13:26 Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)

It is astonishing that at a time when our economy has to adapt to the challenges that the Secretary of State referred to—globalisation, digitisation and climate change in the post-Brexit environment—investment in skills remains so lacking. Four in 10 young people are leaving education without the level of qualification they need, the number of apprenticeships has fallen by more than 40%, and 9 million adults lack basic skills in literacy or numeracy. No wonder the Chancellor can promise only a paltry 1.5% increase in growth in the final three years of the forecast period.

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13:50 Stephen Flynn (SNP)

In Scotland, we have again been told we should be grateful about the block grant, despite the 2.4% increase. We are also told that £170 million towards the levelling-up fund is a remarkably good thing, for which we should be really grateful. In my part of Scotland alone, the Scottish Government are putting in place a £500 million just transition fund to ensure that we can make the journey to net zero without leaving communities behind. We asked the Chancellor to match fund it, but despite the fact that the Government have raked in more than £350 billion from our North sea oil and gas sector, they said no and ignored our plea for a mere £500 million. Of course, they did something much more damaging than that: they walked away from carbon capture and storage in the north-east of Scotland. [Interruption.] I hear Members saying, “Shame,” and it is exactly that—shame on the Government. They walked away from that billion-pound investment in the north-east of Scotland in 2015 and they have done the same again now. They have turned their back on the communities I represent and the needs of Scotland. We can do so, so much better, and we will do better when we have that opportunity to take our own future into our own hands. Let me tell Conservative Members that that day is coming faster than they dare think.

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14:38 Marsha De Cordova (Labour)

Ultimately this Budget failed to invest in tackling the issues that matter: structural inequalities, a supply chain crisis, unsafe homes, in-work poverty, a cost of living crisis and a climate emergency that is inching closer and closer towards the doorstep of each and every one of us—and No. 10 will not be spared. The Chancellor said he wanted to build a new economy coming out of this crisis, but if he was serious about that, we would have a Budget that prioritised people, prioritised our public services, and looked after the planet for generations to come.

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15:04 Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)

We need to look at the move towards decarbonisation, which will create additional problems for people in low-income groups, who will struggle to meet the inevitable higher costs without help. Net zero should be seen as an opportunity to help the poorest. As the Resolution Foundation said,

“Reducing the number of families living in fuel poverty should be the lens through which the Government addresses both the immediate gas price crisis, and future plans to decarbonise our homes as part of the UK’s net-zero transition.”

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15:18 John McDonnell (Labour)

We all agree that we are at one minute to midnight on climate change, but in this Budget I was hoping we would see a radical response to that—just the basics. No: I think at the last estimate, the Chancellor was introducing at least £54 billion of tax reliefs. Why do we not at least ensure that none of those tax reliefs go to companies promoting the use of fossil fuel, or that none of those tax reductions are linked to operations that increase emissions? In this instance, of course, I refer to the shocking announcement about the support that domestic flights will now get.

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15:25 Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)

I argue to those on the Treasury Bench that we need to rediscover that spirit and thinking. We could link it to the green agenda, giving purpose to the many people who want to see what they can do to help. They should not just think, “We need to give to charity here or give money to this or that group.” We do need to do that, which is what the Prime Minister and various other people are doing at COP26, but we should also champion the nobility and virtue of wealth creators, and actively argue that more economic innovation is a social good, because that is what enriches our society. I do not believe that those values are inherent to this country alone, but our growth rate over the last 30 to 40 years has not been as strong as it could be, and it has not been for want of trying by either the Conservatives or Labour in government.

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15:33 Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)

Finally, as Glasgow hosts COP over the next two weeks, many of us would have hoped to see some strong statements in the Budget about climate change, but the Chancellor has not even paid token consideration to climate or the environment in this Budget. The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report provided a stark warning that the climate is changing in an unprecedented and damaging manner. We all know what our responsibilities are, but we are not seeing enough action. When our children and grandchildren ask us, “When COP was held in the UK, in Glasgow, what big steps did you take? How did you make changes that would make a difference to us?” I am afraid that we will look at this Budget and answer, “Not very much.”

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15:39 Ben Everitt (Milton Keynes North) (Con)

The Budget that we are debating today demonstrates just how far we have come since March. It is full of optimism, investment and growth, levelling up every town, region and industry across the United Kingdom. Of course, I cannot talk about it without first mentioning one of the big successes for my constituents in Milton Keynes North: the announcement that Milton Keynes will receive our share of £70 million for a fleet of more than 50 new zero-emission buses as part of the Department for Transport’s ZEBRA—zero-emission bus regional areas—scheme. Having lobbied the Government with my good friend and colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart), I am delighted that my constituents will not only benefit from improved connectivity, but be part of the Government’s ambitious net zero strategy.

