Amendment of the Law

Adam Afriyie Excerpts

Monday 23rd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Graeme Morrice (Livingston) (Lab)]

Like the Chancellor’s previous five Budgets, this one does nothing to recognise or address the problems faced by my constituents and many others across the country. It is a Budget that yet again demonstrates how out of touch this Government are.

The Chancellor talks of a national recovery and an economic plan that is working. However, the reality is that thousands of hard-working people in my constituency continue to experience low pay and in-work poverty. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation is right to say:

“There was little in today’s Budget to enable those on the lowest incomes to be part of an economic recovery.”

Indeed, about 18,000 of my constituents currently earn less than the living wage.

The Chancellor’s announcement of a 20p increase in the minimum wage will mean very little to my constituents. It is yet another example of a broken promise from a Chancellor who, over a year ago, promised to increase the minimum wage to £7 per hour. People in my constituency and across the country deserve better and it is clear that more needs to be done to help those on the lowest incomes. It was a Labour Government who introduced the minimum wage and it will be a Labour Government who go further and increase it to £8, because that is what people deserve.

[Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)]

I have been listening very carefully to the hon. Gentleman’s words. Will the Labour party raise it to £8 even if it should be higher than that?

[Graeme Morrice]

I think that is a possibility, and I am glad the hon. Gentleman acknowledges we will have a Labour Government on 7 May.

Throughout the past five years, people have come to my surgery to tell me that their benefits have stopped or that they are struggling to pay their bills, and what is clear is that, month after month, people are worse off under the Tories, as the prices of food, heating and travel rise faster than wages. Given the continued struggle faced by my constituents and many others over the last five years, it raises the question: who is this Budget for? The answer is that this is a Budget made by the rich for the rich.

The bedroom tax continues and so do zero-hours contracts, and retail energy bills do not reflect the fall in wholesale costs. There can be no getting away from the fact that working people are £1,600 a year worse off after five years of the Tories. Indeed, the Institute for Fiscal Studies is right to say that

“the poorest have seen the biggest proportionate losses”.

The Budget offered nothing to help families with children, who have borne over 70% of the impact of this Tory Government’s changes to tax credits and benefits. The Chancellor said they “choose families” but it is clear from the Budget that they choose millionaires.

The Budget also offers nothing to help our young people. It speaks volumes that there was hardly any mention in the Chancellor’s Budget speech of any real commitment to help our young people and their prospects. Our young people are the key to the future success of our country, and our young people deserve the chance of a secure job with decent pay.

I know from speaking to young people in my constituency that many feel a sense of hopelessness about their situation. Indeed, nationally youth unemployment remains high, with 743,000 young people currently out of a job. In my constituency, youth unemployment remains above the national average, with 3.6% of young people in West Lothian unemployed. Even when our young people do get jobs, many of them are insecure zero-hours contract jobs. There was nothing in the Budget to address any of these problems, and that once again demonstrates how this Government have written off our young people.

Young people need a Government who will listen to their concerns and ensure they have a better future. They need a Labour Government who will introduce a jobs guarantee scheme for all young people out of work for a year and over 25-year-olds out of work for two years, and I have no doubt that this scheme will be of enormous benefit to all young people in my constituency.

My constituents cannot afford another five years of the Tories, but it is clear that there would be further pain to come if they were to form the next Government. Indeed, the Office for Budget Responsibility has warned that there is to be

“a sharp acceleration in the pace of implied real cuts”.

We need a Labour Government to ensure that that does not happen. We need a Labour Government with a plan for working people and their families and for our young people. We need a Labour Government who will stand up for the whole of my constituency and for the whole of our country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

Since this Government were elected five years ago, three mantras have been quoted by the Con Dems against the Labour party, and I want to debunk some of them. The first is the suggestion that, somehow, the global financial crisis was caused by the Labour party. [Laughter.] The second is that, somehow, that was because we had a light touch in our regulation of the banks. The third is that, somehow, our party is anti-business. Conservative Members started laughing when I mentioned the global crisis, but they perhaps need to be reminded that when Labour came to office in 1997 the national debt to GDP ratio was 43% but by 2002, five years later, it was down to 30% under Labour. So let us not have any lectures about our financial prudence.

The banking crisis occurred later—I expect more laughter—but Conservative Members should stop laughing because if the banking crisis was our fault, why were the USA, Japan and the entire world having the same problem? That is why it was called the global financial crisis. It was not the UK’s financial crisis; it was the global financial crisis, which we know started with the sub-prime mortgages in the USA, the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the other things that happened. So it is wrong for the Government to have said what they have said for the past five years, and I hope that the British people, who know the truth, will reject them at the forthcoming election.

We keep hearing about our light-touch regulation, with people saying, “You took your eyes off the banks and you regulated them too lightly.” Yet this Chancellor and this Prime Minister were saying up until 2010 that the Labour party was far too stringent on the regulation; we were being accused of stifling business and of over-regulating the banks. So which way do Conservative Members want to play this: were we overly light or too strong? I would say that we regulated the banks properly. Again, the Government have collective amnesia and they need to be reminded.

The current national debt is £1.36 trillion, whereas when Labour left power in 2010 it was £0.76 trillion, about half what it is now. The national debt to GDP ratio is about 95% now, so we need take no lectures from Conservative Members about financial management and fiscal prudence. The reason there remains such a high debt, much bigger than when we left office, is that the Chancellor’s austerity measures meant he was not able to get the revenue receipts he needed to close the deficit.

Although jobs have been created, which we welcome, most are on zero-hours contracts, part-time jobs and poorly paid jobs. Many people still have to rely on working tax credits to make ends meet. It is worth remembering that, in 2007, the Labour Government borrowed £37.7 billion, but spent £28.3 billion on big projects, such as building hospitals and schools, which helped the economy. By contrast, when this Government borrowed £91.5 billion in 2013, they invested only £23.7 billion. The rest was used to bring down the budget deficit, so there has been no economic miracle.

Today’s debate is about jobs. We are told by Government Members that we are the party that is against business. Well, since 2010, it is Labour that has constantly urged the Government to fulfil the infrastructure projects that we pushed for and it took years for the legislation to be passed so that they could go ahead. We called for a reduction in VAT and in national insurance to help small businesses. We called on the Government to reduce business rates to enable start-ups and to allow local authorities to help small businesses. We have constantly argued that the banks were not lending enough money to small and medium-sized enterprises. We are the party that said we would build 200,000 new homes. We are the party that said that all 18 to 24 year olds who qualify would get apprenticeships, which is about 1 million young people. We are the party that said that it would create 20,000 more nurses training places and 8,000 more doctor and GP training contracts.

[Adam Afriyie]

The hon. Lady is saying that Labour is the party for all sorts of things, but was it not also the party that did nothing about zero-hours contracts when it was in power?

[Yasmin Qureshi]

When zero-hours contracts are properly used, which is rare, they are fine—I am talking about students who work part time—but we now have 1.5 million people on them.[Interruption.] I am sorry; I thought that the hon. Gentleman wanted to intervene again.

[Adam Afriyie]

I am happy to intervene.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

No, no. To say that we are a party that does not believe in business or enterprise is wrong. We are a party with a social conscience. Some years ago, when my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition talked about producers and predators, he was said to be anti-business; he was not. We are the party that believes in fairness. We are the party that believes that if a person does a day’s work, they should be properly remunerated. We are the party that spent many hours in the previous Parliament arguing for the minimum wage when everyone in the Conservative party was trying to argue against it. We have a record of which we should be proud.