The Tory Queen’s Speech will not solve the cost-of-living crisis. Here is what will

Britain is on course for the biggest fall in living standards since records began, with inflation predicted to top 10% and unemployment set to rise. The Bank of England says we are on the brink of recession. And this isn’t just statistics. It means parents not being able to feed their kids; it means private renters terrified they won’t be able to keep a roof over their heads; it means pensioners forced to travel by bus all day because they can’t afford to keep their homes warm.

Against this grim backdrop, the Queen’s Speech, in which the government sets out its legislative agenda for the year ahead, was a chance for the Tories to show how they would tackle this crisis. But there was nothing in the speech – literally nothing – that attempted to solve the cost-of-living crisis, demonstrating once again that the Tories neither know nor care what life is like for ordinary people.

Instead, the speech focused on what the Tories do best: attacking hard-won rights and stoking division. It outlined plans to target protesters and impose even harsher sentences on environmental campaigners, silence freedom of speech and ban human rights-inspired boycotts and rip-up workers’ rights under the guise of ‘Brexit freedoms’. Even the Tories’ long-awaited employment bill – promised on at least 20 occasions and aimed at strengthening workers’ rights – was absent.

But it is no surprise that the Tories are failing to address the cost-of-living crisis. They inhabit a world far-removed from the lives of my constituents and the vast majority of people in the country. After all, the man responsible for the purse strings, Rishi Sunak, is the richest MP in parliament. Boris Johnson complains that his £157,000 salary isn’t enough to live on. And the vast majority of the cabinet (17 of its 22 members) are so enmeshed in the privileges of the super-rich that they have refused to deny using tax havens or nom-dom tax status.

These are people for whom the economy is working perfectly well. Alongside soaring energy bills, oil and gas giants BP and Shell are making record profits, projected to exceed £40bn this year. Whilst working-class families struggle to put food on the table, bankers’ bonuses are booming, driving rising economic inequality according to the Institute of Fiscal Studies. This isn’t an economy that’s broken. It’s an economy that rigged, working just as the Tories intended.

Look at how the Conservatives have deepened the cost-of-living crisis: the biggest overnight cut in the history of the welfare state, slashing the £20-a-week Universal Credit uplift; letting energy bills soar by 54% whilst voting for a 3-4% real-terms cut in pensions and social security. This shows that the cost-of-living crisis isn’t natural or inevitable; it is the result of political choices, made by politicians in Westminster.

But, just as political choices are making millions of peoples’ lives harder, we could choose to do things differently. We could choose an alternative. Supported by members of the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs, I proposed an amendment to the Queen’s Speech, outlining five key policies to put the needs of the many before the greed of the few and solve the cost-of-living crisis:

1) Slash energy bills. The energy price cap rocketed by 54% in April, up almost £700, and is projected to rise by another £830 in October. As an urgent measure, the government should revert to the pre-April price cap and pay for this with a windfall tax on fossil fuel giants. That’s just the start. To address this long-term crisis we must plan to insulate homes, invest in renewables and bring energy companies into public ownership.

2) A pay rise for Britain. Poverty pay is rife and inflation is rising faster than wages. This can be tackled by raising the minimum wage to a real living wage – £15 an hour by the end of this parliament – and implementing a real-terms public sector pay rise.

3) Rebuild the safety net. More than a decade of Tory rule has shredded the social safety net, with more and more people falling into destitution. We need to rebuild this collective commitment to care for one another, starting with a real-terms increase in social security payments and pensions, including the restoration of the £20-a-week Universal Credit uplift and extending it to all benefits.

4) Decent homes for all. In place of homes built for property developers and big landlords, we should build to provide decent homes for all. This begins with a commitment to build at least 100,000 council houses a year and introducing rent caps.

5) Tax the rich, not workers. Instead of hiking National Insurance and hitting ordinary people with higher taxes, we should raise taxes on the richest and big businesses, and ensure the wealthy few can’t dodge tax by ending loopholes like the non-dom tax status.