Living Standards

Ben Gummer Excerpts

Wednesday 4th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Barwell]

I would like to make a bit of progress first.

I want to talk about two things: how the problem arose, and what we can do to solve it. I would argue that there are four causes of the problem. The first was the deficit built up under the last Government, which was partly the fault of the collapse in the banking system, but partly the fault of Labour for having a deficit before the recession started. Let me quote from something written by the Institute for Fiscal Studies before the last election:

“With government borrowing at its highest level since the Second World War…the key domestic policy issue for the next parliament will be how best to implement a combination of spending cuts and tax raising measures to return it, over the medium-term, to appropriate levels.

This will be painful…families”

will be made

“directly worse off”.

That was the view of the IFS, no matter who was going to win the last election. That is the logical consequence of having the deficit, and voters understand that. I spent the summer knocking on more than 5,000 doors in Woodside and South Norwood in my constituency. The electorate understand that tough decisions have to be made.

The second cause is the international economic climate, which has led to lower than expected growth across the developed world. The third and fourth causes have nothing to do with Government: they are rising commodity prices and long-term changes in the labour market, which have led to a lower value being placed on low-skilled work. My hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) referred to a quotation from the shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions identifying the problem back in 2004.

[Ben Gummer (Ipswich) (Con)]

My hon. Friend said that the third reason, rising commodity prices, had nothing to do with Government. I would respectfully demur. One of the biggest pressures on families is energy prices, and the reason we have high energy prices in this country is because no one built anything in this country in the 13 years that Labour was in power.

[Gavin Barwell]

There are certainly some commodity prices that Government can influence—my hon. Friend is quite right to pick me up on that—but there are others, such as the prices of basic foodstuffs, that are beyond national domestic control.

How do we solve the problem? I would like to suggest five possible solutions. The first is economic growth. It is not a solution on its own, because part of the deficit is structural.

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[Gavin Barwell]

rose—

[Ben Gummer]

rose—

[Alison McGovern]

As I am following the speech of the hon. Member for Croydon Central, I will give way to him.

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[Emily Thornberry]

The hon. Gentleman raises a point that divides us completely. Those of us on the Labour Benches believe in investing money in housing, for example. I have just mentioned the huge rents that people have to pay, and how difficult it is for people on average wages to live in London without relying on housing benefit. If we could build more houses in central London and the south-east, house prices would not be as high as they are now and people would not need to rely on benefits in the way that they do. That makes sense. If we build homes, we also provide jobs and infrastructure, lower our dependence on housing benefit and lower housing prices generally. We will offer hope and opportunity for the next generation. I have no idea why the Government will not do this, but they are refusing to invest properly. We will need a new Government before that happens.

[Ben Gummer]

There is absolutely no difference between us on whether there is pressure on living standards, as it is completely obvious to all Members that there is. Where there is a difference relates to prescriptions. The hon. Lady rightly talks about housing demand in the south-east, but she knows perfectly well that, even if we start building tens of thousands of houses in the south-east this year, it will take many years before it feeds into reductions in rent. What prescriptions—costed prescriptions —could the hon. Lady and her Front-Bench team bring forward now to ease living standards?

[Emily Thornberry]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman, who I know takes this issue very seriously, will have seen the policy development happening in the Labour party and the seriousness with which we are putting this issue as a front-and- centre policy for us as a future Government. We know the difference that that will make to the economy. When it comes to investing money, this is what we should invest it in. I fully support our Front-Bench team on this and I believe it is the right thing for this Government to do. In the end it would save us a great deal.

I do not believe that we can just build tens of thousands of homes. We need to get out there and start building seriously. We need to start building now and, frankly, I think it is disgraceful that, given the recession that we are having to endure, this Government have, I believe, the worst house building record of any Government since the 1920s. That is outrageous. This was not the original purpose of my speech but since the hon. Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer) has touched this particular nerve—I apologise for giving it to him with both barrels—I simply cannot see the sense in the Government’s current policy of putting their fingers in their ears and saying “La, la, la, la, la, la, la.” and thinking that this problem will somehow go away. It will not go away. The only way to solve our housing crisis is to build more housing.

Returning to my original brief, those in part-time work do not earn enough money to be able to afford a good standard of living and that applies even to some of those in full-time work, so some have to rely on benefits. We have seen that 60% of new jobs since the last election are in the low-paid sectors of our economy—retail and residential. Between 1997 and 2010, 25% of the new jobs established were in those sectors. Why is this difference occurring? A Resolution Foundation study has shown that 4.8 million Britons—20% of all employees—earn below the living wage, which is a leap from 3.4 million, or 14%, at the height of the recession. Why is that happening? Why have those on average wages lost an average of £1,500 a year?

