Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I am a low-tax Conservative as well, and I hope that I am in good company on the Government side of the House. We have made reductions in tax. The small companies tax rate was due to go up to 22% under the Budget plans voted on by the Labour party, but we have reversed that and reduced it to 20%. We are now of course bringing the main headline rate of corporation tax down to 20% as well, and getting rid of the complicated taper. That is all further evidence to support the ambition of reducing marginal tax rates for businesses.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Could the Chancellor and I make a deal that I will start to welcome any measure of improvement in the economy if he stops blaming the whole economic world meltdown on the previous Labour Government?

On small businesses, many people find crowdfunding and crowdsourcing a real way to start businesses and get the finance to do it; women, in particular, are coming through that route. Will he meet an all-party group of MPs to talk about the proposed regulation of crowdfunding so that we do not strangle a rather nice baby at birth?

[Mr Osborne]

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman welcomes the better news. Indeed, I think that unemployment in his constituency has fallen by 20%, which is further good news. It is the first time in years that I have heard him try to defend the record of the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown): since he is not here, the hon. Gentleman has to do it for him.

The point that the hon. Gentleman makes about crowdsourcing is a serious one. We are looking at this new market and at what, if anything, the Government should do to support it. It is of course growing without Government support, but we are actively looking at it, and I would very happily consider any positive suggestions he has on what more we can do to support crowdfunding.

Pub Companies

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Tuesday 21st January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Toby Perkins]

Of course I welcome anyone taking a positive step in what is an incredibly difficult climate. At a time when there are so many pressures on pubs— 26 are now closing each week—anyone who is able to buck that trend will have our wholehearted support.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am possibly the only Member in the House who owns a pub. I am the chair of the John Clare Trust, which has bought the Exeter Arms, where Clare and his father used to sing and play. Unfortunately, it is closed at the moment, but we are determined to reopen it as a community pub.

[Toby Perkins]

I almost got carried away there, then my hon. Friend announced that his pub was in fact closed. However, the fact that his determination and vigour will ensure that it soon reopens gives us all a sense of enthusiasm and excitement.

My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray), a former Enterprise Inns landlord himself, will have the honour of winding up the debate. I also want to salute the many other hon. Members who are here today and who have previously raised this issue in debates here or in the press, or joined campaigns in their communities to highlight the problems caused by aggressive pub company behaviour.

In September 2011, the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee’s fourth review of pub companies finally settled on the view that only a statutory code with a mandatory rent-only option would put the pubco relationship on a fairer footing. I was therefore disappointed by the suggestion in today’s Government amendment that Labour should have regulated this issue before. The Government will know that it was precisely because the Select Committee wanted to give the pubcos time to get their house in order that they were given a final chance in 2010, with a timetable that the Secretary of State supported when he first came into office.

--- Later in debate ---

[Vince Cable]

I have not seen those comments by the Office of Fair Trading, but I will certainly look for them. I am rather surprised by them because the whole purpose of that option is to increase competition and market forces. If my hon. Friend could send me the details, I would be interested to see the response of the competition authorities.

[Mr Sheerman]

As I own a pub, I have a great interest in this debate; I am chair of the John Clare Trust and we will be bringing this pub back to life through crowdfunding. The Secretary of State might not have control of the Budget, but he knows that there is a consultation on crowdfunding regulation. If we get that regulation wrong, it will stop a lot of community enterprises funding themselves, so will he ensure that it is appropriate?

[Vince Cable]

I am well aware of the importance of crowdfunding, and the hon. Gentleman might have followed the progress of the business bank, which is now actively engaged in, and supporting, crowdfunding, certainly through the peer-to-peer lending streams. I am aware of the issues with the regulation. Some incumbents, understandably, want their industry regulated, but we need to balance that against the fact that new companies coming into the industry might be less enthusiastic about regulation. Incumbents such as Funding Circle have made a very good case for sensible, moderate regulation.

Let me move on. As I said, we have had four Select Committee investigations into whether the tied model is at the root of the unfairness in the relationship. We have received an enormous amount of correspondence, quite apart from that received from the various action groups, from tenants about problems in their relationships with pub companies and from MPs. The response I have had in the past 10 to 15 minutes shows how widespread such concerns are.

Although pub-owning companies can and sometimes do treat their tenants well, the overall sense from those representations is that the tie arrangements with the pub-owning companies are unfair and that a lack of transparency causes a severe imbalance of negotiating power. That is the essence of the problem. There is an issue about what exactly we should do about it, which is what we are consulting on, but there is no doubt about the problems.

It has also been very clear from the discussions led by the Select Committee over the years that the problem is not so much the tied business model but the unfairness with which it operates. There is quite a lot of debate about the evidence on the speed of closures and how they operate in the tied sector and the non-tied sector. My understanding is that there has been a fairly steady rate of decline, from some 70,000 pubs in 1980 to 50,000 today. Depressingly, that is something in the order of 18 a week net. That decline has continued even after some of the big changes that have taken place in the industry—from the beer orders to pub company consolidation. I know that there is a debate among campaigners about whether tied pubs are more likely to close than pubs that are free of tie, but the evidence I have seen goes both ways. This is not fundamentally an argument about pub closures; it is essentially about the unfairness of and inequalities in the relationship.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Murphy]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The purpose of this debate is not to argue for or against the proposals, because last year the Secretary of State said that he agreed with them. He said that he did not believe in the voluntary system and that a proper system of regulation was needed, and I believe he genuinely believes that. He represents moderation in the Cabinet and, some might argue, social democracy.

[Mr Sheerman]

And sanity.

[Paul Murphy]

Indeed. In which case he would be opposed to the big energy companies, the shenanigans of the bankers and—I believe that he is—the way the pub companies operate, which is to the detriment of the small and medium-sized enterprises that are our pubs. I therefore think that he is on our side.

However, I know from my years in government that things can be delayed for other reasons, even if Ministers pretend that it is because the consultation exercise is too big to handle. I think that the Secretary of State is meeting opposition from Cabinet colleagues, maybe from the Treasury and maybe from the top. The consultation ended months ago and the timetable is now tight, and I do not believe for one second that the delay is being caused by anything other than Government disagreement, whoever it is from.

