Jobs and Growth
Chris Ruane Excerpts(13 years, 2 months ago)
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Danny Alexander
I will not. I only have a few minutes left.
We will not return to growth on the back of debt-fuelled consumption.
Danny Alexander
No, I will not.
We will not return to growth on the back of what we might call predatory growth, based on spending money we do not have, so that when the music stops and the bills fall due, they have to be paid for by the rest of us. Instead, we are committed to building a new model of growth powered by investment, exports and enterprise, for example by investing in infrastructure. Over the four years of this spending review period, we will invest more in transport infrastructure than our predecessors managed in the previous four years.
Eurozone
Chris Ruane Excerpts(13 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Osborne
As I have said, I was always one of those who said that Britain should not join the euro. I worked alongside my right hon. Friend for Richmond (Yorks) (Mr Hague) when he was Leader of the Opposition, and helped him to write many of the speeches that set out that case. Although the shadow Chancellor keeps talking about the important role that the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) played in all that, I do not recall lots of passionate speeches about why Britain should not join the euro; but no doubt he was doing his work in private.
Let me say this about the Greek situation. If Greece were to leave the euro, there would be a balance of payments crisis. Greece does not have a primary balance, so there would automatically be a need for a huge international programme. The idea that leaving the euro would get it out of needing international assistance, or out of the clutches of the International Monetary Fund, is just fanciful, because it would need such a programme. There would be a balance of payments crisis and there would probably be runaway inflation as well, which would wipe out any competitiveness gains.
I think that we are depicting a nirvana of Greek exit from the euro which does not exist. Greece is in a very difficult position, and it needs to work through its problems.
Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
The private sector is not creating the jobs that the country needs. Will the Chancellor now review his massive cuts in the public sector? Forty-six per cent. of workers in my constituency work in the public sector; what chance have they of employment if there is a double jobs whammy, in both the public and the private sector?
Mr Osborne
The hon. Gentleman is the shadow Chancellor’s Parliamentary Private Secretary—[Hon. Members: “No, he’s not.”] Oh, he has been promoted! It is a complete clear-out. Well, well. We are very pleased to see that the shadow Chancellor is still in his place.
Let me draw the hon. Gentleman’s attention to what was said by Digby Jones, one of the members of the last Government. [Interruption.] It is funny how Labour Members disown these people. They booed Tony Blair, and now they are attacking their former Trade Minister. Anyway, he said that the Labour leadership was
“displaying poor statesmanship at a time when the country needs leaders, not players to a union gallery”.
He also said that their policies were
“a kick in the teeth for the only sector that generates wealth, that pays the tax and creates the jobs”
in this country. He added:
“Pro-business? Not!”
It is the businesses that will create the jobs in this country, and being the anti-business party will not get Labour anywhere.
Independent Banking Commission Report
Chris Ruane Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr Osborne
I thank my right hon. Friend for his support for the Banking Commission, and for his kind words. He has many decades of experience—
Mr Osborne
Well, I think my right hon. Friend was certainly alive when Messrs Glass and Steagall were, which most Members of the House could not say.
I respect my right hon. Friend’s experience. He has long argued for some form of separation between retail and investment banking and has been consistent in making that argument. Events have borne out his advice to successive Governments.
We asked John Vickers carefully to consider the timetable, and he gave a lot of thought to it. He recommends that all the changes should be completed by 2019, but that other changes should take place at earlier dates—he specifies those dates in his work. The 2019 back-stop is appropriate, because that is the date when the international rules also need to be in place. We should not underestimate the huge amount of work to be done in this House to get the report turned into legislation that works and that people do not find ways around.
Mr Osborne
My hon. Friend—who wrote what I thought was a very good piece for The Times, published on 9 September—has made a point based on his personal experience. I may or may not offend someone when I say that he is probably the most senior former investment banker in the House of Commons.
Mr Osborne
That is because they leave the House of Commons and go to work for investment banks.
My hon. Friend's experience was that an investment bank had many incentives to use retail deposits to subsidise its activity. That was not always right, and Glass–Steagall helped to stop it. We are not reintroducing Glass–Steagall, or introducing it in the United Kingdom; we have a different set of proposals which John Vickers has spent time developing, and I think that they meet the challenge that my hon. Friend set out in his article.
