Leaving the EU: Economic Analysis

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Wednesday 28th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

The hon. Lady asks specifically about those with disabilities. This Government have an outstanding record in that respect. We spend £50 billion—[Interruption.] We spend £50 billion on those with disabilities and long-term health conditions. The critical point here is that the only reason we can provide that support is because of our effective, responsible stewardship of the economy. The responsible thing to do for the economy now, in order to protect just the constituents to whom she refers, is to ensure that this deal prevails, that we get economic certainty behind us and that we see the economy safeguarded, improving and growing into the future.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

The 90-page economic analysis repeatedly cites the importance of trade to the north-east, and the significant negative impact of no deal. Will the Minister confirm that, because of our manufacturing strengths, our exports and our integrated pan-European supply chain—which, regardless of claims by the European Research Group, cannot be replaced by deals with Australia, America or China—the only deal that could possibly work for jobs in the north-east is permanent membership of a European customs union?

[Mel Stride]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right to identify and characterise the businesses in her constituency in that way. They are deeply connected through supply chains to the European continent. That lies right at the heart of the political declaration and of our commitment to having the most frictionless trade possible and having no barriers, quotas or additional charges involved in that aspect of the relationship. I would say to her, respectfully, that she cannot view this deal in a vacuum. She has to consider it in the context of the alternatives. There is a danger, as she will recognise, that if we end up in no-deal territory, all the very things she fears may come to pass. It is really important for all of us across the House who have manufacturing businesses in our constituencies to stand up for them and support this deal.

EU Customs Union and Draft Withdrawal Agreement: Cost

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Monday 22nd October 2018 Commons Chamber

[John Glen]

Such an answer is dependent on so many conditions and the determination of what is in those trade deals, so I am sorry, but I cannot give a precise answer.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

Is the Minister finding withdrawal from the European Union as easy and cost-free as some of those on the Government Benches behind him suggested it would be?

[John Glen]

Government is always challenging, and there are always issues that need to be resolved. It is self-evident that this is a challenging set of negotiations.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[John Glen]

The Government are expanding Tech City’s reach across the UK, creating Tech Nation by investing £21 million over four years to help people grow digital businesses. That includes a large-scale CityVerve smart city demonstrator in Manchester, which demonstrates how the internet of things, technologies and services can improve local services in transport, energy, health and culture.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

Newcastle has national centres of excellence in data, health and energy—key drivers of our future economy. On Saturday, I held a business summit with Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, at which start-ups identified attracting investment as a key barrier to their growth. What are the Government doing to attract investment to businesses in Newcastle? Does that include a regional business bank, as supported by Labour?

[John Glen]

We certainly have a national bank to encourage investment in small businesses. We also have the £400 million digital infrastructure fund. As a Minister, I am doing all I can to ensure that we find the best conditions for investing in small and medium-sized enterprises across the country.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Tuesday 24th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Barclay]

The Government remain fully committed to agreeing both city deals, and to working constructively with the Scottish Government and local partners. I am, of course, very happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss this further.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

A decent transport infrastructure is an essential platform for economic growth, but the Minister will be aware that public transport investment in the north-east is only £200 per head, whereas it is £2,000 per head in London. Will he now commit to investing in the north-east on the Tyne and Wear metro, and with public money, not some private finance initiative?

[Stephen Barclay]

The Government are committed to increasing infrastructure investment across all regions, including the north-east. Indeed, investment is 30% higher than it was under the Labour Government. It would be better for Opposition Members to recognise the record investment in infrastructure, which is driving productivity and growth.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

I am delighted to join my hon. Friend in congratulating Scientifica, and I am happy to make that pledge. At the spending review, we committed to a £175 million reinvestment in UK Trade & Investment, now part of the Department for International Trade, to drive UK exports. We remain committed to ensuring that UK exporters receive world-class support. Indeed, as the Prime Minister will make clear today, maintaining the UK as one of the best places in the world for science and innovation is a priority for us.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

On Friday, I visited Wirecard, an innovative financial technology company in the emerging payments sector; it is based in Newcastle. It is concerned that leaving the European single market, and in particular the passporting rights, will diminish investment in fintech, an area in which this country leads, and which is growing in Newcastle and the north-east. What reassurance will the Minister give Wirecard?

[Mr Gauke]

As the hon. Lady will be aware, the Prime Minister will have just begun making a speech on this matter, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union will make a statement to the House later. Let me just say that the UK is in a very strong position on fintech, and on ensuring that this successful sector is a priority. Indeed, the Minister for Trade and Investment, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands), led a delegation of 33 companies to India, where the focus was, among other things, on this sector and promoting the best of British businesses. We will continue to ensure that the UK remains a strong place for the sector.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Mr David Gauke)]

No UK taxpayers’ money has been used in the EU’s lending to other member states. Only in the event of default would the UK be asked to pay its share.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

What impact has the Secretary of State made of his predecessor’s austerity economics on the nation’s prosperity and would he like to apologise for that divisive and discredited ideology?

