Author Archives: The Voice

You can watch Ed Davey’s response to the Budget statement here. The full text is below. He wants to see more radical action to encourage growth and the most important thing is try to repair the damage brought about by Brexit. His main message is that we need some jam today and can’t wait another 5-10 years for it.

Here is his response in full:

It is always a pleasure to follow the Chair of the Treasury Committee, the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier). I am glad she committed to looking at the devil in the detail of this Budget, because when one looks at the fine print there are quite a few things for her Committee to scrutinise. In particular, I hope that she will look at the very disappointing growth forecasts, because I think this Budget will be defined more by Labour’s red lines on Europe and the Conservatives’ Brexit red tape than by faster growth.

At the root of so much of what has gone wrong in our country—the cost of living crisis, higher taxes, broken public services, empty high streets, and the lack of jobs and opportunity—is the lack of economic growth. Our economy is being held back. British business is being held back. It is being held back above all by the terrible damage of the Conservatives’ Brexit deal: a deal, let us never forget, that was backed by the leader of Reform and voted for by Labour—a deal that put up pointless new barriers to trade, tied up British firms in extra costs and red tape, and pushed up prices on our supermarket shelves.

As I was saying, our economy is being held back by Brexit, so the biggest single thing the Government could do to fix our economy is to fix our trading relationship with Europe and take us back into the single market and a customs union, giving us the growth and the money to cut people’s taxes.

Unless and until a Government have the courage to do just what I have outlined, I am afraid that any Budget will only be tinkering around the edges, because it will not provide the growth our country so desperately needs.

The Prime Minister, to be fair, has rightly talked about the economic damage caused by Brexit, but in answer to my questions he still refuses to drop Labour’s red lines set down by Keir Starmer more than five years ago. The world has changed so much since then and it is long past time that Labour policy changed with the world. I welcome the Prime Minister talking more openly this week about the need to move forward on Europe, but can I say to the Chancellor and the Prime Minister that it is just too urgent to wait until the next Parliament? Today’s Budget shows why.

I remember when 2% growth was nothing special. When we were in government that was the average, but since we left the EU, it has been less than half that—less than 1% growth a year. Today’s forecasts show things starting slowly to move in the right direction, but they still show growth well below 2% every year for the next five years. What used to be average growth now feels like a pipe dream, so we need a real growth plan with Europe at its heart: a plan that only our party has set out—an economic plan to make Britain richer, safer and stronger.