Oral Answers to Questions
Dan Poulter Excerpts(8 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
I welcome the unity across the House on Israel’s right to defend itself in the face of an unspeakable act of terror, but it is also clear that we must support the Palestinian people; they are victims of Hamas, too. Hamas use innocent people as human shields, and we mourn the loss of every innocent life of every people, every faith and every nationality. We are working as hard as we can to get as much humanitarian aid into Gaza as quickly as practically possible.
Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
Last week, Suffolk experienced its worst local floods for over 100 years, with communities in and around Needham Market, Framlingham, Debenham and Wickham Market particularly badly affected. Homes and businesses have been destroyed. In Suffolk, the community has rallied together, in a very stoic and pragmatic way, to support those in need at this very difficult time. What longer-term support can the Prime Minister offer to the people of Suffolk whose businesses and homes have been affected by these floods, to help them to recover and rebuild?
The Prime Minister
Flooding is a devastating experience, and I extend my sympathies to all those affected, including those in my hon. Friend’s constituency. I am pleased to say that, through the flood recovery framework, we are confirming additional financial support for the most affected households and businesses. This will include a £500 grant for households and council tax discounts and business rates relief of up to 100% for three months. Small and medium-sized businesses will also be eligible for a £2,500 business recovery grant, and there is a grant of up to £5,000 to make flooded homes more resilient to future flooding. We recognise the heroic efforts of local councils like my hon. Friend’s and of emergency responders everywhere who have been working tirelessly in affected areas. They have our thanks, and we stand ready to consider any requests from councils to support their recovery efforts.
Future of the UK Constitution and Devolution
Dan Poulter Excerpts(1 year, 3 months ago)
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Bim Afolami
As with the intervention from the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury), the hon. Lady’s intervention provides me with a perfect segue to talk about Scotland and, indeed, Wales and Northern Ireland. We live in one United Kingdom—I appreciate that we have opposition from the hon. Lady on that particular question—and it is important that local people in all parts of the United Kingdom have broadly similar relationships with the centre, with Westminster and Whitehall, regardless of whether there is a devolved Assembly or devolved Parliament. By achieving that, we will help to knit our country closer together and, again, build the understanding and awareness of responsibilities with the population, business and economic actors in this country and outside it.
The next part of my remarks relates to the second Chamber, the House of Lords. People have been talking about Lords reform for more than 100 years and I am pretty sure that in another 100 years, people will still be talking about Lords reform, although I do not intend to be here then—[Interruption.] You never know.
Personally, I am not a proponent of an elected second Chamber, but I strongly understand and recognise the concerns of those who feel that it needs an elected element. It is clear to me that there is a way to help to sort out some of the glaring inconsistencies and problems with the House of Lords. We are all familiar with those issues, whether we are talking about a sense that it is too big, concern about certain people who have been nominated to it, the fact that there is no retirement age, or various other things that a lot of people have problems with, in my view very reasonably. We can try to kill two birds with one stone by engaging local leaders in the broader governance of the country and by using the second Chamber partly to help that process to happen.
By doing that, we would help the voices of local people to be heard, because they would not just elect a local leader to deal with their local issues, and that was that. That local leader would then have a national voice that would help the governance of the wider country. Presumably, we are all here to help to improve the governance of our country. Where there are local leaders who have something to add and to offer, that should be shared and voiced, which could benefit everybody. In my view, we should use the House of Lords to do that.
Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
I hope that we can all agree that the bishops and hereditary peers have no place in a House of Lords. For the moment in the House of Lords, representation is disproportionately by peers from London and the south-east. Will my hon. Friend outline what could be done to improve representation from other parts of England and the United Kingdom?