The longer the delay continues, the greater the damage to public houses in our communities. Some 26 pubs a week are closing. The pub companies themselves have caused thousands upon thousands to close. Some of those closed pubs have now been taken over by big companies and turned into shops—I think Tesco has taken over 130 in the past few months. When we bear in mind the importance of pubs to our communities, we realise that the longer the delay continues, the worse the situation will get.

The Secretary of State has the power to change that. He could persuade his colleagues—that is where the problem is coming from—on how to change those things. Unless he does so, all the promises that he was forced to make last year, which I believe he thinks are right, will come to nought.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

It comes almost as a surprise to me to speak in this debate. First, I am a member of the Methodist Church and we have a long tradition of not being very keen on drinking, although we have modernised a bit since those days. As I said in an intervention, I also own a pub as chairman of the John Clare Trust, because we bought the Exeter Arms in Helpston. It is temporarily closed while we finance what we call an omni-hub in the village, which will meet the needs of the local community and the overall educational purposes of the trust. A journalist said to me the other week, “You must be the only MP who owns both a church and a pub.” Funnily enough, the church in Norwood Green in Halifax, where we have an environmental body, has a strict codicil that states we cannot serve alcohol. It is an interesting world we live in.

May I remind the House of a bit of history? I support the motion today. I do not say that in a partisan way because there is so much agreement about the need for action. I shall support it not only because the Whips will tell me to, but because it is about time we had some action. I think there is a majority in this House for action on the situation of the many people in tied houses. When we took over the Exeter Arms, having negotiated a reasonable price with Enterprise Inns, there had been a succession of tenants who just could not make it work while having to pay premium prices for beer and everything else. They had to pay if they introduced new varieties of food and for all the gaming machines—I did not realise the tie could take a lot of that as well. Many people had found it very difficult to make a go of that pub, and they need a new and fair deal.

[Sir Tony Cunningham (Workington) (Lab)]

I do not want to miss the point because the whole essence of this debate is about fairness. We should always remember that word—fairness—because it has been absent for a very long time in that relationship.

[Mr Sheerman]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right and I was about to make that point. Let us look at the history. I have been in the House quite a long time and I remember what seemed to be a dramatic change when Lord Young of Graffham, then Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, cut up the industry, and the link between brewers that cared about their pubs and the pub estate was broken. That was done perhaps with the best intentions, but the unintended consequence was that people who had a tradition of brewing and who loved beer and their pub outlets were cut out of that relationship. The Conservative Government at that time—I am not being too rancorous about this—created unintended consequences that severely damaged brewing and the pubs of this country.

[Greg Mulholland]

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that that was an unintended consequence of the change, but organisations—particularly CAMRA at the time—said that there had to be a limit for all companies, including stand-alone pub companies, but that was not included because of industry lobbying. That led to the disaster that created the stand-alone pubcos and it is why the Government must now intervene to put that right.

[Mr Sheerman]

I agree, but we cannot get away from the fact that, as I see it, the whole brewing industry and the pub estates have been taken over by money men and women who are interested mainly in the return they can get on the estate and do not have a real love of the sector, brewing, beer and the leisure industry generally. I get the impression that the people who own most of the pubs in our country are not those who love the sector, and they are out to screw as much money and profit from it as they can. Some of them, because they made unwise takeover investments at a particular time, have become very ruthless indeed, although I shall not dwell on that.

The hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) made a very good speech, but one thing I feel strongly about as a long-term campaigner against smoking is the myth that banning smoking in pubs damaged trade. I do not think it did. I think it opened pubs to a broader audience of people who wanted to go out but not to finish the evening stinking of tobacco. That is the only thing I disagree with the hon. Gentleman about.

Hon. Members are sometimes cosy about the pub trade and defend it. I love the pubs in my constituency—I do not go to all of them, but there are some wonderful ones. We have some fine history, too, like the Luddite trail in Huddersfield. At the time of the Luddites, people could not belong to a political society or trade union. The only place they could meet—it was a secret society—was in pubs. People still go to many of the pubs that the Luddites conspired in, which is a lovely bit of history. The Exeter Arms in Helpston is the pub where John Clare played the fiddle—he was taught by Gypsies—and sang with his father, who was also a farm labourer. That is the wonderful history of Helpston. John Clare also worked as the pot man at the Blue Bell Inn to make ends meet.

There is history, but the industry, like any other, must be up to date. Many people stopped going to pubs because they did not keep up to date. The hon. Member for East Hampshire mentioned men going home from work and drinking a lot of beer every night. That has gone. The pub trade should keep up by providing good food and a good selection of drinks—I drink wine, but not much beer. Pubs should have well trained people serving. The skills training in the pub trade is very poor. I care very much about high-quality skills in every sector, but there is too little high-quality training of pub staff. I have found that there is very little training in pub management. Many who have a go at running a pub have never been trained to manage anything, which is a recipe for disaster. We need an industry with training at its core and with 21st century skills.

We also need a diverse community of pubs. One of the first social enterprises I started as a young councillor was a folk club for young people in a Welsh village. Pubs playing the relevant music for the area are an amazing draw. People go to pubs to have fun and a good time. If they cannot have fun and a good time in a pub, what is its purpose? A good time means different things for different parts of the community. The pubs mentioned by the hon. Member for East Hampshire reminded me of Roger Davies, a well known singer-songwriter from Brighouse in West Yorkshire, who strung together the names of all the pubs in his area in a glorious song.

Pubs have to upgrade. Back in the day, someone went into a pub in Rochdale after reading a sign saying, “Pie, pint and a friendly word.” He gets a pint, which is not very good, and his pie. He says to the landlord, “Where’s the friendly word?” The landlord leans in and says, “Don’t eat the pie.” I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) was not in the Chamber to hear that, because that is too often the image of the pub. I love CAMRA and my local CAMRA organisation, but it sometimes puts people off. There is sometimes a stand-off in CAMRA pubs. There are only men, many wearing beards and dressed in a particular way. They sometimes make going to the pub a little bit too much of a minority leisure activity, which can be damaging.

The future of pubs is at the heart of the community, doing all sorts of things they have never done before. They could have crowdfunding centres, educational facilities for elderly and young people, and a range of activities, so that they are a hub in a broader sense than anyone has managed to achieve so far. I chair the Westminster forum on crowdfunding. Crowdfunding through CrowdPatch can turn a community around. Where better for such activity than the pub?

