The Budget
Here are some of the highlights:
- Scrapping the Two Child Limit will lift 450,000 children out of poverty. Combined with other measures announced this year including the expansion of free school meals, Labour is lifting 550,000 out of poverty, with this Parliament set for the largest fall in child poverty on record.
- Wages are up more in the first year of this Government than the first decade under the Conservatives.
- Cutting the cost of living with c.£150 off average energy bills, with the Budget bringing down inflation by 0.4 ppts.
- Cutting NHS waiting lists with 250 new Neighbourhood Health Centres.
- Cutting government borrowing every year so interest rates, cut 5 times since the election, can keep falling.
- Refusing to borrow more: cutting borrowing more than any other G7 country, doubling headroom to £21.7bn.
- Turning our back on austerity: we are maintaining the highest levels of public investment for four decades.
- Supporting high streets with permanently lower tax rates for 750,000 retail and hospitality properties.
- Freezing train fares and prescription charges.
- Ending asylum hotels while reclaiming £70m from Tory asylum hotel contracts and almost £400m from Covid fraud.
- Ensuring income is taxed more fairly, because landlords pay less tax than their tenants.
- Reforming property taxes so a £10m Westminster mansion doesn’t pay less than a terraced house in Blackpool.
- Ensuring everyone who drives on our roads helps maintain them, including electric vehicle owners.
- Supporting the long-term youth unemployed, by offering a guaranteed six-month work placement for 18-21 year olds.
Labour’s Northern Ireland Troubles Bill
Last week, the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill took a major step forward in the House of Commons when it received its second reading. It’s provoked some controversy, however, so what is it all about?
By 10 April 1998 and the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, the death toll from the Troubles had risen to over 3,500. 90% of those who lost their lives were murdered by paramilitaries. Northern Ireland is now a largely peaceful place, but many people still live with the effects of those decades of violence. And far too many have, all these years later, been unable to find an answer to the simplest of questions: what happened and how did my loved one die? So, what is this Bill aiming to do and why is it needed?
It is trying to put in place a way of dealing with this issue that can actually command broad public support in Northern Ireland. It is needed because the previous Government’s legislation, didn’t work. It was legally flawed, and it failed to gain any support in Northern Ireland among victims and survivors, or the political parties. That was no basis for progress or reconciliation. One of the principal reasons for that lack of support was the Act’s attempt to offer immunity from prosecution to soldiers but also to terrorists who had committed the most appalling murders. The problem was that it was undeliverable. It was never implemented and the courts found against it.
What we are going to do is to put in place protections for veterans against repeat investigations, and if a veteran is asked to give evidence in public, they will not be forced to travel to Northern Ireland. They will also be able to seek anonymity. Decisions about prosecutions are made independently – that is the absolute foundation of our legal system – based on the evidence, so those who claim that this legislation will somehow lead to a huge increase in prosecutions of veterans, or that it is only veterans who have been prosecuted in recent years, have got it wrong.
If one looks at the facts, in the 27 and a half years since the Good Friday Agreement, just one veteran has been convicted for a Troubles-related offence, and with the passage of time the chances of any more prosecutions get slimmer and slimmer. The majority of those who have been convicted, and indeed of those currently facing prosecution, are in fact paramilitaries. The Bill is fair, proportionate and workable and it deserves our support.
Ukraine
As I write, peace negotiations for Ukraine are taking place. President Zelensky is in a difficult position given the reported position of the USA. European countries, including the UK, are trying to improve the plan. The big issues are land and security guarantees for the future. As the Prime Minister has said, there can be no lasting peace in Ukraine without Ukraine.
Local, Political and Parliamentary Activity
- Moved the Second Reading of the NI Troubles Bill
- Represented the UK at the British Irish Intergovernmental Conference in Dublin
- Visited Temple Moor High School
- Oral questions in the House of Commons and urgent question on the Northern Ireland Troubles
- Met Sandra Peake of the WAVE Trauma Centre
- Appeared on BBC Any Questions from Belfast
- South Leeds Life Column