Cost of Living

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Wednesday 27th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman is so interested in tax, because he will be sure to welcome the news that 38,000 people in his constituency have had an income tax cut and 4,500 have been taken out of income tax altogether.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

I am grateful to the Opposition for pointing out earlier that before the election the Minister worked for a bank that the British Government did not need to bail out, whereas the shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury ran the campaign of the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown). Nevertheless, does my hon. Friend agree that the Prime Minister made it absolutely clear at the Dispatch Box only last Wednesday that he did not agree with putting VAT on children’s clothes and food?

[Sajid Javid]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. [Hon. Members: “Answer the question!”] The Prime Minister answered it. The Government have absolutely no plans to increase VAT.

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[Kwasi Kwarteng (Spelthorne) (Con)]

I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me to speak in this important debate. We have had such debates on a number of occasions, but it is important that we have this one now, when the economy is growing. All the indicators from the IMF, the OECD and other estimable bodies suggest that the worst is over in the British economy and that we are encountering some sort of recovery.

More important than recovery in itself is understanding how we got into this position in the first place. The economy will be a very important issue in the next election. I was interested to hear the hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie) criticise the Chancellor and the Government for not reducing the deficit fast enough. When I asked what his solution was to this conundrum—whether he wanted to borrow more—he failed to answer. I still do not know what his answer is; perhaps he will care to enlighten us in the course of my speech.

It is true that the UK economy has faced a difficult few years given our reliance on financial services and, more importantly, the appalling fiscal legacy of the previous Labour Government. It was insane for them to borrow money in every fiscal year from 2001, even when the economy was growing. I have never heard of an economy growing at 3% while running a deficit of 3% of GDP. Not even Lord Keynes would have advocated such a policy. Yet we lived through a period in which we had year after year of deficit even when the economy was growing.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Does my hon. Friend share my deep concern that the most shocking thing that has emerged during this debate is that the shadow Chief Secretary does not appear to know the difference between deficit and debt?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

That is absolutely right. I was as shocked and appalled as my hon. Friend that, when I asked the shadow Chief Secretary what the absolute level of the British deficit is—it was a very simple, general knowledge-type question—he did not seem to know. I then asked him whether he knew what the deficit-to-GDP ratio is, but he flannelled away that supplementary question and did not even pay me the courtesy of answering it.

We have to look very carefully at the legacy of the previous Labour Government, because it has a direct impact on living costs and this cost of living debate. People in Britain—people in my constituency and, I am sure, in other constituencies across the country—intuitively understand that after a period of excessive spending in which, to borrow a metaphor, the national credit card went way beyond its limit, it is necessary to have a period in which spending is reduced. Nearly everyone understands that and, as a consequence, any poll that Members may care to look at shows that the Government and coalition parties have a considerably better rating on the issue than that of the Labour party.

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[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Inverclyde (Mr McKenzie) and to speak in this debate. It gives me an opportunity to relate to the House the good news happening in Tamworth, which is not some leafy suburb but a no-nonsense, hard-working, gritty, midlands town. In Tamworth in the past 12 months, unemployment has fallen by 31%, youth unemployment by 35%, and long-term unemployment by nearly 40%.

Last month I held a jobs fair at which there were more jobs than jobseekers. There were some 400 jobs, including apprenticeships at Jaguar Land Rover and Spline Gauges, 50 jobs at Marston’s brewery, and jobs at Toys R Us. That demonstrates in a small but significant way how we have turned a corner and are creating real, sustainable jobs and growth for our constituents. It is our job to do that, and a story that Labour Members do not like to tell, just as they do not like to be reminded of their last miserable years in government, when in my town jobs were lost across the board. One could walk down the Glascote road and see repossession notices in window after window, as banks foreclosed on people’s homes. People were not just losing their jobs under Labour, they were losing their homes as well. We will not listen to lectures from Opposition Members when we remember the grisly legacy of Labour’s years, and we will not let them forget it either.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Does my hon. Friend agree that in order to receive a lecture, someone actually has to have some information given to them?

[Christopher Pincher]

My hon. Friend is, as ever, apposite in his point, and we look forward to hearing Labour’s plan—plan A, plan B, plan Z? One day perhaps we will hear what it might be.

