Budget Resolutions
Debate between Angela Eagle and Stephen Doughty(7 years, 8 months ago)
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Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Rishi Sunak), whose constituency is in my home county, Yorkshire. The last time I was in his neck of the woods, it was not to go to a pub—as many of my hon. Friends seem to have done—but to fight the by-election that his predecessor fought and won. I remember wandering forlornly through a village in the constituency, door-knocking with my much-missed colleague, Mo Mowlam. We did the entire village and found not a single Labour voter, so I think the hon. Gentleman is probably fairly safely ensconced in Richmond (Yorks), pending an electoral earthquake—although, of course, they do happen.
I was disappointed by the Chancellor’s statement yesterday. His first Budget did not rise nearly seriously enough to the challenges faced by our country in these times of great volatility and change, which we must now confront together. We needed a wider and bolder vision. We needed radical reform to rebuild our prosperity in a post-Brexit world and a sustainable plan to deal with our ageing population and all the pressure that that brings. We needed a recognition that we must recast our tax and benefit systems to deal with the world to come, rather than the world as it was when Beveridge produced his blueprint for a welfare state, 75 years ago.
Instead, we got a Budget that made no mention of the greatest challenges facing us today. There was no mention whatsoever of climate change. There was no mention of rising poverty and inequality, or of public expenditure cuts stretching to the far horizon. Perhaps most surprisingly of all, there was no serious mention of Brexit. This was an occasion on which the Chancellor ought to have set out a bold reforming vision for the UK. But he did not. He left the grimmest news unspoken; perhaps he hoped that nobody would notice.
On living standards, the Office for Budget Responsibility revealed something that millions of people in this country already know: real pay levels have not yet returned to their pre-2008 peak. The autumn statement revised down the forecast for real earnings by £1,000 by 2020, and the Budget will do nothing to change that. That means that workers are facing 13 wasted years of lost earnings and stagnating pay under this Government. To make matters worse, the Government’s flagship promise of a £9 so-called living wage, which in itself was never going to be enough, has been revised down to £8.75.
The modest growth in our economy, which is at historic lows, has translated into real earnings stagnation for the vast majority of people. The fact that more than half the 13.5 million people in this country who are now living in poverty are in work is not a problem the Chancellor was troubled enough to mention in his speech, but it is an indictment of his Government’s record, and it is one of the most serious social problems facing Britain today.
The Budget papers reveal that consumer debt is once more exceeding its pre-crisis peak; it is this unsecured debt that is driving what modest growth there is in the economy. The Bank of England is right to be worried about it, but it did not trouble our Chancellor enough for him to refer to it at all in his Budget statement. These facts alone show just how much the Prime Minister’s just about managing families are being made to shoulder the burden of a painfully slow recovery from the financial crash, yet there was simply not enough help announced for them yesterday.
On infrastructure and investment, the perfunctory re-announcement of the £23 billion in the rather grandly named national productivity investment fund is to be welcomed, although it has been announced many times before. But, at 2.6% of GDP, it remains far lower than the levels of infrastructure investment achieved by the previous Labour Government, and well below the OECD average. That is going to put us at a continuing long-term disadvantage in a global race in which we are more isolated and at risk than ever before, after the Brexit vote.
On investment generally, the OBR forecasts that Brexit and the uncertainties surrounding it are likely to depress private investment going forward, and uncertainty about trade arrangements will hit exports and inward investment, too, offsetting any beneficial trading effect of the depreciation of sterling. This is not a credible platform from which to launch any serious attempt to prepare our economy for the challenges of a post-Brexit world and enable us to secure our prosperity for the future.
This is a Budget that continues to hit the poorest the hardest. The Red Book demonstrates that the cuts to public services just go on and on into the future. We are told that the target for eliminating the deficit, which was originally meant to be achieved in 2015, might now not be accomplished until 2025—a 10-year delay on the original five-year plan. The Budget documents reveal a massive 20% cut in the funding allocated to local government next year, down from £8.2 billion to £6.5 billion. That puts at risk services for the most vulnerable and threatens to rip our social fabric apart.
There is an 8% per-head cut in education funding, which will threaten to bankrupt some schools—certainly in my constituency—while the extra funds announced for education are ring-fenced for the Prime Minister’s grammar schools vanity project. Once again, some people are being left behind while a chosen few, in certain chosen areas, get all the advantages. Also unmentioned by the Chancellor in his statement yesterday was a 6% real-terms cut in non-pension-related spending on social security, which will hit the most vulnerable the hardest.