Mr Osborne
The hon. Gentleman says we’re all doomed, but the idea of these reforms is to ensure that we are not doomed in the future.
Sovereign Grant Bill (Allocation of Time)
Chris Ruane Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am not going to go back to 1066, but I am not sure whether it was auspicious to schedule the debate for Bastille day. Debating the monarchy today of all days might not have been wise, but to limit the debate so much is not necessarily as constitutional as it ought to be, and perhaps Her Majesty’s Government might like to bring the Bill back, as the right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane) suggested, when we can have a little bit of time for a proper debate on Second Reading.
Question put and agreed to.
Sovereign Grant Bill
Sovereign Grant Bill
Chris Ruane Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Osborne
First, I do not want to speak for the Queen, but I think she is quite familiar with the Scottish coastline.
Mr Osborne
Let us try to keep focused on the issue at hand.
Secondly, I completely accept that I could have brought other mechanisms before the House, but the Crown Estate is a large commercial property company that is run in a pretty conservative way. It is not a bad proxy for how the country and the economy are doing. That is why we are proposing this mechanism, but of course if people want to propose something else they are entitled to do so.
Mr Davidson
It is difficult to follow a speech like that because in many ways, it took the biscuit.
Mr Davidson
Of course, as my hon. Friend says, that biscuit would be a Bourbon.
It is worth while clarifying the question of the ownership of the Crown Estate. Is it owned by the monarch as an individual or the monarchy as an institution? When the Public Accounts Committee looked at this matter, there was a consistent attempt by officers of the monarchy to confuse and conflate the two. We need to ask ourselves this question: were the monarchy abolished, would Crown Estate moneys and properties belong to the deposed monarch as an individual or would they remain with the state? It is quite clear that they would remain with the state. Therefore, the moneys and the estates are not the property of the individual who happens to be the monarch at any particular time. That clarifies a number of things.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
I rise to speak to amendment 1, page 2, line 31, at end add—
“(4A) The statement must be accompanied by information showing the numbers of directly or indirectly employed hourly-paid staff of the Royal Household working in or in connection with the Royal Palaces in London who in the financial year in question were paid at or below £8.30 an hour.”.
I shall be as brief as possible, given the time constraints. The amendment is straightforward. Clause 2 proposes that the royal household’s accounts are to be reported. I am asking that a statement be included in that report to show the number of employees who are directly or indirectly employed by the royal household and who are being paid at or below £8.30 an hour. The reason that I have arrived at the figure of £8.30 is that that is the London living wage, as set by the Mayor of London, who has described it as the wage level designed to provide a
“minimum acceptable quality of life”
for people working in the capital.
The London living wage was started by a group of religious organisations, churches and trade unions 10 years ago, as part of a campaign by London Citizens. They came together to try to tackle poverty, and recognised that the national minimum wage did not allow people to avoid living in poverty in the capital city. They have campaigned over the past decade to press employers to pay the London living wage. They have targeted cleaners, in particular, who are living in poverty. They campaigned and they won. First, they won in a number of banks at Canary Wharf, then they came to Parliament and ensured that we paid our cleaners the London living wage. The campaign continued right through the capital, and more than 200 major companies have now signed up to the London living wage campaign. The Prime Minister himself described it as
“an idea whose time had come”.
The Leader of the Opposition appeared with him on a platform before the general election with members of London Citizens to sign up to the London living wage. Every mayoral candidate has supported it. Why? They did so because all of us want to see people living out of poverty. Yet in the royal household, which is only a mile and a half away from here, the workers who are employed by contracting companies including KGB—
John McDonnell
It is an unfortunate name, but there we are.
People working in the royal household for companies such as KGB and GreenZone are being paid £6.45 an hour, maximum. We have discovered that many of them are organised by the Public and Commercial Services Union, which is not recognised by the companies. Many of those people do not even have written contracts, which is an illegal practice. The number of jobs there has just been cut, and the work load has increased. Some people have had their hours increased, but they are still living on poverty wages.
