Fairness and Inequality

Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts

Tuesday 11th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Edwards]

Plaid Cymru has certainly prioritised apprenticeships in Wales. We struck a budget deal with the Welsh Government to secure more of them.

[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

The aim of the motion is to ensure that a commission is established to investigate inequality and poverty. The commission would deal with the details to which the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) has referred, and I hope that he will support the motion on that basis.

[Jonathan Edwards]

I am grateful to my colleague for making a very valid point on my behalf.

I was talking about the inequality that exists in the United Kingdom. Why is this so, how is it so, and why has it been allowed to happen under successive Labour and Tory Governments? I am sure that many Members will be able to cite numerous facts and figures that amply demonstrate the inequality and lack of fairness that exist in the UK; indeed, we have already heard several interventions to that effect.

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[Jonathan Edwards]

I believe that the House of Commons would be far better if we had such a system, rather than a system that bases its politics on preserving the power of two political parties.

Economic development has become radically distorted as inequality has risen. My constituency predecessor pointed out last year in an economic study entitled “Offa’s Gap” that the Welsh economy had been growing more slowly in relation to its historical trend growth and to that of the UK economy for the past two decades. He and Plaid Cymru’s other noted economics adviser, Eurfyl ap Gwilym, concluded that Wales needed the kind of defined economic and export development strategy that is sadly lacking under the current Labour Welsh Government. Similarly, the economic policies of the current Westminster Government are woefully inadequate and ignore the requirements of my country.

[Mr MacNeil]

Given the lag in growth in the Welsh economy, is it not all the more perplexing that the Government in Cardiff—who must know far more about the situation there than I do—are choosing not to take the powers to do anything about it? It is like a man on a ship that is heading for the rocks refusing to put his hand on the tiller and instead letting it carry on merrily towards the rocks. It is a scandal that Labour has chosen that route.

[Jonathan Edwards]

The people of Wales might want to ask themselves what is behind that decision. Are the Welsh Government afraid of their own ability to use those powers effectively, or do they have a vested interest in our communities remaining poor and disadvantaged?

The legacy of de-industrialisation in places such as Wales is well known. Levels of poverty, disability, and ill health are high. There is a lack of economic opportunities, and the flight of the many young ambitious people understandably wanting to make something of themselves is invariably known as the brain drain. That creates a vicious circle of its own. A Centre for Cities report at the end of last month noted that 80% of private sector job growth since 2010 was in London, that one in three young people now move here for work, and that power should ultimately be devolved in order to allow greater freedom for areas outside London to develop.

Historically, vast areas of the British state have been economically depressed, with most political efforts concentrated on the south-east. Today, GDP per person in inner London is almost 10 times that of many parts of Wales, including the communities I represent. Many areas of northern England are in the same boat as Wales. Great inequalities exist within London itself, and we must not forget that challenge, but there is an overwhelming concentration of wealth in that region—70% higher than the UK average. It is the current political structures and policy priorities of the Labour-Tory tag team that have allowed this to happen.

One would hope that when one part of the state is the richest in the European Union and others are the poorest, there would be a clarion call for action. Alas, the Westminster elite seem oblivious to the matter, pursuing the same old failed policies of the past. Indeed, who could forget Lord Mandelson, the man who so epitomised Labour in office, saying that he was

“intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich”?

It is no wonder that wealth inequalities gathered pace under the last Labour Government. Incredibly, west Wales and the valleys now find themselves below parts of Bulgaria and Romania in the EU wealth league.

There are many indicators of rising inequality, besides individual and geographical disparity. Over the past decade, the number of households in fuel poverty in Wales has risen from around 140,000 to 386,000 at the last count in 2012. That is 30% of the Welsh total. I strongly suspect that the total will have risen since then, given the combination of oil price inflation and a real-terms reduction in wages.

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[Jonathan Edwards]

That is a very useful intervention, and I think the answer depends on the progress on the desalination plants. I am following the debate in Scotland with great interest, because we will be having the same debate in Wales within the next couple of decades and we will have the “Project Fear” manifesto off the bookshelf ready to read.

[Mr MacNeil]

I just want to tell the hon. Gentleman that the “Project Fear” manual has a short lifespan. It is almost as Robert Burns said, in that it is a snowflake in a river:

“A moment white—then melts for ever”.

The fears fall apart on a daily basis; they last only for about 48 hours, but that does not stop them being reheated.

[Jonathan Edwards]

I am grateful for those insightful remarks. In Scotland, we are seeing the same stories as were used in other parts of the British empire when they endeavoured to seek their political independence. That approach will fail in Scotland and it will fail in Wales when our turn comes.

By the end of Labour’s time in office, child poverty had increased, with 32% of children in Wales living in poverty, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. The number fell in 2012, but only because wages had fallen across the board. That technicality in the way child poverty is calculated ignores the fact that falling wages mean even less resources with which to feed hungry young mouths. The recent rapid rise of food banks is yet another symptom of growing inequality. The Labour Welsh Government had set the target of eradicating child poverty by 2020, but they cannot and will never achieve that if they do not stand up for Wales. It cannot be achieved while their masters in London refuse to confront the widening gulf in equality that has been emerging over the past 30 years and even accelerated under their watch.

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[Jonathan Edwards]

I have been totally clear in my comments about the constitutional journey of my country: we are not in a position to fight for independence at this very moment, which is why Wales needs the economic powers to build up its economy to be in a position to do so. We are in a different situation to Scotland. We will not get anywhere if we continue with the policies of the Labour party, which aims to keep economic control in London and to keep our communities impoverished. It is in its vested interest to do so, which is why it is opposed to all the measures being put forward by the Silk commission.

[Mr MacNeil]

People who say that Wales’ tax take is not equivalent to its expenditure are quite short-sighted. They fail to realise that they are living in the United Kingdom, the tax take of which has not matched expenditure since 2001, and is not likely to do so until 2018. This is a UK that records a deficit year after year, and has a debt that grows year after year.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Obviously, Mr MacNeil will want to catch my eye to make his speech. I would not like him to use it all up now, so shorter interventions.

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[Stephen Crabb]

The hon. Lady talks about inappropriate sanctions on benefits. I recall hearing one of her Front-Bench colleagues say only a few weeks ago that the Labour party would be even tougher on benefits than this Government have been. I think that she needs to get some consistency with her Front Benchers on whether they support sanctions.

The best way to reduce economic inequality is to have a growing economy and to ensure that people are in work. Today, more people in Wales have gone out to work than at any time before, with economic inactivity at its lowest level since records began. However, the tragedy is that there are still 200,000 people in our country who have never worked a day in their lives. I hope that the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr agrees wholeheartedly that that represents an enormous waste of talent, potential and skill and that a small nation such as ours cannot afford to lose that potential. I hope that he shares my ambition for welfare reform to see those people who have been locked in worklessness brought back into the labour market to achieve their full economic and social contribution.

[Mr MacNeil]

Does the Minister think that the situation he describes is the result of something inherent in those people or the result of the circumstances and structures they are living in?

[Stephen Crabb]

That question probably warrants a separate debate. I firmly believe that the vast majority of people want to work. I believe that human beings are hard-wired to want to make an economic and social contribution, but the welfare system, which too often the Opposition parties run to the barricades to defend, blunted that inherent instinct that people have to want to better themselves and to choose work over dependency.

[Mr MacNeil]

The Minister has accepted that it is not the result of something inherent in those people, so why do they not work, and why can they not work? I contend that it is the structure of the United Kingdom that leaves them in that situation.

[Stephen Crabb]

I think that I answered the hon. Gentleman’s question the first time.

More than 1.6 million private sector jobs have been created since 2010, and the way to ensure that that number keeps growing is to maintain this Government’s economic discipline and not to follow the discredited plan-B economics of the Opposition parties, which would see growth slow down and inequality widen.

We recognise that the economic situation is still challenging for many people across the UK, but we are committed to reducing the burden on the cost of living where we can. Inflation is at its lowest for four years, benefiting families and businesses across the UK. The Government recognise the impact that persistently high pump prices have on the cost of living and on business costs. We have taken action to support the motorist by freezing duty for almost four years. Had we continued on the path set by the previous Government and followed their taxation plans in full, petrol would be 13p higher per litre than it is today and the average motorist would be paying more than £7 extra for a tank of fuel.

Under the previous Government, energy prices escalated, with the average domestic gas bill doubling between 1997 and 2010. It is this Government who have brought forward changes to help reduce energy bills. We are ensuring that the most vulnerable get direct help with their bills: 230,000 homes will be warmer this year by getting energy efficiency measures installed under the energy company obligation; and 2 million households will get help under the warm home discount, including more than 1 million of the poorest pensioners.

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[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker. [Interruption.] I also thank the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) for his usual cheer as I start to speak.

We are having an important debate today. In recent months we have had a number of debates on subjects such as the minimum wage, the bedroom tax, and gender issues. Those are all important debates in themselves, but they are also, if I might be so bold, symptoms of a bigger issue that is afflicting our society and other societies—inequality and unfairness. In many ways, this debate has been screaming out to be had, especially in recent times as people are waking up to how things are arranged in our society or societies.

