That income tax is charged for the tax year 2021-22.
And it is declared that it is expedient in the public interest that this Resolution should have statutory effect under the provisions of the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act 1968.
Before I call Secretary Oliver Dowden, I would just like to indicate to those participating remotely that there is a clock on whichever device you are using to transmit. Please could you abide by that, because the time limit of three minutes will be introduced from the beginning of Back-Bench contributions? If you cannot see the clock, please have another device handy. For those who are participating in the Chamber, the usual monitors will be used for timing.
This Budget represents a turning point in our fight against coronavirus. It is almost a year to the day since the Prime Minister, in a televised address to the nation, took one of the most dramatic steps of any peacetime Government in history and imposed a national lockdown. From that moment on, we were facing twin crises: not just a public health emergency, but an economic emergency too. The Government promised to do whatever it took to see the British people and British businesses through the crisis, and we did. A year on, thanks to one of the most comprehensive and generous Government support packages in the world, we are now in a position to begin rebuilding our economy. This Budget lays the first bricks in that process. It offers businesses protection to get through the next few months, but, with the road map as a guide, it also sets them on a course to stand on their own two feet once the country reopens, and, most importantly, it puts us in a position to build back better from the pandemic, leaving us a country that is stronger, safer and greener than the one upended by the coronavirus.
In a debate about supporting businesses during covid, it is worth taking stock of just how much was at stake when coronavirus brought our country to a standstill last March. On the day that national lockdown was imposed, all non-essential shops were forced to close their doors, alongside pubs, restaurants, museums, galleries, gyms, theatres and cinemas. In the space of a few short hours, millions of business owners across the country had their income wiped out. Their livelihoods were hanging in the balance, and nowhere was that more apparent than at DCMS. Arts, culture and tourism thrive on the walls of human interaction. Theatres, cinemas, live performance venues, museums and galleries simply cannot exist without an audience or visitors; with lights switched off, seats empty and stages bare, people genuinely worried that a century’s worth of culture and heritage was at risk.
Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)
As chair of the all-party parliamentary group for hospitality and tourism, may I place on the record my thanks to the Government for the incredible support that they have given the sector to help it reopen? There is no doubt that the Government have done their bit. Does my right hon. Friend agree that what we now need, as soon as it is safe, is for the British people to do their bit—to take holidays in the UK, to go back to our pubs and restaurants, to go back to our theatres and cinemas, and to get our economy rolling?
I of course agree with my hon. Friend. Indeed, I very much look forward to visiting Cornwall again myself. I spent many happy childhood summers on Crantock beach and have taken my own children there. That sits alongside other support we have provided for Cornwall and, indeed, my hon. Friend’s constituency, including, for example, the Lost Gardens of Heligan, which has had more than £600,000-worth of support. Under the culture recovery fund, a total of more than £1 million has been provided to his constituency alone.
Seven decades ago, when we were rebuilding from the rubble of the second world war, we looked to heavy industry—to coal and steel production—to power our recovery, but today our economy will be rebuilt on the back of cleaner, greener industries, and tech has the power to turbocharge all those other technologies. Science and tech now underpins our entire economy. Millions of businesses rely on the UK’s broadband networks to trade, to connect with customers and to advertise their goods, and in the year of pandemic, Zoom and Teams have temporarily replaced office spaces all over the world.
In building back better, tech will be at the heart of our recovery. We have set 10 clear tech priorities for this Government in the coming years—we will be setting those out later this week—but we also included a number of measures in this Budget to make the most of the digital revolution.
During this pandemic, millions of businesses were forced to move their operations online—to pivot to deliveries and to click and collect. This time it was a necessity, but we want to turn that into a long-term opportunity for British businesses. That is why we are launching a new UK-wide Help to Grow scheme to help 100,000 small and medium-sized businesses to get online or expand their digital businesses.
At the same time, we are cementing our position as the tech powerhouse of Europe. We have unveiled a new visa to attract the most exciting and talented tech brains in the world, alongside a new, improved visa process for scale-ups, entrepreneurs and disruptors. We have also launched a £375 million future tech fund. That is a breakthrough scheme for groundbreaking tech businesses. We have a plan to unlock billions from pension funds and funnel that money into new innovative ventures.
