Budget Responsibility Bill

[Ms Nusrat Ghani in the Chair]

I remind Members that, in Committee, Members should not address the Chair as “Deputy Speaker”. Please use our names when addressing the Chair. “Madam Chair” or “Chair” are also acceptable. Clause 1 Announcement of fiscally significant measures

13:58:00

I beg to move amendment 9, page 1, line 14, at end insert— “(c) or any changes to the government’s fiscal targets.” This amendment requires the OBR to produce and publish a section 4(3) report at the time new fiscal rules are announced by the Treasury.

With this is will be convenient to take the following: Amendment 2, page 1, line 25, at end insert— “(2A) In any case where the Office has acted in accordance with subsection (2), it may notify the Independent Adviser on Ministers’ Interests of the circumstances in any case where it considers those circumstances may be relevant to— (a) the Ministerial Code, or (b) the functions of the Independent Adviser on Ministers’ Interests.” This amendment enables the OBR to notify the Independent Adviser on Ministers’ Interests where the OBR considers that any instance where the Treasury had not requested a report under section 4A(1) in advance may give rise to consideration of compliance with the Ministerial Code. Amendment 5, page 1, line 25, at end insert— “(2A) Where the OBR prepares a report in accordance with subsection (1) or (2), it must take account of the impact of the measure or measures on— (a) the UK’s compliance with, and (b) the fiscal cost of meeting, the UK’s net zero target as set in section 1(2) of the Climate Change Act 2008.” This amendment requires the OBR to report on the impact of fiscally significant measures announced by Government on the UK’s statutory net zero target. Amendment 1, page 2, line 4, at end insert “or (b) the measure, or combination of measures, is likely to have an impact on— (i) the cost of government borrowing, (ii) interest rates, or (iii) the rate of growth of gross domestic product.” This amendment broadens the definition of fiscally significant measures to those which fall below the costing threshold, but have wider fiscal effects, by affecting either the cost of government borrowing, interest rates or rates of economic growth. Amendment 6, page 2, line 4, at end insert “or if the condition in subsection (3A) is met.” See the statement for Amendment 7. Amendment 7, page 2, line 6, at end insert— “(3A) The condition in this subsection is that the measure, or combination of measures, forms part of category of measures with a cumulative impact on— (a) public sector net debt, (b) public sector contingent liabilities, or (c) both, that exceeds a specified percentage of the gross domestic product for a specified period. “Specified” means specified in, or determined in accordance with, the Charter for Budget Responsibility” The purpose of this amendment is to extend the definition of fiscally significant measures to include measures with a cumulative impact on public sector net debt or contingent liabilities when taken together with other measures in the same category, such as public projects with private sector partners. Amendment 3, page 2, line 16, leave out “28” and insert “56”. See the statement for Amendment 4. Amendment 4, page 2, line 17, at end insert— “(6A) After the publication of a draft under subsection (6), the Treasury must consult— (a) the Office for Budget Responsibility, (b) the Treasury Committee of the House of Commons, and (c) such other persons as the Treasury considers appropriate. (6B) When a modified Charter so as to include provision by virtue of this section is laid before Parliament, the Treasury must also lay before Parliament a report on the outcome of consultation under subsection (6A).” The purpose of this amendment is to impose a requirement on the Treasury to undertake a full consultation and publish the outcome of that consultation prior to revision of the Charter for the purposes of the Bill. Clause 1 stand part. Clause 2 stand part. Amendment 10, Title, after “measures” insert “and of any changes to the government’s fiscal targets”. This amendment is consequential to Amendment 9. It would amend the long title of the Bill.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. May I first take the opportunity to congratulate you on your election? I promise to try not to try your patience over the coming weeks, years and so on, but we will see how things go. I wish primarily to speak today to amendment 9 and, of course, consequential amendment 10, which effectively seek to ensure that the fiscal lock proposed in the Bill should also include any changes to the fiscal rules and would require the Office for Budget Responsibility to produce a report on their effect on public finances. The Office for Budget Responsibility was of course constructed by a Conservative Chancellor following the poor forecasting record of the previous Labour Government. Between 2000 and 2010, the then Labour Government’s forecasts for economic growth were out by an average of £13 billion, and their forecasts for the budget deficit three years ahead were out by an average of £40 billion. Their forecasts therefore lacked credibility, and to re-establish confidence and credibility the OBR was created by the Conservative Government. Labour lacked economic credibility in the past, and I am afraid it still lacks it now. The facts simply do not stand up the false claim that the Government have inherited the worst economic circumstances since the second world war; they transparently have not. Contrary to the rewriting of history that the current Labour Government are attempting, when we took over from Labour back in 2010, inflation was 3.4%. When they took over from us, it was 2.2%. The annual deficit is half what we inherited in 2010, unemployment is about half what it was in 2010, and we handed Labour the fastest economic growth in the G7. The dominant political and economic narrative since the second world war is in fact, as has been widely commented on, that every single Labour Government end up with unemployment higher at the end of their time in power than when they took over from the Conservatives preceding them. The British public should not be taken for fools. Just because Labour keeps claiming something, that does not mean that it suddenly becomes true, which is why clarity over plans and rules is so important. The fiscal rules are of course restrictions on fiscal policy set by the Government to constrain their own decisions on spending and taxes. The fiscal rules set by the previous Government said that the debt to GDP ratio should be falling within a five-year horizon, and that the ratio of the annual budget deficit to GDP should be below 3% by the end of the same period. Labour’s manifesto for the election proposed the following fiscal rules: balancing the current budget, so that day-to-day costs are met by revenues, and that debt must be falling as a share of the economy by the fifth year of the forecast. On the surface, therefore, the debt rules appear to be broadly the same under the new Government. The Government have even said that they have an “ironclad” commitment to reduce Government debt. It is therefore critical what definition of debt is used for the fiscal rules. Clearly, any changes to the fiscal rules are financially significant decisions because they affect how much the Government can borrow and spend. On Second Reading, the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury said: “Our fiscal rules are non-negotiable.”—[Official Report, 30 July 2024; Vol. 752, c. 1263.] Great, but why then has the Chancellor repeatedly failed to rule out that she will change the definition of debt in her fiscal rules to allow, presumably, for massive borrowing? The Government cannot run from the scrutiny that they should be subjected to if they are considering making such a change. We believe that our amendment requiring an OBR report on changes to the fiscal rules is entirely consistent with the Government’s stated policy intent, and should therefore be fairly uncontentious. After all, on Second Reading, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury said that “the announcement of a fiscally significant measure should always be accompanied by an independent assessment of its economic and fiscal implications, in order to support transparency and accountability.”—[Official Report, 30 July 2024; Vol. 752, c. 1211.] We agree, and not accepting our amendment would be contrary to those goals, because clearly changing the fiscal rules would be a fiscally significant measure in anybody’s book. Furthermore, the Chief Secretary said that “fiscal discipline and sound money is the bedrock of our plans.”—[Official Report, 30 July 2024; Vol. 752, c. 1213.] Well, changing the fiscal rules would be changing the foundations and that bedrock. Transparency and clarity are important in relation to the public finances, because Ministers should never forget that it is not their money that they are spending; it is the public’s money. The public have a right to know how their money is being spent, and government is about making difficult choices with limited resources. With Government spending being above £1.2 trillion per year, the British public recognise that the Government clearly have choices. It is not an endless supply of money, but it is a very, very large amount. In the last few weeks, the new Labour Government chose to spend the public’s money on pay settlements for their union friends rather than on supporting pensioners. Those settlements are estimated to cost about £10 billion. They also chose to spend £8.3 billion on a public energy company and £7.3 billion on a national wealth fund, so far from inheriting a £22-billion black hole, they have actually just spent £25 billion creating one within their first few weeks of coming to power.

My hon. Friend is making a fantastic speech on the importance of being responsible with our public finances. Much of the Bill is concerned with responsibility and transparency. Does he know whether the Government published an impact assessment when they took away the winter fuel allowance?

I thank my hon. Friend for that point. My understanding is that the Government have not published an impact assessment, as would normally be the case for something with such a significant impact. I think that speaks to the whole narrative that we are hearing from the Government: claiming one thing when the facts speak differently. As I said, far from inheriting a £22 billion black hole, they have actually spent, or committed to spending, an additional £25 billion. That is a choice that they made, so the claim that the Labour Government are having to take the winter fuel allowance away from millions of pensioners as a response to unexpected financial constraints simply does not stack up against the facts, or indeed the words of the Chancellor herself, who on 25 March 2014—yes, a decade ago—said: “We are the party who have said that we will cut the winter fuel allowance for the richest pensioners and means-test that benefit to save money”.—[Official Report, 25 March 2014; Vol. 578, c. 174.] That is a direct quote in Hansard from the current Chancellor, so no, the Government’s restriction of winter fuel payments is not a response to financial circumstance; it is a long-established, clearly stated Labour policy intent—a deliberate policy choice, but a policy that they conveniently forgot to tell the public about in the run-up to the last election. I hope, however, that the Government can be straight with the public on this point about the fiscal rules, accept the amendment that we are proposing, and provide assurance to all Members and the outside world that there is no sleight of hand here. We want the Bill to work as they say it is intended to, and to include financially significant decisions, such as on the levels of Government borrowing and the fiscal rules. I would therefore appreciate it if the Chief Secretary to the Treasury confirmed in his wind-up that the Government do not intend to change the definition of debt in their fiscal rules or practise some accounting trick to hide the level of Government borrowing, and that they do indeed wish to be clear and transparent about the public finances. If Labour Members vote against our amendment, it will merely prove that they are planning to change their fiscal rules in the Budget to borrow more money, increase debt, and run away from independent OBR scrutiny—the very opposite of the stated intent of the Bill.

I call Dr Jeevun Sandher to make his maiden speech.

Thank you, Madam Chair, for allowing me to give my maiden speech in this House. Like every Member across this House, it is the greatest honour, privilege and responsibility of my life to represent my community of Loughborough, Shepshed and the villages. I rise at the most difficult moment for our communities and our country since the second world war, when many feel despondency, despair and anger. I know that every Member across this House wants our communities to succeed and to contribute to our national success. That is what my community has done before and will do again, with hope and determination. My story does not begin in Loughborough. I was not born there—unlike my neighbours, who are now my friends, and who have made it my home. My story instead begins in rural Punjab, 4,000 miles away, where my father was born almost 70 years ago. His chances of dying before his fifth birthday were one in four. Today, a child born in the same place is around nine times less likely to die. That is what economic growth means. It means less suffering, it means less misery and it means less death. That is why I became an economist: to build prosperity and to lessen misery. I learned my trade in the Treasury and then went to work in Somaliland, one of the poorest nations on Earth, where I helped to write its economic policy, its budgets and its national development plan. That was where I saw the horrors of climate change lead to drought, hunger and death, but it was also where I learned that even in the darkest of hours and the most difficult of moments we can build prosperity. Now I stand here as the elected Member of Parliament for my community. It says something remarkable about our nation that the fact that I, the son of immigrants, am standing in this Chamber is in and of itself unremarkable. It speaks to our common culture—a culture forged of different backgrounds, a culture that not only rejects the violence we saw over the summer, but completely rejects its reasoning too. My election represents an historic first for my community. I am a member of an under-represented minority—I am, of course, the first Member of Parliament elected by the men and women of Loughborough to have a beard. To the organisers of the beard of the year competition I say, “Call me.” Luckily for me, my dad is not eligible for that particular competition. I know that the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) has won the award several times; I hope he does not mind me winning the prize this time, as long as I let him win the argument. My predecessor in this place, Jane Hunt, was not a contender for that award, but no one can doubt her commitment to team Loughborough, and every single Member across this House and across my community will wish her the very best, especially as she has recovered from cancer. Her predecessor, Baroness Morgan, has talents that are well known both in this and the other place. Before her was my good friend and mentor Andy Reed. Members who know Andy will know that he is still a leading figure in sports policy, and they will also know that Andy is the nicest man in British politics. It is his character that I hope to live up to in this place. However, I rise to speak at the most difficult time for our communities and our nation since 1945. Our communities are in crisis. Wages in my constituency are £10,000 lower than they would be had we grown at new Labour rates. The divides caused by deindustrialisation have widened from cracks into chasms, with young men who used to leave school and get good jobs now 20% less likely to get any job; in our most deprived neighbourhoods, life expectancy falling before the pandemic; more than any fact or figure, the despair, the despondency and the anger; across and beyond our shores, war in Europe once more, with democracy in danger; and, most seriously of all, a planet that is burning. For my community, this was the hottest summer we have ever known, followed by the worst flooding we have ever seen, destroying homes. The Prime Minister and I saw that destruction when we visited the homes of Ian and Alan. No one should wake up in the morning to find their home destroyed by flooding, but that will only become more common in the years ahead. What we do in the next decade will determine the fate of our communities, of democracy and of our planet. Either we will rise to this moment, build prosperity for all, protect democracy and stop emitting carbon, or everything we hold dear will crumble and fall. Previous generations have shown us that we can rise to this moment that threatens us. Our country stood alone against fascism in Europe and won. I think today of my constituent William Williams, 104 years old, who flew Spitfires in the war. As his generation rose to their moment, so can we. My community have shown me that we can. When the waters came and the floods rose, my constituents Caz and Carl did not pause to think if they could help, only how they could help. They organised collections, they provided refuge, and they looked after perfect strangers. It is their spirit that I carry into this place—asking not if, but how. How can we build prosperity and protect our planet from burning? We can do so by investing in a green transition that creates good jobs and gets wages rising for the people and places left behind when the factories closed. That is what we can achieve, and we are seeing it work already in the United States.

14:15:00

In my community there is world-leading hydrogen research and industry. We need green hydrogen for fertiliser and to keep our trucks moving. It is not a coincidence that I have chosen to speak in this debate, with Treasury Ministers on the Front Bench; I say to them, “Get out the cheque book”—they are very excited by that—“because I will be asking for money from both the National Wealth Fund and GB Energy.”

However, this is about more than cash. It is about rebuilding hope and prosperity. As a previous generation rose to their moment, in the midst of the most destructive war in the history of humankind, an economist wrote a report that still defines our nation. He wrote:

“Freedom from want cannot be forced on a democracy or given to a democracy. It must be won by them.”

It was won by them. They built prosperity for all, with good jobs across our country, education for all, housing for all and healthcare for all.

As that generation rose to their moment, so will we, by building prosperity, protecting our planet and ending despair and despondency. As previous generations rose to their moment, we will too, with the hope and determination that defines our communities and that defines our country.

A very strong maiden speech, without a script in hand—your parents will be proud.

