Lord Beamish
Main Page: Lord Beamish (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Beamish's debates with the Department for Work and Pensions
(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Vince Cable
The vast majority are in full-time work. The figures show that quite clearly. It is better to be in part-time work than out of work. I hope that there will be some recognition of that.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
Does the right hon. Gentleman recognise that when the coalition came into government in 2010 the economy was growing because of the actions of the previous Government? Does he regret cutting capital expenditure straight away and the other mistakes that were made early on, which sent the economy into depression and have caused it, as my hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) said, to bump along the bottom?
Vince Cable
I have said that the cuts in capital spending have been too deep. The Chancellor has acknowledged that and changes were made in the autumn statement and the Budget. The hon. Gentleman seems to forget that the decision to slash capital budgets by half was made by the outgoing Labour Government in 2010.
Vince Cable
I spend a good deal of time discussing that issue with the Home Office, and I will come on to students in a moment as they are a crucial category.
In order to clear the decks for an honest discussion of this problem, we must confront the reality that some of the facts, or factoids, used in this context are deeply unhelpful. All parties and commentators use the concept of net immigration as a way of measuring what is happening on that front, but at the heart of that concept lies a logical absurdity. One reason net immigration rises is because fewer British people emigrate—one would have thought it rather a good thing that people feel comfortable living in this country and want to stay here. Net immigration declines if more British people emigrate, which one would have thought is rather a bad thing. We often operate, therefore, with a concept that gives us misleading and unhelpful conclusions.
Similarly, the biggest item in immigration—this relates to the previous intervention—and the biggest category of people regarded as immigrants are overseas students. Of course, overseas students are not immigrants; that is not why they come here. A few stay on—indeed, I probably contributed to immigration statistics 50 years ago when I married someone who was then a student at the university of York. For the most part, however, people come to the UK to study and then go home. They are not immigrants, but by way of a quirk—not in our statistics, but those of the United Nations—they are regarded as immigrants and we must acknowledge that in our debates.
Setting aside prejudices and anxieties, it is important to acknowledge that in some key areas immigration makes an important and positive contribution to the UK. The first category is the one we have just been discussing: students. Overseas students contribute about £9 billion a year to the UK economy. They also contribute in other ways, but education is one of our most successful export industries. The Government have tried to curb abuses that were taking place. People were using bogus colleges as a route to illegal immigration, and those have been closed. Once we have established the principle of legality, students make a positive contribution, and I would see a negative trend in students coming to the UK as a problem rather than an achievement.
Mr Kevan Jones
I agree with the right hon. Gentleman’s point about bogus colleges. First-class universities such as Durham rely on a lot of overseas students not only for income but to become more cultural and diverse places. Does he agree that some of the language being used gives the impression to students from the middle east and far east that they are not welcome in the UK?
Vince Cable
That should not be the case, and the Prime Minister has gone out of his way—as he did on a recent visit to India—to make it clear that we welcome valid, legal overseas student visitors to the UK. That is our policy and we are encouraging it.
Vince Cable
That is essentially the point I am trying to make. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman can communicate his message to the shadow Home Secretary, who has a slightly different take on those things.
My essential point is that there are positives, and we need to stress them in the current atmosphere. However, we also need to provide reassurance, which is what the Government are seeking to do in two main ways. First, when people come to this country, we should acknowledge a distinction between the rights to work and to claim benefits, which is at the heart of people’s sense of citizenship and belonging. My colleague the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions will explain how we want to ensure that British citizens and not people from overseas receive benefits. The sense of abuse in that sector fuels much of the current anxiety.
The second source of concern is the belief that the laws and restrictions we have should be enforced. There are measures in the Immigration Bill to try to ensure that the private sector, particularly the property sector, plays its role in enforcing them. Those restrictions will have to be subject to a proper regulatory impact assessment and, under the one in, two out principle, they will have to demonstrate that they do not impose red tape on small business. Provided that happens, I hope the combination of actions that have been taken in respect of the benefits system and enforcing the law will be sufficient to reassure the public, or those people who are willing to be reassured, that managed immigration is very much in the national interest.