The amendment would simply ask the royal household to publish the information on how many people working for the royal family, cleaning their rooms and corridors and serving them in different ways, are being paid below the London minimum wage. In this way, I want to recruit the royal household to support the London Citizens campaign. I want it to lead the campaign. As the Mayor of London himself has said, no company in London should be paying less than the London living wage. The Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and, I believe, the Chancellor and the shadow Chancellor have signed up to the campaign in the past. The amendment simply seeks to tackle poverty wages in London. On that basis, I hope that we can expect the unanimous support of the House.
Finance (No. 3) Bill
Chris Ruane Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Oliver Heald
The hon. Lady makes an important point, which I imagine will be considered by the consumer credit review. I am a member of a credit union, and I think that all MPs should be because it is a good way of illustrating—
Oliver Heald
I am a member of one, and membership is a good way of trying to convey knowledge about credit unions. I pay tribute to the all-party group on credit unions, chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds). We need to do more to increase the amount of credit that is available on reasonable terms.
I am a member of the all-party group on financial education for young people, chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson). The move to teach children the basics of budgeting from quite an early age is long overdue. In households that are chaotic and at the bottom of the economic pile there is very little understanding of basic budgeting, which we must resolve.
Finally, I want to support the point about advice. In the past, I have given free legal advice and dealt with welfare rights. I have experience of the people the hon. Member for Makerfield described, who come to see us carrying bags of documents from companies and unpaid invoices. The people who sit down with them, go through everything carefully and present their case to creditors do a marvellous job. The other day, I went to the Shelter facility in Hatfield, which offers debt advice in that part of Hertfordshire. Someone there had been working on debt advice for 29 years and she had lots of letters on the wall from people saying how grateful they were to her for trying to sort things out for them. We must certainly support debt advice, but we need to do other things in relation to education and credit unions. I would like more regulation in this field and, possibly, a cap.
Civil List
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Mr Leigh
Well, some stingy previous Government, whom I will not mention by name, got rid of the royal yacht. What a tragedy. It is not the working part of the constitution but it is an important part. As for the royal train, it is quite right that this wonderful elderly lady should sometimes be allowed to sleep on the royal train so that when she visits Newcastle or Manchester she can wake up and perform her duty refreshed, and not be forced out of bed at 5 am to take a plane. We saved the royal train; that, I think, is something that the PAC achieved.
The PAC, then, will not cause any unnecessary trouble. Although I cannot speak for the new Committee, I have great respect for the right hon. Member for Barking, and I know that she will handle the matter in an effective and completely non-partisan way. I am sure that the Committee will do a wonderful job.
Before I finish, I want to say something about royal palaces. We paid that visit to Kensington palace, and we visited Buckingham palace. We found a lot of peeling wallpaper there—there was a lot of under-investment.
Mr Leigh
Yes. This is the Head of State. She should not be in a palace that is falling down, and we should not be mean and stingy about that. I think that the Government had been a bit stingy. Perhaps these new arrangements will allow her to look after her palaces better.
There is one scandal that I want to raise: Frogmore, the royal mausoleum. It is falling down. As I understand it, under the new arrangements there will be an opportunity for the royal household to have greater control of its own affairs so that it can rehabilitate Frogmore, which is an important national monument and in an appalling state. It is a national scandal that the mausoleum for Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort is in such a derelict state that the public can no longer be admitted. That shows some of the problems with the royal finances. The Queen and her household have been making enormous strides in creating efficiency savings, but they simply have not had the independence or the resources to try to maintain the whole of the estate. It is vital for the nation that they be allowed to do so.
In conclusion, I warmly commend the Chancellor, and say well done for finally getting parliamentary accountability. We now want to continue doing battle with the BBC and the Bank of England, and make sure that this Parliament can audit all aspects of our national finances.
Mr MacShane
I am trying to choose my words carefully, because this is a serious matter. Serious questions would be asked if any Government Minister, acting on behalf of the nation, were to start hopping around in oligarchs’ planes—
Mr MacShane
I do not think that right hon. Member for Tatton (Mr Osborne) was a Government Minister at the time of that yacht trip—
Finance Bill
Chris Ruane Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Chris Leslie
What on earth is going on with the Tories this evening? It is a perplexing situation, because Conservative Members usually accuse Labour Members of filibustering in an open-ended Finance Bill debate, but not at all this evening. Instead we seem to have a private family dispute breaking out.