The pressures of our changing demography make it clear that there must be urgent and radical reform of our system of social care, and in social justice more broadly. The changes to our labour market, which are happening on a global, national and local level, along with the profound implications of rapid technological change, make it imperative that we reform our tax and benefit system to make it fit for the future. We must be willing to look again at the tax base in order to guarantee real security for everyone in our society.
In both those areas, though, the Government have been caught out by their cynical electioneering attacks on Labour and their even more cynical election promises to the people. After participating in cross-party talks following the Dilnot report on adult social care and agreeing a joint approach to the challenges we face, in 2010 the Tories cynically produced propaganda posters condemning what they called “Labour’s death tax”. Thus, for short-term, cynical electoral gain, they equally cynically ruled out the changes we need to make as a nation so that social care can be put on a sustainable footing for the future.
The Tories did the same with what they called “Labour’s tax on jobs”—proposed changes to national insurance contributions. In 2015, they even produced the Tory “tax lock”, a pledge that it has since emerged was manufactured to fill a hole in the general election grid. It was described by the No. 10 adviser who thought it up as
“the dumbest economic policy that anyone could make”.
Stephen Doughty
My hon. Friend mentioned previous claims by the Conservatives. I have the advert that they put out during the last election, which made clear that any rise in national insurance would be
“costing jobs and hitting hardworking taxpayers”.
What has changed?
Ms Eagle
Exactly. My hon. Friend will agree that, with their cynical use of short-term advantage and the way they have electioneered on it, their pledges and the way they have campaigned, the Conservatives have actually made it much harder for us to make the reforms that we as a society need to make to our tax and benefit system and our social care system. That is the ultimate in irresponsibility.
Yesterday, the Chancellor tore up the tax lock. He can dance on the head of a pin and claim that the lock did not apply to class 4 national insurance contributions all he likes, but that was not on the side of the bus and no one will believe a Tory election promise ever again. The Chancellor has learned a tough lesson: if he wants to be for the just about managing, he needs all the tools of government available to him. He cannot tax-lock himself out of all his options and end up having to plug the gap in social care by taxing the self-employed. The Government have been hoist by their own cynical petard.
We are willing to work with the Government on both the challenges that I have mentioned—social care and how to arrest the alarming rise in self-employment, which brings precariousness for far too many people. Self-employment is often just apparent self-employment, and it is quite often very low paid and precarious. We need to ensure that the self-employed are properly protected and have proper access to the protections that employees take for granted.
Ms Eagle
I agree. We saw a cynical dash from the Conservatives to make short-term promises to get elected, and we saw them campaign even more cynically on those promises in the hope that when they had to be broken nobody would notice. But the Government’s actions are making it much harder for us to have cross-party support on anything, and they have also made it very difficult for anyone to believe any single one of their manifesto pledges again. The Government have increased distrust of politics. That is the legacy of their behaviour on social reform and tax reform, which are vital if we are to prosper in the future.
Stephen Doughty
My hon. Friend is being generous in giving way. She talks about mistrust having been created. Does she agree that people out there often say to us that they do not feel that politicians in this place—the Government—actually understand the realities of life? Life for the self-employed, in particular, is often very difficult. They have many costs on top of those we would normally expect. They need increased insurance, find it difficult to get a mortgage and have to pay out for additional things. This Government simply do not understand the reality of life for self-employed people.
Ms Eagle
That may be the generous interpretation, but there are other interpretations that involve the cynicism I have talked about. This is the issue: if the Government really wanted to make a reasonable reform to the tax system and national insurance contributions to take away the current tax incentive for people to self-incorporate or real employers to force people into becoming apparently self-employed, they would not have made such a reform. They would have said, “We’re going to introduce these new benefits for the self-employed and take away the tax advantages and disadvantages of being self-employed, and finally we will bring forward a much more stable tax base and tax system.” That could be supported, but it looks like the Government have changed national insurance contributions to fill a fiscal hole in social policy. That is a grubby way to behave, and it is in breach of the Conservatives’ election manifesto. That is not the way in which the Chancellor should have made this change. He may learn, but in this Budget all we got was green Hammond rotten eggs.
Draft Trade Union Act 2016 (Political Funds) (Transition Period) Regulations 2017
Debate between Angela Eagle and Stephen Doughty(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Stephen Doughty
No, I do not. Indeed, I fear that costs are a consequence of many other parts of the legislation. Fines can be introduced for non-compliance, and there are many other restrictions. Many of the unions we have talked about, particularly USDAW, have been clear that they are trying to comply with the legislation within a reasonable time, yet the Government are not listening to their very reasonable concerns. The unions are suggesting that this be delayed not by years or decades, but by months, given their pre-existing and very reasonable democratic structures and processes.
