240 a month for a typical family remortgaging this year, because the Conservatives lost control of the economy. They sent interest rates through the roof, and they made working people pay. They should be under no illusion: that record is how the British people will judge today’s cuts, because the whole country can see exactly what is happening here. They recognise a Tory con when they see it, just as they did in November—give with one hand and take even more with the other.
People have been living through this nonsense for 14 years. They know that the thresholds are still frozen, dragging more and more people into higher taxes. They know that a Tory stealth tax is coming their way in the shape of their next council tax bill. The Levelling Up Secretary has told not just this House but every house in the country that he is coming for their council tax—give with one hand, Gove with the other.
Most insultingly of all, the British people know the only cause that gets this lot out of bed is trying to save their own skin. Take the desperate move, after years of resistance, to finally accept Labour’s argument on the non-dom tax regime. Has there ever been a more obvious example of a Government who are totally bereft of ideas? If they are sincerely in support of that policy, the question they must answer is: why did they not do it earlier? Why did they not stand up to their friends, their funders and their family? If they had followed Labour’s example, 3.8 million extra operations and 1.3 million dental emergency appointments would have taken place by now, and there would have been free breakfast clubs for nearly 4.5 million children. If instead this is just another short-term cynical political gimmick, honestly, what is the point? What is the point of a party that is out of touch, out of ideas and nearly out of road?
We saw this last year as well, when only Labour’s policies on the cost of living made the difference. I say to those on the Conservative Benches who are now a little downbeat about another intellectual triumph for social democracy, I say, “Get used to it!” With this pair in charge, it will not be long before you are asked to defend the removal of private school tax relief as well. The harder they try with cynical games like that, the worse it will get for them, because the whole country can see exactly who they are. Fighting for themselves. Politics, not governing. Party first, country second.
Because we have campaigned to lower the tax burden on working people for the whole Parliament—and we will not stop now—we will support the cuts to national insurance. But I noticed that in 2022 when the Prime Minister was Chancellor, he made this promise:
“I can confirm that…in 2024, for the first time…the basic rate of income tax will be cut from 20p to 19p”.—[Official Report,
Having briefed all week that an income tax cut was coming, that promise is in tatters. Of course we support the fresh investment in our NHS, although I have to note that the Chancellor, when he was Health Secretary 10 years ago, promised to make the NHS paperless by 2018. I know the Prime Minister’s fondness for Elon Musk extends to an enthusiastic embrace of his Community Notes on fact checking, so I will say this bit slowly: Labour supports the fuel duty freeze. That is our policy. I look forward to the Prime Minister’s acknowledgement of that in the coming days. We ask the Chancellor to set out how he will ensure that the policy gets passed on to hard-pressed families at the pump.
For all the fanfare around the tax measures today, this straightforward story remains true: taxes at a 70-year high; the British people paying more for less; and an unprecedented hit to the living standards of working people. This is the first time the Government have gone backwards over a Parliament, and they were cheering that. The reason is equally simple: there is no plan for growth. How can there be? The Chancellor can say “long-term plan” all he likes, but—[Interruption.] Last year he announced 110 growth measures. He said that we had “turned a corner”, but where are we now? Britain is in recession, with an economy smaller than when the Prime Minister entered Downing Street—the textbook definition of decline. That is their record. After 14 years, who do they think feels better off?
Productivity is flat, mortgages are through the roof, house building is off a cliff, worklessness is rising and rising, homelessness has never been higher, crime goes virtually unpunished, children cannot see a dentist and there is sewage in our rivers. Billions and billions of taxpayers’ money has been wasted, including £7 billion by the Prime Minister on covid fraud alone and £500 million on the Rwanda scheme that has achieved precisely nothing. I can keep going. We have a railway line that will never reach our great northern cities. In fact, it might not even reach central London. Billions upon billions for a white elephant without a trunk, while today we learn that taxpayers are picking up the bill for the Science Minister’s libel. And all the time, one thing is growing: the waiting lists in our NHS, now standing at nearly 8 million.
The Government have had 14 years. They are running out of road. This is what decline looks like, and the complacency they have shown today takes your breath away. Britain deserves better than this. Britain deserves a real plan for growth; an end to 14 years of stagnation; wealth creation across the whole of the country; and higher living standards for working people. This is the mission we need, but yet again, what we got was the same tired old formula, the sticking plasters, the chopping and changing, and the party-first, country-second politics with no repudiation of the utterly discredited idea that economic growth is something that the few gift to the many.
