Amendment of the Law

Chris Ruane Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

I was hoping and praying that this Budget would offer some employment chances for the people in my constituency. It has done nothing for employment chances in Vale of Clwyd; in fact, it has increased the chance of unemployment there.

There are 650 parliamentary constituencies in the UK, and of the top 50 for percentage of jobs in the public sector—including Edinburgh South with 67% and Swansea West at No. 50 with 41%—76% are Opposition constituencies and only 24% are Government constituencies. That speaks volumes. The policies that the Government are drawing up are policies not for Britain, but for the Tory and Liberal Democrat areas of Britain, and that is not one-nation conservatism. We are seeing on the economy the same partisanship that we saw on constitutional issues.

There are 13,000 public sector workers in my constituency.

[Martin Horwood]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Ruane]

I am not giving way.

There are 10,000 public sector workers in the neighbouring, Conservative constituency of Clwyd West. [Interruption.] I will give way to the hon. Gentleman.

[Martin Horwood]

Does the hon. Gentleman think that the policy of the pupil premium, which is gearing education funding towards schools supporting the least well-off families, will support more Conservative and Liberal Democrat constituencies than Labour ones?

[Chris Ruane]

I will deal with that shortly; the hon. Gentleman does not have to worry about that.

In my constituency, there are already six people chasing one job. If the Government implement these 10% to 25% cuts in the public sector, another 2,000 to 3,000 people will become unemployed, with 20 people chasing each job. The Government state that they want the private sector to take up the slack of jobs in the public sector. What have they done to promote that in my constituency? Nothing. One of the biggest employers in north Wales is Sharp, which has the biggest solar panel factory in the whole of western Europe. There is also Kingspan in Delyn. In my constituency, we have the Technium OpTIC centre, which has the biggest solar panel in the whole of the UK. The changes to the feed-in tariff that the Government have announced will mean that these sectors are hit, and there will be job losses, not job expansions, in my constituency. An article in today’s edition of The Guardian stated that the UK had gone from third to 13th in green technology jobs in one year. This is not a green Government.

Young people in my constituency were looking to the Chancellor to help them to gain employment. They had help from the previous Government—a Labour Government. In my constituency, the Rhyl city strategy put 450 young people back to work in the space of 12 months. They were given hope; they were given a wage packet; they were given a future. All that has ended. The last day of the future jobs fund is tomorrow; after that, there will be nothing like it in my constituency.

Another article today in The Guardian mentioned that seaside towns and communities have the worst deprivation in the country. This Government did nothing to help those seaside towns; in fact, they worked against them. The changes that they have made to housing benefit will mean, as Boris Johnson has said, a Kosovo-style clear-out of the inner cities, especially London. Where will those people go? They will go to houses in multiple occupation in towns such as Weston-super-Mare, Hastings, Margate, Jaywick, Rhyl, Colwyn Bay and Blackpool. They will be moved from areas of employment to areas of unemployment, where slum landlords will make money out of misery—helped, aided and abetted by the Conservatives, who are altering the rules and regulations on the licensing of slum landlords.

[Stephen Lloyd]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that according to figures that I received last week on Eastbourne, which is of course a splendid seaside town, the unemployment rate for February 2011 was down by 340 compared with February 2010? We welcome anyone to whom we can hope to give jobs in Eastbourne, which has a successful economy.

[Chris Ruane]

What will the figures be in February 2012?

I speak from the perspective of a Welsh MP in a seaside town in an area with high public sector employment. We had made progress under the Labour Government, who created an extra 7,000 jobs over a 13-year period, with 3,500 in one business park alone—St Asaph business park, built by the Tories, empty under the Tories, and full under Labour. We were able to achieve that because we engaged with Europe. We applied for objective 1 funding—something that the Tories never did in their 18 years—and we got it. In my county of Denbighshire, we have had £124 million over the past seven years to create jobs, and we have done that. We have engaged with the Welsh Assembly Government; I give some credit to Plaid Cymru in this regard. Plaid Cymru and Labour, in a proper, working coalition, have pumped £38 million into five principal seaside towns along the north Wales coast: Prestatyn, Rhyl, Towyn, Kinmel Bay and Colwyn Bay. We have engaged with the Department for Work and Pensions in running national pilots in Rhyl—the Rhyl city strategy and Fit for Work.

We have put hundreds of people back to work, not by shaking a big stick at them but by engaging with them. I am talking about drug addicts, alcoholics and ex-prisoners who are now making honey on a farm in Wales. I am talking about Rhyl football club, which is using football as a means to connect with parents and children. I am talking about Rhyl college and the Hub young people’s centre, which has 1,000 young people engaged with the back-to-work agenda. We have made progress, but all that is under threat from the Budget that we have witnessed.

We saw the Tories at work in the 1980s. We have seen what they did to coal, steel and inner-city communities. Remember the riots; remember the closure of the pits and the steelworks. That legacy is still being felt in many of those communities today. I make a prediction: if specific help is not given to areas with high public sector employment, then we will be looking at those areas as the new coal, steel and inner-city communities of this Parliament. Specific help must be given; otherwise, it will be back to the future—back to the 1980s.

--- Later in debate ---

[Danny Alexander]

I am grateful for that intervention, but I disagree with the point that the hon. Gentleman makes.

[Chris Ruane]

rose—

[Danny Alexander]

Let me answer the intervention before I give way again. We have abolished the regional development agencies, which were bureaucratic and inflexible, and we have replaced them with a localised, bottom-up process of local enterprise partnerships that are making a real difference in our economy.

[Chris Ruane]

I thank the Chief Secretary for giving way. Has he read the article in The Guardian today, which reports that the UK has slipped from third position to 13th in the whole world on green renewable energy technology under the Tory-Liberal Democrat Government?

[Danny Alexander]

I am afraid I have not read The Guardian today. I will turn to green issues later in my speech. I disagree with that assessment, although of course the hon. Gentleman is quoting one of the very few organisations that backed his party’s economic plans, if that is what they can be called.

The fourth objective of our growth strategy is to have a more educated work force who are the most flexible in Europe.

Let me turn first to creating a more competitive tax system. We used to have the third lowest corporation tax rate in Europe, but we now have the sixth highest, so from April this year corporation tax will be reduced not just by 1%, as we announced last June, but by 2%. It will continue to fall by 1% in each of the next three years, taking our corporate tax rate down to just 23% and giving us the lowest corporation tax rate in the G7.