Full text of Jeremy Corbyn's response to the Budget
12 min read
Read the full text of Jeremy Corbyn's response to today's Budget.
The reality test of this Budget has to be how it affects ordinary people's lives and I believe as the days go ahead and this budget unravels, the reality will be a lot of people will be no better off and the misery that many are in will be continuing. Pay, Mr Speaker, is now lower than it was in 2010 and wages are now falling again.
Economic growth in the first three quarters of this year is the lowest since 2009 and the slowest of the major economies in the G7. It's a record of failure with a forecast of more to come. Economic growth has been revised down, productivity growth has been revised down, business investment revised down, people's wages and living standards revised down. What sort of strong economy is that? What sort of 'fit for the future' is that?
You may recall, Mr Deputy Speaker, the deficit was due to be eradicated in 2015, then that moved to 2016, then 2017, then 2020 and now we’re looking at 2025. They're missing their major targets but the failed and damaging policy of austerity remains. The number of people sleeping rough has doubled since 2010 and this Christmas 120,000 children will spend Christmas in temporary accommodation. Three new pilot schemes to look at rough sleeping across the whole country simply doesn't cut it - we want action now to help those poor people forced to sleep on our streets and beg. It is a disaster for those people sleeping on our streets forced to beg for a night shelter. They're looking fora ction now from government to give them a roof over their heads.
In some parts of the country life expectancy is actually starting to fall. The last Labour government lifted 1m children out of poverty, it was an amazing achievement. Under this government an extra 1m children will be plunged into poverty by the end of this Parliament. 1.9m pensioners, one in six of all pensioners are living in poverty, the worst rate in Western Europe.
It's falling pay, slow growth and rising poverty - this is what the Chancellor has the cheek to call a strong economy. His predecessor said they would put the burden on those with the broadest shoulder.
So how's that turned out? The poorest tenth of households will lose 10% of their income by 2022, while the richest will lose just 1%. So much for tackling burning injustices, this is a government tossing fuel on the fire.
Personal debt levels are rising, 8.3m people over-indebted. If he wants to help people out of debt, he should back Labour's policy for a real living wage of £10 an hour by 2020.
Working class young people now leaving university with £57,000 of debt because this government, his government trebled tuition fees and the new government policy is to win over oyung people by keeping fees at £9,250 a year - more debt for people who want to learn.
That is just one of the multitude of injustices presided over this government, another is Universal Credit, which we called on ministers to pause and fix. That's the view of this House, it's the verdict of those on the front line.
Maybe the benches opposite would like to listen to Martin’s experience. A full-time worker on the minimum wage, he said ‘I get paid four-weekly meaning my pay date is different each month and because under the Universal Credit system he was paid twice in a month and deemed to have earned too much his Universal Credit was too much. This led me into rent arrears and meant I had to sue a food bank for the first time in my life.
That is the humiliation that him and so many others have gone through because of the problems of Universal Credit. Wouldn’t it have been better to pause the whole thing and look at the problems it has caused? The Chancellor’s solution to a failing system causing more debt is to offer a loan and the six-week wait, with 20% waiting even longer simply becomes a five-week wait - this system has been run down by £3bn of cuts to work allowances, the two-child limit and the perverse and appalling rape clause and caused evictions because housing benefit isn't paid direct to the landlord. So I say to the Chancellor again, put this system on hold so it can be fixed and keep 1m children out of poverty.
"For years we've had the rhetoric of a long-term economic plan that never meets its targets. When what all too many are experiencing is long-term economic pain and hardest hit are disabled people, single parents and women, so it's disappointing the Chancellor did not back the campaign by my Hon Friend, the Member for Brent Central, to end period poverty.. He could have done that. Well done her on the campaign, shame on him for not supporting it."
"The Conservative manifesto after the election disappeared off its website after three days, now some ministers have put together some half-decent proposals conspicuously borrowed from the Labour manifesto. Let me tell the Chancellor, Mr Speaker, as socialists we're happy to share ideas. The Communities Secretary asked for £50bn to invest in housebuilding, presumably the Prime Minister slapped him down for wanting to bankrupt Britain....the Health Secretary said the pay cap is over, but where is the money to fund the pay rise. The Chancellor has not been clear today, not for NHS workers, our police, firefighters, teachers, teaching assistants bin collectors, tax collectors or armed forces personnel.
Will the Chancellor listen to Claire, who says her mum works in the NHS, she goes above and beyond for her patents. Why does the Government thinks it's OK to underpay, overstress and underappreciate all those who work in our NHS?
The NHS chief executive says the budget for the NHS next year is well short of what is currently needed and from what the Chancellor said it's still going to be well short of what is needed."
In the last year we've had 1,200 fewer GPs and we've lost community nurses and mental health nurses. The Chancellor promised £10bn in 2015 and delivered £4.5bn… So if you don’t mind we’ll wait for the small print on today’s announcement but even what he’s said certainly falls well short of the £6bn Labour would have delivered in the June manifesto.
Over 1m of our elderly aren’t receiving the care they need, over £6bn will have been cut from social care budgets by next March. I hope the Hon Member begins to understand what it’s like to wait for social care, stuck in a hospital bed, or other people having to care for them. The uncaring, uncouth attitude of some of those opposite needs to be called out.
That is why social care budgets are so important for so many very desperate people in our country. Our schools will be 5% worse off by 2019 despite the Conservative manifesto promising no school would be worse off. 5,000 headteachers from 25 counties wrote to the Chancellor saying 'we are simply asking for the money taken out of the system to be returned. A senior science technicain wrote to me, Robert, saying 'my pay has been reduced by over 30%, I've seen massive cuts at my school, good teachers and support staff leave. That is what does for the morale of both teachers and students in school. According to this government 5,000 headteachers are wrong, Robert is wrong, the IFS is wrong. Everyone is wrong except the Chancellor.
