House of Commons

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Commons Chamber

Wednesday 11 June 2014

The House met at half-past Eleven o’clock

Prayers

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker in the Chair]

Business before Questions

Contingencies Fund 2013-14

Ordered,

That there be laid before this House an Account of the Contingencies Fund, 2013-14, showing:

(1) A Statement of Financial Position;

(2) A Statement of Cash Flows; and

(3) Notes to the Account; together with the Certificate and Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General thereon.— (Mr Robathan.)

Oral Answers to Questions

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

1. What assessment she has made of progress made by the Northern Ireland Executive on building a shared future in Northern Ireland.

[The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mrs Theresa Villiers)]

In May 2013, the Northern Ireland Executive published their strategy, “Together: Building a United Community”, which contained a number of key actions to help build a shared future for Northern Ireland. The Government support efforts to embed the political settlement through the delivery of those commitments. Additional borrowing powers have been granted to the Northern Ireland Executive by the Government to support those programmes.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Like my right hon. Friend, I welcome the publication last year of “Together: Building a United Community” by the Northern Ireland Executive. Does she agree that addressing community divisions is absolutely key if Northern Ireland is to gain the full benefits of the peace process?

[Mrs Villiers]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Apart from anything else, it is crucial to address those issues to embed political stability, because that is key in attracting inward investment and boosting Northern Ireland’s prosperity. The Government, including the Prime Minister, have pushed the Northern Ireland Executive on these matters and very much welcome the progress that is now being made.

[Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

As we move into the parading season, I wonder whether the Secretary of State will comment on what she thinks the contribution of Sinn Fein is when it objects and protests, for instance, against a parade in Dungiven, where there are no flags, bands or anything of that sort that could cause offence to anyone, and against the sharing of a main arterial route in north Belfast? Where is the shared future in that?

[Mrs Villiers]

I believe that all parties who are involved in or affected by parading have a responsibility to engage constructively to find local solutions and build local relationships and trust, which are essential to a peaceful parading season. That goes for Sinn Fein, as it does for all other groupings that are involved in such matters.

[Mr Dodds]

Will the Secretary of State also comment on what contribution is made to a shared future by people who go out, as Sinn Fein has done, to glorify and revel in the murderous past of the IRA and to cause great offence to victims—for instance, by refusing to go to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee sitting on Monday and refusing to be open and transparent about the on-the-runs scheme? What sort of contribution is that to a shared future? Would the Secretary of State care to comment on that?

[Mrs Villiers]

As I have said many times, it is important for all political leaders in Northern Ireland to express themselves in temperate terms and to bear in mind the impact of their statements on members of the community who come from different traditions. The way forward for Northern Ireland is to build mutual respect, rather than to focus on division and disunity with inflammatory statements.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

Can my right hon. Friend explain how that division is to be addressed when the state continues to fund segregated education to the extent that it does?

[Mrs Villiers]

There is a live debate in Northern Ireland about such matters. I believe that it is possible to ensure that the education system plays its part in building a shared future, without undermining parental choice. That is why I welcome the proposals in “Together: Building a United Community” that provide for far more opportunities for children and young people to learn alongside others from different traditions through the promotion of shared education. In addition, much work is under way on integrated education.

[Ann McKechin (Glasgow North) (Lab)]

12. A shared future in Northern Ireland must be for everyone, regardless of race. I am sure that the Secretary of State will deplore the despicable attacks against Anna Lo, a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly. What steps is the Secretary of State taking to address hate crime in Northern Ireland?

[Mrs Villiers]

I share the hon. Lady’s concern about hate crimes in Northern Ireland. There has been a distressing number of such incidents over recent months. I strongly condemned those incidents in a speech that I made to the Police Federation for Northern Ireland. I have, of course, discussed these matters with the Police Service of Northern Ireland, including with the Chief Constable and Assistant Chief Constable Finlay. Such attacks are unacceptable and incompatible with a civilised society, and I totally condemn the attacks that have taken place.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Further to the last question, there is a small but significant number of ethnic minorities in Northern Ireland. What more needs to be done by the Northern Ireland Executive to ensure that those minorities can play a full part in a shared future for the Province?

[Mrs Villiers]

In reflecting on how to build a shared society, it is important for the Northern Ireland Executive to look not just at the traditional divisions in Northern Ireland’s society, but at how more can be done to integrate and support minority communities in Northern Ireland. One way in which they can do that is by providing leadership and condemning the attacks that have taken place.

[Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)]

There has been a recent announcement about the resumption of inter-party talks, which will deal with issues that are a barrier to building a shared future: flags, parades and dealing with the past. Will the Secretary of State outline what she and the British Government will do to ensure that those talks are brought to a successful conclusion and what her exact role will be?

[Mrs Villiers]

I will continue to urge all the parties in Northern Ireland to engage in the discussions on flags, parading and the past. The Prime Minister is also taking a close interest in that, with his article in the Belfast Telegraph making a strong argument for pressing ahead with an agreement for the sake of the future of Northern Ireland. Both he and I have had several conversations with Northern Ireland’s leaders in recent days. We will continue to encourage, support and facilitate the discussions between party leaders and work in a co-ordinated way with colleagues in Dublin and Washington, who are of course also interested in these matters.

[Mr Ivan Lewis (Bury South) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State will agree that a successful shared future largely depends on the younger generation. A recent poll in the Belfast Telegraph suggested that two thirds of young people want to leave Northern Ireland for good, with many citing sectarianism as one of the reasons. Does she agree that a summit of politicians, business people, civil society and representatives of young people should be convened urgently to begin to address that crucial issue?

[Mrs Villiers]

I am sure that such a summit would be helpful in looking at those matters. It is key to make progress on addressing sectarianism, but rebuilding and rebalancing the economy is also crucial to addressing the grave concern that the hon. Gentleman raises. I hope that this morning’s positive announcement on jobs for Northern Ireland will start to resolve these matters, not least the news that the claimant count in Northern Ireland has fallen again today for the 17th month in succession.

[Mr Lewis]

Now that the local and European elections are over, there is a window of opportunity for the Northern Ireland all-party talks to reach an agreement on parades and the past before the summer recess at Stormont. That is an important milestone on the way to achieving a shared future. Will the Secretary of State confirm that the Government are willing to play a far more proactive role than they have done in the past in facilitating the all-party talks? Will she clarify the level of financial support that the UK Government will make available to support any agreement?

[Mrs Villiers]

We are playing a proactive role and will continue to do so. I made the point strongly to party leaders over recent days that the process needs to be more intensive to take advantage of the coming weeks. I welcome the fact that the party leaders are now addressing the intensity of the process by setting up longer meetings, with a secretariat. The Prime Minister and I will continue to do all we can to support this process, but ultimately the answer has to come from Northern Ireland’s political leaders. It is not within our gift to impose a solution from outside and we will not do that.

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

2. When she expects the National Crime Agency to be operating in Northern Ireland.

[The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Mr Andrew Robathan)]

Although the National Crime Agency currently operates in Northern Ireland in relation to non-devolved matters, and in support of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, its important work is restricted by the lack of agreement among the Northern Ireland parties on the agency’s remit there. Discussions between them are proceeding and very early resolution is essential.

[Mr Hanson]

On 23 April 2013, Royal Assent was given to the Crime and Courts Act, which established the National Crime Agency. We spent many months in Committee discussing the agency. We were given assurances by Ministers that this matter would be resolved by last October or November. Will the Minister tell me, 14 months later, when he intends to ensure that the National Crime Agency operates in Northern Ireland?

[Mr Robathan]

If I may digress slightly, I pay tribute to the retiring Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, Matt Baggott, who was previously chief constable of Leicestershire, and wish him well in his retirement. I also wish his successor, George Hamilton, well in his post.

As the right hon. Gentleman knows, the matter is complicated. I do not think that we disagree about it at all. There are political parties in Northern Ireland—Sinn Fein and the Social Democratic and Labour party—that refuse to sign up to the National Crime Agency. We want the National Crime Agency to move forward in Northern Ireland and the serious gaps that are emerging in crime prevention and pursuit to be closed, but he will understand from his past that we have devolved policing and justice and that, unless we wish to break the Sewel convention, we will have to work with the parties in Northern Ireland to get some agreement.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

The Minister will be aware that there have been numerous incidents in Northern Ireland in the past two or three years involving organised criminal gangs on the border, particularly fuel smuggling, fuel laundering, and money laundering, and that has escalated over the past two years. Will he outline the consequences of a failure to have the National Crime Agency fully operational in Northern Ireland?

[Mr Robathan]

It has been said that serious gaps are emerging. As the hon. Gentleman will understand, these are devolved matters, but we are keen that the National Crime Agency should be able to pursue organised and serious crime in Northern Ireland, and there is no difference between us on that at all. Two parties in the Executive are holding things up, however, and I ask why they are doing that and why we do not all want to pursue serious criminality in the Province.

[Mr Jeffrey M. Donaldson (Lagan Valley) (DUP)]

3. When she plans to report to the House on her Department’s inquiry into the administrative scheme for on-the-runs.

[The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mrs Theresa Villiers)]

While Lady Justice Hallett is making progress on her report, she has informed me that it will not be ready for publication until shortly after the 30 June deadline.

[Mr Donaldson]

The Secretary of State will be aware of deep concern in Northern Ireland about revelations that a number of terrorist suspects were granted the royal prerogative of mercy—in other words, pardons— for serious terrorist crimes. Will the report on the on-the-runs include information about those who have been granted such so-called pardons?

[Mrs Villiers]

It is an independent report so I do not know what it will contain, but given the concerns raised about the use of the royal prerogative of mercy, I expect that aspects of that issue will be covered in Lady Justice Hallett’s report. I emphasise that this Government have not used the RPM in Northern Ireland, and it was used by the previous Government on only 18 occasions. Sixteen of those involved terrorism, but in all cases it was used to shorten sentences, not to cancel the offence.

[Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)]

The Northern Ireland Affairs Committee has spent two days in Belfast taking evidence for our on-the-runs inquiry, including from victims and relatives of victims who gave the most harrowing accounts of what had happened to their loved ones. Does the Secretary of State agree that whenever we decide about writing letters to suspects or issuing royal pardons, the views and needs of victims should be at the heart of those considerations? Does she further agree that that has not always been the case?

[Mrs Villiers]

I agree on both those points. I know that many victims of terrorism would have been deeply hurt by the OTR issue, which is why I apologise to them on behalf of the Government. Future reports and investigations on such matters should put victims at their centre, as should any broader solution looking at the legacy of Northern Ireland’s past.

[Mr Ben Wallace (Wyre and Preston North) (Con)]

In the past, security forces have used informers to help defeat terrorists. Does my right hon. Friend agree that issuing royal pardons to on-the-runs is a world apart from using royal pardons as a way of encouraging and using informers? Will she give an undertaking that the Government will not do anything to put at risk the use of informers in Northern Ireland?

[Mrs Villiers]

It is not generally Government practice to comment on sensitive operational matters such as those, but I acknowledge that the use of informers is an important means of combating crime and terrorism.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

4. What steps she has taken in conjunction with the Northern Ireland Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment to attract jobs to Northern Ireland by promoting its film industry.

[The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Mr Andrew Robathan)]

Economic rebalancing is essential and we fully support it through our economic pact with the Executive. Creative industries are an essential element worth half a billion pounds annually, and Invest NI and UKTI both strongly promote them. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has met HBO—Home Box Office—at Hillsborough and in America to promote Northern Ireland as a destination of choice.

[Jim Shannon]

The popular TV series “Game of Thrones” was filmed in my constituency and is watched by more than 2 million people—there is no better place to have a film made than Strangford. The Northern Ireland screen budget has recently been raised by £43 million, which will raise a further £194 million for the local economy. What steps has the Minister taken to ensure that the local South Eastern Regional College, based in Newtownards, will have the skills and training to increase the economy even more?

[Mr Robathan]

The skills are best dealt with by the people of Northern Ireland and the college. I visited “Game of Thrones” in Paint Hall in Belfast and was very impressed. Carla Stronge, of Extras NI, is quoted in the Belfast Telegraph today:

“When I started up in 2007 there were just two people working in my company. Since Game of Thrones started, I have had to take on more people and now there are 11 people working for me”.

We fully support that. I saw the castle in Strangford that is used in “Game of Thrones” only last week.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

I find myself, oddly enough, in complete agreement with the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). That may disturb him more than it disturbs me. The Northern Irish film and television industry now has a global reputation for excellence. He referred to “Game of Thrones”. There is also Ridley Scott’s “Halo”, “The Fall” and many other productions. However, they tend to utilise talent from within the Belfast area. With youth unemployment still far higher outside Belfast than in the rest of Great Britain, what is the Minister doing to work with the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment and other agencies to extend the benefits throughout the north?

[Mr Robathan]

I do not accept what the hon. Gentleman says. At its height, “Game of Thrones” has employed up to 800 people. As we heard from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), it employs people from around the Province—Antrim, Strangford and elsewhere. The Government have introduced high-end television tax relief that has brought very real benefits to the creative industries in Northern Ireland and elsewhere. We are bringing down unemployment and strengthening the economy. Frankly, the hon. Gentleman would be well advised to remember the state of the economy when he left office in 2010.

[Naomi Long (Belfast East) (Alliance)]

5. What role she plans to play in advancing a comprehensive process for dealing with the past and its legacy.

[The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mrs Theresa Villiers)]

The Prime Minister and I have been engaged with Northern Ireland’s political leaders in recent weeks to urge them to make progress on finding an agreed way forward on the past. The Prime Minister’s article in the Belfast Telegraph made the case strongly for an agreement on all three Haass issues. We both welcome the fact that party leaders are meeting again and are planning to step up their engagement on these matters with a more intensive process. [Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The House can scarcely hear the Secretary of State. That is not her fault, but the fault of Members. We are discussing extremely serious matters. Let us have a bit of order.

[Naomi Long]

At the evidence sessions for the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, we heard directly from victims sector individuals who expressed their disappointment and distrust—indeed, their profound upset—at what had happened with the on-the-runs, and their need to see closure on this issue. What can the UK Government bring to the table as part of the talks that are about to start to ensure a fully comprehensive deal on the past that is transparent and respects the sensitivities of victims?

[Mrs Villiers]

As I have said already, I believe that a way forward on the past has to put victims at its heart. I also agree with the hon. Lady that a new process needs to be transparent, balanced and accountable. As the OTRs issue has demonstrated, it is vital that we put any side deals behind us and that the way we approach the legacy of Northern Ireland’s past is balanced, transparent and accountable. We have said that we will work with the kind of institutions set out in Haass 7 if they are formally agreed by the parties.

[Dr Alasdair McDonnell (Belfast South) (SDLP)]

11. The Secretary of State will be aware that many people in Northern Ireland are living in dread of the potential for another summer of disruption and distress. So that people are not held to ransom through another summer of protests, intimidation and violence, does the Secretary of State agree that there is now a compelling need for both the British and Irish Governments to become fully engaged in bringing the Haass discussions, and the discussions that have flowed from them, to a productive conclusion?

[Mrs Villiers]

Both the UK and Irish Governments will continue to support the efforts of party leaders to reach a conclusion on the Haass issues. Like the hon. Gentleman, I urge everyone, as we approach the height of the parading season, to comply with the rule of law to ensure that all protests and all parades are both peaceful and lawful, and that the Parades Commission’s determinations are complied with.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that getting Sinn Fein to tell the truth about the past is like hoping that Nick Clegg will be the Deputy Prime Minister after the 2015 election? Does she agree that the best way to deal with the past at this precise time is for her Government to annul the letters to the on-the-runs?

[Mrs Villiers]

As I have said many times in relation to those letters, they did not confer an amnesty; they were merely a statement of fact about an individual’s status with regard to the police and prosecuting authorities at a particular point in time, and that was confirmed by the Director of Public Prosecutions for Northern Ireland in the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee yesterday.

[Mr Peter Hain (Neath) (Lab)]

There should be no amnesty or “get out of jail free” card for troubles-related crimes, but does the Secretary of State agree that in 90% of cases, according to experts, victims will not get justice by pursuing prosecutions alone, because the evidence is simply not available to bring those cases to trial and get a conclusion?

[Mrs Villiers]

What came across clearly was that many victims wanted the possibility of justice. I think they would accept that in many cases that is going to be difficult to achieve, but it would be unacceptable to introduce an amnesty and deprive victims of any hope of receiving justice.

[Dr William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP)]

6. What assessment she has made of the current security situation in Northern Ireland; and if she will make a statement.

[The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mrs Theresa Villiers)]

The threat level in Northern Ireland remains severe, with persistent planning and targeting by terrorists. However, action by the PSNI and its partners continues to keep the pressure on these terrorist groups, greatly constraining their ability to carry out their lethal objectives.

[Dr McCrea]

Will the Secretary of State confirm that those terrorists who received a royal pardon, including Liam Averill, did so as a reward for giving vital information to the security forces? As well as other, overt activity to defeat the threat of terrorism, will she confirm that the security services have infiltrated, and will infiltrate, dissident republican terrorist cells, as they successfully did to defeat the Provisional IRA, using high-profile informants without royal pardons?

[Mrs Villiers]

As I said in response to the earlier question on the use of agents and informants, it is not the Government’s practice to comment on such operational matters. However, I can give the hon. Gentleman the reassurance that the PSNI and its partners in the Security Service are working incredibly hard to do everything they can to combat these terrorists and have had a number of successes, not least with recent arrests of leading figures in the dissident republican groupings.

[Mr Speaker]

Very briefly please, Mark Durkan.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

13. Does the Secretary of State recognise that the recent attack in the name of the IRA on a hotel in my constituency was an attack not just on that business, but on the city? Does she support the city in having a strong, resilient response that says, “We are not going to be a place of cold security; we are going to be a place of warmth, welcome and safety”?

[Mrs Villiers]

I can wholeheartedly agree with that statement.

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

7. What assessment she has made of the social and economic effects of youth unemployment in Northern Ireland.

[The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Mr Andrew Robathan)]

Youth unemployment is a critical issue. Specific measures to address it in Northern Ireland are the responsibility of the Executive, but the Government’s efforts to reduce the largest structural deficit in UK peacetime history are now bearing fruit. This, more than anything, will help to deliver a sustainable economic recovery and so directly assist young people to get into employment.

[Ian Lavery]

Despite the 2.6% reduction in youth unemployment, it still stands at an alarming 18.6%. Can the Minister say what measures the Government are putting in place to allow young people to access and progress into employment?

[Mr Robathan]

It is very kind of the hon. Gentleman to raise the matter of employment today of all days, as we bring the rate of unemployment across the UK down to 6.6%—which is pretty good, I would say—and in the 17th consecutive month in Northern Ireland when the claimant count has been down. Youth unemployment is down over the quarter by 2.4%. All youth unemployment is unfortunate, but we are working at it and achieving our aims, and I hope he would congratulate us on that.

[Mr Speaker]

On Question 7, Neil Carmichael.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

8. Does the Minister of State agree that today’s employment figures prove that the long-term economic plan is working in Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom, demonstrating that the Conservative party has won the economic argument?

[Mr Robathan]

My hon. Friend may not be surprised to know that I do agree with him that the long-term economic plan is indeed working. I hope that Opposition Members will congratulate the Government on reducing the unemployment rate both in Northern Ireland and across the country, to the benefit of all the people of this United Kingdom.

[Mr Speaker]

On this question, Mr William Bain.

[Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)]

9. Will the Minister update the House on what action UK Trade & Investment has taken with the participants in last year’s economic investment conference to increase much needed inward investment into Northern Ireland?

[Mr Robathan]

The investment conference was a great success, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman would agree. Out of that came further inward investment through Fujitsu and others, and we reckon that some 300 jobs were created just from the investment conference.

[Mr Speaker]

On this question, Jack Lopresti.

[Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)]

10. Will my right hon. Friend join me in congratulating Invest NI on an excellent year for attracting investment into Northern Ireland, and does he agree that the Prime Minister’s decision to take the G8 to Northern Ireland in June and to attend the international investment conference in October has played a key role in helping that objective?

[Mr Robathan]

I do of course. I welcome my hon. Friend back from his recent illness; I am delighted to see him and pay tribute to his work on the Select Committee on Northern Ireland Affairs. We can all see that the Government’s and the Prime Minister’s engagement in investment in Northern Ireland has been hugely successful. I hope that everyone in the House would congratulate us on that.

[Mr Speaker]

Last but not least Sammy Wilson.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Today’s unemployment statistics show that the work of the Northern Ireland Executive in reducing youth unemployment is succeeding, but what specific measures are there in the Queen’s Speech to indicate a way of reducing youth unemployment at a national level for all regions across the United Kingdom?

[Mr Robathan]

As the hon. Gentleman will know, the Queen’s Speech is dedicated to pursuing this long-term economic plan, and it is working. There are no specific measures that immediately spring to mind for Northern Ireland, but we all wish to see the economy grow and people in Northern Ireland prospering as in the rest of the United Kingdom, and I think that is happening. I am currently visiting a lot of places in Northern Ireland and find people buoyant and optimistic about the future of Northern Ireland and its economy.

The Prime Minister was asked—

[Katy Clark (North Ayrshire and Arran) (Lab)]

Q1. If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 11 June.

[The Prime Minister (Mr David Cameron)]

I am sure the whole House will wish to join me in wishing the England football team the very best of British before their first World cup game this Saturday in Brazil.

This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others, and in addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.

[Katy Clark]

I wish good luck to every football team in the World cup.

Less than a quarter of people who have applied for the new personal independence payment have received a decision. If we continue at this rate, it will take more than 40 years to get to the point where everyone has been assessed. Does the Prime Minister think that that is acceptable, and what is he going to do about it?

[The Prime Minister]

It is extremely important when we introduce these new benefits that we make sure it is done in a way that works well. I would say it is very important not to have an artificial deadline of replacing one benefit with another. The whole point about the personal independence payment is that it is more accurate and more targeted than disability living allowance. It will mean more help for those with the greatest disabilities, and I am determined we get it right.

[Mr Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con)]

Will the Prime Minister join me in congratulating the Foreign Secretary on organising this week’s important global summit to end sexual violence, and does he agree that it is indeed time to act?

[The Prime Minister]

I give huge credit to the Foreign Secretary for the work he has done, but I would also like to pay tribute to all the non-governmental organisations across various countries of the world, which have all come together for this extraordinary summit in London. It is absolutely vital that we never forget about the victims of sexual violence in conflict. This is something that is still far too prevalent in our world, but real advances have been made by having a declaration which countries are signing up to and, even more importantly, by having an action plan of how to gather evidence, prosecute the wrongdoers and make sure that they are properly punished, while helping the survivors. Listening to the testimony of survivors yesterday in Downing street was immensely powerful.

[Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)]

Let me first join the Prime Minister in wishing the England team the best of luck in the World cup. The whole country will, I am sure, be behind it.

Everyone will have been concerned by what has been happening at certain schools in Birmingham—including girls being forced to sit at the back of the class and the forced removal of head teachers. At the heart of this story is a failure of accountability—locally and nationally—but the key question for parents is this: if there is a serious problem at their children’s school, where do they go to get it sorted out?

[The Prime Minister]

Let me echo what the right hon. Gentleman said about how important it is to get a grip on this issue. The problem of Islamist extremism in our schools is serious—the situation, not just in Birmingham but elsewhere, is extremely serious—and I am absolutely determined, as are the Home Secretary, the Education Secretary and, indeed, the whole Government, to ensure that it is unacceptable in our country. People should be being taught in our schools in a way that ensures that they can play a full part in the life of our country. As for where people should go if they are concerned about what is happening in their schools, they should go first to the head teacher and the chair of governors.

While I hope that we can forge real unity across the House of Commons on the issue of combating Islamist extremism in our schools, I hope that that will not be used as an agenda to try to knock down successful school formats, whether they are academies created under the last Government or free schools created under this Government.

[Edward Miliband]

There is certainly a degree of common ground on what our kids are taught in schools and on the need for a proper upholding of values, but the Prime Minister said that people should go to the head teacher or the chair of governors. In certain cases, the head teacher was removed and the governing body was part of the problem. The truth is that the question of who parents can go to is a very hard question to answer, because we have an incredibly fragmented school system in which no one is properly responsible. Some of the schools involved were local authority schools and some were academies, but what parents want is for someone who is responsible on a day-to-day basis to be able to intervene quickly when things go wrong. Does there not need to be one system of accountability for all schools to safeguard the education of our children?

[The Prime Minister]

As I said, the first port of call is the head teacher and the chair of governors. However, if people believe that there is a real problem, there is one organisation that has responsibility for checking standards in all these schools, and that, of course, is Ofsted. That is why what the Education Secretary has said about no-notice inspections is so important. The Leader of the Opposition asked how intervention could happen quickly; well, it will happen quickly if we have the no-notice inspections.

What I would say to the Leader of the Opposition, because this is an important debate, is that if we are saying that there is only one model of accountability that will work—and some Members believe that the only model of accountability is local government accountability—it is worth making the point that Birmingham city council failed in its duty to these parents. Indeed, when we look at what caused action to happen, we see that it was only when the Department for Education was contacted that proper action was taken. So yes, let us learn the lessons, and let us listen to the permanent secretary to the Education Department when he reports, but let us learn the right lessons.

[Edward Miliband]

It is definitely worth making the point about local authorities and academies, and that is why I made the point. Ofsted inspections may happen only once every five years, and that is not the kind of system of accountability that we need.

Here is the thing on which I think we should be able to agree. No one, surely, believes that the Department for Education can run 20,000 schools from Whitehall. Perhaps the Secretary of State believes that, but I do not think that anyone can possibly really believe it. However, no one is arguing that we should go back to the old local authority system either. Is it not time—[Interruption.] Will Government Members just listen to the question? Is it not time that we had a proper system of local oversight, separate from councils and responsible for standards in all schools, to prevent what happened in Birmingham from happening elsewhere?

[The Prime Minister]

I always listen very carefully to the right hon. Gentleman’s proposals, but I have to say that that sounds like creating a new local bureaucracy at a time when we need to ensure that resources are going into schools for the teachers, the computers, the books and the equipment.

The right hon. Gentleman says that an Ofsted inspection can take place only every five years. The point about the no-notice inspections, if we are going to give this issue the attention that it deserves, is that a report and a suspicion expressed to Ofsted about these problems could result in an instant inspection and instant action.

Let me make just one more point. It is often said that some of the schools with new formats, namely free schools or academies, which I thought that Labour Members supported—well, they used to when they were still sensible—do not act as fast as local authority schools. In fact, completely the opposite is the case. When there has been a problem in free schools or converter academies, they have taken far faster action than many of the local authority schools that have been left in a state of failure for far too long.

[Edward Miliband]

I have to say to the Prime Minister that he has no answer on the question of accountability because it is not realistic to do it centrally and Ofsted inspections are not going to do the job. Everyone knows that.

I want to turn from the failures in the Department for Education to the failures in the Home Office. Can the Prime Minister update the House on his latest estimate of the backlog of people waiting for their passport applications to be processed?

[The Prime Minister]

It is extremely important that we get the situation with the passport agency right. I understand people are anxious. They want to get their passport. They want to be able to go on holiday. Let me give the right hon. Gentleman the facts. We have 300,000 more applications than is normal at this time of year. We have massively increased the staff. The level of applications outside the normal three-week limit is less than 10% of that 300,000.

[Edward Miliband]

The truth is that tens of thousands of people are finding that their holidays are being cancelled because they are not getting a passport. The Prime Minister says that the Government have increased the resources of the passport agency. That is not the case. Since 2010, there have been greater responsibilities for the passport agency and fewer resources. When did the Government first know about the problem and how has it been allowed to develop?

[The Prime Minister]

The Government have taken action to deal with this problem not today but in weeks gone past. We have 250 staff already redeployed to the front line, prioritising all outstanding applications. That will allow for an extra 25,000 examinations weekly. [Interruption.] The right hon. Gentleman asked the questions. People will be concerned about this. They will want to hear the answers. [Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. That is certainly true. Mr Robertson, you do have something of a lion’s roar and it rather lets you down because I can hear clearly that it is you. As for you, Mr Lucas, I have told you that you need to go on some sort of therapeutic training course if you are to attain the level of statesmanship to which you aspire. Let us hear the answer.

[The Prime Minister]

The Government have made sure, as I said, that 250 extra staff have been deployed, that there are longer opening hours at the Passport Office—and it is now working seven days a week—and that there are 650 extra staff on the helplines to support customers. The Home Secretary has announced today that new offices will be opened in Liverpool next week, with an additional 100 staff. The Home Office has been on this from the very start, but it all begins with 300,000 extra people applying for passports compared with this time last year. Those are the actions that are being taken. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will be careful not to try to frighten people in the way he did in his opening question.

[Edward Miliband]

The Prime Minister says that the Government are sorting out the problem, but tens of thousands of people, we understand, are waiting for their applications to be processed and are finding that their holidays are being cancelled. The truth of the picture of this Government is that we have the Home Secretary fighting with the Education Secretary but not paying attention to the business of government. Here is the thing. To add insult to injury, people are being told that, if they want their applications to be processed within the three-week target, they will have to pay £55 extra. Can the Prime Minister get a grip on this situation and tell families when the backlog will be cleared?

[The Prime Minister]

We will be clearing the backlog not least because we are not wasting time with the national identity card scheme that we inherited from the Labour party. Is it not interesting that there was not a word about the unemployment figures? The right hon. Gentleman simply cannot bear the fact that in our country we now have 2 million more people in work in the private sector. He cannot stand the fact that unemployment has fallen yet again. The claimant count has come down. He is absolutely allergic to good news because he knows that as our economy gets stronger he gets weaker.

[Craig Whittaker (Calder Valley) (Con)]

It is now 28 years since the devastating accident in Chernobyl and the effects are still being felt, particularly by children. Last year, while many were dying, we ceased to supply gratis visas to children from the affected regions to come to the UK for respite care. Will the Prime Minister look again at our policy because, since charging for those visas, we have seen a 50% reduction in the number of young people being able to come to the UK for respite?

[The Prime Minister]

I am very happy to look at the case my hon. Friend raises—we all remember the appalling incident at Chernobyl and the long-term effects it had on people. We charge for visas because we have to cover the cost of visa operations to make sure we are protecting ourselves from people who should not come here but do come here, and that is important, but I will look carefully at what my hon. Friend said, and perhaps I will write to him.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q2. Does the Prime Minister agree that now more than ever we need to bend our efforts to build a strong, robust civil society? One hundred years ago this August a war broke out that killed 16 million people, mainly young men, and devastated communities. Active participation in politics is declining rapidly. Only 34% of people voted in the recent Euro elections. Will the Prime Minister agree to meet on a cross-party basis to look seriously at citizenship in this country and at how we build a society that encourages active citizenship?

[The Prime Minister]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman: turnout at some of these elections is very depressing. I think people feel that the European institutions are rather distant from them and do not see the relevance of them. Of course I am happy to look at what he says about citizenship, but I would prefer that we put our resources and effort into practical programmes such as the National Citizen Service, which is now a superb service that many young people are taking part in, so they can see the importance of engaging in their communities and in the world. I think that will lead, among other things, to greater political participation.

[Graham Evans (Weaver Vale) (Con)]

Q3. Will the Prime Minister join me in welcoming the 2 million new private sector jobs that have been created since 2010, and will he continue with the long-term economic plan, to make sure the figure goes up?

[The Prime Minister]

This is an important milestone that we have reached: there are now 2 million more private sector jobs than when this Government came to office. That is 2 million reasons for sticking to the long-term economic plan we have set out. May I thank the hon. Gentleman particularly for the work he has done for his constituents in Weaver Vale, in running job club after job club, to help make sure the businesses that need more workers are put in touch with the people looking for a job? That is a vital service that Members of Parliament are delivering, and he is leading the way.

[Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

Given the revelation that the royal prerogative of mercy was granted in at least 16 cases relating to terrorism in the days and weeks immediately following the Belfast agreement, and, indeed, in cases stretching back to the 1980s, will the Prime Minister agree, in the interests of openness, transparency and, not least, justice for the victims in Northern Ireland—and here in Britain itself—that he should be intervening to make sure the names and circumstances in these exercises of the royal prerogative of mercy are revealed, as happens in the rest of the United Kingdom, so people know the facts of these cases?

[The Prime Minister]

I will look very carefully, as I always do, at what the right hon. Gentleman says about this, but what I would say is that the last Government had to make very difficult decisions to try to get the peace process started by John Major on track and working. I do not want to unpick all those difficult decisions or second-guess them, because, yes, we have frustrations and difficulties and many other issues that still need to be settled in Northern Ireland, but we have the basic architecture of devolution and parties working together across historical divides, and I do not want to put that at risk.

[Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)]

Q4. Today’s employment figures show that unemployment in Kingswood is down by 37% since May 2010 and, as the MP for Kingswood, since 2012 I have held eight jobs fairs advertising hundreds of local jobs—just some of the 2 million private sector jobs created since this Government came to office—but there is still more to do. Together with the Kingswood job centre, I am launching the Kingswood challenge today, a mentoring or job fostering scheme where local business leaders will be paired with local people looking for work, helping to provide them with one-to-one support.

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for what he is doing with these job fairs to put people who want work in touch with businesses, and this is absolutely key, because there is no complacency on this side of the House about unemployment whatsoever. Youth unemployment, long-term unemployment: we still need to remove these scourges from our country. We have a goal of full employment and the way we will achieve that goal is not simply through a growing economy—now growing faster than those of other countries in the G7—but by making sure we help people and train people and give them all that is necessary to get on and get a job and have that security and stability in their lives.

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

Q5. Shockingly, one in three children in the north-east are now living in poverty—the highest rate in the UK. Significantly, two out of three young people living in poverty are now from working households. Does the Prime Minister agree that something has gone badly wrong in regard to child poverty? Will he please, please tell me where it all went wrong in the first place?

[The Prime Minister]

I say to the hon. Gentleman that the best route out of poverty is work. If we look at the north-east, we see that the number of people employed there is up by 47,000 over the last year. That is what is happening in the north-east. I know that Labour Members want to have this narrative in our country, but let me give them some facts. Inequality is at its lowest since 1986. There are 300,000 fewer children living in poverty than there were when I became Prime Minister, and there are 500,000 fewer people in relative poverty than at the election. Above all—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Mr Campbell, when you are eating curry in the Kennington Tandoori, you do not yell across the restaurant: don’t yell across the Floor of this House.

[The Prime Minister]

What we need to do is tackle the causes of poverty: underachievement at school, homelessness, lack of work, drug addiction. That is what drives this Government, and that is what we are dealing with. There are 250,000 fewer children in failing schools than when this Government took office.

[Mr Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD)]

Atos is taking even longer to carry out medical assessments of applicants for disability benefits who live in Argyll and Bute than it is taking elsewhere, because it is reluctant to send assessors all the way to my constituency. I am sure that the Prime Minister will agree that that is unacceptable. Will he tell Atos that it must not discriminate against people living in Argyll and Bute in that way, and that people there should receive their assessments as quickly as people living in the rest of the country?

[The Prime Minister]

Obviously there are challenges in particularly far-flung rural constituencies such as that of the hon. Gentleman, which has many islands in it, but we have to make sure that people’s assessments are properly carried out. Those assessments are important. The whole point about this Government’s programme is that we do not want to leave people on unemployment or other benefits year after year. We want these tests and assessments to be properly carried out so that we can see whether people are eligible for benefits and what help they need to get work.

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

Q6. Did the Prime Minister’s intention to legislate to help people with the costs and insecurity of renting their homes lose its slot in a packed Queen’s Speech legislative programme to the plan to ban plastic bags, or did he perhaps not have any such proposals in the first place?

[The Prime Minister]

What this Government are doing is ensuring that we build more houses. That is what we absolutely need to do to help those who are renting or buying. Yes, we need greater transparency in regard to what letting agencies do, and we are delivering that as part of our programme, but I do not believe that a policy of rent controls—which the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and the letting agents themselves have said would put up rents—is the answer.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

Q7. Metal fabricators, hydraulic fitters, computer numerically controlled machine turners, mechanical engineers and vehicle maintenance apprenticeships are just some of the real jobs for local people that are on offer at my jobs fair in Holmfirth. Following the news that 2 million private sector jobs have been created since 2010, will the Prime Minister continue to support the small and medium-sized enterprises in Yorkshire that are creating real jobs and quality apprenticeships?

[The Prime Minister]

Absolutely I will. My hon. Friend makes a good point; we are seeing a rebalancing of our economy. Just this week we have seen a growth in manufacturing and all the elements of GDP, such as construction and manufacturing, growing. We want to see a recovery that is broadly based across the different sectors and in every part of the country. When it comes to today’s figures, we can see that pay levels in industries such as manufacturing and services, rather than financial services, are on the rise.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

Q8. Last week, the Minister without Portfolio, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), said that people in the UK had“not yet felt any sense of recovery.”The Office for National Statistics has confirmed today that full-time workers in the north-east are £36 a week worse off than they were last year. Does the Prime Minister agree with his Cabinet colleague?

[The Prime Minister]

The point I make to the hon. Lady is that, as I have just said, there are 47,000 more people in work in the north-east than there were a year ago. The best route out of poverty is work, and what that needs to be followed by are the tax reductions this Government are bringing in to make sure that people are in work and better off in work—that is going to make a difference.

[Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)]

Q9. Pentland, a company based in my constituency, increased its turnover by 10% to more than £2 billion last year and increased its work force significantly, contributing to the 2 million private sector jobs created under this Government. In addition, the company has just been voted European family business of the year. Will my right hon. Friend join me in congratulating Pentland and agree to visit this British success story?

[The Prime Minister]

I am sure I will be visiting my hon. Friend’s constituency before long, but I join him in congratulating this great British company. I believe it came with me on my visit to China, where we were pushing Speedos as hard as we could, including getting them on the vital Chinese equivalent to Amazon to make sure they could be sold. I am very happy to make such a visit; this is part of the economic success story and export success story of our country.

[Dame Tessa Jowell (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

On Monday, I am going to the United Nations to address a number of member states and to present a cross-party petition in support of the inclusion of the right to healthy early childhood in the new, post-2015 millennium development goals. The petition has been signed by people from 170 countries around the world. May I therefore ask the Prime Minister to support, with his advocacy and the support of his Government, this leadership by the United Nations to create benefit for at least 200 million of the world’s poorest children?

[The Prime Minister]

I pay tribute to the right hon. Lady and what she is doing in this area. Britain has tried to play a leading role in making sure that the world has a good replacement for the millennium development goals; I co-authored a report about what should be put in their place. At the heart of that was the idea of better maternal health and better health services, particularly for women in childbirth. I am very happy to look at the proposal she makes and make sure that we put the full weight of the British Government behind it.

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

Q10. Could I join my right hon. Friend in wishing the England football team every success in the World cup, but may I also raise one of the darker aspects of the beautiful game? Recently, my constituent Donald Distin was seriously assaulted by one of the players while refereeing a local football game and was very seriously injured. May I therefore ask the Prime Minister what steps the Government are taking to ensure that violence is treated with equal seriousness whether it occurs on the field or off it and is never tolerated?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an important point: of course we all support the England football team—it is good to say that again—but it is really important that we crack down on all forms of bad behaviour, whether on or off the football pitch. Referees should have the full protection of the law to ensure that community football is safe and enjoyable. I pay tribute to the Football Association for all the work it has done on not only training but explaining the importance of respect and good behaviour in our game—but we need more of that in the years to come.

[Pamela Nash (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)]

I am afraid I might have nightmares this evening about the Prime Minister modelling Speedos on his world tour—I thank him for sharing that image with us. On a much more serious note, since this Prime Minister took office the number of people in Scotland alone reporting to have been forced into using loan sharks has increased by 57%—it is estimated that a total of 85,000 people in Scotland are in this predicament. What are his Government going to do about this? Or does he think it is acceptable?

[The Prime Minister]

First, let me reassure the hon. Lady that Speedo makes shorts as well as Speedos, so I hope I can clear that picture out of her mind. Hon. Members rightly raise a series of issues that we need properly to tackle to make sure that we help everyone in our country benefit from economic recovery. The minimum wage was declining when I became Prime Minister, but it is now increasing. Nothing was done under the last Government on zero-hours contracts, but now we have legislation to get rid of exclusivity. Nothing was done about payday lending in the last 13 years, but now it is being properly regulated, with a cap on payday lending. We have also made sure that the penalties for not paying the minimum wage have been quadrupled under this Government. I am absolutely determined to make sure that everyone who wants to work hard and do the right thing can benefit from the economic recovery now under way.

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

Q11. The Prime Minister must know that every Member of this House shares a total and collective repugnance that a young woman has been sentenced to 100 lashes and the death penalty for simply wanting to practise her faith. Will my right hon. Friend request that the UK delegation to the UN Human Rights Council press the case that the concept of apostasy is in direct and total conflict with article 18 of the United Nations Convention on Human Rights, and will he reassure the House that the Sudanese Government will be left in no doubt of the abhorrence with which this sentence is held?

