This week the emergency Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, made an emergency statement to calm the markets by reversing most of the Prime Minister’s main policy platform that sent the economy into freefall.
After just a few short weeks, this Government has had to be bailed out by the banks and we are paying for the catastrophic mistake through mortgage rises, inflation and pension pot reductions.
Hunt has now reduced the help for energy bills instead of asking the oil and gas giants to pay more from their vast and unexpected profits – which even the CEO of Shell agreed to.
If as expected energy bills double from next April to £4,350 for the average household, it will be disastrous for many low and middle-income earners, businesses, schools and public services.
The markets have stabilised, but mortgage rates and inflation are still rising.
The damage is done.
Hunt is replacing one failed Tory ideology – ‘libertarianism’, with another – ‘Austerity’, which the Tories admit failed. It led to the devastating decline in public services and the terrible record on growth and productivity which are at the heart of many of today’s ingrained problems.
You won’t find many NHS workers who have a good thing to say about the Chancellor’s six years as Health Secretary.
Hunt took over responsibility for the NHS in 2012. By the time he left, patient experience and staff morale had both taken a dramatic turn for the worse across many key indicators.
The winter crisis became an annual event with official figures showing 2017, 2018 and 2019 were successively the “worst on record”. The NHS was woefully underprepared for the pandemic and many more people, including NHS workers, died as a result.
In recent years, as Chair of the Health Select Committee, Hunt has admitted some of the failures and has campaigned for an NHS workforce plan because of the severe shortage of staff.
I supported him on this and that’s why, now he’s in charge of the budget, I will make sure he puts the money where his mouth is and ensure the NHS is funded properly.
We have a record seven million people waiting for treatment. Our NHS will not survive another period of austerity.
If we don’t invest in our nation’s health and well-being how on earth will we have the healthy workforce that will deliver the growth we desperately need?
The Tories have taken the country through 12 years of economic calamity.
Long before Truss, their all-pain-no-gain austerity regime caused household income growth to drop: between 2007 and 2018 the UK fell behind the rest of Europe, with only Greece and Cyprus experiencing lower economic growth. The UK is now predicted to have the worst growth in the G7 – behind only the heavily sanctioned Russia.
Of course, we can no longer ignore the economic sanctions the Government imposed on us through their hardest of Brexits which has knocked our growth prospects for six.
You can’t expect to leave the biggest trade bloc in the world with no replacement for the loss of trade and expect magic growth. Our economy has shrunk, and we need to face up to ALL of the reasons why if we want to fix it.
On Halloween, the OBR will publish its economic forecasts. With the Chancellor warning of “eye-watering public spending cuts” we can expect another Tory trick, not a treat.
This is a monthly guest column provided by
Mohammad Yasin, Labour MP for Bedford & Kempston.
It is published unedited and does not reflect
the views of the Bedford Independent.