I commend the Opposition motion only because I want action. However, I want the trade and the pub industry to come up to date and do exciting and innovative things.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Sheerman]

As my pub is soon to be crowdsourced, the hon. Lady can become a member.

[Jenny Willott]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on giving probably the best plug to his business, which has been mentioned four or five times in today’s debate—crowdsourcing will clearly not be a problem from now on.

A number of Members who have spoken have previously worked in the licensed trade, so they have been speaking from knowledge not only as constituency Members but as former licensees and so on, which has lent weight to the debate. My thanks go to the members of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee and their Chair, the hon. Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey). He and his predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire (Sir Peter Luff), have done crucial work over the years to raise awareness of this issue. I congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Northampton South (Mr Binley) and for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) on their tireless work over a number of years.

Finally, I thank the wide range of people who responded to the Government’s consultation, including tenants, brewers, pub companies and their employees, interest groups, trade bodies, supply chain companies and consumers. Indeed, a number of Members from all parts of the House also submitted their views.

We have heard a number of stories from Members whose constituents are facing real hardship and adversity, which is clearly worrying. In his opening remarks, the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) name-checked a large number of pubs that have been mentioned in previous debates, so I will not do the same. I would, however, like to highlight some of the Members who have given a passionate defence of pubs: my hon. Friends the Members for Leeds North West, for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) and for Norwich North (Chloe Smith), the hon. Member for Huddersfield, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Sir Andrew Stunell), the hon. Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones), my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson), the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) and my hon. Friends the Members for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) and for Burton (Andrew Griffiths). That illustrates how important pubs are to a diverse range of communities across the UK. The constituencies about which Members have spoken today range from the urban to the rural and have very different issues, and that shows just how important pubs are.

As many Members have mentioned, over the course of a decade there have been four Select Committee investigations into the relationship between pub companies and their tenants and into whether a tied model causes an imbalance in bargaining power. The Government have received a large amount of correspondence from tenants about problems in their relationship with their pub company as well as from many hon. Members writing on behalf of constituents.

Although many pub companies behave well and some tenants have written in support of the tie, many others tell us that the tie arrangements with their pub companies are unfair and that a lack of transparency in particular causes a severe imbalance in negotiating power. Another issue that has been highlighted during today’s debate is the research commissioned by CAMRA based on self-reported income, showing that more than half of tied tenants earn less than £10,000 a year compared with only a quarter of those who are free of tie. The problems faced by tenants are real and clearly something needs to be done.

The Government consulted on the creation of a statutory code of practice to govern the relationship between large pub companies and their tenants and of an independent adjudicator to enforce the code. As a number of Members have highlighted, the proposals would represent a real step change for the industry, offering tenants the protection of a code of practice enshrined in statute and an independent and reliable body to which they could turn for assistance—[Interruption.]

The proposed code has at its core two important principles: the principle of fair dealing and the principle that a tied tenant should be no worse off—[Interruption.]

Banking

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Leslie]

I am not sure that the hon. Gentleman has alighted on the best criticism of the fact that we are having an Opposition debate today on the failures in the banking sector. He is a bit off message because he at least admits that it was the banks that got us into the economic catastrophe in the first place. That is slightly off the script that Ministers usually use.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend agree not only that this is a good day to have this debate, but that most of the people in Huddersfield, whom I represent, and in this country cannot understand the culture of bonuses for bankers? These people have failed us and have failed small businesses and start-ups, and yet they have a bonus culture that is unlike anything else in the country.

[Chris Leslie]

My hon. Friend is right to speak of the anger that his constituents feel. While many of his constituents and mine are struggling with the cost of living crisis, what has been the Chancellor’s response to the concerns about, and the evidence of, excessive pay? Does the Chancellor regret the millionaires’ tax cut or missing another year of the bankers’ bonus tax? Does he reflect on the outrage among the public, which my hon. Friend has expressed, who want leadership in tackling such brazen rewards? No; the response of the Chancellor of the Exchequer is to oppose even the most basic transparency, which would let shareholders know about bankers who are paid more than £1 million, and to oppose any action in the UK to tackle the excessive bonus culture.

The Chancellor’s response to public concern was to travel to Brussels in September last year to oppose Europe-wide moves to limit bonus payouts to no more than 100% of salary levels for those who are on £400,000 or more, unless there is approval from shareholders. The Chancellor continues to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds in legal fees to fight that new EU rule tooth and nail, even though it has only just come into force.

Crowdfunding and the FCA

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Wednesday 18th December 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

It came as a slightly early Christmas present to learn that I had managed to secure a debate on crowdfunding and crowdsourcing, and the implications for the Financial Conduct Authority’s current inquiry into the regulation, or the possible need for regulation, of crowdfunding.

I came to crowdfunding in a rather peculiar way. I kept hearing people talking about it, and I am a serial and committed social entrepreneur. In fact, the other day a journalist said that I must be one of the few MPs who own a church, a poet’s house and a pub, all through trusts, foundations or charities that I chair.

As I say, I am a social entrepreneur and social entrepreneurs always want money. I do not mind asking rich people, big corporations, trusts and foundations for money, but sometimes—especially since 2008—it has been harder raising money from those sources than it was before.

Increasingly, I heard about social impact investment and crowdfunding, so I decided that I needed some more information. I got in touch with the House of Commons Library, but the staff there said they had never heard of crowdfunding; it was the first time that the staff of the Library of this great House has ever said that it could not help me. I then tweeted about crowdfunding, and all sorts of interesting people pitched up in the House of Commons and started to educate me about it. We formed the Westminster crowdfunding forum, we have an all-party group on crowdfunding and non-banking finance, and suddenly we have what I think is the first debate on crowdfunding in Parliament; I am grateful that we have it.

What is so exciting about crowdfunding is that it gives power to the crowd—to ordinary people—to say that there is a problem in their community and that they can form a small group to head something up. They can form a community enterprise and they can fund it through the crowd on the internet, on a platform; there are now many platforms out there that enable crowdfunding. Some of them specialise in education, others in financing films and theatre, and others in community enterprises. However, that is only one side of crowdfunding.

For me, crowdfunding is one of the most vibrant, exciting and important industries to appear in the past decade. The possibilities of crowdfunding are endless, first because all of us know that most people who are entering employment in this country today will work for small and medium-sized enterprises. If we can have more and more SME start-ups and they can grow successfully, the country will be so much wealthier and so much more successful.