Yesterday, a commission headed by Church of England bishop, Dr John Sentamu, published a thoughtful report on the problem of working for poverty wages in the UK. Much has been written on this subject by eminent Nobel-winning academics and economists. Last week, when we realised that this debate was going to happen, my hon. Friend the Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) said that he was going to play word bingo during my speech and had chosen the word “Stiglitz”. I suppose that many of my thoughts and much of my further outrage on this issue have been ignited by Joe Stiglitz, and that propelled the idea for this debate. I would hope to do him justice, but I know I will not, so I recommend reading his book, “The Price of Inequality”, available on anybody’s Kindle app for £5—or, indeed, Paul Krugman’s “End This Depression Now!” Another interesting book I have seen but not read is “The Cost of Inequality: Why Economic Equality is Essential for Recovery” by Stewart Lansley. Perhaps the aim of economic equality is too far away, but certainly the aim of reducing inequality should be uppermost in all our minds; indeed, I think we shall see that it is becoming so.

[Gregg McClymont (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (Lab)]

Can the hon. Gentleman enlighten the House on how his proposal to cut corporation tax for the biggest businesses in Scotland will reduce inequality?

[Mr MacNeil]

It is quite simple—if we start to create jobs and opportunities for people, we will reduce inequality. I would certainly not be in the position of one of the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues who said last week:

“If the Scottish people are going to be better off economically and so on, I would still be against breaking away from the Union.”—[Official Report, 6 February 2014; Vol. 575, c. 467.]

It does not seem to matter whether we can cure poverty—Labour Members would still be against independence because they have made careers talking about it, and handsome careers at that.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am interested in the hon. Gentleman’s call for lower tax rates. Has he now become a tartan Tory?

[Mr MacNeil]

Devil the fear, as my old Irish mother would have said, devil the fear—no chance at all. I think the hon. Gentleman will see, as he pays more attention to the words to come, that the only Tories on this side of the House are probably the red Tories.

I listed the books I mentioned earlier for a reason. We must be aware that we do not have to reinvent the wheel to get people more opportunities and chances in life. Much of the research and science has been done, and the information has been gathered. Perhaps if we stopped, looked and learned from what is around us we would stop falling into the same traps that different generations have fallen into. Why should inequality matter—why is it important? Is it merely because a number of influential professors with Nobel prizes have written books? I would contend that they have put intellectual bones on our instinctive emotions of sympathy and empathy for our fellow people when we see them in situations that disturb us and we think are wrong. This is why nations have international aid budgets and why we give to charity. Sometimes it can be argued that the money is not always best directed, but nevertheless it is useful in the main. It shows an underlying striving for fairness and is a reproach against inequality within the broad set of people.

My first engagement with the idea of inequality was in the religious education class in Craigston primary school at the age of seven or eight, or perhaps even six, with Mrs MacCormick, God bless her. Looking back, I often think that we were really doing philosophy classes rather than RE classes. The example given was this: “If you’re given a box of chocolates at home would it be best to eat them all yourself or share them with your brothers and sisters who have not been given any chocolates?” I have to say that this scenario created a tension in my mind given my great love of chocolates. As you can see, Mr Deputy Speaker, I do not have so much a sweet tooth as a whole set of sweet teeth. I was caught in the tension between doing what was manifestly right and what I really wanted to do on another level. The consensus quickly grew in the class that it was best to share—even among six, seven or eight-year-olds. I am pleased to see you nodding in agreement, Mr Deputy Speaker.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

I assure the hon. Gentleman that I was not nodding in agreement; I was just wondering whether there were inequalities within the chocolates.

[Mr MacNeil]

Very good, Mr Deputy Speaker.

It is a slight concern of mine, however, that the captains of industry, as they get called, or the high-bonus City bankers or hedge fund managers, have never had that experience at a young age and have not engaged meaningfully with sympathy for the situation that others may be in as they gobble all the chocolates of productivity that our economy has produced, believing instead that they are self-made men and self-made women who worship their own creators.

[Richard Fuller]

Before the hon. Gentleman moves on from his Milk Tray doctrine of equality, will he accept that very many of us do learn those lessons in school and do not necessarily need the Government to act for us to fulfil our responsibilities as individuals? What would he say about considering ways to exhort people who have wealth, regardless of the taxes they pay, to give more to others?

[Mr MacNeil]

The hon. Gentleman’s intervention is laudable, and I understand what he says, but I disagree. The consensus post the great depression of the 1930s showed the importance of regulation, and that lesson was probably forgotten by the 1980s in the era of the Reagan-Thatcher deregulation that led up to the precipitous problems that finally exploded six years ago. In the absence of regulation, people have to look into their own hearts, but sometimes we can spend far too long doing that. The rule of politics, Parliament and Government is to ensure that we have the structures whereby all can benefit and they are not just dependent on the whim of some well-meaning individuals who may be a minority among the wealthy and could direct their contribution in the wrong way.

Before I get to the body of my speech, I have a final example of something that I think informs the human condition, namely the observations of anthropologists on hunter-gatherer societies. I hope this will also inform the debate, because I think that inequality is essentially about human choices—perhaps even bias—whether they be conscious or subconscious.

Anthropologists note that hunter-gatherer bands did two main things: they hunted and they gathered, hence, of course, the name—there is no need to be a Nobel prize winner to spot that. The crucial observation is that they treated the products of the hunt and the gather very differently. The products of the hunt were shared out almost instinctively, with many people who might not even have been on the hunt getting a share. Anthropologists explain this as the sharing of luck and good fortune, with those on the hunt realising that they might not have had a successful hunt in different circumstances and that, given the way in which the society of the day was arranged, they might earn the good will of others who might be lucky on another day.

That sharing, however, was not mirrored in the gather, and anthropologists reckon that that was due to the labour and endeavours of the individual graft and application of the gather.

[Caroline Lucas]

I am enjoying the hon. Gentleman’s exposition of hunters and gatherers. I wonder whether it could lead us to a discussion about access to ownership of land. Does he share my concern that very little has been done by successive Governments to address the inequality that arises from the fact that the richest 0.6% of the population own 46% of the UK’s land? Will he join me and others—indeed, this applied to Winston Churchill—who support a system of progressive land value taxation as a much fairer way of taxing land than council tax and business rates?

[Mr MacNeil]

I hear what the hon. Lady says. I am tempted to go down the route of the argument about the taxation of land and labour. I hope the hon. Member for North East Somerset agrees that it has many merits and that he will move a little closer to me on the left wing as a result.

[Gemma Doyle (West Dunbartonshire) (Lab/Co-op)]

On taxation, does the hon. Gentleman agree that the 50p tax rate should be brought back, and would he support it in a separate Scotland?

[Mr MacNeil]

I have two points to make in response to that. First, when the 50p tax rate was abolished, Members from Plaid Cymru, the Scottish National party and a number of other minority parties—as they are termed in this place, even though we, of course, are the only majority Government on these islands—went through the Lobby to oppose the cut. If memory serves me right, Labour Members sat on their hands and did not do so.

Secondly, I would support the return of the 50p rate on the basis of need and argument. I understand that the UK Labour party is suggesting an increase to 50p for a short fixed term, probably because of the level of the UK deficit, but the Scottish deficit is at a different level. Is the increase necessary in the UK because of economic circumstances—that is one argument—or is the hon. Lady saying that a 50p rate is Labour policy for ever?

[Gemma Doyle]

I am happy to clarify that the question was whether the hon. Gentleman supports the 50p tax rate.

[Mr MacNeil]

We voted against its abolition. It would not have gone—we would have the 50p tax rate right now—if the hon. Lady and many others had joined us in the Lobby. The question is: why did she and her colleagues not go through the Lobby to vote against the cut? Where were Labour Members that night? There was no sign of them. Would anybody from the Labour party care to tell me why they did not vote against the cut to the 50p tax rate? I would be very pleased to hear why not. Will one of the about 20 Members on the Labour Benches please stand and explain why Labour did not oppose the cut to the 50p tax rate? Going once, going twice, gone: Labour has refused to explain.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

I remember that evening very well. To call Labour Members headless chickens would be an affront to headless chickenry, given the way they were running around. Does my hon. Friend agree that perhaps it was a principled abstention that the Labour party pursued that evening on the 50p tax rate?

[Mr MacNeil]

Well, a principled abstention by the Labour party is news to me, but I take on board what my hon. Friend says.

I was talking about hunter-gathering. I was not so much hunting Labour Members as asking why they did not go through the Lobby on the 50p tax rate. I was discussing why people have certain outlooks in life. I think that when people view the fruits of their success as being the result of a hunt that involved a great deal of good fortune and support, they might have a tendency to be slightly more left wing, whereas those who think the fruits are the result of their own individual hard graft might have a tendency to be more right wing and view their gains as a gather. I will make no further judgment on that idea—I just want to put it out there and let people chew it over—but I think there is something deep-seated in our own personal biases as to why we arrive at certain points of view.

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr MacNeil]

It would be a great pleasure to give way to the hon. Gentleman. Perhaps he will tell us why Labour did not vote against the cut to the 50p tax rate.

[Michael Connarty]

I would be quite willing to brief the hon. Gentleman later about the technicalities of why the vote was not called on that particular night.

The hon. Gentleman is talking about a sociological analysis, but some people have moved on since then and done a socialist analysis. When society is divided into those who support capital and those who support labour, what happens is that the forces of those who have the power in the land—the landed classes—join with the merchant class to support capital, and they have succeeded in increasing the value of capital by driving down the cost of labour. That is why we have the inequality we have, and that is the structure of the society we—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. It is very good to have a lecture, but not during an intervention. If the hon. Gentleman wants to catch my eye later, I am sure he will be able to do so and give me a lecture then.