Mr Kevan Jones
The right hon. Gentleman makes a thoughtful speech and brings some balance to the argument on immigration. However, if he looks at Department for Work and Pensions figures, he will see that the majority of immigrants are in work and not claiming benefits. Of those who claim benefits, some have contributed through national insurance. Does he agree that we should look at the facts rather than feed the myths put forward by the press? One fact is that, according to DWP figures, fewer than 2% of applications are fraudulent or bogus.
Vince Cable
The hon. Gentleman is right that myth-busting is an important part of what we need to do. However, in order to deal with myth-busting, we must also deal with genuine abuses. I hope he understands that. I am grateful for his first comment—I am trying to lower the temperature of the debate and to get us to deal with fact rather than myth. I am trying to have a proper balance that recognises the very substantial economic importance of managed migration to this country alongside the measures we must take to deal with abuse.
A large part of the Leader of the Opposition’s speech was devoted to the continuing problems in banking and the financial sector, and many of the current problems with the economy relate to the aftermath of the banking crisis. We have got to a situation in which banks—partly under pressure from regulators, and partly as a result of learning from their mistakes—have moved to a position of fairly extreme risk aversion. If we are to ensure that credit flows to small business, which is the motor of the economy, that needs to change.
There is some evidence that the situation is beginning to change. Some banks, such as Lloyds, HSBC and the trade finance market, are showing positive trends, as is Barclays. The head of Royal Bank of Scotland made it clear at the weekend that he has £20 billion-worth above his liquidity buffers and capital requirements available for small and medium-sized enterprise loans. We hope SMEs take advantage of that.
However, the position we are dealing with is genuinely difficult. In the light of banks’ previous misfortunes, they are operating what I call a pawnbroker model of banking, under which people need collateral, whether a gold watch or property, to secure a business loan. That is massively inhibiting for, for example, a creative industry that does not have such collateral, or an export company that is trying to trade on the basis of orders, or simply for a good company with a good business idea and a good business plan that is unable to get into expansionary mode because of the crippling effects of bank credit restriction.
The Government are trying to deal with the problem in a series of practical steps. We clearly need to do more, but it is worth summarising some of the steps we are taking. We have a sophisticated system of developing supply chain finance—the advanced manufacturing supply chain initiative. Work is being done with Kingfisher and others in the private sector to support trade finance outside the banking system. We have a £1 billion fund that now supports non-bank finance, which is proliferating rapidly. We have crowd-sourced funding, invoice finance and non-conventional forms of lending. The Financial Services Authority and, currently, the Financial Conduct Authority, relaxed rules on the establishment of new banks. Within the next year or so, we will hopefully have a lot more banks, based on the model of Aldermore and Handelsbanken.
Probably the most important step, and one that underpins the others, is the work we are doing with the business bank. We have £1 billion of start-up capital. The first £300 million is being marketed to support new banks and long-term patient capital, which can be raised in the City, and to support equity through angel networks. A crucial test of our policy in the coming months will be the speed with which we can get that capital into the market to relieve the genuine constraints.
I listened carefully to try to establish what, if anything, Opposition Members wanted to add to the debate, because the problem is a genuinely difficult one, and because Labour presided over the banking collapse. If I understand them correctly, the big new idea is regional banking. It is a good idea, and I want it to be explained and developed. It has been forgotten that, 15 years ago, we had regional banking—they were called building societies. I have a vivid recollection of that period because I was chairman of Save Our Building Societies, working with one or two Opposition colleagues, particularly the hon. Member for Edmonton (Mr Love), to try to stop the demutualisation of building societies.
I believe demutualisation began originally with Lord Lawson, but it is worth recalling that, in the first five years of the Blair Government, we lost most of our regional banks. It is worth itemising what happened to them: Bradford and Bingley collapsed and was nationalised, and is now part of Santander; Birmingham Midshires bank is now part of Lloyds; Northern Rock in Newcastle collapsed and is now part of the Virgin group; Woolwich is now part of Barclays; Halifax is now part of Lloyds; and Alliance and Leicester is now part of Santander. We had regional banking, and it went. I would love to see it recreated, but that is like turning omelettes back into eggs. I am all ears as to how that can be done. If it can be done, I am very much in favour of it, because we need much more diversity and competition in banking.
Mr Kevan Jones
Do we not also need a bit of consistency from the Conservative part of the coalition, which not only supported that Bill but in some cases, as with the Chancellor, wanted to go further with deregulation of the banking system?