Chris Leslie
There could be, who knows? We had the unedifying spectacle, at the beginning of the debate, of the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), in whose name the new clause was tabled, not moving it, and the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) swiftly getting to his feet and deciding to move it. Three hours later, here we are. I am not quite sure whether the hon. Member for Congleton had reached some sort of deal with the Whips—it did not look like a particularly friendly deal at the time, but maybe she had a concession from Ministers and they are going to announce, finally, some movement on their election pledges. It is all very strange behaviour.
As my hon. Friends have said, it is very peculiar, at a time when millions of families, pensioners and others are being hit hard by deep spending cuts and tax rises, that the first priority of so many Conservative Members is to advocate an unfair tax cut with no apparent benefit to society. It would be a multi-billion-pound marriage tax break that would penalise those who are separated, widowed or divorced, many of whom are already being hit hard by cuts to tax credits and child care.
Mr Hanson
I do. My hon. Friend spent many a happy hour in Committee discussing those very issues.
If the Government are not interested in master builders and the voluntary sector, and if they are not interested in the impact on public sector operations such as hospitals, schools and universities, perhaps they will listen to the British Retail Consortium, which states:
“Increasing the VAT rate to 20 per cent would cost 163,000 jobs over four years and reduce consumer spending by £3.6 billion over the same period.”
Only today, there were job losses at Jane Norman. There have been job losses at Habitat, Focus DIY, HMV, Mothercare, Comet and HomeForm.
Stephen Williams
I thought I heard the right hon. Gentleman say Borders, but Borders went bust under the previous Labour Government. Would he like to retract that?
Mr Hanson
I misheard my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane). I thought he said Borders, but he said Thorntons, which has today lost 10,000 jobs. It may be of some interest to the hon. Member for Bristol West (Stephen Williams) that those jobs have been hit, as has the confidence in the retail sector, by VAT increases.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham mentioned charities. Earlier this year, Sue Ryder, the charity, stated:
“Today's rise in VAT to 20% will cut the amount of social care that charities can deliver”.
That has an impact.
What is the impact on fuel of the VAT rise? People with a typical family car will pay £1.35 more to fill up their tank, as will people moving goods around the country. The VAT increase has hit the retail sector and we see job losses across the board, but there is also concern from the tourism sector. Just recently, on 6 June, the British Hospitality Association stated that the high level of UK VAT is a deterrent to tourism growth. Once again, those are the impacts on growth, jobs and public services.
Clive Efford
My hon. Friend cannot have failed to notice that only one Back-Bench Conservative Member is present—
Clive Efford
Yes, he is a PPS. By contrast, nearly a dozen Liberal Democrat Members have been present. That is nearly as many Liberal MPs as positions their party has taken on VAT. I have here positions set out by not only the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams), but the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson), who called for a review, and a Liberal Democrat activist, who called for a cut in VAT on tourism in that part of the world. Just how many positions do the Liberal Democrats have on VAT?
Toby Perkins
My hon. Friend makes a valuable point. No one is suggesting that because someone is wealthy they do not have a right to go into politics, just as we would never keep someone out of politics because they were poor—[Interruption.] Well, we would never do so! The central point, however, is that when the policies that the Government pursue seem so directly to hit the most deprived people, to attack pensioners and, particularly, to attack women as they have on so many different occasions, people will understandably look at the background of the people making those decisions. When people hear them in opposition say that they recognise that VAT is a regressive tax, but see them go into government and try to claim something different, they will understandably question their credibility.
VAT hits the poor, the workless and pensioners. Are those really the people the Chancellor wants in his sights?
Toby Perkins
Absolutely. The VAT cut, like so many other Government policies, is hitting women hardest.
I do not know, Mr Speaker, whether you ever have the opportunity to visit the Conservativehome website, but if anyone does so today they will see an article entitled “The Conservatives are losing female supporters. Why?” We have had many debates that could have given them the answer, but basically every single economic policy that they have introduced has had an adverse effect on women. Women are more likely to be public sector workers; women have been badly hit by the pension changes; women are more likely to be impacted by the VAT increase; and women often manage the family budget and have noticed acutely the increase in and squeeze on the amount that they have to spend. The Conservatives are trying to analyse why women are deserting them, and we can lead them to the answer without the need for them to do much research at all.