[Mr MacNeil]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that interesting intervention. As an MP for a left-of-centre party—sadly, the hon. Member for North East Somerset is no longer in his place to hear this—I am asking how it is possible that our society and, indeed, many other societies, particularly in the English-speaking world, can tolerate inequality, which has now grown to levels beyond those of the 1920s. Has something primitive been transmitted to our minds through the media? The belief that the poor are poor because they are undeserving and have not worked hard enough is a primitive thought. People have to be helped, because we are complex creatures living together in society. People have deep psychological needs and some can suffer from the paralysis of feeling swamped or depressed when they feel stuck or trapped.

Yesterday’s report by the Living Wage Commission, “Working for Poverty”, looked into the scale and problem of low pay and working poverty in the UK. The first shocking statistic I stumbled on came from the work of the Resolution Foundation, which had tracked low-paid workers for a decade between 2002 and 2012. Despite working for a decade, only 18% of those people had managed to escape low pay in that 10-year stretch. In other words, people in low pay had a four in five chance of remaining there.

The report further notes:

“1.3 million employees remained stuck in low pay for the subsequent decade, and a further 2.2 million workers held higher paid jobs but returned to low paid jobs by the end of the decade.”

That is and should be depressing. Imagine the feelings of the people we eyeball who have been living with that reality on a daily basis for a decade.

There is good news and bad news. Over the past decades, the wealth of this and other countries in the west has grown as productivity has increased. The bad news is that the fruits of that productivity have been disproportionately distributed. According to the BBC’s wealth gap analysis, as the wealth pie grew and there was more to slice up, many people got roughly the same slice of the pie while others took a share that would embarrass a lion.

Between 1997 and 2007, the income of the top 0.1% grew by 82% to an average of £1.179 million annually; the top 0.5% saw an increase of 66.5% to an average of £452,000 annually; and the top 1%, which, of course, includes the previous two groups, saw their income rise by 60%, but their rise was only about a quarter of that of the 0.1%.

Meanwhile, between 1997 and 2007—the happy decade, as some in financial circles call it, before the crash of six years ago—the bottom 90%, which includes most of society, saw their wages rise by only 17%, a disproportionate slice of the economic pie. Another way of looking at it is that the fraction of pay the bottom 90% were getting in comparison with the top 1% had fallen by a fifth over that decade. As Professor Stiglitz says:

“A corporate CEO will not exert less effort to make the company work well simply because his take-home pay is $10 million a year rather than $12 million.”

The “Working for Poverty” report contains a series of nuggets and goes fearlessly into some thought-provoking factors.

[Mr McKenzie]

The hon. Gentleman has mentioned poverty and how to tackle it, which is welcome, but can he explain why the SNP Government in Edinburgh have taken £1.2 billion out of anti-poverty programmes since 2008?

[Mr MacNeil]

The hon. Gentleman will find that the efforts of the SNP have been very laudable in Scotland, with unemployment and youth unemployment lower than in the rest of the UK. The SNP Government have done all they can. He should realise that the Government in Edinburgh are in a financial straitjacket set by the philosophies of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in London. If the hon. Gentleman really wanted to tackle such issues, he would free himself from that straitjacket, and the SNP or whichever party was in government in Edinburgh would be fully accountable, rather than held within the straitjacket of another Government’s philosophy with which we disagree. Does he want to intervene again?

[Mr McKenzie]

indicated dissent.

[Mr MacNeil]

No, the hon. Gentleman is very happy.

[Gregg McClymont]

Can the Scottish Government not spend the block grant in any way they see fit?

[Mr MacNeil]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct: the Scottish Government can do so, but they have to balance the budget. In fact, although John Swinney, the Finance Secretary, balances it every year, the Chancellor of the Exchequer does not. If the hon. Gentleman wants extra expenditure, he knows full well that, under the devolution settlement, he must explain what he will cut. It is, “Want, want, want,” but he has not made any suggestions about what he will cut.

[Mr Weir]

Will my hon. Friend acknowledge that although funds for fuel poverty programmes have all been slashed down here, they have continued to be invested in Scotland; that child poverty in Scotland is now lower than in the UK as a whole; and that, worst of all from the Scottish Parliament’s point of view, one of the drivers of poverty is the welfare changes controlled by this Parliament, not by the Scottish Parliament?

[Mr MacNeil]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. We can see that again in the philosophy behind the bedroom tax, which is not one that I subscribe to in any way. Last night, I stumbled across a Channel 4 programme on Walsall and Glasgow housing authorities. It talked about having to demolish houses in Walsall, due to their being left empty: people cannot stay in them because of their cost and what people have lost in welfare. Glasgow housing authority has demand for 1,500 more one-bedroom properties—people want them so that they will not be penalised—but it does not have them. It is, inefficiently, trying to build them so that people can avoid the bedroom tax, but the costs are colossal.

[Pete Wishart]

I am loth to interrupt my hon. Friend’s fantastic speech, but perhaps I can help him a little. We know a bit about what the Labour party proposes to do with the Scottish budget because of the cuts commission. It intends to do away with universal benefits and it does not like free bus passes and free prescriptions. That is what it would do if it gets control of the levers of power in the Scottish Parliament. We know exactly where it is going with its cuts commission.

[Mr MacNeil]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. Johann Lamont has a cuts commission. [Interruption.] I hear from the Labour Front Bench that she does not have a cuts commission, which is another example of how Labour Scottish Members say one thing while Labour in Scotland says another. If Labour Front Benchers want to tell us what Johann Lamont is doing—if she has told them—they are more than welcome to intervene.

[Mr Russell Brown]

Will the hon. Gentleman tell us why £1 billion has been removed from anti-poverty programmes since 2008 under his Government? Perhaps that might paint a clearer picture.

[Mr MacNeil]

I thought the hon. Gentleman was going to stand at the Dispatch Box to tell us what Johann Lamont is thinking about the cuts commission, but he failed to do that.

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

There is a lot of deflection going on. The Labour party has said that nothing is off the table, which might mean £9,000 per child per year to go to university, a return to a tax on ill health with charge-free prescriptions going and all that. In his heart, does my hon. Friend not agree that this is ideological: the British Labour party thinks that we are part of a something-for-nothing society, when all we are doing is caring for those most in need?

[Mr MacNeil]

My hon. Friend puts it very well: we are caring for those in need. Our hearts should go out to those needing help, and we should not be thought of as part of a something-for-nothing society.

[Gemma Doyle]

Will the hon. Gentleman tell us how much less money there would be to spend on public services in Scotland if his party gets its way and cuts tax for big business?

[Mr MacNeil]

If my party gets its way, there will be more money for services in Scotland, because our fiscal position is far better than the UK’s and our deficit per capita is lower. If we become independent, we can do a lot more to help. I hope that the hon. Lady does not hold the position of the hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Mr Hood). Last Thursday, he told us:

“If the Scottish people are going to be better off economically and so on, I would still be against breaking away from the Union.”—[Official Report, 6 February 2014; Vol. 575, c. 467.]

If by becoming independent we can fight poverty, will the hon. Lady support independence?

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[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I think the hon. Gentleman has got the message across.

[Mr MacNeil]

I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman has intervened, but I am surprised that he says he is against nationalism, because we live in nations. That is why we have the United Nations of about 193 nations. I am not sure exactly what structure he favours. Is he is in favour of the abolition of the Parliament in Westminster and of the UK state?

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. The hon. Gentleman must sit down. I will be helpful: we have had a good debate about chocolates, and I want to get back to inequality. I certainly do not want to get bogged down in the rights and wrongs of abolition. I know that he is desperate to finish his speech on inequalities, and I am desperate to hear it.

[Mr MacNeil]

My speech is about making lives better for people wherever they are from and wherever they are worldwide. That is the important point to bear in mind.

The “Working for Poverty” report even touches on the untouchables of our society—football clubs. It states:

“Research from Citizens UK shows it would take a full-time cleaner 13 years to earn what top footballers earn in a week. Football clubs are important institutions in communities across the UK. They should be setting an example to employers nationwide.”

I must praise the columnist for The Observer Kevin McKenna who, like me, is a supporter of Celtic football club in Glasgow, the richest team in Scotland. Sadly, a few months ago, Celtic refused to pay the living wage to all its staff at the ground. It turned Mr McKenna’s stomach that those subject to such wage inequality could rub along, shoulder to shoulder, with people earning tens of thousands of pounds a week. That has also turned the stomachs of many football fans, especially given that Celtic had cashed in on the story of Brother Walfrid, a Marist brother who now lies at rest in Dumfries, who started Celtic as a means to help the poor of the Glasgow east end in the 1880s. I do not mean to single out Celtic, but to give an example of the toleration of those in even rich organisations for the shocking pay levels given to people the whites of whose eyes they see daily. Frankly, it removes the shine, lustre and glitz from the big football clubs of our land when we realise that gritty reality and see it up close.

[Lorely Burt (Solihull) (LD)]

I have every sympathy for what the hon. Gentleman is saying, but what is his party’s policy on tackling the scourge of overpaid football players?

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[Mr MacNeil]

I must tell the hon. Lady that, to be absolutely honest, I have not considered that question politically. [Interruption.] Labour Members are mocking, but they would, because they probably have no response. If they have one, they are more than welcome to intervene. If the hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (Gordon Banks) wants to limit the pay of top footballers, he can jump up to the Dispatch Box and tell us how. The hon. Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt) addresses a point that we should look at and think about in our society, since it is one of the jarring unfairnesses and inequalities. People working together shoulder to shoulder with such massive disparities sums up what is happening in our society.

In the report “Working for Poverty”, Dr John Sentamu’s foreword starts with a nugget from the CBI director-general John Cridland, who said that there are

“still far too many people stuck in minimum wage jobs without routes to progression…and that’s a serious challenge that business and government must address.”