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15:57 Valerie Vaz (Labour)

However, this is a contradictory Chancellor. He said he wanted to support the imagination and drive of entrepreneurial people, but the 3 million self-employed and small entrepreneurs who did not qualify for covid relief—the excluded—still do not qualify for any other support. He is the Instagram Chancellor—the Insta Chancellor, although none of the money is coming instantly, as he said himself. Everything is going in in 2024-25, before the next election, but we need something now, and I want to focus on three areas: young people, communities and the climate emergency.

What about climate change and the climate emergency? This week, the most dramatic thing is happening in Glasgow—COP26—but there was no mention of it in the Budget. It is not about us; it is about future generations. Even now, the Government are rowing back on their 1.5° commitment. This contradictory Chancellor lowered air passenger duty for short-haul domestic flights, but there was no mention in the Budget of alternatives such as public transport and no mention of High Speed 2 or the integrated rail plan.

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16:09 Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)

The EU funding has in the past supported skills development, business development, decarbonisation and much else. Skills development, of course, is a particular issue this afternoon. The Education Secretary referred to it, as did many of his colleagues. Those three apparently prime targets for this Government are unfortunately going to be neglected now that the funding will be reduced, not increased. To be clear, Wales won those funds from the EU because of our relative poverty. Our poverty puts us in the same category, unfortunately, as parts of post-1989 eastern Europe. That is where we stand economically. I am afraid that that grinding poverty remains. It has scarcely been relieved, yet this Government are cutting the relief that has been available to us—so much for their golden promises about life after Brexit.

There are 2,456 coal tips in Wales, which tower over former mining communities. Most are quite stable—at present, at least—but 327 are classified as high risk, and one of those actually slipped earlier this year near Tylorstown, where my own grandfather was a collier in the ’20s. Others may slip, particularly bearing in mind the increased rainfall that is inevitable with climate change. The coal may have gone and the wealth may have gone, but responsibility for the tips is now devolved—we are picking up the mess—and we will try to make them safe. However, the failure to back a long-term solution for Wales’s coal tips could create an additional financial burden on the Welsh Government, and the Welsh budget, of about £60 million per year.

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16:21 Nadia Whittome (Labour)

For my generation, this Budget offers little hope. It fails to address the climate emergency, the effects of which we must endure; it fails to tackle the poverty pay that means wages do not pay the bills; and it fails to get a grip on the housing crisis, consigning people of my generation to live in their childhood bedrooms or fork out half of their income in rent.

Days before COP26, the Budget could have announced an ambitious spending plan for a just transition to a low-carbon economy, creating thousands of jobs in the process. Instead, the Chancellor cut taxes on domestic flights and pledged just £7.5 billion of new money for climate and nature, which leaves a £55.4 billion gap in the investment we need to hit our net zero and nature targets.

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16:26 Jacob Young (Redcar) (Con)

In the March 2020 Budget—that seems like a lifetime ago—the Chancellor backed the programme of research and innovation for the UK steel and metals sector. Page 85 of the 2020 Red Book referred to £22 million for the Materials Processing Institute for innovation in decarbonising the steel sector. That funding, alongside support from Innovate UK, has created 25 high-skilled jobs. PRISM will go on to make huge strides in decarbonising our foundation industries. That is what we can achieve when we invest in research and, crucially, in development. We can create the jobs of the future, the technologies that will help us tackle climate change, and level up across the country.

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17:02 Olivia Blake (Labour)

As in 2010, people are marching in the streets, but today it is not Parliament Square; it is Glasgow, and they are marching for action on the climate emergency. Rather than action, this Budget offered them tax breaks on domestic flights and the Government are giving them another coal mine in Cumbria and an oilfield in Shetland and financing gas in Mozambique. They are not building anything back better; in some cases, they are building back far worse. The Chancellor has fired up the DeLorean and taken us back to 2010, when what we need is an economy fit for the future. And no, I am not talking about hoverboards or flying cars.

This was a chance to meet the challenge of the climate emergency with a radical green new deal. It was a chance to offer a real deal on wages, rather than giving with one hand and taking away with the other. And it was a chance to reverse the crisis in our public services, to put more money into our schools and hospitals and to invest in our children. Looking at the Members on the Conservative Benches, I am reminded of the uncomprehending faces of the 1955 audience as they look up at Marty McFly playing Chuck Berry on the guitar. To them I can only quote Marty:

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17:06 Chi Onwurah (Labour)

It is a real pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) and her incisive comments. I grew up in a council house in North Kenton, in Newcastle. I went to excellent local state schools, and the NHS made me well when I was ill and saved my mother’s life when she had cancer. I start with that to acknowledge the personal debt I owe to public services. It is a debt that we surely all feel all the more deeply, given the dedication of public service workers during this pandemic, but apparently the Chancellor does not. Yes, he talked about public services. Indeed, he mentioned them 13 times, but unfortunately this Budget is all talk, smoke and mirrors from a Government with no plan to address the three critical crises we are facing: the cost of living crisis, the climate crisis and the covid crisis. There is so much wrong with this Budget, but in the short time I have today, I will highlight five areas: universal credit, science, transport, local government and protecting our communities.

