The Economy

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 8th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

It is to address that exact reason that the Chancellor did not simply announce a VAT cut to help that sector. It is also why the eat out to help out programme is particularly targeted. Demand is key to those businesses being able to restart and take back people who are furloughed. It is predominantly and disproportionately the young who are most affected within that sector, and that is why the measures are targeted to help those who would have been most scarred economically if they lost their jobs at the start of their career.

The commitment to levelling up across the regions, including in Cumbria—in a way I am sure the hon. Gentleman, who is a proponent of localism, would support—is not just about the big-ticket projects such as High Speed 2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail, important though those are. It is every bit as much about numerous smaller-scale projects: the trunk roads, the local bus services, the flood defences—projects that rarely make national headlines but are every bit as transformative at a local level. That is why the Government have announced more than £100 million for local road upgrades. It means that we can proceed with much-needed bridge repairs in Sandwell, we can set about upgrading the A15 in the Humber region, and we can provide £10 million to support tackling bottlenecks in the Manchester rail network to bring about a faster, more reliable journey for thousands of passengers.

Our commitment to levelling up is directly linked to another of the Government’s totemic ambitions—that of achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Steve Barclay]

I can anticipate the intervention and I will make a little progress first. Over the past 30 years, the United Kingdom has reduced its carbon emissions by more than 40%, but now the time has come to accelerate our efforts—and I am sure the hon. Lady agrees at least on that point.

[Caroline Lucas]

Yes, I would love him to accelerate his efforts, but the truth is that the £3 billion earmarked for green recovery is dwarfed by ongoing Government funding for fossil fuels, whether it is the £27 billion road-building scheme or blank cheque bail-outs for aviation, so does he agree that we should have not one penny more spent on propping up the fossil fuel economy, not just for climate reasons, but because investment in the green economy has a much higher return on investment and is much more labour-intensive?

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[Wes Streeting]

I know you are watching the clock, Madam Deputy Speaker, but the good thing about that intervention is that I no longer have to repeat those points in my speech. I agree entirely.

[Caroline Lucas]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Wes Streeting]

I am afraid I must begin to draw to a conclusion. I remember Madam Deputy Speaker as a Chief Whip and she is not afraid to crack it.

The Chancellor has taken measures that most people would have thought unthinkable from a Conservative Chancellor. In his statement this afternoon, he said his response to this crisis would be unencumbered by dogma. We welcome that approach and we hope that others in his party were listening. In recent weeks and months, we have seen the penny drop for the champions of small state, free market, low tax economics about the limitations of their blinkered ideological dogma. As they look to the future, perhaps they might reflect on their past failures, because if we are to build a better country in the aftermath of the crisis, we have to be honest about the state of the country as we entered it.

The ideological dogma that underpinned the last decade of Conservative economic policies has made this a lost decade—a decade of low productivity, stagnant wages, rising poverty and mounting debt, the slowest growth since the war and, perhaps the most damning indictment of all, child poverty rising on their watch. More children in this country are living in poverty—and not by accident or because of factors beyond the Government’s control but because, as the Chair of the Government’s own Social Mobility Commission said,

“welfare changes over the past ten years have put many more children into poverty.”

People may not talk of their own life experiences in terms of a failed economic model or a broken social contract, but they experience it when their bills rise faster than their wages, when their public services are not as good as they were, or when they hit glass ceilings because of their class, gender, race, religion or disability. Those people who have stared into the grim reality of Britain’s social insecurity system—many for the first time in their family’s living memory—and have contemplated what life would be like on universal credit can see that broken system, too. Those living outside London and the south-east can see it, and clearly resent the concentration of so much power, wealth and opportunity in one corner of our country. Even within our capital city, between the glittering lights of the City of London and Canary Wharf, those families crammed into temporary bed-and-breakfast accommodation can see the injustice under their noses. People may not always talk in terms of paradigm shifts, but they know that after this crisis, we simply cannot return to business as usual.

The Chancellor said he wants to

“heal the wounds exposed through this crisis”,

but the wounds were already there for anyone who wanted to see them. This has got to be a turning point for our country—one that tackles injustice and gives everyone a stake in success; that fixes our broken social care system, so that never again are older and disabled people left as dangerously exposed as they have been during this crisis; one that addresses the social insecurity experienced by people in precarious work and builds resilience for the challenges ahead posed by technological revolution; one where we seize the opportunity to make the recovery a green recovery with the green new deal that our country needs; and where we argue with renewed vigour and conviction that global problems require global solutions, and where we play our part in rebuilding the institutions needed to provide safety and security in a dangerous world.

For the sake of our country, I hope the Government rise to the challenge, because ours is a great country, full of promise and opportunity, one of the richest countries in the world, with world-class universities, entrepreneurialism and successful business, groundbreaking science and technology, world-renowned arts and culture and a vibrant civil society, and that is what we are fighting to save. But this is also a country of staggering inequality, intolerable poverty and wasted potential, and that is what we are determined to change. As history has shown us, when the country provides the call for change, it is in a Labour Government that they find the solutions.

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[Sir Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)]

I give almost two cheers for the short-term measures announced today, but less than one for the medium and long-term measures. The Chancellor will have to produce a much more coherent economic strategy if we are to deal with unemployment in the medium term and with inequality and climate change, which are still massive challenges for our country.

In the short term, the job retention bonus looks good, particularly on the back of the furlough scheme. The VAT cut for the hospitality and leisure sector is also good, but there was nothing for the self-employed; they have been left behind—they have been excluded—and that is just not good enough. The kick-start programme for young people looks good, but why only six months of training? If we are really going to help young people come back and retrain, we have to give them far more than that. And I do not think that the stamp duty measure is going to be a huge boost to people. For a start, the housing market is already picking up now that people are able to buy again, as demand was already there. Secondly, this tax cut will get capitalised in the price; house prices will just go up, not serving anyone, and that will mainly go to the better-off. I would rather have seen help for renters, help for homeless people, and building homes—that is the way to tackle the housing problem in our country.