It is a delight as ever to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ghani. I congratulate the hon. Member for Loughborough (Dr Sandher) on his maiden speech and his kind comments about his predecessor Jane Hunt, a great colleague of this House. It was one of my great pleasures in my previous role as Minister for science and research to visit the fine university he now represents; I wish him and them well, and I wish him all the best of luck with those on his Front Bench in procuring the financial support he seeks. This is a disreputable Bill, if we are brutally honest. It is a piece of political theatre, which all of us on both sides of this House should think very strongly about giving our support to. This history of this place is of legislation made in haste, which this House subsequently repents at leisure. I say this in all seriousness and in the spirit of this place: at a time when there is low trust in politics, did our constituents—did the hon. Gentleman’s constituents, when they trooped to the ballot box and returned him to this place only weeks ago—seriously expect that our role would be to give away even more of our responsibilities? Can any of us, hand on heart, say that our constituents know what and who the OBR is? Did the electors of Bristol North West, Hampstead and Highgate, Richmond Park or, indeed, Arundel and South Downs send us to this place only to give away our duties and responsibility to the unnamed, unknown and unelected officials—well-meaning, no doubt—of the Office for Budget Responsibility? Hands on the face of a stopped clock are sometimes more accurate than the OBR forecasts, as they are at least correct twice a day for sure. In truth, this legislation, put together at breakneck speed, has more holes than a Swiss cheese. If we look at clause 1(3), who decides the “costing”? Proposed new section 4A exempts any measure that is intended, at the time of its introduction, to be temporary. Members of this House will be familiar with the fact that income tax itself, one of the largest ever fiscal measures, was intended to be temporary; perhaps the Minister will address that fact when he winds up. Income tax was introduced by Pitt the Younger in 1799 as a temporary measure. Well, here we are, 225 years later, and that temporary measure is still going extremely strong. Who defines what is and is not a fiscal measure—a measure with a potential impact on the GDP of this country? Many things decided in this House will have a direct or indirect impact on the GDP of this country; the decision by Tony Blair to take us to war without a vote in this House undoubtedly had an impact on our GDP. Decisions to introduce a four-day working week—if this House so chooses to make them, as is its right—would have a material impact on the GDP of this country. The Centre for Business and Economic Research estimates that every bank holiday costs this country a sum approaching £3.6 billion. Three, four, five or six bank holidays add up to a 1% impact on GDP, which I speculate may be the threshold for the OBR to intervene. On trade deals, if those on the Government Benches fulfilled their ambition to realign with Europe—to federate and once again abrogate our trade to Europe—that would potentially have a material fiscal impact on GDP. There are very few domains of this House—very few of the decisions that our constituents have sent us here to legislate and decide on their behalf—that would not potentially fall foul of this rule.

I will delight the hon. Gentleman, because, as I am sure he saw on the amendment paper, I have tabled an amendment that would look at trade deals. One of the reasons why I felt compelled to do that, and explore this question that he raises about the economic impact, is that while he was in government and, indeed, a Treasury Minister, the Government did not publish any information for the very trade deals he is talking about. I will always welcome a sinner who repenteth but, for the avoidance of doubt, is he saying that he now believes there should be independent scrutiny of things such as the trade and co-operation agreement?

It is good to have a proper debate. I certainly think that if we want and seek good government—which, like the human condition, is not a perfect state, but a state that we should seek constantly to perfect—the highest levels of transparency and the very important exercise in Government publishing of impact assessments when they make material decisions, as required by Cabinet Office guidance, are things that the whole House should join hands and agree on. It is one of the reasons why I asked my colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Droitwich and Evesham (Nigel Huddleston), whether the Government had published an impact assessment on their callous decision to withdraw the winter fuel allowance from so many pensioners. The hon. Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) will well know that the process of trade deals undergoes extensive scrutiny in this House, and I took one of those trade deals through that process of scrutiny in a former life. I will conclude, because I simply want to alert hon. Members to what they are potentially doing as they seek to support this Bill. It is not for partisan or political advantage, but about the important role of Parliament, which has been litigated many times in this Chamber and in debate.

Unsurprisingly, I have listened to the hon. Gentleman’s speeches on a number of occasions, and I agree with quite a lot of what he is saying about transparency. Does he agree that the burden of his argument is that we cannot make a Government behave better or govern more effectively by quango? This quango was set up by George Osborne to trap an incoming Labour Government and restrict and slow them down, and it is an odd thing that we see this quango being gilded.

As ever, the hon. Member makes an important and weighty contribution. He is exactly right about the direction of travel. On both sides of the House, we will all find our own particular point on the envelope when it comes to the balance around organisations that can hold us to account and, in particular, hold a mirror to Government and ensure that this House acts with the best, most accurate and well-meaning data. My core point is that we are sent here by our constituents. I again congratulate the hon. Member for Loughborough, who has been sent here on behalf of his constituents and has given a fine speech today, but I do not believe—he may intervene and correct me—that the citizens of Loughborough, whether they voted for Jane Hunt or for him, intended that one of the very first actions he and we would take as legislators would be to award more of our powers and place more fetters on ourselves. This is the right Chamber for accountability. We should hold ourselves to account; we have a number of ways in which to do that to ourselves. The hon. Member for Blackley and Middleton South (Graham Stringer) makes a very real point about quangos, arm’s length bodies and how we hold ourselves to account. That is my point. I understand that many colleagues wish to get in. I support the amendment put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Droitwich and Evesham, because it is quite right that we have rules. I was an accountant by training, and the first thing we learn—whether someone is an accountant or in performance sport—is that we play by the rules as they are; we do not seek to rig the rules in our favour.

It is a pleasure to speak in the same debate as the maiden speech given by my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Dr Sandher). I am sure other speeches are coming that will show just how impressive the new generation of MPs is across the House. It is also a joy to follow the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith), because I have always enjoyed the experience of listening to him. When he was a Treasury Minister in the previous Government, I watched him, debated with him and tried to encourage him to take on the buy now, pay later lenders—that is related to what I will say about legal loan sharking. But I have to be honest: being lectured by former Conservative Ministers about fiscal probity is a bit like being lectured by Toad of Toad Hall about safe driving, given the experiences of many of our constituents, which have led to the need for this legislation. I put on record my support for this legislation, because frankly anybody who has had to renegotiate a mortgage since the Liz Truss Budget knows exactly why it is needed and why we must protect the British public from the consequences of bad decision making at a national level. As we saw in many examples under the previous Administration, the public have paid the price for that and will continue to do so.

Of course, the legislation does not fetter previous Governments, but it would fetter the discretion of the hon. Lady’s own Front Benchers. In that context, does she not have the same confidence in her Front Bench that many others seem to enjoy?

I am a bit disappointed that the hon. Member did not seek to call me Ratty. I am also quite struck by the fact that he, a former Conservative Treasury Minister, rises not to hold himself accountable for the consequences of decisions made by the previous Government, or indeed to defend them, but simply to say, “You will be held to a higher fiscal standard.” We on the Labour Benches welcome a higher fiscal standard; that is the purpose of the legislation. Political decisions will still be made, but we will make them with the benefit of independent information. He will know that there were many debates in the previous Parliament, and indeed in those before it, in which independent information about and verification of the economic impact of policies mattered but were missing. Indeed, he mentions trade deals, which are an example of where we did not have independent information. I will comment on that only briefly, because my amendment has not been selected—he will be as disappointed as I am about that.

14:30:00

The amendments that I have tabled are intended to probe the legislation and the concept of “fiscally significant.” Amendments 6 and 7—and indeed amendment 8, although it was not considered in scope for selection—are about how we hold ourselves to account for the impact on future generations. I am not here to make a maiden speech; I am essentially the old guard now because I have been here for 14 years—[Interruption.] I know, it is very sad—my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton North (Lucy Rigby) is looking at me in horror.

You are not as old guard as some.

Yes. But in that time, many of us have had persistent concerns, and one of mine has always been the private finance initiative. The Government are asking all of us to make and support some very tough decisions because of the economic mess that the country now finds itself in. My view is that we must look at all outgoings in that process. If somebody came to a constituency surgery because they had multiple outstanding loans and could not pay their rent, we would look at the debts that they held. That is the challenge with private finance: it is the legal loan-sharking of the public sector. Amendments 6 and 7 are about the process of getting a grip on our debts and ensuring that we learn from the damage that private finance has done. Let us be clear: nobody can absolve themselves from private finance. Governments of all persuasions have sought to use that process—the ability to put only the repayments on the books, rather than the substantial cost of borrowing. That started under John Major; yes, there were multiple PFIs under the previous Labour Government; and indeed, the previous Conservative Government continued to use private finance until 2018. That is why, as of February this year, there are still 700 PFI schemes representing a capital value of £57 billion, but for which we will pay back £151 billion in the years ahead. We are asking pensioners to pay more for heating their homes, but we should be asking how we can pay less for the private finance debts that we have built up. Private finance was about being able to build things such as schools and hospitals. Anybody who has an outstanding PFI debt in their constituency, or a school or hospital that urgently needs rebuilding, such as Whipps Cross hospital in my constituency, understands the importance of being able to access private finance. For the avoidance of doubt, I am not saying through my amendments that we should never work with the private sector; I am saying that PFI was a catastrophically bad deal and that, cumulatively, it would meet the legislation’s targets of 1% of GDP, so it is a fiscally significant policy. My amendments are about trying to understand how we will deal with cumulative debt and cumulatively fiscally significant policies.

I agree completely with my hon. Friend. As a member of the even older guard than hers—

The original OG!

I am certainly the old guard from the start of the previous Labour Government. That is relevant because I had a discussion at the time with the then Paymaster General, Geoffrey Robinson, about the cost of PFIs for hospitals. His answer was succinct: “If you want the hospitals, you have to go down the PFI route.” He said that because the Treasury rules were so rigid about finding money for socially needed projects—hospitals in that case—the Government had to work around them, at what would eventually be a huge cost to the taxpayer. There is a warning there about rigid rules and not dealing with reality.

It will not surprise my hon. Friend that I agree with him not just about his football team but in his analysis. The legislation is about having better fiscal rules and tougher constraints when Governments make decisions. We saw with the Liz Truss Budget how catastrophic those decisions can be. Many Members will have come across PFI in their constituencies, but it is worth putting on the record just how big it is, because that is relevant to the legislation. We are talking about 700 projects, but each project can be hundreds of individual buildings. One of those 700 projects is made up of 80 schools, for example, which shows the scale that we are talking about. About half of PFIs are held between the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Education. That is how we built desperately needed schools and hospitals, but the cost is absolutely critical. Some NHS trusts are now spending 13% of their total budget on PFI repayments—£2 billion a year for some. In practical terms, that means that some trusts are spending more to repay what is essentially a payday loan for the public sector than they are spending on drugs for their patients. It is a huge drain on our public finances. In 2020, during the pandemic, Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust paid £66 million to service its PFI commitments—the same amount that it spent on lab equipment, surgical tools and personal protective equipment. University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has already paid out £200 million in dividends to the company that owns its PFI, so the money is not just going to repay a debt for building a hospital; it is going out in pure profit to those companies. That is why I draw the parallel with payday lenders and buy now, pay later companies: once you are hooked in, you have to keep paying the debt. It is not just a problem in the NHS. Hanson academy in Bradford has reached a debt of £4.16 million because of its PFI debt. It is now referred to as the UK’s “orphan” school because nobody wants to run it or take it over, given its financial position. Liverpool city council pays £4 million a year for Parklands high school, which was, again, built under PFI but is no longer needed because of falling school rolls. The council has roughly £42 million left to pay back on that contract for an empty, dead building. The equity solutions company that owns it has posted profits of £340,000 from that project this year alone. PFI companies have made £111 million in pre-tax profit from education projects alone. That is about £800,000 per project, and the equivalent of 5,5000 new teachers’ salaries. The companies took on the risk of those deals to rebuild our public infrastructure, but the reality is that we do not let schools and hospitals go bust, so they took on the ability to print money. That is what the deals are doing. I will wager that every new and returning MP has had a conversation with someone in local government, a local hospital or a local school who talks about the damage that PFI is doing to their budgets, as if it is non-negotiable. My amendments are about changing that culture. One challenge is that we have let those companies run rampant. That does not mean that we should not work with the private sector; it means that we should learn lessons, and I think we could learn some very simple ones. For a start, a lot of the companies are incorporated in overseas territories, which raises questions about the amount of tax that they are paying on those deals. Tax was originally part of the Treasury assessment of the deals, which was why working in that way was considered good value for money, and why my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Middleton South (Graham Stringer) was told that it was the best way to get a school or hospital. We could also learn from payday lending by capping what the companies pay. After all, we cap the returns on defence projects. It makes no economic or ethical sense that we cap what can be earned from a military contract, but when someone builds a school or a hospital, they have free rein. Above all, we need to know how much we owe, because even the Infrastructure and Projects Authority within Government could not get a grip on the total reality of our PFI commitments to date. That is partly because this has been done at a local government level, through devolution and in silos within companies, but it seems a very simple thing: even if those debts are being held overseas, the people paying them are very much here. In Northampton, there are 42 schools costing £30 million per annum, including £4.2 million in pre-tax profits in 2021-22, and Northampton’s budgets as a local authority are in a very difficult position right now. The firm that owns all those schools is based in Guernsey. In Birmingham, 11 schools are part of the Birmingham Schools Partnership, owned by Innisfree. Innisfree owns 260 schools across this country, as well as my local hospital in Whipps Cross. It is based in Jersey and is making millions of pounds in profit from these deals. We have never consolidated those loans to ask ourselves whether we could renegotiate them as a country and therefore claw some money back, because we do not know who we owe what to, or how much it is going to cost. Amendments 6 and 7 deal with the challenges posed by the threshold of this legislation. It is absolutely right to set a threshold for what is fiscally significant, and individual PFIs would not go anywhere near a threshold of 1% of GDP, which is about £28 billion. However, when we add them up, it is very clear from what we already know about our PFI commitments that they do. As such, these amendments are intended to probe the Government about how we deal with debts and spending that might not meet that threshold individually, but might do so cumulatively, and to look at what we can do in the future to make sure that if we work with the private sector—again, I am not saying that we should never do so; I am saying that we should learn from PFI—we make better decisions. After all, this legislation is about making better-informed, independent decisions. That is why I also tabled amendment 8, to learn the lessons from trade deals. The hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs is right: the Government’s decision to go for the trade and co-operation agreement—the hardest of Brexits—has cost us an estimated 4% of GDP, so again, that would be a fiscally significant decision. It would be as catastrophic as that Liz Truss Budget—indeed, many of us can see that it has been—but we did not have an independent assessment. Amendment 6 and amendment 7, which is an enabling amendment, would ensure that we have an independent assessment of cumulative spending looking at these issues. I know that the Minister is as interested as I am in what we can do to tackle the drain that PFI represents and work better with the private sector. I hope that this legislation and the concept of putting PFI on the books is the start of a conversation about better public spending, and I hope that Toad of Toad Hall will recognise that maybe this time it is good that they are in the passenger seat.

