Cost of Living: Energy and Housing

Debate between Albert Owen and Michael Ellis

Thursday 5th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)]

I apologise to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and to those on both Front Benches that I will not be here for the winding-up speeches, but I have to leave the House for personal reasons.

I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Fareham (Mr Hoban) because he was a courteous and able Minister. He was very courteous in dealing with the Equitable Life issues, which were complex. I will touch on pensions a little later.

I will start by welcoming some of the measures in the Queen’s Speech. Like other right hon. and hon. Members, I welcome the Modern Slavery Bill. It is an excellent piece of legislation. The draft Bill was rightly scrutinised before the Bill came before the House. I believe that the Bill will proceed with the good will of those on both sides of the House. It has been referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) and others, but I just want to say that I will be very proud to be one of the Members of Parliament who helps to push that legislation through.

It is important not to lose sight of one issue in respect of that Bill. We must have adequate resources to ensure that measures can be taken against those who traffic people across our countries. As someone who represents a port community, I know how difficult that will be. We must have the right numbers, the right resources, the right intelligence and the right kit to ensure that there is adequate screening at ports and that people are brought to justice when they are caught. I welcome that piece of legislation.

I also welcome the announcement that the Government made a couple of days before the Queen’s Speech on pubcos and the need for adjudicators. There has been cross-party consensus on that. The House works very well on such issues. Many pub landlords in my area have suffered over the past few years because of the unscrupulous way in which the pub companies have dealt with them. Many pub companies bought lots of property across the United Kingdom at the height of the market when prices were high and got their fingers burnt. The victims of that are the tenants who are in tied premises. The proposal is an excellent way forward.

I also welcome the plastic bag legislation. I say that as a Welshman because in my part of the world, we do not have carrier bags in many places. I feel quite stupid when I take my carrier bags with me to go shopping in London and other parts of England. People look at me rather oddly. Getting rid of carrier bags is not the end of the world. It is very good for the environment. It also helps in framing one’s thoughts and buying just the right amount of goods, rather than loading up one’s trolley too much, thinking that there will be all those free bags. The serious point is that it is good legislation and I will certainly support it.

I am rather confused about the measures that are coming out on pensions. I know that the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb) is very good on the theory of pensions. He knows the subject inside out. However, I am slightly concerned about the contradictions in the different pensions measures. We talk about liberating people to have choice on the one hand and collectiveness on the other. I want to see more detail before we move forward. We do need 21st century legislation on pensions because we are an ageing population, but I want to ensure that we mitigate the risks to workers in the private sector and to those who collect the state pension.

As a Welsh Member I do not often get the chance to engage with housing issues because of devolution, but I tell hon. Members from all parts of the United Kingdom that housing is a real and big issue whether someone lives in Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales or England, and we need to build more houses for the future. We also need the skills and work force for that—more bricklayers, plasterers, structural engineers and various things—and it is in all our interests for the United Kingdom to have an adequate skills base to ensure that.

This is not a partisan issue. Previous Conservative and Labour Governments have built numbers of houses, but we now face a massive challenge because the demography of our country is changing so much. Elderly people need to downsize. Many people who have had strokes and suffer from various things are living longer, and we need to adapt and build accommodation that is fit for purpose. We must help young entrants with the Help to Buy scheme—I know from my daughters and their peers how difficult it is—but we also need to look after older and less able people, and ensure a good mix of housing stock for our future citizens. I welcome legislation that will help that to happen.

The consensus ends on energy and the cost of living. It was interesting to hear the Prime Minister’s opening remarks on the Queen’s Speech. Government Members are now all on message to say that the long-term economic plan is working, but they have short memories. In 2010 an emergency Budget by the Chancellor stated that the core of the economic plan was to eliminate the deficit by 2015, but that has changed. Cuts are being felt by communities across the United Kingdom, but we have not eliminated the deficit and that is a big failure of the Government’s economic plan. It was their words, their actions, and their failure, and they will be judged on that as in recent elections and in the future—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis) laughs, but I do not think we should be laughing when 5 million people vote for third and fourth parties in protest. They are doing it for a reason and the Government should be wary of that.