Bim Afolami
This is how that could work. First, alongside what I was saying about local leaders, a standardised system of local government—whether people live in unitary authorities or a mayoralty, and whether they live in England, Scotland or Northern Ireland—would by necessity spread representation all over the United Kingdom. That is how we build in a lot of regional balance. Secondly, we could change the system by ensuring that, in the weight of the total number, there was always at least a significant minority—if not at least 50%—represented in that sort of way, rather than this being just about appointments. Ultimately, lifetime appointments cannot be made on a regional basis; even if we tried to, people are free to move around. However, if by necessity, in an ex officio capacity, the Mayor of Newcastle had a right while they were Mayor to speak in the second Chamber, it would have that regional balance.
This matters because not only would it improve democratic accountability and increase economic growth, as well as helping investors understand who to go to, but it would help to spread good practice and ideas. Constitutions matter because of what they practically do to the governance of the country. We currently have ad hoc relationships that depend on the political colour of the Government and, for example, of mayoralties, and whether particular individuals are perceived to be effective. To some degree, that is always the case. However, where we find good practice happening, we need to highlight it and have a vehicle for it to be aired in a public forum. Parliament, if nothing else, is a vehicle for the public airing of issues and debate. Linking local governance with the review of the second Chamber in that way would be effective.
I will add a bit more detail about why, economically, it makes a big difference if we get more standardised control of how our local government works, and how it links in with central Government. I like data—it is important. If we look at the data for most of the 20th century, inequality in GDP terms between the regions of the United Kingdom was quite low by European standards. However, by 2010, we had started to perform quite badly in comparison with our European partners, and we have continued to perform badly in that vein. I happen to think that that is more about the strength of London than it is about the weakness of certain parts of the country, but we can have a debate about that.
The consequence of that high degree of regional inequality has been twofold. First, it has caused political problems. In certain parts of the country, people feel left behind and that, economically, they have not been given a fair shake. There are calls to reform the Green Book and the Treasury. There are all sorts of political shenanigans and things that Opposition Members will appreciate, as we do on this side of the House. Secondly, that regional inequality has contributed significantly to our national productivity problem, which is well documented. It is out of the scope of this debate to go into that in detail, but if there are big portions of the country performing economically poorly—even if London and the south-east are doing well—the country’s economy overall is not going to improve as much as it needs to.
How does effective devolution help the national productivity problem? Some people might argue that it is about tax, education or skills policy passed in Westminster. Effective devolution, standardised and regularised in the way that I am describing, will help. There are two broad reasons economists give for productivity and regional inequality. The first is poor transport infrastructure in huge swathes of our country. The second is poor policy on innovation clusters, particularly in areas of high skill and around universities. Compared with the UK, other countries are just doing better in those two areas, although the economic debate is broad. If we had more effective power for local leaders, more of a voice to spread good practice, a clearer understanding of who was responsible for what and when, and a more effective fiscal package for each of those local areas, I submit that we would perform better in both those areas.
It is impossible for any centre of government in Whitehall and Westminster to focus appropriately on every single need of every single part of the country, because we make broader national and international policy. We cannot deal effectively with everywhere; that is the role of local leaders. Helping them do that better, whether that means transport infrastructure, skills or innovation clusters around top universities and areas of learning, is what we need to do, and to do that effectively we need to talk about money. It is easy for me to talk about powers and how things should be better and more effective. We have to talk about not just the money available for local authorities and leaders to spend, but what they are accountable for raising. I will be candid with the House. One of the difficulties politically that I and many party colleagues have felt at times is that certain local leaders seek to blame Westminster for all that goes wrong, yet take the credit for everything that goes right. I know it will be a shock that any politician would think of doing something like that.
In this country, we are incredibly centralised fiscally. About 12% of taxes are spent and raised locally, the lowest proportion in the G7 by some stretch. The next is Italy at about 17%, then Germany at about 30%, Canada at about 50% and the United States at somewhere between 40% and 50%, depending on how it is calculated. We are an outlier. I do not want to stray beyond the subject of the debate into Treasury policy, as we have the Budget for that—I know the Minister will be itching to weigh in on the Treasury, and will hold himself back—but when we think about raising more revenue, we should do that as closely as possible to people in the places where that money is spent.
