Amendment of the Law

Debate between Lord Lilley and Jack Dromey

Tuesday 29th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lilley]

What would the hon. Gentleman cut instead?

[Jack Dromey]

Bankers’ bonuses and, as our Front-Bench team proposes, among other things, we would have a sensible programme of investment, just as we invested in the construction industry to get it going at a time of recession, providing 110,000 homes, 70,000 jobs and 3,000 apprenticeships. We would invest now in a fresh stimulus package of much-needed social housing, creating jobs, apprenticeships and hopes. That is what we would do, and that is the difference between them and us.

The police, too, are feeling the consequences. This Friday 300 of the most experienced police officers in the west midlands will be forced out under regulation A19. I was with five of them this morning. They included an inspector, the national champion of designing out crime, who on one Birmingham estate achieved a 97% reduction in crime levels; a sergeant leading an excellent team of neighbourhood policemen; and a detective constable, the specialist in robbery, who has put away those who robbed old people at cash points and those who robbed shops with a machete. They all now face having to leave the force against their will. The Government have said to them, “Thanks for your past loyalty, but here’s your notice.” Governments should cut crime, not the police.

With regard to the impact on the private sector, 1.2 million people in that sector depend on public expenditure, particularly the £38 billion spent on local government procurement. If local government budgets are cut by 28%, major job losses in the private sector are inevitable. The estimate for the midlands is that 67,000 jobs will go as a consequence of what is happening in local government.

On rebalancing the economy, the Government have abolished the most successful regional development agency in Britain—Advantage West Midlands—and put in its place local enterprise partnerships that have no money, no power, no statutory basis and no power over skills. The planning proposals are a cocktail of confusion and the regional growth fund has only a third of the funds that were available to the RDAs. Incidentally, the RGF is the most elastic fund in history, designed to cope with all sorts of applications according to the Government.

Then there is the impact on the voluntary sector, the good society. Billions will be lost to the voluntary sector, including, in Birmingham, the oldest citizens advice bureau in Britain and 13 advice centres—all facing closure. The CAB was founded in 1938 and is the quintessence of the good society. Excellent people give first-class advice with an army of volunteers, but, just when the people of Birmingham need their support and advice most, those centres are facing closure.

My constituency of Birmingham Erdington is one of the 10 poorest in Britain, but it is rich in talent, with young people who are deeply aspirational and want to get on. What now haunts the people of Erdington is the spectre of the 1980s and TINA: there is no alternative. I know families in Erdington, Kingstanding and Castle Vale, where excellent men and women in the 1980s were made redundant two, three, four, five times. Some of them never worked again, because they gave up hope. The idea that once again the spectre of mass unemployment should haunt north Birmingham is absolutely wrong.