The fact is that start-ups have the most difficulty in getting money from the conventional banks. Very often, the banks have failed them, because start-ups have no track record and no history; consequently, banks are very cautious about lending money to them.

Crowdfunding enables and empowers people who want to start a business to do it in their own way, and to raise the money to do so. It often starts with friends and family, and then a wider range of people become excited about the enterprise and put a little bit of money in to help it start. The history of the last few years has been that many more businesses have started up successfully using crowdfunding and the new social media to reach out to a broader audience and involve them in a very interesting way.

Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising many small amounts of money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. However, people become confused about what is crowdfunding and what is not. I will talk briefly about four kinds of crowdfunding.

First, there is equity crowdfunding. It is very simple indeed. Someone wants to start a business and they give a share in their business to someone else. It may be worth a fiver, or fifty quid, but it is usually only a small amount—an amount that I am sure you, Mr Chope, and I could afford to put into an enterprise that we believed in and that might make us money in the longer term. It is also possible for someone to invest in the little corner shop that they do not have in their village or community, or in a failing pub that the community wants to take over. There are lots of enterprises that crowdfunding can help.

However, there is the very interesting issue of starting businesses—private sector businesses. There is nothing wrong with starting businesses. As chairman of both the all-party group on manufacturing and the all-party group on management, I am a passionate supporter of well-managed enterprises and start-ups.

Equity is one way that crowdfunding works; someone can invest money in that way. However, it is also possible to borrow and lend money through the internet and crowdfunding; that is the second form of crowdfunding I want to discuss. Some people in the peer-to-peer lending area are a little cautious about being called part of the crowdfunding empire, but—in broader terms—they certainly pitch up to the Westminster crowdfunding forum. Such lending allows people to borrow money at very low rates of interest, and it also allows people to lend money at quite high rates of interest. People might think that is impossible, but the fact is that we have a system that gets rid of the intermediary. It is peer to peer—very direct. There is no big bank, with glass panels and marble halls, to go into, or a network of branches of banks, with all the people that have to be employed in them. There is a very simple relationship, and it means that the facility to lend and borrow money is made quite radically different.

Thirdly, there is rewards crowdfunding. That is the kind of crowdfunding that you, Mr Chope, and I might be most interested in; I realise that I am interpreting your wishes in saying so. Rewards crowdfunding means that someone asks someone else to help them with an enterprise, such as the John Clare Cottage Trust, which I am involved with and which is a national centre for learning outside the classroom. We run a campaign called every child’s right to the countryside. What we do to raise money is to ask people, “Will you adopt a school in less affluent area of the country, whose pupils would benefit from coming to the countryside and learning in the countryside for a day?” We look to crowdfund up to £500 to bring a whole school class to the countryside for a day. We can do that by offering rewards, because we not only give the reward of a day in the country to the pupil but—as we will do in the new year—we will give a limited edition of John Clare’s love poetry to those giving money. It is a collection of poems that were never published in his lifetime, because they were a little steamy for Victorians. We can give the reward of a limited edition, or free entry to the lovely John Clare poet’s house in Helpston, which is right next to Burghley house. So, with rewards crowdfunding, people do not get their money back, but they get the engagement, and the reward might be, at the bottom end, with a small amount of money, a mug or a tea-towel. Further up the scale, there are more substantial crowdfunding rewards.

Fourthly, there are donations. Mr Chope, you will know about the success of justgiving.com, which is estimated to have raised £3 billion for good causes, in direct donations. As I say, there are various types of crowdfunding, and I hope that I have educated those attending this Westminster Hall debate about them.

Crowdfunding gives all of us access to the money to make things happen. According to a recent report—published only this week—by the charity Nesta, Cambridge university and the university of California, Berkeley, the alternative finance sector raised £939 million in the UK in 2013. That is a hell of a lot of money, and it was up by 91% from the £492 million raised in 2012. The UK alternative finance market provided £332 million-worth of early stage growth and working capital to more than 3,700 start-ups and SMEs in the UK in 2013 alone. So this sector is not small beer; it is big and it is going to grow.

If we play it right, the UK is likely to become the centre of crowdfunding in the world, partly because the United States, in its haste to regulate crowdfunding, has, many argue, strangled the baby at birth. That is the truth; the US has overregulated and made it almost impossible, certainly for equity crowdfunding, to carry on.

Those of us who are passionate about crowdfunding want to make this appeal: whatever the Financial Conduct Authority does in regulation—it is currently consulting—it must get it right. We are not against all regulation, but it must be appropriate, and it must be quite soft regulation. It can be effective, but if we go down the US route, we will lose the opportunity to have one of the biggest growth sectors and most interesting phenomena of the modern economy.

The FCA should not present an obstacle to the growth of the sector. The criticism that I am getting is that if the FCA is not careful, it will take the “crowd” out of crowdfunding. I am not against the FCA. I was quoted in The Independent earlier this week or late last week as asking for a halt to the consultation process. I did not say that; I never spoke to the journalist in question, and I do not believe that. The consultation process is good, and we have certainly had a good face-to-face relationship with the FCA over many months; we just want to ensure that we get it right, and that is what this debate is partly about. We want to ensure that we do not make a mistake.

Certain language used by the FCA and people around it would I think horrify your constituents, Mr Chope, as it would mine. The FCA suggests that only “sophisticated” investors should have access to crowdfunding; in other words, those who have a relatively high net worth. The FCA’s consultation paper makes a distinction between retail and sophisticated investors. That kind of language makes me nervous, because it is insulting to ordinary people, suggesting that they do not know how best to invest a little bit of money.

My constituents can go down to a bookie’s, play fixed-odds betting, and lose thousands in a day. Those machines are dreadful things, and I have campaigned against them. My constituents can also go next door and borrow money at ruinous rates of interest from payday lenders. They can go online to gamble and, especially at Christmas, spend a lot of money that they do not really have. Why should ordinary people not be able to put a fiver, £10 or even £50—small amounts—in something that they think will grow?

I will give an example that might interest you, Mr Chope. A plethora of universities are now getting into crowdfunding. If your university is like mine, Mr Chope, the only time you hear from them is when they want some money. That angers a lot of people, because that is the only communication that they have with their alma mater; I am looking at the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) on that.