The challenges that business face are significant. Before coming to this place, I was running my own business. Confidence is low. When customers are worried about whether they will be able to afford to pay their mortgage, they will not be spending money on anything that they do not need. The banks are not lending, public sector organisations are not buying from the private sector because they have less money, and IT suppliers are finding that they are not getting the business they relied on from the public sector. At the same time, public sector employees are not contributing to the private sector by buying all the things they would be buying if they had confidence in the security of their jobs. The cuts to the public sector are having a dramatic effect on the private sector.
We have had a Budget for growth that has led to no growth. We now need an assessment of the impact of the VAT increase so that we can understand fully the reasons we are not getting growth in the economy. We need to make decisions based on getting people back to work, getting money in people’s pockets, and seeing the economy grow back in the way that every single one of us wants it to.
The Economy
Chris Ruane Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Ed Balls
Well, at least that was not an animal noise.
Something has been puzzling me in recent months. Why does this Chancellor have such a love of the nautical metaphor? Navigating through choppy waters, steering a steady course, sailing into strong global head winds—where does he find all those boating metaphors? But this, of course, is the Chancellor who likes to spend his summers gossiping on the yachts of his friends.
I have said many times in the past year that the Chancellor must learn the lessons of history if he is to avoid repeating the mistakes of history. I am sorry to have to raise that rather unfortunate episode in his history again. I know that it is a bit irritating for Members, even a bit annoying, but the Prime Minister said that I was the most annoying person in politics, and I must live up to my reputation.
As a matter of fact, my reign at the top table did not last very long. A few days later, The Sunday Times conducted a poll asking the public who was the most annoying person in British politics. It turned out that the Prime Minister is just as annoying as me, it turned out that the Chancellor of the Exchequer is more annoying than me, and it turned out that the Deputy Prime Minister is more annoying than all of us. But who is the most annoying person in British politics today? It is still Lord Mandelson, the Chancellor’s yachting partner.
I know Lord Mandelson well. He is a good friend of mine. [Laughter.] He is, actually, and I know that he will agree with me on this. If the Chancellor and his friend the Prime Minister have found us annoying so far, they should bear in mind that this is only the beginning; and when the Chancellor boasts that he narrowly avoided a summer Greek crisis, we know what he is really remembering.
Mr Osborne
I have just taken an intervention from that side.
The first requirement to fix the mess is a plan to deal with the deficit. The second requirement is the plan for growth. While the shadow Chancellor was letting the debt build up, the underlying competitiveness of our economy declined and the UK fell from fourth place to 12th in the international rankings. More than 1 million jobs were lost in manufacturing. Regional inequality, which we heard about during Prime Minister’s questions, worsened during Labour’s 13 years in government as the gap between the regions increased. As I pointed out earlier, private sector employment in the west midlands fell. Those imbalances have become deeply entrenched and cannot be fixed overnight, but we are undertaking the long-term structural reforms necessary to make that happen.
Mr Osborne
John Hutton said that he would like the leader of the Labour party
“to endorse the report I produced, yes, because I think it does strike the only fair balance”.
Mr Osborne
It is his report, Labour’s former Work and Pensions Secretary, and I want to know whether the Labour party backs it. [Interruption.] Unbelievable. Will the shadow Chancellor shake his head or nod?
Oral Answers to Questions
Chris Ruane Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Debbie Abrahams
Over the past six months, we have seen the economy flatlining, whereas in the previous six months we saw growth of 1.8%. Can the Chancellor explain to the House exactly what has changed?
Mr Osborne
I think the hon. Gentleman will find that the Government changed a year ago. I would say to the hon. Lady that the economy is now growing, and that in the past year more than 500,000 private sector jobs net have been created, which the Opposition should welcome. Exports are up 13%, investment is up 5.8% and manufacturing is up 4.2%—[Interruption.] Well, we remember when that lot were in a couple of years ago and the economy was tanking. Now it is growing and, as the public finance figures show today, we are getting the budget deficit down, dealing with our borrowing problem and restoring stability to the British economy. That is why the plans that we have put in place have been welcomed by so many independent organisations.