When it comes to the medium-term, this package is just not up to the moment. We have a serious economic crisis, the like we have never seen, and it comes on the back of the threats that will be posed to parts of our economy from Brexit. We also have the climate change challenge and the global issues caused by the tensions in trade between China and the US. All these things will dampen the global economy and our economy, and I just do not think that the package we have heard today really amounts to anywhere near enough if we are serious about protecting jobs and getting that green transition.

It is difficult to look at the figures and do a proper analysis, given that there is so little data in this plan for jobs, but it looks like this may be the smallest fiscal stimulus in the whole of the G7. So to put this into context, this is not the massive boost that people are saying.

If we really want a fiscal stimulus, we should be talking about the longer term and about the new industries. I was very proud when I was Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change that we really boosted renewables. We nearly quadrupled renewable power. We became the world leader in offshore wind. We saw jobs created in declining economies such as those in Hull, Grimsby and Lowestoft, thanks to the policies we put in place on the basis of green jobs. Where is that ambition here? I do not see it. There is nothing on hydrogen, as has been said, and no real push for renewables, no real push to make sure that we bring in investment in nature and environmental improvements as part of the climate change challenge, and very little more on green transport.

I say to the Ministers on the Treasury Bench that what we wanted above all, for short-term jobs and long-term benefits for the climate and the economy, was a home insulation package that was much bolder. There is a former Prime Minister who used to say, “Education, education, education,” and I say, “Insulation, insulation, insulation.” I want jobs in every village, town and city across our country. That will be the way to really make sure we do not have a blight on our economy and a blight on young people, and really get a grip.

[Caroline Lucas]

The right hon. Gentleman is making a powerful case. As well as insulation, does he agree that we need to make sure we have zero-carbon homes going forward? Some 2 million homes have been built since the Climate Change Act 2008 came into being that now need to be retrofitted. Does he agree that the Government must bring forward the future homes standard, and that they were wrong to scrap the zero-carbon homes standard?

[Sir Edward Davey]

The hon. Lady, whom I call my hon. Friend, is absolutely right. I was part of the team that brought in the zero-carbon homes regulation, and two months after we left office the Conservative party got rid of it. It was an outrageous act of climate change vandalism, and nothing has happened on that, so the hon. Lady is absolutely right.

The idea that the Conservatives have a good record on climate change is for the birds. All the advantages actually came from things that the Labour Government did before 2010 and things that the Liberal Democrats did when we were in charge of the Department of Energy and Climate Change, and they tried to undo almost everything when they had the chance. I saw them trying to undo all the great things—not just zero-carbon homes, but they cancelled the carbon capture and storage plans, which they are now trying to put back with the timidity of a mouse. They do not understand how big the challenge is. This is an historic challenge; we have to move our economy from a fossil-fuel based economy to a net zero carbon economy, and we cannot wait for 2050. We now have an opportunity to retrain our young people, and our whole workforce, so that we can deliver this, creating a green industrial base and a regional strategy that brings everybody up. However, I fear that this Prime Minister, this Chancellor and this Government are just not up to the job.

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[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

Three minutes: so just three short points.

First, I want to add my voice to all those urging the Government to plug the gaps in the self-employed support scheme. In Brighton this is a massive issue, particularly in the creative and arts sector. Of course we welcome the funding package that was announced earlier in the week, but we need to fund the people who work in that sector, not just the bricks and mortar and the infrastructure, so I ask the Government: please listen to all those people on both sides of the House who want to see those gaps plugged and also please take a sectoral approach to the furlough scheme so that it can be maintained in those sectors that cannot yet safely open.

Secondly, the statement as a whole was, sadly, far too much about propping up the housing market, ignoring renters and creating low-paid jobs. It is about consumption at any cost and it is doing far too little on climate and nature.

Thirdly, the so-called green recovery is a drop in the ocean of what is needed. Yesterday, the New Economics Foundation released a new report that showed that by investing £8.6 billion a year in whole-house retrofit, we could create more than half a million jobs, reduce household emissions by more than 20% and cut affected household bills by £418, all within the remainder of this Parliament. That is what an energy efficiency programme worthy of the moment would look like.

It is a similar story for nature. There is some recognition of the challenge, but a complete failure to grasp the scale required. The £40 million for nature-restoration jobs might sound good, but let us compare it with the last 10 years of cuts to our nature agencies. It is a sticking plaster that will not arrest the decline of our natural world. In 2009, the core funding grant to Natural England was £212 million; 10 years later, it was just £60 million. That is £150 million less for nature protection each and every year, which is more than three times the total allocated to the green jobs challenge fund today. The sums announced are so out of step with the challenges we face that some are even questioning their lawfulness. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor will no doubt have received Plan B’s letter before action.

Any progress is still dwarfed by public money for fossil fuels. We cannot put out a fire with one hand while still pouring petrol on it with the other, yet that is what the Government are doing, through the £27 billion road building schemes, the blank cheque bail-outs to airlines and the public money funnelled into fossil fuel projects overseas. It is time for a line in the sand. The Government should commit that not one penny more of public money will be spent on propping up the fossil fuel economy and fuelling the climate emergency.

Yesterday I presented the Decarbonisation and Economic Strategy Bill. It was put together by the hon. Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) and myself, and it is the first ever attempt in the UK to legislate for a green new deal. If the Government are struggling to grasp what a commensurate response to our challenges looks like, I invite them to take a look at the work that has already been done. It is, some might say, oven ready.