Mr Umunna
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I was just about to come on to that. The Business Secretary, soon after making that statement in favour of our regulatory framework, said:
“Like the Conservative Opposition, we shall approach the issues constructively. There is no reason to hold back the Bill.”—[Official Report, 28 June 1999; Vol. 334, c. 58.]
My hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) is absolutely right: neither the Conservative party nor the Liberal Democrats voted against that Bill in opposition, and yet we have had no expression of regret from them for supporting the regulatory framework that we put in place. It is about time that we heard some mea culpa from Government Members.
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
It is a great honour to speak in this Gracious Speech debate on jobs, and a particular honour and pleasure to be called first after the dazzling performances on both Front Benches. It is also a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna), the shadow Secretary of State, who made a typically assured and polished speech—as I am sure his Wikipedia page will shortly remind us.
I shall bear in mind your words of wisdom, Mr Deputy Speaker, and not speak for too long. I am heartened by the fact that you have not set a time limit, because on the last three occasions when I have spoken in the Chamber, I have been given just three minutes in which to do so. That certainly focuses the mind, but I assure you and the House that I shall not be speaking for three minutes or, indeed, for three hours.
I want to speak about the issue of jobs, which is important to my constituents in Tamworth. Notwithstanding the rather gloomy words of the shadow Secretary of State, and the collapse last December of a company called Drive Assist, we in Tamworth have been heartened by a downward trajectory in joblessness. I think that that will be enhanced and encouraged by the measures announced in the Gracious Speech, particularly the proposal to offer an employment allowance towards national insurance, which I am pleased to note that the shadow Secretary of State seems to support. It means that small businesses up and down the country, from Redruth to Redcar—including, importantly, businesses in Tamworth, Fazeley and the district of Lichfield—will be exempt from national insurance, which will enable them to grow and employ more people. I think that the measure will also help us to rebalance our economy, moving back from the over-reliance on the financial services sector and the public sector that was so beloved of the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) towards a more sustainable, broad-based private sector—a sector that contracted by some 730,000 places under the last Labour Government.
I was also heartened by the announcement of a deregulation Bill, because regulation is, after all, a form of tax. A small business man must be not just his firm’s managing director and sales director, but its human resources director, logistics director, financial director and IT director. Any piece of bureaucracy and administration, even a small piece, can add to the distraction and detraction from the time when he should be growing his business and selling.
Mr Kevan Jones
One example of deregulation in the Queen’s Speech is the removal of health and safety legislation relating to sole traders. Can the hon. Gentleman explain how the economy will be boosted by the exclusion of sole traders from such legislation? Will that make the workplace safer for them?
Christopher Pincher
A sole trader will be able to spend more time finding and doing work and making money, on which he will then pay tax to the Exchequer. I think that this is a very worthwhile regulatory change. I am sure that, as an old hand in the House, the hon. Gentleman will have heard many Governments down the years say that they will deregulate. I only hope that this particular Bill will have real teeth, will do what it says on the tin, and will enable business men to spend more time doing business rather than administrating.
Mr Jones
Would the hon. Gentleman be happy for a sole trader such as a plumber or even an electrician who had been allowed to have no regard for health and safety legislation to come into his home? Will this really make any difference to economic growth, and will it make the safety of the public and that individual any greater?
Christopher Pincher
I hope that it will. We shall see. However, there is certainly an argument for deregulating, and as the hon. Gentleman surely knows, the Bill will need to do what it says on the tin.
The Queen’s Speech also refers to measures to support intellectual property. If we are to focus on and support the extremely important design businesses in our country, we need to help them to protect their intellectual property from countries and businesses that would rather borrow, steal and copy knowhow than buy it.
I hope that the measures will help my constituent Mr Ken Clayton, a photographer who fears that changes proposed, he says, by civil servants will mean that photographs on Facebook and on BBC websites will be automatically stripped of their metadata and will become “orphan works”. As a result, he says,
“individuals and companies will be free to use such photographs with no reference to the person who took the photographs and will be able to license them without any payment to the photographer.”
I hope that when we come to debate the Bill, Mr Clayton will be reassured by it.