I will speak in favour of amendments 1 to 4, which were tabled in my name. Once again, I welcome this Bill and this Government’s intent to rebuild trust with the financial markets and across our economy as a whole. The Liberal Democrats are optimistic about the new Government’s stated commitment to building a strong platform for economic growth, particularly after years of Conservative turmoil. I remain hopeful that this Bill can support fiscal responsibility and transparency and help prevent a repeat of the Conservatives’ disastrous mini-Budget. The amendments tabled in my name would strengthen the legislation so that that aim can be achieved. I welcome the concern that the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith) has shown for my constituents in Richmond Park and their thoughts about this legislation, but I wonder where his concern for my constituents was when the Government of which he was a part cheered on, championed and voted for that disastrous mini-Budget that so undermined our stable economy, to the detriment of the wellbeing of individuals, communities and businesses. Liberal Democrats understand how much our constituents have suffered from the increase in mortgage payments, higher fuel bills and escalating food prices. We understand the disastrous effects of the chaos and uncertainty wrought by the previous Conservative Government in their horrendous mismanagement of the economy, and we know that future prosperity can only be built upon a firm foundation. We know the heavy burden that our constituents continue to feel in their pockets and their personal finances, and we know that they deserve better. As I have previously acknowledged, the broad positive response that this Bill has evoked across the business and finance sector is indicative of the desire for stability, and we welcome the engagement from economists—such as the new hon. Member for Loughborough (Dr Sandher), who I wish well in the beard of the year contest—and industry experts who advise of the beneficial impact this Bill will have on confidence in the public finances. We have carefully scrutinised the details of the Bill to make sure it will achieve its intended aims. In particular, we have looked closely at the threshold for fiscally significant measures, which will be set at 1% of GDP or approximately £30 billion, and whether the proposed fiscal lock could be circumvented by Governments announcing major changes that fall just below that threshold. Although we understand that the bar has been set relatively high to prevent a large-scale irresponsible fiscal event such as the disastrous mini-Budget, we are aware of the limitations this places on the Bill, especially when it comes to measures that might have relatively small up-front costs to the Government but significant indirect fiscal or economic effects. I therefore ask Treasury Ministers whether a GDP measure alone can adequately capture the impact on the economy of a spending or taxation measure, and whether the Government should examine the possibility of using additional criteria when setting the threshold.

14:45:00

That is why I have tabled amendment 1, which would broaden the definition of “fiscally significant measures” to include those that fall below the costing threshold but could have wider fiscal and economic effects. The amendment would ensure that the OBR was able to produce a report when it judged that proposed measures were likely to affect interest rates, the cost of Government borrowing, or economic growth. Whereas a fiscal lock based solely on GDP could leave open the possibility of circumvention, that wider definition would enable the OBR to step in if it thought it likely that Government measures might precipitate the kind of economic disaster we saw after the mini-Budget. It is possible to imagine a situation where a fiscal measure fell just short of the 1% of GDP threshold, but was none the less likely to carry significant ramifications for the cost of Government borrowing, for economic growth and, crucially, for interest rates.

We cannot forget that any spike in interest rates does not just carry grave consequences for the public finances, but has a huge impact on household finances and people’s living standards. We all witnessed mortgage rates skyrocket in the aftermath of the previous Government’s catastrophic mini-Budget, and millions of families are still struggling with higher bills as a result. It is therefore wholly appropriate that interest rates be taken into consideration when assessing whether a measure is fiscally significant. This Bill is an encouraging sign of this Government’s intention to act with more integrity and transparency than the last, but its provisions alone may not be enough to protect voters from the consequences of another disastrous mini-Budget if a future Chancellor or Prime Minister is so minded to deliver one. That is why strengthening the fiscal lock by broadening the definition of “fiscally significant measures” is such a vital safeguard.

I also wish to speak in favour of amendment 2, which would enable the OBR to notify the independent adviser on Ministers’ interests if they think a failure to request a report ahead of a fiscal event might constitute a breach of the ministerial code. The 2022 mini-Budget was clearly the moment when the Conservative party’s carelessness took our country to the brink. However, we should not forget that it was the culmination of years of mismanagement and disregard for the principles of good governance from a Conservative party that considered itself to be above the rules. Sidelining the OBR ahead of a major fiscal event was the pinnacle of the arrogance we had seen so many times before.

The ministerial code puts in place guardrails that are crucial for good governance. It promotes essential principles such as transparency, accountability and openness. For example, it states that Ministers have a duty to

“be as open as possible with Parliament and the public”.

Those are principles that all Governments should abide by, especially when they relate to economic matters, and the Liberal Democrats have long called for the ministerial code to be enshrined in legislation. In the same vein, amendment 2 would provide for useful scrutiny of the Government’s actions by empowering the OBR to notify the independent adviser on Ministers’ interests if they have reason to believe that vital principles of the code may have been violated. We must never again have a Government put the country’s finances at risk out of their disdain for the rules, and this amendment would help achieve that aim.

Finally, I wish to speak in favour of amendments 3 and 4. Their purpose is to strengthen scrutiny of any changes to the charter for budget responsibility, so that provisions of the Bill cannot be circumvented simply by revising the threshold set out in that charter. A full consultation, along with an extended period of scrutiny, would ensure that Parliament and the public were fully informed of any proposed changes and given the opportunity to engage with them, improving transparency and accountability.

Responsible public finances are essential for the stability, certainty and confidence that drive economic growth, and for getting mortgage rates under control. The Conservative Government have shown all too clearly the damage and pain caused by fiscal irresponsibility. I therefore urge the House to accept the amendments I have tabled. The Liberal Democrats want to see a thriving British economy—one that provides jobs and opportunities for working people and is attractive to businesses and investors. We believe that this Bill is a significant step in promoting long-term stability, and we urge the Government to accept our amendments, which would strengthen the legislation and help create the conditions for responsible economic governance.

I thought I would offer some tips to colleagues in the Chamber. If you are bobbing, you will be called. If you are on the list, but are not bobbing, you are indicating to the Chair or the Speaker that you no longer wish to be called, so if you hope to be called, bob throughout the debate. If you are on the list and committed to bobbing, but leave the Chamber, you are indicating to the Chair or the Speaker that you no longer wish to be a priority on the list. However, you can speak to the Chair or the Speaker and ask permission to leave and return, and you will then remain where you were in the priority list. Unless Members stand, I do not know whether they wish to contribute to the debate, so who wishes to bob?

I call Amanda Martin to make her maiden speech.

Thank you, Ms Ghani. I start by commending my hon. Friends for their impassioned speeches, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Dr Sandher). He will be pleased to know that I will not be a contender this year in the competition that he mentioned. Maybe later, menopause depending. It is a huge honour to stand before you today as the newly elected Member of Parliament for Portsmouth North. This moment is not lost on me; I am filled with immense emotion at the thought of representing the place where everyone I love lives. Portsmouth is a city rich in history, innovation and, most importantly, community spirit and pride. It is also a place of firsts. Throughout our city’s storied history, we have been pioneers in many fields, be it shipbuilding, maritime trade or cultural advancement. Portsmouth has always led the way, and it is that spirit of innovation that I intend to champion while in this House. I am deeply humbled to make my maiden speech in this debate highlighting the importance of fiscal standards, because during the election campaign so many people told me that their mortgage had gone through the roof, or that they had lost the ability to buy or rent their first home, or indeed any home, because of the actions of the last Government. I understand personally what it is like when a full-time job does not even cover the bills. My gramps was a train driver. He taught me the importance of hard work and public service. He introduced me to the trade union movement and to the Labour party, which I am proud to say have been at the centre of my adult life. My mum was a factory seamstress and my dad was a plumber and then a police officer. As a kid, times were tough, but our house was always full of love, humour and determination. My dad worked three jobs and my mum set about making childhood the very best it could be. My gramps navigated the tracks with precision and care, my mum sewed with love, and my dad served his community. I know I will bring the same attitude to my time in this House, because the opportunity here is so very precious. Like so many of my colleagues on the Government Benches, I was the first in my family to go to university and the first to become a teacher, but thankfully not the last to enter what I still deem to be the very best profession in the world. The right education really does empower young people and give them belief and the opportunity to succeed, whatever their background and circumstances. I am so very proud to be part of a Government who will bring down the barriers to opportunity and tackle child poverty, working across Departments to ensure that all kids get the best start in life. Having been a teacher for 24 years, I know that not everyone has the start in life that I feel privileged to have had. Being allowed to try things and fail was a great lesson. My working-class background means that I sometimes seem a bit impatient. This is because I know that people from my background must fight harder, and do not often get a second chance, so they have to seize every opportunity as it arises. As an MP, I want to champion children and young people from all backgrounds across my city, so that they are given every chance to succeed and fulfil their potential, whatever that may be and wherever that may take them. The children and young people in Portsmouth deserve nothing less. Portsmouth, as I have said, is a city of firsts. The first dry dock in the world was built there in 1495. The first ragged school was established there in the name of John Pounds in 1818. We were the first to have a steam railway in 1837, and the first co-operative society in Britain was set up there in 1796 by dockyard workers fed up with being ripped off by local tradesmen. The first oil-fired HMS Queen Elizabeth was built there in 1913; the second ship is very close to my heart. In 1956, the first football league game played under floodlights took place there; it was Portsmouth versus Newcastle. In 2024, the Portsmouth women’s football club turned professional for the first time. Another first is the nursery on Whale Island’s naval base; it is pioneering a brilliant programme to help children deal with separation and the unique challenges of having a parent in the military who is serving away. Portsmouth also produced the first female Secretary of State for Defence, and as I raise this first, I would like to pay tribute to my predecessor. Penny Mordaunt’s service to our city, and particularly her role in the coronation of our King, is to be celebrated. In this House she had many roles in Government. She has always championed the Royal Navy, and from what I hear, she loved her time in the parliamentary hairdressers. However, the sword now passes to me, and I will continue her lead as I champion our Royal Navy and our great city, both here and at home. Now for my final first for our great city. For the first time in our city’s history, both Portsmouth MPs are Labour MPs. We build on the work of our predecessors: Lord Frank Judd; Sarah McCarthy-Fry; and my very dear friend, mentor and freeman of our city, Syd Rapson. Together, my good friend the new Minister with responsibility for early education, my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan), and I will work night and day to be champions of change for the city we call home, Portsmouth. I am so very proud of the positive campaign we ran in Portsmouth North. We unashamedly focused on the need for opportunity and for real change. I want to put on record my thanks to the many people who helped me get here, including the Pompey Belles, my amazing family of 17, friends and the dozens of volunteers from Portsmouth Labour and beyond. As I begin my journey in this House, I know that the need for change has never been so great. As this debate highlights, after 14 years of Tory rule, there are so many uncertainties for the people in my city. People are struggling; the money just does not go far enough. Schools are underfunded and understaffed. Appointments in primary care, the NHS and dentistry are, in some areas, almost impossible to get. Youth services outside the voluntary sector stretch only to offering support with probation. Our high streets are a mess, and housing is in complete chaos. However, not everything is about money and pay. This is about pride. Pompey people are proud people. They do not shout about successes, unless they are in football. They rarely grumble—equally, unless it is about football. Many of them just get their heads down, roll up their sleeves and get on with it, and many feel betrayed and let down by those who should have been there for them. For some, trust in politicians has disappeared, and I can understand why. People on the doorstep and in the street are wary and fed up with broken promises. Many feel alone, isolated and betrayed. Coming from one of the most trusted professions in the country to one of the least, I get it. I know that, as the MP for Portsmouth North, the chance for opportunity and real change lies with me—real change, that people can see, feel and be part of; positive change that they can proudly shout about. As Alan Ball said, “This is Portsmouth, people went to war from this city”. It is a city that deserves the very best, and I aim to give my very best in representing and serving it. What of the city of Portsmouth? We officially turn 100 years old in 2026, and a raft of famous figures have helped shape our city, including Charles Dickens, Isambard Kingdom Brunel and James Callaghan, a Labour Prime Minister in whose honour I hope next year to secure a blue plaque. As rich in culture as our city is, it is also full of unsung people who should be right up there with the famous people I listed. These include—this is in no way an exhaustive list—Shamila from Portsmouth City of Sanctuary, Roni at Pamodzi, Isabelle from Loaves of Love, Laura at STEMunity and Mandy, an award-winning community volunteer. They are just a few of the people in my city making it great. I feel extremely privileged to have seven magnificent wards in my constituency, and to have lived, worked or had family and friends in every single one of them. They are all special and unique in their own right, from Paulsgrove, Drayton and Farlington to Cosham, Hilsea and Nelson, and Copnor and Baffins. They are also all very much Pompey, and when you walk down the street it would not be uncommon to hear, “Oi, mush, don’t be a squinny”, or “Oi, you loon”, or “din”. As a whole, Portsmouth North is made up of those magnificent seven wards, with 70,000 constituents, 35 schools, our brilliant Queen Alexandra hospital, 11 GP practices, hundreds of charities, small, family-run, large, regional and national businesses, a municipal and thriving international ferry port, seven allotments, 27 pubs, one mobile and four static libraries, a shoreline, the best view in the world to watch the sun rise or set at Portsdown hill with a cracking burger van, a pond, a marshland, a forest—albeit a mini one—and the training ground for the football club who are simply the best. As a season ticket holder and a trust board member, it is sad to say that Fratton Park resides in the south of my city, but I get the brilliantly named John Jenkins training ground. I stand here today not only as the Member of Parliament for Portsmouth North, but as a proud representative of a city that has always been full of firsts, and will have so many more to come. I will acknowledge that together as we work we may face times of choppy waters and, as they say in the Navy, “Fair winds and following seas”. And as they say at Fratton Park, “Play up Pompey”.

15:00:00

That speech will delight every corner of Portsmouth North. I call Dave Doogan.