We should politically enable local areas to raise more money, because people would know what they were responsible for and how they were responsible for it in a more standardised way. By raising more money locally, they would be responsible and accountable for it, and there would be a higher degree of trust that the money would be spent well. If that money is not spent well, local people will vote for somebody else. That is how democracy works.
I finish by saying that yes, we need the powers to be regularised. Yes, local leaders across the whole United Kingdom need to be linked in much more closely with Westminster. I have not touched on the powers of the devolved Parliaments, because I am not convinced that a huge shift in power required at devolved level is necessary. When we think of England, we should ensure that what we do mirrors existing models. The hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) described how local government in Scotland interacts with Holyrood. That is the sort of model we could bring in more broadly, on a UK-wide basis, but the money really matters.
Enabling local areas and local leaders to raise and spend more of their own money, whether through property taxes, local income tax or a reformed version of business rates, rather than always relying on Westminster to raise all the money and dole it out, would be an effective way to build our democratic Union, as well as helping our understanding of how we are governed and our economy.
Oral Answers to Questions
Dan Poulter Excerpts(3 years, 1 month ago)
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Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
The Prime Minister (Boris Johnson)
The thoughts of the House, following the decision by the court this morning, will be with the family and friends of the Hillsborough 96 and the hundreds more who were injured. I know that the Crown Prosecution Service has said it will meet with the families again to answer any questions they may have.
I know colleagues from across the House will want to join me in paying tribute to our former colleague, Mike Weatherley, who sadly died last week. He was a dedicated parliamentarian and a fantastic servant to the people of Hove.
This morning, I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.
Dr Poulter [V]
I draw the House’s attention to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a practising NHS doctor who has been working on the frontline of the NHS during the pandemic. My right hon. Friend will be aware that the Health and Social Care Act 2012 resulted in local authority commissioning of addiction services. Ten years later, almost all addiction services are now run by non-NHS providers. The result is that the numbers in alcohol treatment have fallen, many alcohol detoxes take place in an unplanned manner, and opiate and alcohol deaths are at record levels. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, for the sake of patients, we must bring the commissioning and provision of addiction services back to the NHS, and will he meet me and experts in this field to discuss how we can get this right?
The Prime Minister
I want to thank my hon. Friend for everything that he has done throughout this pandemic in the NHS, but also for raising this vital issue. I am proud that under this Government we are seeing the biggest increase for 15 years in treatment for substance abuse, but the specific points he raises we will make sure we address with Dame Carol Black, who is undertaking a review of drugs and treatment. We will make sure that his point is fed in.
Oral Answers to Questions
Dan Poulter Excerpts(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Michael Gove
Again, let me welcome a new member to the shadow Cabinet Office team, and I look forward to working with the hon. Lady and congratulate her on her promotion. It is the case, of course, that we want best practice to apply in all procurement, and the recent Boardman report that the Cabinet Office commissioned emphasises some changes that we can make in order to ensure even greater effectiveness and transparency. At the beginning of the covid pandemic, when there was a global demand for personal protective equipment, we used perfectly legitimate, well-understood expedited practices. There were, as I mentioned earlier, a number of suggestions from across the House, including from Labour MPs, of companies and firms that could help. It was important that we looked at those with speed and expedition in order to ensure that those who were capable, as many were, of providing us with the equipment that we needed were able to get that equipment on to the NHS frontline as quickly as possible.
Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office (Michael Gove)
The Government are committed to delivering our bold agenda of electoral reform to strengthen our democracy and protect public trust and confidence in our elections. As outlined in our 2019 manifesto, the Government will introduce measures requiring identification to vote at polling stations and to stop postal vote harvesting.
Dr Poulter [V]
The Minister will be aware that, during the previous election and, indeed, during the 2017 election, there was considerable concern about students potentially voting in more than one location. Is there more that my right hon. Friend can do to ensure that we prevent this from happening? Rather than just relying on retrospective prosecutions, can we look at improving the registration process to stop people registering to vote or potentially trying to vote in more than one location at a general election?
