‘Good time’ Chancellor’s ‘bleak’ budget

Philip Hammond attempted to mask the Tories’ dismal economic record and lack of direction with jokes during his outline of the Budget today (November 22), even as he admitted official growth forecasts have been slashed.

Unite described the forecasts – the first time in modern history that official GDP growth predictions were less than 2 per cent for every year calculated –  as “bleak” and said Hammond’s Budget is far from the ‘game-changer’ the country needs.

During his speech to the House of Commons, the chancellor brushed over Office for Budget Responsibility projections that downgrade growth – from 2 per cent to 1.5 per cent for 2017 and from 2.1 per cent to 1.6 per cent in 2021 – before dressing up his paltry budget offerings and continued cuts with quips.

Seemingly oblivious that the UK is going through the biggest squeeze in living standards ever seen, Hammond jokingly apologised to Lewis Hamilton about an increase in tax on private jets – a move unlikely to see the Tories’ super-rich donors dumping the party.

While he did not announce a desperately needed pay rise that would help stop vital public sector workers leaving in droves, Hammond promised extra maths teachers in schools.

He said, “Don’t let anyone say I don’t know how to show the country a good time.”

Furious

A visibly furious Jeremy Corbyn did not find Hammond funny, however.

Responding to the speech, the Labour leader blasted the chancellor for not mentioning the social care crisis and labelled jeering Tories “uncaring” and “uncouth”.

Corbyn said, “Over six billion will have been cut from social care budgets by next March.

“I hope the Honourable Member begins to understand what it’s like to wait for social care stuck in a hospital bed while other people are having to give up their work to care for them.”

Unite general secretary Len McCluskey criticised the chancellor’s lack of a cohesive strategy to kickstart the economy and condemned his disregard for the interests of working people.

“With yet further bleak downgraded forecasts for growth, wages and productivity, this is the time when this country desperately needed a game-changing budget to meet the challenges of the years ahead. Instead we got more of the same from a government out of touch with people’s every day struggles,” McCluskey said.

More cuts

“Communities continue to face more of the cuts which have sucked the life out of the economy, with wages plummeting and personal debt soaring to dangerous levels.”

A £2.8bn increase in health service funding for England – £1.2bn short of the emergency injection the boss of NHS England says is needed to prevent the system from failing – was given short shrift, as was the chancellor’s inadequate response to crippling public sector cuts and the pay freeze.

McCluskey said, “Services like our NHS, schools and police services face becoming ragged shadows of what they once were.

“Public sector workers, whose wages have been drained by thousands since the Tories took office, cannot provide for their families with warm words for their selfless service.”

While the budget contained spending to stimulate industry – including £20bn for knowledge intensive industries, £2.3bn for research and development, £500m for artificial intelligence and £400m for electric car chargers – McCluskey slammed Hammond’s lack of strategy to meet the challenges and opportunities of the new technological age.

“The comprehensive package of investment in skills and infrastructure we urgently need was missing. What was offered instead by the chancellor was piecemeal initiatives,” McCluskey said.

“The UK will continue to lag well behind competitor countries like Germany, Norway and China in this important new technology unless the government acts with greater urgency with bigger investment and good joined up policies, such as giving cab drivers grants to go electric, as they are doing in London.”

McCluskey added, “Chancellor Hammond had the chance today to set our country on a path to being a fairer, more equal nation. That he chose not to confirms what voters suspect about the Conservatives, that they are for the few, not the many.”