MP backs enterprise and hard work over bigger welfare state
“I strongly support the benefits cap; there is a great social injustice when people in work earn less than those on benefits.” So I said in July 2015, two months after being elected for the first time.
I have always felt strongly that, as a country, we need to do far more to control welfare spending. Prior to Parliament, I ran my own business, and was astonished to find myself offering higher pay and longer hours to my staff – only for some of them to decline. I thought my offers would be good news. In reality, the jagged edges of the welfare trap got in the way, making it far from worthwhile for those staff to work any extra or – in one case – even to take a pay rise.
As it is, given the financial circumstances our country faces, it beggars belief that we’ve just had a Budget which – in essence – taxed the working population to boost benefits. I cannot think of a worse economic strategy.
We can all debate whether Britain should have locked down in the pandemic, but at the time, there was no opposition – in fact, as the then Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s right hand man in the Commons, we only had calls for longer lockdown (other than a tiny minority of MPs) hand in hand with demands for even more spending. The same was true after the invasion of Ukraine, when we gave out billions to support energy bills. Nobody opposed this; the only opposition was that we should give even more.
So let’s not pretend there is some parallel universe out there, which with different leadership we could have conjured out of a magician’s hat, where we would not have gone into the general election with much higher debts as a nation – built up in extreme circumstances, unprecedented for decades. In fact, given those tumultuous events – beyond the control of any politician – I regard with pride the achievement of getting to last July with inflation on target at 2%, unemployment benign and our deficit (the nation’s overdraft) in good shape.
Yes, there were still going to be tough decisions awaiting any incoming Government – that is always the case, but especially so in the wake of borrowing half a trillion pounds for furlough and all the other massive interventions. There’s been this sense that ‘nothing works’; and for that, my Party was rightly punished by voters last July.
But what of Labour’s response? What we saw in last week’s Budget was the most damning indictment of the glaring reality that they never had a plan for our country, and still don’t. Starmer and Reeves are making it up as they go along, driven by their backbenchers, and despite a huge majority they cannot deliver what the national interest requires.
Namely: to cut welfare spending and use the savings to pay down our debts, and cut taxes to stimulate economic growth. Instead, they have chosen the opposite path: more tax to fund higher benefits, crushing entrepreneurial activity.
It is true that Labour recently announced a very welcome U-turn on their Employment Bill, or unemployment Bill as it should be branded. They are no longer going to proceed with day one rights to an employment tribunal. But that was always a terrible idea, which no one with an ounce of business experience would have ever even considered, let alone proposed to put into law.
Right now, our country needs more food security; energy security; and national security. More backing for our farmers; more use of our national energy resources; more Defence spending. Instead, our farmers will still be hit hard by the Family Farm Tax – going ahead despite the existential threat it poses to the rural way of life. Labour are also still pressing ahead with effectively kissing goodbye to North Sea oil and gas. Meanwhile, their promises of more Defence spending pall as this year the MOD is cutting billions, and our veterans are once again to be hounded through the courts for their service decades ago in Northern Ireland.
Ultimately, I am an optimist. I am proud of my country – but it needs to get its mojo back, and that means the Government backing wealth creators, not hitting them with ever higher taxes. So I will keep fighting for my farmers; for the small business owners facing higher rates’ bills; and the families just wanting to be able to keep up with the cost of living. And I will do that by making the case, day in day out, for supporting enterprise and hard work, instead of a bigger welfare state.
Published in the East Anglian Daily Times.