If the Chancellor bothered to listen to local authorities, they have been warning that services for the most vulnerable children are under more demand than ever, more children being taken into care, more in desperate need of help and support yet they're labouring with a 2bn shortfall in the cost of dealing with vulnerable children, because local authorities will have lot 80% of their direct funding by 2020.
The reality of this across the country is women's refuges closing, youth centres closing, libraries closing, museums closing, public facilities under-staffed, under-resourced and under-financed."
Just £10m is needed to establish the Child Funeral Fund campaigned for so brilliantly by my Hon Friend the Member for Swansea Est. why couldn't the Chancellor at least have agreed to fund that?"
Under this government there are also 20,000 fewer police officers and 6,000 community support officers and 11,000 fire service taff are being cut as well.. You cannot keep communities safe on the cheap. Tammy explains this - 'our police presence has been taken away from our village, as a single parent I no longer feel safe as a single parent at night'.
5.5m workers earn less than the living wage, 1m more than five years ago and the Chancellor couldn't even see 1.4m unemployed in this country. There is a crisis of low pay and insecure work affecting one in four women and one in six men, a record 7.4m people in working households living in poverty. If we want workers earning better pay, less dependent on in-work benefits we need strong trade unions, we need the most effective way of boosting workers' pay. Instead this government weakened trade unions and introduced employment tribunal fees thanks to the victory in the courts by Unison, a trade union representing its members.
And Mr Deputy Speaker, why didn't the Chancellor take the opportunity to make two changes to control debt? Firstly, to cap credit card debt so nobody pays back more than they borrowed, and secondly to stop credit card companies increasing people's credit limit without their say-so. Debt is being racked up because the government is weak on those who exploit people, such as rail companies who hike fares above inflation year on year, and water companies and energy suppliers.
During the general election it promised an energy cap that would benefit around 17m families on standard variable tariffs. But every bill tells millions of families the Government has broken that promise and with 10bn in housing benefit going into the pockets of private landlords, housing is a key factor in pushing up the welfare bill. Not too many words from the Chancellor about excessive rent in the private rented sector.
With this government delivering the worst rate of housebuilding since the 1920s and 250,000 fewer council homes, any commitment would be welcome. But we've been here before, the Government promised 200,000 starter homes three years ago, not a single one has been built in those three years. We need a large-scale publicly funded housebuilding programme, not this government's accounting tricks and empty promises. Yes, we back the abolition of stamp duty for first-time buyers because it was another policy in our manifesto in June, not a Tory one.
This government continues preference for spin over substance, that means the words Northern Powerhouse and Midlands Engine are now met with derision. Yorkshire and Humber get one tenth of the transport investment per head given to London. Government figures show "Every region in the north of England has seen a fall in spending on services since 2012. The Midlands, east and west is receiving less than 8% of total transport infrastructure investment, compared to 50% going to London. In the east and west Midlands one in four workers are paid less than the living wage. So much for the Midlands Engine. Re-announced funding for the Transpennine rail route won't cut it and todays' other announcements won't redress that balance.
Combined with counter-productive austerity this lack of investment has consequences in sluggish growth and shrinking pay packets. Public investment has virtually halved. Under this government this country has the lowest rate of public investment in the G7. It's now investing in driverless cars after months of road-=testing backseat drivers in the Government.
By moving from RPI to CPI on business rates, the Chancellor had adopted another Labour policy. Why don't they go further and adopt Labour's entire business rates pledge, including exempting plant and machinery and annual revaluation of business rates?
Nowhere has their chaos been more evident than on Brexit. "The Brexit Secretary has been shunted out for the PM, who has got no further. Every major business organisatoin has written to the Government telling them to pull their finger out and get on with it. BUsiness are delaying crucial investment decisions because if this government doesn't get its act together soon they will be taking relocatoin decisions.
"Crashing out with no deal and turning Britain into a tax haven would damage people's jobs and living standards, serving only a wealthy few.
It's not as if this government isn't doing its best to protect tax havens and their clients in the meantime. The Paradise papers have again expose how a super-rich elite is allowed to get away with dodging taxes. This government has opposd measure after measure and their Tory colleagues in the European Parliament to clamp down on the tax havens that facilitate this outrageous leeching from our public purse. Non-paid tax, clever reinvestment to get away with tax hits schools, hospitals and the most needy in our society.
"There's nothing moral about dodging tax, there's everything immoral about evading it. Too often ti feels there is one rule for the super-rich and another for the rest of us. The horrors of Grenfell Tower were a reflection of a system that puts profit before people, that fails to listen to working class communities.
"In 2013 the Government received advice in a coroners' report that sprinklers should be fitted in all high-rise buildings. Today the Government failed to fund the £1bn investment needed. The Chancellor says councils soudl contact them, but Nottingham has, Westminster has and nothing was offered to them.
"We have the privilege to be MPs in a building about to be retrofitted with sprinklers to protect us. The message is pretty clear - this Government cares more about what happens here than what happens in high-rise homes. In effect saying they matter less. Our country is marked by growing inequality and injustice. We were promised lots of hype, a revolutionary Budget, the reality is nothing has changed. People were looking for help from this Budget and they've been let down. Let down by a government that, like the economy they've presided over, is weak and unstable and in need of urgent change."
"They called this a Budget fit for the future, the reality is this is a government no longer fit for office."
PoliticsHome Newsletters
PoliticsHome provides the most comprehensive coverage of UK politics anywhere on the web, offering high quality original reporting and analysis: Subscribe