I draw the attention of the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. We just heard from the Secretary of State how very well the Government have done through this crisis, and he said how much we could look forward to the Government—to the Tories—uniting the country in times ahead. To use an old-fashioned northern expression, “I’ve heard ducks quack before”. The Secretary of State joined this House in 2015, so while I think I am right in saying that he is two years older than me, I have been around this Budget roundabout 13 times to his seven. That is nothing that I am proud of—I have spent my time in opposition and he has not—but, that said, he did work for David Cameron during 2012, so I am sure that he has experience enough to know the golden rule of Budgets: never tax anyone’s pasties.
Despite the exceptional context that the Secretary of State talks of, despite the many Budgets that he and I have heard in this House, the question at every Budget is the same. It is the question at the heart of all economics—who has what and is it fair, and what will this Budget do to change the prospects for the people of the United Kingdom? Every time the Chancellor gets to the Dispatch Box, that question is the same. So when I look back over those 13 Budgets that I have seen, I think, “What have the Tories done to make our country fairer?” They removed regional development agencies and slashed local authority funding, and now they complain that the economy is unbalanced. They ran down social security only to realise that when people with higher incomes needed it at the last minute, they had brought it to breaking point. They wasted years spending money on a costly reorganisation of our health service that they now say they want to reverse. Child poverty is high and rising. Food bank use is through the roof and we are staring down the barrel of an unemployment crisis. Economically, it has been a decade of misrule and now this Budget is on top of all that. Despite all that the Secretary of State says, I suspect that in the long term it will be neither use nor ornament at this time of economic peril, because this is a diabolical record, and I regret very much the choices that the Conservative party has made over the past decade. There is only one thing I regret more than its choices, and that is the failure of my party so far to replace it.
I am delighted, as a woman on the Conservative Benches, to be joining this debate. As I have only three minutes, I am unable to go through the many things in the Budget that I think are wonderful. It is a great Budget and there are many things to praise in it. The numbers that have been quoted by the Secretary of State are frankly eye-watering in terms of Government spending, but in the midst of those big numbers there are some losers and some areas of our economy that need focus. I would like to spend my three minutes—two and a half, as it is now—focusing on them.
First, the self-employed who are employed through a limited company have not had any support at all. I cannot be the only Member in this House who has constant emails from such constituents asking for support. I am not saying that this is easy, but perhaps the Treasury could see whether there is a way to help the self-employed. Many of those who are self-employed through limited companies are in the creative industries, and it would be great if we could find some way of helping them.
The wedding sector has also been particularly hard hit. Wedding venues are too large to qualify for business rates relief. They have no turnover, so the VAT reductions do not help them, and they do not serve food, so eat out to help out could not help them. I know that support has been given to the wedding industry, but these venues want to get back open and to hold weddings. They can do that in a covid-safe way, and they were doing so before this lockdown. I ask the Government to bring forward support for that sector.
I also want to touch on pubs, and I declare my interest in that my family run pubs and it is the industry in which I grew up. While great support has been given, wet pubs in particular have suffered. Support such as eat out to help out has been available, as well as the VAT reduction to 5%, which is very welcome and I am pleased that it has been extended—as is Alton Towers, one of the biggest employers in my constituency. However, if a pub does not sell food, it does not qualify for the 5% reduction. Would the Government consider finding some way to help those wet pubs? They will be reopening just as the football season comes to an end and will therefore not have the benefit of people coming in to watch the football, and they do not serve food and therefore cannot benefit from many of the Government’s incentive schemes. Just a suggestion: maybe there could be a way to allow those businesses to continue furloughing staff but let the staff come back in to work to help them to reopen. There are great costs involved in reopening that they need to think about.
Let me join other Members in marking today as International Women’s Day. It is certainly a day for us to reflect on the contribution of women, and on how we ensure that everyone is able to make their fullest possible contribution and how we advance the cause of equality. It is also important for lawmakers to be considering the impact of the choices that are made all year round. With last week’s Budget, it is particularly important to ensure that the decisions as far as possible enhance equality and opportunity rather than diminish them.
Siren voices have been calling for action to be taken on the deficit that has resulted from the economic responses to covid, by which they inevitably mean the Government taking steps to cut public spending. Unfortunately, the Chancellor shows every sign of wishing to heed that. The only comparable economic event to the covid crisis in its impact on national debt was world war two. Most of us would find it hard to imagine the political voices that prevailed after world war two saying that a national health service was unaffordable, that public services were unaffordable or that it simply was not feasible for the Government to play a leading role in rebuilding housing and industry.
