The Conservatives’ Graham Stuart reacts to Rachel Reeves’ Budget
On Wednesday, Rachel Reeves revealed her second Budget, detailing a number of moves including tax rises in an attempt to fill a black hole in public finances. The Chancellor also announced a series of measures aimed at helping people who are currently struggling with living costs, including a long-expected end to the two-child limit on benefits.
Having abandoned plans for an income tax rise, Ms Reeves chose a range of smaller tax increases to pay for Government spending and build a larger buffer against her borrowing rules. These include a new pay-per-mile tax for electric vehicles, increased taxes on online betting and a so-called “mansion tax” on homes worth more than £2 million.
Ms Reeves has insisted taxes are being kept “an absolute minimum on ordinary working people” but critics have accused the Chancellor of breaching Labour’s election promise not to raise taxes on working people after deciding to keep tax thresholds frozen until 2030/31 and levying national insurance on some pension contributions.
Here, Graham Stuart, Member of Parliament for Beverley and Holderness, reacts to the Chancellor’s Budget. You can also read what the Labour MPs for Hull North & Cottingham and Hull West & Haltemprice had to say about the Budget here.
The Chancellor told us she wouldn’t come back for more, but today she has. By choosing welfare over work and dependency over opportunity, the Chancellor shows she has learned nothing from last year’s Budget of Broken Promises, a Budget that brought fewer jobs, fewer businesses, and lower growth. Today’s changes will do more of the same.
Conservatives back hard work; Labour punishes it. Britain now has a Chancellor who talks about helping working people while making it harder to work, save and succeed. That’s not a vision, it’s a fantasy, and the public can see right through it.
Labour swept to power promising change, and change is what we’ve got: 280,000 more people unemployed, over 200,000 businesses shut down, and 5000 people signed off sick every day. She’s wrecked the economy we built: 4 million more jobs since 2010, over a million new businesses, inflation brought under control, all squandered. And now we’re paying the price. They hit us with a ‘Taxi Tax’ and call it progress. Let’s hope she’s booking a one way ride out of Downing Street.
The Chancellor’s goals sound good, almost Conservative: lowering the cost of living, cutting NHS waiting lists and tackling debt. But her methods? Fanciful. The Good Samaritan could help because he had money in his pocket. A government can only give a hand up to those who truly need it if it encourages work, not welfare dependency.
Here’s the truth: Labour doesn’t understand business, and when you don’t back business, you don’t back jobs. Every new tax they impose means fewer chances for working people. From the day you start your company to the day you pass it on, they see a target to tax. Conservatives see a dream to back. We believe in entrepreneurs because they create the jobs and opportunities Britain needs. We give them the freedom to build, the tools to invest, and the chance to pass their success to their children.
This Budget was her chance to keep her promise made last year that she’d, “never have to do a Budget like this again.” She could have taken urgent action to breathe life into our high streets by scrapping business rates. Instead, she keeps squeezing the life out of them. She could have taken our plan to scrap Stamp Duty and help more people move house. Instead, she hiked Council Tax. And she could have had the courage to adopt our plans to cut welfare spending by £23 billion. Instead, she’s increasing it by £3 billion by scrapping the two-child benefit cap. Labour has chosen welfare over work, dependency over opportunity, and everyone who strives to be better will pay the price.
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