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Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

The Budget claimed to be a Budget for education and a green Budget, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) pointed out, there were disgraceful omissions from the Budget in those respects and also in respect of the NHS. I shall take each of those in turn. Education takes many forms, including the learning of IT skills. I am pleased that in the debate many hon. Members have mentioned the home computing initiative. There is a long history of using computers in my family and my constituency. My father, Don Horwood, helped to build the very first programmable digital computer, Colossus, during the 1940s at Bletchley Park. Bletchley Park became GCHQ and moved ultimately to Cheltenham, so there is a good connection. Many families are excluded from the IT revolution that took place during my father’s lifetime, sometimes because of their low incomes and sometimes simply because of inexperience in IT. The home computing initiative was a valuable programme not only because it gave access to IT equipment, but because it improved the employment prospects of those on low incomes and their families, and increased the overall set of IT skills of the nation, thereby increasing our productivity—another Budget theme. It is disgraceful that the home computing initiative was abolished in the Budget. That was not flagged up in the Budget statement, of course, but was buried in the small print. The home computing industry was not consulted or informed beforehand, despite the existence of an industry body, the home computing industry alliance. I have had angry e-mails from constituents who are in the industry and who are appalled that that was done at such short notice and in such a sneaky back-door way. It is a very unfortunate cancellation of a valuable scheme. Support for the NHS has been identified by other hon. Members as a subject that was not mentioned in the Budget speech. It is an outrage that it did not rate even a mention at a time when the NHS is in financial crisis. I do not represent one of those legendary 6 per cent. of areas that are in deep financial crisis. I speak for an area represented by Cheltenham and Tewkesbury Primary Care Trust, which, as my neighbour, the hon. Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown), knows has been in financial balance. It is a three-star primary care trust. We have an acute trust, Gloucestershire Hospitals Trust, which is a relatively low cost provider of services, doing exactly as the Government wanted it to do. We even have a mental health partnership trust, which is a three-star trust hoping to apply to be one of the first partnership trusts to gain the much-vaunted foundation status. That is precisely the kind of area that should not be in crisis. Why, in that case, was it announced today that Battledown children’s ward in my constituency will close as a 24-hour in-patient facility, despite pledges from all three primary care trusts and the acute trust last year that it would stay open? Why will St. Paul’s maternity wing close in due course, and why will the Delancey rehabilitation hospital probably close? Why are adult mental health services to be rationalised, and a range of other services that were provided in both Cheltenham and Gloucester to be provided in only one place? I suspect that my neighbour, the hon. Member for Cotswold, will be considering community hospitals and local NHS services in his constituency with some trepidation given the overall package. Why has that devastating news been delivered to the people of Cheltenham today? The answer is that the Department of Health got its sums wrong. Initiative after initiative, contract after contract and target after target have been inadequately funded by the Department of Health. The result has been the requirement for some £29 million of savings across the three PCTs in Gloucestershire and £10 million lost to Gloucester Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, even if it stands still on its current activity. That is an unacceptable attack on front-line services, and I agree with my hon. Friends that it could cost lives. I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to leave the debate to meet the Secretary of State for Health tonight. I asked her why a PCT that is in balance and that has a low-cost acute trust provider is facing such cuts. She said, ““We can’t take funds other than from the NHS to bail out the overspending PCTs.””““Can’t””? The Chancellor keeps telling us that he has 10 years’ experience. Why ““can’t”” the political will be found to protect services, even in the areas of the NHS that have been in balance and that have done everything that the Government have asked of them? Furthermore, those events are taking place while the threat of pandemic flu hangs over the NHS—this is the very time when we should be looking at increasing capacity in the NHS, not cutting it. Finally, the Chancellor claims to have produced a green Budget, but it is a very pale green. For all the Government’s protestations, the simple fact remains that CO2 emissions are going up, not down. Today’s conveniently delayed climate change review—it is a shame that there was not enough time to produce it just before the Budget speech—makes it clear that the climate change levy has been frozen since its creation and that it will be increased only in line with inflation from 2007. Let us hope that climate change itself proceeds only at the rate of inflation with six-year pauses, although that is unlikely, because, as the evidence shows, while the Government are slowing down, climate change is speeding up. It is also disappointing that the Chancellor has only partially implemented Liberal Democrat policy by placing higher vehicle excise duty on the most gas-guzzling vehicles and introducing a zero rate for those vehicles that are the lowest consumers. However, the rate is feeble, and, as Conservative Members have pointed out, there is no protection for rural farmers who genuinely need such vehicles. Instead, the owner of a Porsche Cayenne, which the Environmental Transport Association lists as one of the worst offenders and which costs between £30,000 and £50,000, now faces an extra bill per annum of £30, which is rather less than the cost of one Porsche Cayenne windscreen wiper. At this point in my speech, I must declare an interest, because, like the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron), I have got the builders in to plan an extension to my house. I plan to install a mini-wind turbine, a combined heat and power boiler and solar panels, but I was surprised to discover that some of the grants that I was hoping to take advantage of under the clear skies programme seem to have run out. There is no provision in the Budget, not even in the small print, on householder microgeneration. On an MP’s salary, I may be able to afford to go ahead, but many others will not. Earlier in the debate, the Minister gave me a disingenuous answer on that point, because, although he discussed supporting microgeneration for the Government’s own buildings, he made no firm commitment on householder microgeneration. Microgeneration has huge potential to reduce emissions and fuel poverty, to lower fuel bills for a wide section of the population and to more than fill the gap left by the nuclear industry were we to decide—rightly—to decommission it completely. The truth is that the Budget has failed to support education and productivity, to save the NHS from financial crisis and to protect the environment. Unless the Chancellor fails with his next job application, it will go down as his greatest missed opportunity.