Budget Resolutions

Debate between Clive Betts and David Simmonds

Tuesday 12th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

One of my mother’s favourite phrases was that anything can be proved with statistics. It seems to me that Budget debates always follow that, as they are something of a statistical salad from which Members can pick out their favourite morsels to support any individual argument.

What is often more important is not to pick and choose statistics to advance an argument, but to look at trends. The reports that I think every Member receives on a regular basis from our big banks and financial institutions—NewDay, Barclays’ Insights reports, Lloyds and others—tell us a great deal about what is going on in the financial lives of the people we serve. Broadly across the country we see a clear trend that people are in a position to save more from their day-to-day incomes. Spending on consumer activity is increasing quarter on quarter, and is particularly strong among constituents on a household income of between £20,000 and £40,000 a year—those on lower incomes, but in employment. That is part of a generally improving—although not rapidly improving—trend.

It is against that backdrop that I welcome in particular the fact that the Budget focuses its support primarily on the lowest income households, including pensioners through the triple lock. It incentivises work, but not just for the benefit of people earning their own income. It recognises the benefits of having a job—for mental and physical health, and for tackling child poverty. It also encourages investment. We have heard a great deal of debate about manufacturing. The introduction of full expensing, and the commitment to retaining it, will be hugely important in raising productivity over time and will help us to address our biggest national challenge, the demographics of a reducing workforce, while helping individual businesses. On a recent visit to the Sharmans Pharmacy in my constituency, I was shown its new pharmacy dispensing robot. It increases rapidly the ability of that pharmacy to fill prescriptions for people who come in. It increases the efficiency of workers and their ability to engage with customers, and it represents a degree of confidence on its part that an investment in an expensive piece of technology will help to increase its profit margins, secure jobs and provide a better service to people who come through the door.

Against that backdrop, and although we have seen amazing progress, with on average an additional 800 jobs per day since the Government took office in 2010, we still face a very significant recruitment challenge. I hear from businesses in my constituency, day after day, that securing workers with the skills to fill the jobs that enable us to grow and increase productivity remains a challenge. I will provide the Government Front Bench with the thought that, just as with the Windrush generation, when we went out and specifically sought to recruit people from across the world to fulfil the roles we needed—it did not always end well, but on the whole it was enormously significant and positive—we might need a similar kind of deal with a friendly nation today, and to make a decision to take control of economic migration and establish links with countries from which we can source the skills we need and with whom we have an affiliation, to provide the stability our economy needs, and in particular the public sector workers we require in the NHS, dentistry and so many other areas of our national life.

To develop the theme of productivity, all across the public sector we hear interesting examples of how different public services are looking to improve productivity. From the Royal Navy, we have heard how future generations of warships will require one third of the number of sailors that the current technology demands. Across the NHS, we see examples of how new technology—I declare an interest; I am married to an NHS doctor—is improving the efficiency of both the delivery of services and the speed with which they can be provided. In that context, it is striking that, while people can be cynical about capitalism, there has been a 50% improvement in cancer survival rates over the past five decades as a result of the wealth that has been generated and invested in this technology.

I very much encourage the Government, as they look at where the productivity gain can most be found—echoing the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) and having spent a lot of my time in local government—to focus on the areas of our public sector where we have seen the most impressive gains in productivity. It is clear from, for instance, our experience of the better care fund and what has happened in relation to public health that local authorities have consistently achieved not only some of the most impressive efficiency savings in any part of the public sector, but also the greatest productivity gains. That is because they contain accountable, elected politicians like ourselves, responsible to their communities, who are willing to run things as if they were running their own businesses. One example is the investment in jet patchers enabling potholes, which are a real pest for many of our constituents, to be fixed very rapidly. The decisions on that investment were made in local government years before anyone in central Government got around to identifying the potential benefits of the technology.

[Mr Betts]

Is it not therefore disappointing that while the Government have assumed 5% productivity increases in the Budget, they are also assuming that central funding from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities will be cut by 2.3% a year in real terms for four years? Even if a 5% increase in productivity were achieved, it would fill only half the gap caused by the cuts in local government funding that are projected in the Budget. That is no way forward, is it? Moreover, the Budget made absolutely no mention of public health or integrated care.