Crowdfunding allows universities such as the university of Huddersfield—university of the year last year and entrepreneurial university of the year the year before—to be able to have a crowdfunding relationship, so that when graduates and postgraduates come through, they can say, “Not only can we help you find the money for your start-up business, our first port of call is our alumni, who might want to invest back in a new generation of entrepreneurs coming out of their university.” There is so much excitement here.

There is a common-sensical way of having regulation that does not cause damage. I want to make it clear today that there has been a good dialogue with the FCA. I hope that it is listening to what we are saying. I also hope that the Treasury, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and all the other people in government who know about the issue will learn about it and realise the enormous potential for growth in the British economy.

Crowdfunding can bring communities back to life. Political parties have hardly any membership. There are low levels of voting in general and local elections. Here is something through the social media—look at 38 Degrees and its achievements—that will reinvigorate our communities, grow them and make them wealthier, and will be a new way of funding social and economic activity in our country.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Sajid Javid]

As the hon. Lady kindly suggests, I will write to her and take a closer look at what plans the FCA does or does not have.

[Mr Sheerman]

Will the Minister do some missionary work with his colleagues? This is a cross-departmental issue, and one does worry. The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills is well apprised of the issue, and we have met him. We want a better relationship with the Treasury team, because people are having to think about this business of investing only 10% of their portfolio. Most people who invest, or who will potentially invest, in crowdfunding would have no idea what a portfolio was if it jumped up and bit them. Every time I complain about “sophisticated” investors, the FCA and other people say, “Well, it’s part of the literature.” It is demeaning to say that people can do something only if they have a certain net worth and if they are a “sophisticated” investor. I do not mind “experienced” or another term, but “sophisticated” upsets many people in crowdfunding.

[Sajid Javid]

I share the hon. Gentleman’s concerns, and if there are too many barriers to investment, it could stifle growth. I have relayed my concerns to the FCA. As we have heard, one of the consultations has just closed, and the other is about to close. I believe that we will get a report from the FCA by February. He makes an important point.

[Mr Sheerman]

Last week, here in Parliament, we hosted the founder of Indiegogo, which is a pioneer. Is it not interesting that bright, talented women are coming into crowdfunding because there are fewer barriers? Many sites are run by people such as Karen Darby. The sites are successfully changing the world, but they are also giving women an opportunity to use their talent, when, in some areas, they do not yet have that opportunity.

[Sajid Javid]

The hon. Gentleman again points out one of the successes of this growing industry. We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) that more young people are involved in the industry and, in some cases, are perhaps finding it an easier platform than banks for raising money.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Huddersfield again on securing this debate. I reassure him and all other hon. Members that we would like to encourage the growth of this industry.

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Tuesday 10th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

The Government want to support all sports clubs and encourage as many people as possible to participate in grass-roots sports, which is why we recently announced changes to the community amateur sports clubs regime that we hope will benefit up to 40,000 sports clubs in this country. I hope that the club in my hon. Friend’s constituency will take advantage of that. One of the best things we have done is extend corporate gift aid so that local businesses that donate to sports clubs will be able to offset their donations against their corporation tax bill, which I hope will make a real difference to their income.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I ask the Chief Secretary to ponder the fact that when I talk with my constituents, the thing they always talk about first is, “Housing, housing, housing.” When are we going to give young people, and increasingly older people, the chance that many of us in this House have had to get their own homes, because we are not building enough houses? He knows that is true—get on with it.

[Danny Alexander]

In many ways I agree with the hon. Gentleman. My constituents say exactly the same thing to me. That is why we are reforming the planning system to enable housing to be built more quickly, why we are increasing substantially the number of social homes in this country, compared with his party’s lamentable record, and why we have introduced the Help to Buy scheme to help people who cannot afford a large deposit to get on the housing ladder, all of which is leading to new houses being built in this country.

National Infrastructure Plan

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Wednesday 4th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Danny Alexander]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. As part of what we have announced today in the national infrastructure plan, we are also commissioning feasibility studies for improving surface access, by both road and rail, to Stansted and Heathrow, and that is alongside the money for the Gatwick railway station and the feasibility study we have commissioned on the rail link between London and Brighton, including the important Lewes to Uckfield line.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Chief Secretary say a little more about the sell-off of national assets? Many of my constituents feel bruised, because they all used to own a bit of Royal Mail, but now only a few rather wealthy people do. Will such transactions continue with the sale of other national assets? Harold Macmillan once said that the Tory Government were selling the family silver. Is the furniture now following?

[Danny Alexander]

The hon. Gentleman asks an important question. Let me address it briefly. On Royal Mail, he will know that 10% of the shares are owned by the employees, which I think is an extremely good step that has not been taken before in the sale of national assets. The Government should not own assets that they do not need and in which investment could be made more effectively in the private sector, particularly when their sale would release receipts that could then be used to invest further in our critical national infrastructure. That is why we are raising our target for sales from £10 billion to £20 billion. I think that we have been under-ambitious in the past. There are assets that could be sold, such as the Government’s stake in Eurostar. No final decision has been taken on that, but we are working towards ensuring that we can put those assets into the private sector, where they can be better run and better managed, and use the resources for the infrastructure projects contained in the plan.

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Tuesday 10th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

Let me say first that the shadow Chancellor was in effect the deputy Chancellor for 13 years, when the economy became so unbalanced and we experienced the biggest crash in modern history.

My right hon. Friend raised a serious question about the separation of retail and investment banking and about, in effect, Glass–Steagall-like reforms or a Volcker rule in the United Kingdom. We asked John Vickers— whom he mentioned—to look into the issue, along with a serious commission of experienced people, and they concluded that ring-fencing retail banks was a better solution. That is what we are legislating for, and it shows that we are learning from the mistakes of what went so badly wrong when that deputy Chancellor was in charge of the City.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

As the Chancellor knows, a large number of small and medium-sized enterprises were let down by the conventional banking system. Many are finding that crowdfunding is a useful way of enabling them to start up and grow. Will he and the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills be very cautious before introducing unnecessary regulation to curb crowdfunding, which is a good thing for most small businesses?

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Greg Clark)]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. We want to see a great variety of sources of finance for small businesses. It is important for consumers and businesses to have confidence in those sources, and the Financial Conduct Authority is considering carefully rules that will strike precisely the balance to which the hon. Gentleman has referred.

Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Tuesday 9th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Leslie]

Here we are again—a second bite at the Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill. Today, we debate a series of amendments and new clauses that have been loosely grouped together under the title “Competition etc.” I shall speak in particular to new clauses 8, 10 and 12 in due course, but I shall start with new clause 8.

We felt it important to discuss the obstacles in the way of better competition in the banking sector. I am sure that it is not true of you, Madam Deputy Speaker, but many hon. Members have probably been with their retail bank since they were very young—not so long ago in your case, Madam Deputy Speaker. Although an aficionado of switching and looking at different services in banking, I must confess that I have been with the same bank since I was 14, and with no real logic other than the inertia that afflicts many customers: we tend to think that it is inconvenient to change bank accounts; we tend to think, “There is not much choice, so what is the difference or the point of shopping around?” It is this sense of a lack of competition and lack of choice that we want to remedy with the new clause, tabled with other amendments in the group.

There are significant obstacles to competition, particularly to new challenger banks coming into the system, breaking into the business and trying to do something to challenge the absolute dominance of the big five banks. The new clause would require the Treasury to publish a review considering the obstacles to those new challenger banks and ways of increasing the number of new banks coming into play.

Under the new clause,

“The Chancellor of the Exchequer shall instruct the Competition and Markets Authority to begin a full market study…into UK financial services institutions involved in the provision of core services”—

in other words, retail banking. The aim is to provide a structure to support better competition, dealing with obstacles in the way of allowing new institutions to break into the market and to consider what actions could be taken to facilitate the new institutions entering into general competition.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the Minister accept that help is needed not just for new entrants, but for unusual, smaller players in the present financial system? As a Labour and Co-operative Member of Parliament, I have an interest in the Co-operative bank. When HBOS and RBS got into difficulties, everyone rushed around throwing taxpayers’ money at them, but when the Co-op gets into serious difficulty because of its unique ownership basis and its lack of shareholders, it receives very little help from either the Treasury or the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

[Chris Leslie]

I hope that the Co-operative bank, and all other institutions, will now be in a position to make secure and stable progress. However, I do not think that there is really a parallel between the Co-operative bank and institutions that would have disappeared had it not been for the intervention of the taxpayer in keeping the cash machines operating. We hear Government Members say that the public deficit was somehow created as a result of ministerial choices. It is sometimes forgotten that the state—the taxpayer—had to intervene to rescue the banks. Thank goodness that happened, but it left us with a phenomenal problem with which we are still struggling years later.

[Mr Sheerman]

Many of my constituents worked for the Halifax mutual building society, and we saw what really caused the ruination of two banks. Wicked, evil, unethical people took over a bank and ran it into the ground. That was not about the Government; it was about greed, and about particular people.

[Chris Leslie]

Absolutely. Those are the very issues that should be in the Bill, but it is a pretty thin measure. We are still waiting, apparently endlessly, for the Government to decide to populate it at some point with the recommendations of the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr Tyrie) and the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards.

We need support for mutuality and greater diversity in the banking sector, and that is why the new clause refers to competition. We do not just want more plcs to enter the market; we want institutions of many different types, including mutuals, to be given a chance to compete for business. My hon. Friend’s Co-op bank, for example, might wish to have that greater choice were it available. The new clause was largely inspired by the recommendations of the parliamentary commission, whose most recent publication made it very clear that the sector suffers from a lack of serious competition.

Which?—formerly the Consumers Association—reported recently that 55% of people had never switched their main personal current account, and that the larger banks had not earned their market share by dint of innovation or the provision of competitive services but simply through “first mover” advantage, because they had been there for such a long time. It also reported that, sadly, customer surveys had indicated that the big five high street banks—Lloyds, RBS, HSBC, Santander and Barclays—consistently gave less satisfaction than others. Those banks have a very large market share, which has increased over the last few years. They control 85% of the current account market as opposed to 71% before the financial crisis, 67% of mortgage gross lending as opposed to 38% before the crisis, and 61% of the savings account market compared with 47% before the crisis. The inertia of their customers enables those large banks to sit on a fairly stable customer base. It has often been said that people are more likely to divorce than switch current account, although I am sure that that does include those who are in the Chamber today. The lack of dynamism and choice in the market is a significant worry, and it is no wonder that it has been criticised by the Office of Fair Trading.

There are major barriers to entry for new banks, which need to establish an infrastructure to have a fair chance of competing more widely. Recent suggestions include the adoption of utility platform sharing, and an extension of the payments system machinery beyond the big banks. I think that such ideas should be given serious and detailed consideration, but they pose a challenge to institutions that own and control payments systems, and we must think carefully about how they can be tackled.

Some of the big banks were supposed to divest themselves of branches. RBS was supposed to float off a number of its branches to Santander, but that did not get very far. Similarly, as my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman pointed out), Lloyds was supposed to divest itself of many of its branches to the Co-op, and we all know what happened in that instance. In all, 1,000 branches were supposed to be out there creating a proper challenger bank, or at least mixing it up a little by increasing the number of players in the system. That has not happened, and I have to say to the Minister that the Treasury has not exactly covered itself in glory. I am not claiming that it is entirely the Treasury’s fault, but I think that it had a hand in overseeing some of the divestment strategy. I hope that the Minister will update the House, because divestment is very relevant to the issue of proper competition.

John Fingleton, chief executive of the OFT, has said:

“More than a decade on from the Cruickshank report, we still have a banking sector where competition is manifestly not working well for consumers.”

The hon. Member for Chichester, the Chairman of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards, who has left the Chamber—oh, there he is, next to the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso). I apologise to him. He is clearly negotiating away as we speak. He has said:

“The lack of competition in banking has been reinforced by a regulatory regime favouring large incumbents. Customers have lost out as a result. Moves to remove barriers to entry are essential.”

We all agree with that.

We constructed new clause 8 very much along the lines of the commission’s recommendation of

“a market study of the retail and SME banking sector, with a full public consultation on the extent of competition and its impact on consumers. We make this recommendation to ensure that the market study is completed on a timetable consistent with making a market investigation reference, should it so decide, before the end of 2015.”

The time scale is very important, because the issue has drifted on year after year.

