Amendment of the Law

Anne McGuire Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Vaizey]

Oh, it was the Budget book. It looked like an iPad cover. Forgive me; I keep mistaking the hon. Gentleman for somebody who is on top of new technology. We have not yet decided where the aviation centre will be sited, and it may not even be in one place. It may be sited in two or three different areas.

To become Europe’s technology hub, we need world-leading digital infrastructure. The average broadband speed in the UK is already 7.5 megabits a second. In Northern Ireland, almost all the population have superfast broadband, and in England almost two thirds of the population do. In England, Northern Ireland and Wales, roughly three quarters of the population now have broadband. UK broadband coverage is in fact almost universal, with 91% of the country having access to speeds above 2 megabits a second, putting us in the top 20 countries worldwide. We are far ahead of many countries, including Morocco, where only one in 10 of the population have access to fixed-line broadband.

We have come a long way, but we need to go further. We are already investing £530 million in rural broadband, which will deliver superfast broadband to 90% of the country by 2015, two years earlier than Labour planned. More than half of our local broadband projects have been approved, and all will be approved by the end of this year. Procurement for some projects will proceed in the next few months.

[Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

Would the Minister like to come to the village of Balquhidder in my constituency and tell people that they might be better off living in Morocco? I see that the Chief Secretary is trying to tell him where Balquhidder is. In that village people still have dial-up, not even slow broadband, never mind fast or superfast broadband.

[Mr Vaizey]

First, that is why we are spending the money that we are, and secondly, we are working in partnership with the Scottish Government, so the right hon. Lady should have a word with them if she wants to put her constituency at the forefront of broadband roll-out in Scotland.

We will have provided universal coverage by 2015 without Labour’s telephone tax, which in any event would not have raised sufficient money to do the job. Not only do we have the most ambitious rural broadband programme, but the Chancellor announced in the Budget new measures to upgrade the coverage in our cities. The UK’s four capitals, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Newcastle, Leeds and Bradford will share a £100 million pot to ensure that they are among the best-connected cities in the world.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

During the Minister’s opening speech, I asked him about a community, running along one of the spiral routes in my constituency, which still has dial-up—or wind-up—broadband. If I did not mistake him, I think he advised me to speak to the Scottish Parliament, but I find that a somewhat strange response, because the Red Book mentions a Scottish trunk road, the A82. Coincidentally, that happens to run through the constituency of the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the right hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Danny Alexander). It is interesting that, if someone is the apologist in Scotland for this Government, they need to get their trunk roads mentioned in the Red Book.

Prior to the Budget and against the background in my constituency of unemployment among women and young people that was falling in 2010, and a dramatic increase in the claimant count of 35% in young people and of about 22% in women in 2012, I conducted a survey to see whether there was any advice that the Government could take on board. It suggests that my constituents are completely out of tune with the Budget, because 93% said that it was a good idea to have a tax on bankers’ bonuses to fund employment for young people in Stirling and throughout the UK; 85% agreed with a temporary reduction in VAT on the tourism and hospitality sector, an important industry in my constituency; and 87% supported a one-year reduction in national insurance contributions to give every small firm on my patch the incentive to take on extra workers. There was no mention of the reduction of the 50p rate for those earning £150,000, no mention of a raid on the age allowance for those of state pension age—a measure that has been in place since the 1920s—and certainly no mention of the so-called pie tax.

The latter proposal crystallises the chaotic thinking at the centre of the Government’s financial strategy. It must have sounded like a jolly wheeze—“We’ll tax pies and rotisserie chickens and so on”—but I have an image of us all wandering round Tesco doing our shopping with thermometers in our hands to check the ambient temperature of the chicken from the rotisserie. Will the VAT be put on to the chicken when I take it out of the hot cupboard, or will I find when I get to the checkout, having wheeled my trolley around the supermarket, cooling the chicken with the soft winds of Tesco or Sainsbury’s, that it has become a cold chicken, which means that the VAT will not be charged? This does not apply only to supermarkets. My hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex) tells me that yesterday or the day before he went into a bakery shop in Callander in my constituency and got bread rolls. It is a very good bakery shop called Mhor Bread. In future, he might have to ask the person behind the counter, “Can you wait until the bread rolls cool down because I don’t want to pay 20% more for them?”

It is a mish-mash of a policy. However, I will try to give the Government some comfort and save Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs tens of thousands of pounds on the consultation by pointing out that the European Court has already ruled on this issue by saying that where the level of service is minimal, the purchase should be considered as a simple food sale and not be subject to extra tax. I ask the Minister and the Government to abandon this foolish, mish-mash piece of financial thinking. It did not make sense when the Chancellor said it last Wednesday, it does not make sense tonight, and it will not make sense when hundreds and thousands of us roll our trolleys around supermarkets to cool down the chickens.