We do not generally think of science as a public service, but it is certainly a public good and the foundation of our future economic prosperity and global competitiveness. The Chancellor echoed the Prime Minister’s talk of a science superpower, but he went quickly over the bit where he actually broke the Prime Minister’s commitment to doubling the science spend by 2024-25, delaying it by two years at a cost of £8 billion in private sector investment. In science, as elsewhere, levelling up is nothing but a slogan. The Chancellor’s £1.4 million global Britain investment fund purports to spread economic opportunities across the UK by investing in life sciences, the automotive industry and manufacturing. Those are all sectors the north-east has considerable strengths in and they are critical for addressing climate change. Yet, for example, Government investment in life sciences is just £22 per person in the north, which is two fifths of the £55 per person invested in the south—in the midlands, it is just £16 per person. How will we deliver good, green, sustainable jobs across the north-east, and indeed in all our regions, without investment in science?

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17:12 Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)

The Scottish Tories have always been silent on the fact that Scotland has the highest grid charges in Europe. They have been silent about the £350 billion of oil and gas revenues that the broad shoulders of the UK have helped to spend without creating a sovereign wealth fund. They are silent about nothing being added to the Budget that matches the Scottish Government’s £500 million low-carbon just transition fund for the north-east of Scotland.

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17:27 Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)

This was a Budget for the Government to deliver on their promise to build back better for our country, to lay the foundations for economic growth, and to provide investment and support for businesses, workers and the most vulnerable across our country. It was a Budget that could have transformed our economy in the face of the impending climate crisis. Instead, we heard nothing beyond the rhetoric that could meet the reality that our country and our burning planet faces. Many people in the diaspora communities in my constituency of Ilford South have family who are already facing the impacts of catastrophic and deadly climate change.

This Budget was equally bleak for those in the transport sector. Having already faced a sharp drop in revenue for the best part of two years, and with passenger numbers far off pre-pandemic levels, the transport sector needed a lifesaving shot in the arm to enable it to survive. Instead we Londoners heard not a single word, let alone got a pound sterling for Transport for London, when we know that every pound spent in the capital creates jobs outside it. Capital spending announcements for the transport sector across the piece were at their lowest level for half a century. I fear announcements that I think will come this week confirming the scale of job losses across Network Rail and many parts of our rail sector—good jobs that could be lost but should be there to get people out of their cars and travelling on public transport, so that we can really start to tackle the climate crisis. This is a dire state of affairs in a sector that is crucial for keeping our country moving and enabling us to recover as quickly as possible.

The Chancellor can claim that the Tories are the public service party, but as always the devil is in the detail of his Budget. He and his party have overseen more than a decade of austerity that left us woefully underprepared to tackle the current crisis. The fact that in some areas the Budget has only raised spending back to pre-2010 levels shows how economically illiterate the austerity decade was. With so little support offered by this Government, once again, we are now facing one of the worst winter crises in living memory, alongside a catastrophic climate crisis that is growing worse every day.

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17:45 Mohammad Yasin (Labour)

One of the most astonishing aspects of the Budget was that, just days before the most important climate conference in a generation, the Chancellor failed to mention “climate” or “environment” once. Green transport is key to reaching our net zero targets, and a green rail network must be part of that ambition. The Treasury will continue to plough billions into the UK’s rail network to help train operators to cope with a fall in passenger numbers because of covid-19, but the funding falls way short of what is needed to level up local economies and decarbonise the transport system.

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17:49 Yasmin Qureshi (Labour)

While we sit here in the Chamber, in Glasgow, we are hosting the world at COP26. Yet the Chancellor did not mention climate change once in his speech—neither its impact abroad nor its impact at home. Where is the commitment to funding flood defences? In my constituency yesterday, the Environment Agency issued a flood warning. These communities have suffered year on year and they live in abject fear of flooding.

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17:57 Alex Sobel (Labour)

It is not just business rates, however. The Chancellor’s Budget failed to make any mention of retaining the current VAT rate for tourism and hospitality businesses in the UK, an ignorant oversight which serves only to compound the struggles that the tourism industry and holidaymakers in the UK are currently enduring. It is also about climate action. Supporting domestic tourism means fewer people flying longer distances. Make no mistake, the cut to air passenger duty on domestic flights is not about supporting British tourism or British tourists. It is not ordinary people who take unnecessary short-haul flights in the UK, but business executives and occasionally the Prime Minister, who, it transpires, is flying back from COP26 in Glasgow to London, rather than taking the train like the rest of us.

