Toby Perkins' Speech in the Budget 2024 debate (1)

Derbyshire Times

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00:00 Thank you very much Mr Deputy Speaker. This budget demonstrates that this is a government

00:06 that exists for one reason and one reason only. And that reason is that if it didn't

00:11 exist, the Conservative party would have to face a general election. And the only thing

00:16 that the five families all agree on is that the one thing they hate more than facing the

00:22 tough choices that their disastrous legacy has left this country is facing the harsh

00:28 verdict of the British people. And so the government limps on, endlessly, joylessly,

00:34 hopelessly, and without any sense that it has a clue how to tackle the kind of issues

00:40 facing our country that I see at my constituency surgeries every week of the year. This is

00:47 a budget that self-evidently fails to rise to the challenge that 14 years of Tory government

00:54 has left our nation facing. Crumbling public services, growing social problems, and a bleak

01:00 fiscal forecast is the damning but unsurprising legacy of 14 wasted years. This is a government

01:09 that has failed by every measure. They came to power saying they were going to cut the

01:14 nation's debt. Now my honourable friend from the Rhondda knows British history far

01:19 better than I do, but the earliest example of UK debt that I could find was under King

01:25 William III back in the late 17th century. It took the collective governments of the

01:32 next 316 years to raise a cumulative debt of £1 trillion. This government, in 14 useless

01:42 years, has increased that debt from £1 trillion to £2.6 trillion. This is a government that

01:50 for all their failure on public services existed, they told us, in order to reduce the nation's

01:57 debt. But it's not just the national debt that is rising. People are worse off. Real

02:03 GDP per capita will be lower at the end of this year than it was at the start of this

02:08 Parliament. Real pay has gone up just £17 a week over 13 years of Conservative government.

02:16 Under the 13 years of a Labour government, real wages rose by £183 per week. And OBR

02:25 figures show that within this budget, for every 10p extra that working people will pay

02:31 in tax under the Tories' plan, they will only be getting 5p back as a result of the

02:37 combined national insurance cut. The idea that this is a budget that is on the side

02:43 of working people is simply untrue. Under this Tory government, work doesn't pay.

02:48 Now it was interesting to spend a moment of my day today listening to the Honourable Member

02:54 for Ashfield. This is a man who just two months ago was the Deputy Chairman of the Conservative

02:59 Party. He said that under this government the cost of living is out of hand, people

03:05 can't get a GP appointment, there's no control on migration, there's crime on our streets,

03:10 you can't get a police officer to a burglary, people are pulling their own teeth out for

03:15 the lack of a dentist. Now for someone who was the Deputy Chairman of the Conservative

03:19 Party just a couple of months ago, you have to say there's not much that's wrong in

03:23 that analysis. But there is so much more that you could say. I see my own Conservative council

03:31 in Derbyshire and the disastrous decisions that they are making. Now I have no time for

03:37 the leadership of the Conservative council and I see the huge impact on parents whose

03:44 children are waiting for a special needs assessment or unable to get support with special needs

03:51 teaching assistants in school. I see the state of our roads that are simply unfit to be driven

03:57 on. I see people who are waiting for a social care assessment. I met a gentleman just today

04:04 who's literally at the ends of his tether trying to get support for his wife who's in

04:09 a terrible state. But for all of the failures that Tory Derbyshire County Council have,

04:15 you have to come back and look at this government's funding of local government when councils

04:20 right up and down the country are experiencing the same, whether they're Labour or Conservative

04:25 or Liberal, they are all saying that council funding is out of control. And we also see

04:33 the impact on NHS waiting times, the longest waiting times in our history. We see food

04:38 bank usage coming to be absolutely commonplace. We see rising child poverty. I hear every

04:47 time I go to a school that the school have children turning up unable to learn because

04:53 of the hunger that they experience. And this is a government so out of ideas that at the

04:58 same time that they claim that the Labour Party doesn't have a plan, they actually

05:04 steal Labour Party policies on a whole raft of areas, whether it be the non-DOMS announcement,

05:10 whether it be our plan on dentistry, whether it be our plan on NHS workforce, whether it

05:15 be the current consultation on water bosses bonuses. All of these things have in common

05:20 that they've been attacked by the Tories and then stolen by the Tories. So Mr Deputy

05:25 Speaker, it's clear this government has neither the ambition nor the courage to tackle

05:30 the issues facing our country. Not only does our economy need growth, but our country needs

05:36 a shot in the arm that a government with a commitment to tackling poverty and the causes

05:41 of failure that have gone unchecked under this government. No more a country where people

05:46 die on an NHS waiting list, waiting for the treatment that could have saved them. No more

05:51 a country where the trains don't run and the roads aren't fit to drive on. No more

05:56 a country when the place you are born is the biggest determinant of your chances in life.

06:02 Change is coming Mr Deputy Speaker and it can't come a moment too soon.

06:05 - Thank you. - Thank you.

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