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend speaks for the whole House on that issue. I completely share his abhorrence at the way in which this case has been treated; it has been absolutely barbaric, and it has no place in this world. I can confirm that we will be raising this case at the forthcoming UN Human Rights Council. Sudan is firmly on the agenda at that council, and we should bring the full weight of everything that Britain can do to make it clear to that country that the way this woman is being treated is totally unacceptable.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

Q12. It was good of the Prime Minister to wish the England team every success in the forthcoming World cup, but with his Cabinet split and his coalition fractured should he not be picking up the phone to Roy Hodgson and asking for some tips on team discipline?

[The Prime Minister]

I would not want to offer Roy too much advice. What I say about this Government is that we have had the same Chancellor for four years and we have record growth in our country; we have had the same Home Secretary for four years and we have had record falls in crime; and we have had the same Education Secretary and we have 250,000 fewer children in failing schools. If you have a strong team with a strong plan, stick with them, and keep on putting it in the back of the net.

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

The Prime Minister will have heard calls from all parts of this House for an independent inquiry on the Hillsborough model into organised child sexual abuse in this country. Can he truly be satisfied that current police investigations are sufficient for the public to have confidence that we are both willing and able to get to the truth?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, and I have looked carefully at the matter with ministerial colleagues, because we have a series of inquiries taking place into what happened in various hospitals, care homes and media organisations. It is important that the Government keep a clear view about how those are being co-ordinated and how the lessons are being learned. If there is a need for any more overarching process to be put in place, I am happy to look at it. At the moment, thanks to the Home Secretary and her colleagues, we have a proper view of what is happening in all those organisations.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

Q13. Recent analysis has shown that Labour’s policy to allocate NHS funding based on health need actually reduced health inequalities by 85%. Why did the Government scrap it?

[The Prime Minister]

This Government have ensured that public health budgets are properly ring-fenced and that money has been delivered, according to need, to the various areas of the country. I think the only part of the country in which Labour policy is put in place is Wales, which has not hit a health target since about 1989. It is also where experts say people are dying because of the length of time they spend on waiting lists, so if the hon. Lady is concerned about Labour health policy, Cardiff would be a good place to start.

[Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)]

Q15. Youth unemployment in Harrogate and Knaresborough today stands at 50— that is not a percentage, but the total, and it is down 83% since 2010. That clearly reflects the 2 million new private sector jobs created since then. Will my right hon. Friend be building on that success by providing more opportunities and skills for the young people in our area through more traineeships and apprenticeships?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that even though 50 is a small number of young people to be unemployed in Harrogate, it is still 50 too many. Our ambition in the next Parliament should be to ensure that everybody has the chance either to go to university or to take on an apprenticeship and that we leave absolutely no one behind as they leave school and look for the stability and security that a future in work provides.

[Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)]

Q14. This Government said they were going to recruit 11,000 new reserves, to make up for the cuts to the Regular Army. In fact, what has happened, according to today’s National Audit Office report, is that the number has actually declined since 2012. Is the Prime Minister content to continue to preside over not only a debacle in passports, but this further example of his Government’s incompetence and, frankly, buck-passing?

[The Prime Minister]

I am afraid to tell the hon. Lady that what we inherited in defence was not only a £38 billion black hole, but a situation where the military reserves had been under-resourced and undervalued for years. We now have a five-year programme for building them up; that programme is under way and it is gathering pace. What we are going to see is the strongest possible professional Army, with all the best equipment it could have, and a very strong reserve force backing it up, making sure that we can meet all the obligations we set out in the strategic defence review.

New Member

The following Member took and subscribed the Oath required by law:

Robert Jenrick, for Newark.

Petition

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Commons Chamber

Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)

- Hansard - - Excerpts

The petition states:

The Petition of residents of the UK,

Declares that the Petitioners believe in fighting to defend the NHS, believe in fighting to defend the NHS services in East Cleveland and Park End, Middlesbrough, and oppose cuts inflicted by the Conservative-led government’s Health and Social Care Act 2012; further that the Petitioners believe that proposals to scrap GP services at Skelton Medical Centre should be abandoned; further that proposals to scrap GP services at Park End Medical Centre should also be abandoned; further that the Petitioners believe that South Tees clinical commissioning group’s plans to close East Cleveland Hospital’s and Guisborough Hospital’s minor injuries units is short-sighted given the £30 million deficit of South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust; and further that the Petitioners condemn South Tees clinical commissioning group’s decision to close Skelton’s NHS walk-in centre.

The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to encourage NHS England and South Tees clinical commissioning group to reverse plans to close Park End Medical Centre, Skelton Medical Centre, its NHS walk-in centre and East Cleveland and Guisborough Hospital’s minor injury units.

And the Petitioners remain, etc.

[P001357]

G7

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Commons Chamber

12:37

[The Prime Minister (Mr David Cameron)]

With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement on last week’s G7 summit in Brussels.

This was a G7 rather than a G8 because of Russia’s unacceptable actions in Ukraine. Right from the outset, the G7 nations have been united in support for Ukraine and its right to choose its own future, and we have sent a firm message that Russia’s actions have been totally at odds with the values of our group of democracies.

At the summit, we kept up the pressure on Russia. We agreed that the status quo is unacceptable and the continuing destabilisation of eastern Ukraine must stop. We insisted that Russia must recognise the legitimate election of President Poroshenko; it must stop arms crossing the border into Ukraine; and it must cease support for separatist groups. We agreed that wide-ranging economic sanctions should remain on the table if Russia did not follow this path of de-escalation, or if it launched a punitive trade war with Ukraine in response to Kiev proceeding with the trade aspects of its association agreement with the European Union.

I made those points directly to President Putin when I met him in Paris on the eve of the D-day commemorations. The inauguration of President Poroshenko has created a new opportunity for diplomacy to help to establish a proper relationship between Ukraine and Russia. I urged President Putin to ensure that this happens. It is welcome that he met President Poroshenko in Normandy and that Moscow and Kiev are now engaging each other again. It is important that we continue to do what we can to sustain the positive momentum. We also agreed to help Ukraine to achieve greater energy security by diversifying its supplies.

The G7 also continued the work we began last year at Lough Erne to deal with the cancer of corruption, with further agreements on what I call the three T’s of greater transparency, fairer taxes and freer trade. We made good progress in working towards common global standards of transparency in extractive industries, we agreed to push forwards with establishing new international rules to stop companies artificially shifting their profits across borders to avoid taxes and we agreed to make a concerted push on finalising bilateral trade deals as soon as possible. These included the EU-Canada and EU-Japan deals, but of course also the EU-US deal, which we launched at Lough Erne last summer. I believe this is one of the greatest opportunities to turbo-charge the global economy and could be worth up to £10 billion for Britain alone. With these agreements, the Lough Erne agenda on transparency, tax and trade has been hard-wired into these international summits for many years to come.

There was also a good discussion on climate change, where the recent announcements by the US make a potential agreement next year more achievable, and we should do what we can to make that happen.

In my bilateral meeting with President Obama, we discussed what I believe is the greatest threat to our security: how we counter extremism and the terrorist threat to our people at home and abroad. We agreed to intensify our efforts to address the threat of foreign fighters travelling to and from Syria, which is now the top destination in the world for jihadists. And here in Britain, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will be introducing a new measure to enable prosecution of those who plan and train for terrorism abroad. In Libya, we are fulfilling our commitment to train the Libyan security forces, with the first tranche of recruits arriving in the United Kingdom yesterday. On Nigeria, we reaffirmed our commitment to support President Jonathan’s Government and the wider region in confronting the evil of Boko Haram. We continue to help address the tragedy of the abducted schoolgirls.

Finally, in all my recent meetings with European leaders and again at the summit in Sweden yesterday, there was discussion about the top jobs in Europe. I believe the European elections sent a clear message right across the continent. The European Union needs to change. It is vital that politicians across Europe respond to the concerns of their people. That means having institutions in Europe that understand the need for reform and it means having people at the head of these institutions who understand that if things go on as they have done, the European Union is not going to work properly for its citizens.

Quite apart from the entirely valid concerns about the proposed people in question, there is a fundamental point of principle on which we must not budge. As laid down in EU law, it is for the European Council to make its own nomination for President. This is the body that is made up of the elected leaders of the European nations, and it is not for the European Parliament to try to impose its will on the democratically elected leaders of 28 member states.

Prime Minister Reinfeldt, Prime Minister Rutte of the Netherlands, Chancellor Merkel and I also agreed on the work programme for the new Commission: completing the single market; energising trade deals; and making further progress on deregulation—a clear focus on jobs and growth. We also agreed the Commission must work together to address the abuse of free movement, so that people move across Europe for work but not for welfare. These were important agreements from like-minded European leaders who share my determination to deliver a reformed European Union.

Finally, amidst the various meetings of the last week I was able to attend the very special commemorations for the 70th anniversary of D-day in Normandy. Attending the vigil at Pegasus bridge—marking the moment the first glider touched down on French soil—was a fitting moment to reflect on the importance of our collective defence, something that will be at the heart of the NATO summit in Wales this September. But above all, it was a moment to remember the sheer bravery and sacrifice of all those who gave their lives for our future.

The veterans who made it to Normandy are quite simply some of the most remarkable people I have ever had the privilege and pleasure of meeting. I will never forget the conversations that I had that night and indeed the next day. Our gratitude for their service and sacrifice must never wane, and neither should our resolve to protect the peace that they fought for. I commend this statement to the House.

12:44

[Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)]

Let me begin where the Prime Minister ended by paying tribute to the commemorations of the 70th anniversary of D-day that we attended last week. They were a reminder of the incredible bravery that tens of thousands of our servicemen and women who left our shores 70 years ago showed, risking their lives to fight for the freedom that we so often take for granted today. I echo the words of the Prime Minister: it was deeply moving to hear the stories from the Normandy veterans we met and to hear about the sheer courage they showed for our country on that day. Our job is to ensure that those memories and stories continue to be told so that future generations know about the service and sacrifice of those who went before us.

Before turning to the G7, let me also take this opportunity to echo the Prime Minister’s comments about the European Commission President. The message from the European elections was clear: we need reform in Europe, and we need people in top jobs in Europe willing and able to pursue that agenda. The appointment of a new Commission and President provides a vital opportunity to pursue the much-needed European reform that we need, and it must be seized, not squandered.

Turning to the G7, we welcome the G7’s commitment to open trade. What discussions did the Prime Minister have with EU leaders and President Obama on whether the TTIP—transatlantic trade and investment partnership —negotiations for the free trade agreement are on track and when they are likely to be completed? Can he specifically reassure the House—this point has been raised by a number of people—that there will be no impact on our public services, particularly the NHS?

On tax and transparency, the Government must ensure that the bold promises made at Lough Erne are not watered down. In particular, last year we welcomed the OECD work on tackling tax avoidance, and it was promised that developing countries would be part of that process. Can the Prime Minister assure the House that that will be the case going forward?

We support the conclusions on international development. In the spirit of consensus, any time the Prime Minister wants to bring forward the promised law to enshrine the 0.7% aid target, the Opposition would of course offer him our support. It was promised in the coalition agreement, but it seems to have mysteriously disappeared.

The agreement of a new international framework for tackling climate change is very important, and the talks in Paris will be key to that, as will making good on the promise made in Copenhagen on climate finance for developing countries. Can the Prime Minister inform the House how the UK’s preparations for playing a part in that are going and assure us that he is working to secure timely contributions from the other G7 members, because we have tended to be at the front of the pack on this, while others have been less so.

Finally, let me turn to Ukraine. First, following Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea, it was absolutely right for G7 countries to boycott this year’s G8 summit, which would have taken place in Sochi. The crisis has been the west’s most serious confrontation with Russia since the end of the cold war and there had to be consequences for Russia’s actions.

Secondly, we welcome the swearing in of President Poroshenko and his first act of offering talks with the Russian-speaking east. I join the Prime Minister in welcoming the initial engagement between President Putin and President Poroshenko. However, can the Prime Minister assure us that in his discussions with President Putin, and following the Ukrainian President’s commitment to signing an association agreement with the EU, there was an assurance that there will be no further Russian aggression in response to that action?

Thirdly, it is with growing concern that we see the volatile situation in eastern Ukraine continuing and rising violence in the south-east of the country. During the Prime Minister’s conversations at the summit, did he seek assurances from Russia that it will accelerate its withdrawal of troops from the border with Ukraine and stop the flow of weapons and pro-Russian insurgents into the country?

The G7 meeting was a demonstration of the unity of international action. It was right for the G7 to call for a de-escalation of the situation in Ukraine, the need to work towards a diplomatic solution and continuing to maintain the pressure on Russia. In taking that action, the Government have our full support.

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his response, particularly what he said about D-day, which I think for both of us, and indeed for the Deputy Prime Minister, was an extremely moving occasion. When it comes to the principle that the European Council should decide who is the leader of the Commission and that it should not be determined by some electoral process in the European Parliament that many people did not take part in, I am very grateful for the fact that this is a common British position that is held by the Labour party, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservative party. I also thank him for that. It is very important for others in Europe to know what an important issue of principle it is for all three parties.

On TTIP and the deal between the EU and the US, I can report that there have been five good meetings on progressing it. We are pushing very hard and trying to set some deadlines for the work. No specific deadline was agreed, but it was agreed at the G7 that further impetus needed to be given to the talks and, specifically, that domestic politicians needed to answer any specific questions or concerns from non-governmental organisations, or indeed public services, that can sometimes be raised and that do not always, when we look at the detail, bear up to examination. Perhaps I will do that with regard to the NHS and write to the right hon. Gentleman about that.

On tax and transparency, we want not only to make sure that countries sign up to the tax tool we have created so that we can see where profits are being earned—that is going very well, with a number of countries signing up—but to find the best way of sharing that information with developing countries so that they can make sure that they are not being ripped off by these companies.

On the 0.7% target, I would say that what matters more than legislation is doing it—actually showing the political will and making the arguments about protecting our promises to the poorest people in the world.

On climate change, the right hon. Gentleman is right that Britain and the EU can play a leading role in helping to achieve a deal. We need to make sure that the EU has the political will to get to the right position on this. That should happen in September, and there will be important discussions between now and then to make sure that it happens.

On Ukraine, the right hon. Gentleman asked about how we would respond to further aggression. The agreement at the G7 was, first, that the status quo in terms of aggression and destabilisation in eastern Ukraine is not acceptable. That has to be fixed, plus the fact that Russia must not respond to the trade elements of the agreement between Ukraine and the EU by taking unfair steps against Ukraine. If those things happen, that is how sanctions could be put back on the table.

The right hon. Gentleman talked about the withdrawal of Russian troops and the issue of weapons. I said to President Putin that it was welcome that a number of troops had been withdrawn from the borders and that we wanted to see more of that happen, but crucially we have got to see action to stop weapons getting into eastern Ukraine, because it is noticeable that the so-called rebels have, for instance, very technical, high-tech weapons such as MANPADs—man-portable air defence systems—and it is hard to believe that they could be coming from anywhere else.

I hope that that answers the right hon. Gentleman’s questions. I think that in a lot of these areas there is a good measure of cross-party agreement.

[Mr Stephen O’Brien (Eddisbury) (Con)]

In welcoming the full range of the Prime Minister’s statement, may I particularly congratulate him on showing how he was able to lock in so much of the success of the G8 at Lough Erne and on his references to the three T’s and Nigeria? Did he get any assurance that there is a continuing commitment that there should be no payments on kidnap for ransom, which was also a crucial element of his success at Lough Erne?

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for raising this issue. I raised it specifically at the G7 because I am very concerned that we signed the agreement at Lough Erne about not paying ransoms for terrorist kidnap, yet there are terrorist kidnaps taking place in our world and it is—how can I put it politely?—far from clear that some countries are not allowing, or even enabling, ransoms to be paid: ransoms that then go into the hands of very dangerous terrorist groups and fund weapons and explosives that could well be used in our countries back home. I raised this issue very forcefully, as did President Obama. It is very important that we do all we can to help to release those who are held, but paying ransoms for terrorist kidnaps is totally self-defeating—it makes the terrorists stronger and increases the chances of further kidnaps in future.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

May I first endorse what the Prime Minister and my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition said about the presidency of the EU? I remind the House that it is not long since the German press themselves were very heavily critical of Mr Juncker for “running a tax haven” and, indeed, for his behaviour on some late evenings. OECD projections suggest that in 11 years the BRICs—Brazil, Russia, India and China—might overtake the G7 in terms of aggregate GDP, and we are already seeing a parting of the ways in terms of international cohesion. How far are the strategic implications of that change in economic power being considered by the G7?

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. The reason I believe the G7 is going to have continued relevance in the years ahead is that it is a chance for some of the world’s biggest democracies, and largest economies, who are like-minded to have a very frank and open conversation. It is much less about communiqués and reading out speeches and more about a discussion about how we approach really complicated and difficult issues, whether it is the rise of Islamist extremism or how to make sure that our relations with China work in our mutual interest, and so on. I hope that we can keep going with these meetings. The G20 is able to address the broader world economy and to bring together the BRIC countries with some of the older western democracies.

[Sir Richard Ottaway (Croydon South) (Con)]

My main objection to the nomination of Mr Juncker is that it is a stitch-up and a power grab by the European Parliament, and the Prime Minister is absolutely right to have no part of it.

In Syria, against a backdrop of indiscriminate killing, delays in removing chemical stockpiles, contempt for UN resolution 2118, and the ongoing use of chemicals such as chlorine, the United States is now arming the rebels. Is it not time that we reconsidered our position on this?

[The Prime Minister]

First, on Syria, I think we are doing the right thing, which is that we are working with the legitimate opposition—we are giving them support and giving them help, but we draw up short of lethal equipment. But there is plenty we can do to help, to train, to advise and to assist, alongside the Americans, that will make a difference and bolster those voices of democracy and freedom for the Syrian people.

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right about the so-called power grab. It is the principle we should be focused on, because the rules are clear. Through the European Council, the nation states of Europe, democratically elected, come together and propose someone to head the Commission. That is how it is meant to work. If we were not to oppose what is happening, we would be accepting for ever in future that there was going to be some sort of elected president of the European Commission, even though many countries would not be taking part in that election. It is interesting that the European People’s party stood in Britain and—I checked the figures—got 0.18% of the vote. [Interruption.] I heard that—steady on! That is not a mandate. So it is a very important principle that Britain continues its opposition.

[Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central) (Lab)]

I am sure that the Prime Minister will have agreed with President Obama’s comments when he said that he thought the UK worked “pretty well” and hoped that his ally would remain effective, robust and united. Is not the G7 a perfect example of the fact that when we—that is, England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland—work together we all benefit from being at the top table and discussing the most important issues facing the world as we move forward?

[The Prime Minister]

I think that the hon. Gentleman speaks for many in this House by making that point. Britain is fortunate that we are a member of so many important international organisations. Whether it is the permanent seat at the UN Security Council, the EU, NATO, the G7, the G20 or the Commonwealth, we are able to use these forums to make our points on behalf of the whole United Kingdom and to stand up for the whole United Kingdom when doing so. Being part of these organisations increases our influence in the world, and increases Scotland’s influence in the world.

[Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)]

Does the Prime Minister agree that the whole House must remain firm in its message to President Putin that Russia’s actions are completely unacceptable and totally against the values of democracy and the principles of international law?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about that. What Russia has done is wrong—wrong in respect of the bogus referendum in Crimea and wrong in respect of the support that has been given to groups in eastern Ukraine. The only thing that it will respect is a very clear, very firm and very predictable response from the EU and the US. What has been noticeable is that while a lot of people have thought there would be great divisions opening up between the United States and the countries of the European Union, we have actually, I think, delivered a fairly joined-up and clear response to what is unacceptable.

[Fiona O’Donnell (East Lothian) (Lab)]

On the three T’s of tax, transparency and trade, what leadership is the Prime Minister giving and what progress has been made on establishing public registers of beneficial ownership in the overseas territories and Crown dependencies?

[The Prime Minister]

I am delighted to be able to do that. The first thing was our putting the whole issue on the agenda at last year’s G8 and getting countries to sign up to the Lough Erne declaration, which specifically talked about registers of beneficial ownership. The second thing was our announcement in the Queen’s Speech of a world first, I think, in publishing, here in the United Kingdom, the open register of beneficial ownership. As for the overseas territories and Crown dependencies, we should commend them for the work that they have done to bring their arrangements up to date. I had this conversation with them almost exactly this time last year before the trooping of the colour. They have made huge steps forward, and we should commend them for that and encourage them to go further.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

I commend my right hon. Friend for having a discussion with President Obama about the serious terrorism threat posed by Boko Haram in north-east Nigeria. Does he agree that the tragedy of the kidnapped girls should be resolved and that the front-line states of the United States, France and ourselves should co-operate further, because the terrorism threat to Nigeria threatens the whole stability and economy of that most important economy in Africa?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we need to give the issue further attention. At the G8 last year, we talked about encouraging leading countries such as France, Germany, Italy and Britain to partner up with nations and their security forces to try to strengthen their work in combating extremism. That is more urgent than ever, and there is a real opportunity at the NATO summit to put more flesh on the bones of that idea. As we do so, and as President Obama said in his West Point speech, we should not think that the only answer is a security and military one; we should be thinking about aid, development, advice and all the other things we can do to help the country.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

Like the Prime Minister, I had the great privilege to be invited to attend the D-day celebrations in Normandy. It made me reflect on the dangers of sitting on our hands when another country is re-arming and acting aggressively. In the past five years, Russia has increased its defence spending by more than 10% a year in real terms, while defence expenditure has been reduced in Europe by an average of 10% over the same period. The UK has cut its defence spending by 18% in real terms. Does the Prime Minister think that now is the time to reconsider those cuts, stop them and start rebuilding our defence forces?

[The Prime Minister]

On the figures, this Government effectively froze defence spending in cash terms, which was an 8% real-terms cut. We are, of course, still meeting the 2% that NATO countries are meant to meet, and we are virtually the only country in Europe that is doing so, so I think we are in a strong position to say to others that they should do more.

Where I would perhaps part company with the hon. Gentleman is on the fact that our changes are about making sure that we have effective and deployable armed forces. Some countries might maintain spending or current patterns, but they do not actually have deployable armed forces for the things that are needed. That is what we need to get countries to focus on as they come to the NATO summit.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

May I echo the Prime Minister’s appropriate words about D-day? It is very welcome that President Poroshenko has committed to normalised relations with Russia and that Russia, in turn, has recognised his legitimacy as President of Ukraine. Does the Prime Minister agree that it is important that the European Union does not slip into complacency over Ukraine and that other, alternative options, such as the alternative long-term energy strategy, should still be pursued with vigour?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. Europe has to do two things. First, it must make sure that the trade relationship with Ukraine works properly, that the implications are discussed with Russia and that a successful Ukrainian economy develops. The second and far more long-term issue is the changes to our energy markets in the European Union. We really have to set out a work programme for more investment in liquefied natural gas terminals, more reverse flows between different countries and more action on shale gas, which is an important natural resource that we ought to be making the most of. Europe will rue the day if it just puts out communiqués and talks about these things, rather than actually doing them.

[Angus Robertson (Moray) (SNP)]

The humanitarian situation in Iraq is a calamity. What can the international community do to help the more than 500,000 people who have just fled Mosul? The Prime Minister, like David Miliband, voted in favour of the Iraq war. This morning, Mr Miliband said that if he had known then what he knows now, he would not have voted in favour of invading Iraq. Given what the Prime Minister knows now, would he again vote to invade Iraq?

[The Prime Minister]

I have always made the point that I do not particularly see the point of going back over these issues. I voted and acted as I did, and I do not see the point of going over the history books. What we have to deal with now is the situation today. There is an extremely serious situation in Mosul. I agree with the United States that the threat posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in Iraq and the region needs a strong and co-ordinated response. It needs Prime Minister Maliki to pursue inclusive policies that can unite his country, but it will also require a security response from the Iraqis. At the same time, as a generous country that supports humanitarian aid, we should look at what we can do for those people who are displaced.

[Mr Ben Wallace (Wyre and Preston North) (Con)]

Although it is obviously desirable that the Germans seek an alternative nomination for President of the EU Commission, it is not entirely essential should Italy perhaps join Britain, Sweden, Holland and the Czech Republic. May I urge my right hon. Friend to seek wider support across Europe, including Italy, to try to back our position? As someone who wants to stay in the European Union, I think it is vital that Europe demonstrates that it gets the message of what the people want and picks a new, forward-looking generation of Commission.

[The Prime Minister]

I am certainly doing everything I can to make a series of points, including that we need reform in Europe, which means a particular programme of reform, and people who are capable of carrying it out. I also keep coming back to an important point of principle: if Britain were to give way on this issue and say that we accepted it, we would effectively be saying that we accepted a change to the whole way in which Europe worked for ever into the future. I sometimes find it frustrating that many other European leaders agree with me completely about the need for reform and for people who can carry it through; we need to make sure that everybody works together to get the right outcome, but I am absolutely clear that this is a point of principle and one on which we should not budge.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Prime Minister referred to Syria. Was there any discussion with the other leaders about the terrorist threat from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, both in Syria and in Iraq? This morning, there were reports of the imminent capture of the main oilfield, as well as of the events in Mosul. Does not that prove that the John Major and Labour Governments were right to give support to the Kurds to establish their autonomy and the protection and stability that exists in at least one part of Iraq at this time?

[The Prime Minister]

First, there was a discussion about the current state of Syria and there was also, as I have said, a discussion, including my bilateral with President Obama, about the specific ISIL threat in Syria and Iraq. The threat is being played out in terms of terrorist kidnap and terrorist training. British people are going to Syria and being trained, with the risk that they will come back here or to other parts of Europe and carry out terrorist offences, so it is one of the most serious security challenges that we face.

I agree with what the hon. Gentleman says about the Kurds, but I also agree that there is no option for an international-facing, open-trading nation such as Britain to turn away from the world and say we will not have anything to do with these problems because they are all too difficult or complicated. Those problems will come back and bite us unless we act with allies not only to make ourselves secure here at home, but to try to help to deliver security there as well.

[Mr Jonathan Djanogly (Huntingdon) (Con)]

Media reports indicate that Russia is being given one month to disengage from eastern Ukraine before facing further sanctions. Does my right hon. Friend agree with that, and, more particularly, what steps does he want to see taken within that month?

[The Prime Minister]

The way I would put it is that the clear view of the G7 was that the status quo of the flow of arms and people across the border and the support being given to separatist groups is unacceptable and those things need to change. We also need a responsible response from Russia to the free trade agreement between Ukraine and the EU. Both of those things need to happen for further sanction actions to be comprehensively avoided.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

Does the Prime Minister recognise that the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism in the transatlantic trade and investment partnership agreement is deeply controversial, because essentially it allows private companies to sue democratic Governments? Given that sovereignty is an issue that the Prime Minister is obviously very fond of, will he explain why he is so relaxed about the potential very serious loss of sovereignty if TTIP goes ahead?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady is right that this is a contentious and difficult issue, but I do not believe that it is one that cannot be solved through negotiation. After all, these sorts of issues come up in every bilateral trade deal. If we are going to get the full advantage of these trade deals, so that they include services and financial services as well as goods, we have to address those problems. If we made trade deals simply about reducing tariff barriers, most of that work has already been done though international agreements, so we have to do the difficult things to get the full benefit.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

As usual, the Prime Minister speaks with absolute sense on Europe, but if—despite his efforts—the next President of the European Commission is a federalist who wants even closer union, will we be one step closer to the Prime Minister leading the out campaign in 2017?

[The Prime Minister]

As I said in Sweden yesterday, obviously it will be easier to persuade people to stay in a reformed European Union if we can demonstrate that reforms are being put in place. Where my hon. Friend and I perhaps part company a little bit is that I think we have seen some good steps forward in recent years. We have cut the EU budget, so this organisation has to focus and do less—that is a positive thing. We have brought in deregulation, so it has to start taking away European laws, rather than adding them—that is a good thing. But given the results of the European elections, we now need to take that further and achieve more full-throated reform. Obviously, the more of that we can have, the easier the task those of us who want Britain to stay in a reformed European Union will have.

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

Many of my constituents, and no doubt many of the Prime Minister’s, are very worried about the possible impact of TTIP on public services. I heard what the Prime Minister said about the meetings taking place, but there is no timetable yet. Will he assure me that the impact on the NHS is at the forefront of his discussions?

[The Prime Minister]

As I said to the Leader of the Opposition, I will write a letter to him—[Interruption.] No, I am sure that I have written to him about something before, if only to wish him a very happy birthday or something like that. I do think this is important because all of us in the House feel—I would say instinctively—that free trade agreements will help to boost growth, but we are all going to get a lot of letters from non-governmental organisations and others who have misgivings about particular parts of a free trade agreement. It is really important that we try to address these in detail, and I would rather do that than give an answer across the Dispatch Box.

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

This summit should of course have been of the G8, not the G7. Do not events from Ukraine to Mosul show that we have entered a new chapter of instability at the very time when we are ever more dependent on overseas trade and resources, and does it not therefore make sense to bring forward the decision on the second aircraft carrier as a statement of maritime strength, intent and preparedness?

[The Prime Minister]

That was an ingenious way of levering in a question on an aircraft carrier into a statement on the G7. The best thing is that the first aircraft carrier is soon to be launched—that will be a very exciting moment for the United Kingdom including, indeed, for Scotland—and, obviously, we can take into consideration how to handle the second carrier closer to the time.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister must be concerned about the continuing remilitarisation of central Europe both by Russia and by NATO. Does he not think that we should pause for a moment and question the role of NATO and its continuous expansion eastwards, and start to put limits on what NATO does and what its ambitions are, as a way of de-escalating this crisis and demilitarising that region to avoid future conflict?

[The Prime Minister]

I cannot see any sort of point in trying to draw some moral equivalence between Russia’s totally unacceptable action with respect to Ukraine and the fact that NATO, as a defensive legal alliance, has sent extra forces to the Baltic states or indeed Poland to demonstrate our belief in collective defence. If we do what the hon. Gentleman has just said in his question, we would actually let Russia off the hook for everything that it wanted to do anywhere, and that is a terrible basis on which to conduct foreign and security policy.

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement and his tribute to the inspiring sacrifice of our forebears who gave their tomorrows for the freedoms that we enjoy. I particularly support the PM in his insistence that the EU Commission and President must support the case for reform. Is it not the case that Europe and the UK’s diplomatic and military strength is fundamentally linked to our economic strength and that we need to become more flexible, more entrepreneurial and more outward looking?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We will only count for something in the world if we can demonstrate that our model of democracy and open markets can deliver a strong and growing economy, and stability and security. I agree of course with what he says about the top jobs, but we should beware that I am sure all the candidates will suddenly make absolutely loving declarations about deregulation, the importance of growth and the importance of jobs, and they will even use great words such as “subsidiarity”. The point that I would make to everyone on both sides of the House is that we should not get too excited about these declarations; we have to focus on the principle that it is very important that the European Council keeps its right to suggest who should run the European Commission. That is at the heart of our argument.

[Katy Clark (North Ayrshire and Arran) (Lab)]

In Prime Minister’s questions on 30 April, I raised the cases of Princesses Sahar and Jawaher, who are being starved by the Saudi regime. Since then, I have received a letter from the Foreign Office saying that it is a matter for the Saudi Arabian authorities and the family concerned. The Government are willing to take up human rights issues in relation to other countries; why are we not willing to take up cases in relation to Saudi Arabia?

[The Prime Minister]

We do take up human rights cases when it comes to Saudi Arabia. When the hon. Lady raised this matter in April, I explained that we give proper priority to human rights and the rule of law, and we raise those issues with all countries, including Saudi Arabia. Our expectation of all states is that they uphold their international human rights obligations.

[Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

I was really pleased to hear the Prime Minister’s continued commitment to finding a workable solution for Syria. Does he agree that there is more we can do in our own country to prosecute the people involved in the training and planning of terrorism abroad, including in Syria?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, which is that we need to keep examining our own legal situation to make sure that where wrongdoing is being planned, we can prosecute. That is why I mentioned in my statement the change we are making through one of the Bills in the Queen’s Speech to ensure that we properly prosecute the planning of terrorist acts. This is now going to take far more resource by the intelligence and security services, the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Defence and No. 10 Downing street, and this is now really one of the biggest security challenges that we face—as big now, I am told, as the problem of terrorism coming from the Afghanistan-Pakistan region—so we need to make sure that the whole Government are focused on it.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the Prime Minister for his continued commitment to Nigeria. Last week, I met the Metropolitan police Nigerian police forum. There are now nearly 900 officers of Nigerian origin just in the Met alone. They are very keen to go and work with the police in Nigeria to try to tackle the human rights abuses that they perpetrate as well as the other challenges there. Does the Prime Minister agree that his Government should look into this and should tap the wonderful resource we have in human rights policing in the UK?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady makes a very good point. There is expertise in how to police in a way that properly recognises human rights, and how to have other security and intelligence forces that do the same thing. Frankly, that has been one of our problems in relation to doing more with the Nigerians. She makes an excellent suggestion, and it is something that this Government are certainly keen to do.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

On the issue of freedom of movement, does the Prime Minister accept that many millions of Britons are extremely unhappy that citizens of the other 27 European Union states enjoy rights of access to this country that are denied to the rest of the world, and that unless this preferential treatment is removed, they will conclude that the only way to resolve the problem is for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union?

[The Prime Minister]

What people want to know is that we have in place a robust set of border and immigration controls that is in our national interest. When we came to office, people wanted to see robust action to deal with bogus colleges, economic migrants from outside the EU who are often unskilled, and those often using the route of family reunion to bring in people who did not really have a proper right to be here. We have shut that down and sorted out those issues. We now need to demonstrate that the right of free movement is not an unqualified right. That is why it is very important to look at future transitional controls for new countries that join the EU. It is also important to look at benefit tourism and welfare tourism, and see what else can be done to reassure the public that we take our responsibilities for border and immigration control extremely seriously.

[Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

I thank the Prime Minister for what he has said about Nigeria and the issue of tackling extremism more generally. He said in his statement:

“We continue to help address the tragedy of the abducted schoolgirls.”

Given the depth of interest in this country in that issue and the revelations just yesterday about more abductions, will the Prime Minister update us on where this particular action now lies and on what is happening?

[The Prime Minister]

What I would say is that the British and Americans, principally, have put in some resources and help to Nigerian military and security forces—teams that can help them with their work. But we must be frank and say that this is not something we can lead or initiate ourselves; it has to be Nigerian-led and Nigerian-owned, and they will be thinking very carefully about what steps they can take. We have to be there to help and to advise, but we cannot take this over or lead it.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

I, too, urge the Prime Minister to continue his objection to Mr Juncker, who is, by nature, a federalist. What we want is a President of the Commission who will repatriate powers to Britain and other countries across Europe. Many people across Europe—not just in Britain—voted for more national control, not more control from Brussels and Strasbourg, which is what Mr Juncker would deliver.

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes some very good points. All I would add is that there are many good candidates on the left, right and centre of European politics who could play a role in the top jobs. Of course, there is not only the President of the Commission, but the President of the Council, the President of the European Parliament and the High Representative who speaks on foreign affairs. There are many good people who could do those jobs.

Let me make an additional point, and I absolutely promise that this is not a job application. Were we to follow the proposal that the Parliament should somehow choose the top candidates, as has happened in this election, we would shut off for ever the idea that we could find a serving Prime Minister, President or even Foreign Minister to run the European Commission. That would be a terrible step for Europe to take, because we need the widest possible pool of talent so that we can find people to do the things that my hon. Friend has suggested.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

I am sure that we are all reassured by the Prime Minister’s kind offer to write to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition about the TTIP. I urge him to go further and to commit today to using future G7 gatherings to convince his fellow EU leaders and President Obama of the case for safeguarding our national health service from the impact of the TTIP.

[The Prime Minister]

I do not believe that our national health service is under threat in the way that the hon. Gentleman says. There are many parts of international co-operation and trade from which our national health service can be a huge beneficiary. For instance, we lead the world in sequencing people’s DNA and building up a vast databank, so that is a huge opportunity, and some of the leaders of our best hospitals are talking to new cities that are being built in China about how to establish health services. We should not be frightened of our NHS being a great British success story, parts of which can be exported to the rest of the world. We need to ensure that the TTIP and other such things make that possible.

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

We have all seen that Russia uses her vast energy reserves as the provisional wing of her diplomatic policy. The Prime Minister is quite right to suggest that Europe needs to diversify its energy supply as a consequence. Will he encourage greater supply of gas and oil from the south Caucasus and, in particular, the extension of the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli deal in Azerbaijan? That would help the economy of Europe and the development of civic society in Azerbaijan, the all-party parliamentary group on which I chair.

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We need to look at some of the energy proposals, such as piping gas directly from places such as Azerbaijan to southern Europe, so that it does not have to go through Russian pipelines, alongside the other things that I have mentioned. The key point is that unless those specific actions are taken, a lot of European countries will remain over-reliant on Russian gas. In Hungary and one or two other countries, a very high percentage of the gas comes directly from Russia. It will always be difficult for those countries to be part of a more unified approach in standing up to Russia on those or any other issues.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister has rightly stressed the importance of the G7 behaving in a predictable manner. However, last week, under the heading “British troops in show of force on Russian border”, The Times reported that

“Ukraine…is regarded as a NATO partner.”

Surely such statements are a recipe for confusion, instability and miscalculation. The benefits and obligations of NATO membership are clear. We cannot have a penumbra of semi-NATO members. Please will the Prime Minister clarify the situation?

[The Prime Minister]

We are very clear that our obligations relate to other members of the NATO alliance. Of course, that includes the Baltic states and Poland. I will apologise to nobody for sending additional British help to those countries for things such as air defence to reassure them at this time, because they contribute to the NATO alliance, they have Russian minorities, they are extremely worried by what they have seen happening in Ukraine and they want to know that NATO means something. I am happy to say that it does.

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

On Europe, does my right hon. Friend agree that the agenda for the work programme on growth, jobs and reform has to come before the choice of which candidate will be European Commission President? The agreed agenda needs to be clear about the imperative for reform in the EU, because there is a broad consensus that what we need is real change in Europe, not simply more of the same.

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. Angela Merkel and I have been working very closely on that, because we should be using this moment, when Europe is considering who should be the next Commission President, to be very clear about what we want the Commission to do. If the European Council lays out a work programme that includes things such as trade deals, deregulation and reform and dealing with the abuse of freedom of movement, it will be much easier to say to whoever runs the Commission in the future, “This is the platform that we agreed on. Will you please stop interfering so much in the affairs of nation states and concentrate on the things that need to be fixed?”

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

The G7 communiqué rightly stressed the importance of genuinely sustainable development. A key part of that is development assistance. Although it is really welcome that we are achieving the 0.7% target, should we take it from what the Prime Minister said that it is a forlorn hope that it will be enshrined in legislation, or would he support such a Bill if it came forward?

[The Prime Minister]

I support meeting our pledge to the poorest people in the world, which is that we will achieve the 0.7% target. We have done that and we should go on doing it. I am very clear about that. On the G7/G8, what matters is having a proper accountability report so that everyone can see who has kept their promises and who has not. It is quite important that at the next G7, which will be held in Germany, we have a very clear list of who has done what. I am confident that, if I am still Prime Minister at that time, we will still be meeting our promises.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

Does the Prime Minister agree that, whether it is at home in Birmingham or abroad in Nigeria, it behoves all Members of this House to unite to tackle Islamic extremism, wherever it occurs and whatever form it takes?

[The Prime Minister]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend. That is what the extremism taskforce, which I set up, is all about. We have a problem not with Islam, which is a religion of peace and one of the great world religions, but with a minority of Islamist extremists, who have a completely unacceptable world view. We need to deal with that on our campuses and in our colleges, our prisons, our schools and elsewhere. The extremism taskforce brings together the whole Government to ensure that we sweep away these problems in all those areas of our life.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

What discussions were there at the G7 on the post-2015 development framework? Will the UK Government give a commitment that they will ensure that tackling extreme economic inequality will be one of the commitments in that framework?

[The Prime Minister]

There was a discussion about development. We agreed that the G7 next year in Germany should have a particular focus on what will replace the millennium development goals. The work that Britain did on those has been greatly welcomed. The hon. Gentleman used the words “extreme…inequality”. I think it is important that at the heart of the goals we have a vision of eradicating extreme poverty. That has to come before issues of inequality. Inequality is an important consideration, but we should not take our eyes off the prize, which is abolishing the idea that people should be living on less than a few dollars a day in our world. That should be the key focus.

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

The fact that the EU single market in services remains incomplete after so many years represents one of the biggest failings of the EU, but also one of the greatest opportunities. Does the Prime Minister detect a real sense of change from his discussions with other leaders, including at this summit, and does he agree that reform at the top of the European Commission will ultimately drive the completion of that vital market?

