On Sunday 23rd March, James Wild MP featured on BBC Politics East alongside host Amelia Reynolds, and guests, Alistair Strathern MP, and former Chair of the New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership, C-J Green, to discuss issues from tackling unemployment and supporting business to their ‘happy places’ and predictions on the government’s upcoming Spring Budget.
Opening the show, host, Amelia Reynolds brought attention to the fact that the ‘World Happiness Report’ has just been published that week, which reports on levels of happiness people feel in different countries around the world. Naturally, guests were asked where their ‘happy place’ was, to which James responded:
“Well, I grew up in North Norfolk, and the coast is my favourite place, and Burnham Overy is a particular favourite.”
As the gravity of discussion deepened, attention turned to the issue of unemployment and getting people into work. When asked on his view of the government’s approach, James emphasised the need to “double down” on local charities he has supported like ‘Working Well’, before noting that:
“The government is following a lot of the measures that we already had in place in the programmes, they’ve renamed some of them, but the billion pounds in support, that was a programme that Jeremy Hunt put in place – a big back to work scheme that we had at the end of the last government. So, we aware already addressing this and the government needs to double down and do more.”
As conversation turned to Labour’s record so far and public polling on the Prime Minister’s performance, James said:
“Labour won on a manifesto for example on energy bills. They promised everyone across the country a £300 cut in their energy bills. What’s happening? Next month they’re going up on average of £111 a year. And the dogma driven approach that the Energy Secretary is taking tot energy is going to load more costs onto the system.”
When asked about hikes in National Insurance, James said:
“Let’s be clear again this is a broken promise, Labour said at the election they wouldn’t increase National Insurnace… the first thing they did – a £25 billion a year jobs tax. We voted against the National Insurance Bill. Last week in Parliament we had votes on exempting small businesses, hospices and charities from the NI tax.
This is doing real damage in the economy. I’ve been talking to businesses across my constituency every week – they’re stopping hiring, they’re not making investments. I spoke to a company on Friday – they’ve got £200,000 on their bottom line. They simply can’t absorb that.”
Speaking on the economy, James said:
“The Bank of England has just halved their growth forecast, and doubling down by continuing with this jobs tax is entirely the wrong thing to do. The government needs to listen and change course because we can’t afford this.”
As the show was nearing its end, the panel guests were asked one final question, which was what they expected to see in the government’s upcoming Spring Budget. Whilst Alistair Srathern MP forecasted “growth, investment and reform featuring pretty highly”, James, meanwhile, said:
“Well, it should be called ‘Emergency Budget Bingo” because that’s what this is. The government has come back as the Chancellor is going to break her fiscal rules. Growth… it would be great to see growth. There isn’t any growth. Growth has stopped stone dead. I think it’s going to be stability. But stability on the wrong track is not sensible…”
With the Chancellor’s, Spring Budget scheduled for Wednesday 26th March, James awaits the government’s updated plans for the country’s economy, and is ready to continue scrutinising its policies to ensure they work best for the country.
