Future Government Spending

Andy Sawford Excerpts

Wednesday 4th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Andy Sawford (Corby) (Lab/Co-op)]

The difficulty that Government Members have is the question of motive. When people across the country see Sure Start centres, police stations and NHS walk-in centres closing, underinvestment in schools and queues outside our A and Es, they know what a Tory Government have done already, and they know what will happen if we go back to their 1930s plan.

[Chris Leslie]

The whole country will be affected, including Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, if the Conservatives are given a further five years for their ideological plan. The plan has not just failed to date; it will continue to fail and will continue to harm those on lower and middle incomes and those who depend on public services. The Conservatives will not set out where their billions of social security cuts will hit, for example, so we have to take past performance as a guide.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Sawford (Corby) (Lab/Co-op)]

I would like to say that it is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson), but he reminded me of a performance by Sir Ian Bowler at a “Stand up for Labour” event at the Labour club in my constituency, which was a caricature of a particularly unpleasant form of Conservatism in this country. I can see now how Ian Bowler was inspired. The hon. Gentleman used ugly language to portray a gross mischaracterisation of the events of recent years.

The hon. Gentleman called for some humility. He might have acknowledged that when the Government came to office, they promised to balance the books and said that we would all be in it together. They have failed on both counts, and people in his Peterborough constituency know that.

“In five years’ time, we will have balanced the books,”

the Prime Minister told the CBI in October 2010. Let us be absolutely clear: that promise has been broken. They have not balanced the books and the next Labour Government are set to inherit a large deficit as a result. The Office for Budget Responsibility says that borrowing in 2015-16 is set to be £75 billion. The Government will be borrowing over £200 billion more than they planned in 2010. It is because of their failure to deliver on debt and tackle the cost of living crisis that we so desperately need a Labour Government.

Despite Tory claims that our economy is fixed—Conservative Members go around the country and we see pictures of the Chancellor in his hard hat doing a lap of honour while the public look on incredulous—wages have stagnated for many workers. Too many of the jobs that are being created are in low-paid insecure work, rather than high-productivity sectors. I have consistently called for action on zero-hours exploitation, and I introduced a private Member’s Bill on the issue. I am pleased that we have made a tiny bit of progress, and I was proud of the role I played in getting the Office for National Statistics to change the way it records figures so that we now have a more accurate reflection of the situation.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

The problem of the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) is that a lot of us were in the House when the world economic situation deteriorated. He forgot to tell us that the problems started in America. Conservative Members were in their bunkers at the time and talked about doing something about regulation and so on; they never had a policy. Therefore when they talk about honesty in this debate, they should get up and admit that they suddenly discovered there was a problem after they came to power. What happened? People’s wages have been cut by 7%.

[Andy Sawford]

My hon. Friend is right. Conservative Members were calling for less regulation of banking in this country. Not only did they back Labour’s spending plans right up to the time of the global financial crash, but I remember that in my area they paraded around during the 2005 election calling for more spending and criticising the then Labour Government because we had not built enough hospitals, rebuilt enough schools, created enough Sure Start centres, or put more police on the beat. They had the cheek to call for more public spending in 2005, and now 10 years later they pretend that they were counselling caution at that time when they plainly were not.

The notion that the Labour party—the powerful Labour party that created a global financial crash that hit a Conservative-led Government in Germany and right-wing Governments in France and America—did so because we were investing in schools and hospitals is completely absurd. The public have found the Government out and they will be exposed for it at the election.

[Andrew Gwynne]

Let me take my hon. Friend back to what he said about low pay and its impact on the economy. Low pay is not just a tragedy for our constituents who are forced to accept low wages; it is a disaster for the economy of Britain. We have seen tax receipts drop by £68 billion, and national insurance contributions by £27.3 billion—money that could be invested in public services.

[Andy Sawford]

My hon. Friend is right. The effect of low and stagnant pay means that tax receipts have been much lower than expected. The Government have failed on the deficit and the cost of living crisis. Low pay is combining with higher housing costs and the failure to deliver benefit reform to drive down social security costs, which are rising under this Government. The Tory-led Government are set to spend £25 billion more on social security than they planned in 2010. We need action on the issues that our constituents are facing.

In my area it is not just zero-hours exploitation that causes insecurity, and many people are working through agencies. They come off the books of the jobcentre to work for an agency. That work might last days, weeks, or a few months if they are lucky, and sometimes they get exploited working year in, year out through an agency without holiday pay or proper terms and conditions—desperately insecure employment. Although a few agencies follow the law, when HMRC investigated agencies in my constituency they found more than 70 breaches of the law, and £120,000 owing to local workers in non-payment of the minimum wage. People were being made to pay to get their own pay through payroll companies, or they had to pay illegally for their own protective equipment. That is the real world that many people face in my constituency and across the country.

[Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andy Sawford]

I have no more time. The Prime Minister said that he would name and shame those companies. A year ago he made me that promise at the Dispatch Box during Prime Minister’s questions, in front of the whole House and the country. It was on the front page of my local paper, but a year on he still has not named and shamed those local companies. The people in my area do not know which of these agencies is most likely to rip them off.

What about the second part of the Government’s promise: that we are all in this together? They promised us that they would not balance the budget on the back of the poor. They cut the 50p rate to 45p, handing a £3 billion tax cut to the richest 1%. They handed people earning £1 million a tax cut of more than £42,000 a year, while cutting council tax support for war widows and the disabled. They imposed the deeply unfair bedroom tax, which has had the direct result of driving many people into the queues at the food banks in my constituency and across the country. I want to thank Hope church for its brilliant work, which I try to support. The people of Corby have been brilliant. The food bank ran out of stocks recently. We put out an appeal and within 24 hours it was full again. However, people in this country, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, should not have to rely on food banks. That is Tory Britain.

Since 2010, there have been 24 Tory tax rises. Ordinary families are paying £450 a year more in VAT. Figures from the IFS show that households will on average be more than £1,000 a year worse off by the time of the next general election. This is the first Government to lower living standards during their time in office. It gets worse: because of their failure and their dogma—the Tory party tried to stop the NHS being created in the first place—they are now planning to take us back to a time before the NHS existed, to a 1930s level of spending.

At the coming election, there will be a very stark choice. Under Tory plans, the state will shrink from 41% now to 35% by the end of the next Parliament. That is the lowest level since 1939, before the NHS existed and when children left school at the age of 14. That is the equivalent of cutting every penny we spend on schools, half the budget of our NHS, and more than all the Departments’ capital budgets added together, including what we spend on investment in schools, hospitals, roads, railways, housing, science and flood defences.

People in my constituency know that I have been fighting very hard to try to stop cuts to the local fire service and to keep Sure Start centres open. The children’s centre in Raunds has just closed. Our police stations are threatened: the front desk at Oundle has just closed and Corby police station is threatened with closure. We have had cuts to our ambulance services. Last week, the captain of Corby Town football club broke his leg in two places and dislocated his ankle. An ambulance was called at 8.10 pm. It came at 11.10 pm.

That is what has happened in the first five years of a Tory Government. People know what will happen in the next five years of a Tory Government. Our NHS will be completely decimated, as our social care services have been in this Parliament. People in my constituency and across the country cannot afford five more years of this rotten Tory Government.