[The Prime Minister]

To answer my hon. Friend very directly, I do sense a change. When it comes to the single market in services, it is not always the newer and relatively poorer countries that are the problem; sometimes, it is the richer, longer-standing members that have rules on lawyers, architects, doctors, pharmacists and so on that go against the single market. I sense that people realise that we cannot go on talking about this issue and that things have to be done. That will not happen unless we have a reform-minded head of the Commission.

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

I welcome the Prime Minister’s words on climate change, but he will know that there was considerable disappointment that not one G7 member managed to send a Minister to the Bonn United Nations framework convention on climate change meeting last week. Will the Prime Minister confirm that he intends to attend the Ban Ki-moon summit later in the year?

[The Prime Minister]

I will be looking carefully at this. Obviously, we have the NATO summit and there are party conferences, the dates of which have been rather shuffled around this year because of the absolutely vital Scottish referendum. I will make sure that either I go or we send very senior ministerial representation because I think that it will be an important meeting. The key role for Britain is to make sure that the EU as a whole puts its best foot forward by agreeing a good deal in September.

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

I welcome the Prime Minister’s and the G7’s tough stance on Russia’s unacceptable actions in Ukraine. With that in mind, will my right hon. Friend tell the House whether the G7 discussed the strategic implications of Russia’s recent deal on gas with China?

[The Prime Minister]

We did discuss the recent deal. It is interesting that the Russians felt it necessary to do this deal, and perhaps at a price not quite as attractive as they might have hoped. It underlines the importance of energy policy to Russia, so the correct European response is to make ourselves more independent and less reliant on Russian gas. That is doable. Britain has very little reliance on Russian gas—just a few per cent.—but we need to help other European countries make sure that they can have a similarly open and competitive market.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister’s answers to the Leader of the Opposition and others about the TTIP and its potential effect on the NHS seem to be that if he just explains it better, all will be fine. Many people do not want to wait until somebody makes a legal challenge at some point in the future, and it is too late to do anything about it. Would it not be easier to craft an exemption for the domestic operations of organisations such as the NHS so that we do not have to face that risk?

[The Prime Minister]

Perhaps I will include the hon. Lady on the mailing list for the letter that I am going to write. Having looked briefly at this issue, my understanding is that the NHS is not at risk, but I understand that people believe it could be, so we need to set out why we do not think that that is the case and what the negotiations will consist of. We must ensure that hon. Members who want to support the TTIP have good answers to give the NGOs. Although some NGOs talk a good game on trade and its importance, when it comes to the crunch they often take quite an anti-trade position. I think that they are on the wrong side of history on this because trade has been a great way to lift people out of poverty, but I am happy to address these issues as fully as I can.

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

When our all-party parliamentary group visited Brussels to support the TTIP, we found there was not one representative of small business on the advisory council that was looking at the deal. I thank the Prime Minister for his support of the TTIP and urge him to make the case that its benefits will be for our smallest businesses throughout Britain and the EU.

[The Prime Minister]

It is very important that we listen to the voice of small business as we go about this. Sometimes these issues can be dominated by the big lobbies and it is important that we let small business speak clearly.

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Prime Minister referred to energy security, which businesses, particularly those in light industry in Feltham and Heston, have raised with me. Will the Prime Minister confirm whether the UK, in line with other G7 nations, has started its energy security assessment? If so, when will the findings be made public?

[The Prime Minister]

We address energy security all the time through the national security strategy and the National Security Council. It is one of our considerations. Perhaps I could let the hon. Lady know about the specific issue that she raised.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

On Iraq, does the Prime Minister agree that the near breakdown of governance is down to Prime Minister Maliki’s failure to form an inclusive Government rather than a sectarian Government, which is now leading to weapons that have been given to the Iraqi army ending up in sectarian and extremist hands in Syria?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Iraq has always faced the challenge of having Sunni, Shi’a and Kurdish populations. It requires politics and a political leader who can bring them together and make sure that everyone feels part of the whole. That has not always been the case with Maliki’s Government. It needs to be; otherwise, we will see more breakdowns such as the one that has happened in the last 24 hours.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the Prime Minister for his commitment especially to the new measure to enable prosecution of those who train for terrorism abroad. Dissident republicans have sourced explosives and weapons from terrorists in the middle east and they have also been trained in certain parts of the world, including the middle east. What actions will the Prime Minister, the Government and the G7 take to address this issue, given that there are pockets of support across the Republic of Ireland for dissident republicans?

[The Prime Minister]

First, let me make it absolutely clear that laws that we pass in this House to combat terrorism apply to dissident republicans or people on the other side of the divide who take up arms for terror, just as they apply to anybody else. The actions that we are taking to try to stop the leakage of weapons, explosives and techniques from these broken countries into the UK apply just as much to the problems that we could have in Northern Ireland as to those that could occur anywhere else.

[Mr Brian Binley (Northampton South) (Con)]

I was privileged to observe the elections in Ukraine and I saw people queuing for two and a half hours outside polling stations. That underlined to me the importance that they accorded to the elections. There is no doubt that Mr Putin is fomenting violence in eastern Ukraine, and a cynic might say that that was to take attention away from Crimea. What conversations did the Prime Minister have specifically about Crimea? Are we still adamant that we will hold Russia to account for what was an illegal action in anybody’s terms?

[The Prime Minister]

The British Government’s view, like that of the rest of the EU, the G7 and America, is that what happened in Crimea is illegal and wrong. One cannot individually and unilaterally redraw the boundaries of a nation state, and that needs to be properly addressed. As for my hon. Friend’s other remarks about ensuring that we stand up strongly for the Ukrainian people’s right to choose their future, I absolutely agree.

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

I commend the Prime Minister for first putting and then keeping tax transparency at the heart of the G7/G8 agenda. The Business, Innovation and Skills Committee will soon conclude an inquiry into UK extractive industries and our position around the world. May I urge the Prime Minister to stress that it is in the interests of international NGOs based in this country and those of the UK’s extractive industries for the UK to keep playing a leading role on transparency?

[The Prime Minister]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. It is not only in our interests because we want a world where we do not have poor countries exploited by individuals or companies with corrupt payments, and it all being done in a totally shady and underhand way; it is also in our interests, as a country whose companies do not behave like that, to try to raise the level of every country and every company in the world. It is absolutely the right agenda and we should keep at it.

[Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)]

I welcome the Prime Minister’s comments about new trade deals. Does he agree that they are a vital way of backing British business and of creating more secure manufacturing jobs in Britain?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about this. There are always sceptics about these deals, but the good thing about the current situation is that we can point to things such as the EU-Korea free trade deal, which has led to big benefits for the European Union and for Britain, and say that more deals like that mean more jobs, more exports and more wealth and prosperity in the United Kingdom. Particularly when we are dealing with countries such as Korea and Japan, which have not always had high tariff barriers, but have had several ways of trying to keep their markets locked up, if we can open up those markets, there are real opportunities for Britain.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

Having served in Operation Warden, the no-fly zone over northern Iraq in the 1990s, I join many colleagues in having deep concerns about the deteriorating security situation in northern Iraq. A constituent who is working there as an engineer contacted me last night, and dozens of Kurdish students attend my local Huddersfield university. Will the Prime Minister acknowledge the relative peace that there has been in the Kurdistan region for the past couple of decades and do all he can to ensure that that stability is spread to this troubled part of the world?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point about the relative stability of the Kurdish part of Iraq. As we have said, we need an Iraqi Prime Minister who leads an inclusive Government, bringing together Sunni, Shi’a and Kurd for the future benefit of that country. There is no reason why Iraq cannot be a success story. It has the mineral and oil wealth and it needs to ensure that that wealth is properly put to the use of everyone in the country.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

However deeply flawed and imperfect the referendum in Crimea was, it is clear to all that a majority of Crimeans want to be part of Russia and not Ukraine. In his discussions with the new Ukrainian President, was it made clear to the Prime Minister how the Ukrainians see the situation being resolved? Do they want Crimea back, or what other solution are they offering?

[The Prime Minister]

Obviously, the President of Ukraine wants the territorial integrity of his country to be respected. My hon. Friend might be right that, over time, it will be found that a majority of people in Crimea want to be part of Russia, or independent or whatever, but it must be for the Ukrainian Government, under the Ukrainian constitution, to set out how that should go ahead. It is rather like we have done by giving people in Scotland the right to choose their future—as I say, I hope they stick with the United Kingdom. That is the way things should happen, not an independent, artificial, unilateral move by Russia and holding a referendum when there were not even proper registers of electors.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

Remaining with trade, global markets are becoming ever more competitive as newer economies develop. Does the Prime Minister agree that despite the remarks of the Labour party, it is important to get on and achieve an early and successful outcome at the TTIP talks?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is right. There are always concerns from people who see free trade as a zero-sum game: there must be a loser, there must be a winner, and somehow there will be a hollowing out of middle-class, middle-income jobs in our world. I do not believe that is the case. Britain has a lot of goods and services that the world wants to buy, and arguably a lot of those—particularly things such as intellectual property, patent protected services, and financial, banking and insurance services—require a greater opening of other markets to get in there, perhaps more so than just manufacturing and selling a particular good. It is really important for our whole future and prosperity that those deals go ahead.

[Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)]

The Prime Minister will know that manufacturing output, which he has just been talking about, is up 4.5% this month on the same time last year. He may not know, however, that the west midlands is the only region in the United Kingdom—and one of very few regions in Europe—that has a balance of payments surplus with China. My question follows that of the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) on the BRIC countries: what discussions did the Prime Minister have at the G7 to ensure that there will not be dumping of manufactured products from those countries, and that we continue to see long-term economic success?

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Gentleman has made his point, and at rather too great a length I am afraid.

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and if we look at where exports are growing fastest in the United Kingdom, it is not the City of London or the south-east—the west midlands is leading the way. Of course we must have proper rules on dumping, but we sometimes find people using accusations of dumping to oppose the loosening of trade, and I do not think we should see that. The manufactured goods being exported from the west midlands—things such as Jaguar Land Rover cars—are exported on the basis of quality. People want to buy those cars, and the faster we can open up markets and try to fight protectionism in countries such as Brazil or some of the other BRICs, the better for all concerned.

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the Prime Minister and colleagues.

Nominations for candidates for the post of Chair of the Backbench Business Committee closed at 5 o’clock yesterday afternoon. Only one nomination was received, and therefore a ballot will not take place. I congratulate Natascha Engel on her re-election as Chair of the Committee.

I remind Members that the book for entering the private Member’s Bill ballot is open for Members to sign in the No Lobby. It will be open until the House rises today, except during any Division.

Debate on the Address

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[5th day]

Debate resumed (Order, 10 June).

Question again proposed,

That an Humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, as follows:

Most Gracious Sovereign,

We, Your Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled, beg leave to offer our humble thanks to Your Majesty for the Gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament.

Jobs and Work

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I inform the House that I have selected amendment (b) in the name of the Leader of the Opposition.

13:44

[Mr Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)]

I beg to move an amendment, at the end of the Question to add:

“but regret that the measures in the Gracious Speech fail to ensure that those who put in a hard day’s work get a decent reward for doing so, or cut the costs to the social security system resulting from the current record 5.2 million workers on low pay and the rising tide of insecurity at work; and call on your Government to bring forward measures setting the Low Pay Commission a five year target to raise the National Minimum Wage faster than average earnings while retaining the capacity to take account of shocks to the economy.”.

We are here to debate the Queen’s Speech, and in particular its impact on jobs and work. Ultimately, to create jobs and work so that someone can raise a family we need sustainable and balanced growth. We cannot legislate our way to sustainable and balanced growth, but a Queen’s Speech and the proposed legislation therein has a role to play. Essentially, today we are debating the economic policies of this Government.

[Stephen Mosley (City of Chester) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Umunna]

Just one moment. I will give way in a bit.

When I first arrived in this House—together with the hon. Member for City of Chester (Stephen Mosley), I think—I remember that all Government Members wanted to do was talk about the previous Government. This is now their fourth Queen’s Speech and fifth year in office, and it simply will not do to drone on about the last lot. They are in government; they have a record and we will hold them to account for it.

When this Government entered office the country was recovering from a recession that was caused by a global financial crash and precipitated by irresponsible behaviour in the banking sector. When they took office, a recovery was under way, unemployment was falling, growth was rising and stability was beginning to settle in. Those are the facts. However, the extreme fiscal consolidation that they attempted to embark on choked off growth for the best part of three years, causing the Business Secretary, the Work and Pensions Secretary and their ministerial colleagues to fail completely to meet their deficit reduction targets. That led to a huge amount of misery for the British people as unemployment soared beyond 2.5 million. Consequently, they borrowed more in three years than the last Labour Government did in 13—again, the facts.

During those three wasted years, the eurozone slumped almost as badly as Britain. Indeed, the Government frequently pointed to the impact of the crisis in the eurozone on our economy. Of course, that crisis hit our exports, and the Business Secretary, like others, referred to that and its impact in this House during previous Queen’s Speech debates. There are, however, a couple of important points. As the economist Lord Skidelsky put so well in his essay on this subject in March, we should have done so much better than the eurozone, given that we retain the pound and control of our exchange rate. The eurozone slump arose in part because European Finance Ministers were pursuing exactly the same kind of failed policies as the Business Secretary and his colleagues.

Things have thankfully moved on. I know the Prime Minister and Chancellor like to take the credit for the return to growth that we are seeing, but let us be clear: the fact that the recovery has kicked in is down to two things. First is the utter determination and hard work of our businesses and firms in weathering the storm, as well as their ingenuity and continuing capacity to innovate, and second is the hard work and compromises made by their employees.

So often we have sat in this House and had to listen to Government Members, week after week, smearing and denigrating our trade unions. I will be most surprised if we get through this debate without that happening again. The agreements that so many workplace convenors reached with firms and businesses in this country—taking pay cuts; accepting reduced hours—helped keep those firms afloat during these difficult times. That is why I am proud to be a member of the GMB and Unite.

We are certainly not out of the woods. The fact that the Bank of England still has the pedal on the floor with a 0.5% interest rate illustrates how fragile the economy still is, and how far the recovery has to go. More than three quarters of a million young people are still out of work. On average, people are still earning £1,600 a year less than they were when this Government came to office. In fact, just before I came into the Chamber, I was speaking to my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) who told me that she has a 42% rate of poverty among the children in her constituency, so we still have a lot more to do.

The 2008-09 crash exposed long-standing, big structural problems in our economy that go back decades, admittedly under Governments of different persuasions, and have to be dealt with. This is in spite of the progress made by the previous Government and the stronger supply-side conditions we achieved. What we have now is an economy unbalanced by sector and region, short-termism in our corporate culture leading to low levels of business investment and low productivity, a dysfunctional finance system, and a stubborn and increasing trade deficit.

[Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman think it was a measure of the success of the previous Labour Government when our country lost 1.7 million manufacturing jobs?

[Mr Umunna]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman that we need to diversify our economy and grow our manufacturing base, but, as I have just said, these structural issues have grown up over a number of decades under Governments of different persuasions.

At the same time as we are dealing with these structural issues, we face more competition from emerging markets and others than we have ever experienced before, with technological advance and automation creating new jobs but destroying old ones too. That has left our economy failing to meet the material needs of too many families. The problems of these imbalances have resulted in our country having one of the highest incidences of low-paid work in the OECD.

I, of course, accept that any job is better than no job. I note that the Chancellor gave a speech earlier this year committing his party to full employment. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. The only problem with what the Chancellor said is that it is almost 70 years late. It was, of course, the great reforming Attlee Government who first committed to full employment, in our manifesto “Let us Face the Future” in 1945. Unlike the Chancellor, however, we have long sought to build on that commitment. What we want is for everyone in this country to be able to access good work that affords them a level of dignity and respect, and, importantly, that is secure and pays a wage that they can live off. That is simply not the reality for far too many people in Britain in 2014.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

There are now 1 million people on zero-hours contracts. Does my hon. Friend accept that their lives consist of moving in and out of benefits? When there is discontinuity in benefits, people have to go to food banks. That is not the way to build a strong economy. Surely, we need infrastructure in city regions and to move forward with export-driven growth, rather than having people living in poverty on zero-hours contracts.

[Mr Umunna]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

A few moments ago, the hon. Gentleman talked about a wage that people can live on. Will a future Labour Government commit to having a living wage in place of the minimum wage, or will his speech be more about rhetoric than firm commitments and pledges to the British people?

[Mr Umunna]

The hon. Gentleman raises a good point, because 22% of employees in his constituency under this Government are paid less than a living wage. I will come on to what we intend to do and what is so sorely lacking in the Queen’s Speech.

We do not want to wait until a Conservative Chancellor sees the light and matches our ambition in 2084. What we are hoping is that in the Queen’s Speech, and the Bills that follow, he will match our commitment and ensure that we have a better-waged economy. There are two parts to this challenge: first, action to tackle low pay and insecurity at work—I will come on to what the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) talked about—and, secondly, the implementation across Government of an industrial strategy to nurture and grow the sectors that produce the better-paid jobs we want to see across the country.

On low pay, we make no apologies for reminding the House at every opportunity that it was this party, in the face of strong opposition, that introduced the national minimum wage. When we entered office, some people were earning as little as £1 an hour, a practice I am proud to say we outlawed. To give just one of the many examples of the opposition we faced, when we introduced the national minimum wage into this House 17 years ago, a member of the then shadow Cabinet said:

“If, as I and all my Conservative colleagues believe, the DTI’s minimum wage comes into effect, it will negatively affect, not hundreds of thousands but millions of people.”—[Official Report, 4 July 1997; Vol. 297, c. 526.]

That shadow Cabinet member is now the Work and Pensions Secretary. We had the good sense to ignore him.

[Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

On low pay, is my hon. Friend aware of allegations that several UK parcel carriers, namely Hermes and Yodel, are using so-called lifestyle couriers and effectively paying less than the minimum wage to the staff they use?

[Mr Umunna]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I was not aware of that, but I am sure the Business Secretary has heard what he said and will no doubt ensure that his Department looks into those two firms.

We have to build on the national minimum wage. Many Members, for example my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery), have argued for us to do so. It is currently £6.31 and is due to increase to £6.50 in October, but that is just 53% of median hourly earnings. We want to set—this in part relates to the point raised by the hon. Member for Dover—a more stretching target for the minimum wage for each Parliament, within the Low Pay Commission framework, to increase it faster than average earnings, while retaining capacity to take account of shocks to the economy. We would also give local authorities new powers of inspection and enforcement of the minimum wage, alongside central Government, to ensure it is enforced properly. We would also increase fines for non-payment to £50,000.

A number of measures are contained in the small business, enterprise and employment Bill. We are told, among other things, that the Bill will strengthen UK employment law by tackling national minimum wage abuses. It does not appear, however, that the Government will come close to matching our commitments to strengthen the national minimum wage. There will be no stretching target, no enhanced role for local authorities and much lower fines than we envisage. We will be pushing the Government to adopt our package during the passage of the Bill.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I am glad to hear that the hon. Gentleman is talking about moving towards something that might eventually look like a national living wage. He will recall that it was the Greens on the London Assembly who made the Living Wage Commission a possibility. Will he also consider, as inequality is such a major issue, maximum pay ratios between the highest and lowest paid in companies?

[Mr Umunna]

I have to say to the hon. Lady that I thought it was the excellent Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, who introduced the London living wage.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

May we add to our consideration of people who end up not being paid the minimum wage the scandal of workers in the care sector? A constituent told me recently that although she is contracted to work 40 hours, she is lucky if she is paid for 15 to 20 hours. She is not paid travel time, is paid in dribs and drabs, and short-notice cancellations are the norm. In many weeks she has ended up being paid for only 15 to 20 hours, yet these are the people we are trusting to provide care for our most vulnerable people.

[Mr Umunna]

I think my hon. Friend is referring to somebody who is on an outrageous and exploitative zero-hours contract that is not reflective of her working conditions. I will come on to that shortly.

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Umunna]

I will just make a little progress and I will give way in a bit.

As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition said last week, under this Government the shocking fact is that for the first time on record more people who are in poverty are now in work than ever before. The minimum wage is important. It is set with an eye to the impact on jobs, but we want employers to pay a living wage. Record numbers are currently paid less than the living wage—I have talked about the 22% in Dover, for example. It is estimated that we have 5.2 million people earning less than the living wage, which is costing the Treasury, at the very least, £750 million in tax credits and £370 million in means-tested benefits. We want to do all we can to ensure that anyone who puts in a hard day’s work gets a decent reward for doing so. That is why it is disappointing to see nothing, not just in this Queen’s Speech but in all four to date, to incentivise employers to pay a living wage.

[Stephen Mosley]

The proposals to increase the national minimum wage are welcome, but they are no use if the Government then increase taxes and take more money out of people’s pockets. Will the hon. Gentleman do what his leader failed to do last week and rule out any increases in national insurance contributions if Labour were to win the next election?

[Mr Umunna]

I note that 18.2% of employees in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency are paid less than the living wage. I hope he will be encouraging Ministers in his Government to adopt our proposals to incentivise people to pay it, so that he can reduce that percentage in his constituency.

As for the tax and spending policies of any Government in a future Parliament, these will be set out in a Budget at the time. One of the questions that the hon. Gentleman and others will have to answer is whether they envisage making further reductions in the top rate of tax, giving people earning millions of pounds an even bigger tax cut than they have already.

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

rose—

[Christopher Pincher]

rose—

[Mr Umunna]

I thought that would rile them. I am going to get on, because I want to ensure that we get other people into this debate.

If elected next year, we would introduce “make work pay” contracts to encourage employers to pay a living wage and help businesses to raise the wages of millions of low-paid workers. This is fully costed and will be entirely funded from the increased tax and national insurance revenue that the Treasury would receive. Again, I encourage the hon. Member for City of Chester to encourage those on his Front Bench to adopt that proposal. If they do, we will support it. However, the silence we have heard from those on the Government Benches when it comes to doing anything on the living wage is quite extraordinary. People will remember the Prime Minister’s speech to London citizens back in 2010. In the last week of that campaign, he said he would do all these things to promote the payment of the living wage and he has done next to nothing—nothing—in office.

However, wages are one thing; insecurity at work is another, and never in recent times has it been so resonant an issue, as my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) said. I am not at all surprised by that, because since they came to office this Government have mounted a full-frontal attack on people’s rights at work. This is often talked about by Government Members as though it were a trade union issue, but it is an every person issue. Every single person in this country who works has had their rights at work attacked by this Government. They have increased the service requirement to claim for unfair dismissal from one to two years, depriving people of the right to seek justice when they have been wronged in the workplace; they have reduced compensatory awards for unfair dismissal; they have reduced the consultation period for collective redundancy; and they have watered down TUPE protections for people. I could go on. Most starkly, this Government have erected a barrier in the way of those seeking redress with the introduction of tribunal fees.

But perhaps the biggest symbol of insecurity is the extensive use of zero-hours contracts in 2014. The Office for National Statistics estimates that there are 1.4 million zero-hours contracts in use right now.

[Christopher Pincher]

I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. Just in case his Front-Bench team want to prompt him with statistics, my constituency is Tamworth.

The hon. Gentleman talked about the importance of having a job instead of no job. Has he had correspondence with Labour-run Liverpool council or Labour-run Newham council, which make extensive use of zero-hours contracts?

[Mr Umunna]

What I have said time and time again in this House when we have debated zero-hours contracts—I will come to this point in a moment—is that the Opposition are not opposed in principle to any use of zero-hours contracts. The question is: what are the Government going to do about their exploitative use? What they have announced so far comes nowhere near close to what we have proposed to deal with the exploitative use of such contracts.

Zero-hours contracts do not oblige employers to offer guaranteed hours of work to their workers. Sure, some workers—it is for this reason that we do not oppose zero-hours contracts in principle—choose the arrangement because they like the flexibility, but for many it leaves them subject to the whim and demands of their employer to work at short notice, promoting insecurity. These arrangements make it almost impossible to own a home, save for a pension or plan family life.

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech and rightly highlights the difference between the use and abuse of zero-hours contracts. We have seen high levels of youth unemployment in this country. Does he agree that the use of zero-hours contracts sometimes hides a problem that exists for young people getting on to the work ladder? A constituent of mine talked to me about the insecurity he feels. He cannot plan ahead and does not even know whether he can accompany his mum to a hospital appointment, because he has no idea what will come his way in the week.

[Mr Umunna]

That is a perfect example of the egregious and exploitative use of such arrangements. We are told that the employment Bill will help hard-working people to have confidence in the terms of their contracts and that it will crack down on the abuse of zero-hours contracts, such as the example my hon. Friend mentions. However, the details that we know of suggest that the Government are simply not going far enough. On its own, banning exclusivity clauses in such arrangements will not do the job. We need, among other things, to give workers the right to a fixed-hours contract when they have regularly worked hours with the same employer for a period of time—such as the constituent of my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South—and to protect them from having their shifts cancelled at short notice without compensation. Above all, we must ensure that people know that they are on a zero-hours arrangement.

I have talked about jobs, wages and security at work. The other part of reforming the jobs market is the implementation across Government of a proper industrial strategy, both to create the right conditions for businesses to thrive in all regions of the country and to put the full weight of Government behind those sectors that can win gold medals in the global marketplace for the UK, creating more of the middle-income jobs we want to see.

[Charlie Elphicke]

rose—

[Mr Umunna]

I will just make a bit more progress.

Part of that involves ensuring the right environment across the country in all regions for our businesses to grow, and part of it involves a sector-led approach, looking at where we have a competitive edge and comparative advantage relative to our international competitors. I am very supportive of the sectoral approach. It was of course the Labour Government who led the way in that by setting up the Automotive Council.

When it comes to creating the right environment, ensuring that people have the skills our businesses need is crucial. Increasing the quantity and quality of apprenticeships is a must. We have a record to be proud of. In government, we rescued apprenticeships from the scrap heap. We more than quadrupled starts—[Interruption.] Government Members do not want to hear it, but let me give them the facts. We more than quadrupled apprenticeship starts, from a woeful 65,000 under the Major Government to 280,000 in our final year in office.

[John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)]

Is it still the Opposition’s policy to get rid of the intermediate apprenticeship?

[Mr Umunna]

No, it is not, and I should say that the Deputy Prime Minister’s intervention on this subject while standing in for the Prime Minister at PMQs was deeply embarrassing, given that he was attacking an independent report that was produced by a group of experts for us which said exactly the same as his own Secretary of State’s report for his Department on the same subject.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the best ways of increasing the numbers of advanced and higher-level apprenticeships would have been to implement my Apprenticeships and Skills (Public Procurement Contracts) Bill? It would have meant that the billions of pounds of investment that we spend as taxpayers in public procurement could lever in extra apprenticeships at the higher and advanced level.

[Mr Umunna]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for drawing attention to his excellent Bill, which I and many of my hon. Friends were here to support, but which was disappointingly ignored by the Government.

What is happening to apprenticeships now? This issue, frequently raised here by my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool South (Mr Marsden) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne), is worrying.

[John Hemming]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Umunna]

No, I want to make some more progress—[Interruption.] I have been quite generous in giving way.

Countless other colleagues have talked about opportunities for young people. My hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) has drawn attention to the lack of apprenticeship opportunities for people in her constituency. Under-19 apprenticeship starts have fallen by 17,000 over the last academic year, and there are now 2,000 fewer under-19s starting apprenticeships than in 2009-10, and less than 2% of apprenticeship starts last year were at level 4 or above. Where was the Bill in this Queen’s Speech to require all large companies taking on large Government contracts to provide apprenticeships, as we called for? It was not there. Where was the requirement for all apprenticeships to last at least two years and to be at level 3 or above to ensure we maintain their quality? It was not there. We need to see more done on that.

It is important to help those who want to get into work through jobs and training, but it is also important to help those who want to create their own jobs, and they will not be able to do that without the finance. We are told that the small business Bill will make it easier for small businesses to access finance. I really hope so, because in the last year, net lending to small and medium-sized businesses fell by £3.2 billion. Scheme after scheme after scheme—from Project Merlin to funding for lending—has simply failed to resolve these problems. In the last quarter, net lending to businesses by funding for lending participants actually fell by £700 million—an issue on which I know my hon. Friends the Members for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) and for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) have been campaigning.

[Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

Let me inform my hon. Friend that what I hear in my Blackpool surgeries, particularly from small businesses and hoteliers, about the continued failure of a number of banks, including those still supported by this Government, underlines what he is saying. Does that not also underline the fact that we should be looking at the regional initiatives on banks that he and his colleagues have brought forward rather than having the long-standing dithering from the Secretary of State on the whole question of the investment bank?

[Mr Umunna]

I agree with my hon. Friend. The problem with the Government’s scheme is that, to date, the main transmission mechanism to our small businesses has been the very high street banks that have been the problem. That is why we want to set up not only a British investment bank, but a network of regional banks like the Sparkassen in Germany, to ensure that we get the money to our small businesses.

Finance is one thing, but cash flow is an issue too. If, as we are told, the Government are to extend the obligation for public sector bodies to pay small businesses as their suppliers within 30 days and to apply it all the way down the supply chain, that would be welcome, but on its own it will not be sufficient. We will press Ministers to introduce—I think this will be in the small business Bill—more stringent reporting requirements for customers of small businesses to crack down on those who do not pay on time. I think that the practice of late payment is an absolute national scandal that needs to be dealt with.

I saw the Business Secretary and the Deputy Prime Minister make their trip to the pub the other week. On the one hand, I suppose this was a “kiss and make up” event after the activities of a certain rogue pollster—perhaps the Liberal Democrats’ equivalent of Lord Ashcroft; and on the other hand, it was to draw attention to the measures in the Queen’s Speech on a new statutory code and independent adjudicator to ensure that the sole traders and small businesses that run our 20,000 or so tied pubs are treated fairly. To be honest, after the dither and delay we have seen from this Government and the numerous debates we have had to force on the issue, any action from this Government is welcome, but my fear is that the real reforms that we and others across the House have campaigned for will be watered down. We will scrutinise the detail when the provisions are introduced.

I want to say a word about rebalancing, particularly between regions and within regions. It has simply not happened, and I see nothing in this Queen’s Speech to change that.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a really strong point about the need to get additional help to the regions. Does he agree that it is unacceptable that start-up businesses in Durham have reduced by 14% over the last year? It is clear that the Government’s policies are not addressing the issues facing the north-east.

[Mr Umunna]

This is an important issue. Since the recovery kicked in, we have seen around 54% of GDP growth coming in London and the south-east, and around 75% of new jobs created in the same region. It is essential that we see more of that happening in my hon. Friend’s constituency and others around the country.

Let us be honest about it, the Government’s flagship scheme that was supposed to address this problem—the regional growth fund—has become a bit of a joke. More than a third of winning bidders under that scheme’s first round have now withdrawn entirely, while others have been left waiting almost two years to receive their money. Hundreds of millions of pounds of growth fund moneys across the regions are gathering dust in Government coffers and have not yet reached the winning bidders.

Of course, having scrapped our regional development agencies, which I am sure the Business Secretary privately feels was a big mistake, the Government replaced them with local enterprise partnerships, which have simply not been given appropriate budgets or powers to do what was asked of them. In fact, the vast majority of bids made by LEPs to the regional growth fund have been rejected in some regions. Many colleagues across the House—my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (David Wright) has spoken of his area’s desire for a city deal—will tell us, as my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods) has just done, that a lot more needs to be done to rebalance our economy geographically.

On sectors, the Business Secretary’s predecessor, the noble Lord Mandelson, started pursuing a course of industrial activism, which, in the main, the Business Secretary has continued in his overall approach. There is a degree of consensus on the principles—that is a good thing—and industrial strategy is part of agenda 2030, our plan for better balanced sustainable growth, which is winning support from businesses across the country. But unless we get the overall environment right—on skills and finance, as I have discussed—across the whole country, delivery on these sectoral strategies will be compromised.

Let me finish by saying a few words about our export position. The Government promised an export-led recovery in their plan for growth. That has simply not materialised, and the measures that the Business Secretary and the Chancellor have introduced to date seem to have made no impact on that. In fact, the Office for Budget Responsibility said that the Budget would have no impact on our net trade position.

The promise to increase exports to £1 trillion by 2020 is disappearing out of reach. It has been reported that civil servants have privately conceded that the Government’s promise to get 100,000 new companies exporting by the end of the decade is “not going to happen”. This is hardly surprising when the Government have not done enough to ensure that small firms are made aware of the support that is out there. Half the members of the Federation of Small Businesses do not even know that UK Trade & Investment exists. They need to be given much more information and to be made more aware of what help is available. But then the performance of some of these schemes has been totally lamentable. The £5 billion export refinancing scheme, which was launched in July 2012 as part of the Government’s UK Guarantees scheme, and the £1.5 billion direct lending scheme, launched to great fanfare several months ago, have not helped a single firm. We need to see much more competent delivery of these schemes.

It is clear that our country has huge potential, and there is a huge amount of talent waiting to be unlocked, but people need a Government to empower them to realise their dreams and aspirations. That is not happening under this Government. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) talks about the long-term economic plan. The fact is that for many people—including people in my constituency, where, on average, people are earning £2,300 a year less than they were when the Government came to office—this “long-term economic plan” is a long-term economic sham. That is why we aim to ensure that we can allow and empower people to meet their aspirations by making certain that, this time next year, we are sitting on the other side of the House.

14:20

[The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Vince Cable)]

It is a pleasure to respond to the Opposition amendment, and to introduce a debate on the general topic of jobs and the world of work on what is a very good day for jobs. I was struck by the fact that, in something over half an hour, the shadow Secretary of State—the hon. Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna)—did not make even a passing reference to today’s unemployment figures.

I shall take a three-pronged approach to this debate. I shall deal first with the creation of jobs. Job creation depends on enterprise and business, and a key element of the Queen’s Speech is support for business through the small business Bill, which covers issues such as access to finance, Government procurement, prompt payment and, of course, pubs.

Secondly, I shall make it clear that as our economy recovers—and the recovery is now very firmly embedded —we want to ensure that that recovery is translated into higher-paid jobs and more secure employment. The small business Bill contains measures relating to zero-hours contracts and the minimum wage. It will also ensure that people have decent pensions when they retire, which is another thing that the shadow Secretary of State did not mention. Over a long period, for demographic and economic reasons and as a result of policy failures, there has been a gradual decline in the defined-benefit system, but my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb), the Pensions Minister, are reconstructing a sensible, durable environment for pensioners.

Thirdly, I shall talk about the issue of trust in business. One of the blows to our economy, and many other western economies, during the financial crisis has been a loss of trust. The Bill contains a serious of measures—to which the shadow Secretary of State did not refer—relating to transparency of ownership and the duty of directors, which will be important to the reconstruction of that trust.

Let me begin, however, by commenting on the Opposition amendment. I try to be polite, but the amendment is not exactly bulging with creative policy initiatives. It contains only one recommendation, which relates to a

“target to raise the National Minimum Wage faster than average earnings”.

The shadow Secretary of State seems to be telling me to do what I am already doing, which is giving guidance to the Low Pay Commission so that it can do exactly that; but I am not entirely sure what the Opposition’s policy is. Is the target to be mandated? If so, that undermines the autonomy of the Low Pay Commission. If not, what the shadow Secretary of State recommends is exactly what we are doing at present, which is giving forward guidance.

I should like to clarify another point. Two or three weeks ago, the Opposition had another policy on the national minimum wage, namely that it should be indexed to earnings. There is no reference to that in the amendment. Is it still the Opposition’s policy? I suspect that, when they did the sums, they discovered that indexing the minimum wage in that way would make it lower than it is now, and quietly dropped it, but may I ask what is the current status of the proposal?

In the amendment, the shadow Secretary of State sensibly acknowledges that the Low Pay Commission must

“take account of shocks to the economy.”

However, he does not mention whether the commission should take account of the impact on employment. That has been at the heart of its work. If it is indeed to take account of the impact on employment, why—as my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Stephen Mosley) asked earlier—are the shadow Secretary of State and his colleagues now promoting the idea of higher taxes on employers through national insurance? If this is to be the major theme of the Opposition’s attack on the Queen’s Speech, their approach will require a great deal more clarity and a great deal more consistency.

Let me now say something about today’s figures, because they are important, even if the shadow Secretary of State did not think it worth his while to talk about them.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Vince Cable]

May I finish this point first? As the hon. Lady knows, I am happy to take interventions.

In the last quarter, 340,000 new jobs have been created; 780,000 have been created in the last year, and 2 million have been created since the Government came to office. The level of unemployment is now 6.6%, and is one of the lowest in the developed world. We are approaching German levels, and our figure is significantly better than those in almost all the other European countries. We have 600,000 job vacancies, and if the shadow Secretary of State goes around the country talking to businesses, as I do, he will know that the talk is increasingly of job shortages rather than unemployment. In many key categories— those aged 65 and over, women, disabled people, and lone parents—more people are in work than before the recession began. Of course there are serious unemployment problems among young people —we acknowledge that—but youth unemployment is 100,000 down over the year, while long-term unemployment is down by 108,000.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Does the Secretary of State share my concern about the growing gap between the unemployment figures and the claimant count? More than 2 million people are still unemployed. It is clear that many of those people are not receiving benefits of any kind, and they seem to have disappeared from the statistics. Is the Secretary of State, perhaps in partnership with his colleagues, trying to find out why that is and what we can do to help those people?

[Vince Cable]

I have been quoting the figures from the International Labour Organisation, which provides the international accepted definition, and they include the people whom the hon. Lady has described. Of course, many people are self-employed, and many of those are potential entrepreneurs. I am sure that she would not want to diminish their contribution.

Opposition Members often say “The job figures are fine as far as they go, but are those jobs full time?” As a result of the strengthening of the labour market within the last year, three quarters of all new jobs have been full-time. Moreover, some interesting information has emerged during the last few weeks. People who are doing part-time work, which is often criticised, have been questioned to establish how many of them wish to do full-time work. The current figure is about 20%, and it is useful to compare that with the figures for the European Union as a whole, for France and for southern Europe, which are 30%, 40% and 60% respectively. The underlying trends in the labour market—not just the top-line figures—are significantly healthier in this country than they are in almost every other part of the European Union.

[Fiona O’Donnell (East Lothian) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State has not yet mentioned young unemployed people. I know that he is always keen to look for ways in which the Liberal Democrats are making a difference in government. Will he tell us about his leader’s youth contract, which, it was claimed, would help 160,000 young people into work by incentivising employers? How many young people have benefited so far?

[Vince Cable]

The fact that youth unemployment has fallen by 100,000 in the last year is significantly owing to the youth contract, as is the advance in apprenticeships—and the shadow Secretary of State’s comments on apprenticeships were an absolute travesty. We know that there has been a big increase in terms of both quantity and quality, and, of course, the support given to employers so that they can take on young people has been an important and extremely positive element of the youth contract.

[Mr Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab)]

One of the problems is that all too often under this Government work simply does not pay enough. Does the Secretary of State accept any responsibility for the fact that since the Government came to power, the number of working people claiming housing benefit in Croydon has increased by 1,100%?

[Vince Cable]

Quite a lot of those people have moved from unemployment to work, which explains the change in the definition. However, we want to ensure that people are in work and are properly paid in work, rather than being dependent on benefits.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

What are the Government doing to deal with the fact that people under 25 are four times more likely to be unemployed than those over 25? He has talked about youth unemployment, but that group really is not benefiting from any of the Government’s policies.

[Vince Cable]

The hon. Lady makes a valid point. I know that in her constituency there is a particular problem with graduate unemployment, which we have discussed. Youth unemployment is a long-standing problem. It was very substantial even before we got into this major recession and financial crisis. We need to deal with it in a variety of ways: job training, apprenticeships and by providing a better-working market.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

I ran a business before coming into this place and the Secretary of State will know that what businesses need is confidence that they will be rewarded for making the right decisions. That will encourage businesses to take on more people and deal with many of the issues raised by the Labour party. This Government have given businesses confidence and that is why we are seeing significant reductions in unemployment.

[Vince Cable]

That is why I started my speech by saying that the most important thing we are doing is encouraging small businesses to grow. That is where the jobs come from. That is what I am keen to get to, but as the Opposition amendment was couched solely in terms of the second element of the Bill, that is what I am now trying to address.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Vince Cable]

I will take two more interventions and then move on.

[Charlie Elphicke]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Opposition’s stance, which is to pick out any poor statistic or position, highlights that they are completely in denial about the recovery’s strength? It exposes their lack of any vision to secure economic growth for this country.

[Vince Cable]

I was going to go on shortly to what is underpinning labour market growth, which is strong and balanced economic growth. I will come back to that.

[Gordon Birtwistle (Burnley) (LD)]

Is the Secretary of State as disappointed as I am by the constant deriding of manufacturing and the growth in the economy by the shadow Secretary of State, who, every time he gets up, runs the economy down? Is that the right way to give confidence to businesses to drag us out of the recession that Labour left behind?

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Vince Cable]

I will take more interventions later, if hon. Members will let me make a little progress. That intervention prompts me to remind the House where we are with the economy. We are the strongest growing of the major G7 countries. Major forecasts by the IMF and the OECD suggest that this year growth will be between 2.7% and 3.5%, which is quite exceptional in current circumstances, with the trend continuing in 2015.