We have heard something from the Leader of the Opposition, whose latest stunt is to announce an energy price freeze. We should beware geeks bearing gifts, because that announcement is pretty hollow for three reasons. First, if a price freeze is imposed, companies will simply hike their prices before the freeze and afterwards, and people will be paying artificially high energy prices. That is what Professor Dieter Helm says, as well as Adam Scorer from Consumer Focus. Even the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) has raised that concern. He is a Labour member of the Energy and Climate Change Committee and says that Labour’s plans for an energy freeze are somewhat sketchy.

The second reason a freeze will not work is that rather than break up the big six oligopoly, it will entrench it. Stephen Fitzpatrick of Ovo and the First Utility company—the company of choice for the Leader of the Opposition—say that a price freeze will make it more difficult for them to break into the market and operate, and that it will entrench the position of the big six, rather than break it up. The third reason the freeze will not work is that it will jeopardise £125 billion-worth of investment that we must make in short order in our energy infrastructure—£25 billion of that in the pipes and pylons that keep our lights switched on.

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[Mr Meacher]

That may well have had something to do with it, but it happened also because the Tories decided to blank out the bankers’ bail-out and put the whole blame on the Labour party. For any objective economist or objective observer of any kind, that is obviously absurd.

Secondly, there was another and much better way to deal with the budget deficit than through semi-permanent austerity. It is costing the country £19 billion a year to keep 2.5 million people unemployed. I simply say that it would have been far better to get these people off benefit and into work through public investment, so that they could earn and contribute to the Exchequer through taxes and national insurance contributions. I well know that the question will come, “How do we pay for that?”, so I shall answer it. This can still be done—and it could have been done three years ago—without any increase in public borrowing at all, despite the Chancellor’s continuous jibes to the contrary, by a further tranche of quantitative easing targeted not on the banks but directly on industry, or by instructing the publicly owned banks RBS and Lloyds to prioritise lending to industry, or by taxing the ultra-rich.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Let me remind the right hon. Gentleman of the fact that it was his Government who did the deals with RBS, yet they did absolutely nothing in those deals to force the banks to do things that they had decided they did not want to do.

[Mr Meacher]

There has been a great deal of partisanship in this debate, and I am prepared to recognise that the problems did not start with the present Government. I agree that we should have taken a much tougher line with the banks before 2010, but let us concentrate on where we are now, because the country is in a very serious position.

That brings me to the third point. We never were “all in it together”—quite the opposite, and to a stunning degree. In The Sunday Times rich list, the richest 1,000 of the UK’s citizens—a tiny 0.003% of the population—have increased their wealth in the five years since the crash by a staggering £190 billion, while 90% of the population over exactly the same period have had to take a real-terms cut of about 9%, and their wages are still falling. So much for social solidarity! If that £190 billion were charged to capital gains tax, it could technically raise £53 billion. I do not think it would for a moment, but it could realistically raise roughly £30 billion to £35 billion—quite enough to generate 1 million to 1.5 million jobs within two or three years. That would be a far quicker way of reducing the budget deficit—which is supposed to be the aim of the exercise—than spending cuts could ever be.

The Government’s fourth point is that we have a recovery. Well, we do have a recovery of sorts, but one that has been generated in exactly the wrong way. It has been generated by consumer borrowing and an incipient bubble, and it is not—I repeat, not—a real, sustainable recovery. As my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) pointed out, such a recovery can come about only as a result of rising investment, increasing productivity, growing wages and healthy exports, and none of those is present now.

Over the last five years, Britain’s business investment has dropped in real terms by a devastating 25%, well below the global average. UK productivity is now almost the lowest among the OECD countries. As we were told by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie), UK wages are undergoing the biggest fall since the 1870s, and are still falling. As for exports, Britain’s deficit on traded goods is still running at a mountainous rate of over £100 billion a year. If that is a recovery, God help us if we ever experience a downturn.

So has the Government’s economic policy failed? Not necessarily. It all depends on what we think the Government’s objectives really were. If the objective was to cut the budget deficit, as they claim, then yes: I think that the last three years of unending misery and austerity have involved a momentous waste of resources in return for almost nothing. According to the Government’s own figures, the budget deficit was £118 billion in 2011 and £115 billion in 2012. Like those who engaged in trench warfare during the first world war, we have advanced a few dozen yards, and have taken enormous casualties in order to do so. No sane person would continue with such a policy at such expense in blood and treasure, yet here we have a Government who are determined to slog on with exactly the same policies, and—as with the generals in the first world war—the cost is not to them, but only to the poor squaddies who are sent over the top.