It is happening because our economy is unfair and unbalanced. What are the Government going to do about it? How are they going to address the problem? They cannot simply keep sailing on and hope that things are going to be all right. Things are not going to be all right. The evidence shows that there will continue to be people who just manage to grab on to work by their fingertips, but not by enough for them to be able to sustain themselves and their families. Even those in full-time work, particularly in areas such as London and the south-east, cannot afford to live without being supported by benefits. In the end, this is unsustainable; we must raise wages in real terms.

I hold a women’s listening panel every year. This year, it is on 13 September at St Mary’s hall in Upper street, and all my female constituents are welcome. I carried out a survey last year and 89% of the constituents who replied said that their income had gone down in the previous year; 32% said their rent had gone up and 70% said it was difficult for them to make ends meet because of their food and fuel bills. They particularly mentioned the expense of child care in Islington. The problem is not just the obvious and manifest cost of rent. The cost of child care—£164 a week—is so expensive as to make it impossible for someone on the minimum wage of £212 a week to put a child into full-time child care. These things do not make sense.

There are many single parents in my constituency who want to get into work, but who simply cannot make ends meet when it comes to getting to work, placing their children in child care, being able to pay the rent and being able to pay their way. This is the trap that so many people find themselves in, and there has to be an answer to it. Even getting someone to pick the children up after school and look after them for a few hours until the person finishes work can cost £92. How can that be all right for someone on the minimum wage of £212 a week? It does not make sense; it does not add up.

Those who live on benefits and do not work at all—those on jobseeker’s allowance—have, of course, seen a rise in their income of 70p a week. I do not know whether the Exchequer Secretary has ever spoken to anyone who lives on jobseeker’s allowance and gone through with them how they spend their £70.70 a week? If so, he would know how difficult it is for them to make ends meet at the moment. It seems to me that we have heard a great deal of political knockabout today when what we should be doing is listening to real people out there and how they live their real lives. I invite the Minister and his boss to come to my women’s listening panel. I will not tell the women that they are Tories, so they will be safe, and we will finesse the fact that they are the only men in the room. They should listen to what is said, listen to these women’s stories of how they are trying to make ends meet in these difficult times. Year in, year out, it gets worse and more difficult for them. The Minister may talk about the economy getting better, but he should listen to what is going on in real life.

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[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Again, we heard a ragbag of rubbish from the Financial Secretary, who gave us the Laurel and Hardy story about another fine mess from Labour. In fact, between 1997 and 2008 the economy grew by some 40%. It was only when the financial tsunami came that we saw difficulties, but with the fiscal stimulus from Obama and my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), bang, we were back to shallow growth, albeit with a deficit two thirds of which was caused by the bankers and a third of which was caused by spending beyond earnings to pump-prime the economy. That was the right thing to do at the time.

[Ben Gummer]

Let us try to get the facts right. First, the Government were running a structural deficit between 2002 and 2010. Secondly, the private sector in Britain did not grow after 2003. All growth was down to credit and public sector increases. The hon. Gentleman’s contention that somehow the economy grew by 40% is therefore incorrect.

[Geraint Davies]

That is certainly not the case. GDP was up by 40%, and the history of the last three years is one of zero GDP growth. I admit that we have seen growth of 0.6% in the last quarter. However, according to the TUC, 80% of the new jobs that have been created—it has been claimed that there are 1.3 million, but that figure is contested by the director of the Office for National Statistics—are low-wage jobs. What we actually have is a low-wage, low-investment, falling-productivity economy, with living standards falling through the floor and prices rising at the same time. It is a complete disaster.

Government Members such as the hon. Members for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) and for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) and other economic illiterates have said that interest rates might rise under Labour, but anyone who reads the financial press will know that the new Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, has given undertakings that they will not rise until unemployment has fallen by 750,000, from 7.8% to 7%. So that argument too is a complete load of rubbish.

[Ben Gummer]

If the hon. Gentleman does not mind my saying so, he is confusing market rates with bank rates. Market rates will rise, because the cost of borrowing for the British Government on the international markets will rise under a Labour Government. That was shown at the time of the general election. The hon. Gentleman is right in saying that bank rates will be fixed, but the two are not connected to the extent that he claims.

[Geraint Davies]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point. The point that I was making was that the Bank of England rate would be secure in the way that I described. The other rates depend on confidence. Whatever happened to the triple-A rating? Government Members said “Oh dear, it will be all over. We will lose the triple-A rating if Labour gets in.” Well, we have lost it, and why has that happened? It has happened because objective observers have seen that productivity is falling, not rising, that the jobs that are being created are low-grade jobs, and that the distribution of investment is skewed towards the next general election, with 80% of all infrastructure investment being made in London and the south-east—which needs the least investment—and most of the cuts being made in the north and in Wales: in places such as my constituency in Swansea, where 40% of people work in the public sector. Yes, we want investment in the private sector, but the way to boost local economies is not to cut people’s wages, jobs and services, which is the current prescription.

What is happening is not sustainable, and given the current economic capacity—the manufacturing and construction sectors are 10% smaller than they were in 2008—there is clearly some way to go before unemployment reaches the level at which interest rates will fall, so that point was a complete red herring.