What is more important is the fact that that has been achieved in a balanced way. In the last three quarters, manufacturing has been growing faster than the economy as a whole. Business investment, which was seriously depressed through the recession, is now experiencing double-digit growth on an annualised basis. I was taken aback when the hon. Member for Streatham started to tell me about the industrial strategy. I was in the House for the 13 years of the last Labour Government. Throughout that period, any suggestion that we have the kind of industrial strategy that we are now leading was regarded with utter ridicule by—

[Mr Umunna]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Vince Cable]

I will in a moment. The hon. Gentleman has reminded us of some genuinely useful things that were left by my predecessor, including the Automotive Council. Of course no money or long-term investment was attached. We are now doing work with the high-value manufacturing sector through the Catapult centres. There has been a billion-pound co-investment in new automotive propulsion systems. That did not exist. However, some things left by my predecessor were useful. They were small, but they did contribute to what is now a valued industrial strategy supported on both sides of industry. I am glad that the Opposition have bought into it, albeit rather belatedly.

[Mr Umunna]

I am sorry, but that is rather ridiculous coming from a BIS Secretary who in opposition argued for the abolition of his own Department. Now he is trying to pose as a great industrial activist.

[Vince Cable]

My Department is now very different. It now includes universities, science and many other things. In one period during the last Labour Government—the hon. Gentleman may remember it; I think that the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) was the Minister who started the change—there were about 186 different systems of industrial support, the cumulative effect of which was largely negative because we had large-scale deindustrialisation. We are pursuing the strategy in a much more concerted way, in partnership with business and on a long-term basis. That is what we are achieving.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

The right hon. Gentleman talks about how the policy is seeking to grow the economy in a balanced way, but does he accept that many regions of the UK are not growing at the same rate as the south-east of England, for example? Places such as Northern Ireland are suffering from that. Why in the Queen’s Speech is there no reference, for example, to the devolution of corporation tax to the Northern Ireland Executive, which would help them to grow the economy in Northern Ireland by more than is happening at present?

[Vince Cable]

I accept the point that there are regional differences in the pace at which the recovery is happening. As it happens, of the four nations in the UK, Scotland and Wales are growing more rapidly than the UK average. However, Northern Ireland is not. I know that there is a debate about corporation tax. I do not think that is the central issue. The problem in Northern Ireland, as the hon. Gentleman well knows, is that two major banks are bad banks and are seriously contracting lending to small business. I am trying to work with the Northern Ireland authorities to assist with that.

[Mr Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman has not so far given the figures on zero-hours contracts. He will know that the Office for National Statistics has said that 1.4 million people are on those contracts, but the Government say that only 250,000 are. What is the reason for the difference?

[Vince Cable]

I was going to talk about zero-hours contracts later, but since the right hon. Gentleman has asked me the question, I will try to explain. There are very different estimates of zero-hours contracts. The ONS gives very different figures from other surveys. They range from roughly 2% to 4% of all jobs. It is worth mentioning this in passing. The shadow Secretary of State has been quite modest about his own contribution. He has been in correspondence with the statistical authority, which rebuked him for being misleading in terms of the trend in zero-hours contracts. It is a significant problem, and in a few moments, I will come to how we want to address it.

Let me move on to the underlying question in relation to zero-hours contracts and to what the Opposition are trying to say about living standards. What has always surprised me in these debates is that people are surprised that living standards fell in the wake of the financial crisis. Let me rehearse some basic facts. In the 2008-09 crisis, the British economy contracted by over 7%—more than any other major economy. It was the worst shock to our country—worse than in the 1930s. It was only after the first world war that we had a comparable hit to our economy. It was an enormous disruption, with massive implications for people’s jobs and living standards. It did happen under the last Government. It was not entirely their mistake, but it was on their watch and they had a substantial responsibility for it.

That contraction of output inevitably translated into people’s living standards, and median wages in real terms contracted by about 7% as a result of the crisis. That has been the impact on living standards. It is clear. What is different from previous recessions is that the people at the bottom end of the scale have been protected by two things: first, the minimum wage—there is cross-party consensus on that, which I welcome—and, secondly, tax policies that led us to lift large numbers of low earners out of tax altogether.

Let us look at what the combination of those factors has meant and the work of the Institute for Fiscal Studies. It makes the point that the contraction in real take-home pay for people in the bottom 10% was 2.5%. For the people in the middle, it was 6% and for the people in the top 10%, it was 8.7%. That was an essentially progressive response to a major economic crisis. Of course there are still major inequalities of income and wealth. We acknowledge that, but that relates to the top 1%, rather than the top 10%.

How do we strengthen the minimum wage system, which my colleagues and I fully buy into? We decided earlier this year to increase the minimum wage faster than inflation—a 3% increase, the biggest cash increase since before the recession. The Low Pay Commission has issued guidance to secure improvements to the real minimum wage. We accept that one of the main challenges—which the last Government did absolutely nothing about—was enforcement. We inherited a system in which the maximum fine per company was £5,000. Under this legislation, we will strengthen it to £20,000 per worker—a big step up in taking seriously sanctions in respect of the minimum wage. We now have a naming and shaming regime in place, and 30 companies have been named since it was initiated a few months ago, and as a result of much more active intervention by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, we have increased by a factor of 38% the amount of arrears identified and paid to employees. All the things that the shadow Secretary of State is calling for are now being done.

Let me address the specific issue of zero-hours contacts. It is a problem, but let us get it into perspective. Although there are wide variations in the estimated number of zero-hours contracts, we are talking probably about between 2% and 4% of jobs. Of course we do not want people in that type of employment to be disadvantaged, but many take up such employment voluntarily, and particularly for students and older workers, it is an attractive system. For some, however, it is exploitative and as a result of our consultation—one of the biggest that the Government have undertaken, with over 36,000 people responding—it was very clear that there were some points on which action needed to be taken, and we are going to take action on exclusivity.

[Geraint Davies]

Does the Secretary of State accept in principle that if the Government converted a £20,000 a year job into two £10,000 a year jobs, with the higher tax threshold, he would be moving from tax payment to zero tax payment, and that this inflexibility and zero-hours and part-time work are contributing massively towards the increasing debt we face under his Government?

[Vince Cable]

That is attributing a slightly sinister train of argument to employers, which is not the case. There are many industries that have flexible working arrangements—and zero-hours contracts are only one form of flexible working—which the work force accept. The shadow Secretary of State talked proudly about his membership of Unite. I engage with the car trade unions, which accept that zero-hours contracts have quite an important part to play in the flexible working in the automobile industry.

[Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)]

In the Government’s response to the debate that we held on zero-hours contracts last October, the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon), said that it was perfectly reasonable for Opposition Members to ask whether the consultation would also address problems with short-time working and agency working. What conclusions did the consultation come to on those aspects of employment practice?

[Vince Cable]

I am not sure precisely what the hon. Gentleman is driving at. As he knows, there is an agency workers directive, which we have transposed into British law. It is not terribly popular with many parts of business, but it was agreed between employers and employees. I am not sure what else he is referring to.

[Barbara Keeley]

I want to refer back to the points made about the quality of jobs and whether jobs are full time or part time, and how people feel about that. Will the Secretary of State comment on a recruitment exercise that an agency has just done in my constituency for jobs in a warehouse that start at 3 in the morning, when there is no public transport? A very large number of people were put through a week-long recruitment exercise for that, and only a very small number were offered jobs. They were offered four hours of work a day, starting at 3 or 4 in the morning at a warehouse. People were mandated to attend that training. This is the kind of thing that is happening. Does the Secretary of State think that my constituents want to be offered jobs picking in a warehouse at 3 in the morning when there is no transport and where, instead of offering full-time jobs to fewer people, a larger number of people are being offered four or five hours of work a day? How can people live with that kind of casualisation?

[Vince Cable]

Obviously, I do not know all the details of that case, but it seems a very bad one. It is not clear to me whether it is to do with the employer or the way that the benefits system has impacted on people, but if the hon. Lady writes to me we will get it investigated.

[Charlie Elphicke]

I am a passionate believer in reform of zero-hours contracts, but does the Secretary of State agree that Opposition Members’ comments sit ill with the White Paper that the Labour Government issued that said that Labour

“wishes to retain the flexibility these contracts offer business”?

They then proceeded to do nothing about it for the rest of their time in office.

[Vince Cable]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for reminding us of that. Two of my Labour predecessors investigated this problem and neither of them felt there was sufficient cause to change the legislation.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

The figures show that 580 more people are employed in my constituency now than this time last year, which is positive news for the area. However, what conversations is the Secretary of State having with the devolved Administrations to ensure unemployment continues to be tackled, especially for low-wage earners?

[Vince Cable]

Although the situation is improving in Northern Ireland, there are significant unemployment black spots. I want to work with the Northern Ireland devolved authorities to make sure that we deal with them systematically. As the hon. Gentleman knows, this is a long-standing problem in Northern Ireland that goes back long before the recession.

[Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I raised previously allegations concerning a number of UK parcel carriers and minimum wage enforcement. Will the Secretary of State undertake to look at whether the minimum wage is being properly enforced by UK parcel carriers? Apart from the justice issues for the individuals concerned, there is the potential to affect the sustainability of the universal service obligation that Royal Mail is under.

[Vince Cable]

Certainly, if there is abuse of the minimum wage, we will want to know about it and we will investigate it. Liberalisation and the opening of the market was mandated by the European Commission some years ago, and it was implemented by the last Government, and we are now seeing the consequences in terms of pay and conditions.

[Fiona O'Donnell]

Will the Secretary of State remind me—and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, while he is sitting at his side—whether he still believes that any of my constituents on jobseeker’s allowance who turn down a zero-hours contract job offer should then be subject to sanctions?

[Vince Cable]

The same sanctions apply to all forms of employment.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend has taken several questions on zero-hours contracts, but may I ask him a slightly different question? One of the most interesting statistics that has come out today is from the south-west Manufacturing Advisory Service, which serves as a leading indicator: 49% of all small and medium-sized enterprises manufacturing in the south-west have said they expect to employ more people over the next six months. Does my right hon. Friend agree that when we look at the forward leading indicators—whether for zero-hours or full-time employment in a great industry like aerospace in the corridor between Bristol and Cheltenham or other manufacturing industries around my constituency of Gloucester—we see there are huge indications of really positive jobs growth in really good growth industries?

[Vince Cable]

Yes, there are, and that is a very good example. We had an earlier exchange on the aerospace industry. One of the major accomplishments of the industrial strategy is that we now have a partnership stretching between Parliaments, guaranteeing large-scale investment by the Government as well by industry, and that is one of the factors contributing to the confidence that my hon. Friend described.

In my concluding remarks, I want to refer to the specific measures introduced in the small business Bill, which will support small business. Let me say at the outset that I fully accept the shadow Secretary of State’s point that one of the central issues affecting small business is access to bank credit. It remains a very big issue, and it is not difficult to understand why. We had the biggest banking crisis in our history going all the way back to the beginning of the 19th century. We have never had anything on this scale, and Britain was uniquely affected because of the scale of banks in the UK relative to GDP—it is higher, I think, than in any other country except Iceland—and, again, the Labour Government had responsibility at the time. The effect of the bank collapse and the subsequent deleveraging that has taken place, particularly in RBS, have been deeply damaging to business. We understand that and are taking steps to deal with it.

The British Business bank is now playing a significant part. Over the past year, I think there have been net flows of £660 million into the small business sector. That is a mixture of new flows to organisations such as Funding Circle and to the challenger banks, together with the guarantee schemes, which have increased by a factor of 75% since they came under the Business bank.

We are running up a downward-moving escalator, but the Government accept that we have a responsibility to intervene heavily to support like lending in the wake of an extremely damaging banking crisis. That is the context in which we are operating. The Bill will contain a series of measures that will help further. Late payment is a massive issue for small businesses, with something in the order of £30 billion in outstanding payments. The legislation will introduce a requirement on companies to be much more transparent in how they deal with late payments.

We also want to introduce much more competition in banking, to ensure that banks will come forward and lend to small businesses. Within the last year, we have seen the creation of a whole set of new banks, supported by the Business bank. The big obstacle—which I recall describing in the House 15 years ago at the time of the Cruickshank report—is the fact that the four leading banks had a stranglehold over the process through the payments system. We have introduced a new form of regulation of the payments system, opening it up to competition and preventing the kind of stranglehold that the existing banks have. The Bill will enable that to happen. In addition, we want to ensure that we have a proper system of data sharing. The lack of such a system is one of the obstacles to new banks coming in and competing. There are also problems with export finance, but the new Bill will enable us to extend export finance into new areas.

The shadow Secretary of State talked about the small business measures having taken a long time, and we accept that. There has been a massive consultation on pubs, for example. It has gone on for many years—indeed, it started long before this Government came into office—but we are now taking action. There will be a statutory code and an arbitration body. There will also be an option for an independent, market-based rent review. I am sure that we will discuss this legislation extensively, but it does represent action after many years of pressure from the Select Committee and from other Members.

Other business measures will include those relating to public procurement. This Government have opened up public procurement in central Government to small business in a way that has never happened before, but that has not always happened throughout the wider public sector, including local government. The measures that we are introducing in this big Bill will considerably improve practice in public procurement, opening up the rest of the public sector.

[Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State might have had representations from local opticians who had previously provided a service to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency. All their contracts have been taken away from them, bundled up and handed to one big national company, Specsavers. Does not that show that, although the rhetoric might be fine, many Departments are still letting the system down?

[Vince Cable]

When the right hon. Gentleman looks at the figures, I think that he will find that there has been a substantial increase in the share of small businesses in central Government procurement. I am not a customer of Specsavers, but I will happily investigate the case that he raises.

The criticism from the Opposition and certain outside commentators has been that the legislative programme is light, and that there will not be a great deal for the House to do. In relation to the small business, enterprise and employment Bill, I would simply say be careful what you wish for. It will be one of the major pieces of legislation, and it will get to grips with many detailed, complex issues. It will make a significant difference. We are introducing it against the background of a real, balanced recovery that is having a major effect on employment, and it will reflect the substantial achievements of this Government.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. It will be obvious to the House that a large number of people wish to speak in the debate and that there is limited time. I should also point out that the Front-Bench speeches have taken well over an hour, so if Members wish to remonstrate about the shortness of time, they should address their remonstrations not to the Chair, but to those on the Front Benches. I have to impose a time limit of six minutes on Back-Bench speeches.

14:54

[Mr Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Lab/Co-op)]

In view of the shortness of time, I shall confine my remarks to two aspects of the Queen’s Speech. The first relates to the commitment to increase the number of apprenticeship places to 2 million, and the second relates to pub companies. Both issues have attracted considerable interest from the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee, as the Secretary of State has acknowledged.

I welcome the commitment to having 2 million apprenticeship places, but if the Government are to avoid the accusation that they are not matching their rhetoric with detailed policies to deliver those places, we shall need more information on this proposal and on the changes to other policies that will be necessary. In regard to the Government’s phraseology, I must point out that “apprenticeship places” are not necessarily the same as apprenticeship placements. If we look at the records for the past full year, we can see that the number of apprenticeship placements that were actually taken up fell to 510,000. Raising the total number of apprentices to 2 million will therefore require a considerable change in policy. Perhaps more seriously, there has been a drop in the number of apprentices taking placements in the key sectors at which the Government are aiming this policy—namely, construction and manufacturing. If we are to have a skills programme based on apprentices that is designed to address the acute skills shortage—which will be strategically important in delivering economic growth—we will need a far more comprehensive list of policy proposals.

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Bailey]

I am sorry; I will not give way owing to the shortness of time.

A factor in getting more people to take up apprenticeships in key areas is the culture that exists in schools. We need better careers advice, as the City and Guilds Group pointed out following the Queen’s Speech. It commented on the lamentable level of careers advice in schools, which was ensuring that awareness of apprenticeships in key areas remained low compared with the awareness—and, indeed, promotion—of more academic qualifications for young people. I cannot go into greater detail at the moment, but we need a change in the culture in our schools if we are to deliver a pipeline of young people into apprenticeship places in order to deliver on a forward-looking economic agenda for the Government. If we were to revert to a numbers-driven target for apprenticeship places, there would be a real danger of boosting numbers without taking into account quality or relevance. That would simply reinforce the negative perception of apprenticeships, creating a further barrier to recruitment.

My other point relates to pub companies. The Secretary of State has rightly recognised the work of the Select Committee on this issue, and I pay tribute to him for reversing the position of the previous Minister responsible for pub companies, who was prepared to commit only to a voluntary approach. The Secretary of State has recognised that the industry has dragged its feet and been obstructive, and he is now introducing legislation.

The proposals for a statutory code and an independent regulator are welcome, although we shall no doubt want to debate them in greater detail later. However, the failure to commit to introducing a mandatory free-of-tie option will leave publicans feeling let down and disillusioned. It was ironic that when the Secretary of State and the Deputy Prime Minister held their meeting in a pub, we were not quite sure whether a pub company owned that pub. They will have had to be quite selective about the pub they visited in order to get the welcome that they wanted.

The fact is that the overwhelming number of tenants support a free-of-tie option and a mandatory rent review. According to the Government’s consultation, 92% of tenants saw the beer tie as their biggest challenge. My conversations with tenants on this issue and the proposals in the Government response indicate that one of the key problems is the deep suspicion of the rent revaluations based on Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors guidelines; their experience has not given them any confidence that this will significantly address issues that have been so long debated.

I welcome the Secretary of State’s commitment to review things after two years. Although I am not in a position to bind the future Select Committee, I strongly recommend that it carry out further inquiries in this area, with a view to raising the issue again with future Governments.

15:00

[Dame Angela Watkinson (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

I welcome the opportunity to make a brief contribution to this debate on the Gracious Speech. I shall concentrate my remarks on small businesses, growth and jobs, but first I shall comment briefly on the inclusion in the Serious Crime Bill of the recognition of the emotional and psychological neglect of children as an offence.

The wilful withholding of emotional warmth and support is damaging to psychological well-being and to mental health, and can lead to negative long-term outcomes for young people, an absence of self-worth, risky behaviour, poor academic achievement and offending. I hope that during the Bill’s passage consideration might be given to extending legislative protection to children up to the age of 18 who have experienced emotional deprivation in this type of upbringing, have never received approval, praise or encouragement, and would find sustaining independent adult life without succumbing to its many pitfalls extremely challenging.

I welcome the measures in the small business, enterprise and employment Bill, which will build on the fall in unemployment both nationally and in Hornchurch and Upminster. Since 2001, my constituency had been stuck with an unemployment rate of about 3.5%, but this year the claimant rate has dropped to 2.8%. That is not just a statistic; it means that many individuals who have been released from benefit dependency have gained not just an earned income but self-esteem and the satisfaction of independence. This Government’s welfare reforms have all contributed to the fall in unemployment, especially for people who have been out of work long term. The £2,000 off employers’ national insurance bills, the doubling of small business rate relief until April 2015, the increased number of apprenticeships and the new private sector jobs, particularly in retail and construction—up 9% and 19% respectively in Hornchurch and Upminster—have all contributed to the fall in unemployment.

I pay tribute to the schools and colleges in my constituency, and to the value they place on fiscal education, the preparation they give for adult life in their citizenship classes, and the development of life skills, which inspire ambition and aspiration in their pupils to achieve their maximum potential through further education, apprenticeship or employment. That is particularly important for pupils who come from workless households, where these examples of opportunities for a successful future may not be considered. Those pupils need to know that the professions, public service and starting up a business are all open to them, and are not just for other people.

Ford, as a large employer in a neighbouring constituency, is also playing an important role by supporting the women in engineering compact, which was launched on 7 May. Ford has traditionally provided jobs for my constituents and is now influencing the future career paths of female students by demonstrating the attractiveness of technical careers to women by visiting schools and colleges to talk about the opportunities in STEM—science, technology, engineering and maths—careers.

Small businesses are the foundation of the local economy in my constituency. The majority—86%—have an annual turnover of less than £250,000; 10% have a turnover of between £250,000 and £l million; and only 4% have a turnover of between £1 million and £5 million. These figures represent an increase of 11% in the first quarter of 2014 over the same quarter in 2013, which explains the increase in local job availability. Many people commute daily to London to work using c2c or the District line, but the many local small businesses provide jobs for local people who prefer to work locally. I know they will welcome the establishment of a deregulation target and the introduction of a new appeals champion to protect business against the impact of costly and burdensome regulation. They will also welcome the new measures to tackle late payment by larger firms, which causes serious cash flow problems in a small business. In addition, the streamlining of access to the public procurement market for small businesses will widen opportunities for the growth that enables those businesses to create more jobs and help unemployed people back into work.

The London chamber of commerce and industry has welcomed this Bill but has raised concern about inadequate skills availability, reporting that 45% of London businesses had difficulty recruiting suitably qualified staff to fill vacancies, and that despite stubbornly high youth unemployment there remains a significant skills gap in a number of sectors. Employers recognise that younger people can be a great asset to their business, but developing their skills can be a costly investment. There is an opportunity for closer collaboration between colleges, training and apprenticeship providers, employers and government to pool their knowledge and experience to ensure that young people are acquiring the right skills to make them employable. Both the London chamber of commerce and industry and the Federation of Small Businesses welcome this Bill, and so do I—I wish it a speedy passage through Parliament.

15:06

[Mr Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)]

In March 2014, the Chancellor of the Exchequer said that

“while unemployment has come down, there are still over 2 million looking for a job. It will take time to fix that. But we will not rest while we still have so much wasted potential in some parts of our country.”

I could not agree more, but in the fifth year of this Government I would offer an alternative recipe to the one that has so far been provided.

The fact is that there is greater insecurity in the workplace, not as a consequence of the Government’s economy strategy but because it is at the heart of that strategy. As we have heard today, competition on low wages and low-skilled jobs will not lead individuals or families out of impoverishment. People face the insecurity of zero-hours contracts, which we have rightly discussed, with the Office for National Statistics estimating that 1.4 million are involved. It is shameful that nobody can say with any certainty the precise number of people who are forced to work on these contracts. I welcome the Secretary of State’s saying in response to my intervention that this is “a significant problem”—it is indeed, and I hope he will accept that now is the time to lift the lid on what is going on, to remove the veil of secrecy and to provide some transparency so that we can be told exactly what is going on.

Earlier this year, I asked the Chancellor a question about unemployment in my constituency, but his reply skated over the reality. Setting aside part-time, zero-hours and low-paid jobs, I will tell the House the reality. Since the global crisis, the unemployment figures for my constituency have rocketed from 2,800 in 2008 to 5,300 in 2014—that is a staggering increase of 89.3%. What about the future? Youth unemployment has increased by 53.5% in the same period. And all this has happened as the rich have become wealthier while under this Government millions of people—many of them in my constituency—have barely had an increase in pay.

Is it any wonder that these policies are leading to extremes? “Get us out of Britain”, says the Scottish National party in Scotland. “Get us out of Europe”, screams the United Kingdom Independence party. “Let’s become inward-looking and introspective in response to global challenges”, it says, while 3.1 million jobs are at risk over Europe. The media would have us believe that in the recent European elections, people voted principally against Europe and against immigration. Neither I nor the polls agree. As Nye Bevan once said:

“Such a naive belief in the rational conduct of human beings would wipe out the whole of modern psychology.”

Is it any wonder that, out of frustration, people looking for jobs can be duped or beguiled into believing the propaganda from both UKIP and the SNP? They are responding to their own experiences of declining standards of living and austerity. Therein lies my deepest worry, which is reflected in what is going on in France. I am talking about the challenge to freedom itself.

As we emerged from the second world war, we had to deal with greater economic challenges and a far bigger deficit problem than we have now. Sir William Beveridge in his book “Full Employment in a Free Society,” wrote:

“If full employment is not won and kept, no liberties are secure, for to many they will not seem worthwhile.”

There is an immense responsibility on this House, at this period in our history, to respond to the real concerns of ordinary people, who know, despite the statistics and propaganda, that life for them is very difficult. There are difficulties in dealing with the cost of living; difficulties in dealing with energy prices; and difficulties in finding jobs and in keeping them. In the interests of all our people throughout the United Kingdom, we should ensure that there are real, well-paid jobs and a good future for our young people based on proper apprenticeship and training. We should seize the opportunity, even in the short time between now and the election, to respond to the British people and ensure that we aim to help the many and not just the few.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. As I indicated earlier, there are a great many colleagues still wishing to speak; indeed there are 40 of them. Therefore, after the next speaker, I will reduce the time limit to five minutes.

15:12

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

Like the Secretary of State, let me start by concentrating on today’s good employment figures, especially those from Henley. We have seen a 60% drop in the unemployment figures, giving us a lower level of unemployment than before the general election of 2010. The figure itself stands at 371, which makes us the third best performing constituency in the UK—the two constituencies that beat us probably have more sheep than people. It is 21 lower than in April 2014, and 209 lower than a year ago. Crucially, the number of young unemployed remains around the 20 mark for the two towns of Thame and Henley.

The shadow Secretary of State attacked this Government’s long-term economic plan, but these figures show that the plan is working, and the good news that there are 2 million more people in work since the election reinforces that point. The news is exceptionally good. In my constituency, we would have to go back more than six years to find such good figures. It is a remarkable achievement and I am proud of the way in which business has reacted locally to help young people get into jobs. These remain difficult times for families who are still feeling the impact of the recession, but the foundations for a broad-based recovery are now in place. I am keen to see living standards continue to rise so that we can build on those foundations, and we need to keep growing the economy and creating more jobs.

The problem for me is that there are too few people who are unemployed to have a meaningful jobs club. I found a way around that, which was to have a club to encourage and teach businesses how to keep their employees rather than my trying to find placements for them.

In looking at how this Queen’s Speech continues to build on the good work already started in the long-term economic plan, I want to put my finger on one measure in particular, which is national insurance contributions. Cutting businesses’ national insurance contributions by £2,000 has taken 450,000 firms out of paying employer NIC all together. That follows on from increasing the secondary threshold—the level of earnings above which employers start to pay national insurance for an employee.

We were prevented from sharing in the national insurance holiday introduced in the first Budget as it was regionally oriented away from the south-east, but the £2,000 relief introduced in Budget 2013, the employment allowance, was a welcome addition. Will Labour now confirm that it will not increase that tax again?

The national insurance contributions Bill heralded in the Queen’s Speech is required to simplify the collection of NICs payable by the self-employed and to tackle certain avoidance measures. I urge Ministers to look carefully at the situation in which a small proportion of people pay their class 2 NICs and are not in self-assessment. They need to be able to continue to pay their class 2 NICs.

I was pleased to see that the avoidance measures tackle the situation in which people hang on to the cash in question through long disputes and it will stop them gaining a potentially significant cash-flow advantage. I urge Ministers to ensure that the scheme is tightly drawn so that it will not catch innocent providers.

I also want to touch on the small business, enterprise and employment Bill. Small businesses make a huge contribution to the UK economy and account for around half of UK jobs. One of the areas that the Bill tackles is that of employment tribunals. I understand that it tries to prevent their postponement. Employment tribunals often suffer unnecessary delays, and one of the contributing factors is the frequent requests for postponements at short notice. That has a big impact on the costs to business. It is also necessary to ensure that the rights of claimants are protected, and I was pleased to see the idea of a penalty for non-payment of employment tribunal awards.

One of the other sections of this Bill is the need to ensure that employers pay their workers at least the national minimum wage. The enforcement of that measure is very serious. We are already the first Government to name and shame employers. The number of employers penalised last year almost doubled to more than 600, and the new measure is a logical extension of that.

Finally, on apprenticeship reforms, anything that can be done to ease access to apprenticeships and increase our understanding of them has to be welcome. I am thinking of short, simple standards rather than long, complex frameworks to characterise apprenticeships. It will also be necessary to increase their quality through higher expectations of English and maths and to raise aspirations

The Queen’s Speech contains those and many other measures, which will help to boost jobs and work. It will help small businesses access the public procurement market and hopefully lead to more reductions in unemployment in my constituency.

15:18

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

When the opportunity arises, I will express my reservations about, if not opposition to, the recall Bill. It is not the right way of dealing with a matter that is obviously of concern to all of us, which is those Members who act in a wrong and dishonest way. We should bear it in mind that two Members have recently resigned in circumstances that we all understand, so there is a different way of dealing with these matters rather than in a recall Bill.

Obviously, I want to deal with the main subject of today’s debate. The Queen’s Speech refers to rewarding those who work hard, and I agree with that; it is a good sentiment. However, it does not describe the situation as it is. Millions—literally millions—of people throughout the country, a good number of whom are actually in jobs, are struggling week by week to try to make ends meet. Despite all the denials by Government Members, poverty is increasing. That is certainly the case in my constituency and other parts of the west midlands. More than 50% of families who are living in poverty have at least one adult in work. Yes, we want people to be able to have jobs—unemployment is a curse and the Labour party has said that from the very beginning, ever since it was formed—but it is also a question of having adequate wages.

The reasons for the sort of poverty experienced in places such as my constituency are easy to see: low wages, wage freezes, rising everyday costs, not least of domestic fuel—and let us not forget for one moment the infamous bedroom tax. I am very pleased that we have already given a firm pledge that that notorious measure will be repealed by the next Labour Government. A lot has been said by Opposition Members, and rightly so, about the abuse arising from zero-hours contracts.

For those Government Members who say that this is all an exaggeration and that poverty does not exist at anywhere near this level—

[Mr Robin Walker]

indicated dissent.

[Mr Winnick]

I see the hon. Gentleman shaking his head. Let me mention one statistic that has been sent to all Members by the Trussell Trust, which, as we all know, provides food banks: in 2013-14, nearly 1 million people received three days of emergency food from that trust alone—there are other such food banks—whereas the figure for 2012-13 was 347,000. In one financial year, there has been a 163% increase in the number of people needing to go to food banks. People do not go to food banks for fun. They do not go to food banks because it is free food, as some Government Members wish us to believe. People cannot just go to a food bank and get food; they have to have a voucher and satisfy someone that there is a need for that assistance, and there is a limit to the number of times one can receive food from a food bank. The Trussell Trust’s figures illustrate what is happening.

In a report published last month, the charity Save the Children referred to the fact that, under current policies, there will be an increase in the number of poor children. The Institute for Fiscal Studies predicts that, under existing policies, there will be a one third rise in child poverty by 2020. That should concern us all.

I was pleased and proud in December 1997 to support a national minimum wage, which was fiercely opposed by the Tories. So passionate was their denunciation of that policy, they gave every reason against it. That was an excellent and necessary measure, but we have to build on it and have a decent living wage. There is no reason why, in a prosperous society such as ours, millions of people should have to live in the circumstances I have described.

15:23

[John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)]

One always wonders whether the Opposition have actually learned anything while in opposition, and listening to the shadow Secretary of State gave some indication of whether they have or not. I have had some useful conversations recently with Lord Turnbull, who, as Cabinet Secretary, was the senior civil servant and, I would argue, has some understanding of how national fiscal policy operates. He kindly pointed out table 4.1 of the “Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses” to me, which shows that when Labour was in office, while there was an upswing, public expenditure increased as a proportion of GDP. If anyone is interested, I have put the figures on my web log, linked to a Google Docs analysis that demonstrates how Labour started over- spending.

Much though people on the continent, such as the President of France, may have taken the view that one can spend one’s way out of bankruptcy, after a period in office I think President Hollande concluded that actually one cannot spend one’s way out of bankruptcy—that the additional GDP from the spending does not give an adequate tax take.

That leaves us in a situation where we cannot change things rapidly. A very big deficit cannot be reduced to zero overnight, because of the economic disruption that that causes. The shadow Secretary of State complains that we have borrowed a lot of money, but we have done so because there was a big deficit. Every year, one borrows the amount of the deficit, which adds to the debt, and one cannot change that rapidly, either by putting up taxes or by cutting spending to bring the accounts back into balance, because the disruption from that causes additional problems. The fact that he complains about something that is obviously there on a simple, basic mathematical point shows that Labour has learned nothing.

The hon. Gentleman’s refusals to clarify for me Labour’s plan to get rid of the intermediate apprenticeship is also symptomatic of a substantial problem. Scrutinising the Deregulation Bill, Opposition Members happily stood up and said, “Let’s get rid of the intermediate apprenticeship,” of which there are about half a million in this country; they did not think about the consequences for the people affected. Earlier, the hon. Gentleman gave a one-word answer on that subject and would not clarify, so one has to assume that the Opposition’s detailed policy remains the same: they do not want intermediate apprenticeships. Well, I do want intermediate apprenticeships; they are a good route into work.

There we have two basic examples in which it appears that the Opposition have learned nothing. In government, we are making progress and dealing with matters that require a long-term plan—we cannot do it based on a short-term plan—but there are issues to be worried about.

I worry about the statistical basis of poverty analysis. I see individual cases of people who are really struggling. I see people who have been wrongly sanctioned and, happily, at times I have been able to resolve the sanctions. There are problems with the system—it can have a knock-on effect on housing, which it should not have. I know that the Government are trying, through the universal credit system, to introduce a more supportive system, which is more about encouraging compliance than punishing people, but we are still operating the older system, which is causing problems.

Everyone who is on tax credits and at the bottom end of the market is included, but we have to remember that people who are not officially in poverty in other countries migrate here to enter our work and tax credits system. Should they be lumped in with the people who are having to attend food banks because they were wrongfully sanctioned? I do not think they should. When the statistics conflate those different circumstances—people who are coming to this country to participate on that basis and people who are really suffering—they make a mistake. We need to work as a Government to reduce the suffering that comes from, say, wrongful sanctions and to help people who are having great difficulty making ends meet, but we should not conflate the different circumstances. If we get the statistical analysis wrong, it is meaningless.

15:28

[Katy Clark (North Ayrshire and Arran) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to make a brief contribution to this debate.

This year’s Queen’s Speech is one that fails the people of North Ayrshire and Arran and fails the people of this country. The Secretary of State referred to the fact that there are only 11 Bills, but I do not take much comfort from that because I remember the last parliamentary Session. There were many pieces of legislation covering many matters, but there was little discussion or time given to enable this place to scrutinise effectively the range of measures that were forced through by the Government. When the Secretary of State referred to the small business Bill and the range of measures in it, my response was one of fear about what will exactly be in the Bill when we see it in its full glory.

The reality is that our country faces massive challenges. We face the massive challenge of responding to an economic crisis and to the austerity that is being imposed not only on the people of this country, but throughout Europe and the western world, yet there is little discussion of that in this place.

The Secretary of State spoke about statistics and referred—quite interestingly—to the 99%. He accepted that the vast majority of people in this country are paying the price of the economic crisis and he also conceded that the 1% are doing very nicely. Of course, that is not just the case in this country. As we look around, we see that it is the case throughout the western world, whether that is in Greece, Ireland, Portugal—it is true in any country that people choose to look at. The super-rich, those who are really in control of many of the decisions that affect most of our lives, are seeing their wealth and power increase, while most of us have been put in a position where our living standards have been squeezed by the economic crisis and the way politicians have responded to it.

I am pleased today to speak in favour of the amendment that has been tabled by the Opposition Front Bench team to bring forward measures to raise the minimum wage faster than average earnings. We know that the measures that this Government have introduced have led to a squeeze in the living standards of the vast majority of people in this country, and when proposals are put forward to try to address that situation—for example, the proposal of a price freeze for people’s energy bills, whether those are electricity or gas bills, which would obviously affect not only individuals but businesses—the Government react with horror. They also react with horror when it is suggested that we should do something to try to deal with the private rental market, even though in parts of the country rents are increasing at far higher rates than people’s incomes.

The reality is that since this Government took power, in all but two months real wages have failed to keep pace with inflation. Indeed, after the welcome real-terms increase in pay in March, there was another fall in April. As we know, the Living Wage Commission has highlighted that 21% of people in work in this country— 5.8 million people—receive less than the living wage. Therefore, the amendment that we are considering today clearly outlines the direction of travel we should be taking and we need to say that it is simply not acceptable that we continue to be a country where there is chronic low pay and where people are not paid a decent amount that they can afford to live on if they work full-time. That is not an acceptable way to organise ourselves in a civilised country.

The Government can put forward proposals that refer to welfare caps and fiscal responsibility, but until we put in place the measures that put the pounds into ordinary people’s pockets and give them the ability to make decisions for themselves and live in dignity, we will not address the real issues.

This Queen’s Speech fails the British people; I look forward to voting against it.

15:33

[Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)]

Along with many hon. Members, I welcome the unemployment statistics released today. I note that in my own constituency unemployment has come down, both on the year and on the month, which is to be welcomed alongside the drops nationally in both the long-term unemployment rate and the youth unemployment rate.

I also welcome the national insurance cut of £2,000 for businesses, which has contributed to businesses taking people on. I note of course that the Opposition have refused to say whether they would rule out reversing that change if they were in government.

In the Gracious Address, I particularly welcome the child care Bill, which will continue to make it possible for women to go into the workplace, and for men and women to share their child care responsibilities between them as they think best for their own circumstances.

I also welcome the small business Bill, which the Secretary of State spoke about earlier today. I particularly welcome measures in that Bill that support entrepreneurs. In a discussion that I had only yesterday, I came across an extremely interesting statistic. I understand that by the 2025 general election, for the first time since the second world war, the self-employed will outnumber public sector employees. That is not only extremely interesting electorally speaking but is, of course, exactly why we need to use a Bill such as the small business Bill to back entrepreneurs and all that they wish to do for themselves, their families and the jobs that they may create in the future.

[Charlie Elphicke]

A policy that I have been setting out before now is to have a really light-touch regime for the taxation and regulation of start-up businesses, whereby it will basically cost nothing whatever to set up a business. What does my hon. Friend think of that idea to drive entrepreneurship?

[Chloe Smith]

I strongly welcome that point and the Government could do well to examine my hon. Friend’s idea.

A subject that my hon. Friend and I have spoken about in the past is the other phenomenon that will happen by the 2025 general election. It is that generation Y —to talk in generational terms—will become a competitive part of the electorate compared with the baby boomers. Of course, I am talking about generation Y and all those who come behind them; I think that hon. Members will understand that concept.

I am not seeking to stir up any form of strife between generations; I do not think that would be productive. I mentioned jobs news and I wish to hail the work in my own constituency of the Norwich for Jobs campaign, which has brought about impressive results for young workers. However, I also wish to refer to the needs of older workers who will no doubt remain in the work force. I have met several 50-somethings in my constituency surgery to talk about exactly that issue.

In passing, I will say that I welcome the pensions Bill laid out in the Queen’s Speech, which will allow pensioners to have far more control and freedom over what they choose to do with their savings.

I will take a moment or two to talk about the way in which our politics and indeed our economy need to change, so as to adapt to generation Y and its needs in the coming years. The Queen’s Speech sets out a basis for that change.

Benjamin Disraeli spoke about there being two different planets and we might ask whether there are still two different planets. He spoke about rich and poor, but in fact the figures suggest that there is a gap between older voters and younger non-voters. That gap is an important one and it should concern us all.

I hear some people say that generation Y—younger voters—will simply bounce into the same habits that previous younger generations may have had. However, three things have changed: when asked, this generation reports having less interest in traditional politics than others; it has less belief that voting is a civic duty; and it has less affiliation with parties. That all adds up to an existential change for British democracy. The UK is worse than other countries in this regard; it is indeed the sick man of Europe and it does not compare well with the US either. Young people vote less than their elders elsewhere, but Britain’s problem in this respect has got worse.

That should concern us, but it also gives us an opportunity. We can look at research by Demos, which shows that these younger people look to themselves to take action, and to businesses, charities and action groups to achieve things in their chosen community. Indeed, the state comes a long way down that list. Generation Y, like any other group, backs its own values and aspirations. I want politics in Britain to work for the members of that generation and I want the principles of the small state, responsible economics, freedom, enterprise and social liberalism to come through for them.

First-time voters in 2015 may have an aversion to formal, professional politics, but they are interested in community affairs and they are doing great things in their communities. What are the right things that the Government should do to respond? They should focus on the economy, on education and indeed on those major intergenerational issues that I have mentioned. The Conservatives in government have a good record in that regard: honesty in public finances; more jobs, and a plan to go further with the tax cut in April 2015 for businesses employing under-21s; house building; reform of welfare; and the ambitious work at the Cabinet Office to make public services work for people. We have this record that we can be proud of; we should aspire to do more; and the Conservative party can be this party for the future. The Queen’s Speech delivers results. People should judge us on those results and young people can do the same.

15:39

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

There are few issues of more primary importance to our constituents’ lives and our wider economic health than jobs and work. After the deepest recession for a century, the economy, however tentatively, is improving. The news today of another fall in unemployment should be welcomed across the House. I am especially pleased to see the highest level of women’s employment in Scotland since records began. I am also pleased to note a further fall in unemployment in Banff and Buchan.