The important figure, of course, is not the debt in itself, but the debt as a share of gross domestic product. Economic demand will return as vaccinations start to take effect and more of life can begin to return to normal. If the Government continue to support that economic demand, the economy will return to trend growth and overall Government debt will begin to shrink proportionately, exactly as it did after world war two. However, if the brakes are to be put on spending in the future, demand will assuredly fall and people will have less money to spend and growth in employment will be stifled. Inevitably, the impact will then fall most heavily on all those who have least, such as families that have one or more adult out of work and in receipt of benefits.
It is a pleasure both to follow the hon. Member for Gordon (Richard Thomson) and to be back in this Chamber to support the Chancellor on this Budget for recovery and renewal. In particular, I support his commitment to continue the unprecedented level of support: the extension of furlough relief, which will have given huge reassurance to many families around the country—£280 billion already spent on covid relief in the past 11 months; his help for the self-employed; his extraordinary commitment to freeports to drive transformational growth, investment and innovation in some of the most left-behind communities; his support for business-led investment, which is the key to growth and job creation; and, in particular, his support for green growth to drive a sustainable economic recovery.
I do not know about you, Mr Deputy Speaker, but after a Budget, I look for a judgment not from the Opposition Front Bench but from the business community of this country as they are the people who drive the investment that creates prosperity. This Budget has been welcomed by the CBI, the FSB, the Institute of Directors and all the key trade bodies, which speaks volumes for the confidence of boardrooms in this country in this Chancellor and in this Budget.
As a former Minister for life science, agri-tech and transport technology, I can say that the Chancellor is absolutely right to back the businesses of tomorrow—the highest growth sectors, which produce not just the odd single digit growth in jobs, employment and prosperity, but double-digit and, in some cases, triple-digit growth. Those new sectors of the economy are the best for getting us out of debt and releasing a generation from what could otherwise be a decade of decline after this covid disaster.
Let us be in no doubt about the scale of the economic disaster of covid as well as the healthcare impact. A total of £280 billion has been spent in 11 months, which is an unprecedented level of debt in peacetime. This is also the biggest recession that we have experienced in peacetime. This is a trauma on the public finances on a scale we have literally never seen in this country, and it takes us back to a debt-to-GDP ratio that has not been seen since 1760. This is an extraordinary moment. It is even worse than the economic legacy that we inherited in 2010.
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In Germany, the arts have been described as Lebensmittel —that which sustains life. Our museums, our theatres and our artistic and creative life are not frivolous add-ons; they are essential to our economy and to our national sense of wellbeing, so we stepped up to the plate and protected them. We unveiled the biggest single intervention in the arts in the history of the United Kingdom: the culture recovery fund, an unprecedented £1.75 billion safety net that protected theatres, cinemas, museums, galleries and live performance venues across the country. It has supported every thread of our rich cultural tapestry, from national Crown jewels such as the Royal Albert Hall to regional gems such as the Wolverhampton Grand and Norwich theatre, and through that fund we have given £170 million to music, £21 million to independent cinemas, £60 million to museums, and £180 million to theatres. Surely we can finally put to bed the old lie that the Conservative party does not care about the arts. After protecting arts and culture through a long covid winter, we are now preparing them for the spring and summer of reopening, with another £390 million in this Budget to help museums, galleries and theatres open their doors when restrictions finally ease.
Likewise, the Budget extends our hugely successful film and TV restart scheme, which during the pandemic has supported more than 200 productions up and down the United Kingdom. It has kept cameras rolling on movies such as “Mothering Sunday” and shows including “Grantchester” and “Peaky Blinders”. Most importantly, it has protected more than 24,000 jobs and £800 million-worth of production spend here in the United Kingdom. As a result, studios including Pinewood are currently running at full capacity. In fact, the British film industry just celebrated one of its most productive quarters on record. I hope that Members on both sides of the House will applaud the Chancellor’s decision to extend the scheme.
Members on both sides of the House should also applaud our decision to make another £300 million available to sports clubs as fans begin returning to stadiums, and a new fund that gives local communities the power to take ownership of their local sports clubs. These clubs are not just businesses; many, particularly smaller clubs, are the hubs of their communities, bringing life to villages, towns and cities across the country. The Budget will help to ensure that they are still standing when the pandemic is over, ready and waiting to have their seats filled once more with spectators.