[Mr Philip Hammond]

I assume that the hon. Lady means what assessment I have made. Since 2010, we have brought this country back from the very brink. We have borrowing down from more than 10% of GDP to around 4% with more to deliver. We have created 2.7 million new jobs, making this economy the fastest growing in the G7 for the past three years, and the fastest job creator in the developed world. That is a record of which we can be proud.

Article 50: Parliamentary Approval

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[John Penrose]

As I said earlier to the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) and, I think, to the hon. Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie), discussions are already under way. We are endeavouring to involve everyone and to seek consensus whenever possible but, ultimately, foreign policy is reserved to the United Kingdom Parliament. While we want to ensure that everyone has a chance to contribute, and that, as far as possible, there is a collective view so that we understand what are the best opportunities for the constituent parts of the United Kingdom, at the end of the day the matter must come back to the United Kingdom Government and Parliament.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

Brexit means Brexit, but there is no agreed definition of what “Brexit” means, apart from the fact that it involves parliamentary sovereignty. Is the Minister seriously proposing that we should undergo such a momentous seismic change as Brexit without its having been defined to the British people before the referendum, or decided on by Parliament after it?

[John Penrose]

The hon. Lady is right: the details will become a great deal clearer as the negotiation goes through. We will all discover more about the various facets of how Brexit will affect different parts of our lives as the negotiations near completion. However, I must repeat what I have said several times already: we shall not be able to say how Parliament will engage with that until the new Prime Minister has had a chance to lay out her timetable for the negotiations, whereupon it will be possible to assess when opportunities for debate and discussion will occur.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Vaizey]

I would happily work with the hon. Gentleman and the Welsh Government. I have always found him and the Welsh Government to be congenial colleagues in regard to the roll-out of superfast broadband.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

We know that the Secretary of State wants to leave the European Union, but his Minister appears already to have left the United Kingdom to inhabit some fantasy “Broadbandia” in which everything is, in his words, an “unadulterated success”. For the rest of us in the 21st century United Kingdom, however, the reality is different. One in five broadband users still has less than half the speed that Ofcom classes as acceptable, and 70% of smartphone users in rural areas have zero access to 4G. Rather than living in “Broadbandia”, the rest of us are living in “Broadbadia“. Will the Minister stop fantasising and acknowledge the view of the Countryside Alliance:

“This rural broadband betrayal is devastating”?

[Mr Vaizey]

I know that the hon. Lady will want to join me in commemorating this important day, which is the 33rd anniversary of Margaret Thatcher’s landslide election victory in 1983. In that year, there was no broadband and the Minister you see before you was sitting his O-levels. The Secretary of State, however, was on the great lady’s battle bus.

The hon. Lady might quote the Countryside Alliance, but the gardener Robin Lane Fox wrote an article in the Financial Times, which I know she reads, in which he talked about a move to the rural arcadia brought about by our broadband roll-out programme. He said that, like Falstaff, he was looking forward to dying babbling of green fields because he could live in the countryside with a superfast connection. Let us remind ourselves that Labour had a pathetic megabit policy, and that is still its policy. Let us also remind ourselves that we are two years ahead of where Labour would have been, and let us talk up the success of this programme instead of constantly talking down great broadband Britain.

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The right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington, representing the House of Commons Commission, was asked—

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

1. What assessment the Commission has made of the effect on hon. Members and visitors of the level of diversity represented in artwork displayed in the Palace of Westminster.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington)]

No formal assessment has been made. However, the strategic priorities for developing the parliamentary arts collection are reviewed by the Speaker’s Advisory Committee on Works of Art at the start of each Parliament. The Committee makes targeted acquisitions that reflect the interests of the House, and makes changes to the presentation of works of art to promote engagement by the visiting public. The Committee has already decided to give further consideration in the current Parliament to the representation of the collection of parliamentarians of black, Asian or minority ethnic origin.

[Chi Onwurah]

In the six years that I have had the privilege of serving in this House, I have often felt that the dead white men in tights who people the walls of this Palace follow me around, sometimes into the Chamber itself. As the answer to my parliamentary question showed, there are only two representations of BAME people in the whole of this Palace. In a few weeks, children from English Martyrs Primary School in Newcastle will make the journey to visit Parliament. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that they should be overawed and impressed by the Palace, but feel that they are part of its present as well as its future?

[Tom Brake]

I agree entirely with the hon. Lady’s point. She will, I hope, be pleased to hear that on 5 July the Advisory Committee will discuss this very subject. I hope the Committee will be able to provide her with a clear action plan that will help to address her concerns.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd March 2016 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

The hon. Gentleman refers only to income tax. If he had looked at last weekend’s analysis of the overall cuts and what has happened with regard to tax and benefits, he would have seen that it is actually the poorest decile who are paying the most. The two groups hit hardest are young women with children and older women with caring responsibilities. Some 81% of the cuts are falling on women. This is a discriminatory Budget.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

We are pleased that the Chancellor has found that the PIP cuts are a cut too far, even for this ideological Government. Does the shadow Chancellor agree that characterising all benefits claimants as workshy, stay-in-bed, lazy scroungers, which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has done on many occasions, contributes to an atmosphere in which it is acceptable to enrich the better off at the cost of the poorest among us?