[Chris Leslie]

I hoped that legislation would not be necessary, but I think it worth while for the House to express its view, particularly in response to the commission’s recommendation. Heaven knows, we have been here before. We have heard plenty of warm words from Ministers. They have said “We will certainly consider this, because there is a strong case in favour of it”. When it comes to the crunch, however, if the House of Commons is to do anything through this Bill—and we shall not be doing a lot, because so much is being left to the other place—I think that it is worth our trying to insert the new clause, just to keep the Minister’s feet to the fire. All that we are asking for is a market study in preparation for the proper market investigation reference before the end of 2015.

When the Vickers report was published in 2011, Labour Members felt that specifying 2013 would allow an appropriate time in which to assess the issue, and, two years on from Vickers, I do not think that anything has changed our minds in that regard. Getting that market study under way is the very least that should be done, and the Minister needs to commit to doing that. This is a critical point. When Members listen to what the Minister has to say, they must read between the lines. He will make all sorts of warm noises and say, “The OFT has started this process for SME customers”, but it has not done so for retail customers. That is the crucial difference; focusing merely on SMEs is not sufficient.

The Government have already claimed in their response to the commission’s recommendations that they will be fulfilling the commission’s proposal, but that is not the case. They are not putting in place that retail review, and I do not understand why they are so resistant to doing that. The Minister must explicitly set out why they are holding back from having a market study and investigation of the issues in respect of retail banking.

The Government response is full of warm words—they say they are in discussions and they are engaging with the problem—but it is not strong enough. It is too piecemeal and not sufficiently transparent, and they are not giving the commitment consumers, let alone commission members, would like. If the Government can at least acknowledge that they will not accept the commission’s recommendation, that will give us a clear choice when we come to consider what to do in respect of new clause 8.

The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) has tabled new clause 15, which focuses on local stakeholder banks and local banking. I agree that we should look at sub-national financial provision, particularly for customers, who can feel that they have very little choice at all. She will know that in new clause 10 we say that if state-owned banking assets are to be sold, options for a regional banking network ought to be fully considered. That is a very important proposal from the Opposition. There are some very plucky and hard-working institutions across the country—the credit unions, the community development financial institutions and other smaller building societies and mutuals—that do a lot of very worthwhile work at regional and local basis.

[Mr Sheerman]

Would my hon. Friend add to that list crowd funding and crowd sourcing, which many people think is the basis of a new, democratic capitalism in our country? It allows people to bypass the banks, which have so often failed us, and gives to our communities the power to regenerate businesses and communities.

[Chris Leslie]

As some have said in the past, the magic of the “interweb” will ensure that customers can avoid that intermediation—that middle-management step—and access finance. That may well develop very rapidly, although we need to make sure the regulators can keep an eye on how it develops.

[Mr Sheerman]

That must not be too heavy.

[Chris Leslie]

Well, I think it is important that we make sure the foundations are put in place to allow those new forms of finance to come to fruition in a safe environment.

My hon. Friend makes that point well, and I also want to give a name-check to the Community Investment Coalition: a number of financial institutions at local and regional level have come together to campaign on some of these issues, and in particular to call for greater transparency in the provision of financial services from community to community on a postcode-level basis, although that is anonymised as we do not need to know which organisations have been lending to which individuals.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Leslie]

Absolutely. Sir John Vickers pointed out in his report that a typical customer is likely to move current accounts every 26 years, on average, and it is estimated that about 6% of personal current accounts will be switched this year. All sorts of statistics prove that this is not a particularly active area, although there is a growing consensus among members of the commission, and even some of the banks, that portability might be an idea whose time has come.

[Mr Sheerman]

I switched a business account to HBOS, without knowing that anything was going to happen, because I thought that with KPMG as its auditors and with an auditor process in place my investment and my savings would be safe. What are we going to do to ensure that when people switch there is a guarantee that, at last, the accountants in this country and the auditors actually do their job?

[Chris Leslie]

That broadens things out into a whole new terrain, but suffice it to say, we should be able to trust our banks. We should be able to know that all these issues will be going on safely. To be fair to the banks—I do not say that often—some of their systems are able to cope, and complaints mechanisms are in place to deal with these things.

This is just about the customer being able to grasp and understand what is going on. The grey mist descends on many constituents—and, heaven knows, on many hon. Members, as we can see—at the mention of financial services, and that is without getting into pensions and some of those issues. Basic bank account services are incredibly important and we need the Government to say a little more than warm words in their response on this issue. I commend the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire on her campaign and we are very much behind the spirit of the changes she suggests, hence our new clause 12.

Finally, I wish to deal with new clause 10, which relates to the sale of state-owned bank assets. We feel that before a sale takes place of assets in the ownership of Her Majesty’s Treasury—we are very much focused on the Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds at the moment —the Treasury ought to set out clearly a report discussing the manner in which the best interests of the taxpayer will be protected in the sale, and the expected impact that any sale might have on competition for customers and on the rate of economic growth. That should be accompanied by a proper appraisal of the options for potential structural change in the banks concerned, including: whether there should be any changes to the division between retail banking and investment banking in those institutions; whether some asset classes need to be held back—this is sometimes characterised as a good bank/bad bank split; and, crucially, the impact of the sale on the creation of a regional banking network. We think that is essential.

Royal Bank of Scotland

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Thursday 13th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

As always, my hon. Friend has made a very good point. I agree with him that Stephen Hester has done a commendable job. Five years is a perfectly normal period for anyone to remain as chief executive of a major corporation, and that sentiment was reflected in Stephen Hester’s own comments since the announcement of his departure.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Minister answer one really important question about this very major change? Two banks ran into difficulties, RBS and HBOS—many of my constituents worked for HBOS—but those two banks were not run into the buffers by politicians; they were run into ruin by the group of unscrupulous, immoral bankers who ran the companies, and it was not politicians but auditors and those in the accountancy profession who never flagged that up. Let us get the record straight. Let us be honest with the British people. Let us also be honest and say “You have just sacked this banker for your own purposes.”

[Sajid Javid]

The hon. Gentleman is right about being honest, of course, and in the interests of honesty, it is important to point something out. Since he seems to have suggested that the previous Government played no role in the failure of RBS and that it was just a failure of poor banking, let me remind him of what the then shadow Chancellor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley), said in 1997 when the then Government planned to change the regulatory system. He said:

“The process of setting up the FSA may cause regulators to take their eye off the ball, while spivs and crooks have a field day.”—[Official Report, 11 November 1997; Vol. 300, c. 732.]