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Portsmouth North (Amanda Martin) and that rundown of her fantastic constituency. I want to go there now that I have heard about it, although she might be surprised to know that I am quite familiar with that part of the world around Portsmouth North, Fareham, Gosport, Hayling Island and Southsea. It is a beautiful part of the world, and while it cannot compete with Scotland in scenery, it certainly wins the day when it comes to weather in the summertime. She might also be surprised to know that there is a fairly high concentration of Pompey supporters in Perthshire. That is a legacy of the Royal Naval aircraft workshops outside Perth, when people used to go down to the Royal Naval aircraft yard in Gosport, and picked up a loyalty to Pompey from there. I offer many congratulations, not least on a fantastic maiden speech but also on those exceptional shoes. I am concerned, indeed troubled as many people will be, about the role of the Treasury and Chancellor in the last couple of months. We are here to talk about budget responsibility, and I wonder what answer we would get if we were to ask the 80% of pensioners on these islands who are about to be stripped of their winter fuel payment what they think is responsible about that budget intervention. We could ask the millions living in poverty across these island—a disgrace in and of itself—what they think about budget responsibility in their lives, now double scuppered by Labour’s two-child cap. We could ask the millions of working poor across these islands, who are trying to do right by their children, their employer, and just pay their bills to get by, and who put their kids to bed every night and then sit up all night worrying about everything, what difference this fiscal lock will make to their lives. The Chancellor’s first two acts on taking up her role was to make life harder for the poorest families in society who have the least. Once she had dispatched them, she turned her fire on pensioners, removing their winter fuel allowance. Austerity 2.0—it does not matter to Scotland whether austerity comes in a Labour or Tory wrapper, it is still as caustic. That is relevant because the Chancellor wants us to believe that the Bill and the fiscal lock will make everything okay, but it does not. The Office for Budget Responsibility will take no view on the qualitative merits or otherwise of any Treasury decision, but merely on the quantitative dimension in fiscal terms. There are no locks in the Bill to protect the people of these islands from this Labour Chancellor. We hear ad nauseam that the Chancellor had no choice in any of these actions, and the worst inheritance since the war, and it goes on and on. Well: “The numbers may be a little bit worse than they thought at the time, and I think there were some things that were hidden from view, but the overall picture over the next four or five years is very, very similar to what we knew before the election.” Those are not my words, but those of Paul Johnson, the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies. If that is not good enough, the SNP warned throughout the election that if Labour stuck to Tory spending plans, taxes would rise and/or budgets would be cut, and here we are. The SNP even challenged Labour in Scotland on that point during the election, and the leader of Labour in Scotland, Anas Sarwar, said, “read my lips: no austerity under Labour”. He is not saying that now is he, because he cannot. Perhaps the Chancellor, or those on her Front Bench, can advise us about whether Mr Sarwar was having a stumble with the truth that day, or whether they had forgotten to let their branch office in Scotland in on the plan. Despite all that, the Chancellor and her Treasury Front Bench persist in their claims about a £22 billion black hole to defend their indefensible attacks on the poorest in society. It is unacceptable, and the Bill, if enacted, will do nothing to protect communities from that. I am also troubled by the language that those on the Treasury Front Bench seek to use to accrue some form of disproportionate credit for bringing forward the Bill. At its core, the Bill is nothing more than an additional provision to the existing Act, and the exaggerated language around it exposes the weakness of the Government’s position on this fiscal lock. Nothing is either locked in or locked out by the Bill. The OBR cannot stop any Budget or fiscal adjustment, good, bad or indifferent. That is Parliament’s role, as other right hon. and hon. Members have pointed out. On Second Reading I pointed that out to the Minister, who declined to concede on the absolute fact that the position is as I have just set out. I hope he has had a chance to reflect on the so-called fiscal lock, which is nothing more than an administrative assessment of Treasury plans on which nothing is contingent. The hon. Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) said that she is keen for those on the Treasury Front Bench to be held to a higher fiscal standard. Fair enough, but the Bill will not do that. This is in abstract the narrowest one-dimensional protection from bad fiscal policy. Labour Members are seemingly addicted—the Bill evidences this—to some sort of pound shop exaggeration, and a troubling reliance on hyperbole when detailing something profoundly ordinary. The fiscal lock and the Bill will not protect the devolved nations and their budgets from the austerity of the Labour Front Bench. Before the general election, when Labour in Wales was facing NHS budget pressures, the now Secretary of State said that “all roads lead to the Tories” and Westminster, in accordance with those budget pressures. Now, after the election, we have a Labour Government, the SNP in Scotland is facing those same budget pressures, and it is the SNP’s fault. They cannot have it both ways. They have got the job and they need to own it. The Chancellor claimed that the SNP should raise income taxes to pay for her cut to the winter fuel allowance in Scotland. The cheek of it! I remind those on the Treasury Front Bench that 70% of taxes raised in Scotland go directly to the Treasury. We have paid our dues, and shame on the Chancellor for trying to get Scottish taxpayers to pay twice to compensate for her axe wielding. The double standards of it all are staggering. She wants the Scottish Government to raise income taxes in Scotland, which is precisely what she refused to do ahead of the UK general election. Why will she not mirror the Scottish Government’s progressive income tax regime to increase taxes slightly on those of us who are better off, and reduce taxes slightly for those on the lowest incomes? That would raise nearly £16 billion for the Treasury. If she had done that and followed the SNP Scottish Government’s lead, she would not have had to attack our pensioners’ winter fuel allowance. A significant element of budget responsibility is ensuring that people own their decisions and their own mess. Labour will find that SNP Members are keen to help them in that pursuit. In summary, there is nothing particularly to object to in this inherently ordinary and transactional provision in the Bill, except for the behaviour of the Government advancing it.

I call Will Stone to make his maiden speech.

Thank you, Ms Ghani, and congratulations on your position. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Amanda Martin) on her inspiring speech. I feel like I know her constituency a little better now, and I commend all those who have delivered their maiden speeches today and in recent weeks. They have all been fantastic. It is truly an honour to make my maiden speech in a debate on budget responsibility, and I am proud to be elected in this new Labour Government—a Government committed to fiscal responsibility, credibility and accountability. We will ensure that taxpayers’ money is managed and spent wisely, not recklessly as the previous Administration did. I have the absolute pleasure of representing Swindon North, the town where I was born, raised and am proud to call my home. I am also proud of the fact that I am the first Member of Parliament in Swindon North’s history to have been born in the town. I pay tribute to my predecessor, Mr Justin Tomlinson, who served as the Member of Parliament for North Swindon for 14 years. Justin was a ferocious campaigner and he also supported many local community groups and was incredibly passionate about football, namely our local club, Supermarine FC. While we do not align politically, Justin has my respect, so I thank him for his service. I would also like to mention another former Member of Parliament for Swindon: one of my mentors, the Labour peer Lord Michael Wills. I have learned so much from Michael. Even though he is going through an incredibly tough time with his health, he has always been there to support and guide me with his expert knowledge. Michael is not only a top-notch politician, but a published author of crime novels. I only recently found that out, but I guess it is not too much of a surprise, considering he was once a Minister of State for Justice. I am truly privileged to follow in his footsteps. If I am half the parliamentarian he was, I will have done Swindon proud. I hope the House will join in wishing him a speedy recovery, and I hope to repay his trust in the Chamber. I am the first Brazilian jiu-jitsu black-belt to be elected to Parliament, and I used to run my own academy. Ms Ghani, I promise this is somewhat relevant. When I left the Army, I had offers to teach Brazilian jiu-jitsu across the world, from Abu Dhabi to Arizona, but I picked Swindon. I am often asked, “Why did you choose Swindon?”, but it is an easy answer for me: I love Swindon. I love my hometown. It is a wonderful town built on industry and is full of passion and hope. Our history is a proud history of reinvention. We started life as a farming town with a focus on pig markets, then we transitioned and became a hub for the railways in the 19th century. Generations of railway workers and their families benefited from the cradle-to-grave healthcare that is rumoured to have inspired the great NHS. As technology developed, so did Swindon, and we became home to the likes of Rover, Honda and Mini, but what is next? We are at a pivotal point in history for my town. Where does Swindon go next? My hope is that it will go as it always has: into the future, at the forefront of new technologies and green technologies. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Ed Miliband) hears that. It is my mission to foster green growth in Swindon and see the town thrive again with high-skilled, well-paid jobs. I believe that in a growing, stable economy, we can see that happen. Swindon is not just famous for its high number of roundabouts—if anyone in the Chamber has ever visited, I am sure they will remember those fondly—as we have also had the pleasure of not one, but two James Bond movies being filmed in the town. It is impossible to talk about Swindon without mentioning its people. The people make Swindon what it is: a kind, welcoming, industrious place full of passion, innovation and a desire to support others, including strong local charities such as BEST, a charity at the forefront of tackling antisocial behaviour through mentoring and sports, the Kelly Foundation, which supports people suffering with mental health issues, and Changing Suits, which is breaking down barriers in diverse communities to ensure that people get the help they need. I want to say how proud I am of the residents in Swindon. We have seen tough times across the country, with riots sparked by division invading many communities, but they did not come to Swindon because in Swindon we know that diverse communities can stand strong together against extremism. We will not let division and hatred divide us; we will unite together and stand strong. Swindon, for all its qualities, is not without its fair share of challenges—challenges that I will face head on. Our people are among the least likely in the country to go on to higher education. We have growing levels of knife crime and antisocial behaviour, raw sewage being pumped into our streams and residents of large housing estates being affected by unjust management companies and fleecehold. However, I am confident that with our renewed Labour party and our ambitious agenda set out in the King’s Speech—whether that is recruiting and retaining teachers, increasing police presence on our streets, providing mental health professionals in schools or reforming leasehold and fleecehold—all backed and fully costed in a fiscally responsible Budget, the people of Swindon North will experience the positive change they deserve. To finish, I am proud to be here representing such a fantastic group of people. It truly is the opportunity of a lifetime, so once again, I thank so much the people of Swindon North who have put their faith in me. I will not let them down.

I call Marie Goldman to make her maiden speech.

First, I congratulate Members who have also made their maiden speeches in the Chamber this afternoon. In particular, I congratulate the hon. Member for Swindon North (Will Stone). I wonder whether his skills as a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black-belt led him to apply to be an extra in those movies that he mentioned. I will be watching out for him in the fight scenes.

15:15:00

It is the honour and privilege of my life to be standing in this Chamber giving my maiden speech as the Member of Parliament for Chelmsford. It is a wonderful, young city located in the heart of Essex that I have had the joy to call my home for the past 20 years or so. The constituency covers the main urban area of the city of Chelmsford. It is blessed with beautiful parks and flanking rivers that wind their way through the city centre, passing the home of the Essex Eagles at the Essex county cricket ground. We have a thriving high street that attracts shoppers from miles around. Investment into the constituency from the public and private sectors means that its future continues to look bright.

From Waterhouse Farm in the west, to Chelmer village in the east, and from Springfield in the northern reaches to the southern boundaries of Goat Hall and everywhere in between, I am proud to call Chelmsford my home and even prouder to be standing here today representing its constituents in this magnificent place.

Chelmsford has one of the busiest two-platform train stations outside of London. Having now rejoined the ranks of the commuters, I know at first hand the importance of the brand-new station being constructed just outside the northern edge of the constituency. The new Beaulieu Park station will have a significant positive impact on passengers from Chelmsford, giving them more choice and flexibility and removing the need for many of them to travel into the city centre to commence their rail journey.

A new station must not be seen as job done, however. Train travel in this country is expensive and complicated. Ultimately, I do not believe that the public care too much about who runs the trains; they care more about how much rail travel costs them, whether the trains run on time and whether they are comfortable and efficient. They are often frustrated by the bewildering array of ticket options, whose detailed restrictions seem designed either to make them miss their train as they try to work out which one to buy, or to make them buy the wrong ticket. They are not designed for the faint of heart or the novice traveller. That seems like madness if we want to encourage more people to make use of public transport. The whole system needs to be simplified, and I am keen to see the legislation passed yesterday do just that. Without an economy that can support investment in new rail stations or the redevelopment of junctions, including the major Army and Navy interchange in the centre of Chelmsford, we know that such projects are in danger of never happening at all.

I am pleased to support the Bill before us today to ensure that the terrible, wasteful fiscal mistakes of previous Governments are not repeated, leaving more headroom for investment in our country’s future. The new Beaulieu Park station was important to my predecessor, Vicky Ford, and I pay tribute to her dedication to that project. It is the culmination of more than a decade of partnership work in Chelmsford that Vicky joined after her first election to Parliament in 2017. Knocking on doors throughout this year’s campaign, I found that many constituents were grateful for her help with issues they had raised with her. They also noted her visible loyalty to her party, as she was rarely seen without her trademark blue nail polish to match her little blue car and an outfit that almost invariably included a splash of blue. I thank her for the time she spent serving the Chelmsford constituency.

From the very bottom of my heart, I thank the constituents of Chelmsford who have placed their trust in me to represent them in this place. I know they did not do so lightly. Indeed, it has taken 74 years of careful consideration for the good people of Chelmsford to send to this place anyone other than a Conservative. Indeed, it has been 100 years since they made the choice to elect a Liberal to represent them. That slow pace of electoral change in Chelmsford may lead those not familiar with Essex’s first city to conclude that Chelmsfordians have little appetite for innovation, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Among other things, Chelmsford has a rich and distinguished history in the world of science and technology. Most notably, it hosted the first ever entertainment radio broadcast in the United Kingdom in 1920 from the Marconi New Street works right in the centre, featuring Dame Nellie Melba. That led to regular entertainment broadcasts from Great Baddow in the south of the constituency and eventually to what we now know as the BBC.

It is hard to spend much time knocking on doors in Chelmsford and speaking to Chelmsford residents without coming across someone who used to work for Marconi. Its modern-day successor Teledyne e2v, located little more than a stone’s throw away from the site of the original Marconi factories, has more than taken up the mantle of innovation in Chelmsford. Many of my constituents are now employed there. Think of any space mission of the past few decades and the chances are that its imaging equipment contained components designed and built by Teledyne in Chelmsford. From NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper belt, launched in 2006, to the planned 2028 launch of Ariel by the European Space Agency to observe the atmospheres of thousands of planets beyond our own solar system, Teledyne and its employees are reaching for the stars.

That is what I want everyone to have the opportunity to do: to reach for the stars, to feel that sense of opportunity and to know that even the sky is not the limit. But they can do that only if we invest, and the very best place for that investment is in our children and young people. We are lucky in Chelmsford to have excellent schools. I thank the teachers and other school staff who work so hard every day to give the children we entrust into their care the best possible start in life, but they are increasingly doing so with their hands tied behind their backs, with dwindling resources, crumbling buildings and ever greater workloads.

I am the first in my family to go to university and the first elected to any public office—let alone as a Member of this House. I have been able to achieve that because I have had a loving and supportive family, lots of incredible campaign volunteers—and, of course, a sizeable dose of luck. But I also know that a critical part of my success is owed to the amazing state school education that I received, the dedicated and inspirational teachers I was lucky enough to be taught by throughout my school life, and the extracurricular activities—in my case, largely music based—that broadened my horizons and lifted my eyes to the stars.

I worry that that is not the overwhelming experience of those going through our education system today. I worry that children are going through the day with little or no food in their bellies, I worry that schools are having to cut clubs because they no longer have the time or the resources to hold them, and I worry that the performing arts, such as music and drama, have been seen for too long by previous Governments as expendable and an unimportant luxury without recognition that they provide children with the skills and confidence to stand up on large stages—dare I say, in parliamentary Chambers—and be heard. If you are a child with special educational needs or disabilities, well, good luck with that, because the system is utterly, tragically, devastatingly broken. But I also take hope from the wind of change that blew just a couple of months ago. We know that there will be difficult choices ahead, but my hope is that we recognise that investing early on and giving children the best possible start can pay much greater dividends in the future.

When Guglielmo Marconi brought his fledgling inventions and experiments to the United Kingdom in 1896, he did so because he believed that this is a country that can see potential and will invest in that potential for the long term. It paid off, and a whole industry grew from the humble beginnings of a short radio broadcast in the heart of my constituency. Whatever choices are made by the Government in the looming Budget, it is my sincere hope that they recognise the importance of giving schools and teachers the resources they need to allow all children to reach for the stars.

I call Bayo Alaba to make his maiden speech.