In fact, mortgage rates are low now—as low as 1.5% for safe bets. The Government, alongside the Bank of England, should be thinking about providing more funding for firms so they have more cash flow and can invest in higher-value jobs and products. Household lending from the banks is about the same as it was—it is 0.3% less than in 2008—but lending to business is 32% down. It is massively down in all the major sectors. In January lending to business was 3% lower than a year ago. By June that figure had doubled; it was down 7%. So the Chancellor is a man looking to the future who is walking backwards. The reality is that Britain is 159th in terms of the ratio of investment to GDP, and is lagging around the bottom in terms of research and development.

One might ask why the banks are lending all this money for houses. Part of the reason is because we have a bubble, artificially generated by the Chancellor to get his votes in the south, through what The Economist calls the “daft policy” of subsidising new deposits on mortgages, which will inflate house prices and lead to sub-prime debt downstream.

The banks also now require four times more capital cover to lend to a business than to provide a mortgage. Turning to the question of the complexity of all this, I have run my own businesses and been involved in others, and have therefore looked at business plans. The banks need to look at the business plans too, as opposed to just having somebody in a call centre saying, “All right, fill in the box. You’re all right mate, you can have a mortgage.” The Government should be telling the banks that the funding for lending scheme should be specifically directed at firms to cover new and existing loans. In other words, they should be doing something positive to get the level of business investment up and create real jobs and get wages moving in the right direction. That is what is needed.

The current situation is that house prices are rising and household debt is growing, partly because the cost of housing is going up both in terms of rents and house prices. That is only sustainable if we have real wage growth. [Interruption.] The Exchequer Secretary is mumbling to his mates, but what are the policies for sustainable wage growth? How are we going to move away from this low-investment, low-wages, low-productivity trajectory that we have got? There is no point in blustering and denying it all; we have got this problem across Britain. We have also got inequality between north and south, and obviously between Wales and the south.

I am talking about SME support, but in contrast we have the corporate world, where Vodafone has just done the biggest share transaction of this century. It has taken £54 billion in cash, and it is not paying a penny in tax. What is the Exchequer Secretary doing about that? Nothing. Why does he not do something about procurement, too? We could use our muscle to buy from SMEs locally—companies that pay tax rather than avoid tax—so they can provide jobs locally. This is a complete disgrace. We should be doing something positive with the powers at our disposal, to create higher wages, higher business investment, more security and more focus on emerging markets.

That is not happening, however. This is a complete farce. It is a mess and I hope the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) will join the Labour party like his predecessor, Andrew Pelling, did, and stand up for what is right and what makes sense.

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[Fiona O’Donnell]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that remark. I am afraid that I have just been very unkind and tweeted that not only were there only three Government Members—I think it was—in the Chamber, but the Opposition Whip had fallen asleep. [Interruption.] I should have said that the person sitting in the place usually occupied by the Government Whip has fallen asleep—I say that for the benefit of Hansard.

Fuel bills are a huge problem for families, having risen by £300. The Prime Minister promised this country that he would do something about excessive rises in energy prices, and he has not made good on that promise. The Government parties ask what we did about the energy companies, and I am proud to share the fact that in my sock drawer at home I have a pledge card from the 1997 general election. One thing that Labour did was to use its windfall tax on the privatised utilities to invest in creating jobs. That is the difference between Government Members and Labour Members.

[Ben Gummer]

I am very happy to intervene on the hon. Lady, and I hope that she will have another minute in which to continue her thoughtful speech. On energy prices—I know the next debate will address this—the previous Government may have come to office in 1997 wishing to control energy prices, but in the end by building so few power stations, they have left us having to invest more than any other western European nation—£200 million—to renew our infrastructure. In the end, that money will have to come from somewhere. Part of it will come from those who pay for fuel. The hon. Lady, or at least the Labour Government, must bear some of the responsibility for that situation.

[Fiona O’Donnell]

I am willing to take responsibility when that is due, but it seems as though for this Government the past three years have not happened. In my constituency, a coal-fired power station has closed down. That is good for the environment, but Scottish Power and the Spanish firm, Iberdrola, cannot invest the necessary money to convert that into a gas cylinder plant because the Government are not giving clarity on the charges for connecting to the grid. We should all share the responsibility. Unfortunately, in opposition, there is less that we can do about it, whereas the hon. Gentleman has the privilege of being in government. I wish the Government would use the little time that they have left in office to get on and make a difference to the lives of my constituents.

Yesterday’s debate makes me worry about who will stand up for those people in my constituency who are falling foul of payday lenders and who cannot afford to put food on the table. The whole debate about food banks is thoroughly depressing, and although I welcome the fact that they are there in so many communities, including my own—I am a trustee of my local food bank—I worry that we are propping up a system that is dismantling the welfare state in this country. We need to pause and think about that further. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to contribute to the debate and look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.