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend makes a very important point. My colleague, the Minister for the Constitution and Devolution, is looking at exactly how we can ensure that we have effective voter registration so that either confusion or, indeed, an outright attempt to subvert the integrity of the poll can be dealt with, and we will be bringing forward more detail in due course.
Oral Answers to Questions
Dan Poulter Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Michael Gove
Not just the company my hon. Friend mentions, but Royal Doulton, Wedgwood, Spode and of course more recently Emma Bridgewater. Those are names that are known across the globe. They shine a light on the brilliant ceramics sector that is housed in Stoke-on-Trent and the potteries towns. We will ensure in the future, as we leave the European Union, that across the world people have the chance to dine off and to drink from the first-class products made in his and his neighbours’ constituencies.
Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con) [V]
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend makes a very important point. May I take this opportunity briefly to thank him for the work he has undertaken as vice-chairman of the all-party group on coronavirus and the work he continues to do on the NHS frontline. He has shown real leadership in the fight against this dreadful virus. He is absolutely right that we need to improve procurement. The procurement Green Paper published earlier this week is a part of that, but I hope to work with him and others on the frontline to ensure that the Department of Health and Social Care does even better in the future.
Oral Answers to Questions
Dan Poulter Excerpts(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con) [V]
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend makes a very important point, and he has been a consistent and effective advocate for the rights of older and vulnerable citizens in all his time in the House. We must make sure, both through effective voter registration and through the effective roll-out of our vaccination programme, that older and vulnerable voters are in a position to take part in the democratic process, and I will work with the Minister for the Constitution and Devolution to do just that.
Early Parliamentary General Election Bill
Dan Poulter ExcerptsTuesday 29th October 2019
(4 years, 8 months ago)
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Michael Tomlinson
The fact that you are listening to me, Dame Rosie, makes me so pleased. It makes me smile.
I take very seriously the intervention from the hon. Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns). I, too, have been a school governor, although my experience is not as great as his. I bow to him for the number of years he has been a school governor. However, as to whether the poll is on a Monday or a Thursday, it seems to me that his point does not make a difference. I would prefer it if no school days were disrupted and if local authorities could find alternative venues, which from time to time they can. Temporary polling stations can be put up at short notice. I take the hon. Gentleman’s point seriously, but I do not see that it makes a difference, as to whether the poll is on a Monday or a Thursday. I do not see that that particularly has an impact on the schools: it seems to me that, if a school is going to be interrupted, it may as well be interrupted on a Thursday as on a Monday. I heard his point about the Friday but, in my experience, which is more limited than his, I have not witnessed schools extending the weekend. I understand the point he was trying to make, but I really do not think that it makes a difference whether it is the Thursday or the Monday. My view, for what it is worth, is that schools should not be disrupted, if at all possible, and that we should find temporary polling stations.
Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
On the issue of access to polling stations, my hon. Friend may wish to consider the fact that my electoral registration officers in Suffolk tell me that it is particularly challenging to get access on a Sunday to village halls and many of the other places where votes will take place on a Monday. Will he reflect on that, the importance of holding the election on a later day in the week, and the need to stick with Thursdays, which is the convention?
Michael Tomlinson
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention, because I had not considered that point before. It is a live issue, given that polling stations have to open early in the morning. In Dorset as much as Suffolk, who is going to hand over the key to the village hall? When will it be collected? There are practicalities involved. He has made a powerful point and given a third reason, in addition to my previous two, why Thursday should be preferred to Monday.
Proportional Representation: House of Commons
Dan Poulter Excerpts(5 years, 2 months ago)
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Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Evans. I rise to speak in support of the motion. Undoubtedly, this country’s current voting arrangements do not adequately reflect the diversity of opinion that there now is among the electorate. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) for raising this issue for debate.
There are many different forms of proportional representation, some of which have been touched on briefly. We had a referendum on AV, in which AV was universally defeated—rightly so, because under that system the candidate who comes fourth could become the Member of Parliament if they were the least disliked. That may be an argument in favour of AV, but those who believe in a constituency link find it difficult to argue that the person who came third or fourth should eventually go on to become a Member of Parliament. We also have single transferable vote, and then we have proportional representation.
