Government Finances
Debate on the Address: [1st Day]
“I welcome the King’s Speech, as we continue to implement our manifesto. I note that we have already delivered more of those manifesto promises than Reform has actual policies. I welcome the steps to make Britain a land of opportunity, built for all. That opportunity starts at home, with a good home. That is why I support the measures that we are taking to protect social housing stock and incentivise the building of more social homes via the social housing renewable Bill. At the heart of this opportunity must be a hard day’s work, and it must always be our Labour mission to repair the broken link between work and our livelihoods. I welcome the steps that we are taking to deliver a fair deal for working people, but I want targeted fiscal support behind it, to ensure that we have a tax system for growth, and a tax system that ends the carers’ tax trap and the other tax cliff edges that punish working people. We have to work on lowering the cost of employment for young people, and let them get that first crucial step on the ladder. We must let low earners take home more of what they earn, on top of the pay boost that 2.7 million workers have already had via the minimum wage increase delivered by this Labour Government. I welcome the steps to strengthen and reform the state, and I urge the Government to go even further, faster, to get dynamism back into the apparatus of our British state and to harness its potential as an investor and co-ordinator, as we have done by empowering our public finance institutions. Those same institutions are investing millions of pounds in the Cornish economy and bringing together crucial projects that might not have come to fruition under a pure, narrow-minded, private investor mindset. Sometimes it takes the state to co-ordinate things, and to step up and say, “We are going to deliver in this industry.” This toolkit, and this ambition for the role of the state and its potential for dynamism and for rebuilding our public wealth, is needed to deliver on the ambitions for economic, energy and national security that we have outlined today.”