I commend the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Marie Goldman) for a great speech. I know Chelmsford well—it is a beautiful town—and I commend her passion for supporting young people in schools and their journey, which is very important and something that we need to protect. Thank you, Ms Ghani, for allowing me today to make my first contribution in this House. I think it is right to start off by thanking my predecessor as MP, Sir James Duddridge, for 19 years of dedicated service. He became MP in 2005 when Southend East and Rochford was newly redrawn. The rural areas to the north of Southend have been brought back within the constituency for the first time in many years. Throughout many boundary iterations, from Southend East and Rochford to Rochford and Southend East and back again—you can see the creativity in renaming the constituency—the area has always been Tory-held, until now. I am particularly proud to speak here today as the seat’s first ever Labour representative. The constituency consists of not just the city of Southend but the villages of Great Wakering, Canewdon, Barling, Paglesham, Stambridge and Shoeburyness, the suburbs of Southchurch and Thorpe Bay, and Rochford itself. It is a beautiful constituency, rich in culture, where you should bring your walking boots as well as your swimming costume. It is the place where Dame Helen Mirren went to primary school and home to the Cliffs Pavilion, which hosted Oasis in 1995—that might be tricky next time round depending on who can get tickets. As a Southender, I am contractually obliged to mention that Southend is the site of the longest pier in the world, at 2,158 metres, with the option to walk or take a purpose-built train. I made the mistake some years ago of walking it with my son—he is a little bit older now, and he is up in the Gallery. My calves were struggling by the end of it. From watching the maiden speeches of Labour colleagues past and present, I have been struck by the nature of the local industry that is so often name-checked. Tin, pottery, steel, textiles and coal are among the staple products in historical Labour seats. Those are noble and important goods—they are Labour goods—but they are not the stock-in-trade of my own seat. Southend’s primary industry and expertise has always been tourism: good times, escapism and happy memories. Those are our exports. Southend is a city that allows people to meet a sea turtle, admire a vintage car, win a large teddy bear and even have their palm read, often during the course of a single day. It is a place where past generations have gone in search of freedom and pleasure, and it is hard in today’s world to think of a calling more important than that. Indeed, the musician Billy Bragg immortalised one of the roads that takes people to Southend in his 1985 song “A13 Trunk Road to the Sea”. The chorus name-checks Shoeburyness, and Bragg later said that he hoped his song would imbue the A13—I know this is a bit of a reach—with the same romance as route 66 in America, “The Road to Your Dreams,” which runs from Chicago to Los Angeles. That was a lofty lyrical ambition indeed, and it was always going to be a hard ask, but speaking as someone who grew up in the east end of London in that era, I can confirm that the idea of Southend always carried a certain magic. That is one reason why I feel so privileged to represent the area today. Another reason is the constituency’s military heritage. At the eastern part of my seat we find Shoebury garrison, an area steeped in military history, and in the north is Southend airport, which now serves holidaymakers but in a past life was Rochford airfield, a fighter base that helped to fend off fascism during the second world war. As a former soldier, I was stationed in the Southend area for a short while. One of my great pleasures when canvassing is running into old Army friends still living in the seat—if they are prepared to open the door to me. For me, as someone who left school with no qualifications, got into a lot of trouble as a young boy and needed a second chance, night school and the military provided a lifeline. I quite simply would not be here today in the mother of all Parliaments without the opportunities that gave me and the ethos of service that it instilled in me. To properly understand Southend, we need to understand its proud military history. The city is built on a unique blend. The discipline and the dignity of the armed forces is combined with the creativity and the freedom of the arts—a place for both the soldier and the singer, if you like. But there is a risk of getting too misty-eyed. Coastal areas such as mine have been on the economic sharp end for 30 or 40 years. The root cause of that, most notably, is budget air travel, and that is not going away. Recent years have brought fresh challenges. Southend’s economy was at the sharp end during the covid pandemic. The city is still in its recovery phase. Many of the jewels in Southend’s crown—the Kursaal venue on the seafront or the Freight House in Rochford—remain unused or underused. I am determined that these buildings will come back to life again, as part of our future.

15:30:00

I believe that change is afoot. There is a Southend renaissance at work. The people of Southend are ready to seize the initiative and want more. Southenders are strong, independent and unbelievably hard-working. This weekend we held City Jam, an awe-inspiring international street art festival, now in its third year. But we cannot do this alone. That is one of the reasons why I am so pleased not just to be Southend’s first ever Labour MP, but to be one of many first-time Labour MPs in seaside seats that we have never won before.

Seats such as Southend East and Rochford need a real and impactful regional policy. Too little thought has been put into how we build on existing assets and specialisms, to create a sense of place and an economic centre of gravity. Southend East and Rochford’s future will be found in modern technology, modern infrastructure and green energy, by identifying opportunities in well-paid, modern job sectors. We need a year-round economy, not just a seasonal one, so that young people can move from seasonal work into better-paid positions.

Simply put, Southend East and Rochford will need to regain its cultural capital. This is something I have some experience in, having been one of the creative pioneers of east London’s creative industries. My wife Debbie and my children are here in the Gallery today, and they have always been there for me—certainly during my career pivot from the creative industries into politics. I thank them for their unwavering support and complete belief in me. I believe it is my duty to help shape and create the future jobs and businesses for this generation and future generations to grow into, just like Adebayo Alaba and Atinuke Awesu did, my late parents, who sacrificed everything as part of the Windrush generation to leave their families and communities behind in Nigeria in order to raise a family here, in one of the most welcoming countries in the world.

Simply put, it is now my job to ensure that communities such as Southend East and Rochford are vibrant, dynamic, stable and welcoming. When we talk about the public finances, as we are in Committee today, we should all bear that in mind. Our economy will be strongest if we can fulfil the potential in every corner of the country, including on the esplanades of Southend and in the town centres of Rochford and Southend—places that have so much to contribute to our economy and our culture, yet too often have been sidelined. I look forward to representing my constituents in this House. I look forward to contributing to future debates about our economic future, and I look forward to contributing to many other discussions.

I call Will Forster to make his maiden speech.

Thank you, Ms Nokes, for giving me this opportunity to make my maiden speech. Before I do, I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Southend East and Rochford (Mr Alaba), who spoke of his and his constituency’s proud military past. I am sure that he will see his constituency through these tough challenges and on to a brighter future. It goes without saying that it is a great privilege and an honour of a lifetime to be here, having been elected by the people of Woking. I thank them for electing me as their Member of Parliament. However, I must begin by addressing the Bill and the severe crisis facing my local authority, Woking borough council. Despite being relatively small, the Conservatives left Woking with more than £2 billion of debt following risky investment decisions. This legacy is one of negative equity, service cuts and unsustainable debt repayments. It could be argued that the Conservatives in Woking invented Truss economics before the former right hon. Member for South West Norfolk had her small stint as Prime Minister. What has happened in my constituency shows why the Bill is so important. I fear that, without support from the new Government, the situation in Woking, like the rest of local government, will only worsen. My constituents will suffer the most, and that is unacceptable when it is not their fault. I urge the Government to step in and provide the assistance we so desperately need to ensure that my community can recover and thrive. Most people might think of Woking as a modern constituency, but it has a rich history that stretches back through the centuries. Woking was mentioned in the Domesday Book. Sutton Place, famous for being the former home of Paul Getty, dates from 1525, and is one of the oldest unfortified houses in the country. Woking palace—now sadly a ruin—was a royal residence for both Henry VII and Henry VIII. As a result, Woking football club, my local team, is affectionately known as the Cards, after Cardinal Wolsey. Several Acts of Parliament have had an especially profound impact on Woking. For example, the Basingstoke canal was authorised by Parliament in 1778. The canal runs through much of Woking constituency. It has shaped our area, and is a popular cycling and walking route and a haven for nature. But like so many places in the country, Woking as we know it today was shaped by the railways. With steam, stone and iron, Woking was cast into the proud town it is today. In the mid-1800s we laid the foundations to become the great commuter town we are. Woking is also a wonderfully diverse and welcoming place, home to the Shah Jahan mosque, the oldest in the country. A vibrant Muslim community has developed in the town as a result. More recently, we have welcomed Ukrainian refugees, and I attended many events to support our new Ukrainian residents with my predecessor, our former MP Jonathan Lord. That was a powerful example of cross-party co-operation, and I thank Jonathan for his service as Woking’s MP, especially on this humanitarian issue where there was no disagreement whatsoever. Although we were opponents at the last election, I wish him and his family well for the future. Woking’s MP before Jonathan was Humfrey Malins, who founded the Immigration Advisory Service in 1992, which to this day provides free asylum and immigration advice to those who need it. He got a CBE for his work. Woking has a proud history of electing MPs who welcome immigration, and I am pleased to follow that tradition. Our town is also known for its connection to McLaren; it hosts its Formula 1 team and luxury cars are built there. I was privileged to make a visit only yesterday. As a young child of around 11, I remember watching with excitement as McLaren toured the town with its Formula 1 cars, driven by Mika Häkkinen, to celebrate their success. McLaren is winning again, much like the Liberal Democrats. The town also takes great pride in being home to the World Wide Fund for Nature. We have pressing issues, such as sewage in our rivers and the fight against climate change. I am already working alongside the five other newly elected Liberal Democrat MPs in Surrey to hold Thames Water to account for sewage dumping in our local rivers and streams. One of my first acts as an MP is to bring all the surrey MPs together to meet Thames Water to petition it for improvements and a better service. Woking is fortunate to be surrounded by green spaces. I love walking my dachshund Toffee on Horsell Common, where HG Wells famously landed his aliens in “War of the Worlds”. So it was not a great surprise when Ed Davey’s Liberal Democrats turned up and started campaigning with their out-of-this-world stunts. Of course, I’m only “woking”—I wouldn’t dare call my Liberal Democrat colleagues aliens. Getting back to the matter at hand, my constituency has a much-loved local hospital, Woking community hospital. Despite feeling like I was born and bred in Woking, I was not actually born in the constituency. Actually, no one has been born in a hospital in Woking for generations. I was born in Frimley Park hospital, one of the nearby hospitals we depend on, as Woking lacks maternity services. However, Frimley Park is plagued with RAAC—reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete—and its future is far from certain. I will work with my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Dr Pinkerton) to press the Government for a solution to rebuild Frimley Park hospital. Another major issue is the cost of rent and mortgages. As someone under 40—just—I understand these issues deeply. They have been raised consistently by local people on the doorstep. The increased cost of mortgages and rents in the past two years is a further reason why the Bill is so important. My journey into politics began because of Surrey county council’s failure to protect vulnerable children. At the time, it was rated the worst county council in the country because of that failure. We cannot allow vulnerable children to be failed again. The wider theme of why I was elected, and indeed why so many of my hard-working Liberal Democrat colleagues have been elected, is that we understand our communities’ local issues. I have worked for 15 years in local government and served as deputy leader of Woking council. I have seen first hand the crippling issues that some councils face. When I look at the faces of the Liberal Democrat MPs here, I see people who have worked hard in local government for years. What a glorious theme for this new Parliament: a cohort of 72 who understand the local issues our communities face, and a force for good in the country and in the Chamber when we need it most.

I call Jake Richards to make his maiden speech.

Thank you, Ms Nokes. It is such a great privilege to speak in this debate and make my maiden speech after the hon. Members for Woking (Mr Forster) and for Chelmsford (Marie Goldman). My hon. Friend the Member for Southend East and Rochford (Mr Alaba) made a fantastic speech about the city in his constituency, which I have had the great privilege of swimming in. His speech did due justice to that great place. My hon. Friend the Member for Swindon North (Will Stone) made a faintly terrifying speech about his Brazilian jiu-jitsu skills, and he certainly did justice to Swindon, too. It is a great honour to speak in the Chamber as the Member of Parliament for Rother Valley. For so many on the Labour Benches in particular, making our maiden speeches is the conclusion of long and hard-fought campaigns in which we were ultimately victorious. In the early hours of 5 July, which just happened to be my birthday, we celebrated the end of 14 years of Conservative Government and the first Labour Government of my adult life, but we also humbly accept the responsibility that we have been given. In the context of an often bitter and heated political campaign, and from the thousands of valued conversations I had in my constituency, one cannot avoid the fact that we as a country face daunting and urgent challenges. We cannot overlook the deep apathy towards the ability of politics, and indeed this place, to effect change. There has been the rise of online disinformation blaming bogeymen who do not exist. Conspiracy theorists and keyboard warriors purposefully ignore the complexities of the world around us for attention. Political culture too often thrives on division and controversy, not the common good. The hyperactive vitriolic politics seen so often across the Atlantic is seeping into our discourse here, undermining constructive dialogue. There is an epidemic of alienation among our young people, with levels of self-harm and suicide in my constituency increasing all the time. Children are arriving at school still in nappies and too often without breakfast in their bellies. Waiting lists for mental health support now stretch to half a decade, with many young people reaching their majority by the time they are seen. Too many people in my constituency feel they have to leave their village or town to get on in life. There is a disillusionment that their home, their community, their place is no longer offering the security and hope that people deserve. There is a fear for the future. I was told so often during the election campaign, “What’s the point of politics? This country is broken.” Perhaps some of those factors came to the fore over the summer recess, when a group organised to attend a hotel just a few miles from my constituency in Wath, planning to set that building on fire knowing full well there were innocent people inside. The pictures on our televisions were difficult to comprehend. I spoke to a young mother who had been made homeless and was being temporarily accommodated there with her children. The terror she described will haunt me forever. But from the gloom of that violent act came hope. The day after the hotel was attacked, I reached out to the Muslim community in my constituency and was invited to a meeting after evening prayer. I arrived eager to show solidarity, but anxious about the fear and damage that the community would have suffered—and yes, there was plenty of concern. But the first question I encountered was not one of anger or retribution, but instead a comment urging me to speak with the perpetrators of the violence in order to better understand the causes and motivation. It was a moment of great generosity and sensitivity, and one that will always stay with me.

15:45:00

Indeed, that spirit of togetherness, caring about the bonds that unite us, is everywhere to be seen in the Rother Valley. Dinnington boxing club held an event after the riots, with several south Yorkshire boxing clubs, to show unity and togetherness; a determination to portray south Yorkshire in a different light. That spirit runs through the club. I will always recall having a pint at the Little Mester in North Anston when a young lad from the club arrived to rapturous applause, only to explain that he had casually run a marathon that morning, on his own, wholly unorganised, to raise money for a local children’s hospice. He had heard that it required more funds for toys.

I think of the dementia café in Winthrop Gardens, which provides such an invaluable service, or the Maltby Lions, who are out every week, rain or shine, to raise money for deserving causes. I think of the community café at the beautiful Ulley reservoir, the work of the Salvation Army at the Dinnington food bank, the Community Fridge in Kiveton Park, the volunteer gardeners in Harthill, the community energy project in Woodsetts, or the MacMillan coffee mornings in Anston. This spirit ultimately wins the day, even in the shadow of horror.

In a previous life, as a pupil barrister, I sat behind prosecuting counsel at the trial of the murderer of Jo Cox MP. I learnt an awful lot—not about legal process or criminal procedure, but from Jo’s family, who arrived each day at court with smiles, holding hands and with a bag of sweets that they offered to assembled journalists, security guards and indeed the lawyers, including the defence barrister. I take inspiration from their strength. It was an honour to campaign for my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater) in that vital by-election, and it is even more so to share these green Benches with her today.

That spirit of generosity, the strength of unity in the face of the darkest forces, is what I will try to further in my role in this place. In that spirit, I praise Alexander Stafford, my predecessor, who was a hard-working MP, and who leaves the House as his brother arrives—no doubt the hon. Member for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford) will follow in his brother’s footsteps. In this place, Alexander will perhaps be best remembered for his work promoting the independence of Somaliland, and I know from my own social media that many in Hargeisa were very grateful for his adoption of their cause. I thank him for his service.

Let me end by saying that I will work every day in this place to do my utmost to tackle the forces of division and darkness during my time here, and to do my bit to bring people together, because after all, as Jo Cox told us, we have more in common than that which divides us.

I call Clive Jones to make his maiden speech.