We have talked a little about the merits of first past the post. It was traditionally argued that that system tends to deliver strong government—arguably, that is not the case at the moment. It maintains a constituency link, but some forms of proportional representation also do that. It also—this is the strongest argument in its favour—tends to be a bulwark against the entryism of extremist minority parties. In the 2015 election, even though the UK Independence party received 13% or 14% of the vote, it gained only one seat, which to my mind shows at least some benefit, in that first past the post keeps some of those minority parties out.
David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)
Is not one of the issues that because UKIP got something like 4 million votes but did not get many Members elected to this House, tensions boiled up? We saw that, with a Member of Parliament having been murdered before the EU referendum. Is not the fact that we do not look at having a fair, proportional representation system part of the issue?
Dr Poulter
I do not entirely disagree. Certainly that 13% or 14% of the electorate may have felt disenfranchised by the result to some extent, but during that election I think we all recognised the extremist nature of some of the views held by that party and some of its candidates.
The hon. Gentleman is correct on the broader issue. We now have a much more fractured politics than we did half a century ago, when there was a stronger argument for first past the post, and many groups do not feel represented in their constituencies. For example, I received more than 60% of the vote in my constituency at the last election, but consistently about 15% to 20% of that electorate have voted for the Labour party. Indeed, in Suffolk as a whole in 2010 and 2015, 25% of the electorate voted for Labour and yet seven Conservative MPs were returned. That is not representative of the general feelings of Suffolk residents.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman is making an important point. Does he recognise that proportional representation is about more than electoral outcomes and that, actually, proportional systems change political culture in a way that delivers more effective social outcomes? Societies with PR are more likely to have lower income inequality, better developed welfare systems, higher social expenditure, better distribution of public goods and better environmental controls. It is a much wider issue.
Dr Poulter
The hon. Gentleman is right. Broadly, there is a strong case and good evidence that in countries with proportional representation, or a more proportional system, there tends to be more consensus government, which tends to recognise certain common goods. Today, there is an urgent question in the main Chamber on climate change. In many other countries in Europe, climate change’s importance in the legislative agenda is reinforced by that sort of consensus politics.
For example, the work done by the former leader of the Labour party, the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), when he was Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change in the latter part of the last decade, was broadly supported across the House, but if there had been a sudden lurch to a Government who perhaps did not believe in climate change, a lot of that work could have been undone under the British system. That is much harder to do under a proportional system, under which there has to be much more work through consensus between political parties. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to make that point about the sort of politics that many of us here would like to see.
I want to allow other hon. Members to speak, so I will be very quick. In my view, if we are to have a PR system that is effective, it has to maintain the constituency link. It also has to ensure that we deal with the issue of having a potential threshold, even under PR, for election, be it 5% of the electorate in a particular area or whatever. The best way of doing that, I believe, is by doing something broadly along the lines of what we have currently for the European elections—perhaps not on the basis of a large-scale region, but on a county basis or a city-regional basis. That would allow people in, for example, London, where boroughs identify together, to elect from those boroughs a proportional number of MPs from different parties, according to how those electors voted.
That strikes me, in comparison with our current political settlement, as a much fairer way of electing people. It certainly would have given a voice in 2010 and 2015 to the 25% of constituents in Suffolk who voted for the Labour party but did not have any MP to represent them. I hope that, going forward, it would also give rise to the more consensus-based politics on the big issues of the day, such as climate change, and other forms of policy making that all of us here, I hope, believe in.