My last point relates to a recent speech by the Prime Minister, which I am amazed he gave, and which I think will come back to haunt him. He said that even when the deficit was paid off—and I think that that time could be nearer to 2030 than 2020, given the direction in which we are going—there would be no restoration of spending that had been cut. The Tories, he proclaimed, believed in

“a leaner, more efficient state”.

What he really meant, of course, was a fully privatised state in which you had better succeed in the market, because otherwise there will be precious little help from public sources when you need it.

As for “efficient”, was that G4S at the Olympics? Was it Serco charging for tagging prisoners who had already died or left prison? Was it the big six energy companies ruthlessly profiteering at customers’ expense? Was it the water companies indulging in a profit bonanza for top executives and shareholders, but trying still to charge taxpayers? Was it outsourcing in the NHS, which has led to longer waiting lists and an inability to cope? Was it the free schools that have been set up in areas where there is an abundance of places, while areas where there is a shortage of places are abandoned? Lean and efficient? Come on!

I really do not believe that the Tory leadership sees the prolonged austerity and the economic disaster that have been visited on the country over the last five years as a failure at all. The Tories see that as merely the price to be paid—although not, of course, by them—for attaining the real objective, which is a permanent squeezing of the public sector and a shrinking of the state. That is what they want to do if they win the next election, and that is why I believe they will not win it.

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[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

This is indeed a very important debate. We can hear stories from any part of the House about the struggles that our constituents are going through. Indeed, constituents who one might deem to be on very good salaries are struggling, too. Whether someone is on a good salary or unemployed, if they are on a fixed income—including even those on good salaries who have had them frozen—a rise in the cost of living has a direct impact on their lives.

We must recognise the things we have to try to do to change the situation for the long term. Unemployment in my constituency has reduced by 32% since the Government came to power. We should welcome not only that reduction but the transfer of jobs from the public to the private sector, as quite a few small industrial bases in my constituency are supplying those jobs. As the economy is now turning a corner, growth in the economy and in the productivity of companies will allow wages to go up in line. What I do not support is a false rise in wages.

The minimum wage is very important; it ensures that people are not exploited, and as the Prime Minister outlined earlier today, if companies are found to have broken the minimum wage legislation, they will be fined a huge amount of money. We hope that will crack down on some of the more ruthless employers. We talk about a living wage—we would all hope to achieve a living wage—but it should not be specified in statute. By increasing wages falsely—in London, by 40%—we ensure that a living wage is always just out of reach.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman remembers that exactly the same arguments were advanced, mainly by members of his party, before the minimum wage was introduced. We were told that jobs would be lost—that it would be a terrible thing—but those predictions did not come true, so perhaps the hon. Gentleman is exaggerating his case.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I am most grateful for the hon. Lady’s intervention because she makes the point that I wanted to make. I did not say that the living wage would cost jobs; I said that it would inflate wages. Many would argue that a lot of people already earn the living wage, and that a statutory living wage would benefit all those underneath. But we are all well aware how many people, especially our friends in the unions, would demand a 40% pay rise if it was to go through.

Ultimately, there is nothing to be gained by inflating wages artificially, as we did in the 1970s. I remember my parents telling me that when they were teachers in the 1970s, they got a 25% pay rise when Harold Wilson came to power in 1975 but it was worthless the following year. The goal is always slightly out of reach. We must tackle the cost of living, and ensure that people’s real wages and real net income can advance to meet it.

[Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman’s Government have said that work must always pay, but we still have people who are in work living in severe poverty. More important than just having a job is the level of income, and that is why wages are so important, and that is why the living wage is so important. Does he not recognise that point?

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I could not agree more. What I am saying is that we need to grow an economy to ensure that we can get to a living wage, and that at the same time we should be looking at how we reduce the cost of living.

Why is the cost of living so high today? That is the fundamental question. Fundamentally, the cost of living comes down to one very important point—energy. We have had a lot of debate in the House this afternoon about whether to have an energy freeze, but if we freeze energy prices for a fixed period, prices will get ramped up before and after the freeze, as happened with the beer price freeze in the 1960s. We must take a more long-term view.

How did we end up where we are? It is my personal view—I support what was in our manifesto, and I wish we had moved further on it—that we need to start replacing our power stations, and at the moment nuclear power stations are by far the best way forward. It has taken a lot of effort and lengthy negotiations to get to one nuclear power station; we should be building five or six. But at the same time the world oil price is rising, and will not go down despite what anyone thinks. To put it in context, in 1998 a barrel of oil was $5 a barrel, and yesterday Brent crude was $100 a barrel—I am sure the hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie) will correct me if I am wrong. I believe that if oil reaches $140 a barrel, there is more economically recoverable oil in the North sea than has already been extracted. That is the reality of the situation.