The Secretary of State, who is no longer in the Chamber, made a very balanced speech about immigration and the role that it plays in relation to jobs. Although the last Government created many jobs—some 1.5 million, I believe—a staggering 98.5% were soaked up by migrant labour. If we are to get the many people in the country who are trapped in dependency back into work, or in many instances into work for the first time, we must not only reform welfare so that it will always pay to work, but deter those who may wish to come to this country and provide a low-cost alternative, which would be a cost to our work force, and would put a strain on our infrastructure, services and housing, which would be a cost to the taxpayer.
I hope that, while the Opposition may ask some searching questions when the immigration Bill is debated—as they have tried to do this morning—they will support it in the end. I think that if they do not, they will find themselves on what the broad mass of the British people consider the wrong side of the argument.
The Secretary of State referred to the importance of infrastructure. I am pleased to note that the Energy Bill is to be carried over. After a decade of neglect, it is essential for us to invest in our energy infrastructure—in power stations, especially nuclear stations, and in the transmission infrastructure that conveys energy around the country. It is important for investors to see that both major parties in the House, and indeed our Liberal Democrat coalition colleagues, support the regulatory system.
Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) who, with his usual enthusiasm, delivered an entertaining and informative speech.
I want to mention a number of issues this morning. Although not all of them are covered by the subject of today’s debate, it is important that we get them on the record. I want to discuss three main areas, and then to propose one in which we as a Government could go further. There is no doubt that we face huge challenges as a country, and the biggest challenge remains our economy. It colours everything that we do and it is the backdrop to every decision we make.
It is worth reiterating the facts of the toxic inheritance we acquired when we came into government. We were running a deficit of 11% and had borrowed the equivalent of £1 million a day for the past 4,000 years—since the pyramids were topping out. We must deal with that. We are dealing with it and we are tackling it, but there is no doubt that the waters are choppy. Rather than talking down our economy, which we so often take great glee in doing, we need to start talking it up and looking for some of the positives that we can find out there. The fact that there are 1.25 million new private sector jobs is a positive, as is the fact that there are more people in employment than ever before.
Mr Kevan Jones
The hon. Gentleman talks about talking down the economy, but what did the coalition Government do in their first six months if not talk down the economy? They tried to scare people, saying that if we did not take the draconian action they have taken, our levels of debt could be on a par with those of the likes of Greece.
Stephen Metcalfe
My understanding is that our levels of debt are on a par with those of Greece as a percentage of GDP. They certainly were at the time. Yes, when we came into government—
Stephen Metcalfe
Shall I answer the hon. Gentleman’s first point before I take a second intervention?
The hon. Gentleman’s other point was about our explaining to people when we came to power the inheritance we were left and the measures we had to take to tackle it. I was slightly confused earlier this morning when listening to the hon. Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) who said that the only additional borrowing that Labour had mentioned was the VAT cut, which would add an additional £12 billion to the overall borrowing we have identified. I assume that means that he would stick to every spending plan we have in place. Our spending plans have resulted in spending reductions across Departments, every single one of which have been opposed by the Opposition. I am slightly confused about their current line. Do they agree with the cuts and just want to borrow an additional £12 billion to cut VAT, or are they saying that they do not agree with the cuts, that they will backtrack on all that and that they will raise additional taxation?
Stephen Metcalfe
People in my constituency are suffering because of the toxic economic inheritance we acquired when we came into government. [Interruption.] I am sorry; it is simple. If we had not inherited the largest deficit in the developed world and a huge debt, we would not need to make the decisions that we are making now. We never hear a credible alternative from the Labour party; we just hear opposition.
Stephen Metcalfe
I shall move on.
I shall structure my remarks around the national insurance contributions Bill and what more we can do to support business, but first I shall mention two issues that are of great importance to my constituents. Along with the economy, one of the issues that we struggle with is what we should do about immigration, and how we should handle that quite sensitive issue. We have to get the balance right. Undoubtedly, as a nation we have benefited from immigration. We are a global trading nation; we have sat at the heart of world economic development for very many years, and people come to this country to add to our economic vibrancy. But I share with my constituents a concern about how we handle that fairly—how we achieve a balance. Some of the announcements made in the Gracious Speech will be very welcome. It strikes a sensible balance between my constituents’ rights and those of migrants or immigrants who then commit a criminal offence. It seems to strike people that the pendulum often swings too far in support of the perpetrator rather than the victim.