Even then, the Chancellor’s Back Benchers are owed an explanation. He says that Britain has grown more quickly than countries such as Germany over the last 14 years, but I am sure they will be shocked to learn that this is a statistical sleight of hand. When it comes to GDP per capita—the growth that makes the difference to the pockets of working people—the Government’s record is much worse. Indeed, in per capita terms our economy has not grown since the first quarter of 2022—the longest period of stagnation Britain has seen since 1955. In fact, the Chancellor invited us to look at those figures. The Office for Budget Responsibility has said that GDP per capita will be 0.75% lower in 2028 than was forecast in November last year. That was the number he said we should watch: 0.75% lower in 2028. The Government can call this a technical recession, but there is nothing technical about working people living in recession for every second the Prime Minister has been in power. This is a Rishi recession.
If Conservative Members really want to know what hides in the Chancellor’s spreadsheets, they will see that it is only the record levels of migration they have delivered that have prevented an even deeper decline. That is the record they must stand on at the election. While we on these Benches do not demean for a second the contribution that migrants make to a thriving economy, it is high time that the Government were honest with the British public about the role migration plays in their economic policy, because right now, in terms of growth, that is all they have. There is nothing else. No plan to get Britain building again with a reformed planning system. No ambition to invest in clean British power for cheaper bills and energy security. No inclination to move away from insecure low-paid jobs and strengthen employment rights so that we can finally make work pay.
Where is the urgency on affordable housing? How can the Government look at Britain now and not see that as a massive priority? Never again will they be allowed to pose as the party of home ownership and aspiration, although I have to say, given the disaster that has befallen their childcare plans, perhaps that is for the best. The cost of childcare is a huge challenge for millions. Parents need the Chancellor to deliver on his promise. It seems that he has been taking lessons on marketing from the Willy Wonka Experience in Glasgow: all is not as it seems. With just over three weeks to go, he has to come clean, because up and down the country parents need to know: will they get their entitlement in April, or is this just another of the Government’s reckless promises on governing? Headlines over delivery. Promises without plans. Policies that unravel at the first contact with reality. The lesson is crystal clear that those who broke our economy cannot be trusted to repair it. The Tory credit rating is zero. It is time for change with Labour.
That is what today’s Budget should have been about: a last chance for the Government to show that they understand the economic reality of our volatile world, that global supply chains can be weaponised by tyrants like Putin, that a sticking-plaster approach to public investment will cost Britain more in the long run, and that trickle-down nonsense means that working people pay the price. It could even have been a moment of contrition, a reflection on their fiscal recklessness or perhaps an apology for the ridiculous chaos that they have inflicted on businesses, communities and investors in this country. And yet there is still no stable industrial strategy, still no national wealth fund to crowd in private investment, still no urgency on speeding up critical infrastructure projects and no recognition that they have left in tatters our standing as a country that always keeps its promises.
And if they do not like that accusation, they should look no further than the grotesque spectacle of the Government ducking their responsibility to the victims of the infected blood and Horizon scandals.
“This is one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in our nation’s history.”—[Official Report,
Those were the Prime Minister’s words just two months ago. Today, justice has been kicked beyond the general election. Britain can see exactly who they are, and the reality is that there is no path to economic stability and no way to a calmer, less chaotic politics with the Conservative party in power, because chaos is now their worldview.
It is a mindset that sees Britain’s problems as opportunities that the Conservative party can exploit, whether, like the Chancellor, it is out of desperation because they cannot solve them, or whether, like
The British people know that this will not stop. Five more years and it will only get worse. There will be no change of direction without a change of Government, and that leaves Britain as a nation in limbo, unable to shake off the Tory chaos that dragged us into recession, loaded the tax burden on to the backs of working people and maxed out the nation’s credit card.
Britain deserves a Government who are ready to take tough decisions, to give our public services an immediate cash injection, to stick to fiscal rules without complaint, to fight for the living standards of working people and to deliver a sustainable plan for growth. We say to the Chancellor and the Prime Minister that it is time to break the habit of 14 years, to stop the dithering, the delay and the uncertainty, and to confirm
We all want more victims to come forward, but we have to be honest that, unless things change, the criminal justice system will continue to fail them. That is why we are committed to introducing specialist rape and sexual offences teams in every force to give victims specialist support and confidence that their experience will be investigated properly. When will the Prime Minister commit to doing the same?
]]>Sarah Everard’s murder should have been a watershed moment for policing reform, for the criminal justice system and for violence against women and girls, but the sad reality is that victims of rape who have the courage and bravery to come forward have just a 2.4% chance of their perpetrator being caught and charged within the year. How does the Prime Minister expect women to have confidence in the criminal justice system when almost all rapists do not see the inside of a courtroom?
]]>Couzens’ history of sexual offending stretched back many years. On four occasions, despite allegations of indecent exposure, he was not sacked. We know that indecent exposure is a gateway to more horrific crimes, as was tragically shown to be the case not only in Sarah Everard’s case but in that of Libby Squire, but it is not treated with the seriousness required. The Angiolini report recommends reviewing all indecent exposure allegations against serving officers in order to identify, investigate and remove those officers from service. Given the obvious urgency of this recommendation, can the Prime Minister give a categorical assurance that it will be implemented immediately?
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