I again praise the Archbishop of York for saying elsewhere in his report that business itself has to step up to the plate and make sure that people are getting a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work, but praise is due to John Cridland also, for his remarks at the outset of the report.

Making work pay is important—very important. The UK taxpayer is paying a staggering £3 billion to £6 billion to cover the costs of inadequate pay, which affects a colossal 5.24 million workers—an increase of 400,000 in the past 12 months alone. That is welfare on a sadly grand scale, for which we should not be asking the taxpayer to foot the bill.

The report notes that the prices of everyday items have risen faster than prices of other goods. Food costs 44% more than in 2005 and energy costs have more than doubled. On the bright side, it notes that vehicle costs have remained stable and the cost of audiovisual equipment has halved. In more serious terms, the report notes that children of parents on low pay are less likely to achieve in school compared with their peers at every stage of their childhood education. A living wage employee gets nearly double the amount of family time in a typical working week as someone on the national minimum wage—a subject I shall return to later in my speech.

The report lays out more correctly the problem in the gains of productivity and their distribution, noting that the arrangements are such that economic growth alone will not necessarily solve Britain’s low pay crisis. Unlike the hon. Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller), I think the Government have a role to play; it is not just a matter for well-meaning individuals. Paul Krugman and Joe Stiglitz observe that low pay takes demand out of the economy, as the people circulating money in the economy are those who are on low pay. There is even an argument that higher unemployment benefit is an economic multiplier, in that the money that goes into recipients’ pockets circulates more quickly.

[Gemma Doyle]

The hon. Gentleman is being generous. He mentions the opinions of Professor Joseph Stiglitz. Is he aware of another of Professor Stiglitz’s comments:

“Some of you have been told that lowering tax rates on corporations will lead to more investment. The fact is that’s not true. It is just a gift to the corporations increasing inequality in our society.”?

Will he reconsider his position on corporation tax?

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[Mr MacNeil]

Had the hon. Lady been in Parliament when Labour were in power and seen what her party did in that period, she might be less bold. We have to look at what is good for Scotland and what we can do to create opportunity and employment in Scotland, and I will not resile or shy away from that in any way, shape or form.

The contention is that money is not circulating. That is why some years ago we had a fiscal stimulus and why we have had quantitative easing. My problem with QE is that it has not been aimed at the demand recovery for which Stiglitz and Krugman would look; instead, in the opinion of many, it is propping up financial institutions. I note that, at one time, Ben Bernanke suggested that the way to return demand to Japan 20 years ago, when the country was experiencing stagflation, was to take a helicopter full of yen notes and fly above Japanese cities shovelling them out. That is certainly one way to return demand to the economy, but of course serious voices would recoil at the idea and not allow it to happen. There are some answers in economics, however, that are counter-intuitive to many of the things we naturally feel and do daily. We should not be afraid of looking at some of the other, more grounded, ideas, but I fear that a Government who have chosen the cult of austerity over the pursuit of growth are unlikely to look imaginatively at what they can do for the economy—they certainly have not done so in the past three years.

Growth in productivity has not been matched by growth in wages. The “Working for Poverty” report notes that

“Wages and economic output began to decouple in 2003, five years before the onset of the financial crisis. Real average wages have grown by 13% since 1999, whereas economic output”—

that is, productivity—

“has risen by four times this rate.”

That means again that economic growth alone will not solve Britain’s low pay crisis. The Government should set up a commission of inquiry into poverty and inequality, as we call for in the motion, to look at how we can improve the lives of citizens—people we see daily; people we perhaps knew in school, or relatives; people who live in our communities. They should not be left behind, with only 18% escaping low pay over a decade, as we heard earlier. In a further example, the report notes that

“Productivity growth and median pay began to decouple in the 1980s and median hourly earnings have failed to keep pace with the average value of output that workers produce.”

I am heartened to know that even the Prime Minister supports the living wage, saying that where companies can afford to pay the living wage, they should. A living wage is only £7.65 an hour—that is the figure mentioned in the White Paper for independence and in the “Working for Poverty” report. That is only £306 for a 40-hour week or about £16,000 per annum—not a king’s ransom by any means. We should remember that the minimum wage is £6.31 an hour, so it takes an increase of only £1.34 an hour to get to the living wage. I praise the Prime Minister for what he said, but while he apparently sees the justice and wisdom of the measure, as a politician in charge of a Government, he is doing nothing about it. We should realise that life is short, life in politics is shorter, and life in power is shortest of all, so Governments should take the opportunity when they have power to do a lot to improve the lives of the people they govern.

Some of this debate is mere dry statistics. We should look at some of the human stories in the “Working for Poverty” report—the accounts of normal, decent people across the countries who are trying to earn an honest living in a state, the UK, that does not value all its citizens fairly. Their stories should be heard and understood; they inform the debate and help to remove the dryness of the statistics.

[Stewart Hosie]

Very generously indeed, my hon. Friend has praised the Prime Minister, who at least wants to do something about the minimum wage, but is it not disappointing when the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) was answering questions about the living wage, she said, even though it is £7.65 in Scotland and £8.80 in London, that it was “too difficult to calculate”? Is not that a rather bizarre position for the UK Government to take, given that we already know what the figures are?

[Mr MacNeil]

My hon. Friend puts it very well indeed. I do not think any more needs to be said.

Case study 1 in the interim report from the Living Wage Commission is Paul’s story. The report tells us that

“Paul is a support worker in the care sector in the North West of England. His partner is a youth worker in the youth justice sector for the local Borough Council. They have a sixteen year old daughter and are both paid below the Living Wage.”

Paul says:

“I started work for my current employer in 2009 and have never been given a pay rise. During this time I have experienced a palpable leap in the cost of living. My wife started her employment in 2010 and she has witnessed a drop in the amount of money she is paid for her considerable and anti-social working hours.

We are both working full-time, living in local housing association rented accommodation and we are always struggling to pay our way. We have no luxuries, we have not been on holiday and we do not socialise. We work, eat and sleep. There are no extra benefits we can claim to help us. There is little we can hope to do but keep on working in the hope that we will eventually see some ‘light at the end of the tunnel’.

I have juggled our debt as best as I am able to. I have moved some debt onto zero interest credit cards which have given us an 18 month window to clear some debt without accruing the hefty interest charges which would be crippling.

We are substantially in arrears with the rental of our home. The landlord is attempting to negotiate a payment plan to help us to manage this debt. We avoid doing so to enable us to more flexibly manage our debt. One week we can pay a little off our rental debt but the next we must buy food and fuel, pay outstanding vets bills, and more besides.

We often spend days apart. This is due to my low pay and the need for me to do sleep-in duties as a carer to garner something like a liveable income. We can often only communicate through rushed text messages and leaving voicemails for each other. Our sixteen year old daughter misses us both greatly. We did not even have a day out together as a family in 2013.”

That one story crystallises in many ways the nub of today’s debate. I am grateful to the Archbishop of York for his report and for setting out people’s experiences. Perhaps the saddest line in that quotation is:

“We work, eat and sleep”.

It is shocking that the citizens of a first-world, G7 country are living in that way.

Government Members often talk about the importance of family as a building block of society. I would argue that the living wage benefits and reinforces families. To take home the same wage that an employee on the living wage would receive for a typical 37.5 hour week, minimum wage earners would have to work 52.3 hours a week in London or 45.5 hours a week outside London. In a typical Monday-to-Friday working week, that is equivalent to working 10.5 hours a day in London or 9.1 hours a day outside London. That rises to 11.5 hours for London or 10.1 hours outside London if we include an hour’s lunch break.

A worker who does a Monday-to-Friday job in London on the national minimum wage, who gets the Government’s recommended amount of sleep each night and who has an average commute therefore gets only three hours and 45 minutes to spend as they wish in each week day. The same employee would get six hours and 45 minutes of time each day if they were paid the living wage. That is an extra three hours a day or almost double the time that a minimum wage worker has to spend with their family or to do anything else that they want to do. That shows how those in low-paid jobs have little work-life balance and have to sacrifice the time that they spend with their children or on social engagement. That can lead to other problems further down the line. If ever there was an example of what an additional £1.43 an hour could bring, that is it.

When we hear people using the family as a political argument in future, it must be backed up by some economic and legislative muscle in order that people have a decent wage and a decent start in life. The most important point to make is that the people we are discussing are working—they are the working poor. They work long hours to do what they can for themselves and their families, yet they are unable to participate properly in society.

It is a damning indictment of all of us in this House that we have tolerated the emergence of such a reality in our midst over the past few decades. Although I am only 43, all of us have a responsibility for that. We have a responsibility to speak out about it. That is why we are having this debate. I hope that the Government will listen and will bring forward a commission of inquiry on inequality and poverty, because those issues blight the lives of far too many people. It should simply be stopped.

[Jonathan Edwards]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern at the lack of interest in this policy agenda, which is demonstrated by the number of Members who have put their names forward to speak in this debate? The Westminster parties do not care and just do not get it.

[Mr MacNeil]

It is disappointing that more Members have not engaged in the issues of poverty and inequality. Cynics would say that if this were a debate on Members’ pay, conditions and benefits or any other reform of the House of Commons, the Benches would be full. Alas, we are debating a topic far removed from that. That is why I have tried to humanise the debate.

I was not going to read Becca’s story from the Living Wage Commission, but it is a cracker of a story. The report states that she

“lives in Leeds and has worked in minimum wage jobs since she was a teenager. Now in her thirties, she has a degree and wants to start up her own business, but she can not find the money or the time.”