We are a fundamentally fair nation. We are respectful, we are tolerant, and we believe in fair play, but we do not believe that a person who abuses that tolerance has a right to remain here. I am therefore very pleased with some of the announcements in the Gracious Speech, and I hope the Bill will demonstrate to my constituents that we are tackling a serious problem. They really do not understand how people who break the law here are able to continue to benefit from our good standards of respect for them. Those people should return to their own country when they break the rules here; they forfeit the right to stay.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
The hon. Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe) has just spoken about talking the economy down. I know it was three years ago, which seems a long time, but we need to remind people of who in 2010 was talking this country’s economy down—it was the Chancellor of the Exchequer and this coalition Government. They expressed the ridiculous notion that without the draconian cuts that they brought in, which the Business Secretary said earlier they now recognised were a mistake, we would end up with an economy like that of Greece. We heard the nonsense, which was repeated by the hon. Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock, about the fact that we had the largest debt in the developed world.
Let us look at the facts. In 1997 the Labour Government inherited a debt to GDP ratio of 42%. At the beginning of the financial crisis in 2008 that had been reduced to 35%, so irrespective of the Prime Minister’s claim in opposition that we were not mending the roof while the sun was shining, that is exactly what we were doing, which left us in a strong position to weather that financial crisis. The deficit that we inherited in 1997 was 3.9%. That was nearly halved by 2008 to 2.1%. The hon. Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock throws around figures suggesting that we had the largest debt. In cash terms, yes, but for the millionaires in the House— I do not know whether there are any in the Chamber today, although there are plenty in the Front-Bench team of the Conservative party—
Mr Jones
I accept that.
If one looks at the debt of a millionaire in cash terms, of course it will be larger than that of someone who is earning the minimum wage. To compare the size of the UK economy to that of Greece takes no account of that.
We need to recognise who talked the economy down and who took the disastrous decision in those early days to take demand out of the economy. We were growing, as the shadow Business Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna), rightly said. That destructive early cut, along with talking the economy down, sucked confidence out of the economy. Getting that confidence back is very difficult. Clearly, many people, and certainly those in my constituency, are very cautious about what they are spending.
Let us have this debate based on the facts. I accept that we in the Labour party missed a trick. We were self-obsessed for nearly six months as we selected a new leader of the party, so we did not rebut the nonsense that was put out at the time.
The Business Secretary said, strangely, that the Queen’s Speech is not the mechanism for getting the economy going. I find that remarkable. This is a lost opportunity. The Queen’s Speech was so thin on substance that it could be marketed by WeightWatchers. There is nothing in it that will help the 20% of young people who are in long-term unemployment. My hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) spoke about a lost decade. That is so, and we need to remind the House that that has consequences for individuals. The 20% who are now unemployed—and their number is increasing—will have their lives affected for ever. We must recognise the human cost behind the statistics. The problem will not be solved for those individuals in the short term and will have long-term implications for constituents such as mine and those of my hon. Friend that will need to be addressed in the long term.
Ms Abbott
Does my hon. Friend agree that there will be not just a lost decade but a lost generation? Academics have said that young people graduating now from college and university who do not go into employment can look forward to a future always on the fringes of the employment market.
Mr Jones
Indeed. It is even worse because those who are graduating now are burdened with the debt of student loans, which the Deputy Prime Minister, when he was fighting the general election, said he would not bring in. I worry about those individuals. In the north-east of England, after the destruction of heavy industry under the previous Conservative Government, I saw how whole communities were written off. My fear is that we are writing off a whole generation of young people to long-term unemployment amid low levels of economic growth.
In the Queen’s Speech, as in much that the Government are doing, one has to look at the detail of the proposals. A lot of that is presented for the headlines, but it is worth looking at some proposals which do not have a great deal of substance to them. I shall refer first to the Mesothelioma Bill. Before I was elected to the House, I was a full-time trade union official and legal officer for the GMB. I dealt daily with people who were suffering from the effects of exposure to asbestos. It is heartbreaking to speak not only to the individuals who know there is a death sentence hanging over them, but to the families that they leave behind. Some of the victims are older, but many are young. It is a terrible disease. Some people can be exposed to quite high levels of asbestos and not have long-term health effects, but others are affected.