Energy prices will not come down, so it is no good having a freeze for a period, because energy prices permeate every aspect of the cost of living—the price of food in the shops, the price of getting to work. We always talk about the petrol price, which has a big impact on getting to work, but we must do everything that we can to reduce the cost of getting goods to the shops, because that hits people’s wages. Since the start of this recession we have been on a wage freeze, if not a wage reduction, to prevent the runaway unemployment that we saw in the past.

What frustrates me in debates such as the one we are having today is not just the barrage of criticism from the Opposition of the way in which the Government have implemented their policies. That is fine; that is what we are in the House for. We are here to say that we have a route, we are sticking to it, and we think that it is working, and the Opposition are here to say, “We don’t agree.” But I have not heard any real alternative in the Chamber today. The closest we got—one of the more sensible speeches today—was the contribution by the right hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher), who is no longer in his seat. He actually came up with some suggestions. I did not agree with them—I thought they were pie-in-the-sky thinking—but at least he stood there and put forward some policies.

Sadly, proposals were completely lacking in the shadow Chief Secretary’s speech. There was a constant barrage on what the Government had, he thought, got wrong, but no recognition of the fact that if we are going to tackle the cost of living crisis, we must tackle its root causes. The cost of living is going up because energy prices are high, and that has nothing to do with the six energy companies—there were 14 when the Leader of the Opposition was Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, but there were only six by the time he left that office, so it is a bit rich of him to come across saying that it is terrible. The inescapable truth is that the price of oil is not going to come down.

[Stewart Hosie]

The hon. Gentleman is making an interesting speech. He talks about having more oil and it being economically extractable, but he will accept that part of the equation is tax? Does he not regret the massive hike in the North sea supplementary charge that resulted in project after project being cancelled, and made certain fields less viable?

[Alec Shelbrooke]

The hon. Gentleman will agree that the hundreds of millions of pounds of tax credits that the Government have made available to the oil and gas industry will help make that resource more exploitable in future and keep the supplies on. It comes down to a fundamental issue: what do we need to do to tackle the cost of living crisis? What we do not need, and what my constituents do not want to hear, is “It’s your fault for going down the austerity route” or “The collapse of the banks is your fault.” They want to say, “Look, we know all that—we know what’s going on.” That is why in most opinion polls, a majority of people still blame the Labour Government for the economic mess we are in. [Interruption.] It is all very well the hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Tom Blenkinsop) shaking his head—that is what my constituents tell me, and I am out on the doorstep all the time.

[Tom Blenkinsop]

rose—

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I have given way enough. I am sorry—I am running out of time.

We have to tackle the core issue, and we have to do two things at the same time. The Government are achieving the first one. We have put the economy on the road to recovery following the deepest recession in the history of the nation caused by lack of fiscal control of the banking system—a tripartite system that allowed the banking industry to run wild. Even today, as we see with the Co-op bank, the Labour party is unwilling to take tough decisions with regard to banking. The only public inquiry that the Leader of the Opposition does not want to call for is into the Co-op—I wonder why, but we will find out when it takes place.

We have to grow the economy, which will lead to wage rises, but we must also have a much longer strategic look at how we supply energy in this country. I agree with the Prime Minister—whether or not what was reported in the newspapers was true, green taxes are regressive, and it is amazing that the Labour party, which has always opposed regressive taxation, says that we should keep a regressive tax and not push it into a progressive tax. At the end of the day, energy prices have gone up. [Interruption.] These are luxuries from the boom time that people can ill afford. It is a disgrace that, despite the fact that we are doing everything that we can to grow the economy, and create real jobs that will last and, I hope, be better proofed against the ups and downs of Government spending in future, people are struggling to deal with the cost of heating and the cost of food. The fundamental cause is the high price of energy. It is absolutely vital that the energy reforms and fiscal reforms introduced by the Government carry on and should only be changed as we move forward with energy policies for the long term, not short-term gimmicks. That is what people need.

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[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, but he needs to look at the bigger picture, which is what I will go on to talk about—the cost of everyday living in general.

Water costs a further £30 per month to my constituents. Rent makes another significant impact. A single bedroom property costs £395 a month in the private rented sector. Social properties are, of course, cheaper, but as my hon. Friends have explained on numerous occasions, there are few such properties to go around. Council tax starts at £80, so we need to take that off the overall budget. We are talking about working people who, if they have children, will also need to cover the cost of child care. As Labour highlighted in last week’s debate, the cost of child care is rising five times faster than pay and now amounts to more than £100 per child per week for 25 hours. That is around £460 per month.