Nevertheless, employment is still not back to its pre-recession levels. We should all be concerned about some of the significant challenges lurking beneath the surface figures. The first of these is youth unemployment, which remains unacceptably high. I came of age in the 1980s, when mass unemployment left a generation of school leavers languishing on the dole. I remember how that was not only soul destroying for the individuals affected, but destructive of our whole social fabric. Unfortunately, I see the same mistakes and oversights being repeated before our eyes. Youth unemployment is still around 18% across the UK. The economy is recovering and employment is growing in the wider labour market, but young people are not seeing the benefits.

The scale of the problem and its potentially long-term consequences should shake the Government out of any sense of complacency. In Scotland, the modern apprenticeships scheme has meant that 77,000 new apprentices have had an opportunity over the past three years, and the follow-up shows that 92% of them remain in work six months after completion, the vast majority of it full-time. Additionally, the opportunities for all scheme has offered a training position, a work placement or an educational place for every single 16 to 19-year-old in Scotland.

However, from 2014 a new programme of EU funds becomes available to enable member states to deliver a youth guarantee that would offer those opportunities to any young person up to the age of 24. These additional resources would enable the extension of the opportunities for all scheme to other young adults. I would be keen to know what use the Government intend to make of that funding so that all our young citizens can benefit from the EU youth guarantee.

It is clear, however, that we still have an awful lot of work to do. The interim report of the Commission for Developing Scotland’s Young Workforce, chaired by Sir Ian Wood, highlighted the need for schools, colleges and employers to work much more closely together to equip young people for the workplace and to ensure that vocational education meets their needs and those of the labour market. The report also highlighted the need to tackle inequalities, whether the barriers faced by disabled youngsters and minority ethnic groups or the chronic cross-cutting inequality associated with occupational gender segregation.

In my constituency I have seen a lot of good practice, for example in the North East Scotland college in Fraserburgh, which is working with local employers and schools to create pathways for young people into work. Only a couple of weeks ago I presented prizes to pupils from Mintlaw academy who won this year’s Technology Challenge, a competition run by the college, sponsored by several energy and manufacturing companies and involving second-year pupils from schools across northern Aberdeenshire. The competition is a model of good practice because it involves all the pupils in the early years of secondary school, before they make their subject choices, with a view to making them aware of the excellent career opportunities open to those with qualifications in science, technology, engineering and maths. Importantly, the competition insists on the equal participation of girls.

That leads me neatly on to the other key issue I want to address today: the persistent gap between male and female earnings, even 40 years after the Equal Pay Act 1970. Occupational gender segregation continues to be a problem, and too many women are in low-paid, part-time or insecure work. I do not think that anyone would pretend that these problems are easy to resolve, but I would like to have seen the Government attempt to make more headway. As I have said before in the House, the austerity measures of the past few years have fallen wholly disproportionately on women, to a large extent because women are more likely to have caring roles, to be in part-time or low-paid work and to be in receipt of tax credits.

The availability of affordable child care is an acute issue for parents combining work with family life, but we have seen only this week how parents are falling foul of the Department for Work and Pensions’ new sanctions regime, which is making it impossible for some parents to meet their family commitments. This is carers week and it is also important to acknowledge the role that carers play in providing social care and the impact that has on their employment prospects.

It has become a truism of political discourse to say that work is the route out of poverty—indeed, the Prime Minister said it twice this afternoon. Of course, at the most obvious level, well-paid, full-time work is a route out of poverty, but over recent decades rapidly increasing wage inequality has meant the rise of the working poor. For those in minimum-wage jobs who are unable to secure full-time hours, in-work poverty has become a new reality. We are in a situation in which a family with two children, paying average rent, with both parents working full time in low-paid jobs, will be a family on the breadline. If the minimum wage had kept pace with inflation, those in the lowest paid jobs would be over £600 a year better off. We need to acknowledge that the minimum wage is no longer a living wage and that it needs to catch up with the cost of living.

Meeting these substantial challenges requires strategic interventions and a willingness to try innovative approaches, so I am disappointed that the Gracious Speech failed to address youth unemployment—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order.

15:44

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak in support of the Queen’s Speech, which contains several measures that will impact positively on employment. The Gracious Speech builds on a record of achievement: the deficit will be cut by 50% this year; unemployment is down from the 8.4% that the Government inherited to 6.6%, as announced today; and our economy is growing faster than that of any other country in the G7 and across the European Union. Unsurprisingly, business and consumer confidence has returned.

There have been difficult decisions and people have made many sacrifices to bring about this economic turnaround: people working in the public sector have endured pay freezes or redundancies; people relying on savings have endured low interests rates that have been vital to the recovery; and many private sector employees have voted to take a salary cut, to safeguard employment among the wider group. Let their sacrifices not have been in vain. We on the Government side of the House, as evidenced in the Queen’s Speech, will work hard to ensure that there is no return to boom and bust or to tax and spend, when “more of” was the answer to every question and every challenge.

Earlier this week, I hosted a reception in Parliament for the Federation of Small Businesses. This year is its 40th anniversary. I am proud to represent so many specialist manufacturing companies in Stourbridge, particularly in Quarry Bank, Lye and Cradley. Most of them are family firms that have excellent employee relations, but their main concern is that their employees are ageing and they will have to replace that skilled work force.

I run a programme in my constituency to encourage young people to broaden their career horizons. I lay on university, apprenticeship and career events, and I always aim to get across the opportunities in engineering and manufacturing. Employment in the manufacturing sector declined from 5.7 million to 4.3 million between 1981 and 1996, and then it plummeted by 2.5 million up to 2011. Finally, after 30 years of continuous decline, the number of people employed in manufacturing is on the increase again, up by almost 100,000 since 2011. That is proof that the strategy of rebalancing the economy towards manufacturing and regions outside the south-east is working.

The problem for the sector is the image of manufacturing and engineering in the minds of so many young people, especially girls. That has been a problem for most of my life; it is nothing new. What is new is the opportunity in the sector. I have mentioned the growth in jobs, but output is also buoyant, with growth of over 4.4% in the past 12 months. Technological advances, innovation and export opportunities make for a very different working environment from the machine tool business that my father ran in Wolverhampton during the 1970s. We have a shortfall of 40,000 engineers every year. Several Members have mentioned women in the workplace. Fewer than one in 10 engineers is a woman. If we could treble the number studying science, technology, engineering and maths, we could really address the skills shortage.

Today’s news on employment is an excellent platform from which the measures in the Queen’s Speech can impact even more on people’s employment opportunities. I hope that with the help of businesses, schools and colleges, we can transform the image of manufacturing and engineering and attract the talent that the sector needs further to boost the economy and add to the great work that it has been doing over the past few years.

15:49

[Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

I absolutely agree with the measures proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) in his opening speech. I say that not just to dissipate the impression of disloyalty that I might have created by an article in the Daily Mail this morning, but because those measures will restore what we desperately need in this country—more stability in the labour market. We have had a long period in which wages have increased by less than inflation in 46 of the past 47 months of statistics since the coalition came to office. That has to be ended, because it is creating a very undesirable kind of society. It is the kind of society described by Professor Piketty—or I should say, because he is French, Professor Piketté—in his book, “Capital”.

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

I hope that it is, Mr Ellwood.

[Mr Ellwood]

I know that time stands still when the hon. Gentleman speaks, Madam Deputy Speaker, but the clock does not seem to be moving, and I wonder whether it is possible to make sure that the time limit is placed on it.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

That absolutely is a point of order, Mr Ellwood, and I am very grateful to you. The clock has to be operated manually at the moment, so we will do our best to make sure that it works.

[Austin Mitchell]

If it is any consolation, Madam Deputy Speaker, my clock stopped in 1979. I hope that that qualifies me for an extension of my speaking time.

This kind of society where wealth accumulates and wages and salaries fall as a share of GDP is very undesirable. As Goldsmith put it,

“wealth accumulates, and men decay”.

And it is an economically inefficient society, because purchasing power and stimulus to the economy, then growth, come from the purchasing power of the masses, not the classes. If we are transferring more money to the classes, we will have a slow-growing, stagnant economy. Under the policy pursued by this Government, the only real long-term plan is to slash public spending, benefits and the living standards of the working classes, to transfer money to tax cuts for the rich. The theory is that this will stimulate enterprise and money will trickle down to the poor and the working class, in the same way that the trickle-down effect of horses improves roads. That is the plan, and it is a disastrous development for our economy.

I agree with the proposed measures on raising the minimum wage, promoting the living wage and improving skills, but other measures need to be taken as well. The only real solution to the problem is economic growth to put the people back to work, because full employment is the only adequate form of social security that we have ever developed in this country. That means, first, a massive house-building programme, particularly one of public housing for rent that people can move into, because most people now cannot afford a mortgage and could not get one if they tried. That could be financed by municipal bonds or quantitative easing. Why should the money from quantitative easing—which is, in effect, the Bank of England printing money—all go into the vaults of the banks? Why should it not be used to finance contracts for massive public spending and investment in work on new towns, for instance, provided that there are proper contracts and a proper rate of return? We should use quantitative easing to improve public spending.

[Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

rose—

[Austin Mitchell]

I am not giving way—I am sorry. I am having my time extended as an incentive to carry on next year.

Secondly, we should expand public spending generally. What is the problem with borrowing? In a recession, we need to borrow to stimulate the economy. Keynesian economics still works. Why are we so reticent about borrowing more to spend, to stimulate growth? Only in a growth situation can we pay back the debt.

Thirdly, we should boost exports by getting the pound down to a more competitive level. It has risen by nearly 10% in the past few months, and it needs to be more competitive if our exports are to be stimulated.

We need to take all those measures to expand the real economy as well as the measures to deal with the labour market that we are discussing. I appeal to the Government to get rid of their restrictive attitude and start thinking about expansion. I ask my Front Benchers to be less cautious and timorous about capital. Let us expand, grow, and get the people back to work.

15:54

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow such a passionate speech by the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell). I share his passion for full employment. It is a pleasure to speak on the day the claimant count in Worcester is more than 1,000 fewer than it was at the time of the general election and youth unemployment has halved since its peak under Labour in 2009. As a result of raising the tax threshold, more of those people who have found work will keep more of the money they earn, which we should all celebrate.

As a member of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee—I very much enjoyed my Chairman’s speech earlier on apprenticeships and pubs, which are two areas on which we are making progress—I am delighted that jobs and work are at the heart of the Gracious Speech and particularly welcome the small business Bill. Small businesses are the lifeblood of our economy, and it is to the credit of this coalition Government that we have seen increasing numbers of businesses starting up, employing and expanding. Worcester has a very lively small business community, and one of my greatest pleasures as its MP has been to visit some of the entrepreneurial businesses starting up and then see them grow and take on jobs and apprentices.

It has been right to reduce the tax burden on small businesses as well as on the people who work in them, and the Gracious Speech commits us to continue to do that by talking about the need to

“cut taxes in order to increase people’s financial security.”

[Caroline Dinenage]

My hon. Friend is an outstanding member of the BIS Committee. Does he agree that, contrary to what the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell) has said—when he said that his clock stopped in ’79, I thought he meant 1479—the one thing we need to do to get businesses employing and growing is not to print more money, but to trust them, tax them less and cripple them less with bureaucracy, unlike the previous Government, who between 2007 and 2008 imposed more bureaucracy costing £10 billion?

[Mr Walker]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend, who has been a truly outstanding member of the Committee. We will miss her if she goes on to greater things.

One of the ways in which we have removed a burden from small businesses and the people who work for them is by freezing fuel duty not just once, but throughout this Parliament. My hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) has campaigned very hard to achieve that and I congratulate him on his success.

In this Parliament, I am very proud to have supported the scrapping of Labour’s jobs tax, the introduction of the employment allowance and the extension of doubled small business rates relief. The Gracious Speech takes forward that legacy, but business rates are one area on which I would have been keen to see the Government go further. I warmly welcome the decisions taken in last year’s autumn statement to provide extra discounts to small retail businesses and to initiate a consultation on how the valuation office and appeals system could be improved. However, our Committee recently concluded in its excellent report on the retail sector that fundamental reform was needed:

“Clear, decisive action needs to be taken. If there is one thing that this Report urges the Government to do, it is to reform Business Rates. For retail, and other enterprises, to continue on the High Street, the Business Rates system must be addressed urgently.”

Such reform should make the system more responsive, allow for more regular revaluations, faster appeals, incentives for growing businesses that create jobs and reduce the unfair burden borne by the retail sector.

Although I regret the omission of a business rates reform Bill from the Gracious Speech, I welcome the inclusion of a number of other business-friendly Bills, particularly the small business Bill, which the Federation of Small Businesses nationally and—perhaps more importantly to me—in Worcestershire has warmly welcomed. John Allan, the national chairman of the FSB, has said:

“This landmark Bill will…be welcomed by our members.”

Local businesses have told me that they would particularly welcome measures to encourage prompt payment and a tightening up of what has so far been largely a voluntary code. I have taken evidence as part of cross-party work on some of the problems with late payment that affect many small businesses, and there are sectors, including construction, where not just encouraging but mandating better behaviour would make a massive difference.

Local businesses will also welcome an even greater focus on helping small businesses to access finance. It is good news that the Government should be ensuring that banks automatically pass on customers to alternative lenders when they are turned down for credit. That should encourage the growth of crowdfunding and support the development of community development financial institutions, such as Impetus, which helps many companies in Worcestershire.

Procurement is certainly an area in which the Government can do more to help small businesses. I am delighted that since 2009-10, the value of Government procurement to small and medium-sized enterprises has risen by almost 50% to £4.5 billion, but there is much further to go. That figure is still only just more than 10% of overall public procurement, or 19% if we include the supply chain. This Government have rightly set out to make the figure at least a quarter. Other countries, such as Germany and the US, seem to be able to support a higher proportion of Government procurement from SMEs, and we must do all we can to learn from their example.

This legislative programme also sets out to do something that previous Governments failed to do and that too many small businesses feel they have had to police for themselves, which is toughen up enforcement of the minimum wage. I am proud that this Government have decided to increase the minimum wage above inflation and that they have done so in a way that has kept the support of the business community, but I am also determined that the disreputable minority who flout the rules do not benefit from doing so. Most companies I speak to want to do the right thing, but they expect to be able to compete fairly by doing so, and not to be undercut.

Yesterday, members of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee met some Members of the German Bundestag to discuss their debate about introducing a national minimum wage. One suggestion to come out of that discussion was that enforcement could be linked to Government procurement, with any company proved to have failed to pay the minimum wage named and shamed by the Government and barred from winning Government contracts. I hope that my right hon. Friends on the Front Bench will consider doing that.

Similarly, I am pleased that this Government, unlike their predecessor, are taking real action on zero-hours contracts. It is good news that the majority of jobs created have been full-time ones. Yet where there has been growth in zero-hours contracts, that matter has been taken seriously by the Government, and legislation affecting this area will be introduced.

In dealing with fairness, we need to continue this Parliament’s valuable work to limit the cost of, and to regulate, high-cost credit. I was pleased to welcome the Chancellor’s actions on this in the Budget. I recently attended meetings with the Church of England and the Financial Conduct Authority, which, in their different ways, are taking forward their respective duties. I want to see further progress on real-time data sharing across the industry and more support for the free debt advice sector, with the cap—when it comes—set at a level that will alleviate the many problems that high-cost credit can cause. I was honoured, alongside my Select Committee colleague, the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield), to be named the Citizens Advice parliamentarian of the year for my work on this front, but there is still more to be done.

I welcome this Queen’s Speech and its measures to create greater prosperity and more jobs in this country. I hope that those measures will have their full effect in Worcester, and I look forward to fighting Worcester’s corner in the year ahead.

16:01

[Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)]

Like many right hon. and hon. Members, I have been troubled, particularly in the past few months, by the growing disconnect between the politics in this House or the constitutional politics of the referendum in Scotland and the real-life experiences of our constituents. With wage growth yet to take hold in any sustained way after the longest period of falling real wages in our history, and with productivity remaining weak and investment low, it is no wonder that claims made by Ministers in this House about a recovery for all count for so little with real Britain.

This Queen’s Speech was this Government’s last opportunity to deal with the huge underlying problems in our society that mean, as the Minister without Portfolio, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), admitted in a rare bout of candour from this Government, that ordinary people are not experiencing any kind of recovery in their living standards. The failure of this Government over the four Queen’s Speeches of this Parliament will make even worse the sense of alienation that people feel in communities up and down this country.

However, my discussions with 2,500 constituents on the doorstep in the past month have shown me that people have not given up. Civil society is helping to fill the yawning gaps that this Government are leaving—for example, with the explosion in the use of food banks. They need and deserve a Government who are listening, have a plan for change and are in touch with their lives.

Just as it was Labour in opposition in 1945, 1964, 1974 and 1997 that offered hope that Britain could be better, so it falls to Labour Members now to speak up for the millions of ordinary people who yearn for change and yearn for them to be their voice. In this debate, let us be the voice for the 1.4 million people in this country, including the 120,000 in Scotland, who work part time but need full-time work because of declining wages. Let us be the voice for the tens of thousands of young people suffering for years on end from mass unemployment whom I have encountered in my constituency in the past few months. Let us be the voice for the low-paid and low-skilled workers who need a workplace skills revolution to boost their wages now and to secure greater prospects for the future. Let us be the voice for the 5 million people in this country who go to work and do the right thing, but take home less than the living wage—working longer and longer hours, but finding less and less to show for it.

[Mr Steve Reed]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point about the living wage. Will he join me in congratulating the six boroughs in London—all of them Labour—that are already living wage employers, and in welcoming Croydon’s intention to join them, now that Croydon also has a Labour council?

[Mr Bain]

I am most happy to congratulate Labour borough councils up and down the country on those efforts. That shows what Labour can do when it has power. It also shows the difference between the values of Labour and the Scottish National party at Holyrood, which had the opportunity to extend the living wage several weeks ago, but failed resoundingly in that task.

With three in 10 of my constituents who are in work taking home less than the living wage, a Queen’s Speech for the many would have changed the remit of the Low Pay Commission to raise the minimum wage in line with trends in average wages for the next five years.

A Queen’s Speech for the many would have begun the task of reorganising the banks to ensure that they serve ordinary people and businesses, not the other way around. There should be new challenger banks to introduce more competition in the retail banking sector; new regional banks to support SME lending, as the Sparkassen have done for decades in Germany; a national investment bank, modelled on the successes in Germany, France, the United States and South Korea; and an unshackled green investment bank that is able to drive investment in the renewables sector, with the potential to create tens of thousands of skilled jobs in our economy.

To secure fairness for the disadvantaged, there should have been a Bill to raise the taxes on bank bonuses to help pay for a jobs guarantee for long-term unemployed young people and other jobless people, who are crying out for the opportunity to work and who have been let down so badly by this Government and their Work programme. Perhaps when the Prime Minister was trying to rock the boat with Chancellor Merkel and the Swedish and Dutch Prime Ministers over the EU the other day, he should have taken a steer from them about how jobs guarantee policies in Sweden have benefited employers, given opportunities to young people and helped the public finances.

With 1.4 million people in insecure jobs with no guaranteed hours, a Queen’s Speech for the many would have offered the right to defined working hours after a short period in a job. People in Glasgow have told me about the uncertainty that a lack of guaranteed hours is causing them—uncertainty in their family finances, uncertainty over whether they can pay the bills and uncertainty in planning for a decent future.

Given the increasingly skewed jobs market and the lack of skilled service, construction and manufacturing jobs, a Queen’s Speech for the many would have contained measures to boost exports, which remain desperately weak, and to boost investment by businesses, particularly in research and development.

For a stronger recovery that reaches every part of these islands, we need a Queen’s Speech that expands opportunity, boosts incomes and cuts inequality. We need a fresh start and a new Government to replace this tired and clapped-out coalition—a Labour Government for the many, by the many and of the many.

16:07

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

I welcome the Government’s fourth Queen’s Speech and the strategy that has been used to navigate Britain out of the choppy economic waters that we inherited, courtesy of the last Labour Government. As we have heard, the UK economy is the fastest growing economy in Europe and, indeed, in the G7. Figures published today show that employment is at record levels, though of course there is still more to be done.

I am afraid that the clock is working now and the time restrictions will prevent me from going into further detail on certain issues. I will therefore move on to my substantive point, which is about Britain’s place in the world. The Prime Minister rightly began his response to the Gracious Speech with a tribute to our armed forces and the sacrifices that have been made in Afghanistan. That subject will come up at the forthcoming NATO summit. NATO can be proud of the role that it played in removing al-Qaeda from Afghanistan and building a credible Afghan security force.

[Alok Sharma (Reading West) (Con)]

Britain has always been an outward-looking nation when it comes to trade and foreign affairs. Does my hon. Friend agree that we should continue with that and build on it?

[Mr Ellwood]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman again; it is the second time that I have done so. However, this is a named debate with a subject and an amendment. The subject is jobs and work, so he needs to make sure that he focuses on that.

[Mr Ellwood]

I seek your clarification, Madam Deputy Speaker. My understanding was that Members of Parliament could contribute to any day of the Queen’s Speech debate and give a consideration of all aspects of the Queen’s Speech. If I had been aware that that rule was in place, I certainly would not have chosen today to speak.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Mr Ellwood, what has happened is that today we are considering an amendment. In the Queen’s Speech debates every day before today, Members could raise anything. Today’s debate is more focused, and to be in order speeches need to be about jobs and work. I hope that all other Members will focus on that, but, given the misunderstanding, on this occasion I will allow you to make your points, Mr Ellwood. I should make it absolutely clear that that is out of order, but given that you have been so helpful to me about the clock, it is only fair to let you make your points—perhaps briefly.

[Mr Ellwood]

I am grateful for your latitude, Madam Deputy Speaker. As I said, I understood that I could take a broad-brush approach to matters in the Queen’s Speech.

I return to our role in Afghanistan, which was mentioned in the Queen’s Speech. NATO did well, but I am afraid that the other international agencies did not do so well. We were not good at creating the governance and economic development that were needed in that country. That responsibility was given to other international agencies and they were found wanting. Indeed, our experience in Afghanistan and Iraq now haunts this Chamber, as was shown in the Syria vote last year. It is also making us review Britain’s place and role in the world.

The nation’s attention has rightly focused on the UK economy, business and jobs as well as on strengthening the fundamental pillars of our society, including health, education and the benefits system. However, as we emerge from the biggest recession ever experienced, events such as 9/11, the Arab spring and, most recently, what has happened in Ukraine and the Sahel show that we have entered a prolonged period of instability with which I am not sure that Britain—and, indeed, NATO—has come to terms.

Conflict itself has also changed. There is no longer unconditional surrender, but agencies such as the EU, the Department for International Development, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are involved in stabilisation and nation-building activities that they were never designed to perform. We are essentially winning the wars, but losing the peace.

In an increasingly interdependent world, as the Government’s national maritime strategy states:

“Almost every aspect of British national life… depends on our connections with the wider world.”

We are now more reliant on a stable market for raw materials, energy and manufactured goods from overseas, but recent trends such as globalisation, resource competition, population growth and climate change will challenge that stability, and developments and crises in distant regions will have an immediate and direct impact on our prosperity and security in this country.

As a nation, we have always led from the front in helping shape and influence the wider world. As I have implied, the pace of change has not only increased but become more complicated. In a week when we have been debating the importance of British values, we must also agree the extent to which those values should be defended here and abroad when challenged. There are ever fewer countries in the world that are willing and able to promote, support and, when required, defend our shared values.

However, there is an increasing number of regimes, organisations, groups and movements that wish us harm. It is therefore not the time to turn our back on the world and ignore events around us. This week alone, ISIS has taken control of Iraq’s second city, Mosul, while Boko Haram continues its reign of terror in Nigeria and the Taliban have retaken Karachi airport. Of course, there is also the continuing drama that is unfolding for the fourth year in Syria, not to mention Russia’s hiding its long-term economic weakness in aggression and deniable intervention. Those events do not happen in isolation.

The solutions to those challenges are diplomatic, economic and political as well as military. As we mark the 70th anniversary of D-day, many of the Bretton Woods organisations that were created to secure peace after the second world war, such as the United Nations, the IMF and the World Bank, are out of date and in severe need of reform. I believe that Britain is well placed in the international community to lead the call for the modernisation of those agencies so that they are fit for purpose in meeting 21st century challenges. However, we should also be prepared for instability to increase. I greatly welcome the manner in which the Government are moving Britain back to prosperity, but it is also time to think of the wider world and the role that Britain should play as we face a challenging chapter of instability.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. Several Members have now approached the Chair, and I therefore think it is necessary for me to make it clear before I call the next speaker that today’s debate is focused on jobs and work. It is not the full, general debate that we have had on the previous days of considering the Queen’s Speech. It may be necessary for some Members to refocus their points so that they stay in order. Mr Ellwood did not have time to do that so he got more latitude than anyone else will get this afternoon. I hope that that is absolutely clear and that Members understand that we are debating the amendment on jobs and work. That is why the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions himself is here to listen to the debate.

Now that that is clear, I call Nick Smith.

16:15

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

In Blaenau Gwent, our local economy needs a big shot in the arm if we are to prosper. Adult unemployment is twice the national average, and we have a youth unemployment rate of 10%. Although unemployment has fallen, the pace of job creation is too slow. People in Blaenau Gwent want to work. We have talent, great potential, an illustrious industrial heritage, and many outdoor attractions.

Much work has been done in the past few years to bring a new motorsports circuit to Blaenau Gwent. It would have attendant engineering, leisure and research facilities, and would be a significant boost for employment in south-east Wales. I am aware that the Silverstone circuit has raised objections to the Circuit of Wales, including questioning the potential use of public funds. The previous Labour Government provided £8 million to speed up construction of the A43 bypass to help ease congestion near the Silverstone circuit, and Northamptonshire county council has also recently provided financial assistance, so I hope that the Government will be even-handed and fair when considering the Circuit of Wales and public support for it.

The key to securing good, sustainable jobs in Blaenau Gwent is infrastructure investment. There has, of course, been major investment in Blaenau Gwent, including improvements to the A465, the new Learning Zone and the Nye Bevan hospital, and we hope in the future rail electrification. In its report published last week, the Transport Committee stated:

“The under-funding of transport projects outside Greater London in recent years cannot be allowed to continue. No area across our nation should be second class in relation to the allocation of transport infrastructure funds.”

The same must be true for Wales. Electrification of the west coast main line to Swansea and all the valley lines is imperative. Last December I asked the Chief Secretary to the Treasury whether the Government would consider bringing forward the electrification of the south Wales valley lines as that would boost employment and regeneration in our deprived area. He said he would look at the case for accelerating electrification if possible, but I have heard nothing further.

Infrastructure investment in a home energy efficiency programme is a jobs-boosting measure that is missing from the Government’s plans in the Queen’s Speech. As an example of delivery in infrastructure investment, our social landlord in Blaenau Gwent, Tai Calon, will spend around £23 million by 2015 on tackling fuel poverty. It is installing external wall insulation and new heating systems across the county to help keep homes warmer and make them cheaper to heat. It also has a team of fuel advisers recruited from the local young unemployed who can visit tenants and show them how they can cut bills and use their systems more efficiently. The Treasury should take note.

As growth finally comes to the economy after four wasted years, we find ourselves with the persistent British problem: a skills shortage. We know that in Wales and elsewhere, in too many cases skilled jobs cannot be filled because the work force lack the relevant skills. We need to improve educational attainment. Our local training and education system in Blaenau Gwent has seen major investment in recent years, but it must up its game.

The Government must get their act together. Blaenau Gwent is a brilliant place, but although good progress has been made, much more investment in skills, infrastructure and jobs is needed for the future. I am concerned that the Gracious Speech will unfortunately be a damp squib for Blaenau Gwent.

16:19

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

I was just rewriting my speech in line with your ruling, Madam Deputy Speaker, so you will forgive me—or perhaps you will be pleased—if it is shorter than I intended.

It is a pleasure to take part in the debate. I congratulate the Government on an excellent programme for the final year of this Parliament. It is, despite complaints from the Opposition, a continuation of the comprehensive programme for recovery that we have put in place over the past four years. The idea that it is a thin programme of legislation comes from the Labour party’s belief that all problems in our society can be cured by yet more regulation and legislation. My constituents hope that they can get on with their lives, care for their families and run their businesses without undue interference. Of course, they want good quality public services and we must ensure that they are adequately resourced, but that can be achieved only if we allow business to grow. From that growth, money flows into the Treasury and we get better public services.

In that respect, we are making progress. Last week I attended the Hull and Humber chamber of commerce Expo event, where businesses spoke of their optimism and confidence. The chamber’s chief executive, Ian Kelly, said in its most recent quarterly survey that

“the Chamber feels that the steady climb out of recession is continuing”.

As if to confirm that, when I returned to my constituency office the latest “Barclays Local Insights” was in my pile of post. Among the statistics relating to my Cleethorpes constituency was the fact that overall turnover for small businesses had risen by 15% in the first quarter of 2014 compared with the previous year, and that this is 6% above the national average. Small businesses in the retail sector saw their quarterly turnover increase by 20% compared with the first three months of 2013. Access to finance for small businesses is still a major concern in the local business community. I welcome moves to ensure further improvements. We must recognise, however, that although these figures are encouraging my constituents are still feeling the effects of the recession. The Barclays report states:

“The severe squeeze on household budgets is beginning to unwind as inflation abates and pay awards start to recover.”

I am pleased that the Government continue to recognise that. The continuing increases in personal allowances, the freezing of fuel duty and the help with energy bills, to name but three measures, all contribute to helping hard-pressed families.

Thanks to the efforts of the Government, working in partnership with our local enterprise partnerships and local authorities, much has been achieved to attract inward investment to northern Lincolnshire and the Humber region. The Siemens investment on the north bank is now secure. I am hopeful that the Able UK development, which is now subject to a special parliamentary procedure to determine the final outcome, will be resolved very soon. It is vital that this long-running saga is brought to a conclusion. It highlights yet again that, despite the efforts of the Government, we need to speed up the process for major planning applications. We risk being left behind by overseas competitors if we do not. For those objecting to developments, whose homes and property can be blighted by prolonged procedures, it is equally important.

I must pay tribute to the Minister of State, Cabinet Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), who has responsibility for cities. His hard work in the north Lincolnshire and Humber region has won the respect of politicians across the political spectrum. He has put together a city deal that is vital for the area.

A consultation document published yesterday by the Department for Transport includes suggestions that would reduce dramatically the level of rail service or through-rail connections to major cities, most notably Manchester and Sheffield. If this is allowed to proceed, it would be a severe blow to the investment that is currently coming into the area.

16:24

[Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)]

Last week my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition highlighted some of the most noticeable omissions from the coalition’s programme for this, the final year of its lifetime. He quite rightly mentioned what a missed opportunity the small business, enterprise and employment Bill represents to truly tackle low pay and insecurity. These are issues that result in so many hard-working people feeling left out, let down and left behind, and which resulted in what we saw, not for the first time, in May’s election: the disaffected’s vote for UKIP.

You will be glad to hear that I want to address my remarks to that Bill, Madam Deputy Speaker, but when it comes to the responsibilities of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, my right hon. Friend might have mentioned another huge omission: the lack of a higher education fair reform Bill. We have a tuition fees system that, by the admission of one of the coalition’s own advisers, is simply not working—not for universities, not for students and not for the country.

On the employment Bill, it is clearly welcome that exclusivity clauses in zero-hours contracts will henceforth be banned. There will be cross-party support for that. Clauses that prevent employees on contracts from working for another employer, keeping them constantly on call with no guaranteed hours, are in many cases simply legalised servitude. However, the Bill should and could have gone further. The Government did not have far to look: last October we had a thoughtful debate in the House on zero-hours contracts which highlighted some of the most iniquitous examples of the practice. At the time of that debate, the Business Secretary launched a consultation, but the outcome in the Bill is frankly just timid.

The Business Secretary should go much further. He should, at a minimum, give workers a right to ask for normal employment contracts if they regularly work the same hours and a right to have a contract that specifies a minimum number of hours, to give vulnerable people at least a modicum of certainty and security. He should also ensure that workers on zero-hours contracts cannot simply be summoned outside their contracted hours and that they are entitled to be paid if shifts are unexpectedly cancelled at short notice. Likewise, the Business Secretary should give such workers the security of employment rights that many of us take for granted: the right to be given notice, rights against unfair dismissal and the right to redundancy pay. A flexible work force should never equate to an exploited work force.

There are other, related issues that the Bill should also tackle. The rights of part-time workers who regularly work longer hours need to be addressed, along with the continued insecurity faced by many agency workers. It is now seven long years since I was lucky enough to be successful in the ballot and to present the Temporary and Agency Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Bill, to try to level the playing field. I did not do so simply because it was supported by the big unions, such as Unite, of which I am a member, or my local ceramics union, Unity; I did it because time after time, decent, ordinary working people, and not a few students, had complained to me about being exploited by agencies, along with employees complaining about facing substitution by agency workers if they complained, asked for a pay rise or insisted on their rights. There were complaints, too, about how many workers who would work for less were being proactively recruited from eastern Europe. That was the insecurity that many people faced then and that they still face now, which manifested itself in a vote for a right-wing party, UKIP, that will benefit ordinary working people not one iota.

The agency workers directive eventually went through, but it was an imperfect compromise, with a 12-week qualification period in the UK, which affords workers here less protection than on the continent. It is a compromise that needs unstitching. Big loopholes such as the Swedish derogation need a really good darning. If the employment Bill does not go there, I hope the next Labour Government will do the necessary needlework.

One of the great strengths of my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) is that he has had the guts to admit where the Labour leadership got it wrong. We cannot have growth on the cheap without social and political consequences. We cannot have a recovery that leaves decent, ordinary people behind, insecure and struggling to make ends meet, while working all hours. This he has said many times since becoming leader. He said it to the voters in Thurrock last week; he also said it in the House last week in response to the Queen’s Speech. At the last election I was able to tell people what I was trying to do not only to level the playing field, but to raise the bar, and I support what my right hon. Friend has said about our aspirations for the minimum wage. The employment Bill should go much further to help ordinary working people to be treated more decently. I hope that during its passage we can improve it.

16:29

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow a fellow Staffordshire Member to speak in the Queen’s Speech debate on jobs, particularly on what is, of course, a great day for jobs and for the job prospects of millions. It may not be such a good day for the job prospects of the Opposition Front-Bench team, which may be why they have spent rather less time than they might have done talking about today’s good news.

Today is good news for my town, and this Queen’s Speech is good news for Tamworth. The situation in which we now find ourselves compared with the situation in 2010 when we had our first Queen’s Speech could not be starker. In 2010, at the end of the last Labour Government, the unemployment rate in Tamworth was running into double digits; today, we have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country. In 2010, at the end of the last Labour Government, one could walk down the Glascote road and see repossession notices on window after window as mortgage companies foreclosed on properties. Under the last Labour Government, people were losing not just their jobs, but their family homes. Those notices are now gone; growth is returning; hope is being restored. In my town, Jaguar Land Rover is recruiting; BMW is recruiting; John Lewis is recruiting. They are recruiting skilled workers because our educational outcomes are improving, with GCSE results going up, and the Torc centre has been named the automotive hub for Staffordshire.

I want to speak about this Queen’s Speech in relation to jobs, and I shall make three particular points. I am glad that Her Majesty made it clear that her Government will continue to cut taxes in order to increase people’s financial security. I hope that those tax cuts will also include business tax cuts—cuts in corporation tax and cuts in national insurance contributions. Small businesses are the engines of growth in this country—not Governments, not multinationals, but small businesses up and down the country. We need to reduce the burden of taxation on them so that they can expand, invest and create more jobs.

I was also pleased to hear the Secretary of State talk about deregulation and cutting red tape. We have to get on and go even further. I rather hope that the Government will look at regulation as if it were a tax. A small business man may have to juggle the responsibilities of being IT director, finance director and HR director with the all-important task of being sales director. Any Government activity that detracts from the ability to focus on selling or any Government activity that is a tax on time is a tax on business—and it is in those terms that we should think of regulation. I am astonished that we still have so many regulations. There is even a regulation on how to build a staircase. It seems to me that if we were to get rid of that regulation, carpenters up and down the country would not be left helpless. We do not need many of the regulations under which businesses still appear to labour, so I hope that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will continue his work on that.

I was pleased to see further help being given to the exploitation of our shale gas opportunities. It is unfortunate that the Labour Opposition seem to blow hot and cold on shale gas. In the Finance Bill Committee, the Front-Bench team did not seem to know quite what they wanted with respect to shale gas. I believe that shale gas opportunities in our country could create between 60,000 and 70,000 new jobs. It could create billions of pounds of extra revenue to the Exchequer, which could be invested in infrastructure, creating even more jobs. If the Opposition are serious about the cost of living challenges facing our country, they should surely embrace a resource that will help to even out the cost of our energy. The fact that they seem to refuse to do so seems to make their position illogical.

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Christopher Pincher]

I will not. If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, many Members want to speak: they have things to say—or think they have things to say—and they should be allowed to say them.

In conclusion, this Queen’s Speech helps my town. It drives growth, it drives opportunity and it drives forward our long-term economic plan—and we are the only Government, the only party, who seem to have one.

16:34

[Fiona O’Donnell (East Lothian) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in the debate. I was particularly pleased to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) set out his stall in his opening speech, describing what is happening to the British economy and referring to the constant refrain from Government Members about a “long-term economic plan”. The definition of “long-term” seems to have changed: we used to be told that it would take five years to get rid of the deficit, but we are not sure whether that is still the case. We have not had plan A from this Government; what we have had at best, or at worst, is plan A minus. If they had gone the whole hog and given us plan B, rather than choking off recovery in 2010 by making cuts in the public sector that were too deep and making them too quickly, some of the pain that my constituents have endured over the last four years might have been avoided.

Since we returned from the recess, I have heard the Prime Minister declare on two occasions that work is the best route out of poverty, but that is not an absolute truth. The hon. Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith) spoke of the role of the state and her preference for the small state, and claimed that the state did not have as much impact on people’s lives as other sectors. I can tell her that in my constituency, East Lothian council, which has a coalition with the Conservatives, has introduced a living wage for all workers. I confess that only a small number of workers are benefiting from that, but surely it is an example of the role of the state. Although it is absolutely right for us in the Chamber to welcome better economic news and the fact that the number of people in jobs is increasing, we must also ensure that no one is left behind in that recovery, which is not what is happening on this Government’s watch.

Back in 1997, we too inherited difficult and testing economic circumstances, but what that Labour Government did during their three terms was look out for those who needed the protection of the state and needed the state to intervene by, for instance, introducing tax credits or the minimum wage. That progress has simply not continued under the present Government.

I am glad that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is present, because in the short time allowed to me I want to say a little about some of those people who are in danger of being left behind. People with disabilities and, in particular, those with moderate learning disabilities fear that they will miss out on the new personal independence payment. At present they receive the lowest rate of the care component of disability living allowance, but those who receive it as an in-work benefit cannot sustain employment without it. It is what pays for the taxi if they do not feel able to take the bus to work. There is a real danger that those people will now find it harder to maintain employment, or to find new employment. I am not saying that we should not celebrate the good news that there is in the economy, but I am saying that we must not leave people behind in the recovery.

The same applies to exploitative zero-hours contracts. The other day I was approached in the supermarket by someone who works in the tourism and leisure sector. I think that it is indicative of something when people do not want to name themselves, or even their employers, because they are so scared of losing their jobs. This employee has been on a zero-hours contract job for two years, working the same shift patterns. He is tied into accommodation, and even his meals are provided by his employer. It almost seems like some sort of modern form of slavery when people in this country are not free because they rely on their employers not just for their incomes, but for the roof over their heads and the food that they put in their mouths.

The Government need to do more to protect those workers. If you—or someone like you, Madam Deputy Speaker—had been doing a zero-hours contract job for two years with the same shift patterns, surely you would have expected, long before you reached that stage, to be given a proper contract of employment giving you protection under the law, and all the other benefits of employment. We have waited so many decades to secure those benefits for workers in this country; surely they should be available to them now.

The married couple’s tax allowance is the one bit of help for workers that the Government have come up with recently. However, it is another of their divisive policies, implying that certain members of society are more deserving of their help than others. The Government should recognise that a large number of people—regardless of their marital status—are missing out on the early recovery, and I urge them to do more to ensure that no one is left behind.

16:39

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

I support the Queen’s Speech and, in particular, the work of the Department for Work and Pensions, which is engaged in nothing less than a moral crusade, a war on unemployment, a war for work and a war to defeat poverty. We all know that the best way to cure deprivation is a job and the best way to reduce poverty is work. Today, I have heard so much from the Labour party about how the Government do not care enough about the least well-off. As Labour Members talk about the ills of everything, they remind me of Jack Frost denying the coming of spring, yet each day the sun rises that bit higher and shadows are thrown back that bit further as the economy and employment continue to improve and as unemployment continues to fall.

