The question that everyone will ask themselves at the general election is “are me and my family better off after 13 years of Conservative government?” Does anything work better than it did 13 years ago?”
That is also the question people were asking themselves after the Autumn Statement and the answer to both those questions is a resounding no, because people believe what their bank balances tell them, rather than what Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt tell them.
Nothing the Chancellor announced will remotely compensate for the damage unleashed by successive Conservative governments since 2010.
Debt – up by £1.5 trillion since 2010, the equivalent of £54,000 per household.
Taxes – highest tax burden for 70 years and this parliament will be the biggest tax raising parliament on record. The average household paying £4300 more in tax. Reducing National Insurance rates by 2 pence when you’ve put them up by 10 pence just doesn’t wash.
Mortgages – a year on from Liz Truss’s disastrous mini budget, 1.5 million households have come to the end of their fixed rate mortgage and are paying hundreds of pounds more every single month. Another 1.5 million households have the same fate in store in the coming year. But there is even worse to come. 85% of all mortgage holders are on fixed rates with remaining terms of more than 2 years. The Office for Budget Responsibility say mortgage interest rates will peak in 2027 at around 5%, significantly more than those fixed rates.
Rent – those monthly mortgage payment increases have been replicated for private renters.
Bills – since October 2021, food prices have risen by 30% and food inflation is still running at over 10%. The price of gas in October 2023 was around 60% higher than in 2020 and the price of electricity was 40% higher.
The country has suffered the biggest hit to living standards since records began.
A Labour Autumn Statement would have been very different. The focus would be on our key mission of growth.
Our Green Prosperity Plan creating new jobs, reducing bills and giving the country clean electricity by 2030, combined with a National Wealth Fund and modern Industrial Strategy bringing in £3 of private investment for every £1 of government investment will grow the economy.
Under the last Labour government, the economy grew an average of 2% a year in the thirteen years we were in office. Had it continued to grow at that rate, our economy would be £150 billion bigger creating more tax revenue to spend on public services.
The next Labour government will tax fairly, spend wisely, close those tax loopholes which will trigger an immediate cash injection for public services in Wales and we’ll wage a war on the incomprehensible level of waste and fraud that has gone on particularly during the Johnson/Truss/Sunak governments.
Labour’s Better Off Plan would save families:
- £500 a year by insulating homes to make them more energy efficient.
- £900 a year by building cheaper, cleaner power across the country through the creation of Great British Energy, a new, publicly-owned clean generation company.
- £400 a year by cracking down on unfair car insurance practices like subscription traps and unfair postcode pricing.
- £1,200 a year on mortgage bills by building 1.5 million homes over a Parliament to keep housing affordable.
Listen to my thoughts on the Autumn Statement here.