Living Standards (North Wales)

Albert Owen Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Chris Ruane]

Fuel poverty is being looked at. It is on the political agenda because our Labour leader put it there during conference season. Labour is dictating the agenda on living standards. That aspect should be looked into.

I shall now talk about those in work. When Labour came into power, the proudest political moment in my 16 years in Parliament was the night, the day and the day after we introduced the minimum wage. The Conservatives kept us up for about 28 hours. They hated it and said that it would cost 3 million jobs and be devastating for the economy. It did not cost 3 million jobs; it created another 3 million jobs. Their prediction was 6 million jobs out. The minimum wage put a floor in for those who are paid poor wages.

The issue today is zero-hours contracts. I have tabled some 50 questions about those.

[Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. When talking about living standards in areas such as north Wales, the cost of travel, particularly in rural areas, should be considered in addition to food inflation and energy prices. The Government are considering areas in Wales that may benefit from a discount, but does my hon. Friend agree that hard-working families are suffering because of the great distances that they have to travel, to work and to take their children to leisure facilities?

[Chris Ruane]

Absolutely. That is a particular problem in rural areas. I represent the Vale of Clwyd, a rural seat. This is just one of many ways in which ordinary working families are being hit by the parties in government.

Earlier today, I attended the zero-hours contracts debate in the main Chamber. Statistics are scarce. The Office for National Statistics claims that 240,000 people are on zero-hours contracts, but some trade unions reckon that 5 million people are on them. Either way, those are huge numbers and they are having a devastating effect. It is costly to the state, because if companies do not pay the going rate for the job, the state has to step in and subsidise that; it is also a cost to taxpayers.

The issue is also costly for individuals, because they cannot plan their future. They cannot get a mortgage on a zero-hours contract, cannot save up and get Christmas presents and cannot plan for holidays. The working week, including taking children to and from school, cannot be planned for properly. These contracts have an impact on people’s well-being and mental health.

The issue is costly for the companies implementing the contracts, because they will not get loyalty, good will and commitment from a work force on zero-hours contracts—they are pinging and ponging back and forth to work and can be sacked at a moment’s notice. It is also costly for companies paying a proper wage, because they are undercut by those who use zero-hours contracts. Overall, it is a costly business. The Labour party in opposition has shone the light on these dark practices and got the political ball moving.

To combat the drop in living standards, we need a living wage. I congratulate Councillor Joan Butterfield, leader of the Labour group in Denbighshire, who is pushing for that. The local churches in my constituency—Catholic and other churches—led by Father Charles Ramsay, my parish priest, are also pushing for a living wage.

Living standards are crucial. Labour had a good record on that in government and looked after the poorest of the poor, with, for example, Bookstart, child care credits, nurseries for everybody, Sure Start, the education maintenance allowance, child trust funds and the future jobs fund. We dropped VAT from 20% to 15%. All that helped people’s living standards.

Let us look at what has happened to child poverty under the Conservative-Liberal Government. The latest figures on child poverty, on which there is a two-year delay, show that the trough peaked under Labour and that child poverty will rise again under the Conservatives. The Prime Minister is for ever vilifying the Welsh Government and saying, “Look at Labour in practice, look at their bad practice here and their bad practice there.” Let me give MPs a taste of what the Labour Government are doing in practice in Wales.

In England, the education maintenance allowance was scrapped—the allowance was an opportunity to keep 16 to 18-year-olds in school so that they could get their A-levels, go on to college and get a good job. In Wales, it was not scrapped. In England, tuition fees went from £3,000 to £9,000; in Wales, they were capped at £3,500. In England, there were cuts to council tax benefits; in Wales, the Welsh Government allocated £22 million to stop those cuts.

Last week, £17 million was announced by Alun Davies, a Minister in Wales, to combat fuel poverty over a two-year period, which is equivalent to a UK Government allocating £1.5 billion to address fuel poverty. The Welsh Government are doing an excellent job of helping to buffer the Conservative-Liberal coalition’s negative effects on living standards.

The Conservative party has tried to get rid of its nasty reputation. The Home Secretary described the party as the “nasty party,” and the Conservative leader went to the Arctic to hug a husky and to Manchester to hug a hoodie. As has been said today, instead of hugging a husky he is now gassing the badgers. The mask has slipped: Flashman is back in charge.

In the 1980s, the Conservatives atomised, alienated and broke up society. They were out for 13 years, and now they are back to their old tricks—look at the language being used. The Education Secretary says that people are not able to manage their own finances. The Conservatives have the wrong priority in giving money to millionaires. They are allowing £15 million golden handshakes to chief executive officers of energy companies. They are reintroducing soup kitchens. We have beggars in the street for the first time ever in Prestatyn. The number of homeless people in Rhyl has doubled, and we will see people from the inner cities of England driven out to the UK’s coastal towns, including in Wales.

All that does not bode well for the future, and I am pleased that my Labour party and my Labour leader have put living standards at the heart of political debate.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Stephen Crabb)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alan. I congratulate the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) on securing this debate.

Listening to the hon. Gentleman and some of his colleagues, I am struck by the negative picture they paint of life in north Wales. We are debating living standards and quality of life in north Wales. I am not from north Wales—many of the Opposition Members here today are—but let me be the first to say this afternoon that north Wales is, remains and will continue to be a great place to live, a great place to work and a great place for businesses to invest.

At this time, as the economic recovery starts to gather pace in Wales, what should be seizing all of us with an interest in north Wales, on both sides of the House, is how to maximise the opportunities that are coming for Wales, so that we ensure that the economic recovery is a recovery for the whole of Wales and that north Wales is front and centre of that recovery.

[Albert Owen]

Will the Minister give way?

