Jobs and Work

Debate between Charlie Elphicke and Chuka Umunna

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Umunna]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

A few moments ago, the hon. Gentleman talked about a wage that people can live on. Will a future Labour Government commit to having a living wage in place of the minimum wage, or will his speech be more about rhetoric than firm commitments and pledges to the British people?

[Mr Umunna]

The hon. Gentleman raises a good point, because 22% of employees in his constituency under this Government are paid less than a living wage. I will come on to what we intend to do and what is so sorely lacking in the Queen’s Speech.

We do not want to wait until a Conservative Chancellor sees the light and matches our ambition in 2084. What we are hoping is that in the Queen’s Speech, and the Bills that follow, he will match our commitment and ensure that we have a better-waged economy. There are two parts to this challenge: first, action to tackle low pay and insecurity at work—I will come on to what the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) talked about—and, secondly, the implementation across Government of an industrial strategy to nurture and grow the sectors that produce the better-paid jobs we want to see across the country.

On low pay, we make no apologies for reminding the House at every opportunity that it was this party, in the face of strong opposition, that introduced the national minimum wage. When we entered office, some people were earning as little as £1 an hour, a practice I am proud to say we outlawed. To give just one of the many examples of the opposition we faced, when we introduced the national minimum wage into this House 17 years ago, a member of the then shadow Cabinet said:

“If, as I and all my Conservative colleagues believe, the DTI’s minimum wage comes into effect, it will negatively affect, not hundreds of thousands but millions of people.”—[Official Report, 4 July 1997; Vol. 297, c. 526.]

That shadow Cabinet member is now the Work and Pensions Secretary. We had the good sense to ignore him.

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[Mr Umunna]

That is a perfect example of the egregious and exploitative use of such arrangements. We are told that the employment Bill will help hard-working people to have confidence in the terms of their contracts and that it will crack down on the abuse of zero-hours contracts, such as the example my hon. Friend mentions. However, the details that we know of suggest that the Government are simply not going far enough. On its own, banning exclusivity clauses in such arrangements will not do the job. We need, among other things, to give workers the right to a fixed-hours contract when they have regularly worked hours with the same employer for a period of time—such as the constituent of my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South—and to protect them from having their shifts cancelled at short notice without compensation. Above all, we must ensure that people know that they are on a zero-hours arrangement.

I have talked about jobs, wages and security at work. The other part of reforming the jobs market is the implementation across Government of a proper industrial strategy, both to create the right conditions for businesses to thrive in all regions of the country and to put the full weight of Government behind those sectors that can win gold medals in the global marketplace for the UK, creating more of the middle-income jobs we want to see.

[Charlie Elphicke]

rose—

[Mr Umunna]

I will just make a bit more progress.

Part of that involves ensuring the right environment across the country in all regions for our businesses to grow, and part of it involves a sector-led approach, looking at where we have a competitive edge and comparative advantage relative to our international competitors. I am very supportive of the sectoral approach. It was of course the Labour Government who led the way in that by setting up the Automotive Council.

When it comes to creating the right environment, ensuring that people have the skills our businesses need is crucial. Increasing the quantity and quality of apprenticeships is a must. We have a record to be proud of. In government, we rescued apprenticeships from the scrap heap. We more than quadrupled starts—[Interruption.] Government Members do not want to hear it, but let me give them the facts. We more than quadrupled apprenticeship starts, from a woeful 65,000 under the Major Government to 280,000 in our final year in office.

Blacklisting

Debate between Charlie Elphicke and Chuka Umunna

Wednesday 23rd January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Umunna]

My hon. Friend is quite right. There has been a culture of denial; people are sticking their head in the sand, but the public and people working in the industry deserve some honesty.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

I think that all of us would agree that blacklisting is entirely unacceptable. The previous Labour Government consulted on the issue back in 2003, but no action was taken until 2010. Why? Why was the practice not stopped?

[Mr Umunna]

I say this to the hon. Gentleman, with whom I have enjoyed debating since we both joined the House two and a half years ago: I have already stated that different Governments perhaps should have done more about the issue. I cannot say fairer than that. If people want to make political points about what the last Labour Government did, fine, but I am not sure where that will get us.

