Delivery of Public Services

Darren Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)]

We pay taxes for the Government to run our public services, and many of my constituents are asking: what is the point? From driving licences, to passports, to immigration decisions, to dental appointments, to ambulances, to GP and hospital appointments, backlog Britain is a daily reality for so many people across the country. If Ministers were running these public services as private companies, they would all be bankrupt—and what is their response? It is to charge us more by putting up our taxes while cutting the number of frontline civil service staff providing those services. How Ministers can think that cutting staff and putting up the cost is the answer to backlog Britain, I do not know.

Ministers have said, and will continue to say, that they must take these measures—putting up taxes and cutting staff—because of the economic situation. But after 12 years of Conservative economic mismanagement, they have only themselves to blame. After 12 years of economic mismanagement, the national public debt has increased by billions, from only 60% of national wealth in 2010 when Labour left office, to 80% before covid struck, to now being nearly 100%—all under the Conservatives’ watch. After 12 years of economic mismanagement and repeated tax rises, tax revenue is projected to hit 35% of national wealth by 2025-26, which is the highest sustained level of taxation since the second world war. After 12 years of economic mismanagement, our economy has gone from flatlining to declining. Britain is becoming less competitive, less productive and less wealthy thanks to the Conservatives’ economic mismanagement.

Now more than ever, with the cost of living crisis affecting so many, the public want to know that their taxes are being spent well. Yet this Government’s disregard for public services is self-evident. Many of my constituents in Bristol North West have written to me over the past few months about the problems they have experienced at the Passport Office, which is just one example of a service in the reality of backlog Britain. All of them are desperate after weeks and months of delay. One was left waiting for nearly six months for their passport to be renewed, with their long-planned holiday in jeopardy and their formal complaints left unanswered. Another had their passport lost by the Passport Office for months, with the result that they were unable to travel to visit a sick relative. A third, also with their passport inexplicably lost, was unable to attend a relative’s funeral despite weeks and weeks of chasing.

I say to the public that they should keep a close eye on this lot in government, because rather than outlining how the Government will fix the problems, the Prime Minister’s response to backlogs at the Passport Office was to threaten the service with privatisation. Year after year, cut after cut, I worry that our schools and hospitals could suffer the same fate. We are an ageing population, and the British people will need to rely on our national health service and social care more in the future, yet right now our health service is struggling to cope.

A constituent recently wrote to me to share their experiences of needing an ambulance during an emergency. They reported that they had to wait for as long as 12 hours for an ambulance to arrive after first calling 999. They explained how they now worry about dying alone in the future. Another explained that they were forced to wait for two months, rather than the expected two weeks, for an urgent cancer referral to specialists. If we want Britain to be competitive in this globalised world, our young and working people need to receive the best education and healthcare available. However, because the Conservatives have left the economy smaller, poorer and more indebted, we will have less money to pay for those public services. Bit by bit, those who can afford to use private services, whether dentists, GPs, care homes or private tutors, will have no choice but to do so—many already do.

I have spoken before in this House about the breadth of problems my constituents have encountered in trying to access NHS dental services, which, in my view, have largely been privatised already by the back door. Constituents tell me that waiting times are getting worse and worse, and that the Government fail to intervene. Next, I am sure that the Conservatives will encourage those who can afford it to go private, leaving underfunded public services for those who cannot. Before long, our public services will be changed forever, with only those families able to afford to pay for the best from the private sector able to get the support they deserve.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, including on privatisation, but there is another point, which is that the poorest in our society pay the most for services. They pay the most for banking services, and they pay the most for energy through prepaid meters and other things. We have a further widening, not just of incomes, but of costs to the poorest in society, pushing them further and further away from being able to live decent lives above the breadline. Is that not a broader effect of what is going on?

[Darren Jones]

My hon. Friend is right, and it is for the Government to do something about it. What is the point of having a Government or paying taxes if the Government stand by and say, “Oh well, this is just something that we cannot really affect”? Inequality is growing and it is now impossible for people to make themselves wealthy in our country without inheriting wealth. These issues are getting worse and worse, and the Conservative Government think it should just be left to the market and that the Government have no role to play.

In the backlog Britain that exists in reality today, whether that is passport services or elsewhere, Ministers sit by. They blame anyone else they can think of and threaten public services without taking any responsibility for their role as Ministers of the Crown. It is their job to fix these issues. Why are they not doing so? Until I see the Conservatives get a grip of the economy—[Interruption.] The Chief Secretary to the Treasury and the Minister for Security and Borders are chuntering, but they are welcome to intervene.

[James Daly]

Does the hon. Gentleman make the same points to the Welsh Government regarding their appalling NHS waiting times?

[Darren Jones]

I am a Member for Bristol, but I point out that the Conservative and Unionist party ought to take some responsibility from here about what is happening across the country and the Union. Once again, however, its Members deflect responsibility and distract the public from the real cause of our problems, which is 12 years of Conservative economic mismanagement.

