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@Ed_Miliband's #budget #budget2013 response in full
Ed Miliband’s 2013 Budget response was as follows:
Mr Deputy Speaker.
This is the Chancellor’s fourth Budget, but one thing unites them all.
Every Budget he comes to this house and things are worse not better for the country.
Compared to last year’s Budget
Growth last year, down.
Growth this year, down.
Growth next year, down.
They don’t think growth matters, but people in this country do.
And all he offers is more of the same.
A more of the same Budget from a downgraded Chancellor.
Britain deserves better than this.
I do have to say to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he almost need not have bother coming to the House because the whole Budget, including the market-sensitive fiscal forecast was in the Standard before he rose to his feet.
To be fair to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I sure he didn’t intend the whole of the Budget to be in the Standard before he rose to his feet and I hope he will investigate and report back to the House.
Now, what did the Prime Minister declare late last year, and I quote:
“The good news will keep coming”.
And what did the Chancellor tell us today?
Under this Government the bad news just doesn’t stop.
Back in June 2010 the Chancellor promised:
“a steady and sustained recovery…”
He was wrong.
We’ve had the slowest recovery for 100 years.
Last year he said in the Budget there would be no double dip recession.
He was wrong, there was.
He told us a year ago that growth would be 2% this year.
He was wrong.
Now he says it will be just 0.6%.
He told us that next year, growth would be 2.7%.
Wrong again.
Now just 1.8%.
Wait for tomorrow the Chancellor says, and I will be vindicated.
But with this Chancellor tomorrow never comes.
He’s the wrong man.
In the wrong place.
At the worst possible time for the country.
It’s a downgraded budget from a downgraded Chancellor.
He has secured one upgrade this year.
Travelling first class on a second class ticket from Crewe to London.
And the only time the country’s felt all in it together, was when he got booed by 80,000 people at the Paralympics.
Mr Deputy Speaker, I’ve got some advice for the Chancellor.
Stay away from the cup final, even if Chelsea get there.
And, who is paying the price for the Chancellor’s failure?
Britain’s families.
In his first Budget he predicted that living standards would rise over the Parliament.
But wages are flat.
Prices are rising.
And Britain’s families are squeezed.
And what the Chancellor didn’t tell us, is that the Office for Budget Responsibility has confirmed the British people will be worse off in 2015 than they were in 2010.
It’s official: you’re worse off under the Tories.
Worse off, year after year after year. And wasn’t there an extraordinary omission from his speech, no mention of the AAA rating.
What the Prime Minister called the “mark of trust”.
Which he told us had been “secured”.
The Chancellor said it would be a humiliation for Britain to be downgraded.
So not just a downgraded Chancellor.
A humiliated Chancellor too.
And what about borrowing?
The Chancellor made the extraordinary claim in his speech that he was “on course”.
Mr Deputy Speaker, even he can’t believe this nonsense.
Debt is higher in every year of this Parliament than he forecast at the last Budget.
He is going to borrow £200 billion more than he planned.
And what did he say in his June 2010 Budget:
He set two very clear benchmarks, and I quote, “We are on track to have debt falling and a balanced structural current budget” by 2014/15.
Or as he called it “our four-year plan”.
This was the deal he offered the British people.
These were the terms.
Four years of pain, tax rises ….
The Prime Minister says from a sedentary position, borrow more, you are borrowing more.
And he just needs to look down the road, because the Business Secretary was asked and he said: “We are borrowing more”. From his own Business Secretary.
So these were the terms: four years, tax rises, and spending cuts, and the public finances would be sorted.
So today he should have been telling us:
Just one more year of sacrifice.
In twelve months the good times will roll.
Job done.
Mission accomplished.
Election plan underway.
But three years on, what does he say?
Exactly what he said three years ago.
We still need four more years of pain, tax rises and spending cuts.
In other words, after all the misery, all the harsh medicine, all the suffering by the British people:
Three years.
No progress.
Deal broken.
Same old Tories.
And all he offers is more of the same.
It’s as if they really do believe their own propaganda.
That the failure is nothing to do with them.
We’ve heard all the excuses:
The snow, the royal wedding, the Jubilee, the eurozone.
And now they’re turning on each other.
The Prime Minister said last weekend, and I quote:
“Let the message go out from this hall and this party: We are here to fight”.
Mr Deputy Speaker, they’re certainly doing that.
The Business Secretary’s turned on the Chancellor.
The Home Secretary’s turned on the Prime Minister.
And the Education Secretary’s turned on her.
