PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Fiscal Rules - 28 October 2024 (Commons/Commons Chamber)

With your permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to make a statement to the House about the action the Chancellor will take this week to fix the foundations and rebuild Britain.

Economic growth and modern public services can only be built on strong foundations. That is why this Government have brought political and economic stability back to Britain. After years of chaos from the Conservative party—chaos that cost families, businesses and public services dear—the British people are now rightly looking to this new Labour Government to clear up the mess from the last Government, fix the foundations and rebuild Britain. That is the change that my party promised the country, and it is the change that we will deliver.

To deliver that change, the fiscal rules that the Chancellor will set out this week will establish the basis for stable fiscal policy, meaning careful management of day-to-day spending and responsible long-term plans to invest and grow the economy.

As we committed to in our manifesto, the Government will have two robust fiscal rules that will guide the decisions we take. The first is our stability rule: we will pay for all day-to-day spending on public services from receipts. The budget was last in surplus under the last Labour Government, and this Labour Government will return the public finances to that position. The second is our investment rule, which will get debt falling as a proportion of our economy. It will ensure that we can secure the investment that our economy needs to grow, and to generate jobs and opportunities for people across the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, while maintaining a strong fiscal anchor and ensuring that our debt burden falls over time.

The plans that we inherited from the last Government would have seen public sector investment decline to the lowest level in more than 10 years. The path of declining investment is the path of a declining nation, and we refuse to follow it. Instead, we will seize the huge opportunities of the future to support the enterprise and talent that this country creates.

The Government recognise that sustained public investment is a crucial driver of long-term economic growth, giving the private sector the confidence to invest too, but our ambitions for public sector investment must be balanced against the need to maintain debt on a sustainable trajectory and ensure that we invest every pound of taxpayers’ money responsibly. That is why I will deliver a 10-year national infrastructure strategy next spring, working with colleagues across Government, the nations and regions, and with our mayors and the private sector, to set out a robust long-term strategy for sound investment. That is also why our new approach to overlapping multi-year spending reviews will improve the way that we allocate and spend capital, and why the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and I will lead the new national infrastructure and service transformation authority, which will drive better delivery of major projects and infrastructure across the country. In addition, there will be the work of the new office for value for money and the National Audit Office. Those robust guardrails will ensure that our capital spending is value for money, and that our financial investments deliver a positive return for the Exchequer.

Finally, the Chancellor has been listening to the views of institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, and to expert economists. As she has set out, that is why the Treasury has been reviewing the right measure of debt to target in the fiscal rules ahead of the upcoming Budget. The details of that policy will be announced to the House in the Chancellor’s statement on Wednesday, alongside an economic and fiscal forecast produced by the independent Office for Budget Responsibility. In the usual way, the fiscal rules will be published in a draft charter for budget responsibility, on which Members will vote in due course. I commend this statement to the House.

I am very fond of the hon. Gentleman, but he has some brass neck to stand up in this House and tell this Government how to behave after his party’s maladministration over the last 14 years. May I politely point out that he might be getting slightly ahead of himself? The Chancellor has not set out the detail of the fiscal rules in advance of the Budget; she will do it in this House, in the Budget on Wednesday, and I encourage him to wait for that information. He painted a picture of the country performing so well under his party’s leadership, but he may want to reflect on why he lost the last election so badly.

I know that the Chancellor looks forward to giving evidence to the Treasury Committee following the Budget in the normal way. To answer the question, the national infrastructure strategy will, for the first time, bring together all the infrastructure and major project asks of Whitehall Departments into one place alongside the economic infrastructure assessments. This will inform the multi-year spending reviews, which will now overlap, so that when an election comes up, we do not again end up with a Government making no spending plans whatsoever, or announcing a load of projects when there is no money to pay for them. We are confident that this better approach to allocating capital will mean that investment under this Government will improve the productivity of our public services and the growth of our economy, and mean a better return for British taxpayers across the country.

I thank the hon. Lady for her question and share her continued anger about the behaviour of the last Conservative Government, because as she and the whole House will know, our constituents are still paying the price of that Government’s chaos and failure. That is why the first Act of this Labour Government— the first Act that I took through this House—was the Budget Responsibility Act 2024, which locked in the power of the Office for Budget Responsibility to hold this Government and future Governments to account. If we ever again ended up in a position where Conservative Ministers decided to ignore independent checks and balances, the OBR would be able to report its view to this House independently, so that Parliament could hold that future Government to account. I end by pointing to our first fiscal rule, which is that we will pay for day-to-day spending with receipts. Again, that means that we will not end up in the situation that we were in under the last Government, when month after month, borrowing just paid the bills for which they did not put money aside.

I will avoid the suggestion that we might go back to putting things on stone tablets if I may, but I will accept the invitation in my hon. Friend’s question, and say that after 14 years, we have seen the failure of the approach taken by the last Government. I noted in my statement that public sector investment would now have been at its lowest in 10 years, under the plans of the now Opposition. That has been a failure for the economy and for the British people, and this Government will rectify it.

The hon. Member’s constituents will note at the Budget on Wednesday that this party honours its promises—the promises, set out in its manifesto, to protect working people. He might want to reflect on the way that his party failed his constituents at the last election before trying to lecture this Government.

We made a commitment to delivering 1.5 million homes, and we will do just that. On the second part of the question, the whole purpose of the national infrastructure strategy and the overlapping multi-year spending reviews is to give investors and suppliers confidence that when the Government say something will be delivered, it will, so they can invest and plan on that basis, to help improve the British economy. Frankly, they are starting from a position of complete dismay because of the failed promises of the last Government; we will rectify that.

