Preventing Crime and Delivering Justice

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Wednesday 11th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Lee Anderson]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, as he makes a perfect point. Not only is it a great deterrent, but the longer those people are locked up in prison, the longer they cannot commit these horrible crimes.

As I was saying, the hon. Member for St Helens North made some great comments about food banks. My invitation is to every Opposition Member: come to Ashfield, work with me for a day in my local food bank and see the brilliant scheme we have in place. When people come for a food parcel now, they have to register for a budgeting course and a cooking course. We show them how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget; we can make a meal for about 30p a day, and this is cooking from scratch.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

Can the hon. Gentleman answer a simple question for me: should it be necessary to have food banks in 21st century Britain?

[Lee Anderson]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, as he makes a great point. Indeed, it is exactly my point, so I invite him personally to come to Ashfield to look at how our food bank works. He will see at first hand that there is not this massive use for food banks in this country. We have generation after generation who cannot cook properly—they cannot cook a meal from scratch—and they cannot budget. The challenge is there. I make that offer to anybody. Opposition Members are sitting there with glazed expressions on their faces, looking at me as though I have landed from a different planet. They should come to Ashfield, next week or the week after, and come to a real food bank that is making a real difference to people’s lives.

I will end now, because Opposition Members are not listening; these are a generation of MPs who never listen. The bad news is that this Labour party is out of control and out of touch, but , thankfully, it is out of power. That is me done, Mr Deputy Speaker.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure, an unusual pleasure, for me to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Preston (Sir Mark Hendrick). Perhaps the Government have not been able to muster enough MPs to speak in support of their legislative programme and defend it—perhaps because it is impossible to defend.

The problems our constituents face are grave and numerous: a snowballing cost of living crisis, stagnated growth, energy bills soaring by 54%, inflation at a 30-year high, the tax burden at a 50-year high, record-length NHS waiting lists and criminal prosecutions at an all-time low. The logbook of Tory failures grows more comprehensive by the day.

Our inboxes are full of correspondence from people who are struggling to make ends meet. There are schoolchildren who have to go hungry in the holidays and pensioners who are forced to choose between heating and eating—the same pensioners who suffered yet another of the Government’s broken promises when they ditched the pledge to maintain the triple lock on pensions. More than 2 million adults across the UK have gone without food for a whole day over the past month because they simply cannot afford to eat. It is a national scandal that brings shame on the Government.

Professor Sir Michael Marmot, a public health expert at University College London, said it best:

“If one household in seven is food insecure, society is failing in a fundamental way. These figures on food insecurity are all the more chilling because the problem is solvable. But, far from being solved, it is getting worse.”

In a Queen’s Speech with 38 Bills, there was nothing that would help to address the worsening cost of living crisis. In the face of the obvious need for ambitious reform and support, the Government have offered nothing in response.

It is no wonder that our regional newspaper, The Northern Echo, ran the headline today, “Have they run out of ideas?” The answer is an overwhelming, “Yes, they have,” and the people of Hartlepool agree. Last week, they cast 8,316 votes for the Labour party and 6,487 for the Government’s party. The Government have even dropped plans for the employment Bill that was promised in the last Queen’s Speech. That means that at a time when everyone is straining to make their pay packet go further and they need their wages to be protected, the Government have rolled over at the feet of the likes of P&O Ferries and others who fire and rehire at will, screwing down wages and treating loyal workers like dirt. Of course, there is nothing about slave labour in the Bills either.

The Queen’s Speech lacked any of the real substance needed to address the challenges that the UK faces. Sadly, we know that that deficiency of leadership in Government will hit low-income families hardest. Regions such as mine, where income levels are the lowest in the country and poverty rates are among the highest, will bear the brunt of the crisis.

The Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities—he of the funny voices on television this morning—even admitted in the media over the weekend that the Government-created cost of living crisis will further entrench the existing inequalities across our regions. In some ways, that is no surprise. We know from experience that inequalities widen when the Conservatives are in power. By their own admission, their economic mismanagement has now made it more difficult to achieve their flagship policy of levelling up.

As we have long suspected, the Government’s apparent commitment to supporting growth in our regions is nothing more than bluster and electioneering, and they completely lack the ambition and will to do so. The Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill in the Queen’s Speech is inexplicably thin. With so much inequality ripe to be addressed, it is ridiculous that getting the funding needed is a lottery for local authorities.

In the place of bold reforms, we have a centralised pot of money, controlled by Whitehall. Overworked councils that are trying to provide services to the communities that the Government left behind have to bid against one another for scraps. Even when they have a demonstrable need, they may still fail, as Billingham in my constituency did, and all the while, leafy suburbs nearby were somehow successful in their bids. Perhaps the Queen’s Speech should have had a Bill compelling the Government to be fair to all our communities.

