Yvette Cooper MP: Mini-budget causes economic chaos

Yvette Cooper writes: People were already getting very worried about energy bills and rising prices. Then the Conservatives’ disastrous mini-budget and their plans for huge unfunded tax cuts for the very rich hit people’s mortgages and pensions too. Liz Truss is creating chaos - we need a new approach before it is too late.

When the Chancellor announced his plans ten days ago, I genuinely could not believe it. We are in the middle of a cost of living crisis, people are really struggling, and local food banks across the Five Towns are completely overstretched. Yet the Conservatives decided that their top priority was to borrow money they don’t have in order to give massive tax cuts to bankers and to the very richest people in the country - including outrageous tax cuts for millionaires of over £50,000 a year.

At the same time Ministers have refused to extend a windfall tax on the excess profits of the oil and gas companies to help pay for a freeze on energy bills – something people across our towns have told me repeatedly that they support.

The government also ripped up all the normal rules about showing how tax cuts would be paid for, or setting out long term plans. The markets responded badly to the lack of any serious economic plan and investors started pulling out. Pension funds were hit and had to be bailed out by the Bank of England. Mortgage rates started going up and that’s still going to hit thousands of local families. There are also rumours that the Government is planning major cuts to public services, despite pressures already on Pinderfields or West Yorkshire Police.

At the heart of it all is Liz Truss’s belief that helping the rich is the best way to grow the economy, because the benefits will somehow "trickle down” to everyone else. What total rubbish. Here in Yorkshire we’ve heard that claim from the Conservatives before – it never works, it always ends up with the rich getting richer, the north south divide getting wider, and everyone losing out. This is a disastrous strategy for our country and our towns.

It doesn’t have to be like this. We need a fair deal for everyone and a proper plan to tackle global energy problems and get our economy growing in a greener way too. That’s why Labour announced a new publicly owned Great British Energy company to generate clean power to cut bills, provide energy security for the UK and make us a world leader in the green technologies of the future. The Five Towns area should be at the heart of that. We’ve got a proud history in energy and power, and we need new high skilled manufacturing and energy jobs back in our towns. That’s why I’ve been having meetings across West Yorkshire in support of the bid to get Rolls Royce manufacturing into Ferrybridge.

We need a proper plan based on common sense not all this chaos - one which recognises that the British economy only does well when it values the talents and hard work of everyone. Instead of trickle down from the rich, we should recognise our economy grows best from the bottom up and the middle out. That’s the best way to get a fair deal for Yorkshire and a better future for the country.