Thank you very much for calling me, Madam Chair. I congratulate the hon. Member for Rother Valley (Jake Richards) on his very interesting speech—I learnt an awful lot about his constituency. I have also learnt a lot today about Southend East and Rochford, Portsmouth North and Swindon North, and especially about my colleagues, my hon. Friends the Members for Woking (Mr Forster) and for Chelmsford (Marie Goldman). I actually knew quite a lot about them before, but it was nice to hear some more. I particularly liked the speech from the hon. Member for Loughborough (Dr Sandher), who suggested that the Minister might like to get his chequebook out. Let me say to him, “If you are getting your chequebook out, I would like you to spend some money for the constituents of Wokingham.” Members on these Benches have a strong sense of social justice. This comes to us from many directions during our lives. Fifty years ago, I had an inspirational social and religious studies teacher, John Featherstone, to whom I am grateful for helping to instil these values in me. This sense of social justice will, I hope, guide me during my time in this House. I am very pleased that John is up there in the Gallery today. It is a pleasure to represent the constituency of Wokingham, whose boundaries somewhat changed at the last general election. I would like to pay tribute to my three predecessors, who each represented part of the constituency. From James Sunderland, the former MP for Bracknell, my constituency inherited the parishes of Finchampstead and Wokingham Without. I always found James approachable and straightforward, and I understand that his constituents found the same. Sir John Redwood was the MP for the former Wokingham constituency for a remarkable 37 years—a tremendous stint of public service—during which he had a profound influence on public policy. He served in Margaret Thatcher’s Government as a junior Minister, and in John Major’s Cabinet as Secretary of State for Wales, where he is best known for his enthusiastic miming of the Welsh national anthem. The wards of Thames and Twyford were represented by Theresa May—now Baroness May of Maidenhead—for 27 years. She was a dedicated public servant who served as Home Secretary and Prime Minister. She also has a well-deserved reputation among her former constituents, who hold her in high regard and talk about her warmly, with affection and with much respect. Although our politics are different, I wish all of my predecessors well in their future endeavours. It is an honour and a privilege to be elected to represent the people of Wokingham, where I have lived for much of the last 50 years. I went to school there, and my children went to school there. They were born in the nearby Royal Berkshire hospital, where I am proud to be a governor. It is also the hospital where doctors found my cancer in 2008 and began my successful treatment. In 2016, they were there to help me again, and diagnosed a need for a quadruple heart bypass. Without the Royal Berkshire hospital, I would not be standing here today. Our NHS staff are wonderful, and clinicians at the Royal Berkshire hospital deserve all the praise that is heaped on them by my constituents. Today we are debating the Chancellor’s Budget Responsibility Bill. In a previous debate, she announced the pausing of the new hospital building programme, which included the Royal Berkshire hospital. Parts of the building date back to 1839, and staff have to work in offices where the windows do not open, and they regularly have to walk around buckets that are there to catch dripping rainwater. I must repeat my plea to both the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care for a speedy decision as to when the much-needed rebuild of our beloved hospital will happen. If I may, Madam Chair, I would like to give you a short tour of the Wokingham constituency. In the north is the world-famous Henley regatta course at Remenham and the very successful Leander rowing club—one of the most successful sports clubs in the world. I was delighted that the former Prime Minister chose to visit the Leander Club during the recent general election, and even more so that his visit coincided with a boat trip that I and my hon. Friends the Members for Henley and Thame (Freddie van Mierlo) and for St Albans (Daisy Cooper) were making to highlight the dumping of raw sewage into our waterways. It was fun to wave at the Prime Minister from that beautiful stretch of river, and the media all seemed to enjoy it as well. Wokingham has wonderful, picturesque villages. Wargrave was first recorded in 1061 and features in the Domesday Book. The village of Twyford dates from 871, when Alfred the Great’s army escaped Viking pursuers by crossing the River Loddon. Wokingham has a thriving and growing brewing sector that is establishing great reputations among beer lovers, including the Loddon brewery, the Elusive brewery and the Siren brewery. The Stanlake Park wine estate in Hurst is one of the oldest wine producers in England. The Chancellor will know that our town centres and village centres, like many others in the UK, are finding life difficult. The cost of living crisis created by the previous Government continues to limit people’s spending power, and online competition is ruthless. Business rates are a huge issue for our local retailers, who make our high streets the great places they are, and I do hope that the Chancellor and Ministers will look into the reform of business rates at the earliest opportunity. Wokingham town received its market charter in 1219. I thoroughly recommend the market, especially the fruit and veg stall and the fishmonger. My wife likes me to buy flowers for her from Darren’s flower stall. She says they last longer than any supermarket flowers. Using this market is good value for money and it is an important part of our local character. Today, the constituency is gaining a reputation as a home for life sciences businesses. I was pleased, when leader of the council, to be involved in the early stages of discussions with Lonza, a Swiss public company that will be investing several hundred million pounds in the constituency over the next few years. Wokingham has many charities in which volunteers work hard to improve the lives of our residents. I will mention just a few: the Wokingham food bank, First Days, Wokingham in Need, Building for the Future, Citizens Advice, Age UK Berkshire, Wokingham United Charities and the Cowshed. The dedication and hard work of the volunteers in these charities and many others is truly inspirational. In the southern part of the constituency, in Arborfield, there is a former Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers garrison, with which the town had an important relationship for many years. John Walter, a newspaper editor and politician, and the son of the founder of The Times, lived on the Bearwood estate. He was a Whig MP for the county of Berkshire before 1832—early beginnings of what I hope will become a long-standing tradition in our area. Madam Chair, from your chair you must be thinking that this 59th Parliament has so many young faces, and I hope you will be including me in that category. I bet you are wondering, “What is his secret?” It is very simple: I worked in the toy industry for many years, running manufacturing and importing businesses. Playing with toys every day for the last 30 to 40 years is what makes me look so young. Our toys made many young people and their parents happy. I am hoping to be just as successful in my second career, helping the people of Wokingham to improve their lives. If I can achieve this, I will have had two worthwhile careers. Finally, I am grateful to the many people—in particular, my family and friends—who have helped me in my campaigns to be elected to the House of Commons, some of whom are in the Gallery today. Wokingham has never before elected a Liberal Democrat MP. I will work tirelessly to represent my constituents and I will endeavour to make them feel recognised and supported. I come here idealistic and hopeful, hoping that we can make the public feel the same about our institutions, and I want to ensure that we do them justice on these battered but far from broken green Benches.

I call Sonia Kumar to make her maiden speech.

16:00:00

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wokingham (Clive Jones), and to listen to the excellent speeches made in this Chamber. It is an honour to address the House as the new Member of Parliament for Dudley. The last Labour MP to represent Dudley was Ian Austin, now Lord Austin, who served as Minister for the West Midlands in the last Labour Government. He was a passionate and dedicated servant of the town in which he grew up. My immediate predecessor, Marco Longhi, also had a deep passion for the heritage of Dudley. In his contributions to the House, he sought to protect the historical buildings not just in our town but throughout our country. I now look forward to playing my part in protecting and preserving our heritage, and to go further by preserving our remarkable healthcare system. Working at the Dudley group NHS foundation trust as a physiotherapist, I saw patients from across our town—from Gornal, Castle and Priory, St Thomas’s, Brockmoor and Pensnett, St James’s, Sedgley, and Upper Gornal and Woodsetton. Seeing at first hand the ongoing issues faced by our NHS, and hearing at first hand the challenges my patients encountered, served as the catalyst for my decision to enter this House. My primary goal is to enhance the wellbeing of my residents in Dudley, and to secure an NHS that is equipped to meet the evolving needs of our country. The NHS, founded by a Labour Government, is truly a remarkable institution, and its history, achievements and challenges remind us of the importance of investing in a comprehensive and fair healthcare system. Dudley is the capital of the Black Country, and I know my constituency neighbours will agree. It has a long and proud history, celebrated on Black Country Day. Dudley was the driving force behind the industrial revolution. It is home to Dudley castle, which was built by the Normans and is where people can visit the delightful Dudley zoo. Yet Dudley’s attractions go back even further. Wren’s Nest national nature reserve is part of the Black Country UNESCO geopark. It has one of the oldest lime works in the UK, and the rock there is 428 million years old. Wren’s Nest contains over 700 different types of fossils. People come from all over the world to find fossils, and I invite hon. Members to walk around Wren’s Nest with me to look at the spectacular landscape and to see if they can find a fossil of their own to take home. Perhaps nothing displays the pride of the people of Dudley as much as our Black Country Living Museum. This magnificent tourist attraction not only promises a bostin’ day out; it has also been used as a filming location for, among others, the TV series “Peaky Blinders” and films such as “Stan & Ollie”. The museum has recently added a new attraction to show what life was like in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. A few years ago, the museum had an exhibition to mark 100 years since the granting of women’s suffrage. It is a measure of the progress we have made since then that I can now make my maiden speech as Dudley’s first female MP. Like the Black Country Living Museum, Dudley has changed through time. In the past, Dudley smelted iron ore, mined coal and limestone, and built a canal network that stretched across the country. Now, the Dudley-based Black Country Innovative Manufacturing Organisation is a world-class centre for rail innovation, helping towns and cities across the world meet the challenges of the 2020s. This Bill will also help us meet the challenges of the future. It will protect market stability and public trust, and ensure the Government’s fiscal plans are independently and transparently scrutinised, future-proofing our economy. That will help business owners like my father, Ashok Kumar, who arrived in this country at the age of nine. He set up his own business and is still working as a greengrocer 45 years on. He taught me the importance of hard work and heritage. As a new MP, nothing gives me more pleasure than talking to business owners like my dad. I would like to finish by paying tribute to two extraordinary women, without whom I would not be in this Chamber today. My sister has been my guiding light from the moment I was born. She has supported me unconditionally and encouraged me to pursue my dreams, and today, as every day, she teaches me to never give up. My maa, Rajinder Kaur, taught me the values of community, faith and resilience. She was an aspiring Bollywood actress. While those dreams may have fallen short, her legacy will be etched in history by being mentioned in this House today. Hon. Members will be pleased to know this speech is nowhere near the length of a Bollywood movie, and is coming to a close. I finish by turning once more to the people of Dudley. It is an honour to represent them and our great town in this House. I promise I will work as hard as I can to bring prosperity and happiness to our town, and I will not let them down.

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Dudley (Sonia Kumar) for her excellent maiden speech. Indeed, we have heard more than half a dozen excellent maiden speeches today, several of which touched on the climate crisis and the future of children in our country, themes that relate to my amendment. I was touched to hear the passion with which all the new Members spoke about their experiences and commitments. My amendment 5 requires the OBR to report on the impact of fiscally significant measures announced by the Government on the UK’s statutory net zero target. The justification for my amendment is that we simply cannot separate the economy and the climate—they are interlinked. To deliver the green economic transformation that we so urgently need, as referenced by hon. Members speaking earlier, every single policy must be aligned with the UK’s net zero target and every Government spending decision should be as well. It makes sense to increase the OBR’s remit on net zero to specifically consider the impact of climate risks on economic stability, and how far policies introduced at fiscal events will reduce or increase these risks. Fiscal events, namely Budgets and spending reviews, lock in what is happening in our economy for years to come, even generations, so it beggars belief that they are not properly taking account of climate impacts. Whether those policies are spending on new roads, subsidies and tax breaks for oil and gas, investment in renewables infrastructure or giveaways like a freeze on fuel duty, they all have direct impacts on the UK’s prospect of meeting our net zero targets. Those impacts should be made clear and considered explicitly in the policy-making paper. We need to be thinking about the impacts of today’s economic policies on the prospects for future generations. The costs of failing to take an approach that considers climate impacts are eye watering. A 2022 report by the Grantham Institute found that climate change damages to the UK are projected to triple by 2050 and more than double again 50 years later, so climate prudence and fiscal prudence are one and the same thing. Given that the OBR’s main duty is to assess the health of the UK economy and the sustainability of its public finances, it needs to be charged with assessing whether fiscal events are reducing or increasing climate risks to the economy. Bringing net zero into the OBR’s mandate is consistent with the Government’s five missions. Indeed, in announcing its clean energy superpower document, Labour said that it will add net zero mandates to all relevant regulators that need it. I would argue that the OBR is a relevant regulator that needs a net zero mandate. That is why I am proposing this probing amendment today. As other Members have mentioned, it would also represent increased transparency around how fiscal policy choices are impacting the UK’s progress towards our net zero targets and help ensure that future Governments also consider that. It is also an important stepping stone towards a net zero test, which would assess the aggregate climate and nature impact of every fiscal event. Again, this is something that Labour committed to in opposition. In his winding-up remarks, will the Minister comment on whether he is able to ensure that this test is integrated into the legislation that he is proposing? I hope that Labour will use this opportunity to commit publicly to introducing a net zero test in government, and will take a step towards doing that by backing my amendment.

I call Lauren Edwards to make her maiden speech.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak, Madam Chair. I pay tribute to the many hon. Members who have given such impressive maiden speeches today. It is an honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Sonia Kumar) who gave such a passionate speech about her constituency, and who certainly did her family very proud. Although she has left her place, may I also commend the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Marie Goldman) for her excellent speech, which, as somebody born in Australia, I particularly appreciated for its reference to the Australian opera singer, Dame Nellie Melba? Financial market stability and public trust in announcements on fiscally significant measures are, funnily enough, not issues that come up regularly on the doorstep. But the real-life consequences when these two important pillars of our society are lacking was central to the recent conversations that I had across Rochester and Strood. The cost of living pressures, already challenging for most, were heightened as families found that they had to pay, on average, hundreds of pounds more just to put a roof over their heads. The cause of that additional pressure—the former Truss Government’s mini-Budget—was a deeply undesirable situation that this Bill seeks to prevent from ever happening again. One reason given for the adverse market reaction to that mini-Budget was the lack of forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility—an omission which, in turn, contributed to a lack of investor confidence in the plans. Political parties, whatever their colour, can have the best policies in the world, but if they are not backed with economic competence and market confidence in those who are holding the purse strings, no one will be better off for them. We cannot and should not play fast and loose with the economy, so, like many others, I take great comfort from the Bill. That includes the chair of the OBR himself, Robert Hughes, who says that the Bill will address a gap in the current law and “serve to strengthen the legal foundations for fiscal management.” It is surely only right that policymakers, when making major fiscal decisions, base those decisions on up-to-date economic and fiscal outlooks, published at the same time to give maximum transparency. I dwell so much on economic stability as I view it as a necessary precondition for economic growth—this Government’s chief mission—and because, in recent years, there has not been enough focus on the latter in places such as Medway. I am immensely proud to call Rochester and Strood my home and honoured to have been given the opportunity by its residents to represent them here in this place. I will work hard every day to ensure that residents’ voices are heard in this Chamber and to get a better deal for everybody in Rochester and Strood. I will do that by continuing to drive regeneration work in my constituency, work that I began as a former cabinet member on Medway council. I will work with the Government and the private sector to bring more investment to our towns and villages, support the local business community to thrive, and provide more opportunities for young people, so that they do not feel that they need to move away to get on in life. Rochester and Strood has many strengths, not least the military presence at Brompton barracks, home of the Royal Engineers. The River Medway, which runs the length of the constituency, has so much potential for industry, leisure and tourism, and a very rich maritime history from the days of Chatham dockyard. We have a burgeoning creative community centred at Chatham Intra, developing green industries out on the Hoo peninsula, and high-quality technical colleges and universities. However, we also have high levels of deprivation in the constituency, not enough good-quality and affordable housing, an overburdened hospital, and not enough infrastructure, including health services, public transport and banking services, to support our communities, particularly on the more rural Strood side of the constituency.