This country’s approach to asbestos-related issues has been a national scandal. After the second world war the Government wrote to employers organisations saying that exposure to asbestos was dangerous to health. Was anything done? No. We continued for many decades to deny that there would be any health effects. Successive Governments’ response to the issue is a shame and a scar. If the disease had affected middle-class communities in leafy Surrey, for example, it would be a front-page headline in every paper—it would be a national scandal. But because it is concentrated in the north-east and other poor communities who do not have the strong voice that other communities have, the victims have been overlooked.
The Bill builds on what the previous Government intended. We proposed setting up the employers liability bureau and a tax on insurance companies to pay for the individuals who developed asbestos-related disease and who could not trace the insurance companies of now-defunct employers. The Bill was trumpeted as a great step forward. Even a great journal such as The Shields Gazette announced:
“Asbestos victims across South Tyneside are set to share in a £355m compensation bonanza.”
Well, I just wish that local papers would write stories the old-fashioned way by having a journalist who actually understands the issue, rather than, as seems to be so common now, simply responding to press releases.
If we look at what is proposed, we see that it is nothing of the sort. First, it covers only those individuals who developed mesothelioma after 24 July 2012, so a whole group of mesothelioma victims and their families will get no compensation at all. Secondly, it does not cover other asbestos-related diseases like lung cancers, asbestosis and pleural plaques, so there is a group of individuals who, even after that date, will get no compensation at all. Even for the victims who will qualify for the scheme, there will only be a flat fee of 70% of the average compensation payout.
Also, the scheme will take no account of an individual’s circumstances. One of the youngest victims I dealt with as the union’s legal officer was 46 years old and had three young children. Under the scheme, if he could not prove who the insurance companies were, that would not be taken into consideration. That needs to be amended as the Bill goes through. It is important to remember that it is the trade unions that have fought over many years to ensure that those individuals get the compensation they are entitled to.
One wonders whether this scheme does not represent a very good deal for the insurance companies—I think that it does. The Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians has worked to expose the fact that, simply by coincidence, from October 2010 to September 2012 Lord Freud, the Minister responsible for the scheme, met the Association of British Insurers, Aviva, Royal Sun Alliance and Zurich on no fewer than 14 occasions. That shows how effective their lobbying has been in limiting their exposure to the scheme, and that needs to be changed.
Jim Fitzpatrick
My hon. Friend makes an important point. As a former asbestos worker, from my time in the London fire brigade, I know a number of former colleagues who have died as a result of this disease. The medical evidence on asbestos has been known since 1928. I am very disappointed by what he is saying, because I did not realise that there has been some attempt to manipulate the story. When I read the headline about a compensation Bill, I thought that it was good news, but he is suggesting that it might not be as good as it is being presented in the media. We will have to look at that very carefully.
Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)
If I may interrupt my hon. Friend’s unwrapping for a moment, he is probably the best qualified of all Members to link the armed forces and the problem of asbestos. I urge him to look at those men—they are mostly men—who served in the Royal Navy in the ’50s and ’60s and often had to use flash hood protectors, which were imbued with asbestos. Looking at that issue has been very difficult in the past because of the confidentiality of procurement.
Mr Jones
We made some progress on that when in government in relation to Crown immunity and the fact that people can now access war pensions for such things, but it is very difficult. It is easy to argue that their exposure to asbestos was quite limited, but it can still cause some debilitating diseases. The proposals do not represent a great victory for victims.
The deregulation Bill has been trumpeted as something that will remove the burdens on business and civil society in order to facilitate growth. The great idea seems to be that sole traders will somehow be exempt from health and safety legislation. We wait to see how that will generate growth. It will also create some problems. For example, will we have a two-tier work force on certain sites, with some people having, quite rightly, to follow sensible health and safety legislation, which was put in place to protect not only them but the public, while others will be able to do what they want? As I asked the hon. Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher) earlier, if I invite an electrician into my house as a sole trader, will I be signing up to the fact that he can completely ignore any type of health and safety legislation, whether in relation to me, my family or anyone else?
Stephen Metcalfe
The point that the hon. Gentleman is making would be a fair one if it was accurate, but the actual wording refers to exempting the self-employed from health and safety law where they pose no potential risk of harm to others. That addresses the point he has just made, because an electrician working in his house could cause harm to others and so would have to comply with all the regulations relating to the work being undertaken. The purpose of that part of the Bill is to prevent the ridiculous amount of records that have to be produced and kept when people work for themselves.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. We need short interventions, because they are taking up a lot of time and many more Members wish to speak.