The Secretary of State said that the Government would employ levelling-up directors to help councils to write their bids—so the Government will use taxpayer money to employ people to help places that the Government have disproportionately cut funding from to bid for pots of money that the Government control. Why do they insist on making areas that have been left behind by their failed policies jump through ridiculous hoops just to access basic pots of funding?

However, the scandal of growing poverty is what is really on my mind. I agree completely with the director of the North East Child Poverty Commission, Amanda Bailey, who said yesterday:

“We all want a North East in which every child can thrive and fulfil their potential—including through education—but they cannot do that whilst already high levels of hardship continue to grow.”

Through their failure to take decisive action, the Government are removing opportunities from children and young people in my constituency. As the Child Poverty Action Group said:

“This is a legislative agenda that risks leaving increased levels of child poverty—currently at almost 4 million and expected to rise further—as its only real legacy.”

The failure to deliver levelling up can also be seen in our struggling town centres. I will be interested to see the detail of the Government’s non-domestic rating Bill, but from the little information available, I am concerned that it will not provide the overhaul that is needed. I urge the Government instead to look at Labour’s ambitious plans to scrap and replace the outdated business rates system that disincentivises investment and holds back growth. Labour would also immediately cut tax for small business by raising the threshold for small business rate relief, supporting cash flow and investment this year.

It is time that we made the Amazons of this world pay their fair share, too. Huge online companies have thrived throughout the pandemic, and it is important that their tax burden appropriately reflects that. It is not fair that high street businesses are taxed more heavily than online giants. It is high time the Government levelled the playing field and brought business taxation into the 21st century.

Central to the rise in the cost of living is the increase in energy prices. It affects domestic consumers all over the country, but it is also felt tremendously by industries, particularly energy-intensive industries such as those in my constituency. There is nothing in the Queen’s Speech to support them, despite many months of dire warnings to the Government that some will simply no longer be able to produce their materials competitively in the UK. The job market in constituencies such as mine relies on the sector. Once again, it is my constituents who will be the hardest hit if the Government do not get a grip on the issue. Production lines across the country are dependent on the industries continuing to function, as was dramatically shown in the carbon dioxide crisis last year. If the Government were serious about keeping down prices for consumer goods for our constituents who are struggling with rising prices, they would have provided comprehensive support for those industries.

Another area in which the Queen’s Speech is completely lacking is health. The pandemic brutally exposed the cracks in our healthcare system, but the Government have done nothing to fix them. Instead, they have allowed them to yawn even wider, with gaping holes in provision. A record 6 million people are waiting for NHS treatment; they are waiting longer than ever before, often in serious pain and discomfort, limiting their ability to carry out their lives as normal.

I have said this in every Queen’s Speech and Budget debate since I was elected 12 years ago, and I call for it again: my constituents need a new hospital. To be clear, they need a proper, whole new hospital that will help my community to address the health inequalities that blight it—not a refurbishment or a single new wing added to an existing hospital, which is what the Government are currently counting among their hospital builds. They just try to fudge the numbers all the time.

This Queen’s Speech shows that Tory Ministers simply do not understand the enormity of the cost of living crisis that people on Teesside and across the country face. Instead of introducing measures to deal with rocketing food and energy costs, the Government are choosing to forge ahead with a tranche of half-baked and recycled ideas from previous Queen’s Speeches that they have failed to implement and, worse still, with unnecessary ideological Bills that will do nothing to help the people of this country.

Why are the Government ploughing ahead with a media Bill that will see Channel 4—a unique institution that is owned by the British public but costs them nothing—sold to a foreign bidder? All that demonstrates is that the Government are not serious about supporting British-made programming and our home-grown creative industries across the UK.

Another broken promise is action on conversion therapy. The Government promised a comprehensive ban, so why will their ban not cover trans people or consenting adults? It is now time to end that cruel practice for all, with no exceptions.

The transport Bill is yet more evidence of a Government who are out of touch with the country. Under the Tories, rail passengers are paying more but getting less in return. Fares have risen twice as fast as wages, but services have been slashed and our constituents are being priced out of rail travel. Constituencies such as mine do not even have proper infrastructure to support improved rail services for constituents, so how do they stand to benefit from the Bill? There is nothing to improve our dire bus services either.

At the same time, the Tory Mayor has poured tens of millions of pounds into Teesside International airport, which continues to lose money. Those losses may increase after Loganair ends flights to Heathrow and Southampton, as was announced yesterday. The Mayor has blamed Heathrow charges, but I met Heathrow airport this morning and I suspect that the decision has more to do with Loganair’s arrangements with the Mayor and the extremely low usage rates. I am determined to get to the bottom of it. Perhaps I might suggest to the Government a Bill to ensure full transparency where public money is being used. I think that that would be a very good idea.

We needed a Queen’s Speech that would tackle the cost of living crisis, with an emergency budget, including a windfall tax, to get money off people’s energy bills. Instead, we got the last scrapings of the barrel from a Government who have run out of ideas and are unable to tackle the challenges that our country is facing. They should make way for a party that will do so.