16:15:00

Tackling those issues, among others, will occupy my time in this place, with the simple aim that I leave things better than when I arrived. My commitment to public service will not waver, whatever the political weather, because that is what I have been sent here to do and it is a responsibility that I take immensely seriously. Although I chose Rochester and Strood as my home in adulthood, I pay tribute to my predecessor, Kelly Tolhurst, who was born and raised in the constituency and is rightly very proud of that fact. As she said in her own maiden speech, her successful journey

“is one that every young person in my community should feel is possible for them”.—[Official Report, 25 June 2015; Vol. 597, c. 1121.]

Her commitment to, and love for, the place that she grew up in is undisputed, and I thank her genuinely for her years of service.

Like many new MPs, I have been thinking very carefully about how I can use the skills and experience from my previous career to support the important legislative work done in this place and to benefit my constituents. It was my experience of working here during the last financial crisis that led me to become a financial regulator at the Bank of England, so I aim to use my voice to ensure that the pursuit of much-needed economic growth is done in such a way as to preserve the stability of our economy and our financial system. I intend to draw on my 13 years of experience as an elected trade union representative to ensure that the new deal for working people delivers for my hard-working constituents, who often struggle with insufficient pay and rights, and to help to drive the Government’s commitment to invest in our people by improving their knowledge and skills.

I will use my experience in local government to ensure that legislation allows local authorities to invest to save, and to think much more long term—both things that I consider to be in the best interest of council tax payers. I will try to ensure that this Government’s approach to devolution is one that will genuinely pass power to local communities, which I think are best placed to know what their areas need, and work in the best interest of my constituents. Finally, I hope to continue the cross-party working I have enjoyed with representatives from across Kent and the south-east, so that our region grows and prospers under this Government.

We face significant challenges in our region—infrastructure, transport and border issues alone. These cannot be resolved solely within our distinct geographical areas. My politics is underpinned by collaboration and co-operation, and I know that by working together we can deliver the regional economic growth that is needed to drive so much of what we want to achieve: well-run public services, decent and affordable housing, and better life chances for all.

I call Fred Thomas to make his maiden speech.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Before I talk about Plymouth, may I celebrate the amazing speeches that we have heard this afternoon, and pay tribute to the wealth of experience and passion, not just on the Government Benches but across the Chamber? It is really heartening. My hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Jake Richards) spoke about the spirit that we have all seen in the communities that we represent, and the confidence that he has in that spirit to overcome some of the challenges that we are facing as a nation and in our communities. I completely share that. Let me now talk about Plymouth, the city that I call home and the city that I am so proud to represent in this place as the Member for Plymouth Moor View. I want to talk about our people, our institutions, our rolling hills, grey warships glinting in the south coast sun and the noise that 18,000 Argyle fans make on match day. I want to talk about the gritty determination of staff at one of the biggest hospitals in the country, and I want to talk about hope. I will frame this speech with two principles that I lived by during my time in the Royal Marines, principles that are well known among the armed forces community in Plymouth. First, a leader must be a dealer of hope. When the chips are down, leaders have to step forward and give hope. I believe that is our job in Parliament too. In Plymouth, communities come together to give each other hope. There is immense strength and resilience in the streets, the housing estates, the front rooms and wherever folks get together and organise to change the lives they and their neighbours are living, making simple, tangible changes by addressing the needs in front of them. We have Whitleigh Big Local, the Four Greens Community Trust and Connecting Youth CIC, to name just a few, working in partnership with the local community to improve the things that matter and to bring hope. I want to use my position in this House to empower our community to effect change and generate hope that life will get better and that families can be lifted out of poverty. Today, relative child poverty in Plymouth Moor View is at 23%, set against the regional figure of 17%. I will not accept rising child poverty, because the second principle that I live by, one I believe a lot of us share, is this: “The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.” If we see something that we know is wrong and we keep walking, we are effectively saying we are happy with that situation. The harder option is not to walk past, but to take action. Derriford hospital in Plymouth serves almost 2 million people across Devon and Cornwall. I have met the nurses, paramedics, doctors and volunteers, who do fantastic work under immense pressure. They are people who do not just walk past. However, the hospital is up against it: in June alone, there were 5,000 instances where a patient waited more than four hours in A&E. That represents a series of personal tragedies for the patients affected. With the new Government, I will work tirelessly to change that story. Away from the hospital, the beating heart of our city is Plymouth Argyle football club, which is in its second season now in the championship, making it one of the top clubs in the English football league. Yet in Plymouth, many families struggle to afford access to sport for their kids. I am a keen footballer and I believe in the power of sport to set young people up for life. I will use my platform to improve access to sport in Plymouth, because a standard where this country has the finest football leagues, watched the world over, but our own youngsters cannot afford to play is not a standard I will walk past. I pay tribute to the excellent work that the Argyle community trust and the Plymouth football boot bank do already to broaden access to sport in Plymouth. As a former Royal Marines commando, it is a particular privilege to represent the city that is home to not only the largest naval base in western Europe, but the Royal Marines, who are still headquartered in Plymouth. Ours is a city where so many residents have served in uniform, and I take this opportunity to thank every single one of them for their service and dedication. I also pay tribute to my predecessor for his heartfelt efforts to raise the profile of the veterans agenda. For centuries, Plymouth has had a proud military history, and the Prime Minister recently called it “the frontline of defence in this country”. Navy, Marines and Army personnel have deployed from Plymouth for hundreds of years. The tradition of proud military service runs through our city like the writing in a stick of rock. Now, as we find ourselves as a country in another moment of critical international instability, Plymouth is again a keystone of our national security. Devonport dockyard is the home port for the frigates, survey vessels and amphibious shipping that are crucial for our safety. It is also where the submarines that host our nuclear deterrent are maintained, and will be for generations to come. We are also home to highly skilled small and medium-sized enterprises such as MSubs—makers of unmanned submersible craft used in the most special military projects—Barden bearings and Collins Aerospace, whose cutting-edge engineering is integral to the UK’s modern weapons systems. From our military institutions and our manufacturing base to our hospital, our football club and our dockyard, we stand up and we serve in Plymouth. We give a lot to this nation, but for all this—if I can borrow a phrase from a friend and a constant source of advice, my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard)—Plymouth does not get its fair share. I will work tirelessly with the Government to change that, because in Labour we respect service, and ours will be a Government of service—a Government of hope. As I served my country before in uniform, so I will serve my city now in office. As I was trained to do in the Marines, I will strive to be a dealer of hope. When it comes to taking action, I will remember, along with colleagues on both sides of the House, that the standard we walk past is the standard we accept.

I call Lucy Rigby to make her maiden speech.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth Moor View (Fred Thomas) on his fantastic maiden speech and to all hon. Members who have made such brilliant maiden speeches in this afternoon’s debate. It is a privilege to follow them and to make my own maiden speech in the context of such an important Bill. Northampton has sent Members to Parliament since 1283, and it is the honour of my life to be among them as the Member of Parliament for Northampton North. One of those former Members, I am proud to say, was the trailblazing Margaret Bondfield—the first woman to serve in Cabinet in this country, the first to be appointed to the Privy Council and the first to chair the TUC. I hope, in the course of my time here, that we might find ways to see Margaret’s name given greater recognition and prominence, as I believe is due. Some 51 years after Margaret Bondfield’s arrival in this House, the good people of my constituency elected Maureen Colquhoun—a trailblazer herself in relation to many issues, including being the country’s first openly gay MP. I want to pay particular tribute to my two immediate predecessors: Sir Michael Ellis and Sally Keeble. Sir Michael stepped down at the last election, having served Northampton North for 14 years and served the country as a Minister in multiple roles. He is also remembered locally for performing lifesaving CPR on a constituent having a coronary episode—I am more than aware that that sets me a very high bar for looking after my constituents. Like Sir Michael, Labour’s Sally Keeble served Northampton North for well over a decade and served her country in government too. Sally has many achievements—notable among them was the taking through of one of the last pieces of legislation under the previous Labour Government to protect developing countries from vulture funds. Sally remains a dedicated and committed public servant. I do not mind admitting that I spoke to plenty of residents during the election campaign who told me that while they really appreciated my doorstep pitch for their support, they would be voting for Sally Keeble. I am aware of the examples of good service in this place that have been set for me, and I hope to live up to them, so I want my constituents to know that serving our community in Northampton will be my first and highest priority for as long as I remain in this place. This place could, in fact, be in my constituency, because Northampton has been the seat of Parliament on more than 30 occasions. King John even moved the Treasury to Northampton in 1205, when he fell out with a few people in London over something akin to the disastrous mini-Budget—an option that I suspect those supportive of the Treasury’s current location will be glad to know was not suggested, as far as we know, to the former right hon. Member for South West Norfolk. We are a town of deep pride in both our present and our past. We are the largest town in England. We have buildings of neo-gothic splendour; strong communities; beautiful green spaces such as Eastfield Park, Abington Park and the Racecourse; and not one but two shoe armies: Premiership champions Northampton Saints, and the mighty Cobblers. Our boot and shoemaking industry has provided many Members of this House with their footwear over the years, including, I am proud to say, the former Prime Minister and Member for Sedgefield, who wore the same lucky pair of Church’s brogues at every Prime Minister’s questions for 10 years, which just goes to show where a good pair of Northampton shoes can get you.

16:30:00

Service runs deep in my family. My mum worked for the NHS and the Ministry of Defence. My dad served in the Royal Engineers for 30 years, including in the first Gulf war and in the Balkan conflict. I was born on RAF Wegberg in Germany, and, like many forces children, grew up on military bases all over the place. I learned the true value of service, and acquired a continuing and personal respect for the dedication of our armed forces and a deep patriotism—not for its own sake, but through a commitment to our British values of the rule of law, democracy, tolerance and liberty.

That strong sense of fairness led me to train as a lawyer, so 13 years after my dad served on the NATO deployment in Bosnia, I went out to The Hague to be part of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, the body established to bring to bear some semblance of justice following that conflict. I will never forget the testimony of witnesses to the most appalling of crimes against humanity. That experience showed me not only the importance of the international community, but the value of justice being done. Those principles are particularly important in the context of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and the Ukrainian people’s brave fight for freedom.

My career as a solicitor has offered me a rich and varied experience for which I am very grateful. I specialised in competition law and spent time in the City, at the regulator and at Which?, which gave me particular insight into how markets and regulation work— and can work better—for consumers, businesses and the country as a whole. Given the serious ongoing pressures on living standards and family budgets in my constituency, and the challenges in our wider economy, the Government’s focus on those issues is extremely welcome. The Bill is so vital precisely because it will guard against the recklessness that unfortunately caused so many of my Northampton North constituents so much financial pain and additional hardship.

It is an extraordinary privilege to represent Northampton North in this place. I will continually endeavour to live up to that honour for as long as I am here.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Nokes. May I start by congratulating hon. Friends and others on delivering their maiden speeches? It has been a pleasure to be in the Chamber to hear them this afternoon. They will clearly be great champions for their constituencies. I will take a few moments to remind the House of why we are taking forward the important clauses in the Bill, and to set out the Government’s views on the proposed amendments. At the general election, the Government received a mandate for economic growth. That is the only route to improving prosperity, and it is now our national mission. A crucial first step to achieving it is to deliver economic stability. We have seen what happens without stability: at the 2022 Conservative mini-Budget, huge unfunded fiscal commitments were made without proper scrutiny, and key economic institutions such as the Office for Budget Responsibility were sidelined. That is why we have made a commitment in our manifesto to a fiscal lock that will strengthen the role of the OBR, and why we have taken quick action to deliver on that commitment. That will reinforce credibility and trust by preventing large-scale unfunded commitments that are not subject to an independent fiscal assessment, and proves that we are a responsible Government who will not play fast and loose with the public finances as the previous Government did. The Bill sets out the legal framework for the operation of the fiscal lock, and builds on the Budget Responsibility and National Audit Act 2011. In line with that established legal framework, some of the technical detail underpinning the fiscal lock will be set out via an upcoming update to the charter for budget responsibility, a draft of which the Treasury has published to support scrutiny of the Bill today. I will now talk through the Bill’s two clauses. The first is the main substantive clause, setting out the operation of the fiscal lock. It introduces a new section 4A into part 1 of the Budget Responsibility and National Audit Act 2011, which relates to budget responsibility and was used to legally establish the OBR. Clause 1 makes five key changes. First, new subsection (1) of section 4A guarantees in law that from now on, every fiscally significant change to tax and spending will be subject to scrutiny by the independent OBR. It will require that before a Government Minister makes any fiscally significant announcement to Parliament, the Treasury always requests that the OBR prepare an economic and fiscal forecast. This builds on existing legal frameworks requiring the OBR to produce at least two forecasts per year. Importantly, the OBR’s assessment should include the extent to which the Government are meeting their fiscal mandate. That requirement applies when two or more announcements are made and the combination of measures is fiscally significant, irrespective of whether the measures are announced at the same time. It will also apply separately to costs and savings, so that those cannot be offset against each other. New subsection (2) strengthens the role of the OBR by requiring it to produce an independent assessment if it judges that the fiscal lock has been triggered. If a fiscally significant announcement is made without the Treasury having previously requested a forecast, the OBR is required to inform the Treasury Committee of this House of its opinion, and then prepare an assessment as soon as is practicable. New subsection (3) defines a measure or combination of measures as “fiscally significant” if they exceed a specified percentage of GDP. In line with the existing legal framework, the precise threshold will be set via an update to the charter for budget responsibility, a draft of which will be published on gov.uk. The threshold level itself will be set at announcements of at least 1% of nominal GDP in the latest forecast—as an example, this year, that 1% threshold would be £28 billion. New subsection (4) ensures proper scrutiny of the Government’s fiscal plans without preventing them from responding to emergencies such as the covid-19 pandemic. It sets out that the fiscal lock does not apply in respect of measures that are intended to have a temporary effect and are in response to an emergency. The charter will define “temporary” as any measure that is intended to end within two years. To safeguard against this subsection being used to avoid proper scrutiny, as set out in the updated charter, the OBR will have the discretion to trigger the fiscal lock and prepare a report if it reasonably disagrees. Finally, new subsection (6) prevents any future Government from choosing to ignore the fiscal lock by simply updating the charter for budget responsibility alongside a fiscally significant announcement. It achieves this by requiring the Government to publish any updates to the detail of the fiscal lock, such as the threshold level at which it is triggered, at least 28 days before the updated charter is laid before Parliament. Clause 2 sets out when the Bill will come into force and to whom it applies. Subsection (1) confirms that it deals with reserved or excepted matters, and that its provisions extend and therefore apply to England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Subsections (2) and (3) allow for the commencement of the legislation to occur at the appropriate time, as is usual practice. We expect this will take place ahead of the upcoming Budget on 30 October. I will now turn to the amendments that right hon. and hon. Members have tabled.

Before my right hon. Friend does so, will he give way?

Briefly, yes.