What I can confirm is that what affected interest rates and mortgage payments so severely was the chaotic behaviour of the hon. Gentleman’s party in government before the last election. That is why we have had to legislate to make sure that if they ever returned to Government, they could not behave in similar ways. We are taking a responsible approach to public spending, as I have set out today, and we will never return to the activities of his party in government.

My hon. Friend points rightly to the £22 billion black hole that we are having to clear up after the Tory party. In the Budget on Wednesday, the Chancellor will set out how we are resetting public finances and fixing the foundations, so that we can get on and deliver our manifesto.

I am delighted to hear the hon. Gentleman tell the House that he welcomes the positive change that this Labour Government in Westminster are delivering to the Scottish people. I agree with him. On early announcements, I can point to GB Energy and the huge commitments we have made on energy infrastructure, which we know will be important to the Scottish people. We absolutely recognise that the Scottish economy has a huge contribution to make to the whole economy of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and we look forward to working with the Scottish people to make that a reality.

I welcome my hon. Friend’s question. [Interruption.] I know that Opposition Members find it uncomfortable, but it is a matter of fact that we will return to time and time again, because the sheer truth of it is that the last Government made promise after promise to the British people, knowing that they did not have the money to pay the bills. It is shameful, and the sooner they come to the House and apologise for their behaviour, the better it might be for them in the long run.

The hon. Gentleman is trying to be clever, but he is inviting me to speculate on the Budget. He will have to wait until Wednesday.

My hon. Friend is right. We have a choice at this Budget either to continue with the failed policies of the previous Government or to change them. The British people will not be surprised that our decision is to change them, reflecting on the fact that the cut in investment under the previous Government has led to poor productivity in public services and a lack of growth in the economy. That serves nobody.

I obviously cannot speculate on the Budget, so I invite the hon. Gentleman to come back to the House on Wednesday for the answer to the first part of his question. On the second part, he might know that I lead for the Government on our relationship with the devolved Governments. I have met Finance Ministers from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, most recently in Belfast, where we had a productive meeting. They were all very clear that the reset in the relationship between them and the Westminster Government was positive, given the failed relationships of the past. We made some progress in that meeting, and we will make further such progress in the Budget.

My hon. Friend has invited me to answer the question, “Why wasn’t there investment over the last decade or so?” Quite frankly, it is because of the choices of the Conservative party. This Labour party in government is taking a different set of decisions and we will set out the detail on Wednesday.

The hon. Member asks me so politely, but he will know that I cannot guarantee anything in advance of the Budget. However, it sounds as though he has already experienced the positive way in which this Government are approaching how we will repair the NHS and get it back on its feet, both by getting junior doctors off the strike line and back into wards and by investing in hospitals for the future. I know that he will look forward to the announcements in the Budget on Wednesday.

I thank my hon. Friend, and I thank his constituent for putting her trust in this Labour Government. As the Prime Minister said today, this Government will “run towards” the problems, as opposed to running away from them, as the Conservative party did. That will mean difficult decisions at the Budget on Wednesday to deal with the mess that we inherited, to reset public finances and to be able to start to deliver our manifesto. But this Government will take those decisions and we will announce the detail on Wednesday.

I thank the hon. Member for his question. He and his constituents will know, as much as mine do, that the problem for this country before the election was that the last Government had to borrow each month to pay for bills that they did not have the money to pay for, and that they made a whole list of promises across the country that they knew they could not pay for. That is why we have the £22 billion black hole, and why our first fiscal rule is that day-to-day spending will be paid for from tax receipts by the Exchequer. We will put the public budget back into surplus so that we are not in a doom loop of borrowing and borrowing just to keep ahead of ourselves each month. Where the Government do borrow, we will do so for productive investment to modernise our public services and to get growth back into our economy.

I share my hon. Friend’s commitment to wanting to tackle child poverty in this country—this party had a proud record on that when we were in government previously. That is why we have set up the child poverty taskforce, which reported last week, and our ambition is to reduce child poverty over the course of this Parliament. We will set out further measures in the Budget on Wednesday on how we intend to deliver that.

I point my hon. Friend to our very successful international investment summit only a couple of weeks ago, when it was very clear from investors that bringing stability back to our politics and our economy has been long wanted. That is why we were able to commit to £63 billion of investment in the country at the summit, followed by another £10 billion of investment announced only a few days after. We intend to raise much more to invest in this country and to bring growth back to the economy.

With my hon. Friend’s reference to payday loans, she points to the behaviour of the previous Government. As I have told the House this afternoon, this Government, with their first fiscal rule, will take us to a place where we are not borrowing to pay the bills each month, as had happened for years under the Conservatives. Anyone managing their family finances at home knows that that is the right thing to do, and they will welcome the fact that this Government are bringing that sense of discipline back to the national economy, too.

My hon. Friend knows that the test of a good Government is whether they can secure private sector investment to come alongside them—something that declined under the last Government. That is why the national wealth fund, which the Chancellor has announced, will secure billions of pounds of private sector investment, alongside public sector investment, in the industries of the future.

My hon. Friend will know, from speaking to his constituents during his campaign to be elected and since, that people’s experience of public services across the country shows the fact of the matter: after 14 years of failure from the Conservatives, our public services are on their knees. That is why they need a Government who will bring stability back to our economy, invest in public services and improve outcomes for people who rely on them and work in them.

I thank my hon. Friend for his excellent question, and I agree that £63 billion invested in this country was a sign of confidence, because investors around the world know that Britain is back after years of chaos.

I can give my hon. Friend that reassurance, and I point to the Office for Value for Money, which will work for us to ensure that we improve on behaviours of the past. I also point more broadly to the way that we manage our current assets. People have only to look at the state of our prisons, hospitals and schools, with reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete and roofs falling in, to know that after 14 years of cuts to investment, we cannot carry on like that. That is why people voted for change at the last election, and why we will deliver it.