All this leaves the average individual in my constituency with just £244 to live on per month. That needs to cover food, transport, other bills as well as a multitude of other costs that are part of daily life. I admit that this is rather a crude calculation, but the fact is that people in South Shields living on this meagre income are the lucky ones. Despite everything, they have managed to hang on to their homes and provide for their families through sheer tenacity and the hard work ethic that permeates my constituency. But what about those who fall below the average? What about those on zero-hours contracts, the 3,592 unemployed, the elderly and frail, the homeless and the rough sleepers? And there are those who are affected by the Government’s bedroom tax, who will lose an extra £450 a year.

Five thousand children in my constituency live in poverty, and many of them live in households with a parent in work. Some 4,260 of my constituents live in fuel poverty, and 1,440 of them are affected by the bedroom tax. We have a rise in homelessness and a rise in rough sleepers, yet still this Government fail them. This is a Government led by a Prime Minister who said prior to the 2010 elections that the Conservatives

“are best placed to fight poverty in our country.”

This is an astonishing claim when we know that over a million people have fallen into poverty on his watch, including 300,000 children.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I do not have time. I am sorry.

My local citizens advice bureau, despite taking on extra staff, is struggling to cope with the volume of inquiries it has had about debt. The once monthly requests for emergency food aid are now almost a daily occurrence. My local food bank and soup kitchen have seen demand for their service rise to unprecedented levels. Increasingly, the people coming to these agencies, I am told, are in work. This is no surprise, as we now have 1.4 million more people being paid below the living wage than in 2009.

When I was unemployed, when members of my family and I fell on hard times, I was proud to live in a country where I and they would be able to get help. This is no longer the case. I am still proud of my country, just not of the people who are running it.

People are turning to payday loans to deal with the hardship they face. Last year in my constituency the average borrowing constituent had debt to the tune of £1,610. We all know how quickly this debt can become unmanageable, with dire consequences for those who owe. But these are not people after easy money. They are working people who no longer have the ability to save for a rainy day.

As bad as things are for working people, they are worse for the unemployed. In my constituency more than 3,500 people are out of work. The Chancellor said that

“every job lost in the public sector has been offset by three new jobs in the private sector.”—[Official Report, 26 June 2013; Vol. 565, c. 305.]

This has not happened in South Shields. I recently held a jobs fair in my constituency, and had great co-operation from local employers, but the total number of jobs that these organisations were able to offer was just over 1,000, well short of filling our employment gap.

The situation is worse for our young. A constituent of mine told me how his daughter was offered a job interview and forced to travel to Leeds at short notice. She did not have the money to pay for the train ticket. When she asked the DWP for help, she was refused it. She is now on a zero-hours contract, and some weeks her pay is lower than when she was claiming benefit—but I suppose this Government do not mind about that, as long as she is no longer contributing to the unemployment statistics.

In my constituency people come together every day to help those who are struggling, but they find their task harder and harder as levels of need are rising to an unprecedented degree. Organisations such as Citizens Advice, the Key project, Hospitality and Hope, St Aidan’s, Supported Living and St Hilda’s church are all making a difference, but without the Government taking action their task will continue to be a heavy one.

To sum up, my constituents are great, hard-working, big-hearted people who show every day the ethos of hard work and social responsibility, despite the onslaught of misery caused by this Government.

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[Richard Fuller]

I am answering the question. I know it is hard for the hon. Gentleman to follow the argument, but I will put it in bite-sized pieces so that he can keep up. It is important for a Chancellor of the Exchequer to look at not just the indebtedness of the Government, but at the way in which the entire economy is accumulating debt, which is one of the things that the previous Labour Government signally failed to understand.

If we look at the United Kingdom’s debt in the mid-1990s and take into consideration Government debt, household debt and corporate debt, we will see that that total indebtedness was, like that of many other OECD countries, two times the size of our national economy. Over the intervening 15 years—which in this country were spent mostly under a Labour Government—other OECD countries saw their total debt go from about two times to about three times the size of their economy, and that includes all of the impact of the financial crisis. One country in the G8—and only one—increased its total debt from two times to five times the size of its economy, and that was the United Kingdom under the previous Labour Government. It is the consequence of that pervasive debt in the economy that is the real cost of living crisis in this country.