The Government claimed to support business, promised to deliver recovery and committed to net zero emissions, but—I apologise for what is now a tired cliché—actions speak louder than words.

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18:05 Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)

This Budget was a big disappointment for the millions of people who are worried about the cost-of-living crisis. It failed to provide sufficient funding for public services that have been devastated by over a decade of Conservative austerity, and it failed to address the climate emergency.

With COP26 under way at a critical moment for our planet, the Chancellor announced, astonishingly, that he would cut taxes on domestic flights—an irresponsible act that particularly insults young people and those who are most affected by climate change around the world. The OBR has estimated that it will result in 410,000 more passenger journeys a year at the very time when our Government should be showing leadership on the international stage. The Chancellor also failed to increase international aid to 0.7% of gross national income, once again letting down the world’s poorest people.

This Budget fails to give local councils the funding that they need to deliver crucial public services after over a decade of Conservative austerity. It fails to tackle the growing cost-of-living crisis and fails to address the urgency of the climate crisis. The Chancellor talked of

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18:11 Kate Osborne (Labour)

This Budget does nothing to mitigate those issues. It risks leaving the vast majority behind in pay and in the public services that we all rely on. We should have seen reforms in it to create a fairer tax system in which the wealthiest in our society pay a fairer share through a wealth tax that helps to fund public investment to create good green jobs and a net zero economy. Instead, we have seen no action on the climate emergency—in fact, the Chancellor has opted needlessly to cut taxes on domestic flights. In the week of COP26, that is just astounding, as is the Prime Minister’s decision to fly to Glasgow rather than use the rail network.

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18:24 Richard Burgon (Labour)

The second point I wish to make is that this Budget was a chance for the Government to put their money where their mouth is and fund a green transition to avoid climate catastrophe, which is the greatest example of free market failure. We needed a green new deal that created millions of decent, unionised, green jobs, transforming the basis of our economy while preparing us for the challenges of the future. Instead, the Government’s pledges fall tens of billions of pounds short of the levels of green investment we need to hit our carbon targets. So many people watching at home were shocked—they thought they had misheard—when in the Budget the Chancellor announced that he was slashing taxes on UK internal flights. People could not believe their ears. The Government are also sanctioning new oil and gas fields. We should be tackling the high-polluting lifestyles of the wealthy, which are fuelling the climate crisis. That is why I have called for a tax hike on the incomes of the richest 1%—those on more than £150,000 per year.

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18:30 Bridget Phillipson (Labour)

Labour has set out our climate investment pledge not only to get us on track with our commitment, but to avoid greater costs in the future and to ensure that we can seize opportunities, too. That means developing our domestic hydrogen sector, greening our steel industry, building the cycle lanes and infrastructure, creating new jobs to retrofit homes, ensuring that electric vehicles and their batteries are manufactured here, and that all our families can enjoy the local environment, clean air and open space. We are ambitious for Britain to lead the world with the jobs and technologies of the future, creating prosperity and opportunity in every corner of our country. Under Labour, we will work with business and trade unions to make this a reality.

Labour would tax fairly, spend wisely and get the economy firing on all cylinders. We would cut VAT on heating bills and help to insulate homes. We would back our world-leading industries, and buy, make and sell more here in Britain. We would scrap business rates and replace them with a much fairer system that is fit for the modern world. We would secure our transition to net zero with well paid, highly skilled jobs in every corner of our country. We would not clobber working people and British businesses while online giants get away without paying their fair share. We need a Budget to ease the urgent pressure on families and businesses—a Budget to seize new opportunities and to unleash our country’s potential. We have a proud history but I believe that our best days are ahead of us. The Chancellor has made the wrong choices throughout this Budget; the Conservatives have made the wrong choices throughout the past decade. Our country deserves better.

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18:45 The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Mr Simon Clarke)

Just because disaster has been averted does not mean that we should take that for granted. It is the result of conscious policy decisions that have steered our nation to a safer place. Now is the time to carry this momentum through into building the economy this Government were elected to deliver, with a future of higher wages, higher skills and rising productivity, no longer based on Labour’s and the SNP’s model of low-skilled migrant European labour, but based on training and equipping our own people to succeed; and a future where our businesses flourish and drive growth and that growth is shared more evenly across the United Kingdom. We will have a greener economy. Multiple Opposition speakers, such as the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome) and the right hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz), seemed to forget the £30 billion net zero strategy announced just a fortnight ago. It will be a future where our citizens benefit from world-class public services at every stage of their lives.

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