[Stephen Crabb]

Forgive me, but I will not give way because I have not been left with much time.

This afternoon we have heard Opposition Members talking down north Wales and the Welsh economy and not recognising many of the great things that are happening in their own constituencies that we should be celebrating and promoting.

The hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd, for whom I have a huge amount of time and respect, finished his contribution with a rather crude political attack on my party and my Government. Of course, it was his party that said it was “intensely relaxed” about people becoming filthy rich. His party was intensely relaxed about abolishing the 10p tax band, which hurt the lowest-paid workers the most. His party was intensely relaxed about soaring petrol prices and soaring council tax. The Government are not relaxed about such things, which is why we are doing everything that we can as the economic recovery gathers pace to ensure that people on the lowest incomes are the ones who benefit and are given incentives to move into work and be at the front and centre of maximising opportunities from the economic recovery.

It is a pleasure and a privilege to be a Minister in the Wales Office, and I have the opportunity to go around all parts of the Principality. I see many of the exciting things that are currently happening in the Welsh private sector, and I have to tell Opposition Members that much of that is happening in north Wales; it is happening in their own constituencies. Unemployment is falling in most north Wales constituencies. Unemployment is not falling everywhere, and we are not complacent about that. We want unemployment to fall in every parliamentary constituency, but the hon. Gentleman cannot stand there and say what he said without recognising that unemployment in his constituency is lower today than when his party left office. I remind him that, under the previous Labour Government, in the five years between 2005 and 2010, unemployment increased in his constituency by more than 100%.

[Stephen Crabb]

I am the last person to be complacent. I recognise that a huge amount of work still needs to be done, but the latest figures today confirm that the overall employment picture in Wales is positive. Unemployment is falling across Wales. Overall employment levels are increasing, which we should welcome and want to see more of.

At the start of the hon. Gentleman’s speech, he talked about the decline in real wages between 2007 and 2012 in Denbighshire and Flintshire. We can go through the figures later if he wants more detail, but the vast majority of the decline in real wages happened in the last three years of the previous Labour Government, when, as a result of the economic trauma that they visited upon this country, there was an enormous destruction of wealth and real wages fell. We are now seeing a recovery in wages, including in Wales, but there is a long way still to go before we are back to previous levels.

On income tax, I recognise that many families are facing difficult financial circumstances. That is why we are putting cash back into those families’ pockets by taking the lowest-paid workers out of income tax altogether. We have now cut income tax for more than 1.1 million working people in Wales by increasing the tax-free personal allowance. We are lifting 130,000 of the lowest-paid workers in Wales out of income tax altogether by increasing that allowance to £10,000. Some 324,000 taxpayers in north Wales will benefit from that increase in the personal allowance.

Employers in north Wales are also benefiting from the fact that we are implementing in full all the recommendations of the independent Low Pay Commission. The hon. Gentleman talked about Conservative opposition to the minimum wage, but I for one never opposed the minimum wage, which has benefited the lowest-paid workers. This year, we are able not only to implement all the Low Pay Commission’s recommendations but to go further: the commission recommended freezing the apprentice rate, but we are not freezing it; we are increasing it, and we can do so because we have taken difficult decisions to restore discipline and order to our national finances and to put our house in order, which has given us the capacity and the resources to do things such as increase minimum wages.

One thing that we are committed to freezing, however, is fuel duty, and we have now seen fuel duty frozen for nearly three and a half years. This year, the average motorist will save £7 each time they fill up their fuel tank. I remind Opposition Members that, had Labour been elected in 2010 and implemented its detailed financial plans in full, as it had intended, the price of petrol would be 13p a litre higher than today. That is an example of the Government putting cash back into the pockets of hard-working people and hard-working families. Again, we can do that only because we were able and willing, and had the strength of purpose, to take difficult decisions at the start of this Parliament to put our national finances in order and to restore some sanity to national budgeting.

[Albert Owen]

I wish to put on record that I very much admire the resilience of the people of north Wales. We were not talking down north Wales; we were giving an honest picture. On fuel duty, will the Minister tell us what negotiations the Wales Office has had with the Treasury and others on the rebate scheme and how it will be implemented in Wales? I am talking about not only asking businesses, but providing leadership from the Wales Office.

[Stephen Crabb]

I can write to the hon. Gentleman with further details, but we are in close discussion with the Treasury on the implementation of that scheme in Wales. I have personally written to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury about the scheme, and we want as much of rural Wales as possible to benefit.

We are also committed to freezing council tax in England. Let us remind ourselves that council tax more than doubled under the previous Labour Government. The council tax freeze, of course, does not apply to Wales, as it is a devolved matter. We have provided the Welsh Government in Cardiff with both the opportunity and the resources, but they have so far refused a freeze. If Opposition Members are genuinely concerned about standards of living and the financial pressures on families in Wales, they should be rapping hard on the doors of Welsh Ministers in Cardiff, wanting to know why they are not implementing a council tax freeze in the same way that we are doing in England.

There was some discussion of energy prices. Let me put it on the record that I have not heard one thing from an Opposition Member, or even from the Leader of the Opposition, about a commitment to freezing energy prices that has a shred of credibility. When the Leader of the Opposition was Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, energy prices in this country soared. [Hon. Members: “They went down!”] Opposition Members cannot seek continued investment in energy infrastructure to deliver lower prices in future and to keep our lights on, while making irresponsible and crude promises that they can somehow freeze energy prices.

Housing benefit reform and the overall programme of welfare reform have been mentioned on a day when we again see unemployment in Wales fall. Opposition Members cannot be on the side of falling unemployment, while opposing welfare reform. Welfare reform is a vital ingredient in tackling worklessness at source, which is what we are seeing in Wales.