Economic Growth

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Wednesday 15th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

We are putting in place, right now, new guarantees—the first time that the Treasury has done this—for social housing associations to enable them to build more social homes; in the Budget, we also confirmed support for an additional 30,000 social homes, so we are taking action to help on that front. With our Help to Buy scheme we are also helping those who want to buy their own home in the private market. My right hon. Friend is absolutely right that we should do both, which is precisely what we are doing.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

As we learned with great interest, there was much in the Queen’s Speech that will affect employment, skills and manufacturing in our country. This is an important part of our country’s future. Can the Chancellor assure me that there is a unit in the Treasury—or a plan for the Treasury—to carry out an independent evaluation of how skills, jobs and manufacturing would be affected if this country left the European Union?

[Mr Osborne]

I will come on to talk briefly about reform in the European Union, but I am clear that an unreformed European Union is also doing damage to British competitiveness and British jobs.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Sheerman]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that social value, if combined—as it can be, and will be—with crowdsourcing and crowdfunding, will bring a real democratic renewal and a modern capitalism to our country?

[Hazel Blears]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The combination of social value and the creation of social investment through crowdsourcing, peer-to-peer lending and the activities of the Big Society Capital bank, which was a Labour idea, will take us along precisely that track.

My final example is Interserve, which employs 50,000 people and has a turnover of £2 billion. Its chief executive, Adrian Ringrose, recently committed himself to reinvesting 3% of his profits in the communities where his companies operate. That is the kind of thing that good, decent companies can do, and it can make a big difference. Such companies want to rebuild trust and secure a better reputation for big business, which has suffered from a lack of trust because of the activities of the banks and others. There is also the fact that it is good business.

The challenge for the Government is to enable that activity to become mainstream, rather than a niche activity in which only a few people engage. I ask them to think seriously about extending the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012 to cover goods and major infrastructure. Over the next five years, we shall spend £200 billion on the really important things that we need: energy, transport—including High Speed 2—and building broadband. Why should we not include social value clauses relating to local labour and local supply chains in all infrastructure contracts? Can we not imagine the difference that that could make?

When money is tight—and it would be tight for us if we were in government— we can make a real difference by gaining extra impact from procurement and by doing business differently. We need community reinvestment, and we need to provide incentives for companies such as Interserve to do the right thing. A year ago, when I presented a ten-minute rule Bill in the House, I suggested that bankers could voluntarily put some of their income into local social enterprises. That might even make bankers popular, for goodness’ sake, and it is a very practical thing that we could do.

The Government must also support the development of measurement and metrics for social impact. There is a lot of good work going on. The Connectives Limited in Manchester, which is run by two inspirational woman accountants, has done fabulous work on social audit and accounting, but if we are to make such activity mainstream, we need to ensure that the metrics are rigorous and substantial. I should like the Treasury to do some more work on that.

In the time that I have left, I want to mention the Big Society Capital bank. It was the bank’s first anniversary last week, and I went to an event to mark it in the City. There was standing room only because there was such a huge appetite for the creation of a social investment market. The leadership of Sir Ronald Cohen and Nick O’Donohoe is first class. They have some really good ideas about how to get products to market, and about new types of bond such as social impact bonds. They are trying to persuade foundations and pension funds to invest. I welcome the Government’s consultation on a tax relief for social investment; I think that that is a very good idea. It could release an extra half a billion pounds into the market.

Difficult economic times demand creativity, innovation and boldness. We must get behind that, and make it happen.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

The debates on the Queen’s Speech are a good time to look again at the relationship between us as elected Members and those who sent us here. I always feel that the one thing that I should be doing for my constituents in Huddersfield is to try to ensure that they have a good life, and most of us know what that entails. One of the things that make me feel that the good life is achievable is that over the years we have come closer to being a high-skilled, high-paid economy. However, in recent years we have faltered, and we must look closely at the challenges that we face, globally and internationally, that might lead to us being a low-skills, low-pay economy. There is already great competition around the world from people with high skills who are low paid, and I think of India in particular. Any Queen’s Speech debate on the economy must think thoroughly about the policies that we pursue in order to obtain the good life for our constituents, with high pay in a high-skills economy.

I quite liked some measures in the Queen’s Speech, including those relating to capital allowances and the employment allowance. It is not all bad; it is just all a bit vapid. There are some big gaps; big opportunities. We have just spent about 18 months with almost nothing to debate in the House, so there is plenty of room for a vigorous programme to get this country moving and working again.

I would have loved to see more vision, leadership and courage in the Queen’s Speech. There are so many things that we could be doing. Everyone will know of my interest in skills. I think that any Queen’s Speech at this time, when nearly 1 million young people are unemployed, should have introduced a Bill to abolish unemployment before the age of 25. It would cost only between £4.5 billion and £5 billion a year, but it would have stopped politicians condemning young people to live in the shadows of society on a bit of unemployment benefit here and a bit of housing benefit there. We could have ensured that every young person in this country was in education, training or work experience of some kind. That would have broken, and can still break, the curse of intergenerational worklessness. That is what we should have had in the Queen’s Speech.

What is wrong? We can have high-falutin’ economics in this debate, but the fact is that I would be in favour of a little inflation and debt, rather than less. Keynes was in favour of that, and so am I. I am an economist, I am afraid, and my economics are from the London School of Economics. We had two good things there: we were pretty Keynesian in those days, but certainly not Marxist, and we believed in our motto, which was “To know the causes of things.” It means getting beneath a subject and understanding it in an intelligent way.

There are two things that I think plague us today. First, because people are so threatened, they are turning to UKIP, and the terror and fear on the Government Benches is apparent, as today’s debate has been taken over by a debate on Europe and fear of UKIP. The fact of the matter is that I have seen no major independent assessment of what the impact of leaving the European Union would be on the living standards of my constituents and on the well-being and good life of the people of this country.

Secondly—I will just throw this point in—I am a little worried about one thing that is in the Bill: HS2. It is expected to cost between £45 billion and £50 billion. That money, if invested in the northern and midland cities of this country, could transform the lives of cities that are now endangered. I will use the debates as the Bill goes through to make that point.

There were some good things in the Queen’s Speech, although there has been a bit of a diversion today, and it is sad to see the Conservative party in such a terrible state of distress, but the fact is that there could have been more content to get jobs, skills and homes into our country.