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[Mr Umunna]

That is right. Certainly, the anecdotal evidence that I have received absolutely confirms what my hon. Friend says. One of the problems is that there is what happens on the site and what happens in the boardroom. I have not come across a board director of any of the construction companies who would publicly or privately condone these practices, but these practices have been going on. One either acknowledges that and seeks to deal with them, or puts one’s head in the sand. It is the head-in-the-sand attitude that has been so unhelpful thus far.

[Charlie Elphicke]

As I said, I think we all agree that blacklisting is unacceptable, and was wrong. He mentions that the Information Commissioner took action in 2009. The regulations came into effect in 2010. The question, to my mind, is what can we as lawmakers do further, practically, in terms of the legal structure, sanctions and penalties?

[Mr Umunna]

I will come to that exact point in a bit. I shall explain how the association worked, for the record.

Mr Kerr maintained a list and files on at least 3,200 construction workers. Association members would feed him the names of workers, and information relating to them, to keep on file. It would be remiss of me not to mention that, regrettably—my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) may just have alluded to this—there are allegations that there were some cases of trade union officials assisting in this process. The material included personal information, including on workers’ private relationships, whether they had raised health and safety issues, and their trade union activities. The copies of the files that I have seen give details of people’s specific movements on particular times and dates.

Before they recruited workers, association members would check with Mr Kerr whether the said worker was on the list, and if they were, they would be taken against, and were, more often than not, denied employment. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee West (Jim McGovern) said at the Select Committee’s cross examination of Mr Kerr, for £2.20, the association could dictate whether a worker got a job and so whether they could

“put a meal on the table that week.”

Economic Growth and Employment

Debate between Charlie Elphicke and Chuka Umunna

Wednesday 23rd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Umunna]

With the greatest respect to the hon. Gentleman, the reason the Monetary Policy Committee has set our interest rates so low is that we are struggling to find growth in this country. Without growth, we will be unable to reduce our borrowing. Our not being in the eurozone is another reason we are able to adopt lower interest rates.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

I, too, congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his much-deserved elevation and on his speech, which has been very interesting so far. I put it to him that the Opposition’s plan would have been to borrow about £100 billion more than the Government plan to borrow in the current Parliament, which would lead to higher interest rates and push us closer to the situation Italy and Greece find themselves in and to what is happening in the eurozone, which would be irresponsible and reckless.

[Mr Umunna]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for welcoming me to my post. First, if he looks at page 22 of the Government’s summary of independent forecasts, he will see that they are projected to borrow, on average, over £100 billion more than the Government thought they would. Secondly, when he returns to his constituency he might wish to explain to his constituents, particularly the young people—youth unemployment there is up by 155% since January this year—why he cannot get his Government to change course.

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[Mr Umunna]

I have given way several times, and I want to make a bit of progress.

Instead of reverting to the tired old mantras and doing over the people who work in this country, perhaps the Secretary of State could tell us what he will do to get banks lending to small and medium-sized businesses that are, by his and the Chancellor’s own admission, currently being starved of credit. We know that the Project Merlin accord between the banks and the Government failed. The Secretary of State more or less admitted as much when he said:

“Merlin was necessary but it was never going to be sufficient. I don’t think any of us pretended it was enough.”

We know that the figures published under Merlin are entirely misleading, because under the agreement between the banks and the Government a gross lending measure was adopted, not the more meaningful net figure used by the Bank of England. The truth is that Project Merlin was really no more than a public relations gimmick designed to get the Government out of a hole when banks’ declarations of bonuses were in full flow earlier this year.

For real businesses, the failure is real. The Bank of England’s “Trends in Lending” publication for last month showed the stock of lending to UK businesses contracting overall in the three months to August. The Bank’s latest agents’ summary, for this month, stated that small businesses were still reporting that credit conditions

“remained tight, and in some cases had become tighter.”

That is supported by the figures released this morning by the British Bankers Association, showing lending by the high street banking groups to non-financial businesses contracting this month.

To resolve that problem, the Government first need to change their overall economic strategy, to give businesses the confidence to borrow and grow. The small and medium-sized enterprise finance monitor published last week showed that the main barrier to future borrowing by SMEs was the economic climate, but that the other major barrier was the lending practices of the banks. The Government need to use their influence with the banks, particularly through United Kingdom Financial Investments in the case of the banks in which the state has a stake, to insist that they get money out of the door to responsible businesses that have sound business models but are struggling to access finance. In addition, they must urge those banks to adopt a better lending culture—for example, by ensuring that they have local relationship managers on the ground who get to know the business concerned.