Every family knows that when they have significant debts that they cannot avoid and that they have to pay, their monthly income will be less because they will have to pay back the debt of the past. They are paying the consequences of the Labour party’s failure when in office.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, against that backdrop, it is commendable that under this Government and this Chancellor of the Exchequer, the gap between the richest and the poorest in society is the smallest it has been for 30 years? [Interruption.]

[Richard Fuller]

I see that the shadow Chief Secretary has left for more education on economics. My hon. Friend raises a point about income levels. There is an issue about how we increase the incomes of people at the low end of our economy. How do we make sure that work pays for those people who go out and work very hard?

Over the past 10 years, the United Kingdom has created a massive level of state intervention to support wages at the low end of the income spectrum. In order to try to improve living standards for people at the low end, we have to encourage employers to somehow pay higher wages. References have been made to the living wage. One of the issues about changing people’s income from the minimum wage to the living wage is that the change to their take-home pay, including any benefits they receive, becomes a very small change in their net income level, because the tapering of benefits takes away nearly all the impact of the increase in wage rates. A change to the living wage is therefore a transaction involving additional cost to the employer and additional benefit for the Exchequer; it does not result in additional pay to the employee.

We have to be clear about what we are truly promising people as we seek certain changes. It would be good to hear from my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary, who I presume will wind up the debate, what answer the Government can give people about their income and about making work pay. What are we doing about their tax and their benefits? For people in work who wish to take on additional hours or to increase their responsibilities and get more pay per hour, what are we doing to ensure that their benefits are not taken away so rapidly? If we do that, in the next period of Conservative Government we can continue the battle to make sure that work pays, which is the true answer to any cost of living crisis.

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[Lyn Brown]

I can only apologise, Mr Speaker. I have spent a long time in the Whips Office.

While the right hon. Member for Tatton (Mr Osborne) is victoriously proclaiming that his plan is working, people in my constituency are really struggling. They are struggling to pay bills, to eat and to provide for their family. This Government have shamelessly failed to offer any support to hard-working people in this country, but have provided tax breaks for their friends and let ordinary families bear the brunt of their policies.

Instead of ensuring that our economy recovered, we have had three years of flatlining. This Government have borrowed more in three years than the previous one did in 13 years, and for what? Was it to help hard-working people and to protect the vulnerable, or to oversee the slowest recovery for more than 100 years and to instigate a cost of living crisis?

[Alec Shelbrooke]

rose—

[Mr Newmark]

rose—

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[Nicky Morgan]

I am not going to give way to the hon. Lady, because she did not give way to anyone during her speech.

My hon. Friends the Members for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) and for Bedford (Richard Fuller) talked about work being the key to recovery, the need to create more jobs and making work pay, which is a critical part of our welfare reforms.

We heard from the hon. Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue), who talked about breaking the stranglehold of the big six. It was the last Labour Government who left us with the big six; we started with more and ended up with six.

I listened carefully to the speeches of the hon. Members for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie) and for Swansea West (Geraint Davies), of the right hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher), and of the hon. Members for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore), for West Ham (Lyn Brown) and for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck). What struck me most—I have referred to it before in this place—was the collective amnesia and total lack of understanding among Labour Members of how we ended up with the largest deficit since the second world war, which this Government have tackled by taking tough and difficult decisions.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I may be able to help out the Treasury team by suggesting that if the Minister were to visit a scrap metal dealer, she might be able to solve the deficit with all the brass neck from Labour Members this afternoon.

[Nicky Morgan]

My hon. Friend makes a characteristically colourful intervention and speaks wonderfully, as always.

The hon. Member for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods) made a point about child care and called for action from this Government. This Government are taking action on that matter, with tax-free child care, increased provision for two-year-olds and increased provision for three and four-year-olds. I would have thought that the hon. Lady welcomed that. I noted her welcome of this week’s announcement on payday lenders by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor.

I noted the confession from the right hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton when he said that the problems did not start with this Government. He is absolutely right about that, but that was the only thing with which I could agree in his speech.

The hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) talked about being on the side of Welsh people. In that case, I am sure he would welcome the 4,560 people in his constituency who have been taken out of income tax entirely since this Government’s changes.

The only way to deliver sustained improvement in living standards is to take the difficult decisions that this Government have taken to tackle the economy’s problems head-on, delivering a sustainable, long-term recovery for all. The Labour party has demonstrated comprehensively today that it is not up to taking those decisions. I therefore ask the House to reject this motion.

Question put.