With this Labour government’s first Budget due at the end of this month, I know local residents in Middlesbrough and Thornaby East want to hear some good news.
Dealing with the effects of fourteen years of Conservative chaos is a constant refrain.
But the Conservative approach of cuts to the public services we all rely on and the cuts to people’s pay and social security – all whilst letting the extremely wealthy pile cash in – has led to a huge growth in inequality, with some of the highest levels of poverty being found in our local patch.
The Conservatives started doing that way back in 2010, but on top of that we have seen the cost-of-living crisis, in recent years. Inflation driven by energy bills and food prices has meant people’s incomes stretched further and this has meant people going without.
This just isn’t fair or right. Dealing with that poverty, lifting living standards and giving people a real chance has to be at the top of the Chancellor’s list.
I said that under the last government, and consistently since the election, but I wanted to get my constituents’ views.
Responses in my constituency
Ahead of this month’s Budget, responses I’ve received to my constituency survey revealed how two-thirds of people responding felt worse off than they did this time last year and a slightly higher number felt worse off generally after fourteen years of Conservative government.
Worryingly, close to half of people said that in the last two years they had turned off the heating to reduce outgoings with borrowing money, the second most common action to deal with financial difficulties.
Asked how they would cope with the expected increase in energy costs this month, more than four in ten said they would not use the heating whilst a fifth said they would cut down on essentials — even food.
My survey also revealed people’s deep fears over paying the monthly bills and having security in retirement.
The purpose of the survey was to drill down into how the decisions of the previous government have affected people’s everyday lives, what they have done in response to try and cope and what their current worries and fears are.
What those responses told me was that the cost-of-living crisis continues, with pay too low, social security too low, and not enough confidence about future employment.
I want to use this survey to give our Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves and the Treasury a window into the state of play with people in Middlesbrough and Thornaby East – so they deliver the policies people need. We need an economy with more jobs, better pay, and a safety net that helps people live, not just survive.
Investment is needed
To achieve all that and to secure an improvement in people’s everyday experience, we need to see investment in our hospitals, schools, police and see our local councils better funded if they are to provide the full services that people expect and deserve.
The government has already delivered good pay increases for many of our hard-working public servants. I hope that can continue and we unwind the pay caps and freezes imposed under the Tories.
It has also this week introduced an Employment Rights Bill to improve rights and protections at work. Having worked on this for many years, leading to settling of the foundation document Labour’s the New Deal for Working People, I am delighted to celebrate this landmark bill which will transform the lives of millions of workers very much for the better.
Child poverty
But child poverty is unacceptably high locally. Recent research has found an ‘extremely high’ correlation between the constituencies with the highest rates of child poverty and those with the highest proportions of children affected by the two-child limit, including 19% of all children growing up in Middlesbrough and Thornaby East – the worst affected in the region. I therefore welcomed the launch of the child poverty taskforce in July, and whilst I look forward to seeing the work of the taskforce unfold, we need to take action now to lift children out of poverty. For that reason I hope we will see changes to the two-child benefit limit in the Budget, as the North East Child Poverty Commission has called for.
There is also an urgent need for a Universal Credit protected minimum floor below which payments can’t be reduced. Too many people – up to 63% of all children in households receiving UC in Middlesbrough and Thornaby East – currently face deductions from their UC payment to pay off various bills and debts (the most common of which is to pay back the advance to bridge the five week wait for their first UC payment) before they even receive it.
Measures to expand free school meals to at least all pupils and students at primary, secondary and college in families receiving Universal Credit would also be a huge boost to the constituency.
I also hope we will see attention given to the consequences of the announcement in July on the Winter Fuel Payment. The very real fear is that scrapping the universal payment will leave many pensioners who are just above the threshold of eligibility for Pension Credit, and therefore not entitled to the Winter Fuel Payment, in great difficulty keeping warm this winter. That’s why I couldn’t vote for it. I sincerely ask and hope that changes are made in this Budget to address this problem and give those pensioners some comfort as the nights grow colder.
Alongside pay rises, the government has already introduced new laws to restore passenger rail to the public sector and open a public energy generating company. Again, it is a joy to see the work I did in producing Labour’s GBRail – a plan for a nationally Integrated Publicly Owned Railway- being so quickly progressed by the new government.
On Teesside there will be a new boost in carbon capture investment as we, along with the North West benefit from the government commitment of £22bn to the programme. But we also need a strategy to lift investment in our public services. The National Wealth Fund is a great initiative and hopefully the precursor of more to come from a government understanding the potential impact of an active state.
Addressing unfairness
What we need is the confidence to secure the funds to invest in our public services. Fairly taxing extreme wealth to fund our services, as expressed for example by the members of the group Patriotic Millionaires, is common sense. They say very forcefully that they have personally benefited from our education and health services and they are more than willing to pay higher taxes to repay that investment in them and our country.
So addressing the unfairness in the low rate of capital gains tax as compared with income tax, whilst supporting the real and often personal investment of entrepreneurs, fixing the loopholes in inheritance tax that millionaires benefit from should be obvious starting points to build on our agenda of change and make it a reality.
Now Labour is in government, I am campaigning for real change in Middlesbrough and Thornaby East and across our country.
I look forward to the Budget with hope.
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