Mr Jones
I would be intrigued to know which piece of health legislation would not be covered by the proposal. Again, I think that it is simply one of the issues that have been trumpeted by certain Members on the deregulatory wing of the Conservative party, who have clearly been prevented from pursuing the worst excesses of Beecroft by the Liberal Democrats. I just think it is complete nonsense.
On immigration, I consider the announcements in the Queen’s Speech to be a knee-jerk reaction from the Prime Minister to the threat he sees from his Back Benchers and from the UK Independence party. We have heard a lot of strong language about a crackdown on migrants, and in relation not only to migration but to access to health care and benefits. I understand that a ministerial group on immigration has been meeting, but it has not yet come up with a great deal because most of the plans that have been put forward have been blocked. The Health Secretary has been saying that we have a problem with health tourism, but he cannot tell us how much it costs.
The only real legislation put forward on immigration is secondary legislation that will enshrine the rules on deporting foreign prisoners and on getting private landlords somehow to check whether their tenants are entitled to be in the country. The first one is already law and so will affect nothing, and I do not see how the second can work without some type of registration scheme. Also, it will not apply to the bulk of immigration in this country, which it is threatened will come from Romania and Bulgaria, because that will be perfectly legal.
It is interesting that Nigel Farage says that he is now the heir to Thatcher. I remind Members that it was Margaret Thatcher who signed the Single European Act in 1986, which allowed the free transfer of labour across Europe. These proposals will have no effect. The Prime Minister is trying to act tough, but in practice he can do very little about the transfer of EU migrants. In many ways that transfer of labour has been good for British people, because many people in the north-east who were made redundant when the shipyards closed now work all over Europe, making a contribution not only to the economy of those countries but here.
My hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse referred to the fact that we are at the fag-end of this Parliament. I have to say that the Business Secretary looked very unhappy this morning. He reminds me a little of the father of the bride at a shotgun wedding who is now going round saying, “I told you it wouldn’t last very long.” The Prime Minister obviously has a problem with his children on the Back Benches who are now in open revolt. It will be very interesting to see how it all ends. The lack in this Queen’s Speech of a positive economic stimulus over the next two years will add to the misery that is being faced day in, day out by many thousands of people in this country, many in my constituency.
Gordon Birtwistle
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I was about to move on to the oil industry, to which former members of the armed forces make a substantial contribution. I was on an oil rig in the North sea about 12 months ago and quite a number of ex-military personnel were working there. The medical officer was an ex-Army officer and some of the cooks in the restaurants were ex-Army personnel. It is good to see that they are making such a contribution.
The oil industry, which is more or less a forgotten industry, contributes billions of pounds to economy. One national oil company is about to invest $11 billion in the North sea. The site is about 100 km off the coast of Scotland, but every bit of kit is being provided from overseas. That is an outrageous scandal. That kit should be produced in the UK. Unfortunately, we do not have the companies to do that any more because we have let them disappear over the past 20 years. The previous Government let them disappear without batting an eyelid because they thought that the financial sector could bail us out of anything.
Mr Kevan Jones
The hon. Gentleman is speaking complete and utter 100% rubbish. If he goes to the north-east of England or to Scotland, he will see first-rate British companies that are providing not only hardware for the oil industry, but vital support.
Gordon Birtwistle
Exactly; once the kit has been provided, the support comes from those companies. No company on the north coast of Scotland can build a 17,000-tonne jacket or a topside that weighs more than 45,000 tonnes for the North sea. Those pieces of kit are being built in Spain and South Korea.
Mr Jones
If the hon. Gentleman goes to the technology park at Walker in Newcastle, he will see that 80% of the world’s under-sea umbilical cable is built by two companies in the north-east. That is a success story not just for the north-east, but for UK plc. I am sorry, but his notion that there is no productivity in this country for the oil and gas sector is complete rubbish.
Gordon Birtwistle
I refer the hon. Gentleman to what I said earlier about major structures. I agree that sub-sea equipment is built here. I used to own an engineering company that still builds sub-sea equipment. However, we can no longer build major structures.
Gordon Birtwistle
I do not want to have that debate across the House, Mr Deputy Speaker.
