Graham: It is a pleasure to take part in this debate. Let us travel back in time to those halcyon days for the Labour party: so confidently predicting victory in the election, so far ahead in the opinion polls and so clear on the prospectus they laid before the British people. It had a fully funded, fully costed programme.
When the now Chancellor was challenged about whether she had a full insight into the public finances, she assured the interviewer, if I recall correctly, that absolutely she did.
Therefore, people could rely on the cast-iron promise, which all Labour Members stood on, that Labour would not raise national insurance, would not raise income tax, would protect farmers and would not cut pensioners’ benefits. That was the promise.
But it is better than that. It is not just that Labour was not going to bring in all those taxes, but that it was going to make growth their No. 1 mission for a mission-led Government. Those who feared a return to a sort of socialist job-destroying and enterprise-wrecking past could be reassured that this was a moderate party that had put the right hon.
Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) well behind it, no matter how many Labour Members had said he was a great friend and would make a great Prime Minister. They had changed their mind. There was a moderate promise.
It was not only members of the public who were led to believe in the Labour mission and what it could bring for the country.
Imagine Labour Members, the people who were selected as candidates for the Labour party, who came in not to Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party but to this Labour party of enterprise, protecting workers and encouraging a low-tax system, but doing so in a way that none the less would prioritise the healthcare system, special educational needs children and the like.
That was the promise and it did not just beguile many people in the country—although not that many, as only 34% of people actually did vote Labour, but none the less enough.
Imagine what it was like—I say this to Opposition Members—to come to this place and be a part of that fantastic crew of hundreds and hundreds of Labour MPs to deliver that manifesto.
And where are we now at the historic Second Reading of the Finance Bill of the central policy measures of this new Government. Where are they?
They have been humiliated in the Budget debate, as one after another repeated their rote words.
It was the most intellectually empty Budget debate I have ever taken part in.
I listened to Labour Member after Labour Member trot out their “14 years of chaos” and their “£22 billion black hole”.
It would be entirely wrong of me, given how few Labour Members there are in the Chamber prepared to defend the Budget, if I did not now give way to one of them.
Nesil Caliskan MP: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for finally giving way. I wonder if he might use the opportunity to reflect on the economic record of the previous Government, which saw the highest interest rates and inflation through the roof that affected people’s pockets and their ability to get on in life.
Will he also reflect on the fact that his party lost the election and perhaps show some humility?
Graham: I am grateful to the hon. Lady. I am happy to do so, although it is worth pointing out that we are supposed to reflect today on the actual proposals put forward by the Government of which she is now a member.
But the hon. Lady is right to highlight the Conservative’s economic record.
I have a criticism of those of us on the Conservative Benches: I do not think we do enough to talk about it.
From 2010 to 2024, which economy in Europe grew the most?
Was it Germany or the UK?
Oh, it was the UK!
Was it France or the UK?
Oh, it was the UK!
Which country in Europe created 4 million more jobs?
For which Government did the horrible scar of youth unemployment, which was a permanent feature even in the good years prior to the crash—for those interested in the history of employment—stay horribly high, with its long-term scarring impact on young people?
It was the Labour Government.
All that was turned around. People were paying tax at £6,500 when Labour left power.
That was lifted to £12,500.
They may be decrying and disowning their part in the coalition Government, but the Liberal Democrats should have some pride in what we were able to do together.
We inherited an economic basket case. We brought discipline back. But while we were fixing the foundations, we did not lose sight of the fact that we knew where the wealth comes from.
It comes from the private sector, not the public sector—from those small shops, those restaurants, all those other businesses on which the country relies for its wealth.
This Budget has gone down and damaged each and every one of them, one by one. It has looked around for targets—the “broad shoulders” for the socialist envy to vent itself on—and who better than landowners?
So the Budget focuses on people.
I am not an expert on every area of the economic life of this country, but let us suppose that I looked across the entire economy and tried to find people in private enterprise using their own assets.
Where would people have millions of pounds in assets and be prepared to receive a 1% return on them?
Who would keep that up, year after year, simply in order to feed the nation as part of a pact—a compact—between them and the Government, indeed the whole country?
Who would be prepared to do that, and to feed us, while asking so little in return?
Attacking farmers, of all groups in society, is one of the most retrograde and regrettable of attacks.
Joe Robertson MP: As my right hon. Friend knows, I worked for a charity for six years—or a decade, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer likes to call it.
Would he care to reflect on the damage done to charities by this Government’s Budget?
They are already in a squeeze, and the Government have squeezed them further through their decisions on employment rights and also through taxation in the Budget.
We are seeing a kind of socialist envy and attack on misguided targets.
