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Labour slams George Osborne after he dodges budget urgent question Labour slams George Osborne after he dodges budget urgent question
(about 4 hours later)
Labour has ramped up the pressure on George Osborne after he refused to appear in the House of Commons to defend his budget. Jeremy Corbyn has urged the prime minister to tell his “great friend” George Osborne to “find something else to do” in the House of Commons, as he tried to turn the civil war at the heart of the government to Labour’s advantage by calling for the chancellor’s head.
The Treasury said the chancellor would not respond in person to an urgent question from the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, for 3.30pm on Monday. The Labour leader said on Monday that for the first time in his long experience of parliament, “a budget has fallen apart within two days of being delivered”, and it was up to Cameron to explain to the chancellor that he should consider his position.
David Gauke, the financial secretary to the Treasury, will appear in the Commons instead to take the flak on Osborne’s behalf. But Labour said the chancellor would be unable to escape responsibility. Corbyn was responding to Cameron, who had used a statement on the outcome of Friday’s European council meeting to issue a staunch defence of his credentials as a one-nation Conservative, after the blistering resignation statement issued by work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith.
Tom Watson, Labour’s deputy leader, said: “George Osborne cannot avoid the blame for another disastrous budget that has unravelled in record time.” The Labour leader declined to mention Duncan Smith, however, initially focusing his reply to the prime minister on the plight of refugees. He deliberately sought to avoid personalising the attack on the Conservatives – though he subsequently switched gears and wound up to an angry attack on the chancellor.
The budget arithmetic published last Wednesday relied on cuts to the personal independence payments made to disabled people, which were slated to bring in more than £1bn a year. Some backbenchers were disappointed by the Labour leader’s performance against a backdrop of open warfare in the government.
Just two days after the budget statement was delivered, the Treasury revealed the proposals would be “kicked into the long grass”, amid mounting opposition from Tory backbenchers, with a government source saying they were “not wedded to these figures”. Others, however, said those on all wings of the Labour party would take heart from the Conservatives’ plight. Stephen Doughty, MP for Cardiff South and Penarth, said, “If there is one thing that is bound to unite the Labour benches it is exposing the shameful and ideological attacks of the Tories on the most vulnerable.”
Officials have insisted that they will not make clear how they will make good the shortfall until the autumn statement. But Labour will step up the pressure on the chancellor to explain how he will meet his fiscal pledges without the cuts. Osborne had come under intense pressure from Labour earlier in the day for failing to appear in parliament to defend his botched budget, sending David Gauke, financial secretary to the Treasury, to respond in his stead to an urgent question tabled by the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell.
Iain Duncan Smith used his resignation letter and subsequent appearance on The Andrew Marr Show on BBC1 on Sunday morning to question whether the tax and spending rules imposed by Osborne, including his “welfare cap”, had led his party to abandon one-nation Conservatism. McDonnell used his question to claim that “the budget process is in chaos”, after cuts to disabled benefits were hastily abandoned amid a growing Tory rebellion. The absence of Osborne was a strong card for Labour, and backbenchers repeatedly demanded that he come to the House of Commons to explain how he would pay for the cancellation of disability benefit cuts.
Labour is determined to exploit the Tories’ disarray and is drawing up a list of decisions made by the government, from cutting inheritance tax to reducing spending on welfare, which seek to show that Cameron’s “compassionate Conservativism” is empty rhetoric. Veteran MP Dennis Skinner called on Cameron to say that last week’s budget, Osborne’s eighth, would be the last for the chancellor, as “only cats have nine lives”. The prime minister replied simply, “no”.
Watson said: “George Osborne has exposed the fundamental unfairness that lies at the heart of his government’s policies and shown the Tories are still the same old ‘nasty party’ his colleague Theresa May once warned they had become.” Tom Watson, Labour’s deputy leader, said before yesterday’s statement in the House: “George Osborne cannot avoid the blame for another disastrous budget that has unravelled in record time.”
McDonnell, said: “It’s unacceptable to the country and insulting to parliament that the chancellor is not turning up to respond to my urgent question on the chaos of his making around a budget he delivered only last week which had collapsed by Friday night.
“This has meant hundreds of thousands of disabled people will have been worried needlessly by George Osborne.” Some inside the Labour party believe the Conservatives’ travails have bolstered the position of Corbyn, whose grip on the leadership had been threatened by rumblings of discontent from backbench MPs, and persistent rumours about the risk of a challenge.
Some inside the party believe the Conservatives’ travails have bolstered the position of Jeremy Corbyn, whose grip on the leadership had been threatened by rumblings of discontent from backbench MPs, and persistent rumours about the risk of a challenge. By echoing his argument that the chancellor’s spending cuts were politically, not economically, motivated, Duncan Smith strengthened the hand of those within the party who support an anti-austerity stance.
Chuka Umunna, the former shadow business secretary, used a speech on Monday to warn that the latest benefits cuts, which Conservative backbenchers find unpalatable, are the result of what he called the “Trumpification” of politics, with different groups in society set against each other. Other senior Labour politicians made memorable interventions. Yvette Cooper, who stood against Corbyn for the leadership, brandished the budget red book and told Gauke, standing in for the chancellor: “if he’s too scared to answer the questions on the issue, he’s not fit to do the job.”
Speaking at the launch of an all-party parliamentary group on social integration, he said: “It’s no wonder we have an utterly toxic political debate on social security, which too often ignores the impact of low-paid work and the cost of living, and ducks the challenge of addressing the real barriers which people face in getting back to work – zeroing in instead on the criminal minority who set out to scam the system.” When the former shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna urged the prime minister to repeal the so-called bedroom tax, arguing that it hit disabled people disproportionately hard, Gauke archly called him the “shadow shadow chancellor”. Some former Labour front-benchers, including Ummuna, have been working together to formulate a distinctive response to economic policy from outside the leadership team.
He added: “Iain Duncan Smith, the man who has presided over the biggest programme of misery for the disabled, the poor and those in need for a generation, only now tells us the policies he was implementing were arbitrary and unfair. The greatest sadness is not that he left it so long but that, in spite of this, the polls tell us the harsh policy agenda he has pursued commands some considerable public support.” There were also questions about whether it was a wise tactic for Corbyn to call for the chancellor’s head, after Osborne’s position had been shored up by a barrage of supportive questions from Conservative backbenchers during Gauke’s statement, and by fulsome praise from the prime minister when he took to the despatch box.