She says:

“I have pretty much always worked for minimum wage. I worked in an office photocopying for two years, I have worked in customer service, I once sat watching a TV screen and counting cars on clickers. I’ve done all sorts.”

That is another example of a person who is trying to better herself, but who is—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I have a good feel for the examples, as, I am sure, does the House. This should be the hon. Gentleman’s speech, not just a speech full of examples from other people. I have allowed a few examples to go, but I have heard enough for now. I want to hear from the hon. Gentleman, rather than other people.

[Mr MacNeil]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is because of my modesty and kindness that I want to share the wisdom of others. I do not see myself as the sole well of wisdom. [Interruption.] “Thankfully,” say my SNP colleagues.

We have to consider how poverty and inequality are affecting young people. I spoke to a young person recently who said, “It’s difficult being young. Houses are expensive. We have tons of student debt. The costs of living are rising and wages don’t go up. It’s sort of tough being young at the moment.” That young person was right. I was at university when student loans came in. I followed a demonstration against student loans that was led by a student who later became an MP. I later saw him on television backing Labour’s introduction of tuition fees in 1998. I cannot remember his constituency.

There has been a sharp rise in the number of 24 to 34-year-olds who are living at home with their parents. As Joe Stiglitz said, that is not due to a rush of filial devotion, but because they have no choice. The economic cards are stacked against them. Youth unemployment is high in many countries. It is too high in Scotland and higher still in the UK as a whole. Instead of getting on with their lives, the young find themselves in a holding pattern.

The SNP has done what it can in Scotland by keeping tuition fees at zero, which is saving families from paying £36,000 for a four-year degree. Families risk having to pay that if we vote no to independence. We know that there are cuts down the line and some people think that this is a something-for-nothing society and that certain things should be taken off the table. We do what we can with the powers that we have, but we want to do so much more.

An exciting proposal in the White Paper that will tackle inequality is to follow Sweden’s example on child care. Parents of early-years children in the UK face the highest child care costs in Europe. Parents in Scotland spend about 27% of household income on child care, compared with the OECD average of 12%. Independence would give us the opportunity to make transformational changes to the way in which Scotland provides child care services. That will allow women, in particular, to work without worrying about the cost of looking after their children. With independence, the benefits of their work, such as economic growth and tax revenue, will stay in Scotland and contribute to the costs of child care provision.

The Scottish Government plan to have a universal system of high-quality early learning and child care from the age of one up to school entry. At the end of the first year of an independent Scottish Parliament, every three and four-year-old and vulnerable two-year-old will be entitled to 1,140 hours of child care. That is the same amount of time as children spend in primary school each year and is equivalent to 30 hours per week over 38 weeks. That is an important aspiration. It demonstrates one way in which we should be moving our society forward. It would certainly be a way to reduce inequality.

It has been argued that inequality has caused the rise in household debt because people try to keep up with the Joneses. There are more pernicious examples of what inequality can do. Professor Paul Krugman states:

“Before the financial crisis of 2008 struck, I would often give talks to lay audiences about income inequality, in which I would point out that top income shares had risen to levels not seen since 1929. Invariably there would be questions about whether that meant that we were on the verge of another Great Depression—and I would declare that this wasn’t necessarily so”.

In the end, it turned out that that was the case. Once again, we are not arresting the growth in inequality. Are we on the verge of repeating the same mistake? I wish that we would learn, but we seem not to be doing so.

Some voices in the world are talking about inequality. Yesterday, the mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, made a speech about tackling inequality in New York. My only criticism is that, when one looks at the detail, it is quite timid. The Pope has said:

“The promise was that when the glass was full, it would overflow, benefiting the poor. But what happens instead, is that when the glass is full, it magically gets bigger nothing ever comes out for the poor.”

The church and nation committee of the Church of Scotland addresses that issue frequently and, as I said, the Church of England’s Archbishop of York has also done great work. A number of US Senators are aware of the problems and what is happening.

In my view, Governments should concentrate on growth and jobs. The deficit obsession and austerity cult has taken demand from the economy and probably led to a slower recovery—we have probably lost years as a result of the policies that were followed. We cannot fully prove that because we do not have a controlled environment in which to do so scientifically, but the feeling among many economists is that growth has not returned as strongly as it should have done, and that when it did come back it was three years delayed.

We are in food-bank Britain; we have the bedroom tax hammering people. VAT, one of the most regressive taxes, has been increased to 20% in this Parliament. That is a real shame and something that hits people disproportionately. We have had the cut to the 50p tax rate. That probably cost £4 billion to £5 billion in revenues, although the Commons Library has stated that behaviour alteration should mean that it will cost only £0.5 billion. Only £0.5 billion? That means that the cut to the 50p rate of tax has cost the Exchequer and not raised any extra revenue.

In the debate last Thursday—I am coming to a conclusion, Mr Deputy Speaker—it was sad that many of those Members who had the opportunity to speak in a very time-limited debate made no real mention of the future, and there was no mention at all of poverty. Unfortunately, we seem to have made a god of money, and we treat those who do not get hold of it as somehow inferior beings. In fact, as somebody once remarked, the cure for cancer might well be found in a child living in a poor household. They should be given a helping hand and an opportunity for their future because—who knows?—they could help us some day.

I have a couple of final reflections. It was said of Nelson Mandela that he not only liberated the blacks in South Africa, but also the oppressors. When I look at inequality I see, of course, great insecurity at the bottom, but I also see insecurity at the top. People realise that when the safety nets are removed, they themselves are a step or an accident or two away from going down. If those people do not have a society with safety nets in place for their own security, they can never fully relax. They need to get more and gather more because—who knows?—they, a relative or a friend might need it.

That struck me very strongly when I was at Alabama state university on an exchange programme with a US Congressman and we went to see a game of American football. We were taken to the president’s box of the university, and there were people who had made it in life. I met a man from Leeds, but it struck me that despite having made it, the talk was all about health insurance, health care, and what sort of plan people had—conversations we do not have in this country. In reality, there was deep insecurity because the social nets were not there to help everybody. When the nets are not there for the poorest and most vulnerable, we, our friends, our relatives, the relatives of relatives and friends of friends, are all but one step away. It is not a nice situation to be in, and I could see the fear in the whites of their eyes. Even though they personally had made it in society, there was massive insecurity around them.

Just as Nelson Mandela liberated the blacks and the oppressors, so too does the arresting of inequality liberate the poor and the rich—not quite in equal measure, but it certainly liberates them both from the insecurity that inequality brings to us all. We should work to get rid of inequality, and I hope that when we have independence, we can prove that one of the best ways of fighting inequality and poverty is through the prosperity that I expect we shall bring to Scotland.

[Guto Bebb (Aberconwy) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil). In 1979 I spent a fantastic summer holiday on the Isle of Barra—something that I have promised my children I will repeat at some point.

[Mr MacNeil]

You’re very welcome to come back.

[Guto Bebb]

Thank you.

This has been an interesting and passionate debate thus far, but I would like to pick up on a few points made by the hon. Gentleman about the minimum wage. Members across the House will share the aspiration to increase the minimum wage, but to accuse the Prime Minister of inaction when he has simply stated a need to consider the facts is slightly unfair. On Friday, I met a number of constituents who run small hotels in my constituency. Not a single one of those six businesses had posted a profit in excess of £15,000 for the past three years, yet they all employed people and each paid slightly above the minimum wage. They want to do the right thing and retain their staff, but when talking about prosperity and creating jobs, we must ensure that anything we do with the minimum wage does not destroy the very thing that helps people out of poverty, which is having a job.

--- Later in debate ---

[Guto Bebb]

I am responding to the initial comments that proportional representation leads to a more involved electorate. I would challenge that because, as I was about to say, in my constituency 70% of constituents turned out in 2010 on a first-past-the-post race, but under a PR system in 2011, the turnout was only 40%. If we want democratic engagement, I argue that the evidence for the hon. Gentleman’s point is not clear.

Finally, I agree with the hon. Gentleman that when trying to ensure full employment in Wales and supporting businesses—all part and parcel of improving equality and job opportunities—we must support our small businesses and ensure that our banks are lending. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has made huge strides in trying to ensure that the banks support small businesses, but I accept the arguments about the need for further intervention to support small businesses in Wales.

I take from the comments of the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr an implied rejection of the work of Finance Wales, an organisation which has existed in Wales for a long time and has the purpose of supporting small businesses. In my view, it is a Government-supported way of supporting small businesses. On Friday, however, in my constituency I met a small hi-tech IT company employing 23 people, which had been asked to pay 9% above base to be lent money by Finance Wales. That is the type of behaviour that, if undertaken by the banks, we would be criticising openly. The initiative is supported by the Welsh Labour Government, and they should ask themselves serious questions when small businesses trying to create employment opportunities in my constituency are offered penal rates to borrow money.

I have some sympathy with the comments made by the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr. I share his surprise at the behaviour of the Labour party in the Welsh Grand Committee last week. Democratic engagement is part and parcel of the process through which we engage people and tackle inequality. However, the Labour party’s rejection of the entirety of the Silk commission report, with the exception of borrowing powers, should concern us greatly. If we are to create equality, in Wales and in the United Kingdom as a whole, we should avoid spending more money on debt repayment than we do on education. The only part of the Silk commission report that the Labour party seemed willing to support was more borrowing powers—no surprise, perhaps—but that is a betrayal of the aspirations that those of us on the Government Benches have for the people of Wales.

[Mr MacNeil]

I have been hearing quite a bit about the Welsh Labour Government’s rejection of more powers going to Wales, but I still cannot find the reason for that. Do they doubt their own abilities of stewardship and governance? Does the hon. Gentleman know why they do not want them?