The whole country can see that’s what’s going on.
The blame game has begun in the Cabinet.
The truth is the Chancellor is lashed to the mast, not because of his judgement, but because of pride.
Not because of the facts, but because of ideology.
And why does he stay in his job?
Not because the country want him.
Not because his party want him.
But because he is the Prime Minister’s last line of defence.
The Bullingdon boys really are both in it together.
And they don’t understand, you need a recovery made by the many not just a few at the top.
It’s a year now since the omnishambles Budget.
We’ve had u-turns on charities, on churches, on caravans.
And yes, on pasties.
But there is one policy they are absolutely committed to.
The top rate tax cut.
John the banker, remember him?
He’s had a tough year, earning just £1m.
What does he get? He gets a tax cut of £42,500 next year.
£42,500, double the average wage.
His colleague, let’s call him George, his colleague has done a little better, bringing home £5 million. What does he get in a tax cut?
I know the Prime Minister doesn’t like to hear what he agreed to, what does he get? A tax cut of nearly £250,000.
And at the same time everyone else is paying the price.
The Chancellor is giving with one hand, and taking far more away with the other.
Hard working families hit by the strivers tax.
Pensioners hit by the granny tax.
Disabled people hit by the bedroom tax.
Millions paying more so millionaires can pay less.
Now the Chancellor mentioned childcare.
He wants a round of applause for cutting £7bn in help for families this Parliament, and offering £700m of help in the next.
But what are the families who are waiting for that childcare help told? They’ve got to wait over two years for help to arrive.
But for the richest in society, they just have to wait two weeks for the millionaires tax cut to kick in.
This is David Cameron’s Britain.
And still the Prime Minister refuses to tell us – despite repeated questions – whether he is getting the 50p tax cut.
Oh he’s getting embarrassed now, you can see.
He’s had a year to think about it.
He must have done the maths.
Even he should have worked it out by now.
So come on.
Nod your head if you are getting the 50p tax rate.
They ask am I?
No I am not getting the 50p tax rate, I am asking whether the PM is.
Come on answer.
After all, he is the person that said sunlight is the best disinfectant, let transparency win the day.
Now let’s try something else. What about the rest of the Cabinet, are they getting the 50p tax rate?
OK, hands up if you are not getting the 50p tax cut?
Come on, hands up.
Just put your hand up if you are not getting the 50p tax cut. They are obviously … they don’t like it do they?
At last the Cabinet are united, with a simple message:
Thanks George.
He’s cutting taxes for them, while raising them for everyone else.
Now the Chancellor announced some measures today that he said would boost growth.
Just like he does every year.
And every year they fail.
I could mention the “national loan guarantee scheme”, he trumpeted that last year.
And then he abolished just four months later.
The Funding for Lending scheme, that he said would transform the prospects for small business.
The work programme that is worse than doing nothing.
And today he talked a lot about housing.
And the Prime Minister said this in 2011. He launched his so-called housing strategy, and in his own understated way he labelled it “a radical and unashamedly ambitious strategy”. He said it would give the housing industry a shot in the arm, enable 100,000 people to buy their own home.
18 months later, how many families have been helped?
Not 100,000.
Not even 10,000.
Just fifteen hundred out of 100,000 promised
That’s 98,500 broken promises.
For all the launches, strategies and plans, housing completions are now at the lowest level since the 1920s.
And 130,000 jobs lost in construction because of their failing economic plan.
It’s a failing economic plan from a failing Chancellor.
The Chancellor has failed the tests of the British people:
Growth, living standards and hope.
But he has not just failed their tests. He has failed on his own as well.
All he has to offer is this more of the same Budget.
Today the Chancellor joined twitter.
He could have got it all into 140 characters.
Growth down. Borrowing up. Families hit. And millionaires laughing all the way to the bank. #downgradedChancellor.
Mr Deputy Speaker, more of the same is not the answer to the last three years.
More of the same is the answer of a downgraded Chancellor, in a downgraded Government.
Britain deserves better than this.
Cameron won't get as far as holding a referendum in 2017, as he'll have been shown the door long before then.
The reply “The Tories just feel like crap managers” was in response to my recent question, “Do you think people are excited about politics?” Suzanne Moore instead suggested, “Yes but not the political system or way it is represented.” Olivia simply replied, “If people were excited about politics wouldn’t more people vote? The fact that so few actually bother to vote, suggests that people are far from excited about politics.”
