Jobs and Business

Christopher Pincher Excerpts

Friday 10th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

It is a great honour to speak in this Gracious Speech debate on jobs, and a particular honour and pleasure to be called first after the dazzling performances on both Front Benches. It is also a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna), the shadow Secretary of State, who made a typically assured and polished speech—as I am sure his Wikipedia page will shortly remind us.

I shall bear in mind your words of wisdom, Mr Deputy Speaker, and not speak for too long. I am heartened by the fact that you have not set a time limit, because on the last three occasions when I have spoken in the Chamber, I have been given just three minutes in which to do so. That certainly focuses the mind, but I assure you and the House that I shall not be speaking for three minutes or, indeed, for three hours.

I want to speak about the issue of jobs, which is important to my constituents in Tamworth. Notwithstanding the rather gloomy words of the shadow Secretary of State, and the collapse last December of a company called Drive Assist, we in Tamworth have been heartened by a downward trajectory in joblessness. I think that that will be enhanced and encouraged by the measures announced in the Gracious Speech, particularly the proposal to offer an employment allowance towards national insurance, which I am pleased to note that the shadow Secretary of State seems to support. It means that small businesses up and down the country, from Redruth to Redcar—including, importantly, businesses in Tamworth, Fazeley and the district of Lichfield—will be exempt from national insurance, which will enable them to grow and employ more people. I think that the measure will also help us to rebalance our economy, moving back from the over-reliance on the financial services sector and the public sector that was so beloved of the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) towards a more sustainable, broad-based private sector—a sector that contracted by some 730,000 places under the last Labour Government.

I was also heartened by the announcement of a deregulation Bill, because regulation is, after all, a form of tax. A small business man must be not just his firm’s managing director and sales director, but its human resources director, logistics director, financial director and IT director. Any piece of bureaucracy and administration, even a small piece, can add to the distraction and detraction from the time when he should be growing his business and selling.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

One example of deregulation in the Queen’s Speech is the removal of health and safety legislation relating to sole traders. Can the hon. Gentleman explain how the economy will be boosted by the exclusion of sole traders from such legislation? Will that make the workplace safer for them?

[Christopher Pincher]

A sole trader will be able to spend more time finding and doing work and making money, on which he will then pay tax to the Exchequer. I think that this is a very worthwhile regulatory change. I am sure that, as an old hand in the House, the hon. Gentleman will have heard many Governments down the years say that they will deregulate. I only hope that this particular Bill will have real teeth, will do what it says on the tin, and will enable business men to spend more time doing business rather than administrating.

[Mr Jones]

Would the hon. Gentleman be happy for a sole trader such as a plumber or even an electrician who had been allowed to have no regard for health and safety legislation to come into his home? Will this really make any difference to economic growth, and will it make the safety of the public and that individual any greater?

[Christopher Pincher]

I hope that it will. We shall see. However, there is certainly an argument for deregulating, and as the hon. Gentleman surely knows, the Bill will need to do what it says on the tin.

The Queen’s Speech also refers to measures to support intellectual property. If we are to focus on and support the extremely important design businesses in our country, we need to help them to protect their intellectual property from countries and businesses that would rather borrow, steal and copy knowhow than buy it.

I hope that the measures will help my constituent Mr Ken Clayton, a photographer who fears that changes proposed, he says, by civil servants will mean that photographs on Facebook and on BBC websites will be automatically stripped of their metadata and will become “orphan works”. As a result, he says,

“individuals and companies will be free to use such photographs with no reference to the person who took the photographs and will be able to license them without any payment to the photographer.”

I hope that when we come to debate the Bill, Mr Clayton will be reassured by it.

The Secretary of State, who is no longer in the Chamber, made a very balanced speech about immigration and the role that it plays in relation to jobs. Although the last Government created many jobs—some 1.5 million, I believe—a staggering 98.5% were soaked up by migrant labour. If we are to get the many people in the country who are trapped in dependency back into work, or in many instances into work for the first time, we must not only reform welfare so that it will always pay to work, but deter those who may wish to come to this country and provide a low-cost alternative, which would be a cost to our work force, and would put a strain on our infrastructure, services and housing, which would be a cost to the taxpayer.