[Charlie Elphicke]

I am sure the whole House has considerable sympathy with the hon. Gentleman’s position. Unfortunately, the Government’s hands are somewhat tied, because UKFI was set up on the basis that it was at arm’s length. When the original deal was done with the banks, the then Government did not force any lending targets on them. This Government have been trying their best to undo that damage through Merlin and other measures, but the previous Government should have got it right in the first place and have made it harder now.

[Mr Umunna]

When will Government Members take responsibility? I wish that we were still in government, but we have not been for 18 months now. It is about time that they got used to the fact that they are in government and took responsibility.

Business is crying out not for a Government who step aside and fail or refuse to act but for one who adopt an active approach, using all the tools at their disposal to create the conditions for private sector growth. For all their claims about our record, such as the ones that we have just heard, the Government have kept in place some of the support measures for business that we left them on leaving office. I should point out that under Labour, 1.1 million businesses were created. When we left office, the UK was rated fourth by the World Bank for the ease of doing business, and first in Europe. Under this Government, the UK has dropped to seventh in the global rankings. We will take no lectures from the Government on support for business.

In government, we set up the Better Regulation Executive and the Regulatory Policy Committee to improve the quality, and where appropriate reduce the quantity, of regulation on business. I note that the Government have continued with them.

Banking Reform

Debate between Charlie Elphicke and Chuka Umunna

Monday 29th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Umunna]

The apparatus would help to introduce greater transparency on bonuses, because if we want to do something about reckless remuneration we need to know about it. I speak to many people in the City, and, although some of course disagree with the measure, many accept that it needs to be introduced. Action was taken, but some measures are still outstanding.

[Charlie Elphicke]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Umunna]

I am going to make progress, because I do not have much time.

I welcome the introduction of the independent banking commission, which the new Government were right to set up. Without pre-empting the commission, I firmly believe that we should separate retail from investment banking. There is some consensus on that, but it is a question of degree.

Finance (No.2) Bill

Debate between Charlie Elphicke and Chuka Umunna

Monday 8th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)]

Let me make three very quick points, parts of which will pick up on comments that have already been made.

The first point is the issue of declaration. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) mentioned last week’s Treasury Committee hearing, during which I asked the Chief Secretary to the Treasury how he intended to enforce the new child benefit measure. He said that the coalition Government will introduce legislation to require higher rate taxpayers to declare whether child benefit is coming into the household. Such a declaration is partly dependent on information being passed from one partner to the other. The Chief Secretary was very clear that the obligation to provide the information will be on the higher rate taxpayer. Why not also introduce a requirement in respect of the other half of the couple? As the Chief Secretary did not answer that, will the Minister now shed some light on it and reveal whether the Treasury has taken proper legal advice? The hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), a former tax lawyer, is in the Chamber. I wonder whether he advised his colleagues.

[Charlie Elphicke]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind words. As a lawyer, I might be very cautions, but as someone who has been in a relationship and who has found that couples tend to talk, I will ask the hon. Gentleman whether he is aware of any couples with children who do not share their financial information?

[Mr Umunna]

I do not usually ask my friends and acquaintances whether they share financial information with their partners, but I hear the comments of the hon. Gentleman.

My second point is, how will it be possible to prove the connection between the mother and the higher rate taxpayer, bearing in mind the problems that we have been having at Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs? Given that HMRC’s resources have been cut over the past few years, how will it be able to keep tabs on the situation between couples on a monthly basis? As some 1.2 million families will be affected by the new measure, will HMRC be given any more funding to enable it to enforce the new change and to keep tabs on what is happening out there in the nation?

Finally, John Whiting, joint interim head of the Office of Tax Simplification, has obviously commented on the problems of the new measure, but what is the point in setting up such an office when the people working within it and those heading it up have not been properly consulted or asked to advise on this measure? Surely, if the Government are not minded to accept this new clause, it would be a good idea to delay the introduction of this measure and ask the Office of Tax Simplification to do its job and advise on how it can be more efficiently introduced.