Fuel Prices and the Cost of Living

Baroness Keeley Excerpts

Wednesday 16th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Fiona O’Donnell (East Lothian) (Lab)]

I am genuinely grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate. The increase in VAT has been a matter of great concern to my constituents and I am unashamedly going to concentrate on how it is affecting them.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way, as the Minister did not. The Minister talked about living in the real world, but I am sure that we on the Opposition Benches know more about that than she does. I am sure that my hon. Friend’s constituents will be struggling with the £450 a year increase—

[Justine Greening]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. The hon. Lady has just made an accusation about what I do or do not know about living in the real world. That goes beyond what I think is a personal comment. She has no understanding of what I do or do not understand. I can assure her that I get on the District line every day to come into work and I know exactly what is going on in the real world. I only wish that the Opposition did.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Murray]

I would like to make some progress.

My constituents wrote to ask me to bring their stories to the House and put them directly to the Chancellor and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, so I am disappointed that neither of them is in their place. It shows a real disregard for this place when those two senior Ministers are not present to debate such an important issue. Of course the two Ministers on the Treasury Bench are among my favourites, but it would have been nice for my constituents to have had a response directly from the horse’s mouth.

Let us examine what fuel price rises are doing to the cost of living. I shall start with the case of a constituent in Edinburgh South who runs a small business. Let us look at what these particular fuel increases are doing to growth in the economy; in so doing, I shall echo some of the points made by the hon. Member for Worcester. My constituent runs a business in the service sector, so she uses a lot of suppliers. However, suppliers’ price increases are going through the roof, mainly because of additional fuel costs. She told me that some of her suppliers were charging as much as an additional £5 per delivery to cover their own increased fuel charges. My constituent faces a dilemma of what to do about that £5 increase. Should she pass it on to her customers? She finds doing so difficult. Why? Her problem is compounded by the fact that VAT has increased from 17.5% to 20%, which has also impacted directly on prices to her customers.

[Barbara Keeley]

My hon. Friend makes the important point that this debate is about the cost of living, as well as about fuel prices. He also rightly raises the problem faced by businesses in deciding whether to pass the increases on to their customers. My constituents live in one of the 15 most deprived areas in the country. They have an appalling bus service after the network was privatised by the Conservatives. People in that situation, like my hon. Friend’s constituents, will suffer both from increased costs from fuel charges and from having to pay £450 a year in increased VAT. Does he agree that our constituents are suffering heinously from that?

[Ian Murray]

Of course. The poorest suffer disproportionately because they have to use public transport and face the increased costs, while also having to pay more in VAT for all the supplies they buy. Prices are going up because small business issues, such as the one I am highlighting from my constituency, further compound the problem. I noticed that the Economic Secretary was upset when my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) suggested that she did not live in the real world, but we are talking about what is happening in the real world and I do not think that the Minister’s 40-minute contribution dealt with any of the real issues for our constituents that are happening at the coal face.

The owner of the small business that I mentioned is faced with a dilemma, but it seems that she must increase prices at a time when consumer confidence is at its lowest. People are worried about their jobs, they are worried about prices going through the roof, they are worried about commodity prices, and they are worried about how they are to fill up the family car. It is a quadruple whammy for businesses, which, as I have explained, face increased core costs as well as increased supplier costs, increased prices owing to the VAT rise, and increased borrowing costs. All that is creating unstable consumer demand, which, I am told by small firms in my constituency, is depressing their businesses.

On Friday I was visited by someone who works as a middle manager at Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. He has two small children, he is not a high earner by any means, and he and his wife live in my constituency. He described to me plainly how he has been affected by what the Government have done in the past 10 months. It is clear that he is being squeezed from all angles because of this Government, and fuel and the cost of living are part of that. Let me go through the list. He faces increased national insurance contributions, the increase in VAT to 20%, and the fact that his pension will be linked to the consumer prices index rather than the retail prices index, along with the additional pension contributions that he must make. He faces tuition fees for his children, he has lost his child benefit because he is the sole earner in the relevant bracket, and he faces record commodity prices.