Unusually, somebody in her 60s last week told me that she and her husband were determined to vote in the General Election anticipated around June 2015. Vicky and John are not impressed by the current incumbents but feel passionately that any party is better than ‘this lot’. Returning to the answer, “The Tories are just crap managers”, there is an overwhelming feeling amongst my friends in real life, my 3000 friends on Facebook and 7000 followers on Twitter amongst both my accounts that the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are playing for time. They offer no leadership, and are sub-standard managers.
They have bungled the forests issue, raised tuition fees, scrapped Building Schools for the Future, scrapped education support allowance, killed a growing economy from 2010, told Europe that they only wish to be in Europe on their own terms, unilaterally decided to scrap GCSEs, outsourced the NHS on the way to privatising it, produced a shambolic budget last year with numerous U-turns, and shut libraries.
The £3bn re-organisation of the NHS, which nobody voted for, was probably the pièce de resistance. The Conservatives have done a disgraceful job of explaining what these reforms mean, and the BBC have made no effort in explaining what is clearly a very significant issue of public interest. The public are none-the-wiser that NHS services have been completely thrown open to the private sector, such that you can walk into a walk-in centre with it having NHS branding but being run to maximise shareholder dividend for a private company. The medical Royal Colleges all opposed it, as did the BMA and the Royal College of Nursing. The marketisation of the NHS means that the service cannot be guaranteed to be anywhere near comprehensive, and already evidence is accruing of definite examples of rationing (e.g. in cataract surgery).
A similar disenfranchisement of key professionals was seen in the high street with the Government, the Conservatives enabled by the Liberal Democrats, ramraiding through the ‘Legal Aid and Sentencing of Offenders Act’ which has seen destruction of legal aid on the high street, killing off access-to-justice for social justice fields such as housing, immigration and asylum, welfare benefits and employment. The marketisation of law on the high-street means that the public are left with an incomplete fragmented service, and again these ‘reforms’ were officially opposed by the Law Society and the Bar Council.
A third disgrace has been the “reform” of GCSEs. Michael Gove barged through processes which meant that even examining in last year’s GCSE English ended up being a shambles, and had to go for judicial review in the Queen’s Bench Division of the High Court. The teachers, notably the National Union of Teachers, were not consulted about the changes to the GCSE system, a completely ludicrous state of affairs that there are GCSE courses presently in progress.
The “political process” is the third arm of the long-awaited policy review of the UK Labour Party. Whilst millions will have been spent cumulatively on the Scotland referendum, and the AV referendum, and on the introduction of Police Commissioners, there is no doubt that the political process is broken. David Cameron’s talk of holding a referendum in 2017 shows complete contempt that he has disconnected him and his party from major areas of society. The list goes on – disabled citizens are sick of the welfare reforms in progress, with the disastrous introduction of the ‘Personal Independent Payment’ following fast after the pitiful administration of Work Capacity Benefits by the Department of Work and Pensions.
Cameron won’t get as far as holding a referendum in 2017, as he’ll have been shown the door long before then.
David Cameron's PMQs are nothing short of a disaster, but provides useful clues about Tory Britain
I went to Lady Thatcher’s last ever Prime Minister’s Questions in 1990. I remember the experience well, and of course I didn’t actually know it was her last ever PMQs at the time. The thing that struck me was the House of Commons debating chamber is like a TV studio, or film set, or at least seems that way from the public gallery. In a sense it is, as it is a set-piece spectacle for the media, almost as firm a ritual as Coronation St. or EastEnders. That it is supposed to hold the Government to account is not really what most of us are interested in. It’s a barometer of the important issue of the day, whether Ed Miliband can deliver an effective punch, and whether David Cameron will be ‘on the ropes’ or respond with a counter-hook of his own.
From the perspective of the media managers such as Craig Oliver and Nick Robinson, a concern will be how the exchange will be reported on the 6 o’clock news or the 10 o’clock news. There will have been some of us who witness the ex change live, and we will happily provide instantaneous feedback with our hashtag #PMQs. Media commentators will usually give a decisive result, such as “Miliband triumphant” or, rarely these days, “Cameron floored that”. For all his quips about how Ed Miliband “practises” in front of a mirror – and David, the one olds aren’t really your best – Cameron is neurotic that his Party comes across well in the whole performance. Conservatives are, it is reported, even sent memoranda reminding them of the need for barracking and heckling the opposition.