I hope that, while the Opposition may ask some searching questions when the immigration Bill is debated—as they have tried to do this morning—they will support it in the end. I think that if they do not, they will find themselves on what the broad mass of the British people consider the wrong side of the argument.

The Secretary of State referred to the importance of infrastructure. I am pleased to note that the Energy Bill is to be carried over. After a decade of neglect, it is essential for us to invest in our energy infrastructure—in power stations, especially nuclear stations, and in the transmission infrastructure that conveys energy around the country. It is important for investors to see that both major parties in the House, and indeed our Liberal Democrat coalition colleagues, support the regulatory system.

[Meg Hillier]

The hon. Gentleman has made a good point, but does he not agree that the withdrawal of some of the potential funders of our future nuclear provision was partly caused by wobbles in the coalition Government on this issue? Has he any stronger messages for his coalition partners?

[Christopher Pincher]

That is rather rich coming from the hon. Lady, given that for years there was no proper investment in our energy infrastructure and a moratorium on the building of a fleet of new nuclear stations. I hope that the time that it has taken to get the Energy Bill into this House and then into the other place is symptomatic of a desire on both sides of the House to build a robust Bill that will stand the test of time. We need it to make clear to investors that the regulatory changes we have made and the framework we have established will not change, and that they can put their money behind it.

I also hope that the Bill will help the shale gas industry and bust the myths surrounding it, because shale gas is capable of creating create new jobs in our country. Providers such as Cuadrilla say that they want more than an end to the moratorium, which has in fact now ended, and a new licensing round, which is to take place. They also want the Government to support their reasonable planning applications. That will mean we do not have so much wrangling about planning, so that exploratory drilling can be done to find out whether we have beneath our feet 200 trillion cubic feet of shale gas—perhaps there is more—which will be enough to cater for our needs for a century. That would help reduce our exposure to the volatility in international hydrocarbon markets, and would mean we had stable energy prices for domestic consumers and businesses, which would be good for jobs.

I will not end my speech without mentioning High Speed 2, to which the shadow Secretary of State referred, calling for the project to be implemented more swiftly. There will be time enough to discuss the hybrid Bill and its provisions. There is no doubt that the development of HS2 as a major infrastructure project will create jobs—if we shift concrete up and down the country, we will create jobs—but I trust the Government will also recognise the jobs and businesses that may be damaged by HS2: those that are in its direct route. In my constituency there are many such companies and businesses, including Joy McMahon’s racing stables, Packington hall farm and manor, which has been managed by the Barnes family for generations, and Jonathan Loescher’s accounting businesses. These are all small businesses, and they are all now blighted by the proposals to build that railway line. I therefore hope the Government will introduce their HS2 paving Bill swiftly and ensure that it contains clear, quick and commensurately generous compensation measures so that such businesses in my constituency—and in that of my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant), who spoke eloquently and passionately about HS2 yesterday—are properly compensated.

With that caveat, I shall conclude by saying I welcome the job provisions in the Gracious Speech. They will contribute to the development of a more modern and flexible work force in this country. They will ensure that we have the skills for work and the right attitude to work, and I trust they will bring forward another army of entrepreneurs who want to work for themselves.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Byrne]

Apprenticeships quadrupled during our time in office. In the decade before the crash, we achieved rising productivity and rising wage growth. That is why wages were so much higher when we left office than when we began. Because we invested in skills, our record on rising wages was beaten only by Ireland and Australia. The Government should be building on that record, not watering it down.

[Christopher Pincher]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Byrne]

I am going to move on quickly because I need to refer to some contributions to the debate.

