Living Standards

Debate between Emily Thornberry and Alison McGovern

Wednesday 4th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

I respect the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell), but with respect, I understand that Croydon put its council tax up because of a lack of Government funds. Although we would all like to see living-wage councils, we need to recognise the extreme pressure that local authorities are under because of this Government’s ferocious cuts to them.

On skills and education, which I shall come to later, I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) on the need for a history lesson. It is absolutely right that we focus on the needs of young people. However, Government Members in this debate somehow seem to have forgotten that a previous Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer had to rescue modern apprenticeships from the history books in order to give this country a proper industrial skills policy again. I am glad that Government Members support that and that it has been kept going, such that young people will still have the chance to get an apprenticeship in this country, but let us not pretend that we did not suffer all those years until 2003, when that proper industrial skills policy was put back.

On the broader question of living standards, if the Government think that they are out of the woods with this recovery or that all our problems are solved, then good luck to them. I ask the Minister just to speak to a few people on low and middle incomes in Merseyside, as he has already kindly agreed to do the next time he is there. I really do not think that those people are feeling better off at all. They do not feel better off, and they are not better off. In fact, I think that the Chancellor might quietly agree with me on that. Before the summer, I asked him at Treasury questions:

“Does the Chancellor believe that since he came to office the average British family is better off after inflation, yes or no?”

I was hoping for a straightforward answer from him. Instead, I got this:

“I think that they have better economic prospects than they did under the previous Government.”—[Official Report, 26 June 2013; Vol. 565, c. 333.]

[Emily Thornberry]

Jam tomorrow.

[Alison McGovern]

Quite right! Jam tomorrow, but never jam today. People in the Wirral will certainly not put up with that, and I doubt that anyone in the rest of the country will either.

I have spent much of the summer talking to people about zero-hours contracts. They are a growing issue for my constituents and others. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger), my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) and I have conducted a survey in order to listen to people with experience of such contracts. Given the stories that we heard from people who simply did not know what their wage packet was going to contain at the end of each week or month, I simply cannot accept the argument that any job is better than no job. That is like saying that it is better to work for £1 an hour than to have no job at all. I cannot accept that argument. I cannot accept an economy that is devoid of standards.

This is not a proper recovery. Unless it reaches those on low and middle incomes, we shall not see the kind of economic recovery that we need. Instead, we shall see the kind of hysteresis and waste of talent that my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan has described. Zero-hours contracts affect young people; they are a blight on their prospects. Those people need a chance to build their skills so that they have the potential to have a good career. Will the Minister answer these questions? What will he do if the number of hours worked per person in the economy does not increase? What will he do if people are still underemployed in a year’s time? How will he address their need to increase their pay packet so that they can afford the prices in the shops?

On inflation, I repeat that I still cannot quite believe the Prime Minister’s response at Prime Minister’s questions today to the question about school uniforms. I remember only too well the situation in my own family. There were three of us, and September was an expensive time. My mum used to worry that we had grown. If the Prime Minister has not experienced that, or heard about it from families in his own constituency, let me tell him that it was extremely stressful. Unfortunately, the previous Governor of the Bank of England was forced to write to the Chancellor of the Exchequer citing the VAT increase as part of the cause of the inflation that we have experienced. So, although I accept the points that have been made about the global situation, the Government’s policy has not exactly helped to bring down prices.