The numbers on poverty are encouraging, too. Let us be honest. In the previous Parliament, under the last Labour Government, poverty rose. It is falling under the Conservatives. Under Labour, child poverty rose. It is falling under the Conservatives. Under Labour, inequality rose and it has been falling under the Conservatives. Before the crash, under Labour, 9.8% of people were reporting that they did not have enough money to buy food, according to OECD figures. Today, the figure is 8.1%. That is still too high but it is moving in the right direction. I hope that food poverty will continue to fall under this Government, who are engaged in a crusade against poverty, want and need because they believe in the power, importance and value of work, and the poverty-fighting aspects and dignity that work can bring.

Under Labour, youth unemployment rose and it has been falling under the Conservatives. Under Labour, economic inactivity—people doing nothing—rose and it has been falling under the Conservatives. Under Labour, long-term unemployment rose and it has been falling under the Conservatives. However, it is not enough. I have a vision of the future that we can build under a Conservative Government after 2015: a Britain moving further towards economic success and a work revolution, particularly through the promotion and fostering of small businesses, and through making it easier to have a light-touch regulatory system where one can set up an enterprise at no cost. I hope that the small business Bill will deal with that.

It is important that we give young people a better future. Under Labour, nearly 2 million more people went into renting. Young people’s futures were stolen by Labour’s buy-to-let policy and its promotion of buy-to-let landlords. That was a disgrace. It was wrong that, in 2000, 2 million households were in rent and that, by the time Labour left office, about 3.4 million were in rent. That took away the futures of our young people. We should give them their futures back, so I want more action to disincentivise buy-to-letting—it is too incentivised today through the tax system—and to incentivise owner-occupation. We should give back to our young people the chance, hope and aspiration that owning one’s home brings, which the previous Government took away. It was wrong. It was a shame for Labour to do that. We need to promote work for our young people. We need to promote home ownership and owner-occupation for our young people to give them those things. We need to build a society that is fairer and more just.

I have powerfully made the case for tackling tax avoidance. We must tackle want through welfare reform. We must tackle welfare tourism, too. It is important that we make our borders secure to give our young people a greater chance. For the Labour party, borders and immigration are just issues to be discussed at a coffee morning. Those issues involve the hopes, security and futures of our young people, a generation who were sold the pass by the previous Government. This Government are looking after them.

We need to reform zero-hours contracts, which the previous Government did nothing about.

[Christopher Pincher]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, although we do need to reform zero-hours contracts, only very few people on them say they do not get enough hours of work?

[Charlie Elphicke]

I agree. For me, this is about fairness and justice and ensuring there is flexibility while also protecting people. Labour did not do that, but this Government are doing it. That is very important, and social justice lies at the heart of so much of what we are doing.

We need to look after savers. There are too many zombie accounts—too many zombie ISAs, too many savers being taken advantage of. That was allowed under the previous Government. I say we should give consumers and savers a fair and just deal.

There should be more competition in the power markets, and our water bills should be fairer. I have made that case before, and I am glad to see that Ofwat has been listening and has made a stronger settlement for consumers in the 2015-20 period.

There must also be fairness and justice to our way of life. We need to make our Supreme Court supreme. We need to reform human rights legislation, which has too often gone wrong and too often promotes unfairness and injustice. That is the kind of vision a Conservative Government could build after 2015, and it is one I look forward to.

16:46

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I have tabled a reasoned amendment to the Gracious Speech because I do not believe that the legislative programme set out for this Session of Parliament puts us on track to either a stable economy or a fairer society, or for that matter a world of better quality jobs. That amendment calls for fair pay for work through a national living wage and maximum pay ratios. It calls for an end to the privatisation of public services and much else besides, but the focus of my comments today will be on the Infrastructure Bill, because one of the main benefits of that Bill is supposed to be job creation.

Of course we need more jobs, but high-carbon investment in new roads and shale gas is not the way to deliver that. There are far more job opportunities in a zero-carbon economy than in the fossil-fuelled economy that it replaces. Indeed, there are already more jobs in the green economy than in the motor and telecom sectors combined. The renewable energy industry in the UK today is a case in point, and supports over 100,000 jobs. That is not a fantasy, eyebrow-raising assumption. It is what we have today: actual jobs all across the UK—and that is without even taking into account future potential.

In 2013 approximately 14,000 full-time jobs were associated with the nation’s solar PV sector alone. That is pretty impressive, especially given that there were an estimated 10,000 job losses in the solar industry as a direct result of the coalition’s cack-handed cuts to feed-in tariffs. These losses have been partially offset by continued job creation in the wind industry: again, many of these will be despite anti-jobs, anti-investment policies from the coalition.

Solar is the most popular energy technology in the UK. Solar PV is also a way for individuals and communities to generate their own clean power, reducing dependence on the big six energy companies, and cutting energy bills. In April this year, two schools in Brighton switched on their solar panels.

[Mr Thomas]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Caroline Lucas]

I am sorry, but there is not time.

As I was saying, in April this year two schools in Brighton switched on their solar panels, while Brighton Energy Cooperative is in the process of raising funds from local people for its fifth large PV system. Yet the Government are now cutting support for large-scale solar, harming jobs and denying communities the opportunity to generate their own power from solar farms in the future.

Commenting on the UK slipping down the ranks of the renewable energy country attractiveness index for the second time in a row, to sixth place, Ernst and Young’s head of environmental finance says:

“Policy tinkering and conflicting signals once again become too much for investors and developers to handle.”

In other words, this Government’s policies are anti-jobs and anti-business, as well as anti-safe as far as the climate for our children and grandchildren is concerned.

The “global race” we hear so much about is getting more competitive. By early 2013, 138 countries had renewable energy targets. This Government are blocking such targets. Some 20 countries had renewable heating and cooling targets, too; we do not. Compared with other countries’ industrial strategies and coherent policy and incentive frameworks for home-grown renewables, the UK is looking pretty poor.

So what sort of policies would we be seeing if we had a pro-jobs Government who were serious about these opportunities and willing to stand up to the vested interests of the fossil-fuel industry, whose business plans are incompatible with a safe climate? We would see the confirming and strengthening of the fourth carbon budget. We would see the ditching of the irrational crusade against a binding 2030 renewable energy target. We would be giving the green investment bank powers to borrow now in order to leverage in the large proportion of private sector investment that is needed for the UK’s low-carbon economy to flourish. And we would be redirecting at least some of the billons of fossil fuel subsidies into renewable energy. We need a just transition—I particularly welcome the work that many unions have been doing on exactly how we will re-skill workers currently employed in high-carbon sectors—but it needs to happen fast. The point I want to illustrate is that the supposed conflict between tackling climate change and creating jobs is simply a political construct that suits incumbent fossil-fuel interests and very few others.

With thousands of people dying every winter because they cannot afford to heat their homes, energy-efficiency should be the No. 1 infrastructure priority for the UK. Hundreds of Brighton residents have written to me in support of the Energy Bill Revolution campaign, which calls for the Treasury to recycle carbon taxes into a national programme of energy-efficiency to ensure that homes need much less energy to heat, so that we have lower bills, carbon savings and, significantly, huge job-creation potential. We could add to that list NHS savings and, fundamentally, an end to people dying prematurely of the cold in winter. A report by Cambridge Econometrics last year found that a nationwide programme to super-insulate 600,000 UK homes a year would create more jobs than any alternative investment or tax break the UK could possibly put in place. So, this Gracious Speech is going in the wrong direction in terms of the economy, the environment and, crucially, jobs.

16:51

[Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)]

It is great to follow the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), and I have several comments to make about renewables. Like other hon. Members, particularly those on the Government Benches, may I say how much I welcome the fall in unemployment, yet again? In my constituency, it is now down to 2.7%. Listening to Opposition Members perhaps reinforces the Education Secretary’s determination to get a new course in British modern history in our schools, so that we can have a true evaluation of Government performance in the 1950s, ’60s, ’70s and ’80s.

There is now a feeling in Lancaster that it is a good time to do business and to set up a business. Just last week, I was opening the bright new offices of the Lancaster chamber of commerce, as it sees business developing and expanding, with a huge contribution from Lancaster university. The one thing that will kill this off for a small business that might be considering taking on one extra person or for an individual thinking about setting up their own business is the threat of an increase in national insurance and a jobs tax—or even the mention of it. I hope that Opposition Members will clarify what they are proposing, so that people thinking about starting a business or taking on new employees can plan what would be life-changing decisions.

I welcome the aims of the small business, enterprise and employment Bill in the Queen’s Speech. It aims to foster and back the entrepreneurial spirit that thrives in the UK, particularly in the north-west; to build on the UK’s reputation as a fair and trusted place to do business; and, in particular, to give further help to small businesses in accessing finance and to improve payment practices between small businesses and their customers. Hon. Members have also mentioned other measures such as getting rid of regulations and assisting businesses to get into the export market.

Fleetwood, at one end of my constituency, still has thriving fish processing businesses, which export all over the world; tons of shellfish go from Fleetwood, even to places such as South Korea. But these businesses are small, and they are in poor buildings and in poor conditions. There is the potential to bring them together in a new Billingsgate of the north, with proposals from Wyre council that would be a game-changer in terms of adding to new employment and new skills in the Fleetwood area. I am asking today for support from Ministers in guiding the council to where it can access those funds, but I am grateful to Ministers for already agreeing that parts of Fleetwood would have assisted area status. We have massive potential to build on thriving family businesses, if they could just have modern buildings and cheaper energy sources to exploit the available markets.

While on potential, which my hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher) also mentioned, we must consider the business potential of 1,300 trillion cubic feet of potential shale gas reserves in the Bowland shale in Lancashire. May I say that the constant trumpeting of possibly thousands of new jobs does not totally wash in Lancashire, as there are yet no guarantees of how many jobs would be based locally? I am pleased that the national energy college might be sited at Blackpool and the Fylde college, which includes the Fleetwood nautical campus. If that does happen, local people might feel reassured that they could access the potential new jobs. In trying to sell this national potential, it would be good to get some clear idea of the impact on existing businesses that use water from the water table. As yet, I can find no answers about how much water will be used in this process, and what will happen to the contaminated water afterwards. This is no way to sell this potential game-changing energy business in Lancashire.

The Queen’s Speech contains measures on trespass rights, which affect landowners. I personally think that that is a draconian move, and no way to sell this business. To rub salt in the wounds, the consultation paper proposes a voluntary compensation scheme decided by the companies. If we want to sell this game-changing business and its potential, we should consider what a cross-party group of MPs and councils in Lancashire have requested, which is to make a bigger contribution to Lancashire. We should increase the offer of 1% of revenues to provide investment in that potential, rather than propose those draconian measures. I personally have some difficulty with that part of the speech.

16:56

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

In a report published last week, the think-tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research, predicted that, by 2022, there will be an additional 3.5 million jobs in medium-skilled occupations in industries where jobs require high-level vocational qualifications. The report identifies several emerging sectors with a serious deficiency of skills, including both health care and the building industry. In construction, a net increase of almost half a million jobs requiring medium levels of skill is predicted over the next eight years. That is a 40% increase from 2012. We need to prepare our present generation of young people for these jobs of the future, which is why quality, technical, practical and vocational education is so critical in this debate today.

Last year, around one in three students in this country in upper secondary education took vocational courses, and our youth unemployment is still almost one in five. I welcome the recent fall in youth unemployment, but the figure is still far too high. If we look at Germany, around half of young people under the age of 22 have successfully completed an apprenticeship, and apprenticeships are offered by around one in three companies. The youth unemployment rate is around 7.5%. The expert Tim Oates said that in 1945, the UK developed a world-class system of vocational education and then exported it to Germany where it thrives today.

My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition coined the phrase “the forgotten 50%” to describe the young people who do not go to university and whose talents are all too often wasted. That is why Labour has promised a proper, high-quality, technical baccalaureate, to recognise a structured route for young people pursuing vocational qualifications. Chris Husbands’s review for the Labour party set out the overhaul that is needed.

In the Queen’s Speech, there is a reference to the further expansion of apprenticeships. As my hon. Friend the hon. Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey), the Chair of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee said earlier, the headline numbers on apprenticeships simply do not stand up to scrutiny. As the Husbands review found, two-thirds of apprentices are not new job entrants but existing employees over the age of 25. Although it is right that those over the age of 25 should be able to retrain and gain new qualifications, the lack of quality apprenticeships for young people is startling.

In most other northern European countries, apprenticeships are typically level 3 qualifications that last from two to five years and include significant on and off-the-job training. In this country, the majority of new apprenticeships in recent years have not met those standards. It is crucial that we get this right. It is also crucial that we get right the quality of advice and guidance. Earlier this year, the Association of Colleges conducted a survey of careers advisers in secondary schools across the country. It found dramatic reductions in the amount of professional careers guidance on offer. A survey of pupils found that half of them felt that they were simply not well informed about the jobs available.

Let us learn from the best examples, which I know exist in communities up and down the country. Cardinal Heenan Catholic high school in my constituency is making great progress. Careers advice and guidance is built in from day one, as pupils arrive in year 7. They receive a careers passport as year 7 students, with a pack of information and advice about different employment options, and that follows them right the way through their time in the school. Every November, the whole school focuses on careers, and at the end of the month, year 7 pupils pick three careers of potential interest and make a list of who they would like to meet. That information informs the organisation of career and industry days right the way through the school. Year 8 pupils are given the opportunity to reflect on the choices they made, and in years 9 and 10 that develops further. The programme follows through right the way into sixth form. It is a fantastic way to get young people prepared in choosing a vocation, and the model could be replicated in schools across the country.

I also mention the excellent work of Future First, which seeks to build links between state schools and their alumni to offer guidance on different career paths and the world of work. It is a brilliant organisation, and it is great to see it go from strength to strength. Finally, in our focus on the forgotten 50%, we must also ensure that we continue to challenge our universities to be genuinely open to young people from all backgrounds. Our top universities still have a great deal more to do.

17:01

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

As the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) did, I apologise at the outset; following the stipulations from the Chair, my intended speech has been ditched and replaced by a more ad hoc one, although I hope to touch on one of my original points a little later.

In Ceredigion, if we took away the three largest employers—the universities, the national health service and the county council—from the employment base for my rural constituency in west Wales, we would be left exclusively with a small and medium-sized enterprise work force. It is the work force of the 600 family farms and the one and two-man bands running small businesses right across the piece that will benefit very strongly from the provisions in the Queen’s Speech, not least the small business Bill and in particular the remedial proposals for prompt payment and late payment.

Some Members might have visited the Montgomeryshire day event in the Jubilee Room today, sponsored by my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies). I asked a producer of local cider where he sells his products. He used to send them to a wholesaler, but the wholesaler could not pay his bills. His late payment problems had a direct impact on the cider producer’s selling of his product. The small business Bill will assist in many other ways, such as on the minimum wage.

I commend what the Government have done on the employment allowance. I can think of no more significant step to ratchet up the employment base in the small business sector than by offering that opportunity to many of my constituents. Unemployment in Ceredigion now stands at 601 people, which is a welcome figure, but no Government Member will rest on their laurels. The Government are to be commended for what they have done on rural fuel. My regret is that the rural fuel derogation does not extend widely enough to places such as Ceredigion and many rural areas in England, too, but action has been taken.

We will not rest on our laurels in responding to reports, such as “A Fair Start for Every Child” by Save the Children, which identified 200,000 children in Wales still living in poverty. To their credit, our Assembly Government in Cardiff have proposed some initiatives, such as Flying Start, Communities First and Families First, to assist and support families in their everyday lives and to encourage some of those parents into training activities that will help them later on seek work.

I have a particular gripe with the Assembly Government in Cardiff, because they slashed the funding to two rural Communities First projects in Ceredigion; they were excellent projects in two areas of need, the Tregaron Uplands and Penparcau. However, this Government are taking clear initiatives that will support and assist in the creation of jobs.

Madam Deputy Speaker, given that I have spent the bulk of my time speaking within the terms of the debate and the amendment, may I cite what I wanted to talk about initially, namely the proposals in the Queen’s Speech dealing with child neglect? The fact is that we will now have measures—in clause 62 of the Serious Crime Bill—that will take decisive action in tackling the lack of harmony between action that can be taken in the family courts and civil law against the psychological abuse of children, and action that can be taken in criminal law. It closes an important loophole. Action for Children has been campaigning for that with great vigour over the years. I had the opportunity in the previous Session to have a private Member’s Bill, the Child Maltreatment Bill, which did not get beyond its First Reading. However, I am glad that the Government have listened on this issue. They have listened to the late Paul Goggins, who was among those who campaigned for years on this issue, to close a loophole so that the police can intervene—if necessary—when all other interventions have failed and take action against this most dangerous and heinous form of child abuse, namely psychological abuse.

With seven seconds to go, Madam Deputy Speaker, I thank you and the House for showing tolerance of a rather unintended speech.

17:06

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

I start by welcoming the fact that for the 17th month in a row Northern Ireland unemployment figures have fallen. In my constituency, this time last year there were 513 more people out of work than there are today. That has to be acknowledged, although I must say that it is partly due to the hard work and pro-business policies pursued by my colleagues in the Northern Ireland Assembly, with the Finance Minister and the Industry Minister from the Democratic Unionist party. During the last year, the Industry Minister has announced 10,800 new jobs in Northern Ireland, 40% of which have wages above the average for Northern Ireland.

I have no doubt that the context in which that has happened has been partly due to the increase and the improvement in the UK economy as a whole, and I acknowledge that that is the case. However, it is important to point out that many Government policies have acted as a counter to the work done by the Northern Ireland Executive. Whether those policies are the reductions in public expenditure—reductions of £4 billion in Northern Ireland, a region that is heavily dependent on public expenditure—or the inability to get to grips with the destructive attitudes and work of banks, especially Royal Bank of Scotland and its local bank, Ulster Bank, or indeed the removal of jobs from Northern Ireland in the centralisation programme affecting the Driver and Vehicle Agency and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, all have acted as a counter.

Nevertheless, there are important things that the Government can do. I am disappointed that although the Queen’s Speech refers to further fiscal and financial devolution for Scotland, there is an absence of any commitment to the devolution of corporation tax to Northern Ireland. Of course, such a commitment would have given the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment Minister an additional lever when it comes to trying to attract jobs to Northern Ireland.

I have only a short time to speak, but one area where I support the Government is the new direction—at least, I hope it is a new direction—on energy policy. There is no doubt that the current policy of increasing reliance on renewables has pushed up energy costs; it has cost jobs, especially in energy-intensive industries; and it has caused fuel poverty among many of our constituents. Indeed, today the National Grid Company has indicated that it is now paying firms to switch off power at times when wind speeds are low, because the renewables industry cannot cope with the capacity issues in the system. I therefore believe that the switch to exploiting the fossil fuels that we have in the United Kingdom is an important one.

It has already been estimated that the exploitation of shale gas will create between 64,000 and 70,000 jobs, many of them high-paying. Queen’s University Belfast has done a lot of research which has indicated that getting shale gas out of the ground in Northern Ireland would not only have an impact on Northern Ireland’s fuel security, but provide an important impetus in driving new feedstock for downstream industries, which themselves would create further jobs. I therefore welcome that Government initiative.

The second measure I want to welcome is the introduction of harsher penalties for employers that breach minimum wage legislation. We need not only harsher penalties but greater enforcement, because there is nothing more destructive of local firms than those who break the rules being able to exploit that and push legitimate companies out of business. On a related point, I believe that the Modern Slavery Bill will also play an important part. I hope that the Government will include supply chains outside the United Kingdom so that firms within the United Kingdom are not undercut by the use of slave labour in atrocious conditions in other parts of the world. We should not leave it to individual firms to check their supply chains; there needs to be legislation forcing them to do that.

All those measures will, I believe, help to create additional jobs. I hope that in a year’s time in Northern Ireland we will see even fewer people on the dole and more people in productive work, and in work that pays.

17:11

[Alok Sharma (Reading West) (Con)]

I am delighted to speak in this debate on jobs and work. Despite all the doom and gloom from some Opposition Members, the long-term economic plan is working. I see that in my constituency, where since the general election overall unemployment is down by 47%—it is now 2.4% of the work force—youth unemployment is down by 65% and long-term unemployment is down by 24%.

What do local business owners and managers—the wealth creators in our country—think about the economic recovery and about jobs? The latest Thames valley business barometer, which will be formally published later this month—it is put together by accountants BDO and consultants C8 Consulting—could not be clearer: it has recorded a staggering swing in confidence levels in Thames valley businesses, from 31% last year to 90% now. Furthermore, 82% of businesses said turnover had increased, 86% expect it to increase further in the next six months, and 71% expect to increase their headcount over the next six months. Even on the availability of finance, 37% of businesses surveyed by the barometer said that they felt that access to finance had improved. Access to debt finance is of course important, but so is access to equity finance, especially for start-up ventures.

The Thames Valley local enterprise partnership has received funds from the Government, some of which it has allocated to a growth fund. The fund is administered by a third party, with match equity funding of between £50,000 and £150,000 available. Of course that is a good initiative, but we need to ensure that we can provide more equity funding. I would like to see the Government replicate the success of their StartUp loans scheme with a StartUp equity finance scheme, with match equity funding of up to £5,000 or £10,000, mentoring support and a fast turnaround of application decisions. The StartUp loans scheme has been allocated £150 million and has helped more than 18,000 entrepreneurs. Perhaps a StartUp equity finance scheme would have similar success.

I turn now to the small business, enterprise and employment Bill outlined in the Queen’s Speech. I welcome the Bill. There is a lot in it that will help smaller businesses. In particular, I welcome the fact that it will establish a deregulation target for each Parliament and introduce a new “appeals champion” to protect business against overreaching regulators. Small and medium-sized businesses do not want to be shackled by unnecessary red tape or to spend precious time and resources on it; they want to spend their time and resources building their business and creating employment.

As well as an appeals champion, I suggest that in future Parliaments we ought to have a Minister whose sole job is to look at deregulation across the piece. Ministers are helping to create new legislation every day, and it would be rather nice if at least one Minister spent all his or her time thinking about reducing the burden of regulation, particularly on businesses.

My final point is about naming and shaming employers who are not paying the minimum wage, and raising fines on such errant employers. I welcome what the Government are doing to expose the underpayers, but we need to be careful that reputable employers who make a genuine one-off error are not having their reputations tarnished unnecessarily. On Monday, I was contacted by HSS Hire Group, which employs almost 3,000 people across the UK and Ireland and has a successful training academy in my constituency. Only 20 of its employees are on the minimum wage; the rest are above it. In October last year, an error in the HSS computer system meant that the pay of 15 employees was not updated with the changes to the minimum wage made in that month, costing employees between 47p and £25 each and amounting to a total underpayment of £150.

According to HSS, this administrative error, which was noticed by the company itself, was rectified within a month. HSS received an acknowledgement from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs confirming that it was satisfied with the company’s response, and was issued with a notice of underpayment some three months after the error was first noticed. HSS has since been named and shamed. The company feels that, having proactively put right a genuine admin error, this is unfair. It has made representations to the Business Department and to HMRC. I raise this case because while it is absolutely right to expose rogue employers, we need to make sure that the internal checks and balances are working before companies with a reputation to protect are named and shamed.

In conclusion, I welcome the provisions to promote jobs and work creation in the Queen’s Speech, and I commend it to the House.

17:16

[Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and my proud 45-year membership of a union.

Let me start by referring to the exchange that took place between my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition and the Prime Minister earlier today about the transatlantic trade and investment partnership. I have to say that I was disappointed by the Prime Minister’s response—not by its substance but by the fact that he did not really seem to be engaged with the issue. He offered, generously, to write to the Leader of the Opposition outlining the Government’s response to concerns about the TTIP’s impact on the national health service.

There are several campaigns under way regarding people’s beliefs about the impact of the TTIP. Personally, I think that many are misplaced. For example, on concerns about privatisation in the national health service, the biggest threat in that regard would not be the TTIP but the re-election of a Conservative Government at the next election. I accept, however, that those concerns are out there. Equally I accept that some of them are whipped up by those who are opposed to trade, and, even more so, viscerally opposed to the United States. None the less, these arguments have to be taken on. Frankly, there is a lack of that by Ministers or officials, and I have raised that with them directly.

This is important because it involves about half the world’s GDP and a strategic transatlantic linkage of the liberal democracies and liberal economies. It has great potential for our manufacturing industry, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises involved in niche manufacturing, many of which have great difficulty in dealing with all the paperwork of international trade—much more so than the multinationals—and would be better able to expand their business. This is an important trade deal for the future that should not be allowed to go by default. Trade deals are never easy, as many of those who have been involved in several over the years will agree. However, they are very important, particularly because if we do not have trade deals between the liberal economies, international standards will be set by economies that do not take such a view.

The essence of the success of trade depends on our capacity to produce, and Government have a very significant role in this. I will be a little more generous to the Business Secretary than he was to his predecessor, because I think that he has not only pioneered several issues but very much followed on from many of the initiatives taken by his predecessor, Lord Mandelson.

I also pay tribute to the Foreign Secretary, who has brought about a significant cultural change in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, directing it more towards battling and selling for Britain. I was recently in Auckland —the England rugby team are there—taking the opportunity to sell British goods. The GREAT Britain campaign is an extremely successful brand that our incoming Government should and will continue. I accept there is a need for more communication to ensure that many small and medium-sized enterprises are made more aware of the assistance they can get.

Although the FCO and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills are doing well, other Government Departments are letting them down. Too often, we focus on Government as legislator or policy maker and miss out on their role as a client. My hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) has drawn attention to what can be done in construction. However, on the purchase of police vehicles, the Home Office’s framework prevents Jaguar Land Rover from competing. No other country in the world would behave like that, and such behaviour runs through a number of Departments. I could give other examples if I had time. I ask the Minister to get his colleagues in other Departments to see reality and to start behaving like officials in other countries and put the interests of British manufacturing first.

17:21

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

Anyone who has listened to a number of speeches by Labour Members during this debate could be forgiven for believing that the good news about unemployment that we continue to see month on month—the 2 million jobs created by the economy, the record pace of the fall in unemployment, and more people, including more women, working than ever before—had never actually happened.

A number of Members have referenced the picture in their own constituency and I will briefly do the same for mine. More than 800 fewer people are on the unemployment register now than 12 months ago. Unemployment has fallen by a third. In east Kent, wages are rising faster than the national average and unemployment is falling faster. We are seeing the regeneration of the local economy.

Some Members have said that nothing is being done about apprenticeships, but nothing could be further from the truth. The number of young people starting an apprenticeship in my constituency this year is more than three times the number under the previous Government. Significant strides forward are being taken and young people are benefiting from that.

I also want to take this opportunity, in front of the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, to thank a group of people who do not get thanked enough, namely the staff at Jobcentre Plus in Folkestone. They are dedicated to what they do and work very hard with employers and people who are looking for work, particularly young people seeking apprenticeships and work placements. There will always be cases that we as Members of Parliament will take up with jobcentre teams, but they are a dedicated and hard-working group who are doing their best for people and we are seeing the result, which is fast-falling unemployment.

If Members were to stand in the middle of my constituency—this is certainly true of Folkestone—they would be considerably nearer to the coast of France than to the House of Commons. It is interesting, therefore, to reflect on the difference between the employment picture in Folkestone and that in Boulogne, with which we have been twinned for many years. Many Labour Members have suggested that if the Government had taken a different course—such as borrowing more money or taxing more heavily—perhaps things would have worked out even better, but the French economy gives us a live example of what might have happened. The unemployment rate in Folkestone is 3.4%, but in Boulogne it is more than 15%. The average hourly wage in Folkestone and Hythe is £12, whereas in Boulogne it is £9.

If we look at the performance of the British and French economies, we will see not only that unemployment here is lower, but that the rate of business start-ups here is significantly higher. Earlier this year, I was interested to read in The New York Times, which is not exactly famed for being a tribune of the hard right—it is a fairly liberal, moderate newspaper—an article called, “Au Revoir, Entrepreneurs”. It looked at the growing trend of people moving from France to the UK to set up their own business, and quoted Guillaume Santacruz, who explained his thinking:

“A lot of people are like, ‘Why would you ever leave France?’…I’ll tell you. France has a lot of problems. There’s a feeling of gloom that seems to be growing deeper. The economy is not going well, and if you want to get ahead or run your own business, the environment is not good.”

When asked why he had chosen to come to the UK, he said:

“I asked myself, ‘Where will I have the bigger opportunity in Europe?’…London was the obvious choice. It’s more dynamic and international, business funding is easier to get, and it’s a better base if you want to expand.”

I am pleased to hear anyone tell such a story about their reasons for coming here.

[Mr David Ward (Bradford East) (LD)]

In the short time available to the hon. Gentleman, will he, as the chair of an all-party group that covers the textile industry, say what a great news story the renaissance in UK textiles is?

[Damian Collins]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. Textiles is becoming one of the great renaissance industries, with British textile businesses and manufacturing centres winning contracts back from the far east, creating high-quality jobs here and supporting the fantastic British fashion industry. That is one of the great success stories.

The shadow Secretary of State spoke about picking winners and having a positive industrial strategy. We see that nowhere more clearly than in the creative sector in this country. The recovery in textiles is such an example, but the Government’s programme of tax credits for film, animation and television production—now extended to theatre production as well—is bringing more work not just to England, Scotland and Wales, but to Northern Ireland, where it is a very important part of the renaissance of the Northern Ireland economy.

The Opposition amendment requires a bit more attention, which the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills gave it in his speech, because the Labour party is once again presenting itself as the champion of a great cause, without having any real answers for the problems it identifies. In its amendment, Labour does not propose the adoption of the living wage as the minimum wage—it is largely proposing exactly what the Government are doing, which is to encourage the Low Pay Commission to consider increasing the minimum wage faster than average earnings—and does not propose to mandate any changes, while it includes the caveat that the Low Pay Commission is still free to disregard Labour’s advice and do what it wants.

On the basis of the amendment, Labour is somehow seeking to present itself as a party with a very different policy. It does have different policies on tax and spending, which are those that got the economy into the mess it was in. Our policies are leading to a renaissance in work, employment and business start-ups, and they are also delivering a fairer deal for the low-paid, both in increasing the minimum wage ahead of the rise in average earnings and in cutting taxes for low-paid people in work. That is a much better model to follow.

The future is incredibly bright for business and job creation in this country. The very large number of people who, as we come out of the recession, have decided to set up their own business, start up on their own and invest in themselves and their community is a sign of the great underlying heath of the economy today.

17:27

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

During the past year, I have been pleased to work with colleagues from both sides of the House in seeking, with some success, to regulate payday lenders. Going beyond such regulation, however, we need to ask why people turn to high-cost credit and what we can do about it.

Christians Against Poverty has recently reported that 80% of its advice service users have taken out loans for food, 52% for fuel bills and 36% for rent and mortgage payments: food, heating and housing—the cost of living. There are two sides to the problems in that not only are costs rising, but incomes are depressed. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition was right to say last week:

“It is a basic belief of the British people that if you work all the hours God sends, you should at least be able to make ends meet.”—[Official Report, 4 June 2014; Vol. 582, c. 16.]

That is not happening today in Britain, one of the richest countries in the world.

Some 47% of those who visited Citizens Advice with a payday loan issue in the past quarter are in work. There has been a staggering 60% increase in the number of working people claiming housing benefit since the Government were elected. According to a recent Church Action on Poverty report, much of the increased use of food banks has been by working people on low wages. Our economy is simply not rewarding hard work.

Over the last generation, there has been a shift of between 5% and 7% of GDP from wages to profits and from profits to shareholders—quite deliberately—by weakening the bargaining power of working people. We are now seeing the consequences: for too many people, part-time employment has replaced full-time work; the minimum wage has become the norm, not a safety net; and the security of income that people look for has been replaced by the uncertainty of zero-hours contracts.

Employers are looking for every opportunity to drive down labour costs. A care worker who came to see me was paid the minimum wage for the time she spent with the elderly, but was paid nothing as she spent hours driving from one appointment to another. People have come to see me about zero-hours contracts that make it impossible for them to plan their family budget from week to week.

Growing impoverishment is not the only consequence. Public funds are increasingly being used to prop up a low-wage economy. Social security spend on in-work benefits has risen by almost 20% in 10 years. Taxpayers’ money is being diverted from funding public services to paying dividends and feeding the growing income inequality.

People deserve better. They need a Queen’s Speech that stimulates the growth that will create better-paid jobs through an active industrial strategy, backed by a British investment bank and regional banks, and by building the homes that we need. We need to make work pay by strengthening the enforcement of the national minimum wage and giving local councils the responsibility of taking on that task. We need action to end abuses such as the non-payment of travel time, which affects about 10% of care workers, according to the Low Pay Commission. We need to end bogus self-employment in sectors such as construction. We need to reset the remit of the Low Pay Commission to increase the national minimum wage significantly and bring it closer to average earnings. We need to stop wage rates being undercut by employers who recruit exclusively from eastern Europe. We need to end the abuse of zero-hours contracts by giving workers the right to proper contracts that reflect their actual working hours. We need to work towards a living wage by building on the initiatives of the Labour councils that have implemented it for their workers, using the levers of public procurement to encourage more employers to pay it, and putting in place tax breaks to encourage more employers to adopt it.

I started my comments by welcoming the action that the House has taken on payday lending, but let us not just deal with the symptoms; let us tackle the sickness at its source. We need bold action to make our economy work for the many, not for the few. The Gracious Speech falls short of that mark.

17:32

[Chris White (Warwick and Leamington) (Con)]

I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield), but I support the Gracious Speech and, in particular, the measures that will support the continued creation of jobs.

Warwick and Leamington is home to a thriving local economy. The Government’s pro-business policies have provided significant help in achieving that and I pay tribute to local businesses for their part in it. More supportive policies were announced in the Queen’s Speech, such as the small business, enterprise and employment Bill, which will undoubtedly add to the climate of business confidence and expansion. Small business rate relief and the reduction in and, in some cases, removal of employer’s national insurance contributions are but two examples of the many Government policies that have supported business growth over the past five years.

There is clear evidence of that growth in my constituency, where the number of out-of-work claimants has reduced by a staggering 59.5% since April 2010. Further proof of business confidence came to light just this week in a report from the business consultancy, Duport, which showed that a record number of companies were formed in Leamington Spa in the first quarter of 2014. From January to March, 205 new companies were registered in the town, which represents a massive 31% increase on the previous year.

My region has a proud industrial heritage. It has been home to iconic brands such as Aga Rangemaster and Dennis Eagle for many years. It is now the destination of choice for companies such as Vitsoe and First Utility.

Vitsoe offers a particularly apt example, which sums up this renaissance. The old Ford foundry, which manufactured on the same site for many years in Leamington, closed in 2007, with the tragic loss of many hundreds of jobs. In 2013, furniture manufacturer Vitsoe was looking to relocate its factory and, earlier this year, it was confirmed that it would take over the old Ford foundry site, again confirming that we are a destination for manufacturing.

The area also attracts new industries. Leamington is home to a thriving creative industry, with many digital media and video games manufacturers now calling the town home—to the extent that the area is now commonly referred to as “Silicon Spa”. It acts as one of the global hubs for the games industry and the jobs that creates.

Despite those positive and encouraging developments, I would be the first to admit that there is more still to do. There are two key areas to focus on to achieve this. First, we need to continue to rebalance the economy by supporting our manufacturing sector and the jobs it creates. There is great positivity in the manufacturing sector, with UK manufacturing activity increasing for the 15th successive month. However, we can do more as a Government to support the sector and ensure that it continues to thrive.

The Government have already demonstrated their commitment to supporting UK manufacturing and to encouraging a re-shoring of industry, as evidenced by the measures in this year’s Budget, including reducing operating costs and providing affordable finance options, which will encourage investment and export.

Secondly, we should do more to encourage the developing social enterprise sector. We need to support these businesses, which contribute to society as much as they contribute to the economy and jobs. As a Government, we need to have a greater understanding of the culture behind those businesses and increase the recognition that this part of the economy receives.

Support for business, through well designed policies, will create an environment that supports growth and jobs.

17:37

[Simon Danczuk (Rochdale) (Lab)]

Let me start by saying that I found the comments of the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White), particularly about manufacturing, of real interest.

As the economy recovers, we have a genuine opportunity to think about how we are shaping it and about how Britain succeeds in the modern world. My view has always been that Britain succeeds when its small businesses succeed. It is the Government’s job to get behind small business and create the conditions for British SMEs to thrive. I therefore welcome the inclusion of a small business, enterprise and employment Bill in the Gracious Speech. I hope that it will offer an opportunity to have a serious discussion about some of the very real challenges that face small business in Britain.

Having recently set up a small business in Rochdale—Danczuk’s Deli, for which I declare an interest—I can testify to how real some of these challenges are. Whether it is access to finance, late payments or being shut out from the tendering process for local procurement contracts, too many small businesses feel that Government do not always give them the proper level of support.

I have two important concerns. The first surrounds aspects of the small business, enterprise and employment Bill where I do not feel the Government are showing the necessary ambition to tackle the big challenges. For example, the Government talk about increasing access to finance, but they are unclear about what they actually intend to do about it. This country needs an ambitious programme based around regional investment banks aimed at getting banks lending to businesses again. In Germany, where thriving SMEs form the backbone of economic success, nearly 2,000 institutions lend to small businesses. In the UK, fewer than 400 do that. Any Government that are serious about tackling this issue would start by reforming the banks. My first concern is therefore about a potential lack of ambition in the Bill.

My second concern is that the Government still have their head in the sand on business rates. I guarantee that at any event with people from the small business world, the subject of business rates will be raised pretty quickly. Business people think the system is broken, and they rate that as their No. 1 concern. They are right to be angry about it.

The business rates system is based on a view that the profitability of a business is linked to the physical size of the premises. That is complete madness in the modern world where many businesses trade online with no physical shops or factories. When we add to that the ridiculous and arbitrary valuation system, we have one of the most unfair and ineffective systems of taxation that can be thought of. The Gracious Speech is a final indication that reform of business rates has been kicked into the long grass for the foreseeable future. If the Government are not prepared to act, will they please give up the empty rhetoric about business rates?

Finally, we need a serious discussion about some of the other proposals in the Bill and how they will work in practice. For example, Jill Nagy from Rochdale Training in my constituency has raised concerns about how the new apprenticeship arrangements will work. She feels that those arrangements will push more bureaucracy on to employers and take it away from training providers, which could cause problems for SMEs hiring apprentices. That is a real issue that could create more bureaucracy and red tape for small businesses, and we need to look at it again.

I hope that many of these issues can be ironed out during the year, and that the small business, enterprise and employment Bill will give us the chance to push for more action on access to finance and business rates reform. Small businesses in this country are all different, but they are united by a sense of ambition and optimism about the future. It is time for the Government to match that ambition.

17:41

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk). As always, he speaks with conviction and commitment, and I know he works hard on behalf of his constituents and for the north-west. It is good to speak in this debate and recognise the progress being made on the economy nationally, and indeed in Macclesfield. Many Conservative Members have recently also seen how well things are going in Newark, and it was great to recognise and honour our new colleague in the Chamber today.

In my work I am constantly inspired—as, I am sure, are many other hon. Members—by the great work that goes on in my constituency with volunteers, dedicated town and parish councillors, Cheshire East councillors, and public servants. Today, however, I wish to recognise the inspiring work of many small and medium-sized businesses and self-employed people who are making a huge difference to our local economy.

Debbie Quinn is one of the inspiring people who set up our community treacle market. She then went on to set up a small restaurant, the Salt Bar, which was featured on “The Restaurant Man” on the BBC. She has now helped revitalise the castle quarter in Macclesfield. Yes, that is for profit, but my goodness is she making a contribution to our economy as well. She came to a recent jobs fair with me and we spoke to lots of small businesses. She is already taking on more apprentices—that is the dedication that individuals can have.

I recently visited a local business, Silkmoth, which was set up by a few people and now totals 13 employees. It services 700 independent tyre fitters across the country and provides a platform for them to do e-commerce and online business. That is the sort of contribution that such businesses make, along with other fantastic businesses such as musicMagpie, which has recreated a whole segment of activity by recycling DVDs, CDs and computer games in a massive market. It now employs more than 800 people, with sales in 2012 at £63 million—an incredible achievement. That is the sort of difference such businesses can make, and increasingly they come to me and thank me for the contribution and work of this Government in setting a framework in which they can thrive and succeed.

Earlier in the week it was encouraging to go to a reception by the Federation of Small Businesses here in the House and—other Members may have noticed this—hear its national chairman speak about having had a bumper year, and the way it has been able to influence Government policy and engage with other political parties. It says that it regards the small business Bill as a landmark Bill, and it is a landmark Bill because it will build on the Government’s work in the Finance Bill and the national insurance contributions Bill, which featured in the Queen’s Speech. Together, they will make a difference to the lives of the people who will help to transform our economy even further. The entrepreneurs, employers and exporters are the people who will help to create sustainable economic growth.