Voter ID Pilot Schemes
Dan Poulter Excerpts(6 years ago)
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Ellie Reeves
I will go on to talk about the experience in Bromley, where people were turned away. A number of different forms of ID could be taken to the polling station, but nevertheless people were disenfranchised, and I will speak about that in a moment. Unlike in Swindon and Watford, where voters were required only to bring their polling cards, in Bromley, Gosport and Woking, where formal ID was required, voter turnout was marginally down compared with the 2014 local elections. The scheme took place in five areas, but I can speak specifically, and with first-hand experience, about the impact of the trial in Bromley. Reports on polling day from the Bromley wards within my constituency highlighted numerous cases of voters being turned away and prevented from rightly casting their vote. The council’s figures suggest that 154 people in Bromley were unable to cast their ballot on 3 May. When I was out campaigning on the doorstep, I was told of a significant number of people telling activists that they would not be voting because they did not agree with the principle of being asked for ID. Although that is direct evidence of voter disenfranchisement, it is unfortunately incredibly hard to measure.
On polling day, four polling stations in the Crystal Palace ward in my constituency had already turned away multiple people by 10.30 am for not having the correct ID. When I went to vote at 8.45 am at my polling station, I was told of two people who had already been turned away. In addition, the increased time that it takes to do ID checks puts a strain on the rate at which polling stations can process voters. In the morning on polling day there were reports of queues in Bromley due to the extra processing time, and of voters leaving before casting their ballots because, understandably, people do not necessarily have the extra time to wait while also juggling family and work responsibilities.
I also heard reports of polling station staff not being fully briefed on what ID was acceptable. In one case, a voter with a bank card was initially refused, but subsequently showed the polling staff the guidance that stated it was a valid form of ID. How many people might they have turned away before being shown the correct guidance? Another case involved a voter with a utility bill on their phone, who was told by staff to go home and print the document out. The polling station staff clearly had not been given guidance on whether a digital copy was sufficient. Such examples suggest that polling stations across Bromley were not adequately prepared for the trial and that Bromley’s measurements of 154 voters being turned away are far from exact. I believe that many more people might have been turned off from voting.
Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate on an important issue. She is quite rightly highlighting some of the challenges that voters might face when we introduce a new system. Would she also accept that this was a pilot scheme, and that we aim to learn from pilots? Is she, in principle, supportive of the idea that voters should prove who they are when they go to the polls?
Ellie Reeves
No. For the reasons I have already set out and will continue to set out, I do not, in principle, support the changes because, as the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the Electoral Reform Society have identified, it is likely to lead to widespread disenfranchisement. I say that 154 people being disenfranchised in Bromley is 154 too many.
Tommy Sheppard
I am afraid I do not have time.
That seems to be a problem so marginal as not to require Government attention. We also know that the public are not concerned: a survey released today by the Electoral Reform Society showed electoral fraud at the very bottom of a list of potential concerns the public have about the voting system
Tommy Sheppard
I am sorry, but I will not take interventions because we are short on time.
Unlike in Northern Ireland, where there was a serious problem, the instances alleged appear to be sporadic and individual rather than as a result of any organised campaign to scam an election—I have yet to see any evidence that the latter is the case. Given that, why are the Government so concerned and being egged on by some members of the governing party, for whom this seems to have become something of an obsession? Indeed, I note that someone recently put in a freedom of information request to the Human Tissue Authority, which regulates dead bodies, to ask what information it has about electoral fraud, as if we are looking at zombie voters coming to influence the situation.
As the evidence is not there that this is a huge problem that needs to be tackled, there is a case in what the Opposition are saying. In fact, the motivation is party political, with people seeking a party advantage. It is the case, is it not, that photo identification is less likely to be held by people who are unemployed, people who earn low incomes, black and minority ethnic groups, people with disabilities and migrant communities? All of those people have one thing in common: they are less likely to vote for the Conservative party. It seems to me that, as the hon. Member for Woking (Mr Lord) said, potentially very few votes influence the outcome of an election, if photo ID achieves the suppression of participation by voters in those categories—
Public Sector Pay Policy
Dan Poulter Excerpts(6 years ago)
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Luke Graham
Yes, that is the point I am making. Recommendations will be forthcoming as part of the delegated pay reviews. I will come to the NHS shortly, but some of the NHS pay increases that were put forward have been funded. I am sure that the Minister will talk about funding in further detail.
Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
I am sympathetic to the points my hon. Friend raises, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) on securing the debate. The pay review bodies historically have had their hands tied by the Government’s 1% pay cap. Is it time that the Government listened to those independent pay review bodies and implemented the meaningful increases they recommend, given that they have regard to recruitment and retention issues throughout the public sector and particularly in the sectors in which they recommend increases?
Luke Graham
I am a Back Bencher, not a Minister, so I am wary of committing the Government, but yes. My point is that where pay increases are recommended, the Government should fund them. Given that inflation is now increasing after a period in which people had to make sacrifices and we had to have more financial control, it is only fair that we ensure that there are sustainable pay increases across Departments and the different sectors of public life to reflect the increases in the private sector.
As real wages grow across the United Kingdom—much like the economy as a whole—I am glad that some hard-working public sector staff are reaping the benefits of the UK Government’s new, more flexible approach. For example, the pay rises of between 6.5% and 29% over the next three years in the NHS in England represent great progress. I welcome the fact that pay increases will be larger for lower-paid staff and smaller for those on the highest salaries. The hon. Member for Glasgow South West mentioned that those increases compare with increases of 3% plus 1% in Scotland.
We should be really clear, because sometimes we do not get the full story on Scottish issues. We speak in favour of some of the pay increases, but it is clear that the increases have been between 6.5% and 29% in the NHS in England, and 3% plus 1% in Scotland, as the hon. Gentleman said. We all face challenges—I just wish the Scottish National party would be more honest about those challenges.
Dr Poulter
The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. I draw attention to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests in making this intervention, but there has been great reliance on agency and temporary staff in both the education sector and the NHS as a result of the failure to retain and recruit staff in many areas. Does he agree that improving the terms and conditions and the pay of NHS staff would help to address that and would improve NHS finances overall, and that it is a short-sighted Treasury that does not take note of that point?
Christian Matheson
The hon. Gentleman is very experienced in matters of health and the NHS, and I suspect that what he says has real merit. Frankly, there are private companies offering bank staff across the NHS and making a large amount of money that would be better spent on frontline services and on paying staff more than the 1% pay cap. I thank him for his contribution.
We have all heard the heart-wrenching stories of public sector staff having to work two jobs to pay their bills or having to use food banks just to eat. This is modern Britain, where our greatest national treasure and our most valuable assets are treated with the same contempt and disregard that tax-dodging conglomerates have for our country. The Chancellor agreed to a below-inflation pay increase for NHS staff of 6.5% over three years on the condition,
“that the pay award enables improved productivity in the NHS”.
In real terms, that means forfeiting a day’s holiday each year for less money. Public sector workers have been cheated out of thousands, have had their pensions negatively affected and have now had their workload increased for less money.
If hon. Members visit any hospital, such as the Countess of Chester hospital in my constituency, they will see the NHS running on the goodwill of its staff. I know of health care assistants on wards who will work a 12-hour shift with barely a 10-minute break. They do that because they believe in what they are doing, but they are already working to maximum capacity and productivity, yet the Government still demand more to earn a pay rise that they have, in reality, already earned several times over. If hon. Members visit any school, where cuts still bite despite Government promises of more cash, they will find headteachers worried that any pay rise granted by the Government will have to be found from existing school budgets—the usual Conservative tactic of passing the responsibility on to someone else.
The hon. Member for Glasgow South West and my hon. Friend the Member for Easington referred to the study by the Centre for Labour and Social Studies on the terms of civil service pay rises. It is the same tactic. We have heard that the pay rise would have to come out of resource departmental expenditure limits for current spending; yet, as we have also heard, Departments as a whole will continue to suffer real-terms cuts to their RDELs up to 2020 and, of the principal Departments covered, only the Ministry of Defence will see an increase in this area of its budget. They made that point clearly, and it calls into question whether the Departments will be able to award pay rises of more than 1%; in fact, they might not even be able to raise that 1%.
