Amendment of the Law

Debate between Chris Ruane and Martin Horwood

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.