[Michael Ellis]

rose—

[Albert Owen]

I will take an intervention if the hon. Gentleman wants to defend the fact that the deficit has not been eliminated. [Interruption.] The Whip states from a sedentary position that the Labour party is not in power, but this Government said that they would eliminate the deficit and did not do so. They also said they would not raise VAT but did so straight away. They are raising taxes and ordinary working people across the country are paying more for fuel, not less, because every time they buy £1 of fuel, they pay 2.5p extra. The reality is not the mythical 20p that the Government talk about; it is the real 2.5p on every pound when people purchase fuel.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Ellis]

Does the hon. Gentleman think that he is rather like the hypothetical arsonist who starts a fire somewhere and then criticises firefighters for not putting it out quickly enough? Labour has the responsibility, which it is abrogating, and this Government have been fixing Labour’s problems.

[Albert Owen]

The hon. Gentleman needs to get out and about. That might be what Conservative central office is telling him, but he needs to get out across the country and ask himself why people are genuinely suffering as a consequence of the actions his Government have taken. Blaming the Labour party is old hat and will not work. Carry on doing that, and we will see at the next election that the Government are judged on their record, not that of previous Governments.

I want to say the three letters that the Prime Minister will never admit to—VAT—because this is about trust in politics. When the leader of a party tells the country that he will not do something and then immediately does it, the country does not forget. This is about trust in politics and this Prime Minister. Indeed, to be fair to the Deputy Prime Minister, before the election he warned that the Conservatives would put up VAT, but he has now jumped into bed with them and is pushing those reforms through.

I think there is a big challenge for energy, and whichever party was in government would have had to reform the energy market. I supported many of the reforming measures in the Energy Bill, but the cost of living crisis has pushed up energy prices beyond what is reasonable and what households can afford. I think it is a missed opportunity for the Queen’s Speech not to contain a consumer Bill for helping with energy prices.

The Government ridicule the fact that the Opposition have come up with a energy freeze, which they say is populist, yet energy companies are starting to do it. The Government need to take a lead on that and not allow energy prices to go beyond the means of ordinary people. The hon. Member for Angus (Mr Weir) mentioned people who are off-grid. The Queen’s Speech contains an infrastructure Bill, but no mention of extending gas mains to many households in the United Kingdom. Many off-grid households have to pay a heck of a lot more for their fuel. They do not benefit from dual fuel bonuses and are not able to switch in the way that the Energy Secretary boasts about. They are also paying considerably more for their energy. The Winter Fuel Allowance Payments (Off Gas Grid Claimants) Bill promoted by the hon. Member for Angus would help to alleviate that, but we need to go further and build infrastructure.

When the Energy Committee, of which I am a member, discussed shale gas three or four years ago, the Government dismissed it because they did not think it worth taking forward—hon. Members can see the responses to that report. We then had another report, and I think it is important to have energy security. Rather than importing foreign gas and oil, we should produce our own if the potential is there. However, I am confused about the way those measures have been handled, moving towards exploration of shale gas, and from what I heard from the Energy Secretary today, things are no clearer.

We must bring communities with us to enjoy the benefits of shale gas together, and there should be local benefits. I am certainly not a nimby and I represent a constituency that has a nuclear power station, offshore wind farms in close proximity, too many onshore wind farms—they need to be moved as new development takes place—and tidal power. I think we should look at the bigger picture, and find local but also national benefits from a gas and oil bonanza, whether it be in the North sea or from shale. We should be putting aside money and ring-fencing some of those profits for local communities and for national benefit, and that could help to fund extension of the gas mains that are causing problems for many of our communities. I know that those on the Opposition Front Bench are listening to these arguments, just as they listened to arguments about people who are off-grid being protected by the regulator. The market does not work in the same way for people who are off-grid, as I explained, and they do not have the protection of a regulator. The Labour party is moving forward on that issue, and such measures could easily have been included in the Queen’s Speech.

People are suffering on a day-to-day basis from a cost of living crisis in the real world. Hon. Members should not take my word for that; they should listen to the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke). When he goes out and about and listens to people, he hears that there is a problem. There is a problem, and the Queen’s Speech should have helped to deal with it. Over the next 11 months I think that we will go at a slow pace and little will be achieved. There will then be an opportunity for real choice at a general election, and this failed Government will be turfed out because they have failed to do the things they said they would, and they have done many things that they said they would not do.