Our police and prison service staff were offered a 1% increase and a 1% bonus, which will leave them with, yet again, a below-inflation increase. The chairman of the Police Federation said that staff had been left “angry and deflated” and had experienced a 15% decrease in real spending terms compared to seven years ago. Prisoner numbers are up and are increasing by an average of 3.5% per year, while the number of frontline prison officers, who have been offered a below-inflation 1.7% increase, has remained static.
The pay cap may have been verbally ended, but there is no evidence of its ending in the real world. Take-home pay, in real terms, has not increased. The quite shocking reality is that less than 4% of public sector workers will benefit from the Government’s decisions last September, and no further spending or new money has been made available in the autumn or spring Budgets. What makes one part of the public sector more worthy of being paid fairly than another? Even if the pay cap was genuinely lifted, it would not make up for the loss of thousands of pounds in the past—and indeed in the future, as a knock-on of the pay freeze now. One advantage of the pay cap is that, by keeping wages low, it makes it easier for parts of the public sector to be privatised, and for the privateers to make bigger profits off the back of low-paid but hard-working employees.
I will finish on a point also made by the hon. Member for Glasgow South West, first about pay in the private sector. For many positions in the private sector, public sector roles and pay increases are used as a comparator. Squashing public sector workers’ pay keeps some private sector pay deals flat as well. By crushing the pay of several million public sector workers, billions of pounds of spending power is taken from the private sector, as the hon. Gentleman said. I imagine that very few civil servants, school dinner ladies or police officers salt away their money in offshore tax havens. They spend it here in the UK in the private sector, which then pays the taxes to support public services. The pay freeze is therefore not just unfair—it is bad economics.
For the record, I will wind up by suggesting that the next Labour Government will lift the public sector pay cap for all public sector workers. We demand nothing less from this Government. In “Funding Britain’s Future”, Labour set aside a costed £4 billion to ensure that every public sector worker will get an above-inflation pay rise. The pay review bodies have been operating under the constraint of a Tory 1% cap for eight years. The Government must now lift the pay cap across the whole public sector, rather than playing one group of workers off against another.
Oliver Dowden
Forgive me; I thought I made that very clear at the beginning. When we inherited such an enormous deficit, we had to constrain public expenditure. Given that public sector pay accounts for a quarter of public expenditure, public sector pay had to play its part. That is why we initially introduced a freeze, followed by a 1% cap from 2013 to 2017.
Those were difficult decisions, and I genuinely pay tribute to all our civil servants who had to live within that constrained pay deal. However, it is worth making a few points in relation to that. The first is that the median civil service salary has increased by 15% since 2010, which is actually the same as in the private sector. Indeed, it is greater than other parts of the public sector.
Many hon. Members also raised the gender pay gap, which is important. Clearly, more progress needs to be made, but again it is worth looking at the figures. The pay gap for full-time employee civil servant salaries is 7.2% for the mean salary and 11% for the median. That compares with 13% and 15.4% in 2008, so we are making progress, but I do not deny that we need to progress further.
Dr Poulter
Adjusted for age, sex and other determinants, the pay gap is actually about 3%. I am sure my hon. Friend will want to clarify that point.
Oliver Dowden
I thank my hon. Friend for that helpful intervention; I am absolutely sure that he is correct.
Inequality was also raised, but again let us look at the actual figures. Income inequality is down since 2010, and is lower than at any point under the last Labour Government, so let us start with the facts of the situation. Not only that, but we have helped the lowest paid. For example, when the freeze was introduced, we ensured that anyone earning under £21,000 received at least a £250 increase in their pay.
In addition, as many of my hon. Friends have mentioned, we introduced the national living wage, the effect of which has been to benefit more than 2 million people, leaving them more than £2,000 better off since its introduction. As a result, figures from the last two years show that the lowest paid in our labour market received pay rises almost 7% above inflation, and many of those who benefited were our lowest-paid civil servants. Indeed, the overall picture shows the salaries for junior grades of civil servants remaining comparable to private or public sector equivalents, and in total remuneration both administrative assistants and administrative officers—the lowest paid in the civil service—are paid more than their private and public sector equivalents in London.