It is worth touching on the contribution that is being made by the self-employed. We are helping the growing band of first-time entrepreneurs by cutting back red tape. The small business Bill will ensure that red tape is reviewed frequently and that that requirement is put into law. The national insurance contributions Bill will simplify the collection of national insurance for the self-employed, removing one of the barriers to taking on the opportunity to become self-employed. I feel absolutely passionately that we need to do more to encourage first-time employers. We have done that already with the employment allowance, reducing national insurance contributions and taking under-21s out of national insurance entirely. We need to build on those opportunities by removing more barriers. It is critical that the small business Bill strengthens existing prompt payment codes, helping small businesses to have a better deal in their interactions with bigger businesses and greater access to public procurement. It will also ensure, as other Members have mentioned, that sources of finance and advice on finance will be more available to them, too. I agree with the Federation of Small Businesses that this is a landmark Bill.

This is an important Queen’s Speech that will help many more businesses to succeed in their activities. It is further progress in our aim to have successful and sustainable economic growth under the long-term economic plan. For those reasons, I support wholeheartedly the Queen’s Speech.

17:46

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I have been contacted by many constituents who are disappointed by the Queen’s Speech, not just by its broad failure to tackle the real economic and social problems they face, but, in particular, its failure on recall and the inexplicable omission of a Bill to ban wild animals in circuses.

Today’s debate is about jobs and I want to start by talking about the prevalence of low pay—and, indeed, no pay—in one of the fastest-growing and most successful sectors of our economy: the arts and creative industries. I speak here as chair of the all-party group for the Performers Alliance, which works with the Musicians Union, Equity and the Writers Guild to provide a voice in Parliament for musicians, actors, writers and performers.

The headline figures on the success of our creative industries are impressive, but they mask a situation in which those with talent and creativity often go unrewarded. Equity’s most recent survey of members found that virtually half earned under £5,000, and 86% earned less than £20,000 a year. Similar research by the MU demonstrated that 60% had worked for free in the past year. We must get a grip on this situation to ensure that work in this sector does not become the preserve of only those from privileged backgrounds, as is increasingly the case.

The all-party group’s report, “Work Not Play” sets out what action is needed, such as clear, industry-specific guidance on the national minimum wage on the Gov.uk website. That is something Equity and I discussed with the then Minister with responsibility for employment relations, the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson), back in October. We will keep pressing the Government on this matter.

As the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is in his place, I will take the opportunity to highlight Equity’s concerns that the roll-out of universal credit will prove extremely detrimental to the ability of many of its members to sustain careers in the creative industries. Many will be assumed to have an income they simply do not have, as a result of the application of the minimum income floor, or subject to increased conditionality. This is why Equity is calling for a reduction in the minimum income floor and a relaxation in conditionality for creative industry workers. The creative industries are characterised by unpredictable and short-term patterns of work, and the system must acknowledge that.

I want to talk about the need for action against unscrupulous—or perhaps, to be generous, unwitting employers—who profit from the exploitation of workers both here and abroad. We have heard how the failure to pay the minimum wage and the use of zero-hours contracts have undercut the wages of workers in the UK, and I fully support my party’s efforts to push the Government further on tackling such abuses. There is much more to be done, particularly in relation to company supply chains.

We have heard horrific stories in this Chamber before about the use of trafficked, child and forced labour. According to International Labour Organisation estimates, there are 21 million victims of forced labour around the world, working in unimaginably harsh conditions for little pay or enslaved for no pay at all. People will have seen today’s coverage of the Environmental Justice Foundation’s report, “Sold to the Sea”, which documents the severe conditions in the Thai fishing industry, where, it is said, men are

“bought and sold like animals,”

held against their will, abused and even murdered. An investigation by Finnwatch into Thai factories also revealed forced and child labour, illegally low wages, excessive working hours, abuse by managers and unsafe working hours.

Such factories form part of the supply chains for European companies. As Anti-Slavery International has said:

“If you buy prawns or shrimp from Thailand, you will be buying the produce of slave labour”.

I know that the Modern Slavery Bill is being introduced by the Home Office, and I welcome it, but the Business Secretary clearly has a strong interest too in ensuring that British companies and British consumers do not support the exploitation of workers in that way. I urge him to talk to his colleague the Home Secretary about whether the Bill can be strengthened to legislate against slavery in the supply chain. The EU imported over $1 billion-worth of seafood from Thailand in 2012, so I would also ask the Business Secretary to raise these issues in the EU’s free trade agreement negotiations with Thailand, which is in his remit too.

Given more time, I could talk at length about other examples of the exploitation of workers by unscrupulous employers, whether it be one individual taking advantage of another’s vulnerability or the systematic exploitation of hundreds of workers by huge companies. We need a fundamental shift in power and a Government who stand up for such workers—in whatever industry or, indeed, whatever country, because in today’s global economy the exploitation of workers abroad has an undoubted impact here—using whatever international mechanisms we have at our disposal, such as the ILO, to ensure that everyone gets a fair deal. The Government have singularly failed to step up to the plate so far. I hope they will do so now.

17:51

[Graham Evans (Weaver Vale) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy). She made some important points, which I agree with, about modern day slavery.

It is a pleasure to have my chance to speak about my constituency of Weaver Vale, and jobs and work. I am aware that I have spoken a number of times about my jobs and apprenticeship fairs. This is the third time that I have mentioned my third annual jobs fair, of which colleagues have been very supportive. However, if I keep this pattern up, I suspect that my colleagues will be slightly less tolerant when I hold my fourth jobs fair, next year.

The reason I raise employment in the House so frequently is that I understand that it is not about just boosting economies, ticking boxes or quoting statistics. I left school at 16 with few qualifications and I spent some time unemployed, so I understand that employment means so much more than being a statistic on a piece of paper. This is about confidence, getting up in the morning and people knowing that they are in control of their own future. When we think of employment statistics, we should think not just of the big picture—although of course that is important—but of how lives have been changed because of new-found vocations.

So what is the outlook for Weaver Vale? I am exceptionally proud that my constituency is a real success story. Since 2010, unemployment has dropped by 30%, to a claimant rate of 3.1% for jobseeker’s allowance. There are 749 fewer jobseekers than a year ago, and youth unemployment has dropped by 41% in the past year alone. What has caused such a dramatic improvement in the outlook for my constituents? Of course, a number of factors have contributed to this success story. First and foremost, as I have mentioned occasionally in the past, the long-term economic plan is working. This country’s recovery from the biggest budget deficit in our peacetime history and the deepest recession since world war two is fast and getting faster. Britain has set out to the world that it is a great place to do business. International and national confidence in our economy is high. Confidence translates into investment. Businesses are therefore expanding to create more jobs. Britain is open for business and everyone knows it.

The second factor is local investment projects, such as the Mersey gateway bridge—representatives of which were in attendance at my jobs fair—and the regeneration of Northwich town centre, which are creating hundreds of construction roles and thousands of permanent jobs. Such projects identify the local need and are being maximised to create bright new prospects across a huge range of vocations. I look forward to continuing to work with jobseekers and employers alike as those projects develop.

Finally, I should like to mention employment skills. At my jobs and apprenticeships fair, I welcomed employment support organisations and apprenticeship schemes to help people to develop the skills they need. Waitrose recently opened a store in Northwich, creating 151 roles as a part of the regeneration of the town centre. I am very pleased that Northwich shoppers now have more choice in their weekly shop and that numerous charities and community projects, such as the ArtWork gallery, are receiving support from the store. However, what is even more important about the opening of this store is the fact that 45% of the staff were unemployed before being offered their role. A further one in five roles were offered to people working fewer than 16 hours a week.

Last month, I was delighted to welcome the Chancellor to Northwich to see the regeneration, to meet staff and to learn about their stories. Waitrose collaborated with a number of local organisations, including Cheshire West and Chester council, the Northwich jobcentre and Mid Cheshire college, which works with local jobseekers, tailoring its training to make them perfect candidates for the roles. This is a great example of local bodies recognising the need for candidates and the need for jobs, and identifying the skills required to match up to those needs. In truth, this is the most important aspect of the upturn in employment statistics. It is about showing individuals the skills that they have already, helping them to discover new skills and finding the right role for them. That is also why I believe apprenticeships are so important; they nurture vocational skills.

I am very pleased that the number of apprenticeships in my constituency has risen by 27% over the past three years—a statistic that I expect to rise even further next year, thanks to the excellent work of Mid Cheshire college and the ambitious 100-day apprenticeship challenge of the Northwich Guardian. I am proud that the outlook for jobseekers in Weaver Vale has improved so markedly since I became a Member, and I will continue to run my jobs fairs to bring together training, talent and opportunity, because I believe that every job filled is a success story to be proud of.

17:56

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

I am pleased to have an opportunity to participate in the debate. I hope to demonstrate that many of the measures in the Gracious Speech fail to address the real issues facing my constituency.

The north-east demonstrates many aspects of a successful knowledge-based economy, with a highly skilled and motivated work force. Our manufacturing industry alone is worth £7.5 billion to the economy, and we have a strong and successful advanced engineering sector, as well as leading the way in low-carbon technology and sustainable energy solutions.

The north-east has some key competitive advantages to enable further rebalancing and job creation to happen, if only opportunities can be unlocked. Labour recognised that when in government, and our regional development agency, One North East, was working very successfully to build on this unique skills base. Regrettably, this approach was lost when the Government abolished the regional development agencies without giving thought to the consequences of losing their skills in job creation and attracting jobs to the area.

Lord Adonis’s “North East Independent Economic Review” report recently made proposals to boost exports and supply chains and co-ordinate inward investment activities. In many ways, it sought to put back together some of the functions once carried out by the regional development agency, but with a fresh purpose and momentum. Unfortunately, there is no sign whatever that the Government will act on this report. Indeed, they have no proposals at all to intervene in an economy that needs to deliver more jobs—something that Labour did very successfully. It worked very hard to attract Hitachi to the region, and it looks as though we will gain more than 5,000 jobs in the next few years. Labour also supported Nissan through the recession, so that more jobs and skills could be developed, and we also developed the supply chain. My point to the Government is that that simply could not have happened without intervention—something that we do not have from them at the moment.

There is a real contrast between all that under Labour and having a local enterprise partnership in the area that is barely functional—it does not have a chief executive or even a deputy chief executive at the moment—and a regional growth fund that operates a scattergun approach. Most of the money allocated to the region is not drawn down in any case. According to a recent report by the National Audit Office, most of the funds remain unspent, while the cost of creating jobs has increased considerably, but Ministers are taking no action to tackle this set of concerns.

This is not only about the number of jobs created; it is about the quality of jobs on offer, too. Work must pay. The northern TUC has raised the important issue of the nature of the jobs being created in the region: many are precarious and based on zero-hours contracts, and we risk losing valuable, high-quality public sector jobs in the region, with poor private sector replacements. A good example is the Government’s proposals to privatise the Land Registry. Those jobs are currently good-quality public sector jobs, but we risk their being downgraded through privatisation. Under the present Government, about eight out of 10 new private sector jobs have been created in the south of England. It is also worrying that the number of business start-ups in Durham has fallen by 14%, compared with a national fall of 1% in the first quarter of the year.

This is not only about finding work; it is about what happens to those who are receiving low pay. My constituency is among the 10 areas that are suffering the most from the bedroom tax, which is causing households to lose about £482 a year, resulting in a reduction in local spending power. Wages in the north-east are about £50 a week lower than the UK average and about £200 a week less than wages in London. Therefore, in the retail sector, people in the north-east are spending 10% less than people elsewhere in the country. The Government must do more to rebalance the economy, and take account of issues relating specifically to regions such as the north-east.

18:00

[Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

One of the critical drags on the creation of decent, well-paid jobs is the continuing difficulty experienced by both small businesses and ordinary households in gaining access to affordable credit. I wait with interest for details of the measures in the small business Bill, but I fear that they will not go far enough.

A number of United Kingdom-based experts with knowledge of small business lending have suggested that part of the problem is the wide disparity within and between different parts of the UK in obtaining access to business finance. For years, as a result of a package of legislative measures known colloquially as the Community Reinvestment Act, banks in the United States have had to disclose where they are lending by postcode and the type of lending that they offer and to demonstrate, to secure banking licences, that they are offering a service in all the areas from which they take deposits. There is also organised scrutiny of the data that they disclose, so that policy makers can locate the gaps in access to credit. In parts of America where lending is low, banks work closely with alternative lenders of finance such as community banks to address the shortage. In the absence of a similar regular disclosure of lending data, the Government, local enterprise partnerships, local authorities and community banks in this country are working with one hand tied behind their backs in trying to understand where further support is needed to provide proper access to credit.

It is true that in January, following sustained pressure from Members in all parts of the House, banks published data showing lending to businesses and personal lending by postcode, as a one-off, but I understand that no organisation has yet received funds that would enable it to carry out a comprehensive examination of those data, and it is not clear how regular further lending data disclosures will be. There is no legal requirement for UK banks to release such data—it is still voluntary—but I hope that we may yet see such a requirement in the small business Bill.

Concern about lending to businesses is mirrored by concern about the existence of lending deserts in personal finance. The number of bank branch closures has increased over the past four years, and, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield), a growing number of communities with no bank or alternative banking facilities are being forced to turn to high-cost sources of credit such as payday lenders.

I asked the Financial Inclusion Centre to take an initial look at the lending data for London. It concluded that there did appear to be a postcode lottery, with significant variations between levels of lending. There are, for example, areas of London in which lending to small and medium-sized enterprises drops to between a quarter and a third of the London average. A better understanding of the differences in personal lending between communities might help to ensure that efforts to expand credit union coverage and membership were directed more effectively. I should have liked the Queen’s Speech to contain further measures to accelerate awareness of credit unions as a cheaper source of personal credit. The inclusion of a clear cross-Government target of increasing the number of members and enabling local authorities, housing associations and employers to encourage credit union membership might have been useful. Similarly, a legal right to allow employees to have deducted at source a small part of their income for saving with a credit union would have been helpful.

I am disappointed that there are no measures in the Queen’s Speech to tackle the growing crisis in the NHS. In my constituency, there are problems at Northwick Park hospital. Our A and E department is under significant pressure; it is one of the worst in terms of meeting the target to see 95% of A and E patients within four hours. My constituents are inevitably worried about the Government’s decision to close the nearby Ealing hospital A and E department and about the disclosure that the hospital board thinks that an additional 123 beds are needed on the Northwick Park site to deal with the pressures. I have not yet seen any evidence that the Government will meet the demand for finance to deal with that issue. I hope that that will be corrected soon.

18:06

[Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to make a brief contribution in the debate. It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas), who made a powerful case. My hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna), the shadow Secretary of State, outlined a range of issues on which the Government could have acted to deal with the cost of living crisis and to support the small business sector. A couple of points have been raised with me by small businesses in my community, and I make a plea for joined-up government to deal with them. However, one thing struck me during the debate on zero-hours contracts and the variability of the hours that people work. I recently met a woman on the doorstep who said, “I am working part-time. I am trying to do my best. I have two children, and if I get extra hours it costs me £15 an hour for child care. I earn £7 an hour.” That is the reality that many people face.

We regularly hear pleas about red tape from the small business sector. Some Members have mentioned that, but I have not yet heard anything from the Government about which particular bits of red tape they may want to slash in the coming Bill. In an attempt to be helpful, as always, I will mention some that my constituents have suggested. Unlike some Members, I would not suggest cutting red tape in a way that would impede our ability to ensure safe working environments. My constituents’ suggestions are about the collection of statistics. One constituent told me in an e-mail:

“We currently ‘have’ to take part in the Monthly Business Survey, the Annual PRODCOM (UK Manufacturers Sales by Product) survey, the Business Register and Employment Survey, and the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, fifteen surveys per annum.”

That is from a very small business that employs local people and contributes to the local economy. However, for some reason it seems to be locked in: once the ONS gets hold of a small business for surveys, it never gets out of that cycle. It is unclear how small businesses are selected for those surveys.

I understand that 26 businesses in my constituency have to complete these surveys during the year. Another two businesses have contacted me. One is a small business that manufactures ice cream. It cannot understand why it was asked to complete a very lengthy survey and threatened with legal action and penalties if it did not do so. After pursuing the issue, it turned out that the business was being asked to complete the wrong survey. When we looked at this further, it seemed that, despite all the threats that are made to small businesses, very few people actually end up being pursued. I wonder how much it is costing the Government to pursue this, rather than slashing the so-called red tape facing businesses.

On the same issue, a businesswoman who runs a local garage explained to me that she had queried the form she was being asked to fill in because it did not make any sense in relation to her business, and she received an acknowledgement that perhaps it was not the right form. The Cabinet Office, which has responded to me, and the BIS and DWP teams may want to try to ensure that we do something practical and sensible and bring forward specific proposals that will help such small businesses in my constituency.

I want to make a final plea on business lending. Notwithstanding everything the Government say, businesses in my constituency are still telling me that it is impossible to get the funding they need to get people into jobs and make the contribution to the local community that they want to make.

18:10

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

Having sat here for the best part of six and a half hours listening to the discussion of various issues to do with the Gracious Speech, I have to say I am not surprised that many people outside the Westminster bubble feel disenchanted with politics. We have seen from the Government Benches that the fine and dandy politics shines through—Government Members have explained to the people who will be listening to this and who perhaps read reports that life in the UK is fine and that everybody is doing marvellously, but that simply is not the case.

People are right to sit back and be offended by politicians who continually ram that down their throats, suggesting that their life is fine and their families are fine and they should not complain and they should know their place. We live in food bank Britain, yet the fine and dandy politics of the coalition suggests that that is a good thing—it shows community spirit; it is not because people need to eat food to live. The fact that there are more working people at food banks than there are people who are not working is apparently the big society, and it is to be celebrated. Try telling that to people who actually attend the food banks.

We discussed zero hours for a lot of hours today. Different people have different views. The fine and dandy politics of the coalition simply says, “Well, we’ll look at zero-hours contracts, but listen: people should be happy that they’ve got zero-hours contracts. It’s a job. They’re not unemployed, and it doesn’t matter that they’re not making a halfpenny in a week. It doesn’t matter that you haven’t got any protection in the workplace. Be happy because you’ve got a job and you’re not unemployed.” That is rubbish. Try telling it to the young man or woman or the family who are on zero-hours contracts and cannot control their lives. Try telling the agency workers who are being exploited. Try having a look at the situation they are in. Instead of telling everybody that life is brilliant, we should be looking at trying to restore some justice to ordinary people in this country.

I am terribly upset by what went off today, because Members have simply been suggesting that we live in utopia, and saying, “This is happening and that is happening and it’s fantastic, and that’s what we’ve delivered, and you’re scared to talk about it”, while at the same time we have got people suffering greatly in our constituencies. We have child poverty, pensioner poverty, fuel poverty and food poverty, and people relying on handouts—not benefits but handouts—to make a living, put bread on the table and clothe their kids. That is what we should have been addressing in the next few months, in the road to the next general election. People are saying that this is a zombie Parliament. Of course it is, but it is not as if we have not got things to talk about and people to deliver for.

The Bills in the Queen’s Speech, which we will be dealing with for the next six, seven, eight months, contain nothing that will deliver for many of the people in our communities who are desperate and do not live with rose-tinted spectacles on. They are desperate for some help from politicians from all sides. That is what we are here for— we are here to represent the people in our communities—and it is about time that people in this place realised that the Westminster bubble is completely different from other parts of the United Kingdom. My view is simply that we need at all times to remember where we come from, where we want to be and who we represent.

18:16

[Mr Iain McKenzie (Inverclyde) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery). The Government claim this Queen’s Speech is unashamedly pro-work, pro-business and pro-aspiration, but that statement is an attempt to show a united front between the two coalition partners rather than a reflection of the reality of the content of this Queen’s Speech. Yet again, this Queen’s Speech is notably weak on something that matters crucially to the people of Britain: the quality of jobs and work. Once again, my constituents could be forgiven for seeing little in it for them: very little on jobs, very little for families, nothing to deal with the cost of living crisis, and nothing to instil confidence in the future for our young people.

The Government claim to have turned the economy around, yet they ignore the everyday struggle of ordinary people. Under this Government we have seen a rising tide of insecurity at work, which is adding to the costs of social security as people are forced to rely on benefits to make ends meet. The truth is that most people across the UK are experiencing squeezed living standards. Families are working harder, for longer, for less, yet they are seeing prices go up and up. In addition, the talents of millions of our young people are going to waste, and small businesses feel that this Government are not on their side.

For the Government to declare their economic plan a success, they must continue to deny the cost of living crisis that is engulfing the country. Even people in work see that wages are falling, because of the increase in the cost of living, and there have been unprecedented falls in real wages in the UK since the start of this recession. If we cast our minds back—[Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Minister of State, I can hear your conversation clearly. Members have sat in this Chamber all day waiting to speak and we should pay them the courtesy of listening to what they have to say, even if we do not necessarily agree with them.

[Mr McKenzie]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Let us cast our minds back. We recall that this did not happen in previous economic downturns, when median real wage growth slowed, or at worst stalled, but did not fall. Under this government, the real wages of the typical worker have fallen by about 8% to 10%, meaning that most people, except those at the very top, have experienced falling living standards. There is a cost of living crisis across the UK, and young people have been particularly badly hit. Those aged 25 to 29 have seen real wage falls in the order of 12%, with falls of 15% for those aged 18 to 24. In addition, many young people cannot find a job at all. Some three quarters of a million under-25s are unemployed, with 25% of them having been unemployed for more than a year. Our young people need work—and on decent contracts; they do not need the rise of the zero-hours contracts that many now find themselves on. The Queen’s Speech does, however, offer a concession on zero-hours contracts, whereby firms will not be able to prevent workers on zero-hours deals from working elsewhere as well—I expect we should be grateful for this.

Let us consider another obscenity that is still occurring: the incidence of people paying below the national minimum wage. The Government have made re-announcement after re-announcement about cracking down on employers who do not pay the minimum wage. They have announced their name and shame policy on several occasions, but very few employers have been named or shamed. The Government need to match Labour’s plans for more robust enforcement. Labour plans to increase the value of the national minimum wage over the next Parliament to a higher proportion of average earnings and to help businesses pay a living wage through Make Work Pay contracts.

The truth is that under this Government, life has become more insecure for people at work, and it has become harder for employees to seek redress. This Queen’s Speech offers little hope to families in Inverclyde who are faced with spending cuts, pay freezes and rising prices. There is little to help the 178,000 unemployed Scots to get a job. In Inverclyde, we have been fortunate to have a Labour MP, a Labour MSP and a Labour council focused on what matters most, which is jobs and work.

A continuation of the future jobs fund has meant that Inverclyde has one of the lowest rates of youth unemployment in Scotland, but we could have achieved more if we did not have a Government in Westminster fixated on the rich and a Government in Holyrood fixated on independence.

If this had been Labour’s Queen's Speech, we would have introduced Bills to make work pay, reform our banks, freeze energy bills and build homes again. Labour would have recognised as wealth creators not just those who set up businesses, but those who put in the hours and do the shifts to make a successful business. Labour recognises that a recovery is created by the many and not the few. We want a plan for jobs. We need to identify industries of the future and to get Britain back to work.

18:21

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

This Government have totally failed to grasp the appalling situation faced by struggling individuals and families who remain unemployed or in insecure work. The Queen’s Speech offers little hope to the almost one in four young people in London who are unemployed. Nationally, 850,000 young people remain unemployed, and 975,000 young people are not in employment, education or training. This business-as-usual approach by the Government continues to put at risk the hopes and aspirations of our young people and shatters the hopes of another generation.

In my constituency, 42% of young people live in poverty. The figures released this week by the Government’s own commission estimates that 3.2 million children will be in poverty by 2020. It is said that two-thirds of those children will live in households in which at least one person is in work. We desperately need a more ambitious approach by this Government to tackle worklessness, unemployment and insecurity and low pay at work.

We should make no mistake that unemployment and insecure and low-paid work remain a massive problem in this country. London’s unemployment rate is still 12% higher than the national average. Although it has seen huge growth in recent months, there has been a failure by both the London government and the national Government to ensure that our young people and the unemployed benefit from the job opportunities. This could be addressed today, but there is great complacency. We need better training, more apprenticeships and more opportunities to get people into work.

In my constituency, the Work programme is still a categorical failure—less than 10% of young people who go on that programme achieve a proper jobs outcome. I raised this matter with the Work and Pensions Secretary a year ago. Although the numbers have improved slightly, they are still not good enough, and there is great complacency in his Department in sorting it out. Why is so much money being wasted, and why are no new job opportunities being provided for young people up and down the country, including in areas such as mine?

Many Members have spoken about the 1.4 million people who are on zero-hours contracts. We need to see action by this Government to tackle the exploitation that goes on in certain sectors with zero-hours contracts and other similar contracts, particularly in the care sector. I met care workers in my constituency who cannot earn enough on these contracts to pay their rent and pay for their food in some weeks. In the 21st century and one of the richest economies in the world, that is a disgrace.

It falls on us all to ensure that we address these kinds of scandal, and that is why it is deeply disappointing that the Government have failed to take action and introduce the appropriate legislation to protect people from such exploitation. The Queen’s Speech should have provided a clear target to improve the minimum wage and should have addressed our point about introducing minimum wage legislation to improve average earnings.

The Government have done nothing in the Queen’s Speech to address the real concerns of my constituents on the value and security of work and nothing for people across the country who face insecurity at work and have little hope or prospect of getting a job. They have shown themselves incapable of ensuring that many of these people get a decent wage and can provide for their families. The Queen’s Speech is meagre in its ambition and offers little hope to the millions of people who remain unemployed or in insecure work, struggling to make ends meet. I hope that the Government will think again, stop being complacent and get their act together to get those who are not in work back to work and to support those who face insecurity and low pay in work.

18:26

[Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

In the limited time available to me, I will look at the Queen’s Speech and jobs and work through the eyes of my constituents—the people who come to talk to me in my office and bring me casework—and what I hear as I go around. The Business Secretary, who is now in his place, started off a little grumpy, saying that we were not talking enough about today’s unemployment figures. I will certainly talk about the unemployment figures in Blackpool and praise the modest reduction in the overall number of people out of work and the very modest reduction in the number of people out of work for more than 12 months, but the devil, as always, is in the detail.

The unemployment rate in Blackpool is still twice the UK average and 50% more than the north-west average. We have always had challenges, like many coastal towns, with part-time and seasonal work and low skills, but the way in which the Government have failed to tackle those issues has exacerbated the problem enormously. Great work is being done by our small and medium-sized employers, by Blackpool council, by the “Build It” unit, which gets people back into construction, and by our further education colleges, and I have tried to get things moving, in my own modest way, with the skills fair we held last year: some 450 people turned up and we had 44 exhibitors, and we will repeat that event next year. The reality, though, is that we are not moving in anywhere near a strong or fast enough way.

If we want to know why this “recovery”, so widely talked about by the coalition, is not being felt on the ground, perhaps we should look at the TUC’s “Economic Quarterly Report”, which has just come out. It rightly talks about the continuing under-use of resources and the fact that 1.4 million people in part-time jobs say that their first choice would have been full-time work—a figure 700,000 higher than the typical pre-recession level. We need to look much more carefully at why people are going into self-employment, where there has been a big increase. What I and many Members know anecdotally is that many people, particularly women, are going into self-employment because they have lost their full-time or part-time jobs—often, their job has been outsourced. Their incomes, as the TUC reports, can be modest indeed: the average annual income from self-employment is less than £10,000 for women.

There has been a lot of discussion today about the minimum wage and zero-hours contracts, which are big issues for us in Blackpool. There is also the issue of low-hours contracts, which the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers has taken up and which particularly affects women. If we want to address those issues, we have to take real measures, not the perfunctory measures on zero-hours contracts that have been suggested, particularly at a time when the reduction in the cost of living gap is modest. In fact, figures today from the Office for National Statistics and the Institute for Fiscal Studies suggest that it is becoming even more modest.

As we know, one key thing is to get young people into skills training and then into decent, meaningful employment. However, as the shadow Secretary of State said, the figures still show that the majority of the significant increase in employment has been among the over-25s. The traineeships programme, which we supported and which the Government quite rightly said was really important, has been a fiasco so far. It has not been promoted properly, and it took the Departments for Business, Innovation and Skills and for Work and Pensions months and months to get an agreement on the 16-hour rule. The programme is still not being promoted properly, it is still not clear and we now have a situation in which the Minister for Skills and Enterprise, in a panic about the take-up, proposes to reduce the time involved to as little as three weeks. The disincentives, the problems that people face in getting into work, which I have seen in my Jobcentre Plus in Blackpool, and the sanctioning process are doing nothing to help.

This Government are doing too little for younger people, but they are also doing too little for the 40-somethings and the 50-somethings in my constituency who want to reskill and retrain properly. The Government have got the balance wrong between stuffing people into short-term, low-skilled jobs, which are often temporary, and having a strategy that will produce real growth, real skills and real jobs for those people.

18:31

[Rachel Reeves (Leeds West) (Lab)]

The debate that we have called today and the amendment that we are now considering are based on the values and ideals that brought the Labour party into being. They are about securing for all people in this country the dignity of a decent day’s pay for a hard day’s work, so that people can both provide for their family and spend time with them, sharing in the wealth and prosperity that we all help to create. That is why the last Labour Government faced down those on the Conservative Benches who said that extreme low pay was a fact of life and who were happy to live in a world where there were adverts in jobcentres such as the one pointed out to me by a constituent of mine recently. It was advertising for a security guard and it read, “£1 an hour. Uniform provided. Bring your own dog.”

Labour Members were not happy with that world. We set up the Low Pay Commission and we legislated for the national minimum wage, which for the first time put a legal floor, and a rising floor, under the wages of millions of workers, particularly women, below which their wages could not fall.

Today, however, we need to learn from and build on that success. Since this Government took office we have seen the national minimum wage fall by 5% in real terms in just four years and the number of workers stuck on low pay has soared to well over five million. That is more than one in five workers, and one in four women, who are paid less than a living wage.

That is one of many symptoms of an economy that is just not working for working people today. Along with the 1.5 million people on zero-hours contracts, whom my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) mentioned at the beginning of this debate, there are also 1.4 million people in part-time work who desperately want to work full-time; 600,000 people on temporary contracts who desperately want a permanent job; and numerous reports of a pervasive sense of insecurity, which affects not only the lowest paid but workers right up the income spectrum, including those in what were traditionally seen as middle-class or professional occupations.

We have had a number of contributions from hon. Members about the impact that this is having on their constituents. My hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde (Mr McKenzie) spoke about real wage falls, particularly for young people, while my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) spoke about youth unemployment and the lack of prospects for so many of her constituents. My right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr Clarke) quoted Bevan and Beveridge in his speech, and spoke about the Government’s policies leading to extremes.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Katy Clark) spoke about the living wage, but also about the insecurity that so many of her constituents face, with 21% paid less than a living wage. My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Paul Farrelly) spoke about how this Government’s programme was just too timid, and said that they must do much more both to tackle the abuse of zero-hours contracts and to stop this recovery being one that leaves far too many people behind. He speaks with a great track record, having done so much to campaign on rights for temporary and agency workers.

My hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool South (Mr Marsden) spoke about job insecurity, particularly in seaside towns, and the use of sanctions, which often go too far and penalise the wrong people. The hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) spoke about the gender pay gap and how it is often women who suffer the most. My hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) made an impassioned speech about zero-hours contracts and the restriction of justice that so many people feel. He made an important point about the disconnect that so many ordinary people feel between them and politics and Parliament, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) spoke about last week. That is something we must all be aware of and address.

As well as resulting in so much indignity for so many people, the challenges we face also pile pressure on to our social security system, with taxpayers left to foot the bill for wages that do not cover the cost of living and insecure and irregular earnings making it harder for people to keep up with their rent, arrange a mortgage, save for a pension or do all the other things that so many of us take for granted. The bill paid by taxpayers for people being paid less than the living wage has been estimated at a staggering £2.4 billion a year, including £750 million in extra tax credits and £370 million in extra housing benefit. The cost to taxpayers of the number of people stuck in part-time jobs who want to work full time is now £4.6 billion, including £1.7 billion in additional housing benefit, with the cost of housing benefit for people in work rising by a staggering 66% since this Government came to office.

All in all, over this Parliament this Government are set to spend £13 billion more than they budgeted for on benefits and tax credits because too many people have been left out of work for too long and because the squeeze on wages has been so severe. Expenditure on in-work benefits and tax credits is set to go on rising in real terms over the years ahead. That is the price that we are all paying, and will continue to pay, for this Government’s failure to secure a recovery that benefits everybody.

The impact of that on people is so stark, as has been mentioned in other speeches today. My hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (Fiona O'Donnell) spoke about her constituents feeling left behind, despite the fact that the economy is now starting to grow again. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) made an incredibly powerful speech about the growth of payday lenders and the fact that nobody, especially those in work, should have to rely on that sort of credit to be able to feed their family and pay the bills. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) spoke about an alternative world where credit unions are used more widely and supported more and about saving through the payroll, which I think was an important contribution in the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) spoke about the fact that far too many people in all our constituencies are being forced to go to food banks in order to support their families.

That is putting strain on our social fabric and the functioning of our democracy, as more and more people are feeling left out and cut out. The gains of growth are going to a privileged few and many are feeling left behind. No one in this House can be happy with the turnout in the local and European election just three weeks ago. If we are to turn that around and restore people’s faith that voting can make a difference, we need to show those who are feeling sidelined and short-changed that we understand their plight and that we will take action to address their worries and problems.

We have heard powerful speeches today about the problems faced by people in low-paid and insecure work, but we have also heard powerful speeches about businesses in our communities doing great things, employing people and growing their businesses. We need to build a stronger and better balanced economy in which growth and prosperity are more fairly shared. I therefore welcomed the speech we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey), the Chair of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee, who spoke about apprenticeships. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) spoke about not enough young people doing vocational subjects at school and college and the need to improve and reinvigorate our careers service.

My hon. Friends the Members for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods), for Glasgow North East (Mr Bain) and for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith) spoke about regional policy, local enterprise partnerships, the failure of the regional growth fund and the importance of creating a proper British investment bank. My right hon. Member for Warley (Mr Spellar) spoke about trade promotion, manufacturing and the need to put British business first. My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) spoke about the creative industries and their impact on our communities and on jobs.

We also heard speeches about small businesses. My hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Cathy Jamieson) talked about the red tape facing many small businesses and the costs that it imposes on them but also on Government. My hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) gave a plug to Danczuk’s Deli and spoke about the problems with business rates and the need for a British investment bank.

We also heard some powerful speeches by Government Members, of which I will mention just three. The hon. Members for Macclesfield (David Rutley), for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) and for Stourbridge (Margot James) spoke powerfully about businesses in their constituencies and the good that they are doing in creating jobs.

Those speeches show the difference that can be made and that Labour can make. It is time to set an ambitious five-year target for the national minimum wage so that we narrow the gap between the minimum wage and average earnings over the life of the next Parliament. That would be the effect of the amendment, which would ensure that those who take the shifts and put in the hours in some of the toughest jobs in our economy have a chance of building a decent life for themselves and their families. A Labour Government would beef up enforcement of the national minimum wage, with new powers for local authorities to investigate infractions and larger fines of £50,000 for non-payment. We would also take action to end the abuse of zero-hour contracts, and crack down on agencies that use migrant labour and discriminatory recruitment and working practices to evade and undermine minimum employment standards.

All these measures form an integral and complementary part of the wider path that my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham spoke about, which would secure increased investment in infrastructure and innovation and support the creation of good-quality, high-skilled, well-rewarded jobs and apprenticeships across the country. We need to build an economy that can succeed in the global race to the top on quality and productivity instead of trying to win a race to the bottom on wages and working conditions—sadly, that seems to be the limit of this Government’s ambitions.

We heard evasion and excuses from Government Members, in many cases going back to the arguments of the 1980s and 1990s. The hon. Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma) even suggested that we should be careful about treating employers who do not pay the national minimum wage too harshly in case they did it by mistake. Well, I do not think that is good enough.

[Alok Sharma]

I hope that the hon. Lady listened to my speech in full. I welcomed the fact that we should be clamping down on rogue employers but said that we also need to make sure that employers who make genuine, one-off mistakes should not necessarily be penalised for that.

[Rachel Reeves]

I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman is so lenient on people who over-claim benefits. I think we need to get tough on people who are not paying the minimum wage to their employees. It is against the law, it is the wrong thing to do, and it puts pressures on those employees’ families that they should not have to face.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that over the past year the richest 1% have increased their share of national income from 8.2% to 9.8%. The top 1% have almost 10% of our national income, while 27 million taxpayers who make up the bottom 90% have seen their share of income fall. Wages have fallen further and further behind prices, as we saw again today, and the number of working families in poverty is set to soar. Only today, the latest figures from the ONS showed nominal pay growing by just 0.7% a year at a time when inflation, as measured by the consumer prices index, was running at 1.8%.

Earlier this week, a report from the Trussell Trust highlighted an increasing number of people in work who rely on their food banks. On Monday, the Government’s own commission on child poverty reported that

“twice as many poor children now live in working homes than in workless homes”

and called for

“real action to tackle low pay, create more secure jobs and enable more people in low-paid jobs to progress in work.”

The same report says that the Government’s latest poverty strategy

“falls far short of what is needed”,

highlighting in particular the

“lack of new action on in-work poverty”,

as outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck. I am afraid that it is the same old story from the same old Tories: tax cuts for the rich and pay cuts for the poor.

Last month, my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North and I met a mum called Rachel Palmer who is affected by some of the things we have spoken about. She works hard so that she can provide for her young son, but she struggles to make ends meet on a minimum wage job in retail. She fought back tears as she told us how hard it was. She said, “You cut all your outgoings, shop at cheaper supermarkets, make batches of food and put them in the freezer, and tour car boot sales and charity shops, but still there’s not enough money.” She said there are lots of people like her who do the right thing and go out to work but “can’t afford simple things.” She said, “You have to choose: do you give your child a nutritious meal, or do you let your standards drop?”

No one should have to make those sorts of choices for themselves or their children. Rachel Palmer is doing the best she can for herself and her young son, and we in this House need to do better for her and her family and millions more families in her position.

This Government have made it clear that they are content with the status quo. Labour Members are determined to aim higher. If the Government will not do more to help those who are struggling to find work and those who are working all the hours they can to provide for themselves and their families but are still struggling, the next Labour Government will. For millions of hard-working families up and down the country, that change cannot come soon enough. I urge this House to support our amendment.

18:45

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

It is always a pleasure and an honour to conclude a debate on the Gracious Speech. I urge right hon. and hon. Members to oppose the amendment, which I will address later. I congratulate Members on their speeches. I have sat here for some time listening to them and the quality of speeches by Members on both sides of the House was of the highest order, particularly given the time constraint, which was imposed for good and obvious reasons. I congratulate in particular those who had to change their speeches after being addressed by the occupant of the Chair.

I congratulate and agree with my hon. Friends the Members for Norwich North (Chloe Smith) and for Stourbridge (Margot James), who spoke about the importance of youth employment and the way in which we are now driving youth employment up and unemployment down. On support for growth in manufacturing employment, my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge said that manufacturing employment is now growing and improving after a fall of 2.5 million under the previous Labour Government. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills said in his opening remarks, we are getting more balance in the economy as a result of the work we have been doing, which is different from what was going on before the recession.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), who talked about the small business measures and measures to get rid of excess zero-hours contracts, which my right hon. Friend the Business Secretary spoke about earlier. Many Opposition Members spoke passionately, and rightly so, about excesses in employment, particularly with regard to zero-hours contracts, but, as my right hon. Friend said, they never once addressed zero-hours contracts throughout their time in government. To listen to them, one would think that zero-hours contracts were an innovation created by this Government and that they began some time last year, but they did not: they were running under the previous Government, and it is only this Government and this Business Secretary who will address the matter, which is what Labour should have done.

As I recall, the last time that the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell) and I spoke in the same debate, he urged me to vote against the Government. I did, and look what happened. Today, he advised us that we should borrow more, but I do not think that I will listen to him this time, if he does not mind—it got me into more trouble than I like to think about last time. However, I welcome him to his place and recognise that he also attacked the previous Government for the amount of quantitative easing they oversaw, which he said was wrong.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) was making an effective speech about international matters before he was interrupted. I commend him for managing to get his speech out, regardless of the change in the interpretation of the rules. He made a really important point about the taking of Mosul, which is a terrible issue and we need to deal with it.

I welcome the fact that the hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith) welcomed the rise in employment in Wales. I will pass on to the Transport Secretary his views about the electrification of the railway to Swansea.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) spoke very well about the increase in small business. He rewrote his speech as a result of the ruling from the Chair, and I congratulate him—I do not know whether he is in his place—on making a brilliant five-minute speech with no warning at all.

My hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher) spoke about the good results from business men in his area, and particularly about making sure that small business is supported. My hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) also spoke about that, as well as about the increase in people’s disposable income—that is true—and economic models showing that the UK is now growing faster than any other country.

The hon. Member for East Lothian (Fiona O’Donnell) spoke about abuses of zero-hours contracts. In relation to what she raised earlier, there is no mandation on zero-hours contracts and there are no sanctions. I provide that for clarification and so that she is aware of it.

My hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Eric Ollerenshaw) welcomed the fall in unemployment and the grant of assisted area status for Fleetwood, which I pass on to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, who is in his place. My hon. Friend said we should push on with shale gas, and I fully agree that it has potential benefits for us all.

The hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) and my hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) spoke about vocational training. I welcome the speeches of my hon. Friends the Members for Reading West (Alok Sharma) and for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins), who spoke about real falls in unemployment and rises in employment, particularly youth employment, in their areas. My hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White) spoke about growing business and manufacturing.

I welcome the speech of the hon. Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk), which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves). He made me feel very hungry, as I am sure she did, by talking about Danczuk’s Deli. I hope that we can give it more advertising—I can promise him that something in return would be very welcome after three hours on the Front Bench.

My hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (David Rutley) said that the Federation of Small Businesses had welcomed the Bill on small businesses in the Queen’s Speech as a “landmark Bill”. I agree that the Bill to protect small business is a landmark measure.

My hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans) spoke about the importance of the fall in unemployment in his constituency. Youth unemployment there has fallen by 41%, which I welcome. Apprenticeships in his area have risen by 27% since he became its Member. I am not sure whether that fact is directly connected to him, but it will not do him any harm in his area.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Cathy Jamieson) on the very strong and powerful points she made about taking the burden off small businesses.

In their opening and closing speeches, Opposition Members made no reference whatever to one of the big and important features of the Queen’s Speech, which is the continuation of pensions reform. I will say a few words about that because it is very important. I start by paying tribute to the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb). It is way past time for him to be made right honourable, given the work that he has done—I say that to my hon. Friends—because the work that we have done in concert will leave behind a serious platform of pensions reform. The House will come to recognise that and the fact that his work will have rewarded many people. Obviously, we are ensuring that it pays to work, but also, most importantly, that it pays to save, which is one of our major platforms.

Let me just remind the House what we have introduced since being in office. There is the triple lock on the basic state pension; it is worth about £440 more in 2014-15 than it would have been under uprating by earnings, which was the process we inherited. Under automatic enrolment, more than 3 million people have already joined pension schemes, and there are more to come. We have capped rip-off charges, banned hidden charges and set minimum quality standards. Vitally, there is a new state pension, which is set above the means-test level, so that those who have contributed at the full rate for 35 years are guaranteed a decent minimum income.

We are now going further, with a pensions Bill that will pave the way for innovation, competition and choice. We will introduce new flexibilities, trusting individuals to use their own money in retirement as they see fit, not as the Government tell them to do. Our consultation on guaranteed guidance closes today. We intend to strike a balance between impartiality and deliverability, alongside robust standards and monitoring.

At the same time, we are enabling the creation of a defined ambition pension, which is wholly compatible with the new flexibilities, to facilitate greater risk pooling, while offering savers greater certainty. There was a degree of confusion on the Opposition Benches when the Minister of State said that he had been looking at that idea for some years. My shadow, the hon. Member for Leeds West, tweeted on 1 June:

“I said last week Labour will legislate to introduce collective pensions. Days later, ministers are following suit”.

I did not know we acted that fast. After all the years that my hon. Friend has been considering the idea, the hon. Lady suggests that we owe it to her that we have brought it in. She recently attacked the Labour leadership for not showing enough passion, but she must not confuse passion with accuracy. I notice that we have the pair of them here: the shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and the shadow Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills.

When we talked about freeing up annuities, there was chaos among the Opposition. During his speech on the Queen’s Speech, the Leader of the Opposition did not mention pensions reform. The next day, the shadow Chancellor said only that Labour would look at the Government’s proposals—he did not tweet at all. The day after that, the hon. Member for Leeds West said that she supported the reforms. By the weekend, the shadow Business Secretary backtracked and said:

“I’m not going to sign a blank piece of paper on your show”.

Later the same day, my shadow also backtracked, saying that Labour supported the reforms, but that they did not go far enough. The Opposition have been in complete chaos and confusion about these landmark pension reforms—some of the most important that will ever be introduced. The reason why they have been in chaos is that they really do not trust people to dispose of their own money, which they have worked for and saved, whereas the Government do.

Throughout the shadow Business Secretary’s speech, he would not accept that any of the problems that we have had over the past four years were caused by Labour’s great recession. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills reminded him—and it is worth reminding him again—that the recession that happened on Labour’s watch cost the British economy £112 billion and cost 750,000 people their jobs. Youth unemployment increased by nearly a half, long-term unemployment almost doubled in just two years, 5 million people were left on out-of-work benefits and one in five households had no one in work. The shadow Business Secretary wonders why we want to go on talking about that. We do so because we do not want anyone out there ever to forget that Labour almost destroyed the British economy.

[Mr Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Duncan Smith]

No, I do not have time.

Under this Government, there is record employment. More than 30 million people are in work. Employment is up this quarter, with the largest rise on record. It is up 1.7 million since the election. Record numbers of women are in work. There is record private sector employment, which is up by 2 million since the election. Three quarters of the rise in employment is made up by full-time jobs. Over the past year, more than three quarters of jobs went to UK nationals, reversing the damaging trend of Labour’s last five years in office.

I close today’s debate on the Queen’s Speech with a very simple point: we cannot trust Labour to be in control of the British economy ever again. The Government are helping people into jobs and ensuring that those who work hard and save all their lives are properly rewarded. To set the record completely straight, there are now more people in work than ever, more women in work than ever and more people in private sector work than ever. Youth and long-term unemployment is falling, and we have the lowest rate of workless households since records began. The Queen’s Speech allows us to build on our success, not Labour’s failure. I commend it to the House.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

18:59

Division 1

Ayes: 247

---

Labour: 233
Scottish National Party: 5
Democratic Unionist Party: 3
Social Democratic & Labour Party: 3
Plaid Cymru: 3
Alliance: 1
Green Party: 1

Noes: 306

---

Conservative: 260
Liberal Democrat: 45

19:13

The debate stood adjourned (Standing Order No. 9(3)).

Ordered, That the debate be resumed tomorrow.

NHS Health Services in Guisborough, Skelton, Brotton and Park End (Middlesbrough)

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Commons Chamber

19:14

[Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

The petition states:

The Petition of residents of the UK,

Declares that the Petitioners believe in fighting to defend the NHS, believe in fighting to defend the NHS services in East Cleveland and Park End, Middlesbrough, and oppose cuts inflicted by the Conservative-led government’s Health and Social Care Act 2012; further that the Petitioners believe that proposals to scrap GP services at Skelton Medical Centre should be abandoned; further that proposals to scrap GP services at Park End Medical Centre should also be abandoned; further that the Petitioners believe that South Tees clinical commissioning group’s plans to close East Cleveland Hospital’s and Guisborough Hospital’s minor injuries units is short-sighted given the £30 million deficit of South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust; and further that the Petitioners condemn South Tees clinical commissioning group’s decision to close Skelton’s NHS walk-in centre.

The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to encourage NHS England and South Tees clinical commissioning group to reverse plans to close Park End Medical Centre, Skelton Medical Centre, its NHS walk-in centre and East Cleveland and Guisborough Hospital’s minor injury units.

And the Petitioners remain, etc.

[P001357]

Localised Health Care

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Commons Chamber

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Mr Gyimah.)

19:16

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

The new chief executive of the NHS was right two weeks ago to highlight the need to reshape the NHS around the priorities of patients, particularly elderly patients. As Simon Stevens pointed out:

“Two thirds of hospital patients are over retirement age.”

A solution to his challenge could be piloted in the perhaps unlikely setting of the Cambridgeshire fens, a rural area where we need clearer leadership in reshaping services in the way he articulated in that speech. Patients in North East Cambridgeshire continue to travel to hospitals for appointments that could take place in the community or even in their own homes. That would save them transport and parking costs, be less exhausting and more convenient, reduce the risk of secondary infections in hospitals and increase the likelihood that family and friends could support them throughout the pathway of their treatment.

In parallel, GPs are currently under considerable pressure in rural communities such as North East Cambridgeshire, where they are having to juggle the issues of accessibility, quality and affordability with the national challenge of rising demand, an older population and increasingly complex health needs. Yet GPs continue to undertake work that could be prevented through better use of other NHS resource, lightening our GPs’ workload and streamlining part of their workload through the use of equipment and better IT. However, too often the fractured lines of accountability in the NHS and the different tiers are getting in the way of the urgent need to localise health delivery outputs so that patients can receive treatment in the community and at home, rather than incurring journeys to hospital.

I want to start with a paradox. You may recall, Mr Speaker—perhaps with a shudder, as though it was a bad dream, rather than with the fond sigh of recalling happy memories—that the Health and Social Care Act 2012 was debated extensively in this House two years ago. However, once legislation becomes law, there is a tendency for Parliament to assume that the job is done—that it has been implemented and that therefore nothing further is required. But if we look at the variance in performance of clinical commissioning groups—and, indeed, NHS regional teams—and how the 2012 Act has been implemented, we see that much work remains to be done.

At the heart of the 2012 Act was a great advantage to patients. It was about empowering GPs and clinicians, who best understand the needs of their local community and patients, to act as informed buyers on their behalf, to drive innovation, challenge existing practice, change behaviours and shift treatment from hospitals into the community. The danger is that the great advantage of that legislation, which was debated at great length under your stewardship, Mr Speaker, has now slightly slipped from focus, as the media caravan and the political debate move on to other things. We are at risk of missing out on the central prize, which is how better to innovate and deliver things in a way that advantages patients more.

I want to share three examples of where the current delivery of patient services appears illogical. The first concerns patients suffering from the distress of cancer—you will have them in your constituency, Mr Speaker—and facing tiring journeys to hospital. I had the honour of opening at St George’s surgery in Littleport last month oncology services delivered in the community by Addenbrooke’s nurses: instead of the patients travelling to Cambridge, the nurses come to deliver those services in a more convenient and friendly setting. But where is the drive to ensure that that model is now rolled out by Hinchingbrooke nurses into Doddington, by Peterborough hospital nurses into Whittlesey, by King’s Lynn nurses into the North Cambs hospital? Where is the urgency, while cancer patients continue to make those journeys at cost—in petrol, parking, tiredness and other ways in which their needs are not met? It is time that we accelerated that change to meet the challenge that Simon Stevens has set out.

Secondly, there is intravenous therapy—the delivery of antibiotics through a drip. You will no doubt be staggered, Mr Speaker, to know that patients in Cambridgeshire are being admitted to hospital for five to seven days simply to have antibiotics three times a day, when we could train community nurses to deliver that service in the rural community. That is not only a huge waste of money but, more important, we are putting patients at risk of secondary infections in hospital, as well as providing a less convenient service for them. When some areas of the country have shifted in that way, I cannot see any reason why it has not been adopted in Fenland in north-east Cambridgeshire. It is simply illogical that we still require patients to be admitted for such a straightforward treatment.

A third area is near-patient blood testing. Again, Mr Speaker, this will no doubt be an issue that GPs in your constituency have to deal with. If someone has a suspected blood clot, they are often currently put in an ambulance and sent to hospital. Yet for just £3,000, we could have machines in GP surgeries to provide the results straight away. It would not take that many saved ambulance journeys and the cost of admissions to hospital to start to pay that back. It might be that businesses in the community would be willing to work with the GP practices to deliver that equipment, but the leadership is not accelerating the roll-out of such an approach.

Next week, supported by my local papers—the Cambs Times, Wisbech Standard, Fenland Citizen and Ely Standard—I will launch a community campaign, identifying a range of issues, such as the three I have provided a flavour of today, in respect of which patients want these services back in the community to deliver better clinical outcomes in a more cost-effective way. It seems remarkable that this holy grail, sought by the NHS, is not being grasped with the urgency it demands.

In parallel, we need to recognise that our GPs are under significant pressure. Let me flag up three areas where innovation and reform are needed. The first is health trainers, which have been proven as a means of relieving and preventing pressure on GPs. Yet in Chatteris, Doddington and Manea—areas with significant health needs—we still do not have health trainers to relieve pressure on our GPs. The Minister will know that the National Audit Office highlighted how smoking cessation and other programmes have an important role to play in addressing health inequalities among different regions.

Secondly, I am sure you will be as surprised as I was, Mr Speaker, to discover that within Cambridgeshire the area with the highest health needs is the area that gets the least money. I defy anyone, including the Minister, to explain that. It is largely down to historical reasons and the fact that the clinical commissioning group needs to reallocate funding. The Cornerstone practice in March receives just £62.50 per patient. The county average is between £75 and £80, and the highest-paid practice in Cambridgeshire receives £120. I know that the Minister faces constraints in terms of the overall budget, and of course the Government deserve credit for the fact that NHS spending in England—unlike that in Wales—has been ring-fenced, but I think that the funding allocation needs to be examined.

Finally, let me say something about a much maligned Cinderella service. At present, 65% of the children in my constituency who need mental health services must wait longer than 18 weeks. I know that, as a clinician, my hon. Friend will recognise the seriousness of that. As he will appreciate, it can lead to self-harm and even to suicide, and can damage life chances by affecting exam results, for instance. Furthermore, there are still problems relating to the handover from adolescent to adult mental care. The issue of mental health simply must be addressed if we are to tackle some of the health inequalities in North East Cambridgeshire, and, above all, if we are to meet the challenge set by Simon Stevens in relation to the reshaping of our services. I know that the Health Committee is examining mental health provision, and I hope that it will take account of the points that I have made.

The Health and Social Care Act allows us to deliver the benefits that I know my constituents want by reshaping community health care. The chief executive of the NHS has recognised the need to use levers within the service—such as the assurance role of NHS England, and the role of clinical commissioning groups—to deliver that reshaping, and my campaign next week will demonstrate that patients themselves want that to happen. I hope that the Minister will use his good offices to help the leadership to accelerate the innovation that is needed, so that community health care, which is currently languishing in the slow lane of change, can deliver the more patient-centred, localised treatment that will provide not only the best possible clinical outcomes for patients in North East Cambridgeshire, but the best possible value for money.

19:27

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Dr Daniel Poulter)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Stephen Barclay) for securing the debate and for his strong advocacy on behalf of his constituents and local patients. As he has continually reminded the House since his arrival here—I arrived at the same time—we, as a coalition Government, understand the importance of spending public money wisely and investing every possible penny in front-line patient care.

My hon. Friend raised a number of points, and I did not disagree with a word of what he said. In particular, he was right to emphasise the need for a radical transformation of the way in which we deliver care over the next five to 10 years. We need to deliver more care in the community, closer to people’s homes. It is a question not just of good health care economics, but of good patient care. It is right for people with complex care needs—people with diabetes, dementia and cancer—to be cared for as close to home as possible. That requirement is all the more acute and important in some of our more rural communities, such as my hon. Friend’s constituency in the fens.

We should bear in mind the challenge laid down by the former chief executive of the NHS and echoed by the current chief executive, Simon Stevens. We must ensure that we spend the NHS budget more wisely, and direct more money to front-line patient care. There have been real-terms increases in the budget, and, as a coalition, we are all proud of the fact that we are investing more money in the NHS even in difficult economic times. Nevertheless, we must ensure that that money is spent more wisely, and that the way in which care is delivered continues to become more efficient. We have an ageing demographic, and the effects of that are often experienced more acutely in rural areas. Our technology is continually improving, and patients rightly have rising expectations of the quality of care that they will receive. We must therefore ensure that we deliver care more effectively, and in a more patient-centred way.

To meet that challenge, more needs to be done on NHS procurement at local and national levels, as my hon. Friend highlighted. The Government support that. We need to do more in the health service to ensure that we reduce unnecessary administration and bureaucratic costs and back-office services. He highlighted that as a challenge for his local health economy.

It is crucial that we transform the way we deliver care. That means breaking down silos in Cambridgeshire and elsewhere, particularly between the hospital sector—Addenbrooke’s and Peterborough city hospital, for example—and the health care that is commissioned and delivered in the community by CCGs. That also applies to the social care sector run by the local authority. It is important that Cambridgeshire county council—my hon. Friend outlined the challenges—plays a key role in helping to transform the ways in which services are delivered. Sometimes, it will not be possible to decide whether an elderly and frail person in Cambridgeshire should receive care that is provided by social services or by the NHS. It is the same person; it is the same patient, and it is time that local authorities and the NHS dropped the silo working mentality, worked together and focused the money and attention on the patient. The better care fund that the Government are setting up will come into force next year. That will provide about £3.8 billion specifically to promote better integration of health and social care. I am sure that will be of great benefit in Cambridgeshire, including in the rural communities that my hon. Friend represents.

From an NHS perspective, there are three components to transforming the way services are delivered and to breaking down those silos. It is important we have the right leadership on the ground to deliver improvements. I know as a fellow east of England MP that we have had challenges sometimes in that regard. We need the right leaders to drive change. My hon. Friend was right to highlight that the changes under the Health and Social Care Act mean that we have clinical leadership through CCGs. That will bring benefits because decisions and resource allocations are being made by clinicians who understand where the money is best spent to improve patient care.

We also need the leadership from NHS England teams at an area level to be effective. I hope that my hon. Friend will agree that all MPs in Cambridgeshire and elsewhere need to hold those local area teams to account. We need to ensure that they are working to do their bit to support the clinical leadership on the ground at CCG level.

Hospital providers at Addenbrooke’s, Peterborough city hospital and elsewhere need to come together and work with the CCGs to deliver care. When we talk about delivering care in the community, one of the key aspects is having a work force who work across hospitals and the community—across both primary and secondary care. Far too often, a work force who work in, say, cancer services are based just in the hospital. In commissioning services, we need to recognise that the work force need to be commissioned across primary and secondary care. One example would be to have more specialist nurses in diabetes who not only work at the hospital base but are commissioned across the community. It is important to ensure that my hon. Friend’s CCGs work with the hospital provider, particularly Addenbrooke’s, a centre of international excellence, to deliver more holistic care for people with long-term conditions, and that the work force are not just based in the hospital but go out to where the patients are in the community. That is key to delivering improvements in care.

I want to highlight some of the important local issues that my hon. Friend has raised. I was pleased to hear him make the point about the St George’s surgery and that chemotherapy services are being delivered in the community. His constituents should be proud that they have a GP surgery that is delivering that sort of care in the community. Some of the sickest people, who often struggle to travel to hospitals, are being looked after close to home and receiving high-quality care in the local GP surgery. That sort of care needs to be regularly offered in the next five to 10 years in many more GP surgeries—not as an exemplar, but as a regular example of what good practice and good health care looks like. That is transforming services and delivering more care in the community. My hon. Friend should be very proud of the part he has played in helping to make that a reality, and proud of the fact that his constituents have a service many other people will be looking forward to having in the future.

We must also have the right preventive care so that people who do not need to go to hospital do not go there. My hon. Friend talked about intravenous therapy. Someone with an infection from a leg ulcer, for instance, who will need IV antibiotics could be given them in the community. Traditionally those patients have ended up in hospital not because that is the right place for them to be, but because the care in the community to provide IV antibiotic therapy was not available. That is not good for patients, nor is it good health care economics—it is expensive for the NHS. That is exactly the sort of service older people with complex care needs require, particularly in rural communities. I know my hon. Friend’s CCGs will want to prioritise that in the months ahead.

My hon. Friend highlighted the importance of having close-to-home blood testing facilities. Many older people may be on warfarin for atrial fibrillation or other medical conditions. It is important that for that, and other simple blood tests, the person is treated and looked after close to home by their general practice. In rural areas, particularly in Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, where my constituency is, the GP surgery is often the hub of care, so the more we can do to provide care in those environments and close to home, the better it will be for patients.

We will also find that more patients will turn up for their appointments. One of the major causes of non-attendance at appointments in rural areas is that frail older people struggle to get to where the care is. If that care is delivered by their GP much closer to home, that saves the health service money and makes those services much more accessible. Every general practice should be offering simple services such as blood testing and supporting patients with the management of warfarin. I am pleased my hon. Friend will be championing a campaign to make this a reality throughout Cambridgeshire.

If we are to deliver better services in the community, we must have the right training in place for our work force. We need to have a work force who have the right skills to look after people with complex care needs. Under our health care reforms, we now have Health Education England, with a £5 billion budget. At a local level there are now local education and training boards, which are responsible for delivering the right sort of training to staff in each locality. A particular priority for the local education training board in the east of England is recognising the rurality of places such as Cambridgeshire and making sure there is specialist training in dementia and other care areas that addresses the needs of rural communities and ensures that people can be treated close to home. We must have the staff with the right skills to make sure that that happens.

In that respect, there will be more specialist training for GPs in mental health and children’s health care. Much of GPs’ work load is in those areas, and it is extraordinary that in the past not all GPs have had the right training. Thanks to the changes we have made through the mandate to HEE, in future we will ensure not only that there are bespoke courses for GPs to specialise in these areas, but that the whole skill set of all GPs going through training is improved to provide better community-based care. That will bring benefits to my hon. Friend’s constituents.

My hon. Friend is right that the NHS has received real-terms increases in funding in this Parliament, and we are proud to have delivered that. Every CCG, including in Cambridgeshire, will be receiving increased funding. I can understand the frustration that perhaps the progress on changing the funding formula in accordance with the independent review findings has not been as quick as some of us representing more rural communities would have liked, but that is moving in the right direction. The funding formula is now set independently, away from political interference, and according much more to health care need rather than political drivers Ministers or others may set. We will see a funding formula that will be allocated much more in line with local health care needs, but NHS England will have an opportunity again this year to examine rurality as a factor in allocating the funding formula.

I hope my hon. Friend is reassured by some of the points I have made. More importantly, what has come from this debate is that we have seen that he is a champion for the local NHS and for local patients. In his work on the Public Accounts Committee, not only does he recognise the importance of spending taxpayers’ money wisely and putting money into front-line patient care, but he understands the long-term challenges involved in transforming care. We need much more collaboration between different GP surgeries. Local commissioners need to lead that, we need more back-office sharing to reduce costs in GP surgeries, and we need better management of estates. We recognise that many GPs are small businesses in their own right, but small businesses may need to work together in a publicly funded health service to realise economies and free up more money to deliver better patient care; and we need to invest in telehealth, telemedicine and the right technology to support people with long-term conditions at home.

We also need to ensure that the better care fund that comes into effect next year is used effectively to join up what social services do with the NHS, to focus more attention on the patient and to break down the historical silos between the NHS and social care. We also need to ensure that commissioners, involved in clinically led commissioning, drive this process. They need to challenge other commissioners to do the right thing and make sure that patients are always at the centre of what happens. That is the objective, it is what needs to happen, and I know that my hon. Friend will be championing the cause locally. The goal is there and I know that he will be at the heart of the debate locally to break down those silos and to transform radically the way care is delivered, because he cares about his local patients, and I know that his local clinical commissioning groups do too.

There will be different ways of doing things in future, but they will of course be to the benefit of patients. I am delighted that he is championing this agenda, and he can count on my full support and the support of the Government in taking it forward. Once again, I congratulate him on securing this debate and on the leadership he is showing to support his local NHS in delivering better care for patients.

Question put and agreed to.

19:42

House adjourned.

Written Statements

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Written Statements

Wednesday 11 June 2014

UK Green Investment Bank

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Vince Cable)]

I would like to inform Parliament that I have agreed with my right hon. Friends the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and the Secretary of State for International Development that the UK Green Investment Bank (GIB) will be working with their Departments to explore the potential for GIB to assist in investment of the UK’s international climate fund (ICF).

GIB has been very successful in mobilising private sector investment into the UK’s green infrastructure and economy—since its official launch in autumn 2012, it has committed £1.3 billion to green projects in the UK, and mobilised an additional £3.3 billion of private sector funds. The projects supported by GIB will, when complete, save 3.5 million tonnes of C0₂ per year.

At the same time, the Government have ambitious targets for providing support to projects in developing countries that will mitigate climate change or enable communities to adapt to its effects. We have already allocated £3.87 billion to the UK’s ICF to finance such projects. We are keen to explore how the depth of expertise in GIB, and the commercial discipline that it brings to its transactions, can benefit the deployment of climate aid to mitigation projects in developing countries, alongside existing and planned ICF investments including international initiatives such as the green climate fund.

To this end, GIB will be working with the Government over the coming months to assess the feasibility of the GIB developing and managing some ICF projects. This will have no impact on the resources or £3.8 billion of funding which we have allocated to GIB for investment in the UK. GIB remains fully committed to helping the UK meet its domestic climate change goals. Indeed, this additional activity should benefit GIB’S core UK operations as GIB further builds its global reputation both as an expert in project finance for green projects and as a potential manager of other people’s funds.

Should the Government decide to move beyond, to the pilot, we will make a further ministerial statement to Parliament.

Big Lottery Fund (Triennial Review)

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Written Statements

[The Minister for Civil Society (Mr Nick Hurd)]

On 21 November 2013, as Minister with responsibility for Civil Society, I announced in Parliament through a written ministerial statement, Official Report, column 55WS, commencement of the triennial review of the Big Lottery Fund. I am now pleased to announce the completion of the review.

The review concludes that the functions performed by the Big Lottery Fund are still required and that it should be retained as a non-departmental public body (NDPB). The review also looked at the governance arrangements for the fund in line with guidance on good corporate governance and considered the efficiency and effectiveness of the fund. The report, which has been examined by a challenge group, makes recommendations in this respect.

The full report of the review of the Big Lottery Fund can be found on the gov.uk website and copies have been placed in the Libraries of both Houses.

Private Rented Sector Programme

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Kris Hopkins)]

The Government are investing in building a bigger and better private rented sector through the Department for Communities and Local Government’s expanding the private rented sector programme. The programme’s work includes the £3.5 billion private rented sector housing debt guarantee scheme, the £1billion Build to Rent fund and the private rented sector taskforce.

The Build to Rent fund provides development phase finance to large-scale private rented sector projects and is on track to create up to 10,000 new homes for private rent. It will demonstrate the viability of developing and investing in large-scale private rented sector developments. The programme received £1.4 billion of bids under round 1. This round of funding is currently expected to support 2,550 homes across England in locations that include Durham, Liverpool, Manchester and London. Five round 1 projects with a combined value of over £74.5 million are already in contract and will deliver over 1,000 new homes for private rent; construction has already started in Southampton (Centenary Quay) and Manchester (Three Towers), with further round 1 projects undergoing legal work in advance of exchange of contracts.

Bidding for round 2 of the Build to Rent fund was significantly oversubscribed, receiving 126 bids to the value of around £3 billion. Thirty-five projects on the shortlist from round 2 are now going through a competitive due diligence process, with successful bids receiving funding to deliver thousands of new homes. A list of all shortlisted bids has been placed in the Library. Sixteen projects, with a combined value of circa £625 million, are already in detailed due diligence. The shortlist is over-programmed, meaning not all shortlisted projects will receive funding. Shortlisting and due diligence are the first stages of the Build to Rent approval process and the Homes and Communities Agency will continue to work with bidders until exchange of contracts in order to ensure value for money for taxpayers. I anticipate that all round 1 projects will be in contract by the end of June 2014 and the first round 2 contracts are scheduled to be signed by autumn 2014.

In addition to direct funding, the Government’s private rented sector taskforce is continuing to build the private rented sector as an investment market and have identified £10 billion of domestic and foreign investment available in the private rented sector.

The Government propose to guarantee long-term debt raised by housing providers investing in large scale, new build private rented housing projects through the £3.5 billion private rented sector housing debt guarantee scheme. The scheme aims to facilitate the construction of new private rented accommodation through incentivising private sector investment. Specifically, the guarantees will use the Government’s fiscal credibility to reduce the cost of borrowing for private rented sector housing providers.

The Department for Communities and Local Government intends to take on a contingent liability for the guaranteed debt of up to £3.5 billion (nominal value of the guaranteed debt). This is a limit, not a target for the guarantees. How much of it is used will depend on the appetite of those who apply for the guarantees and the quality of the applications. This amount forms part of the £10 billion made available for both housing guarantees schemes. Should demand for private rented sector guarantees exceed £3.5 billion, the Government may make available a greater share of the total £10 billion for private rented sector housing. I will, of course, inform Parliament in a further minute before taking this step.

The Department for Communities and Local Government is open for business to issue direct private rented sector housing debt guarantees and continues to progress discussions with a number of borrowers looking to invest in large-scale developments. Following extensive pre-market engagement, on 18 March 2014, the Department also launched a procurement exercise for a delivery partner for the private rented sector housing debt guarantees scheme, with the aim of increasing access for smaller borrowers and maximising take up of the guarantees. My Department is currently evaluating bids to perform the role and I expect the delivery partner to be in place in autumn 2014 and approving its first borrowers in early 2015.

A departmental minute providing full details of contingent liabilities arising from the issuing of private rented sector housing debt guarantees is being laid before Parliament.

Training Libyan Troops in the UK

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Philip Hammond)]

On 9 July last year, my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs informed the House that the UK had offered to train up to 2,000 Libyan armed forces personnel in basic infantry skills as part of an international commitment with other G8 nations to train a general purpose force to help the Libyan Government disarm and integrate militias and improve the security and stability of the country.

I am pleased to inform the House that today we are starting training for the first tranche (around 325) of Libyan recruits at Bassingbourn Camp. The training, in basic infantry and junior command skills, will be carried out by troops from 3 Scots and will last for 24 weeks.

These recruits have been carefully vetted by the Libyan Government and Home Office officials to ensure that security and immigration controls are maintained and that those selected are representative of all of Libya. We have also started to work with the Libyan Government and international partners on plans for reintegration of trainees after their return to Libya.

In the year since the Prime Minister announced the UK’s commitment to the general purpose force initiative, the unstable political and security situation in Libya has underlined the complex challenges and the need for the international community to support the transition to a stable, open and democratic Libya.

Libya faces many challenges as a result of over four decades of misrule. It will take time for state institutions to become effective and for Libyans to agree on the path of their own democratic transition. The UK, along with our international partners, remains committed to support Libya. The start of the training of the general purpose force is a further testament to this commitment.

National Curriculum

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Education (Michael Gove)]

On 11 September 2013, I published the new national curriculum for all subjects except for English, mathematics and science at key stage 4. Following a consultation on draft programmes of study for key stage 4 English and mathematics from 2 December 2013 to 3 February 2014, the Department is consulting, until 13 June, on the draft order and regulations that will give effect to the new programmes of study. The final programmes of study are planned to be published by the end of the current school year.

Today, I am publishing for consultation the programme of study for science at key stage 4. The consultation will run until 23 July 2014. On 9 April 2014 we published the new GCSE subject content for science. It is important to consider this programme of study alongside the GCSE subject content to ensure that the curriculum and qualifications are fully coherent.

The programme of study in science at key stage 4 is more challenging. It has been drafted by experts to ensure that it sets expectations that match those in the highest performing jurisdictions. The content is closely aligned to GCSE combined science content. It builds upon and deepens understanding of ideas developed in earlier key stages in the subject disciplines of biology, chemistry and physics. It focuses on the big ideas in science such as evolution and inheritance, the atomic structure and energy and forces and includes new content on developing areas such as the human genome. The working scientifically section emphasises the importance of practical work including experimental skills, analysis and evaluation of data and the understanding and nature of scientific evidence. It makes clear that working scientifically should be embedded within the subject content across all three science disciplines.

The key stage 4 programme of study for science will be introduced from September 2016, alongside first teaching of the new science GCSEs.

Copies of the consultation on the programme of study for key stage 4 science will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses.

Electoral Registration

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Written Statements

[Mr Gary Streeter (South West Devon)]

(The hon. Member for South West Devon, representing the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission:) The Electoral Commission has today published a report containing an analysis of electoral registration data relating to the 2013 annual canvass—the last household registration canvass in Great Britain. The report also includes an update of its final assessment of the performance of Electoral Registration Officers’ (EROs) performance in 2013.

The Commission reports that overall, the canvass was well run, and the key outcomes from the canvass were similar to those in previous years. The overall level of response to the canvass was 94%, although the absolute number of entries on the registers has declined slightly from December 2012 (the parliamentary register declined by 0.5%, the local government register declined by 0.1%).

The decline in numbers on the registers can be largely attributed to the lower level of electors carried forward by EROs. The Commission reports that EROs have a power, not a duty, to carry electors forward in circumstances where they do not have confirmation that they still live at their previously-registered address. It is for each individual ERO to decide whether to exercise that power at the end of the annual canvass. EROs should make their decision based on their individual, local knowledge, and they should consider the balance between the risk of retaining electors who may no longer be eligible, and the risk of removing electors who are in fact still eligible, meaning they are potentially disenfranchised.

The Commission reports that the decline in the use of carry forward on conclusion of the 2013 canvass can be explained by a decision by some EROs not to exercise their power to carry forward entries in advance of the transition to individual electoral registration (IER), when electors who are currently on the register but have been carried forward will need to go through a separate process in order to remain registered and cannot be automatically transferred to the new IER register following confirmation.

The decisions taken by EROs at the end of the 2013 canvass will change the nature but not the scale of the challenge facing them in the transition to IER. In each case, while the administration process will vary, they will still need to carry out work to target all individuals in their area who are not registered individually, and these individuals will all need to take some action in order to be included on the revised register published on the conclusion of the 2014 canvass.

On 31 March, the Commission published a report on readiness for the transition to IER, which included an assessment of ERO performance in 2013. The Commission noted in that previous report that as the canvass was completed only very shortly before its publication, detailed analysis of the electoral registration data, which informs the Commission’s assessment of ERO performance, was still under way. It also explained the Commission’s expectation that, as was the case in 2011 and 2012, this continuing analysis might identify some further EROs whose canvass activity did not, in practice, meet the standard.

The Commission’s detailed analysis of the registration data has identified that in addition to the five EROs (for Mid Devon, Taunton Deane, Torridge, West Devon and West Somerset) who reported that they did not meet performance standard 3—the house-to-house enquiry standard—in 2013, there are a further 17 EROs who did not ensure that during 2013 all non-responding properties were canvassed in person.

These are the EROs for: Broxbourne Borough council; Castle Point Borough council; Ceredigion County council; Durham County council; East Devon District council; Gwynedd County council; Kingston-upon-Hull City council; Maldon District council; Mid Sussex District council; Northumberland County council; North Devon District council; North Dorset District council; North East Lincolnshire council; North Warwickshire Borough council; Scarborough Borough council; Sedgemoor District council and South Staffordshire council.

This means that the Commission’s final assessment is that 22 EROs (6%) did not meet the standard in 2013. (In 2012, 30 EROs did not meet the standard).

The reasons given by each ERO for not carrying out house-to-house enquiries with all non-responding households are provided within the Commission’s report. The Commission has written specifically to those hon. Members whose ERO(s) have failed to meet the standard and it will soon write to all hon. Members to update them regarding the progress of the transition to IER. This update will include suggested questions which hon. Members may wish to put to their local EROs regarding what practices they follow, and propose to follow in future, in order to keep their electoral registers as complete and accurate as possible.

Although IER will present different challenges from the household registration system—particularly in the unique circumstances of the 2014 write-out and canvass period—house-to-house enquiries will remain a key area of ERO performance which will continue to be of significant importance in ensuring registers are as accurate and complete as possible. The Commission report that they will continue to work with those EROs who did not meet performance standard 3 in 2013 to ensure they have arrangements in place to carry out house-to-house enquiries as required under IER, and will continue to monitor their progress to ensure that they deliver this in practice.

In the event that an ERO does not carry out these enquiries, the Commission will consider all available options to ensure that EROs are carrying out their duties in full. This could include making a recommendation to the Secretary of State to issue a direction to the ERO to require them to make improvements to their performance in the discharge of their functions. Discussions are already under way between Commission and Cabinet Office officials to confirm the process to be followed in any such situations, ensuring that action can be taken quickly in the event of any issues emerging.

Copies of the Commission’s report have been placed in the library and it is also available on the Commission’s website: http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/.

Agriculture and Fisheries Council

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr Owen Paterson)]

The next Agriculture and Fisheries Council will be on 16 and 17 June in Luxembourg. The Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), will represent the UK. Richard Lochhead MSP and Alun Davies AM will also attend.

There are both fisheries and agriculture items on this month’s agenda.

On agriculture the Commission may present its progress reports on proposals for a regulation combining and reinforcing existing school fruit and milk schemes, and a regulation fixing certain aids and refunds related to the common organisation of the markets in agricultural products. Draft Council conclusions on the Commission’s reports on the implementation of the provisions concerning producer organisations, operational funds and operational programmes in the fruit and vegetables sector since the 2007 reform and an optional quality term “product of island farming” will be adopted. The Commission will present its report on the development of the market situation in the milk and milk products sector. A Council decision authorising the opening of negotiations on agreements between the European Union and third countries on trade in organic products may be adopted. There will also be an exchange of views on the implementation of CAP reform at national level.

The Minister will join informal talks with US Secretary of Agriculture Mr Tom Vilsack during a working lunch hosted by the presidency and Commission.

On fisheries there will be a state of play item to endorse a draft omnibus (landing obligation) regulation. The presidency is expected to present a state of play paper on the implementation of the common fisheries policy discard plans in all regions followed by an exchange of views. Denmark has requested a discussion on setting the capelin total allowable catch (TAC) for 2014.

There are currently four any other business items:

Animal and plant health control package

Plant reproductive material

Country of origin labelling for meat

Conference in Athens “Scientific support to agriculture: Competitiveness, quality and sustainability”

South Sudan

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mark Simmonds)]

I wish to update the House on the situation in South Sudan and UK efforts to help resolve the conflict.

We remain deeply concerned about the security situation and growing humanitarian crisis in South Sudan. The agreement reached by the parties on 9 May seeks to end months of fighting, in which atrocities have been committed by both sides. Although the fighting on the ground has diminished, the ceasefire remains fragile. Regional leaders, led by Prime Minister Hailemariam of Ethiopia, have made clear that they will not stand by while South Sudan descends further into conflict. We continue fully to support regional efforts to broker inclusive and substantive peace talks leading towards a lasting political settlement.

The already fragile humanitarian situation in South Sudan has become desperate. Since the conflict started, thousands of innocent civilians have died and 1.3 million have fled their homes, of whom 80,000 have sought shelter in UN bases and 300,000 have sought refuge in neighbouring countries. Millions more face the serious threat of famine. Humanitarian access continues to be restricted by both sides. Enabling humanitarian access and assistance is an immediate priority for the UK. When I visited South Sudan in April and met the South Sudanese vice-president, I made clear that South Sudan was on the brink of disaster.

This Government are also concerned about reports of serious human rights violations and abuses in South Sudan. On 8 May, the UN mission in South Sudan issued a human rights report that makes clear the scale of human rights atrocities committed since the conflict began. It concludes that civilians were directly targeted by forces on both sides, often along ethnic lines. South Sudan’s own National Human Rights Commission has come to broadly similar judgements. Justice is essential for sustainable peace and national reconciliation in South Sudan. It is therefore vital that all allegations are subjected to thorough, impartial investigation and that perpetrators are brought to justice. The UK looks forward to the outcome of investigations of the African Union’s commission of inquiry on South Sudan.

The Foreign Secretary and I, working with our international counterparts since the conflict started, have urged President Kiir and former Vice-President Machar to show leadership by ending the fighting and committing to an inclusive political process. We have increased our diplomatic and political engagement with regional leaders to encourage international unanimity and pressure on both sides to resolve the crisis through dialogue. UK officials work closely with regional mediators and others to maintain pressure on the parties and ensure that the international community speaks with one voice. We are considering all levers at our disposal, including the possibility of targeted sanctions, which we are currently discussing with EU partners.

In addition to diplomatic and political support, the UK continues to provide financial assistance and expertise to the regional mediation efforts led by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD). UK expertise supports both the political process and arrangements for monitoring and verifying ceasefire violations. The swift deployment of the protection force for the IGAD monitoring and verification mechanism as part of the UN mission in South Sudan will help build confidence and ensure that the fragile ceasefire holds.

In the UN Security Council, the UK worked to achieve a more focused mandate for the UN mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), adopted on 27 May 2014 as UN security council resolution 2155 (2014). The new mandate will allow UNMISS to respond more effectively to the current situation in South Sudan, focusing on better protection of civilians, enabling the provision of humanitarian assistance, monitoring the human rights situation and crucially providing protection and other support to regional efforts to maintain a ceasefire.

At the UN Human Rights Council this month we are aiming, with African support, for a strong resolution that properly reflects the seriousness of recent events in South Sudan. The gravity of the situation in South Sudan will also be highlighted at this week’s global summit to end sexual violence in conflict that the Foreign Secretary is co-hosting with Angelina Jolie, special envoy of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

The UK is one of the leading donors to the humanitarian effort in South Sudan, contributing around £93.5 million since the conflict started, including £13 million for regional support to refugees. UK humanitarian assistance helps support food security and provides an emergency lifeline of tents, health care and other vital supplies to millions. At the Oslo humanitarian pledging conference on 20 May, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development announced new UK funding of £60 million for the humanitarian effort in South Sudan.