Is this Bill not designed to prevent the recklessness of the previous Tory Government, who effectively crashed the economy, leaving this new Labour Government with the responsibility of putting things right?

My hon. Friend has hit the nail on the head. Indeed, I might go so far as to say that that was one of the reasons we achieved such a large mandate at the last general election, with so many hon. Friends on the Government Benches. We will never play fast and loose with the economy, as Members on the Conservative Benches did, and this Bill will prevent that from happening again in the future. I start with amendments 9 and 10, tabled by the shadow Chancellor. They would require the OBR to publish a report whenever His Majesty’s Treasury announces new fiscal rules. The purpose of the Bill is to ensure that no Government can make large-scale announcements of tax and spending without being subject to independent assessment. The Government’s robust fiscal rules will support economic stability, but do not change tax and spending. It is those decisions that matter, as we saw when the previous Conservative Government announced £45 billion of unfunded commitments in the 2022 mini-Budget.

Will the Minister give way?

Briefly.

The Minister can answer this briefly as well. Could he confirm that he has no plans to change the fiscal rules?

The hon. Gentleman is enjoying himself, but he knows the answer: wait for the Budget. The amendments from the official Opposition are therefore not necessary. To answer the question from the shadow Financial Secretary, the hon. Member for Droitwich and Evesham (Nigel Huddleston), as I have been invited to do so, the Chancellor has already confirmed that the Government will set out the precise details of our fiscal rules at the Budget on 30 October, alongside an updated OBR forecast. amendments 6 and 7, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy), focus on the definition of “fiscally significant” measures to which the fiscal lock will apply. They would extend the definition to include measures that have a cumulative effect on public sector net debt or contingent liabilities. I welcome my hon. Friend highlighting this issue, on which I know she has worked for many years. The draft charter text states that measures will trigger the lock when the combined costing is at least 1% of GDP in any year, and specifically: “The costing of a measure is the direct impact of a policy decision on the public finances”. It is difficult to set and interpret a threshold consistently for contingent liabilities as they can often be large in maximum exposure, but low in expected or reasonable worst-case losses. Effective management of contingent liabilities is important, and transparency is key to good fiscal management. The Government plan to announce new significant contingent liabilities at fiscal events to make sure there is transparency with Parliament. We will of course continue to notify Parliament of new contingent liabilities, as set out in “Managing Public Money”. The amendments would also place a condition on policies with a cumulative impact on public sector net debt, and my hon. Friend noted public-private partnerships as an example. She was referring to PFI and PF2 models, which the previous Government had no longer proceeded with, and there has been no change to this policy. As the Chancellor said in her Mais lecture earlier this year, we will also report on wider measures of public sector assets and liabilities at fiscal events to ensure transparency across the whole balance sheet, which includes non-debt liabilities. Reporting transparently on the Government’s stock of contingent liabilities is key to ensuring we do not take excessive risk. I can therefore confirm today that the Government will publish a report on our contingent liabilities. I expect the contingent liability central capability to do this in early 2025. Having said all that, I recognise the issues my hon. Friend raises, and I will arrange to meet her to discuss them further. Moving on to the Liberal Democrat amendments, amendment 2 was tabled by the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney). As she said, it would enable the OBR to notify the independent adviser on Ministers’ interests if the fiscal lock was triggered. I remind hon. Members that the purpose of this Bill is to ensure that never again do we find ourselves in a situation, like at the 2022 Liz Truss mini-Budget, in which fiscally significant measures are announced without accompanying OBR analysis. If a future Government were to act in this way, the Bill provides a clear remedy. The OBR is empowered to independently notify the Treasury Committee and to produce its own report. This would be available for full scrutiny by stakeholders and Parliament, which would be able to hold Ministers to account in the normal way. We therefore do not consider the amendment necessary. Amendment 1, also tabled by the Liberal Democrats, would broaden the definition of fiscally significant measures to cover anything that is likely to have an impact on the cost of Government borrowing, interest rates or economic growth. The Bill is focused on preventing irresponsible large-scale fiscal announcements that could undermine macroeconomic stability, such as at the mini-Budget. To support that, we need clear and robust legal frameworks that ensure the provisions are triggered only when appropriate. This requires precise definitions that everyone, including the OBR in particular, can understand clearly and work with practically. It would therefore not be helpful, in the Government’s view, to have a broader, vaguer definition that might repeatedly trigger the fiscal lock under many different circumstances. Amendments 3 and 4 would require the Treasury to consult the OBR and the Treasury Committee before the charter can be updated for the purposes of the fiscal lock, and to publish a report on the outcome of any such consultations. It is of course important that the views of the OBR and of Parliament are taken into account when making changes to the charter. However, I hope the hon. Member will accept that it will not be necessary to set out this specific process in primary legislation, because the Bill already includes an important safeguard on the fiscal lock, which is the requirement that any changes to the charter for budget responsibility are published in draft at least 28 days before they are laid in the Commons. That will ensure that the OBR, the Treasury Committee, this Parliament and all stakeholders will have a clear opportunity to make representations to the Treasury and to publish their views, as they see fit. Amendment 5, tabled by the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Ellie Chowns), would require the OBR to take net zero targets into account when preparing a report on fiscally significant announcements. Strong legal frameworks are already in place in the Climate Change Act 2008 to support the transition to net zero in 2050. The Act legislates for interim five-year carbon budgets, and requires the Government to report on those periodically. Parliament and its Select Committees already scrutinise that in great detail. The Green Book, the Treasury’s guidance on how to appraise policies, projects and programmes, requires Departments to assess the climate and environmental impacts of policy proposals, with major bids and proposals at fiscal events being assessed accordingly in that way. We therefore do not consider the amendment to be necessary.

Does the Minister agree that having committed to give a net zero mandate to all relevant regulators, the OBR is indeed a highly relevant regulator?

And it is equipped to do the job it is supposed to do, alongside the other regulatory body that holds the Government to account, the Committee on Climate Change. In conclusion, I hope I have been able to provide some assurances and that hon. Members will be content to retract their amendments. If not, I urge the House to reject them. I thank other Members for their contributions to the debate. I gently invite the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith) to reflect on his own party’s record in crashing the economy through unfunded tax cuts, losing control of public spending and ruining family finances, before offering advice to this Government on fiscal responsibility. I say to the SNP spokesperson, who is not in his place, that I was surprised to see so many discredited Conservative party lines to take in his speech. Who knew that the SNP and the Tory party were one and the same thing? With this Labour Government our commitment to fiscal discipline and sound money is the bedrock of all our plans. The Bill will guarantee in law that from now on every fiscally significant change to tax and spending will be subject to scrutiny by the independent OBR. That delivers on a key manifesto commitment to provide economic stability and sound public finances by strengthening the role of the independent OBR. That is a crucial first step to achieve sustained economic growth, and I commend the Bill to the House.

I call shadow Minister Nigel Huddleston.

I will not detain the House long by repeating the arguments that I made in my opening comments, but I am disappointed by the Minister’s response, and in particular by his refusal to accept our amendments. It is alarming that he is refusing to do so because, as I outlined, I believe they are consistent with the goals of the Bill overall, and I think the credibility of the Bill will be seriously undermined if it does not include the fiscal rules. I like the Minister a lot. We go back a way and have always had civil conversations, but if he does not believe or consider the level, type and definition of debt to be “fiscally significant”, then with the greatest respect perhaps the Treasury is not the right home for him. They are transparently fiscally significant, and an important part of the consideration we are talking about today.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way, and for inviting me to suggest whether I should try to find a job in another Department. I just point out that, having arrived at the Treasury, I have seen the impact of fiscally significant levels of debt after 14 years of the Conservative Government. Has he got anything to say to the House on that matter?

Yes, I have indeed. As I outlined in my original statement, the arguments the right hon. Member is making do not stack up with the facts. The economic circumstances that Labour inherited are better in many areas than those we inherited from them back in 2010. The economy is the fastest growing in the G7. On unemployment, every Labour Government since the second world war has increased it while in power, for us to then clear up and reduce it when we take over. Inflation was lower when Labour took power then when we inherited it, and annual debt was higher when we took over in 2010. Labour Members keep saying all those things, but the challenge is that it does not stack up with the facts. They make arguments about the level of debt, as I outlined earlier, but they have already announced £10 billion for inflation-busting salary increasing for their union mates, £8 billion on energy provisions, and £7 billion on the national wealth fund. That is £25 billion of additional money that they have spent. If there is a black hole in the finances, it is clearly one of their own making by the announcements they have made since coming into government. That £25 billion is a huge amount of money, but I will finish discussing those points, because we had this debate earlier.

I will not give way at the moment, because I want to move on to some more positive things.

There is loads of time.

We have Third Reading as well, so let us enjoy ourselves. Just because the Government keep repeating the narrative does not make it true. I am sure they will continue to do so, but the £25 billion of additional spending that I have just outlined is a choice they have made. The arguments they are having to make—that they are having to cut payments to pensioners in response to the circumstances they have inherited—are not true because, as I outlined in my opening speech, it is a deliberate, long-stated policy choice articulated by the current Chancellor a decade ago. It is not a response to circumstances, but deliberate Labour policy. On a more positive note, I congratulate all those who have made their maiden speeches today: the hon. Members for Loughborough (Dr Sandher), for Portsmouth North (Amanda Martin), for Swindon North (Will Stone), for Chelmsford (Marie Goldman), for Southend East and Rochford (Mr Alaba), for Woking (Mr Forster), for Rother Valley (Jake Richards), for Wokingham (Clive Jones), for Dudley (Sonia Kumar), for Rochester and Strood (Lauren Edwards), for Plymouth Moor View (Fred Thomas), and for Northampton North (Lucy Rigby). They have made incredible contributions. The breadth of experience that they bring to this Parliament is astounding, and I am largely talking here about Government Members. I say it with a great degree of respect, because in many circumstances—in fact, in nearly every single circumstance—they have replaced good friends of mine who contributed significantly to this House. They all have big shoes to fill, but what they have said today was impressive. In particular, those who spoke without notes are a lesson to us all. What a beautiful tour we had around the United Kingdom. Everyone who spoke today spoke eloquently about their constituencies and their constituents and showcased their rich heritage and rich history. It was incredibly impressive. I am sure their constituents will be proud of what they have said. With that, I will finish my comments, but the debate will continue. Question put, That the amendment be made.

10|16:52|109|366|The Committee divided:|Question accordingly negatived.||0|0

Amendment proposed: 2, page 1, line 25, at end insert:

“(2A) In any case where the Office has acted in accordance with subsection (2), it may notify the Independent Adviser on Ministers’ Interests of the circumstances in any case where it considers those circumstances may be relevant to—

(a) the Ministerial Code, or

(b) the functions of the Independent Adviser on Ministers’ Interests.”—(Sarah Olney.)

Question put, That the amendment be made.

11|17:09|73|375|The Committee divided:|Question accordingly negatived.||0|0

17:26:00

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time. I will not take up too much more time, but I will provide a final reminder of how important this legislation is. At the general election, the Government received a mandate for economic growth. Sustained growth is the only route to improve prosperity and to improve the living standards of the British people. It is now our national mission. Economic stability is key to achieving this. We have seen what happens without it, when huge, unfunded fiscal commitments are made without proper scrutiny and when key economic institutions such as the OBR are sidelined. We cannot let ourselves get into that position again. Unfunded, unassessed spending commitments not only threaten the public finances, they can threaten people’s incomes and mortgages, as we saw under the previous Government. I therefore encourage Conservative Members—who have told us today that, after 14 years of Conservative government, the economy has never been so good—to reflect, if only for a moment, on why they lost all credibility for economic competence and suffered the worst election result in their history. Once again, I congratulate all my hon. Friends and other hon. Members on their excellent maiden speeches today. I thank hon. and right hon. Members on both sides of the House for their contributions, and I thank the Clerks and officials who have supported the Bill’s rapid passage. The Budget Responsibly Bill forms a small but vital part of our plan to restore economic stability and deliver economic growth. For these reasons, I commend it to the House.

I call the shadow Minister.

17:28:00

I thank everyone who has contributed to the debates on the Bill, both today and before the summer recess, especially new Members who have made their maiden speech: the hon. Members for Loughborough (Dr Sandher), for Portsmouth North (Amanda Martin), for Swindon North (Will Stone), for Chelmsford (Marie Goldman), for Southend East and Rochford (Mr Alaba), for Woking (Mr Forster), for Rother Valley (Jake Richards), for Wokingham (Clive Jones), for Dudley (Sonia Kumar), for Rochester and Strood (Lauren Edwards), for Plymouth Moor View (Fred Thomas) and for Northampton North (Lucy Rigby). They all spoke incredibly well, with passion and eloquence, and we wish them well for their time in the House. We Conservatives believe that sound public finances, fiscal responsibility and independent forecasts are the foundation of economic stability, which is why it was a Conservative Government who created the OBR more than a decade ago, and it is why today we tabled our amendments to improve the Bill and stop Labour moving the goalposts on the fiscal rule. By voting against our sensible proposal, Labour Members have shown they are not serious about our public finances. What are they trying to hide? It is clear that the purpose of the Bill is to distract everyone from Labour’s economic record and pave the way for tax rises in the autumn Budget. Let us examine Labour’s economic record. The party has been in government for just nine weeks and has already carried out nine acts of economic vandalism. It has removed the winter fuel allowance from 10 million pensioners despite promising not to; caved in to its union paymasters by agreeing inflation-busting pay rises; failed to commit to investing 2.5% of national income on defence; cancelled vital infrastructure upgrades on the A27 and A303; cut funding for a vaccine manufacturing plant that would protect our health; imposed Whitehall diktats to concrete over our green spaces; stopped Conservative plans to build 40 new hospitals; scrapped funding for a next-generation supercomputer, undermining our status as a tech superpower; and appointed Labour donors to senior civil service jobs without open competition. Nine weeks, nine acts of economic vandalism. We know there is more harm to come, with Labour’s autumn Budget set to raise taxes. During the election campaign, Labour promised over 50 times not to raise people’s taxes, but the Labour Government are planning to do just that. It will be hard-working people, pensioners and businesses who will pay the price. May I invite the Chief Secretary to the Treasury to return to the Dispatch Box to rule out raising taxes on working people, such as drivers, savers and business owners? At the same time, will he rule out changing the fiscal rules to allow for more Government borrowing and debt?

I always welcome the opportunity to return to the Dispatch Box, and I thank the shadow Minister for inviting me to do so. Opposition provides an opportunity for reflection. While he is offering his thoughts on our two months in office—two months of great relief for the British people—does he have anything to say about his 14 years in office before the election?

I think the answer from the Chief Secretary to the Treasury is no, which confirms everything we already knew. It means that the people can never trust Labour with our economy, that Labour will raise taxes and cut investment at every opportunity and that Labour’s honeymoon is well and truly over. Question put and agreed to. Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed. House of Commons Commission Resolved, That (1) in pursuance of section 1(2)(d) of the House of Commons (Administration) Act 1978, Rachel Blake be appointed to the House of Commons Commission, and (2) in pursuance of section 1(2B) of that Act, the appointment of Shrinivas Honap as an external member of the Commission be extended to 30 September 2026.—(Lucy Powell.)

I call Tim Farron to present a petition. The Member is not present.