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8.10 pm
Mr. Ray Powell (Ogmore): I was present for the speeches at the start of the Budget debate and have listened attentively to other speeches during the course of the week. I left the Chamber earlier to attend a meeting of the parliamentary benevolent fund, at which we presented ex-Members of Parliament or their widows with more money than the Chancellor are giving them, and more money than the Chancellor will be offering people throughout the country. The beneficiaries of our benevolent fund will receive a Christmas box of £500. Many pensioners in my constituency would love to be afforded a £500 Christmas box from the Chancellor.
What is the Chancellor offering, and what is he taking back, and how will that affect my constituents and Wales? The House and the country realise that the Budget pretended to offer a lot to the people. With respect to the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Hamilton), Labour will not be running afraid of the Government at the next general election. We are positive in the policies that we want to pursue. I do not know the hon. Gentleman's majority, but I am sure that it will have to be good for him to retain his seat at the next general election--especially after this year's Budget.
Newspaper reports following the Budget, especially that in the Financial Times, and the state of the pound immediately after the Budget was announced, proved conclusively that the array of Order Papers waved by Government Members was a farce. As soon as Conservative Members read the details of the Budget, they realised that there was not sufficient in it to allow those right hon. and hon. Members to regain their popularity with the electorate. I would not be so complacent as the hon. Member for Tatton. If he thinks that Labour's lead in the opinion polls can be reduced within the next 18 months without a giveaway Budget and a substantial reduction in interest rates, he is living in cloud cuckoo land.
When I entered the House 16 years ago--you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, were here long before, and it can be seen that we are aging--there was a lengthy list of hon. Members waiting to participate in the Budget debate. In the years that followed, most Budget debates were well attended. The Chamber would not be empty but fairly full. Things have changed. When one examines the Budget, one can understand why the Chamber has not been well attended this week.
When the Chancellor presented his Budget, he suggested that the family on average earnings would be better off next year by £450, which he said was the equivalent of £9 per week. Since then, the Chancellor and the Conservative party chairman have admitted that that large promised improvement was false.
The Treasury press release on Budget day made the inaccuracy clear. It stated that the tax changes would be worth an average of just over £2.80 a week. The day after, the Library--whose figures give me far more confidence--suggested that the average family would be approximately £2.08 better off. In exchanges earlier between the Chancellor and my right hon. Friend the deputy leader of the Labour party, it was plain that the right hon. and learned Gentleman's figure was based on rosy forecasts rather than grim reality.
Living standards have fallen over the past five months--more than at any time in 40 years. After this Budget, the typical family will still be £670 worse off
than at the time of the last general election. The Chancellor's figures cannot be trusted. One year ago, he stated that public borrowing in 1996-97 would be £12 billion. Now he states that it will be nearly double--
£22 billion. Last year, the Chancellor predicted that investment would grow this year by nearly 6 per cent. Now he says the figure is just 1 per cent. Also last year, the right hon. and learned Gentleman said that the economy would grow by 3.25 per cent. this year. Now he admits that growth is running at only 2.75 per cent.
The Chancellor argued, in exchanges with my right hon. Friend the deputy leader during his true and excellent assessment of the Budget, that the Budget was all about putting extra money in people's pockets. What extra money--the £9 that the right hon. and learned Gentleman mentioned when he presented his Budget, or the £2.08 that the Library calculated?
Where are the tax cuts that the Chancellor talked about? Conservative Members waved their Order Papers when the right hon. and learned Gentleman sat down, but, having analysed his speech, they began to realise that they must start looking for a job with a friendly company or a bank, because no way can they win the next general election and hold on to their seats.
As to increases in local government charges, the Secretary of State for Wales stated in a letter to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Aberavon (Mr. Morris) that an 11 per cent. increase will be imposed on rates in Wales, which will mean an increase of £35 a year for the average ratepayer. What kind of tax cut is that? To burden the new unitary authorities in Wales, with all their new responsibilities from 1 April, with an 11 per cent. rates increase is absolutely disgraceful, and should seriously be further considered.
What does this Budget do about job insecurity, or about expensive bureaucrats in the NHS? What are the Government's proposals to solve the negative equity problem in the housing market? Yesterday, my hon. Friend the Member for Newport, East (Mr. Hughes) referred to the "Kane" programme, so called
After my hon. Friend had spoken, the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Lady Olga Maitland), who is not in her place now, asked him to apologise to the people of Wales:
My hon. Friend's experience, however, does not differ from my experience of my constituency. During the 16 years of Conservative rule, seven collieries there have been closed, making 8,500 miners redundant. The decommissioning of the Port Talbot steelworks put 12,000 steel workers out of work. That makes a total of 20,500 redundancies between 1979 and the end of the miners' strike in 1984. Without economic planning, no constituency could recover from such a blow. Perhaps the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam, who criticised my hon. Friend, should travel around the country and visit parts of Wales to see the deprivation and squalor there.
People of all political opinions have said that this Budget was a wasted opportunity. The overwhelming majority of people have found their concerns completely ignored. What measures were included to alleviate the insecurity felt by so many families in respect of jobs, housing, education, hospital services, social security, and increasing drug abuse? That is not to mention the Government's staggering record of failure with bodies such as the Child Support Agency, which has already claimed 35 wasted lives. The Act that set it up should be scrapped as a matter of urgency. In numerous measures, the Government have moved rightwards so as to put clear water between themselves and the Opposition.
Most Opposition Members, like me, wanted positive steps taken to solve the problems in their constituencies and in the country at large. Our constituents, especially the unemployed, are crying out for help. Some of them in my constituency have been unemployed for 10 years or more. Young people leave education with loans hanging over their heads and degrees in their pockets, desperately seeking work.
The Ford engine plant in Bridgend announced a few weeks ago that 480 new jobs were to be created under a £340 million expansion programme. It was reported that 11,600 people applied. That means that 11,120 of them are still looking for work in Ogwr borough. This part of Wales has suffered greatly over the past 16 years, and I greatly doubt that it will recover under the Chancellor's economic plans.
No one will be fooled: this is not the Budget of a Government who have succeeded. After 16 years, they have signally failed, as shown by rising taxes, declining living standards and public services, and increased borrowing. The Budget was the last gasp of a degenerate regime.
"because that is the name of its distinguished presenter, Mr. Vincent Kane, who has not exactly made a reputation for himself as a Labour supporter. A fortnight ago the programme dealt with poverty and made a convincing case for Wales to be described as the most poverty stricken area in western Europe, certainly on a par with some of western Europe's most devastated areas such as are found in Greece, Portugal, southern Spain, Sardinia and the former East Germany.
Once vibrant communities in Wales have been totally decimated. In addition to massive unemployment, officially registered and otherwise, wages are deplorably low. If ever there was a case for a minimum wage, it could certainly be made for Wales."
"I cannot believe that they would thank the hon. Gentleman for describing them as living in an impoverished state and equating them with some grossly chaotic country overseas. I would be furious to be put into such a category, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will later apologise to the people whom he represents."--[Official Report, 4 December 1995; Vol. 268, c. 78-80.]
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