The price that is being paid by our constituents, including our young people, has been well set out. My hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) spoke eloquently, with force and power, about the price being paid by young people and the long-term damage that is being confronted. Some of my colleagues, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), face very high levels of youth unemployment in their constituencies. To echo the substance of the argument made by my hon. Friend the Member for Preston (Mark Hendrick), we need more apprenticeships, not least because in many parts of our country right now—in Yorkshire, the north-east and the north-west—employers are saying that they cannot get skilled workers at a time when unemployment is higher than it was at the last election. That shows that the system put in place by this Government is not working.

We need to do more for the long-term unemployed. We also need to do more to support women back into work. In a brilliant speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) argued powerfully that women are not being supported into work at the rate we would like. The shambles that we saw in the House yesterday on child care policy did not give us much confidence that things are going to change. The price of failure is being paid by families and the 2.5 million people denied the chance to work. That point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling). As we heard in the powerful speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), very many families are contending with falling wages and rising living costs because there is simply not enough work to go round.

Perhaps worst of all for the long term is the price being paid through rising levels of child poverty, about which my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow spoke eloquently. We lifted 1 million children out of poverty during our time in office, and now most commentators agree that all that progress will be wiped out by the decisions of this Government. It is record of shame that we will hang around their neck at the next election. That is why it is such a tragedy that at a time when so many people are paying so much, the Government singled out as their chief priority giving a £2,000-a-week tax cut to millionaires.

We will look carefully at some of the Bills in the Queen’s Speech. We will study with close attention the proposals on mesothelioma. I will heed the words and sentiments expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham. The consultation that we undertook in February 2010 is the benchmark against which we will judge the Bill, and if we find it wanting we will oppose it.

We will look closely at the plans for flat-rate pensions. We support the principle of a flat-rate pension, which locks in the changes we made in office that lifted so many pensioners out of poverty. We hope, however, that the Government will acknowledge that many people’s income replacement rate will fall very low under these proposals. Unless there is reform of the private pensions industry that frees the fetters on the National Employment Savings Trust, caps charges and ensures that there is real transparency, we do not believe that plans are yet in place for a low-cost, low-risk private alternative to help people to save for the long term. That will be the thrust of our opposition to and constructive engagement with the Bill when it comes to this place.

As many colleagues have said, the tragedy of this Queen’s Speech debate is that there was an alternative. We proposed a jobs Bill that would have given the chance of work to young people unemployed for more than a year and to the long-term unemployed out of work for more than two years. We would have used an injection of capital into the construction industry to get our country back to work.

[Christopher Pincher]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Byrne]

I will not.

We would have used procurement powers much more strategically to get our young people and long-term unemployed back into work.

[Christopher Pincher]

rose—

[Mr Byrne]

I am going to spare my time for the Secretary of State, I am afraid.

Those were the kinds of measures that we should have seen in this Queen’s Speech. They are simple, costable and easily affordable, and they would have helped to get our country back to work. To conclude, the struggle for jobs has always been at the heart of the struggle of our movement. When Keir Hardie rose on the Benches behind me to make the first speech of a Labour MP in this House, he insisted on the principle of work or maintenance. In our first election address, “Useful Work for the Unemployed” was our rallying cry. Next year marks an important anniversary in that long struggle for jobs. It is the 70th anniversary of the White Paper on employment policy, which accepted for the first time that the Government had a responsibility to ensure that everybody who wanted to work and could work had a job.

Once upon a time, the Conservative party agreed with that principle. When Rab Butler spoke to the 1953 Conservative party conference he said that anyone who believes in

“creating pools of unemployment should be thrown into them and made to swim”.

It is 40 years since the Conservative party backed away from those principles, starting with Sir Keith Joseph’s speech in Preston.

We could pay down our national debt faster if we got our country back to work. That is why the one idea that should have been at the heart of this Queen’s Speech was a plan for jobs and full employment. That is how we rebuilt our country after the second world war and how we rebuilt public services in 1997. Those are the ideas that we needed in the Queen’s Speech. Instead, we have a Government who are out of ideas. The day is fast approaching when we will run them out of office.