However, support to DCMS sectors is only one small part of the unprecedented offer of support by the Government during the crisis. Together, the safety net we have placed under the British people totals £407 billion —more than the GDP of Sweden—and the Budget builds on that support, adding extra security for businesses to make it through to the end of the road map and back into normality. We have also extended the furlough scheme, which has already supported 11.2 million jobs across the United Kingdom; to be clear, more than 11 million people and families have been given the stability and security of money coming through the door and being able to put food on the table for their children. These are not just statistics; they are real people who have been able to get through the last 12 months thanks to the furlough scheme. We have also extended support for the self-employed to include an additional 600,000 freelancers, making this one of the most generous programmes for self-employed people in the world.
While we continue to support the British people through the final stage of this crisis, we have also announced measures that will put businesses across the country on the footing to stand on their own once more. They will no longer have to subsist day to day off the state; instead, we will put them in a position to thrive on their own. We have therefore extended the VAT cut and the business rates holiday, we are offering new recovery loans, and we are offering new restart grants to help businesses of all shapes and sizes get going again.
If last year’s package was a package of support—the vaccine against economic ruin—this Budget is the booster shot. These measures allow us to put covid in the rear-view mirror and start looking forward to a brighter future.
We also have ideas for a new listing regime that will make it easier for companies to raise money and list their businesses here in the United Kingdom, not on other markets. Some of the most successful and innovative businesses in the world have therefore chosen to make the UK their long-term home, as Deliveroo did just last week when it announced that it would be listing in London. This Budget paves the way for the next generation of tech entrepreneurs and disruptors to join them here in the United Kingdom.
Of course, the other great future-facing industry and powerhouse of DCMS and, indeed, the wider economy is the creative industries. We are genuinely a creative industries superpower. Our fashion and design businesses, those in film and TV, video games, architecture, advertising, publishing and beyond lead the world in every sector. They are a source of pride at home and envy abroad, and they now drive our economy. Film and TV alone are today worth more than the UK’s car industry. The sectors are not discrete—they are businesses that feed off one another and into this country’s wider, vibrant creative ecosystem.
When a UK business, for example, in the video games industry, designs a new game, they do not just support the video games industry. They boost tech, our artists and designers, the musicians who compose the game’s soundtrack and the animators who bring the characters to life. The furlough scheme, business grants and support for the self-employed have been a lifeline to all those businesses, which will continue to benefit from the schemes, as well as from the Budget’s new apprenticeship offer.
Those businesses have also benefited from our unprecedented, multibillion-pound investment in the cultural and creative industries. That investment was made with our hearts, but also our heads. Cultural and creative businesses are vital to our economy, as they are vital to our national identity and, indeed, our very way of life. They will play a key role as we look to the country’s long-term recovery and renewal.
That recovery and renewal will also centre on the rehabilitation of the tourism industry, which, with planes grounded and airports closed, has been particularly hard hit by covid. Tourism is a major enabler in this country, supporting around 230,000 businesses in every part of our United Kingdom. Through the pandemic, including in the Budget, we have provided extensive support to those businesses, including through the cut in VAT. Our new levelling-up fund will invest in tourism infrastructure across the entire Union.
In spring, with my hon. Friend the Minister for Sport, Tourism and Heritage, we will go even further, publishing a comprehensive tourism recovery plan that sets out an ambitious vision for the sector to bounce back from the pandemic and drive that new era of growth. At that point, Britain will start reopening for business. Shops will be pulling up their shutters, people will be returning to pubs and restaurants or working out in gyms and leisure centres. Day trips and mini-breaks will be back on and eventually, overseas tourists will begin pouring back into our great country.
We want a decade of great British summers, culminating, we hope, in the football World cup back here in the United Kingdom in 2030. Much sooner—indeed, next year—that feeling of national recovery and renewal will find its outlet in three unifying show-stopper events: the Commonwealth games, Festival UK* 2022 and the platinum jubilee, when the nation will come together to give thanks to Her Majesty the Queen for seven decades of unwavering public service.
After such a difficult time for all of us, those events represent a much-longed-for return to normality: the return of packed stadiums, packed theatres and streets full of people celebrating. They are not just an opportunity for us to come together and remember what unites us. They are milestone moments, alongside the rugby league world cup, Coventry city of culture, the centenary of the BBC and the 75th anniversary of the Edinburgh festival. They will help drive our economic and social recovery from the pandemic. They will reboot our tourism industry, demonstrating that our doors are wide open. They will bolster our creative industries, with tens of millions of pounds being invested in our arts and creators from every nation of the UK, and they will showcase our remarkable and wonderful country to the rest of the world.
