Debate on the Address

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Tuesday 10th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

It is an honour to be called in this debate, Madam Deputy Speaker, and a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale). Although I disagree with him about much in politics, I am sure his words about animal welfare will be welcomed by many in the House and agreed with wholeheartedly. I also associate myself with all the remarks made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition about the contribution of Her Majesty the Queen and about those colleagues we have lost in the past year. As you said, Madam Deputy Speaker, it is also wonderful to see the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Amy Callaghan) back in her place. We are all very glad about that, and she made an excellent speech. Again, although I disagree with many of the things she stands for in politics, we all are glad that she is here to say them.

Sometimes the House of Commons captures so well the emotions, worries and desires of the people we represent, and sometimes it feels as though Parliament is having a day on a whole different planet. Today has been a whole different planet kind of day. The glaring and burning injustice of children growing up in poverty and of far too many families simply not being able to make ends meet seems to have been ignored. Politics is not performance art; all the pomp and ceremony in the world will do no good at all for my constituents in Wirral South unless the laws we put forward and vote for in this place put money in their pockets.

When the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) was Prime Minister, she spoke of “burning injustices”, but if anything some of them have got worse since she was Prime Minister, and I want to speak about those today. The debate on the Queen’s Speech has many features. We have heard some self-deprecating humour, where we are not taking ourselves too seriously. It is important that in politics we do not take ourselves too seriously, but people do not want crappy jokes from us—they want action, particularly when it comes to making ends meet. So I am at a loss to understand why we are not having an emergency Budget; why there was no employment Bill in the Queen’s Speech, despite promise after promise; and why there is simply no credible plan in that Queen’s Speech to end the need for food banks in our country. We are letting the country down.

On an emergency Budget, it is universally accepted now, by everyone from the chairman of Tesco to most of this House, with the exception of Ministers, that we need a windfall tax on oil and gas companies, in order to put money into people’s pockets to deal with energy bills. On the other side of the equation, on people’s incomes, the Prime Minister claims that we are living through some sort of “jobs miracle”. If he thinks it is miraculous that parents in this country can put food on the table while too many of them are still working on zero-hours contracts that pay the minimum wage and do not know whether they are going to get hours the following week, that women in this country are able to do full-time jobs while relying on the most minimal amount of paid-for childcare, and that families in this country are still able to feed and look after themselves while dealing with loved ones facing a social care system that is failing before our very eyes, I would agree with him. That is truly an employment miracle.

[Mhairi Black (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (SNP)]

Does the hon. Lady also agree that the only jobs miracle to be seen here is that the Prime Minister still has his?

[Alison McGovern]

I was critical about parliamentary humour before, but we can all aspire to that example; it is truly a miracle that the Prime Minister is still in his job. But that is not the jobs miracle that we need. He can say however many times he likes that he wants high-paid jobs, but it will not put money in people’s pockets.

Let me turn to a local issue, as this is not just about the fact that people are finding it far too hard to get by and even people who do what I think of as relatively professional jobs such as nursing or teaching are now turning to the shame of food banks; it is also about the fact that the Government’s promises on every aspect of what they dare to call “levelling up” are meaningless. Whether we are talking about the fact that the money they are doling out does not seem to be reaching any of the right places or that their claims on the high street and regeneration add up to nothing, this Queen’s Speech is simply not good enough for the British people.

I will give an example from my constituency. Madam Deputy Speaker, you will remember that New Ferry, a town in Wirral South, had a terrible gas explosion in 2017, and we were promised help and support to regenerate that area. We got far too little, far too late. One of the major problems has been insufficient power and resources for councils to tackle areas of significant dereliction and deprivation.

The north of England has post-industrial areas that were never really fully regenerated after the 1980s. Those who represent such areas know only too well that the lack of power and resources for our councils has been incredibly detrimental over the past decade to delivering the kind of building on brownfield areas that will help to save green areas for everyone. The suggestions for some changes in planning powers in the Queen’s Speech may do a small amount at the margins, but they give the lie to the promise that has been made to the British public. There is a sense of injustice that this Government will never deliver on the ambition that people have for our country. People are truly angry about that.

The same applies to the issues that people face with the refugee scheme to help Ukrainians—promises made from the Dispatch Box never delivered. People were told to put their hand up and help those who are fleeing the war in Ukraine and that the Government would support them. What have we seen? Applications for visas taking far too long; people left in Poland and other countries without any information; and my constituents continually beating a path to my office to tell me how they have put a shift in and sorted out the spare room only to get so little action from the Government. People have a sense of injustice that they wanted to help in a time of war and the Government were found wanting.

I put on record my thanks to the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead, for speaking up for the Hillsborough law. She knows the sense of burning injustice that Hillsborough created. She put forward a proposal to change the legal system that would treat every person in this country with decency and respect when the worst happened. If the Government fail on the Hillsborough law, as they are failing on every other aspect of public policy, the lack of justice in Britain will be clear for everyone to see.