I go back to the TUC’s key concerns about this statutory instrument. It has been clear that it believes that the proposed 12-month transition period is inadequate and fails to take into account the complexity involved. As I have said, a financial penalty of up to £20,000 can be imposed by a certification officer.
On revising the rulebooks, the changes need to be agreed through union democratic structures—a lengthy process that differs greatly from union to union. They need to consult branches, as has been mentioned several times, and there are rule-making conferences where union democracy can be conducted, with full transparency for the public and members. Why would we want to undermine that by suggesting that unions could go through a secondary process and have a little meeting of the executive committee under the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992?
Stephen Doughty
Indeed. It sets a dangerous precedent. Labour Members want to promote democracy and transparency in trade unions and in all civil society organisations, so that their members can see what is going on, how decisions are made and how money is spent. We support such transparency. We support the transparency around the funding relationships between affiliated unions and the Labour party. Unfortunate comments have been made by the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham. We are clear about our support; the Labour party registers donations. We are not just talking about trade unions affiliated to the Labour party; we are talking about all trade unions and the impact this will have.
As the hon. Member for Glasgow South West pointed out, a month is effectively taken out of the period by the need to secure approval from the certification officer. That seems to be another attempt on the side to curtail this period and reduce the time the trade unions have to deal with this, making things even more difficult.
We talked about the complexity of the process. Renegotiating check-off agreements with employers is not straightforward, particularly if you have a disaggregated workforce across many different locations. This is a particular problem for unions such as USDAW, which has many branches and represents many employees, including in small retail outlets and companies. That could require the renegotiation of check-off arrangements with hundreds and, in some cases, thousands of employers across both the public and private sectors. That is an incredibly complex enterprise. If trade unions are required to do this by law, they will do their very best to comply, but they have to be given a reasonable amount of time to do so.
There was a mention of the plastic bags legislation, but the argument applies to any new legislation; it would apply if we were imposing new regulations on businesses around tax reporting or introducing new regulations around health and safety. I sat on the Consumer Rights Public Bill Committee. Complex changes take a long time to bring in. This is about what is reasonable, when it comes to insuring that those involved can comply with a new legislative framework.
We talked about the practical operational impact on, say, membership databases. There will be a need to redesign membership forms and distribute them across the country, and to train shop stewards and union officials on how to implement the new legislation. Some of those changes have to be deferred until a rule-making conference, because they link into other decisions. That is the crucial point.
What surprises me is that although these concerns have been raised multiple times by unions and the TUC, and the Minister accepts that those representations have been made, this statutory instrument makes no attempt to deal with any of those concerns. That smacks not of reasonableness but of the ideological approach that we have repeatedly seen the Government take towards the trade union movement and society.
We have heard about the particular challenges that USDAW faces; its conference is due to take place. The Minister seemed almost to give a grudging apology. It would be interesting to hear further from her on that. It is not asking for the moon; it is asking for a reasonable period in which to comply. It wants to comply—it made that clear—but its conference has been booked years in advance at a venue that has been paid for. It has to inform its members of conferences, and those members have to get time off work. The changes are being rushed in on 1 March 2018, just weeks before USDAW holds its conference, at which it would be able to decide to implement the legislation. It seems to me—and I think it would to many members of the public, whether they are politically minded or not—an unreasonable measure. I appeal to Government Members to look at that.
Take the politics out of this and look at what is reasonable. Would hon. Members expect businesses and other civil society organisations suddenly to have to comply with measures when they have processes in place to deal with the changes and have indicated a willingness to comply? I will oppose this statutory instrument. The Government’s whole approach to this legislation from day one has been deeply unfortunate and smacks of its real agenda, which is to shut down the voice of working people up and down this country and, indeed, wider civil society.
UK Steel Industry
Debate between Angela Eagle and Stephen Doughty(8 years, 8 months ago)
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Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government have also been asleep at the wheel when it comes to the crucial issue of procurement? Will she join me in commending the Daily Mirror for its Save Our Steel campaign, which has been shining a light on defence procurement, in particular, and found that Swedish steel is being used in the Navy’s newest warships?
Ms Eagle
I certainly agree with my hon. Friend’s observations and share his surprise that Swedish steel is being used in Ministry of Defence contracts in quite that way. I note that it appears to be a Conservative donor company that was doing that work. I join him in commending the Daily Mirror for its fantastic Save Our Steel campaign, which has highlighted the very real effects of the current crisis on steel communities up and down the country. Long may it continue to help us campaign to save this vital industry.
