Unemployment

Debate between Anne Main and Albert Owen

Wednesday 14th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

I shall take no interventions, given the need for brevity. I share the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Oliver Heald) that Labour Members seem to have collective amnesia about exactly how much they frittered away during the prosperous times for this nation and that they now claim that only they know how to fix it.

I am amazed that that flexible old chestnut, the bankers’ bonus, has been wheeled out yet again as a way of solving all the ills. This is from a party that did not tackle bankers’ bonuses in the good times, when there were plenty to tackle, and seems to have found them now as a cash cow that can be used many times—this is the sixth or seventh time the Opposition have proposed using that source of finance. They did not tackle bonuses then, yet they did abolish the 10% tax rate, which they seem to have forgotten about. Many women and low-paid workers were on that tax rate. Indeed, when I was knocking on doors during the 2010 election, many people told me that after that rate was removed it was hardly worth them working. There are still people caught in that trap, which the Opposition have collectively forgotten about.

The Labour party has also collectively forgotten that companies have been disadvantaged by the regulations it put in place. For example, Bombardier could not competitively tender because of the regulations that Labour put in print, which resulted in job losses. Unfortunately, it also presided over the lowest number of social house starts for decades. I read with interest that it now proposes building 25,000 affordable homes—again using the bankers’ bonuses—but with no new funding of the sort that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Local Government has rolled out. At least this Government are making new funding available, rather than relying on the ever-flexible bankers’ bonus.

[Albert Owen]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Mrs Main]

No, I shall not give way.

I am also amazed that the Labour party, while talking about wanting to attack bankers’ bonuses, was so lacking in its support for what our Prime Minister had to do last week, which was to defend London against being raided by the European Union. They do not seem to want to do that either. I can tell Opposition Members that many bankers and wealth generators in the City would otherwise have upped sticks and gone, and there would be no bonuses for them to use in this flexible way.

Labour Members are asking us today to believe their statistics—this from a party that spectacularly underestimated the number of people who would come to the UK through its failed immigration policy at only 5,000. If they looked back at the figures, they would see that they completely underestimated the number of people who chose to come to Britain to work, so I have little faith in the statistics they regularly wheel out. They left us with the highest number of workless households in Europe and only now are coming up with ideas on how to fix that. It bears no credibility. They propose spending bankers’ bonuses multiple times and have few other ideas on how to fix the failed and broken economy that we inherited. They left this Government the note stating that they had spent all the money, but they had in fact mortgaged it. They mortgaged the future of many young people in this country.

I have only a few seconds remaining. If the Government were not taking these tough choices, more and more young people would be looking forward to a fruitless future without hope of social housing or affordable housing, because, unlike this Government, the Opposition had no appetite when in government to tackle the problems, and now they carp from the sidelines and apparently come up with solutions to fix the problems they created.