[Guto Bebb]

It is not for me to correct the hon. Gentleman, but I am not sure whether the proposals were rejected by the Welsh Government. They were certainly rejected by the Labour Front-Bench team in Westminster—a significant difference. Perhaps Labour Members can enlighten us on whether there is a lack of trust between the Westminster team and the Assembly team.

The motion is wrong-headed in many ways, but its key failure is highlighted in the final sentence, which

“calls on the Government to halt its further spending and welfare cuts”.

That tells us that the motion is not serious. It talks about the importance of creating equality and opportunities and supporting people and communities, yet it does not recognise that to have a successful, sustainable economy we cannot carry on borrowing at rates that are unsustainable in the long term. There is nothing moral, fair or reasonable about asking our children and grandchildren to pay for our mistakes. We have a responsibility to future generations not to saddle them with unsustainable debts. We have an ageing population and a demographic problem, nowhere more so than in parts of north Wales that I represent. We face a real challenge to care for the elderly and to ensure that we have a fair pension system. Future generations will have to meet those obligations. In asking them also to meet our inability to take hard decisions, the motion is not a serious one, and it deserves to be rejected.

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[Guto Bebb]

I fully accept and endorse my hon. Friend’s comments. It is important, when we debate public spending and the level of so-called cuts, to bear in mind that we are running a state that is not meeting its obligations. Even in this financial year, we are borrowing £110 billion. We are not out of the woods by any stretch of the imagination. It would be an irresponsible Government who would damage the opportunity for people to have more equality through a willingness to borrow more without any plan to reduce the country’s level of debt.

[Mr MacNeil]

Is the problem for the Government not that the rush and the desire to attack the deficit has taken the focus away from what they should be doing: returning demand and growth to the economy? To make an equivalence between the national economy and a household budget is wrong-headed in the extreme and has led to the three-year delay in growth. It is leading to the wrong policies and—

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[Mr MacNeil]

rose—

[Guto Bebb]

Let me finish this point.

Back in 2000, when the decision was made to apply for objective 1 funding it was argued that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Wales as the GDP of west Wales and the valleys as a percentage of the European average was roughly 74%. As hon. Members will be aware, once that percentage is above 75% the highest level of EU intervention is not available. It was also described as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity because in 2004 all the accession countries from eastern Europe, which had been behind the iron curtain for decades, would become part of the European Union. Lo and behold, in two rounds since 2001 Wales not only has qualified for such funding but has qualified because we are going backwards rather than forwards. Those Members who argue that public spending, Government intervention and the “Government know best” mentality are the way forward for the Welsh economy should seriously consider the impact of public spending on west Wales and the valleys.

I shall now take a final intervention from the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar.

[Mr MacNeil]

What the hon. Gentleman is describing in Wales is a symptom of picking winners; things cannot happen there organically. What is the difference between the EU accession states and Wales? What is the difference between Wales and the Republic Ireland, which used to be behind, but is now well ahead of Wales? The difference is that they have Governments who can make things happen organically within their nations, instead of having to join the “picking winners” line because of policies from another country’s capital that do not fit their needs.

[Guto Bebb]

Obviously, I do not accept most of the hon. Gentleman’s arguments; certainly, we should be careful about taking lessons from the Irish implosion. Ireland is probably one of the few countries to have a banking crisis even greater than ours. Many of the eastern European accession countries have managed to create vibrant economies by imposing low-tax regimes, and the whole of the UK should look carefully at those countries’ performance.

In the debate about whether we have a 50p, a 45p or a 40p tax rate, I remind Labour that it found the 40p tax rate completely acceptable for the vast majority of its 13 years in government. What is the purpose of income tax? That is a question that is often forgotten. Its purpose is not to bring down and punish the successful. If we believe in a more equal society, we want more money coming into the Exchequer, because that means we can do more to support the less well-off in society, but we have lost sight of that argument. If we reduce taxes and get more money coming into the Exchequer, that is something that should be welcomed. Time and again, it has been shown that when taxes are reduced, more often than not, the result is more economic activity and a greater success story.

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[Mr MacNeil]

How much does the hon. Gentleman want to raise council tax by and what else is on the agenda for the cuts commission of Johann Lamont?

[Mr Brown]

That really is a naive question, but it is not unexpected. I am not asking for a council tax increase; I am asking for local government in Scotland to be properly funded. It has to be properly funded. To do otherwise is a false idea, especially when it falls on the shoulders of the poorest.

If the SNP was serious about tackling inequality in Scotland, it would be using the tools of the Scottish Government, like our colleagues in Wales, to protect people from the worst of the Tories. Instead, it would rather not let Westminster, in the words of its Finance Secretary, off the hook. At no point in the debate have SNP Members explained why they think this is acceptable for the people of Scotland. I would only hope that if there are to be further contributions from their Benches, they will explain away some of the inaccuracies that they think are in my contribution.

[Lorely Burt (Solihull) (LD)]

As a Member of Parliament from Solihull, I would not dream of presuming to talk about the very specialised problems of other parts of the UK, but I hope that I have a word or two to say about fairness and inequality. What was unfair was inheriting a £160 billion deficit from the Labour party. I appreciate that it was not all the fault of Labour. The banking crash all started with a company called Lehman Brothers, which makes one wonder what might have happened if it had been called Lehman Sisters. I can blame Labour for failing to regulate banks properly for 13 years, and then having to bail them out with a £500 billion rescue package. I can also blame Labour for allowing welfare spending to spiral up by 20% when the economy was growing. That has made circumstances difficult for our coalition Government.

I am proud of what the coalition Government have succeeded in doing. We have cut the deficit by a third, with more coming from the better-off, I hasten to say. Our flagship policy of raising the tax threshold at which people start to pay tax to £10,000 has taken 2.7 million people out of tax altogether, of which 60% will be women.

[Mr MacNeil]

The hon. Lady says that more tax is coming from the better-off, which is true, but are the better-off not getting a far larger slice of the productivity pie than they have in years and decades past?

[Lorely Burt]

I am not entirely sure what the hon. Gentleman means by the productivity pie, but over the same period of time a millionaire would have paid over £300,000 more in tax under the coalition Government than under the previous Labour Government. In addition, 24 million people have had a tax cut of £700 or more. Those are good things. In addressing unfairness, we seek to ensure that those with the broadest shoulders bear the greatest burden of the tax. The coalition helped 900,000 people out of poverty altogether between 2010 and 2012, so when Labour Members talk about increasingly harmful circumstances, it should be pointed out that poverty increased under the Labour Government and has decreased under this Liberal Democrat and Conservative Government.

We have also helped the rich to be relieved of more than their fair share of tax by increasing capital gains tax and closing pension loopholes. No company now will review its tax arrangements without considering the general anti-avoidance rule that we have introduced, which helps focus the mind because it concentrates on the spirit in which tax is paid, as well the fact. Sticking strictly to the law is no longer an excuse for not paying a fair share of tax. Under Labour, capital gains tax was 18%. We have increased that to 28%.

We fully appreciate that households are under great pressure and we have taken steps to remedy that—for example, by abolishing Labour’s fuel duty escalator, so that when the average motorist fills up their tank, they are paying £7 less to do that. No one denies that it is still expensive, but we are doing what we can to help.

Liberal Democrats have made a big contribution on fairness. There is now free child care for all three and four-year-olds, as well as for 260,000 two-year-olds. For parents who have children in child care, we have a £1,200 tax break coming down the line. We have frozen council tax and helped local authorities to achieve that. The average family will be paying around £600 less today in council tax than would otherwise have been the case. There are now 494,000 more women in employment and 100,000 more women in self-employment, which is an encouraging step. We will be introducing free schools meals for five, six and seven-year-olds, and as I have already mentioned, 60% of the 2.7 million women on low pay will be taken out of tax altogether.

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[Mr Weir]

The hon. Gentleman is like a broken record. I have explained already, and have done so on numerous occasions, our objections to the energy price freeze. It is easy for Labour to say, “Let’s have an energy price freeze.” It sounds great and I am sure many people love to hear it; unfortunately, it simply will not happen. It will not lead to lower bills, it will freeze in the inequalities already in the system, and it will leave people with higher bills, while his party leader flails about trying to find some flesh to put on the bones of that policy.

[Mr MacNeil]

When Labour Members talk about an energy price freeze, are they not basically saying to the people, “Do you want your energy bills to go up before we announce the freeze and to go up again afterwards?” It is a total con, and they know that full well. It was done one weekend for a headline in a Sunday newspaper and they are sticking with it now. That is the long and the short of it.

[Mr Weir]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point.

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[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

I am glad, as an Englishman, finally to be allowed to enter into this debate, because the motion refers to the United Kingdom. It is a great honour to speak in this debate, because the nationalists appear to have a very clever plot, whereby they send their best and brightest people down to Westminster to make us realise how much we would miss them if they went independent. Since entering this House in 2010, I have become more and more pro-Union, simply because of the fantastic speeches we hear from nationalist Members.

Today was a model of its kind. The hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) gave an absolutely brilliant speech that started with the ancient history of Wales and had the House gripped by his every word. I was sorry that I could not hear the whole speech by the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil), as I had to go to European Committee A for a moment, but I was relieved that he was not too brief because there was so much to be said, and he was almost still speaking by the time the Committee ended.