The advantage of Prime Minister’s Questions is of course that questions can be asked of the Prime Minister under parliamentary privilege. Lord Neuberger, former Master of the Rolls and President-Elect of the Supreme Court, and Lord Judge, the Lord Chief Justice, are rightly keen that parliamentary privilege is not abused in the House of Commons. However, it is perhaps worth noting that the content of the answers often are poor in comparison to the question being asked. For example, Debbie Abrahams in her question asks simply, “Can the Prime Minister explain the relationship between Virgin Care donations to the Tory party, the number of Virgin Care shareholders on clinical commissioning group boards and the number of NHS contracts that have been awarded to Virgin Care?” In science, there is often no relationship. That is indeed the null hypothesis for all experiments ever conducted in scientific research, so, strictly speaking, all that David Cameron had to do was provide that there wasn’t significant evidence that there wasn’t no link to support his thesis (if you pardon the double negative). Ian Lavery MP’s question provides another interesting example.
You will notice the sombre mood of the House, as is indeed fitting as this precise theoretically could have happened to any sitting MP of the House of Commons. This is where it is more fitting to think of ‘grading’ PMQs not as a “knockout boxing match”, but a Finals exam script. The default option is a II.1, unless a really good answer merits a First, and a really appalling answer merits a Third. Cameron’s answers are normally in the safe II.1/II.2 category, although he sometimes fails to answer the question altogether. Here the answer is a II.2 really in all honesty, because, while he uses the opportunity to praise a policy which is on the ropes, i.e. the large number of benefit claimants having their original (adverse) decisions overturned on appeal, he in no way addresses the main point. The issue is, of course, put in a strong way that, “austerity kills”, as serious academics address the point in peer-reviewed medical journals whether the austerity agenda of countries including the UK has had an adverse effect on citizens. Take for example this excellent paper from Prof Martin McKee’s laboratory here in London on the “failed experiment” of austerity, in the peer-reviewed ‘Clinical Medicine’, the official journal of the Royal College of Physicians.
Unfortunately, we have all become accustomed to the non-answers given by the Prime Minister during PMQs, but this, in all fairness, is not drastically different from other Prime Ministers in the past, arguably. If the answers do not provide much detail about fine detail, they can possibly throw some light onto the operational smoothness of the running of the Government, and the degree to which they have insight into how seriously the public take their policies seriously. The “Big Society” has had more relaunches than most PR people would like to contemplate, and here is David Cameron trying to shoehorn the relevance and importance of the Big Society into the Tory Britain of David Cameron.
Whilst in no doubt well intentioned, the problem with this answer encapsulates the whole thrust of the main criticism of the Big Society. People have discussed how the Big Society is merely “a cover for cuts”, and it exposes in all its glory how David Cameron has simply has no answer for the failure of market economics. Ed Miliband wishes to advance the notion of a ‘responsible State’ working for the greater ‘public good’, so is able to provide a rebuttal of Cameron’s answer mocking how voluntereeism is not a solution for child malnutrition. This of course plays right into the hands of Labour MPs, and many Labour activists, who feel that Cameron’s Tory Britain has seen a return to Victorian values, in extreme painted as a picture of workhouses and poverty. The implementation of workfare has lent some support to the idea of people being taken advantage of, and the subtext here is that there are some people who have drawn substantial benefit from this culture of ‘using’ labour. The problem with David Cameron’s “something for nothing” jibe is that it can be easily answered with the chaos over workfare, and reports of issues such as George Osborne’s paddock. That large corporates have more of a say in David Cameron’s Britain is a picture which is easy to paint without any effort, such as McKinsey’s being chief “players” in the NHS restructuring (ahead of the BMA, RCN or medical Royal Colleges, for example), or Serco “winning big” for the National Citizen Service contracts. The idea of ‘flexible labour’, i.e. a workforce where job security is nil, could go a long way to explain the record levels of people seemingly in employment (and a equally comparable record number of people with little job security). The problem is that, when Cameron makes another gaffe, legions of Labour activists respond by saying on Twitter, “that’s what he really meant”.
That was the natural conclusion, for example, of this gaffe:
We do not get much of a chance to enter the mindset of David Cameron and his Tory-led Cabinet, and we equally do not have an accurate picture of what is reported from the Tory-led BBC and others, many believe. However, hearing certain things ‘from the horses mouth’ is indeed revealing. If David Cameron had answered his final scripts in the Final Honour School of Philosophy, Psychology and Economics for Brasenose College Oxford, he would have erred into II.2 territory, not because of his lack of preparation and well-researched material, but his simple failure to answer the question. The answers, however, do offer clues for me as to how he thinks about what sort of Society he wants, and what sort of people he values in Society.