[John McDonnell]

That language has been used by the Conservative party. Let me return to the Budget. The hon. Member for Braintree (James Cleverly), who has now left us, asked me to return to the Budget, so let me press on.

Even worse, there is still no certainty about further welfare cuts. We were told yesterday by the new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions—this was repeated today—that there were to be no further cuts to welfare in this Parliament. Within minutes, the Treasury were briefing to correct the Secretary of State, as that then became “no planned cuts”. There is complete confusion—chaos on chaos. Nobody believes or has any confidence in the mealy-mouthed assurances that are being given today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to contribute to such an important debate and to follow so many speeches from my hon. and right hon. Friends. Although I might not have agreed with what the hon. Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup) said, I commend her focus on jobs and the importance of delivering a high-wage, job-based economy for our country. By contrast, the Chancellor opened with the mix of bluff and bravado, arrogance and malice that has become his trademark, but even so, I was absolutely astonished to hear him refer to social justice. This is a Budget with unfairness at its heart and misery in its veins. The Chancellor’s record of failure—failure to achieve any of his own debt targets, failure to deliver decent wages—

[Suella Fernandes (Fareham) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady agree with me and the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which reported yesterday that since the Chancellor has been in place, the gap between rich and poor has narrowed because most people have got into jobs? That is the way to bring about social justice.

[Chi Onwurah]

I would thank the hon. Lady for that contribution, but it flies in the face of the lived experience of my constituents, who are in low-wage jobs, cannot make ends meet and find themselves attacked by this Chancellor’s Budget. The Chancellor has failed to deliver for working people. His failure to raise productivity has been trumped in the past few days, in media terms at least, by his failure to deliver a Budget that lasts 48 hours.

The 1,443 PIP claimants in Newcastle will, like me, be pleased at least that that cut proved an ideological attack too far, but it is undoubtedly the case that by demonising and attacking all benefits claimants, the Chancellor hoped to create an atmosphere in which it was acceptable to enrich the better-off on the backs of the poorest and most vulnerable among us. It will be some compensation for them that members of the Government are now attacking and reviling each other almost to the same extent they have attacked and undermined benefits claimants.

I do not want to focus on the 48 hours following the Budget as experienced by the Chancellor. Instead, I want to give three examples of events that I attended in those 48 hours that highlighted the huge gap at the centre of the Budget, which was a failure to address our future economy and the future of the next generation, as he put it. On Thursday I visited the Big Bang fair organised by EngineeringUK with engineering professional bodies and businesses from across the country, where 70,000 young people discovered or rediscovered the excitement offered by a career in science, technology, engineering and maths. Those are the jobs of the future, the ones I want for my constituents, high-paid—not minimum wage, minimum skill—jobs.

But where were such jobs mentioned in the Budget? Where was the investment in the future to help create those jobs? There were, it is true, tax breaks for those hiring out their assets in the digital economy, but there was nothing for manufacturing or technology. There was no investment in digital infrastructure. There was no more detail on apprenticeships, which we need to ensure that we have the skills of the future. This was a Budget that left behind the technology that we need for our future.

That evening I visited the Creative Newcastle Get Digital summit, celebrating one of the fastest-growing sectors in the north-east, only hundreds of yards from where Stephenson’s Rocket was built. That was the real northern powerhouse, powering our economy into the future. But the Budget offered a few hundred million pounds for investment in north-east transport, against the tens of billions of investment in transport in London. This Budget did not offer any investment in digital infrastructure, and we stand to lose the millions of investment from the European Union, thanks to the referendum and the chaos on the Government Benches over that.

Finally, on Friday morning I visited St Paul’s primary school, where 10 and 11-year-olds were taking on the Pioneer challenge with employers and other schools across the region to promote STEM and entrepreneurship. Those children are the future basis for our economy in the north-east. They are proud Geordies, yet what the Budget did for them was to force the academisation of their school, taking it out of the local authority and the community that it seeks to support and atomising it—in effect, privatising it and taking away responsibility from the local parents and putting it on a desk in Whitehall, which is also where the northern powerhouse is found.

This Budget offered nothing for the future of our young people, for the north-east economy or for our country.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Tuesday 1st December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

I know that my hon. Friend has campaigned consistently on these issues since 2010. The justice reforms are an exemplary element of the long-term economic plan, combining savings with social reform and delivering economic dividends from improved employability to sites for 3,000 new homes. It is because of the strength of the economy, thanks to the long-term plan, that we can invest £1 billion to build nine modern prisons and close the old ones.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

Last night I launched the all-party group on adult education in recognition of the fact that at a time when we are all living longer, having many different jobs and even careers, and whole industries are being allowed to die, our long-term economic security depends on investing in adult education. The Chancellor was persuaded not to slash the further education budget. Will he now acknowledge that investing in further education is vital for the future?