The motion itself, however, though presented with panache and oratory, is fundamentally misplaced. It goes completely the wrong way about tackling issues of inequality because it argues fundamentally that we should all be impoverished. It is an argument that says that inequality is the important issue, not how prosperous people ought to be. It mentions the

“underlying trend of rising income inequality”

but the problem is that the point at which income inequality has been reduced has coincided with the recession. Yes, it is easy to reduce income inequality if we ruin the economy. If we make everybody poorer, we can all be poor—and perhaps happy—together. Actually, I think the British people will not be happy if they get poorer; they will be happier if they get richer. It is of no pleasure to me that during the recession, the income of the top decile of income receivers in the United Kingdom fell by 9%, and that of the bottom decile by 2.4%. Although it could be argued that the better off are making a bigger contribution than the worse off, I do not want to see anybody’s income decline. I want everybody’s income to increase, and that requires the economic policies that this Government have followed.

[Mr MacNeil]

As our state is getting wealthier and productivity is growing, does the hon. Gentleman agree that all should share in that, and that the rent seekers at the top end should not abuse their positions as CEOs or hedge fund managers and see their wealth grow by 60% to 80%, while over a decade the equivalent bottom 90% will see their wealth grow by only 17%?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

Where I disagree with the hon. Gentleman is when he fails to recognise what those very wealthy people do. By and large, hedge fund managers and corporate tycoons spend their money, and if they do not spend it they save it.

[Mr MacNeil]

They spend it on wine!

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

If they spent it on wine, that would help the French, rather more perhaps than the English, but that is slightly beside the point. They might spend it on whisky, which will help the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. If they spend money, they create employment and economic activity, and if they save it and put it in a bank, they provide the deposits against which banks can lend. One of the great problems of the banking crisis was that the loan-to-deposit ratio went way above 100%—I think the Royal Bank of Scotland got up to 135%. It is not practical for banks to lend when they are not taking in deposits, because they then become dependent on overnight money, which can be withdrawn much more easily, and has a tendency to be withdrawn more quickly than long-term stable deposits. When the income of the wealthy is saved, it is an economic good.

[Mr MacNeil]

Is the hon. Gentleman saying that before the crash the wealthy were not saving enough of their money and were perhaps squandering it in various ways, and that one of the main reasons for the crash was that the banks did not have enough deposits from the wealthy? Surely if it had been in everybody’s hands, it would have been in the banks.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman has taken one bit of what I have said and applied it incorrectly. It is uncharacteristic of him not to listen more carefully, and I will come on to the issue of spending cuts.

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[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

The IMF is not full of well-known leftists, but it does seem to be run, by and large, by the French, who have a very different understanding of economics, an absolutely rotten economy, and are the last people from whom I would take lessons. We will not in this Chamber go into the behaviour of the previous managing director—it would shock the viewers of the Parliament channel if they were to consider how Monsieur Strauss-Kahn had behaved. Anyway, I will not be told what to do by people who cannot behave.

I want to come back to the economic benefits of the spending and saving of the wealthy. That is what provides the employment and investment that leads to economic growth, and leads to the rising of living standards for the poorest in society. That is not done by the state. The state can indeed pass money around—it can reallocate money from pot A to pot B—but that does not increase the fundamental size of the pot. It merely reallocates what is already there, whereas the expenditure, saving and investment of individuals in the private sector grows the total amount that is available and therefore leads to cascading wealth.

This is where I must come on to the specific point in the motion calling on the Government

“to halt its further spending and welfare cuts”.

The spending cuts have been essential. The Government and the Chancellor of the Exchequer have been a model to other countries in how they have behaved. In a cross-partisan moment, I thank the Liberal Democrats for the role they have played. It must have been particularly difficult for them to take these tough decisions, having not been in government for so many generations and facing up to more serious responsibilities than parties in opposition sometimes have to deal with. I think they deserve a huge amount of credit for the support they have given to the Conservatives. Lots of economists, some of them quoted by the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar, were saying that it was the wrong thing to do. Even the IMF had to eat its words a year after saying that austerity was not the right thing to do. The IMF was wrong and the Government were right. Why was that?

First, when the Government came into office there was a risk that there would be a funding crisis. There was a risk that the Government would simply not be able to raise the money in the gilt market that they needed to pay for the services that the British people wished to receive. That was the first problem. The second problem was that Government expenditure and very high debt crowd out private sector activity. If the Government had not reduced spending, businesses would not have been able to have access to the capital they needed to begin the recovery. The third problem was that by taking money out of the economy, there was a general depression of economic activity as individuals and their families had less to spend throughout the economic spectrum. It was being taken out of productive capacity and used unproductively merely on a money merry-go-round of the state.

This is, again, where I like the fact that the coalition has raised the basic threshold of income tax. I share the ambition of my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt) that this should be increased. It is absolutely barmy to tax people on low incomes and then give them their own money back in benefits. Not only do we want to get it to £10,000, we want to get it to the point where people on the minimum wage are neither paying national insurance nor income tax.

[Mr MacNeil]

The hon. Gentleman is mainly making points about redistribution and I disagree with him on that. In one of the longest parts of my speech, I made a point on the living wage and the number of people who are now working poor. He mentioned the billionaires and rich people that we have in apparent abundance around the place. Should we not be seeing people at least earning a wage that means that they do not need to benefit from state welfare to top up the lack in their wages?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

The wages that people are paid in this country are set on an economically competitive basis, not just against what goes on in this country but on what goes on in the rest of the world. As a nation, we need to produce goods and services that people will buy. Then, when we have profitability and successful businesses that grow, there will be money to pay people more. We want more billionaires, because billionaires spend money. Who do we think are buying all these Rolls-Royces, Bentleys and Jaguars? In Portugal, the people buying them might be quite poor, because it has a special scheme where one can win a car if one buys a cup of coffee and makes the person selling the cup of coffee promise to pay tax, but outside Portugal—in China, India, America and the United Kingdom itself—the people who buy these luxury goods are those who are well off. We need those people to provide the good jobs.

I want to move on to the dead hand of welfare, as it appears that the feeling expressed by those on the Opposition Benches—particularly by the nationalists, although Labour is not a million miles away—is that if a Government take money and dish it out that helps people. I fundamentally disagree. I do not think that it is fair that people who do not work should be better off than people who do. Indeed, I think that is wrong. I do not think that it is fair that people should be trapped in poverty by decisions that the state makes.

One of the noblest things that this Government are doing is the reform of the welfare state. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) that if people are lifted out of state dependency, they can take charge of their lives and become prosperous. They can then contribute to the overall economy. If benefits are set too high and the percentage of its withdrawal is so high that there is no incentive to work, people are trapped.

[Mr MacNeil]

The hon. Gentleman will be aware of yesterday’s report on working poverty by the Archbishop of York. It showed that most of the people in receipt of benefits are working and the efforts people are making to earn a decent wage are not having an effect because they are not being paid properly. Let me ask the hon. Gentleman again: does he support efforts to ensure that people are paid properly so that companies are not subsidised by the state? In the United States of America, one of the biggest recipients of welfare is Walmart and we have different examples in this country.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

Once again, I am sorry to say that I disagree with the hon. Gentleman on that specific point. It is much preferable that the state should pay benefits to people who are working and being paid the economic rate for their job.

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[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. There must be fears that if the Bank of England goes on printing money, the printing presses will eventually wear out in an inflationary burst.

There is hope from the Opposition Benches. We heard that the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar supported the reduction in corporation tax in Scotland because he thought that it would produce more revenue, more business and more prosperity for Scotland. That is the vision of fairness and of reducing inequality that we should have. It is a vision in which people succeed through their own efforts rather than being trapped by the state; in which people prosper through their own efforts, rather than being held down by the state; and in which people contribute through their own efforts to the growth of the rest of society and the economy, rather than being prevented from doing so by the state and being left unproductive .

[Mr MacNeil]

The hon. Gentleman talks about the state as a malign influence, but does he accept that markets have their flaws and do not work properly? Influences and biases in the markets can conspire so that the CEO gets far more, in ratio with the pay at the bottom end, than at one time he used to whereas the people at the bottom end cannot even make a living wage. There are huge iniquities in the private sector and it is not all “State bad”. The hon. Gentleman should realise that the state can be good as well and there can be big problems in the private sector.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman and I are co-religionists, and if we are not careful we will start talking about original sin and the imperfectability of mankind. It is true, of course, that there is no perfect man-made system, and that would be an interesting debate for another day, but by and large the markets work better than state direction, which essentially re-circulates money that is created in the private sector. We need a flourishing private sector if we are to help people to improve their standard of living, their lives and their livelihoods, and if we are to take them out of this awful poverty trap. There is great nobility in what the Government are doing. They do not want unfairness; they want fairness for those people and families doing their bit for society, working hard and getting on, and they want to take away the clamping down, the closing down, the almost bankrupting of the country that was being done before.

For those reasons, I oppose the motion. It is fundamentally wrong-headed in all it seeks to do, and I hope the Government stick to their guns and carry on with economic and welfare policies that enable people to become better off through their own efforts.

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[Debbie Abrahams]

I will indeed. I also want to pay tribute to Oldham college, which has introduced its own system to ensure that people from the poorest backgrounds can still attend college without being financially penalised.

The Government are restricting access to justice through their legal aid changes. Inequalities are also being created through job insecurity resulting from zero-hours contracts. The swathe of policies that the Government have introduced have done nothing to reduce inequalities. On the Government’s so-called welfare reforms, I absolutely detest the divide and rule narrative that has been deliberately introduced in an attempt to vilify people receiving social security as the new undeserving poor. The pejorative language of “shirkers” and “scroungers” has been really disingenuous, and the Government are distorting statistics to try to prop up their welfare reforms. That is absolutely shameful.