Of course, we are not there yet. Coronavirus has shaken our economic foundations like no other peacetime crisis in our history. I know that businesses up and down the country continue to face many challenges as a result of the pandemic. The road map back to full economic health is rightly cautious, but it is one-way. As normality gradually returns, we have so much to look forward to as a country and so many opportunities to revive our businesses and our economy.
This Budget allows us to make the most of those opportunities. We protected businesses when they could not trade as usual or at all. Now we are putting them in a position where they can finally unroll their awnings again and declare Britain back open for business. I commend the Budget to the House.
I have said that the economic questions remain the same year after year, but the economy moves on and, therefore, so must the answers. To make our economy and our country fairer, we need to understand the situation that we face. It is dire, as a result of both the pandemic and the pre-existing flaws arising from a decade of Conservative Government. Unemployment for young people has increased by 13% and 1.7 million people are currently unemployed, and the Bank of England predicts that this will continue to rise throughout this year. The Office for Budget Responsibility has warned that the scarring effect of the virus a year from now will be that the pandemic lowers output in the medium term by 3% relative to its pre-pandemic path, and that is after the existing problems created by our exit from the European Union. This is the backdrop to my 13th Budget and the Secretary of State’s seventh—a lost decade of growth, with us now facing economic challenges that surpass even the crisis of a decade ago.
So what do the Government do? Well, finally, we have long overdue confirmation of the extension of furlough and vital business support, yet there is still a planned cut to universal credit, just at the very time that unemployment is predicted to spike. Also, less spoken of are the £14 billion cuts planned to public services for the rest of the Parliament and a 4% hit to our economy, as I said, due to our exit from the European Union. That is before we get to the things that they appear to have forgotten, including that missing pay rise for our nurses and cleaners in the NHS and the long-term plan for social care that the Chancellor remembered the day after. There was really very little help on the employment front either. As we know, just 2,000 young people have started their kickstart apprenticeship, when the Tories promised us 120,000.
Businesses in the UK have been challenged over the past 12 months in unimaginable ways, from total shutdown to recreating themselves overnight. UK business organisations, along with those in our social economy, have by and large proved themselves to be brilliantly creative and dynamic as well as having a keen interest in the public health imperative that we have all had to focus on. This Budget does far too little to support those businesses that really need it and too little to plan for the future. If a Government did get the framework right, the innovation and creativity of UK businesses would be able to thrive.
This poor lack of innovation is exemplified nowhere more clearly than in our brilliant creative industries. In this Budget, the Government have fallen well short of creating an environment for growth for creative and cultural businesses, which altogether contributed £225 billion to the UK in 2018, accounting for 12% of the economy. It is the part of the economy for which the Secretary of State is supposed to be responsible. The culture recovery fund, which he trumpets, saves buildings, but it does not do enough to save jobs and support the growth that is needed in creative industries across the whole country. The Secretary of State gave the game away when he said that the fund is there to protect the “Crown jewels”. There is no need for me to add to the extensive commentary on the royal family today. However, the Secretary of State’s comments reveal an obsession with that which we have inherited, rather than the demonstrable opportunities in the next generation.
The adjustments made to the self-employment income support scheme were not good enough either. Bringing newer entrants to the industry into the scheme was welcome, but analysis by the Musicians’ Union suggests that around 23% of its members are still left out in the cold. I understand from Prospect trade union that, while the fifth round of the scheme may run from May to September, it only provides three months’ worth of support, which means that the effect is identical to the scheme running out at the end of July. This will affect many industries, but it is particularly acute in the creative industries, in which it may take until much later in the year for normal work patterns to resume and in which two thirds of people are self-employed.
This is all a mistake because the creative industries deserve to be taken seriously. In growth terms, as we said the day before the Budget, the creative industries were up 7.5% in 2018 on the previous year, meaning that growth in the sector is five times larger than growth in the UK economy as a whole. That is a huge amount of potential that the Government simply have not met. Instead, they decided to spend £25 billion of taxpayers’ money on a tax incentive for businesses to invest in plant and machinery. It is pretty obvious that many of our newer businesses simply will not be helped by that. It is no bad thing at all to invest, but we are facing an unemployment crisis, and many small businesses are struggling to stay afloat. I think it is fair to ask the Government whether this tax cut will really get the money where it needs to be. How they will ensure that money is not spent on investments that were already planned?