After Clegg made it easier for top earners, this is the message he wants you to hear instead
I’ve just been sent this email by Nick Clegg.
Fairer tax. There’s two words that rarely appear together. Too often it feels like there are two sets of rules when it comes to tax in Britain. One rule for the richest. Another for the average worker.
I want to change this. It’s time for fairer tax.
It means cutting the tax bill of average workers. It means making the very rich pay their fair share.
I want the super-rich to pay their fair share, through policies like our mansion tax.
If you support this, please add your name to the campaign now.
Make no mistake – if this was a majority Liberal Democrat Government, we would introduce this tax tomorrow.
But we can already see that opposition to this tax will be strong from those that want to protect the status quo. That’s why I need your support.
Back the campaign today and help make sure the richest pay their fair share.
Together we can deliver fairer tax in Britain.
Meanwhile this is how the Guardian reported on Clegg’s last attempt at tax fairness on 17 Mar 2012:
Nick Clegg faces a growing mutiny within his own party before this week’s budget as Liberal Democrat MPs, peers and grassroots activists accuse him of caving in to the Tories and failing to stand up for low earners.
The Lib Dem leader is struggling to maintain discipline after it emerged that the chancellor, George Osborne, is poised to announce a cut in the 50p rate of income tax for higher earners – without meeting the Lib Dems’ key demand for a “mansion tax” or other property tax on the wealthy in return.
The word ‘incompetent’ doesn’t do this fiasco justice.
More credit where credit is due – not for Mervyn King in other words
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Mervyn King, the Bank of England governor, last night stated that the Bank of England will launch two new stimulus packages in response to the worsening economic outlook. Together with the government, it will provide billions of pounds of cheap credit to banks to lend to companies. It will also offer banks access to short-term money to deal with “exceptional market stresses”.
Spinning the message of George Osborne, King in his Mansion House speech provided:
“Our recovery and rebalancing may have become more difficult, but they are no less important. Meanwhile the imbalances in the world economy still await resolution. It is an ugly picture. Leaders of the G20 will next week confront formidable challenges. In the United Kingdom, we can and will get through this. But it would be naive to pretend that any of us can know when the storms from overseas will have passed over our shores and the economic skies begin to brighten.”
However, King has presided over, and is firmly enmeshed in, a disastrous Downing-Street created recession. Ed Balls, who accurately forecast what would be the result of lack of sufficient investment in the UK, through lack of support for infrastructure projects such as ‘Building Schools for the Future’, increased benefits payment, a threat of inflation and unemployment, diminishing tax receipts, and an economy going in reverse gear from growth to a double-dip recession through customer demand suffocated by an increase in VAT, succinctly explained:
“What more evidence can David Cameron and George Osborne need that their policies have failed and that they now need a change of course and a plan B for growth and jobs? It’s now clear that this is a recession made in Downing Street by this Government’s failed policies. Despite all the problems in the euro area, France, Germany and the eurozone as a whole have so far avoided recession and only exports to other countries stopped us going into recession a year ago. The result is that Britain is now in a weaker position if things get worse in the eurozone in the coming months.”
According to a relatively recent article by Philio Aldrick, Economics Editor of the Telegraph, David Cumming, head of equities at Standard Life and one of the most influential figures in the City, said the Treasury must improve on Sir Mervyn when his second term expires in June 2013. George Osborne has provided that the appointment process will officially begin in the autumn, with the successor named before the end of the year. King has not particularly endeared himself with the City since the financial crisis. However, despite the underlying animosity, senior finance professionals have previously rarely spoken out so strongly against King. Mr Cumming said: “The current appointment in my view has been a disaster, so its important to get a better man this time round.”
Sadly the only thing that can save the economic reputation of Mervyn King and George Osborne is a full-blown Eurozone crisis. Thankfully also it has been predicted by Prof Steve Keen that the UK might enter a further credit crunch this year. Keen was interviewed by Paul Mason on BBC Radio 4 yesteday. He set out his criticisms of conventional macroeconomic theory and proposed how he would approach remedying the ongoing fundamental problems facing the global financial system. Towards the end of the interview he suggests not only that austerity policy is entirely inappropriate in the context of private sector deleveraging but also that the present excessively high levels of private debt in the UK mean another credit crunch is very likely. You can listen to the interview here.
This post does not represent the views of BPP or of the BPP Legal Awareness Society, a student society run at BPP. The author, Shibley (@legalaware), is currently President of the BPP Legal Awareness Society.
