The measures around mental health funding sounded like they might actually be very helpful and worthy of cross party support. Most of the rest was simply dreadful:
- No mention of climate change but £3bn of tax relief for north sea oil extraction
- No tax on plastic cups because he didn’t want to “act in isolation”. Feel free to act urgently and radically across the board Mr Hammond because that is what is needed instead of excuses.
- No additional regular income for schools which have faced ten years of real terms cuts in funding per pupil. Hammond’s response to a funding crisis that was bad enough to get hundreds of Head Teachers marching the streets was to insult the intelligence of those Heads. He sent them £10,000 per school as a one off capital payment that has to be spent in a rush before the end of March. Not one penny of regular reliable extra income was allocated to schools. £500 million of temporary funding was allocated to fix potholes. £400 million was allocated to fix schools.
- £37 million was allocated to help develop a northern powerhouse train system at some point in the future. Crossrail 2 is estimated to cost £30,000 million. The scale of the insult to the rail passengers in the north is almost beyond imagination. They are battling with out of date lines, out of date trains and industrial disputes provoked by remote private companies that can walk away from unprofitable contracts. They are expected to be grateful for very small mercies indeed from a Chancellor who just doesn’t understand the regions.
- There is now clear evidence that his “Help to Buy Scheme” simply wastes money by putting up house prices and has fuelled increased profits for house building companies whilst doing nothing for first time buyers. Hammond’s response was to increase the waste on raising house prices by subsidising shared ownership.
- In the face of a huge crisis on the High Street, Hammond finally got round to doing something Greens have been asking him to do for a very long time. He taxed online traders and subsidised local small businesses. Yet he couldn’t even do that right. Instead of a hard to dodge turnover tax on online sales in the UK he announced he would tax the profits of companies like Amazon. The whole problem is that they have accountants who can move those profits offshore so that local businesses end up paying massively greater amounts of tax than huge online traders pay on their local sales. The tax dodging will therefore continue and the small businesses will continue to struggle. Not a single thing was done to help larger high street retailers who are to be allowed to go to the wall, sucking the life out of town centres and taking a lot of small businesses with them. A little money was granted to local councils to help them turn the closed stores into homes and offices. He might as well have announced that he was giving up on the High Street.
- He allocated £200 million a year to fixing hardship problems caused for those transferring onto Universal Credit. The scheme has been designed to take billions of pounds out of the budget for those on the lowest incomes. The additional funding doesn’t begin to fix the arrogant attitudes and the clumsy bullying behaviour that officials have been encouraged to adopt. One day late with her application and a single mother is left destitute. People with mental health and addiction problems continue to be told that they need to wait a month for their money and that they simply need to organise their life a bit better. I am sure that as they sit on the street begging for change they will raise the plastic cup in which they’ve gathered a few coins to the generosity of a Chancellor who put them there by utterly failing to understand the scale or the nature of their problems.
Yet that isn’t the worst of it. The whole budget was based on a prediction that economic growth will pick up in 2009-10 to 1.6%. That is, of course, possible as we are in the middle of a wildly out of control worldwide boom. It may not feel like it but this is the international economic upswing that has followed one of the worst recessions in history. Yet the finance driven bubble isn’t penetrating enough of the real economy. Suppose that that bubble bursts. Or suppose, as almost all commentators, even many who support Brexit, believe will happen immediately after exit that there is a slowdown precisely because of Brexit. A forecast that we are going to improve the economy immediately after we leave is a very bizarre forecast indeed.
Unless of course, as the Chancellor continually hinted, he plans to release a lot more cash in spring next year to counteract that slowdown. Again and again he talked about holding back cash and returning in the new year with another set of announcements. I think this can only mean one thing. If any kind of Brexit deal is signed the Conservatives plan to come out with a huge “giveaway” budget in April and then call an election in May.
Austerity didn’t end yesterday. Ten years of pain inflicted on the wrong people in the wrong way for the wrong reasons continues. But expect all that pain to be gambled away next Spring. If that is what it takes to make Brexit look like a success and for May to go back to the electorate claiming she is the only person to lead us responsibly through choppy economic waters.
Or alternatively don’t be fooled by a bunch of reactionaries who are stumbling around in chaos and confusion and vote for a party that shows some genuine understanding of the modern world. As so many German voters did in Hesse when they voted Green.