If the Government do finally agree on a fundamental change to our tax system, undoing much of the direction of travel of previous Chancellors—and has anyone checked if George Osborne is okay?—where is the proper review that is needed? There appears to be a view across the House that the losses and gains from the pandemic have been hugely unequal, so what steps have the Government taken to ensure that billions of pounds are not handed over to global logistics companies whose profits have already soared during the pandemic? Whether it is the culture recovery fund or this tax relief, there seems to be a pattern: the Tories handing cash to the already lucrative.
Worse still, what if some of the most important structural changes needed in our economy, which this Budget should be an opportunity to address, cannot be sorted out by these sorts of tax incentive? In fact, on International Women’s Day, could somebody explain to me how this tax cut for plant and machinery will unleash all women’s entrepreneurship? How does focusing on tax breaks for big firms solve the underlying structural issue of poor childcare, which is one of the biggest drags on the well-documented productivity problem in the UK? I worry that the Help to Grow scheme will be about as successful as kickstart and restart have been in reality.
It is not just that. The Government seem to be missing the point of the pandemic entirely: that a strong economy requires a healthy workforce. The Secretary of State seems not to realise that we need a comprehensive plan for public wellbeing. That means supporting public services properly and giving every person in the UK a chance to improve their quality of life.
We know that a healthy population is an important input to a strong economy. Labour councils are already leading the way, with Coventry City Council giving residents free and discounted access to cultural and leisure facilities. The council specifically argued that it was vital for women’s participation, and particularly for those from lower-income backgrounds. In the local elections, councillors are putting health and wellbeing right at the centre of their manifestos. For example, the Labour party in Lancashire launched a manifesto that includes free swimming for residents over the age of 50 and under the age of 16. Given all that we have been through, Labour in Lancashire is putting health and wellbeing at the heart of future economic prospects. To make our economy work well, we need DCMS to focus on a big, bold plan for national wellbeing, which is something that the Government have either forgotten or just do not understand.
Something else that has been forgotten is the fact that our economy is inextricably linked to the global economy. Not only have our financial services led the world, for good or ill, but so have our music, fashion, art and publishing industries. Creative industries exported £36 billion worldwide in 2018 because they are part of the modern services economy that the UK brings to the world. When pandemics hit, our open economy is going to be affected long after everyone is vaccinated at home, which is why, if we really want to rescue our economy, we need a much better plan than cutting aid to some of the world’s most vulnerable people.
It gets worse. In addition to the year of hell that the pandemic has been for many businesses is the underlying cause of the disruption and damage to our economy that will last long after the pandemic: our exit from the European Union. As I said before, our country may be an island economy, but it is also an integral part of the continent of Europe. The project of those on the hard right and the far right—to blame European politicians for every ill that this country has ever faced, just as the Prime Minister did for years in his Telegraph column, with little connection to reality—is having a real impact on our economy across the board. Organisations such as the Federation of Small Businesses highlight its impact on small firms, whose profits are being wiped out as a result of post-Brexit costs.
The creative industries about which the Secretary of State and I have spoken have been hit hugely by Brexit, as well as by covid. The Government show no show sign at all that they will fix the problems. Those in the fashion industry warn that restructuring is necessary due to the industry’s European and global supply chains and the disruption that our leaving the EU has caused, but where is the help? Musicians and performers are unable to tour freely in Europe—a vital stepping-stone for many emerging artists and a key part of a crucial industry. All that because the many are having to pay the price for the ideological obsession of the few.
As the journalist Rafael Behr wrote recently, Brexit has been turned into a “perpetual grievance” machine. Let me give an example. The Secretary of State got himself into hot water by asking the fashion roundtable to use its star quality to influence our European partners—whom the Conservative party has so successfully hacked off. Was that an honest acknowledgment that there just is not anyone in his Department who has star quality of their own? Or was it, on this International Women’s Day, an admission that the Tories see the fashion and creative industry not as a serious, leading industry that puts clothes on the backs of millions around the world but rather as a flighty and insubstantial part of our economy in which women are too busy doing the stitching to be consulted about the future of our economy? Is that how the Tories see us?
It is not lost on me that here we are, on International Women’s Day, debating the Budget—the money in people’s pockets and whether our kids have a decent life or not— and many of the speakers are men, as is often the case in this House. Who can say why that is? I can certainly tell the Secretary of State that I am not the only woman in the country who is a little bit fed up with the Prime Minister’s male-dominated Cabinet. We are fed up with the Chancellor of the Exchequer who, in his Budget, forgot to mention social care, in which thousands of women work. The Budget also does little or nothing for the creative industries, in which thousands of women also work and which the Secretary of State dismissed in such pathetic terms.