[David Simmonds]

The hon. Gentleman has enormous knowledge of the local government world. I think he would also acknowledge the complexity of the local government finance world and, in particular, the opportunity created by the freedoms relating to council tax increases. As we know from other debates in the House, that is not distributed across the country as evenly as we would like, but it will nevertheless enable local authorities that have built up significant financial balances specifically to manage effectively some of the economic shocks that we know are out there in the system.

Let me end with a brief defence of the value of capitalism. In this Chamber we often debate the need for greater regulation—ten-minute rule Bills, for instance, are often intended to address injustices, and that is entirely right—but if we are honest we will admit that, notwithstanding the grandeur of the Chamber and the status of Members of Parliament, the Government do not exert as much control over the day-to-day life of our economy and our national life as some of our debates imply. We need to recognise that free markets, capitalism and people’s ability to invest and seek returns have helped to deliver that doubling of cancer survival rates, as well as the incredible improvements in educational attainment. It does not always work, of course. The private finance initiative remains a significant burden, but it was a worthy attempt to do the right thing which has turned out to have some significant downsides.

We should consider the improvements in our national mental and physical health and to the rates of absolute poverty that have been driven by investment and the creation of 4 million additional jobs since 2010, which have transformed our constituents’ lives beyond almost anything else that we have done in this Chamber. It is for that reason that I have confidence in the impact that the Budget will have, and in the benefits that a Conservative Government are bringing to all our people.

Colleges and Skills: Covid-19

Debate between Clive Betts and David Simmonds

Tuesday 20th October 2020 Westminster Hall

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, as always, Mr Betts. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) for securing the opportunity to highlight important issues in respect of colleges.

I am not going to repeat what others have said. My constituents are very fortunate in that they are served, following the area review, by the merged institution created from Harrow College and Uxbridge College— two of the highest-performing colleges in London. Having been engaged with those colleges for many years, I would like to highlight one strength of the sector that is especially relevant to all of us and the different local economic circumstances that our constituents face: the amazing flexibility that colleges have shown in tailoring their offer to the opportunities that exist in the area for young people.

I am fortunate to represent a constituency that is part of a wider west London economic community in which we have a particularly vibrant tech hub. The video assistant referee systems that support high-level football are located at Stockley Park—I see wry smiles from the football fans in the room—as are a number of the companies that programme some of the world’s most popular computer games. There is a nexus of opportunity for young people—not necessarily those who will be pushed by their schools into the traditional A-level academic route—to gain access to well-paid, prestigious jobs in a desirable working environment close to their home area.

I am impressed by the efforts the local college has made to link up young people who are studying and pursuing those topics with those businesses and to ensure that they are able to access those opportunities and find their way into those very good, highly-paid jobs in an internationally competitive environment. That can lead to people doing amazing things with their lives, from what to many people, when they first look at the prospect of college, perhaps seems a less promising beginning than going down a route that ultimately leads to university. The more we can publicise those opportunities in Colleges Week, the better, because the more our constituents—particularly the mums and dads—understand that that route of opportunity is open to young people, the better it will be.

I will finish by touching on finance. Quite a few Members have made the point that, compared with the schools sector, colleges often feel a bit like a Cinderella service. When we simply look at the money, that is a fact, but we also know that we can sometimes do great things on a relatively modest budget. I think colleges deserve praise for that. I do not simply say that the that the answer is to make sure that more money and resources go to vocational education, although that would be welcome; we should recognise that these are institutions that demonstrate that they can create fantastic opportunities for young people that are not driven simply by the Government spending more and more money.

The more that we can extend that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) alluded to, to a wider age group in this country, the better. I agree we need to look at young people, such as those who might have considered the technology college route in the past, but what about those slightly older people, who may be looking to get their lives back on track with further education later on? This could be exactly the opportunity they require.

I hope that those points provide a summary, but I also place on the record my thanks to the Harrow College and Uxbridge College principals, who have done such a fantastic job for my constituents over the years.

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

We have only two minutes before the wind-ups. I dropped the hon. Member for Warrington South down the list for the simple reason that he arrived well after the start of the debate.