I will move on to trainees and apprenticeships, and the national shortage of skilled people for the jobs of the future. I was told yesterday that of the £106 million budget for the National Careers Service—bear in mind that 1 million young people are out of work— £84.5 million is spent on people over 25, £15 million on prisoners and £5 million on offering careers advice to young people. I think that that is the wrong way round. We should be spending at least half the money on getting young people into the jobs of the future and a little less on people over 25 years old and prisoners. I was shocked to hear that we spend three times more money on careers advice for prisoners than on careers advice for young people who are leaving school. That is outrageous and I hope that the Government will look at it. We need to increase the number of apprenticeships and traineeships to provide people with the skills and the jobs that will be required for this country’s economy in the future.
Mark Hendrick
That is right. If we look at the history of immigration in this country, first we have the Irish, then the West Indian immigration—
Mark Hendrick
That is going back even further. We have had successive waves of immigration to this country, and every wave has benefited this country and made it greater. One of the greatest nations on earth, the United States, is a nation of immigrants. One of the emerging nations, which will be very powerful, Brazil, is a nation of immigrants. Immigrants bring far more to any community than people could possibly believe. Scapegoating them, as some political parties are in this country, is an absolute disgrace. It is opportunism that blames the European Union for our economic woes and foreigners for the state of our public services.
Finally, I want to say something about health tourism, which is also practised by some 1 million to 2 million British people working abroad or living in other parts of Europe, many of whom come back to the UK when they need the national health service, while paying taxes and working in other countries. I have no problem with paying taxes or living in other countries, but we should look at health tourism as a whole.
To leave the EU would be to cut off our nose to spite our face. The only losers would be the UK, and that would be bad for business and bad for Britain.
Mr Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to wind up this debate on the Gracious Speech, but on a topic as serious as this, I cannot help but express a little disappointment at the fact that there have been twice as many speakers from the Opposition Benches as we have heard from the Government Benches. Often, as we have looked at the Government Benches in the course of the debate, we have found them as empty as the Queen’s Speech. There appear to be very few people on the Government Benches who are prepared to defend this Queen’s Speech, just as there were very few people to defend the Budget earlier this year.
Mr Kevan Jones
I agree with my right hon. Friend’s observation. It obviously reflects the amount of support that the Prime Minister has from his Back Benchers. He was so desperate in the earlier stages that he had to have his Parliamentary Private Secretary intervening in the debate.
Mr Byrne
My hon. Friend makes a good point. Looking at the Queen’s Speech, perhaps it is not a surprise that so few people in the Government party are prepared to defend it.
I shall start where my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna), the shadow Business Secretary, concluded. After three wasted years, we have this year had a wasted Queen’s Speech. The task on Wednesday was simple—to give us a legislative programme as big as the challenges that face our country. What we got instead was practically nothing. It seems that this Government are incapable of proposing any ideas that they can agree on. They are a weak Government who are out of ideas, and that is why the public want them out of office. They have chosen to fight the biggest economic battle confronting this country for decades by arming themselves only with pea-shooters.
We should be clear about the task that we confront. It was set out brilliantly by my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham. We have an economy that is flatlining. We have growth of just 1.8%. That is a third of the level of growth seen in the United States. Living standards are falling. The wages of our constituents have fallen by £1,700 a year since the election. Our constituents are getting poorer. GDP per capita has fallen by £1,500 since the election. Unemployment is rising and is 90,000 higher than at the election. The consequence of all this is a catastrophe for the public finances. Borrowing is now £245 billion more than forecast. Worst of all, perhaps, is what is happening to the fundamentals of our economy.
The hon. Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher) expressed some confidence that the economy is beginning to rebalance. If only. Consumer demand is flat. Business investment is stalled. We had great hopes that economic growth would come from some kind of rebalancing towards exports. As the Business Secretary said in his lengthy but rather good essay in the New Statesman not long ago, there is not necessarily a problem with global demand. The problem is that we in these islands are not tapping into that demand.
Our exchange rate has fallen by roughly 20% since 2007, but exports have grown by 1% or 2%. Once upon a time the OBR forecast that net trade would add 1.2% to GDP. Now it admits that net trade is a drag on growth, not a boost. That is a huge contrast to what we saw in the 1990s, when sterling depreciated by about 20% and exports grew by a third. If our economy is to grow at the level that the OBR forecasts it should between now and 2016-17, we need to grow exports by 45% over and above the level we saw in 2009, but we are simply not on track to deliver that change.