The women of this country are not very enamoured of the Prime Minister, but that was true long before this Budget. We do not want his patronising arms around the nation. We want work that pays as much as men’s, we want to share the care of our children and older people so that we can have the same status as men at work, and we want people to listen when we speak. And before anyone says anything, yes I know that the Tory party has had two women Prime Ministers while the Labour party has had none, to which I would say yes, that is a serious criticism and it should be taken seriously. That is why Labour women will keep fighting, forever and a day, for women to be elected to the highest offices of state, not in order to get one woman on a pedestal but to achieve for all women the systematic undoing of the assumptions and strictures that make us less than we are.
In the context of this debate, the assumption consistently revealed by the Tories is that the work women do, from care to creativity and culture, is worth less than the work men do. That assumption—that revealed preference, as the economists would say—is wrong, and it will be the priority of Labour Governments to undo it, alongside the many other aspects of this Government’s economic policy, which, after a lost decade of growth, is nowhere near up to setting our country on the right path. The winners from this Budget will be those who are already comfortable enough. The losers will be the small businesses whose prospects have been shut down temporarily by the pandemic or permanently by Brexit, the children struggling after a decade of disaster for family benefits, and every woman, man and child whose ambitions are not well served by a Tory Chancellor more interested in his own.
My final point is about getting people back into town centres and spending money in the hospitality businesses. We need a whole-of-Government effort to ensure that not just the great events that my right hon. Friend mentioned but local events are held. I spoke to the leader of my district council today, and we are looking to see what we can do because we want those businesses to be able to stand on their own two feet, as the Secretary of State said.
There are many actions, both big and small, that the Chancellor could have chosen to take in this Budget which could help or hinder the recovery, but one of the most significant choices would have been to make permanent the £20 uplift in universal credit. It is no exaggeration to say that for many families that £20 has made the difference between bills being paid or not, and food being on the table or not. It is a comparatively modest financial commitment, but one whose impact for the good has far outweighed the resources it has required. Extending it for six months falls well short of doing “whatever it takes” to ensure the financial security of the least well-off. Governments all over the world have increased their support for their economies throughout this crisis, many with interventions that are proportionately far larger than we have seen from the UK Government. Having rightly carried the economy this far, it would make no sense for the Chancellor to drop that commitment now. It is a real disappointment that he is not doing more to do “whatever it takes” and provide the 5% of GDP stimulus that the Scottish National party has called for repeatedly.
There are of course things that can be welcomed. We certainly welcome the excellent progress being made on vaccinations and on reducing infection levels of the virus, which gives us ever more hope that when restrictions start to be lifted they might be able to stay lifted. We can also welcome the extension of the furlough and the self-employment income support scheme. Obviously, the furlough is not without its cost to employers, and together with the SEISS it still fails to reach too many people, but both have been lifelines for those they benefit. To help fill in some of those gaps, the Scottish Government have provided nearly £30 million for newly self-employed people to mitigate the financial challenges for those who have been unable to access the UK Government’s SEISS. It is past time for the Chancellor to recognise the shortcomings of his support mechanisms, understand those they have left behind, recognise the hurt caused and undertake to do “whatever it takes” from this point onwards to support those people who have been left behind.
Although everyone recognises that those schemes cannot continue forever, the threat to end both in September is not at all helpful for those who are trying to plan how to trade out of their present difficulties. The repeated short-term extensions that we have seen over the past 12 months are obviously better than the alternative of not extending. However, it creates an image not so much of a Chancellor carefully planning a route back to recovery, but almost of a Wallace and Gromit Chancellor, desperately laying the rails in front of the train just before it runs out of track.
Ahead of the Budget the British Chambers of Commerce warned that a quarter of British businesses would fire staff immediately if the Chancellor failed to extend the scheme. The Institute for Fiscal Studies urged the Chancellor to recognise and address the multiple inequalities exacerbated by the crisis, saying that emergency support should be extended and that the furlough scheme
“should not be cut completely in one go.”
Placing a full stop date on furlough, rather than having an open-ended promise of continuing it until it is no longer needed, risks pushing businesses to lay off their workers while they are still in recovery. The resulting loss of skills and experience can only hinder the recovery of individual businesses and the economy, so we urge the Chancellor to reconsider the date. No business is or will be furloughing staff unnecessarily, and a Chancellor truly committed to doing “whatever it takes” would surely agree to maintain both schemes for so long as is required while restrictions remain in place.