For instance, children with special educational needs in private schools will be pulled out of those schools mid-year because their families can no longer afford to send them there.
That was not the intent; not only did Labour Members want to stand on an honest prospectus, but that is not, I am sure, what they wanted. Nevertheless, that is what is happening.
It is exactly what is happening.
My hon. Friend is right, however, to point out that this is not just about a class-based assault on people who do not deserve to be assaulted.
It is also about sheer ineptitude.
Let us consider the £22 billion for the NHS.
Why so little for social care?
Surely Labour Members, however green and new to the House, must be aware that the NHS depends on the social care system, but because of the increases in national insurance contributions and the minimum wage, its costs are rising by about £2.5 billion and it is getting £600 million.
Hospices will be affected, and so will small charities.
None the less, my hon. Friend was right to talk about the impact of this Budget overall, and the effect on hospices and charities in particular.
Yesterday I met the chief executive of HICA, a large not-for-profit provider of social care homes and in-home care.
HICA is a brilliant organisation, which has made real progress over the last few years.
It finally managed to make a surplus last year, so it can pay its staff more than the minimum wage and invest in its stock.
Now it is facing a £3.5 million impact on its £40 million turnover as a result of this Budget and this Finance Bill.
As well as farmers, oil and gas have been touched on today.
When I was the Minister for Energy Security and Net Zero, it always struck me as absurd to look at the production of oil and gas rather than the consumption.
It is the consumption that is the problem.
We must change our factories, our vehicles, our buildings, so that they no longer need oil and gas if we are to move away from them.
Attacking production when it is driven by demand is attacking the wrong end.
In this measure, the Labour Government are raising the energy profits levy, on top of refusing to issue new licences.
The net effect of that, notwithstanding the Liberal Democrats’ saying that they support the policy—I do not know why or how they can do so—
This does not make the slightest difference to how much we consume, but it means that we import more from abroad, and, in the case of liquefied natural gas, those imports have embedded emissions four times higher than the emissions of what we produce domestically.
We are going to bring this in from places that are less careful than we are in its production.
We are going to lose tens of thousands of jobs and £13 billion of tax revenue, and we are going to lose the engineering expertise and companies that we need for the transition.
There is literally no way to make that make sense, and I hope the hon. Lady will now do a U-turn and see the logic of my argument.
Daisy Cooper MP: I will resist that invitation.
Does the right hon. Gentleman understand the nature of a windfall tax?
It raises money on the windfall that a sector was not expecting.
We know that the big oil and gas giants base their investment plans on the profits that they were expecting, but clearly they raised a lot more money because of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.
Windfall taxes have been placed on the big oil and gas giants for the profits over and above what they were expecting to receive.
Graham: The hon. Lady did not actually refer to the measure in front of us.
I know it is the Liberal Democrats’ policy to have a windfall tax on anyone who does not sound popular—big banks, big tech, and oil and gas.
That is their answer. If anyone says, “How would you do it?”, they trot that out and lose not a single vote, because the very definition of not taking a tough choice is suggesting that there is easy money.
The measure in front of us, which the hon. Lady specifically said she supported, is not a windfall tax.
It is a further tax, in tandem with the removal of any new licences, which effectively destroys investment in the North sea.
I point to Apache—which says it is looking to withdraw by 2029, risking 500 jobs—Harbour Energy, JAPEX and Chevron, to name just a few.
They are pulling out, and there is no environmental benefit.
We are losing all that tax, all those jobs and all that expertise, which is exactly what we need for carbon capture, and for hydrogen, for the green economy. It is utterly insane.
I note that there are very few Labour Members present.
I watched them as they came in for the Budget, full of cherry-cheeked enthusiasm and reading out their Whip-prepared rote remarks about the disaster left behind, which, as we know, was the fastest-growing economy in the G7, with inflation at target, debt coming down and the economy coming up.
They are not all mad, socialist loons, and day by day we can see them losing spirit in the Tea Room and in the corridors as they realise that the deceit that their Front Benchers practised not only on the people, but on them, is coming home to roost.
The Government will pour all of the £22 billion into the NHS in the next year—it is in the figures—and we are supposed to believe that public services will rise by 1.3% or 1.4% in the rest of the period up to the next general election.
Is that credible? It is not. I think Labour Members know that, which is what they have signalled by their absence, because they realise, as we do, that this Finance Bill and the Budget are ruinous for this country.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride) was absolutely right to say that they make this country more vulnerable to the shocks that may and most likely will come, and it will be the Labour party that owns the mistakes that are being sown today.
The text of this speech is taken from Hansard on 27th November 2024