Collectively, the impact of public spending cuts is significantly greater in deprived areas. Academic studies also show the relationship between public spending and, for example, life expectancy at birth. The immediate impact of these socio-economic inequalities on health inequalities is already showing. Following the 2008 recession, there was an increase in male suicides, with an additional 437 suicides registered in the UK in 2011, roughly mirroring the increase in unemployment. It will take time for health conditions such as cancer and heart disease to develop. There is always a time lag between such conditions and their immediate precursors. We also know that the protective, positive factors that can mitigate these negatives are being eroded.

[Mr MacNeil]

The hon. Lady is making a clear, thoughtful speech. She has touched on regulation, and on positive factors. Does she agree that one of the malign aspects of state regulation is the excessive regulation of trade unions, especially when the OECD has shown that strong trade unions can help to reduce inequalities? Does she also agree that this is one area in which the UK has definitely gone too far?

[Debbie Abrahams]

I am a trade unionist and I fully support trade unions.

On the current policy trajectory, the social pattern of health inequalities will continue. For example, the gap in life expectancy is set to increase, rather than decrease. In England, there is now a nine-year difference for men and a seven year difference for women. The Government’s indifference to inequality reflects their belief in the dated theory that reducing inequality reduces incentives and slows growth. That theory has had a number of iterations, but the converse has been shown to be the case. For example, Stiglitz produced evidence last year to show that inequality caused financial instability, undermined productivity and retarded growth.

The previous Labour Government did not get everything right, but I am proud that we achieved our targets on health inequalities. Our key successes were in achieving our objectives, first, to reduce health inequalities by 10% as measured by life expectancy at birth for men in spearhead areas, and, secondly, to narrow the gap in infant mortality by at least 10% between routine and manual socio-economic groups and the England average. That was quite a feat, and it has not been acknowledged by this Government. I am sure that the Minister will take an opportunity to mention it in his closing remarks. We did not get it right, but we are definitely moving in the right direction with the policy initiatives we have announced: strengthening the minimum wage; increasing support on child care; freezing energy bills; repealing the bedroom tax; providing support on business rates; and improving the quality of jobs.

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[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

The hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) brings to this House a wealth of experience and understanding from her previous work in the area of health, and I hope that the House listened carefully, as I did, to her comments about the interaction between differences in health and the perpetuation of inequality in our country. However, I did disagree with some points in her critique, which I shall discuss later; most importantly, there was an absence of a full understanding of the context in which this Government are taking actions to address fairness and inequality.

I, like many people, get somewhat concerned and uneasy when I hear politicians bandying around words such as “fairness”, “equality” or “inequality”. History has taught people that when politicians profess themselves in favour of fairness, they too often end up enriching themselves and those politicians who would rally people to the banner of equality too often end up repressing those same people once power has been given to them. So it was with some trepidation that I came to this debate, but the prospect of being able to listen to perspectives on those issues from Members of this Parliament from different parts of the UK attracted me, and I have not been disappointed, either by the opening speech or by those of other hon. Members.

Judgments about what is fair or not fair, or about the balance between equality and inequality, are best left to individuals and families. People are perfectly capable of making those decisions based on what they have learned from their parents and grandparents, on what they have been taught in school or, perhaps, on the lessons they have learned in their church, synagogue, mosque or temple. Politicians fall rather low down the list of people who can be persuasive on those topics. Nevertheless, we shall battle forth.

[Mr MacNeil]

I do not disagree in any way, shape or form that people can make assessments about what is iniquitous or unfair, but the hon. Gentleman needs to go further down the road, because when people see inequity and unfairness they do not have the power to do anything about it. That is when this place and national Parliaments around the world have to regulate, reform things and so on to make sure we have the situation we had after world war two: a better settlement for the greatest breadth of citizenry.

[Richard Fuller]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that helpful intervention. Let us assess the ability of Government today to fulfil that positive role. One of the most important aspects of fairness is the future that we bequeath to our children and grandchildren. It is a natural aspect of human behaviour to want to give the best start in life to our children and grandchildren. One of the worst aspects of the context in which we are operating today, as a Government and as a Parliament, is that under the previous Government, we built up the most significant amount of debt to pass on to our children and grandchildren. One of the most important aspects of what the Opposition call the cost of living crisis—my constituents think of it as trying to meet the family budget—is the debt that was left by the previous Government for this Government to deal with.

The Opposition like to talk about the level of Government debt at that time, but a Chancellor of the Exchequer is custodian not just of part of the economy but of the entire economy, and, before he makes a decision, he has to look at the strength of the economy. It is an incontrovertible fact that the level of indebtedness of this country in 1995—Government debt, household debt and corporate debt—was about two times the size of the economy, and when the Labour party left office, it was five times the size of the economy. We do not need to have a credit card to know that we have to pay off all that debt, and not just part of it.

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[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I certainly understand the motion’s sentiments. When I looked through it, several things came to my attention—income inequality, the impact on low and middle income families, the number of workers on the minimum wage and zero-hours contracts, people in working poverty, the sharp rise in the number of people using food banks, and welfare cuts. I very much understand and would want to speak about all those points in the motion.

At the same time, I do not totally agree with my colleagues in Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National party about their wish to break up the Union. As a committed Unionist who sees the importance of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, I want the four regions of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to be together as one nation—one nationhood together—under the Union flag. I cannot agree with them about that, but I honestly have real affection, as they know, for each and every one of them. I want to see them in this Chamber after the referendum in Scotland and the one, whenever it is—perhaps a decade or two away—in Wales.

[Mr MacNeil]

I want to make sure that the hon. Gentleman fully understands that the hand of friendship is there: whenever he wants to visit Scotland after independence, I will personally make sure that he is made very welcome.

[Jim Shannon]

I knew that there would always be a welcome for me in the hillsides. It is a real pleasure to know that the hon. Gentleman would do that.

Any hon. Member who works in their constituency will have come across the problems that people face, but I know that a lot is being done to combat those problems in many Departments, as should be noted. Perhaps full credit has not been given to the Government of the day for the economic turnaround that we have had. It is only fair to say that, and I want to put it on the record. I know that much blame passes from side to side in this Chamber about why we are where we are. My friends on the Government Benches point to the legacy left by the previous Government that is still being felt, and my friends on the Opposition Benches mention the austerity cuts and decisions that have been taken, but we in the middle are simply saying, “Let’s forget the blame, and focus on how we can make things better for our constituents and our country.”

I am conscious that the debate is about fairness and inequality, which of course relate to many spheres of life. It was only fair, because the best team won, when Ireland beat Scotland 28-6. As for inequality, we saw an example of it when Ireland, the better team, beat Wales 26-3, an indication of skill and experience. Fairness and inequality therefore go into many things, and that is just one of them.

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[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

Inequality is one of the great political scandals of our age, and it is important that we have had a chance to debate the subject at length today. I have been somewhat disappointed, however, at how few speeches there have been from Government Members. Nevertheless, what we have lacked in quantity we have made up for in quality, with a number of substantial and considered speeches from both sides.

Over the past three decades, the gap between the rich and the poor in our society and elsewhere has grown exponentially. The rewards of economic growth have become increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small minority, while those in the lower half of the income spectrum are being increasingly deprived of the just rewards for their efforts. We on these Benches have made the case that inequality, on the scale that we see in the UK and internationally, is bad for all of us. It is in no one’s interest to have a society that is so divided by extremes of income and so damaged by social deprivation, but it is especially bad for those people who find themselves trapped on low incomes and who have seen their spending power and social mobility reduced dramatically over the past 25 years.

We have had a wide-ranging debate today. It has tackled issues as diverse as land ownership, fuel poverty, health inequalities, taxation and social policy, as well as a range of other disparate policy issues that would normally be debated separately. All those topics have been underpinned by the issue of economic inequality and the income gap that has grown so wide over recent decades. We have argued that inequality is not inevitable, and that it is a political choice. The Government have at their disposal the fiscal levers to enable progressive and more redistributive measures, but in recent times we have seen tax and benefit policies that have allowed the gulf between the haves and the have-nots to widen. A number of hon. Members have pointed out that the impact of the tax and benefit changes has fallen disproportionately on those in the lower half of the income distribution, particularly those in the lowest quintile, who have paid the highest price for economic austerity.

[Mr MacNeil]

It is important to bear in mind that redistribution applies not only after tax but before tax. In regard to productivity gains, we need to ensure that people get a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.

[Dr Whiteford]

My hon. Friend makes a useful point.

It is also important to note that those fiscal levers are not the only tools at the Government’s disposal for tackling inequality. Addressing the underlying drivers of wage inequality requires sustained effort and a fresh mindset about the policy choices that we can make to further a more equitable model of economic growth and to build a fairer, more inclusive and less divided society.

My hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) outlined some of the positive ways in which equitable growth could be pursued in Wales. He opened the debate by drawing our attention to the geographical distribution of inequality across the UK, and argued convincingly that while much of Government policy was oriented towards the needs of London and its surrounds, the consequences of that for the other nations and regions of the UK could be dire. Many of us have paid a heavy price for London’s prosperity.

It is notable that, with a few honourable exceptions, the speakers in today’s debate have come from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Perhaps that shows how seriously the issue of inequality—which is distinct from, but related to, poverty—is taken in these islands. It is obviously a pertinent issue in the context of Scotland’s referendum later this year, as we weigh up the two futures that are opening up before us and consider not only the benefits of making policy decisions based on our own values and aspirations but the uncertain consequences of continuing along the path that the UK seems determined to follow, with wealth and opportunity being increasingly concentrated among a small elite.