Community Union column: ‘The budget was a success for working people but there remains more to be done’

BUDGET VERDICT: ALASDAIR MCDIARMID, COMMUNITY UNION GENERAL SECRETARY

In an era where we often bemoan a lack of public engagement in our political processes, Budget Day remains a rarity. All eyes are firmly fixed on the dispatch box, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer briefly shares the media spotlight with Celebrity Traitors contestants and footballers.

It’s something of a poisoned chalice too.

Every business, charity, think-tank and indeed, every trade union – including Community – has a checklist of asks that it would be impossible for any government to satisfy completely.

And political opponents – particularly those on the right, and their allies in the media – will leap at the opportunity to tear apart a progressive budget in bad faith. It is to John Healey’s great credit that few, if any, of the post-budget barbs dished out by the Tories or Reform landed.

The Chancellor is a proud Community member, and over many years of working together – including on behalf of his constituents at Speciality Steels in South Yorkshire – we have found him to be a considerate thinker and a hard worker. His political antennae and priorities in government revolve around the needs of ordinary working people, and that shone through in the budget.

The autumn budget was very much attuned to the traditions of the Labour movement; minimising damage to the wallets of working people and continuing on the path of re-balancing the economy to the benefit of all nations and regions.

We welcomed the immediately impactful measures that the Chancellor has prioritised, such as capping bus fares, removing charges on household energy bills and granting thousands of our members a £100 energy payment this winter. These are all concrete measures which will give millions of workers some much-needed breathing space this winter.

As a union representing thousands of self-employed workers, we also warmly welcomed the extension of parental pay for the self-employed – 150,000 of whom will now be eligible for two weeks’ support worth up to £194 a week. We have long argued that the self-employed require greater protections in times of need, and Labour has shown that it is listening.

Elsewhere, the extension of the 5p fuel duty freeze and red diesel cut will benefit our members in the logistics sector, and we appreciate the stronger commitments to ensuring that procurement boosts jobs in British manufacturing, supporting our members in steel and light industries.

We also share the Early Education and Childcare Coalition’s view that our members in the Early Years sector can benefit from devolving more power to local leaders, connecting early education and childcare provision with jobs and skills, and tackling child poverty and health inequalities.

Staying with education, we know that many of our teacher members will also welcome the new £15millon fund to tackle misogyny, particularly in schools where it has seen a troubling resurgence over recent years.

Whilst we welcomed many of the measures contained in the budget, we would still like to see the government go much further, particularly in its support for foundational industries like steel. We hope that future fiscal statements will build on the good work that has already been delivered by ministers to support our steel sector and drive the reindustrialisation agenda that the Prime Minister has championed.

This must include decisive action to tackle the UK’s sky-high industrial energy costs – it simply cannot be right that our steel producers are paying over the odds compared with competitors in Europe. The backdating of energy cost relief for 10,000 manufacturing firms through the British Industrial Competitiveness Scheme is a positive step – but fails to address the wider elephant in the room.

Our steel makers currently pay 49% more in industrial electricity costs than their counterparts in France, which equates to an annual cost burden of £66 million. With wholesale energy prices rising again, the Gallic energy gap will only grow. British steelmakers cannot continue competing with one hand tied behind their backs.

This isn’t a new problem, and Community has been banging the drum on industrial energy costs for steel over many years. However, with increased pressures facing the sector – including failing trade measures which are resulting in an influx of cheap imported steel from South-East Asia – the threat posed to the industry is becoming increasingly acute across multiple fronts.

Ultimately, the Chancellor promised a budget that would provide breathing space, and he delivered on that last month. In a challenging global context, and with this Labour government still grappling with the Conservative legacy of underinvestment and economic mismanagement up to 2024, the budget was a success. 

Crucially, its main beneficiaries were ordinary working people: not the billionaires, tax-dodgers and corporate cronies who clinked champagne glasses every Budget Day for fourteen long years.

But there is still much more to do, and the government’s response to upcoming Millburn Review and 2027 Spending Review will be crucial.