In the light of all that, why has the Government’s response to the steel crisis been so complacent and ineffective to date? Perhaps it is because we have a Business Secretary who is ideologically indisposed to taking any worthwhile action as he does not actually believe in the concept of Government action at all. Perhaps it is because we have a Business Secretary who has read far too much Ayn Rand and thinks that markets should somehow just be left to look after themselves. Perhaps it is because we have a Business Secretary who will not let the phrase “industrial strategy” even pass his lips.
Ms Eagle
I am just getting the idea of a mixed rugby team out of my mind so that I can address the hon. Gentleman’s point. I think that it rather makes the point that the Government need to do more than just change technical criteria. They need to take a root-and-branch look at what is actually happening in our steel industry, and an industrial strategy would assist them in doing that. We need to do what we can to ensure that any blockages are removed so that we can give our steel communities the best chance to take maximum advantage of the procurement opportunities available in this country.
Stephen Doughty
That is absolutely crucial. Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a pattern of behaviour here? We have seen foreign steel used in the Tide class tankers, in the scout vehicles and in the aircraft carriers, we have no commitments on the frigates, and we have also heard about Swedish steel being used. That pattern of behaviour across all defence procurement needs to be investigated.
Steel Industry
Debate between Angela Eagle and Stephen Doughty(9 years ago)
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Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House believes that the UK steel industry is of national strategic importance and should be supported by the UK Government; notes that the UK steel industry is in crisis and that the recent closure of SSI in Redcar has resulted in 2,000 direct job losses, with a further 1,000 contractor jobs lost and 6,000 jobs to be lost in the local supply chain, the announcement by Tata Steel that they will no longer produce steel plate at Dalzell, Clydebridge and Scunthorpe has resulted in 1,170 job losses, and that 1,700 jobs are at risk as Caparo Industries has gone into administration; recognises that for every direct steel job lost a further three indirect job losses will follow; further notes the vital importance of the steel industry to those local communities it serves, the proud industrial heritage of Britain’s steel towns and the very real threat to these parts of the country should the steel industry disappear; and calls upon the Government to take immediate action to protect the steel industry, including immediately implementing the Energy Intensive Industry Compensation Package, taking action with the EU Commission on antidumping measures, looking at temporary action on business rates, reviewing how regulatory frameworks impact the industry, and promoting local content and sustainability in procurement contacts, and for the Government to publish a full industrial strategy including what level of capacity the Government envisages is needed in the steel industry, so as to safeguard this vital strategic asset.
Labour has secured this debate because the British steel industry is in full-scale crisis, and before they were pushed the Government seemed unwilling to do anything practical about it. In the last three weeks, 2,220 employees in Redcar have lost their jobs, 3,000 on-site contractors have been laid off, and 6,000 further jobs will be lost in the local community. The hard closure of the site means the effective destruction of its steelmaking assets, including what was the second largest blast furnace in Europe. The Government’s refusal to help has effectively ended 170 years of steelmaking in Redcar, destroying specialist local skills and condemning the community to a bleak future. Tata Steel’s announcement about the closure of its long products business in Scunthorpe, Dalzell and Clydebridge has cost 1,170 jobs, and effectively ended steelmaking in Scotland. The news that Caparo Industries has filed for administration means that 1,700 more jobs are at risk across the country.
Alongside the tragedy of each job loss, and the ramifications for supply chains and local economies, there is a real worry that the UK’s steelmaking capacity is being sacrificed on the altar of laissez-faire economics by a Government who simply will not act to preserve our country’s strategic assets. Labour contends that steelmaking in the UK is an industry of national strategic importance and should therefore be supported by the Government.
Steel is important for UK manufacturing as it helps our balance of payments, and it is vital for our defence and security. If we are about to embark on the huge infrastructure investments that the Chancellor is so fond of boasting about, surely we should ensure that UK steel has every chance to compete and win those contracts. To do that, we must ensure that the UK steel industry still exists when those contracts come up for competition. As the industry has lurched deeper into this wholly foreseeable crisis, the Government have been quick to come up with expressions of sympathy, but noticeably reluctant to take any decisive action.
Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend will be aware that concerns about the challenges facing the steel industry have been raised repeatedly in this House—I think there have been 10 debates—and there have been repeated questions, meetings, exchanges with officials from the Departments for Business, Innovation and Skills and of Energy and Climate Change, and others, for more than two years. Is she surprised, as I am, that it has taken until today for the Business Secretary to get on a train to Brussels and try to sort out this mess?
Ms Eagle
I certainly am surprised. If the Business Secretary needs an Opposition day debate to encourage him to do his job by going to Brussels and talking to the Commission after years of not doing that, we will secure more such debates and persuade him to do his duty, which he should have been doing in the first place.