Turning to the tourism and hospitality sector, the best way to help it right now would be to allow it to trade out of its difficulties by getting money across the counter just as soon as it is safe once again to do so. The VAT reduction will be crucial. My party welcomed the VAT reduction to 5% for the sector, but to stop that on 30 September will not be helpful. It should continue for the full year.
Business rates relief will also be crucial and has been a lifeline for leisure, retail and hospitality businesses, helping them to strip out fixed costs and stay alive. It is a matter of regret that the Chancellor has not committed the same level of resource as the Scottish Government, who have announced a £1 billion package that not only cuts the poundage rate, but offers 100% relief not just until June, but for the next 12 months for retail, tourism, hospitality, newspapers and the vital aviation sector.
As a Member of Parliament representing the north-east of Scotland, I am only too aware of the importance of the energy economy and the criticality of ensuring a just transition to net zero. While I acknowledge the £27 million that has been announced for the energy transition zone in Aberdeen, it still falls well short of the wider £62 million transition fund committed last year by the Scottish Government.
Listening to the Scottish Tories would lead someone to think that the levelling-up fund will leave not a single pothole unfilled, not a bridge unrepaired and not a project unfunded in north-east Scotland. Instead, now that the detail has been revealed, we see that Aberdeenshire has been placed in the lowest category and Aberdeen city in the second tier. We are essentially being left empty handed, and it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the UK Government are so far falling far short of the necessary response to help secure the economic future of north-east Scotland. We can only hope that there is better news to come in the sector deal that we have been promised in the first quarter.
As I have said, there is also essentially nothing for the 3 million who have been excluded. If she has spent years of practice and study in pursuit of her dream to perform, Fatima’s next job should not have to be in cyber. She should have a fighting chance to get her next job in the area that she has worked so hard to be in. Our arts and cultural sector would be vital to our sense of who we are even without its economic contribution, but this is not just about the performer we see and admire, because there are so many other parts of the pyramid that helps to put that performer on the stage. Those people have been left behind without the ability to earn. If we impoverish them, we impoverish us all.
There has also been no additional funding to support musicians and touring artists who have suffered the double whammy of coronavirus and an end to visa-free touring in Europe and no provision for live events insurance, without which the industry will be reliant on support for much longer than necessary. The Scottish Government have stepped in with funds for the performing arts venue relief, for cultural organisations and the venues recovery fund, which has supported theatres and other performing arts venues across Scotland. That provision is supporting grassroots music venues and providing a stabilisation fund, furlough top-up payments and one-off grants for nightclubs and soft play centres. The UK Government can and should follow suit. Interventions have also been made in tourism and hospitality with no UK equivalent: in the wedding industry fund, the bed-and-breakfast hardship fund, the tour operators’ fund, and the events industry support fund. These tourism and hospitality businesses have lengthy supply chains, reaching all parts of the economy. It is not just the accommodation provider, but the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker as well. The recovery from the pandemic will not begin when covid recedes, as businesses will simply move on to dealing with the Brexit crisis. We need to offer wide-ranging support for businesses in this regard. Instead of offering loans, it would be better to convert loans to grants.
In conclusion, let me just make this observation: through the Barnett formula, Scotland is still dependent on problems being felt and choices being made in Whitehall in order to release the resources that we would wish to have in order to act in all the ways that we need. Scotland desperately needs borrowing powers, but as the UK Government take back control from the Scottish Parliament, they are also taking away resource and with it any reason for many to support the current constitutional and fiscal settlement. I am certain that that will not go unnoticed as we approach May’s election in Scotland.
How will we avoid a decade of decline and the next generation paying for it? The Chancellor is right about two things. First, we have to reassure the markets that we are the party still committed to returning our public finances to a sensible and balanced state. Let us not forget that a 1% rise in interest rates, if markets lost confidence in us, would lead to an extra £25 billion a year in interest payments. The Chancellor has taken some tough decisions and he is right to have done so, but, crucially, it is growth that we need and that commitment to those new sectors. Nine years ago, we set out an industrial strategy for life sciences, which has paid dividends this year in our ability to deliver a vaccine more quickly than anywhere else in the world, and if we do the same now in bioeconomy, artificial intelligence and robotics, we can do the same again, and the Chancellor has laid the foundations for a decade of growth.