The facts may be uncomfortable, and Ministers may chunter, but they come from the Office for Budget Responsibility and the national statistician. Ministers have no answer to that evidence of the Government’s economic mismanagement of the last 12 years—they merely deflect and blame others. Until I see a Government who are ready to get a grip of the economy, with a plan to make Britain stronger, more successful and more sustainable, with the energy to not just survive until the next vote of no confidence, but invest in and modernise our public services, I have little hope that we will move away from the Conservative legacy of the high-tax, low-growth backlog Britain that we live in today.

[Paul Holmes (Eastleigh) (Con)]

I rise to speak against the motion in the name of the Leader of the Opposition. I feel a sense of déjà vu, because I spoke in an Opposition debate last week on a similar motion. Once again, Opposition Members criticise and talk Britain down, but offer nothing constructive to deal with the problems that the country faces, having been impacted by the unprecedented pandemic and a global economic situation. They are also transparent in not attacking their own politicians who have power in this country, who face and acknowledge the same problem that we are talking about.

I maintain that it is only because of our actions since 2010 when the Conservatives took power that we could spend the money that we needed to insulate ourselves and our public services from the pandemic. We had to do that because Labour bankrupted the country in 2010, and our responsible approach from 2010 to 2018 allowed us to protect the services that we needed to protect and spend the money on them and vulnerable people throughout the pandemic.

The hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) talked about this country’s indebtedness. I agree that this country is in a large amount of debt, but I remind him that in his constituency, people were kept in employment and businesses were kept in business because of the furlough scheme that the Government created. Does he think that should not have gone ahead?

[Darren Jones]

As I said in my speech, the national debt level had reached 80% of national wealth before the pandemic. How did that happen?

[Paul Holmes]

It happened partly because we were investing in services. The hon. Gentleman said in his speech that the Government were woefully in debt. I take it, then, that he did not back the action that we had to take during the unprecedented pandemic and global situation to protect his constituents and the businesses in his constituency. The people out there will take what they need to from his speech.

The action that I have outlined led us to have 7.5% of economic growth in 2021, which was the largest increase in economic growth anywhere in the G7. That has now stalled, but that is because of the global situation in which we find ourselves. Let us remember that if the Opposition had been in charge, we would have come out of the pandemic more slowly, because they wanted to keep us in lockdown. We would have had a slower vaccine rollout—this Government spent the money necessary to get the vaccines onboard—and lower economic growth. Opposition Members now have the cheek to absent themselves from acknowledging the pandemic and the global situation. Once again, they present a vision full of hindsight that is lacking in any reality whatsoever.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Security and Borders (Damian Hinds)]

The Government absolutely recognise the difficulties that families across the country are facing. It is a concerning time, and that is why we are taking concerted and wide-ranging action, the details of which I will come on to highlight, to ensure that people and businesses get the support that they need.

Countries around the world are seeing slowing growth and higher inflation, and I am afraid the UK is simply not immune. This month’s OECD economic outlook says:

“The world is paying a heavy price for Russia’s war in Ukraine. It is a humanitarian disaster, killing thousands and forcing millions from their homes. The war has also triggered a cost-of-living crisis, affecting people worldwide. When coupled with China’s zero-COVID policy, the war has set the global economy on a course of slower growth and rising inflation”.

Our priority is ensuring people get the support and help they need, continuing our responsible economic management and helping people to stay in jobs.

It is important to note what has happened in the labour market. Economists had projected that unemployment would peak during covid at somewhere close to 12%. In the event, it peaked at 5.2% and is now down below 4%. The unemployment rate is now close to historic lows, and youth unemployment is at near record lows, at nearly half the rate during the same period of 2010. Redundancies are at the lowest level since records began in the mid-1990s. Total real wages are 3% above pre-pandemic levels.

We must never forget that by far the most important thing for living standards, for fighting poverty and for the dignity of families throughout the country is having a job, and it was the decisive action of this Government that kept so many people in jobs through the pandemic. The furlough scheme and the self-employment income support scheme, which together went to an estimated 14.7 million people, helped to protect jobs, businesses and livelihoods. Some £100 billion of loans and grants were made available to support businesses of all sizes. And now, as we find ourselves in another global phenomenon, the Government are rightly stepping up once again.

We understand just how hard the rising cost of living is for families across the UK, and we are taking significant steps to ease these pressures. Central to that effort is the £37 billion to help households, especially those most in need, with the cost of living. We know that the best approach to managing pressures in the long term is helping people into work, supporting them to increase their income and helping them to keep more of what they earn, hence the reforms to universal credit and the taper rate, the increased national living wage and the higher national insurance thresholds.

This has been an important debate, with good contributions from both sides of the House, and I thank everyone who has contributed. I thank the Opposition spokespeople, the right hon. Members for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) and for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie) and the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), and I thank the hon. Members for Bristol North West (Darren Jones), for Stirling (Alyn Smith), for Birmingham, Hall Green (Tahir Ali), for Reading East (Matt Rodda), for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Steven Bonnar), for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) and for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows).

I also thank my Conservative colleagues. My hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman), with his Treasury Committee background, spoke with great authority and knowledge. He acknowledged some of the changes we have made to help the travel trade, to which I will return in a moment, and he reminded us of the lesson of history on wage price spirals and the ultimate importance of driving productivity to make sustainable rises in real wages.

My hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Paul Holmes), in a very perceptive speech, noted the repetition we sometimes hear from Opposition Members, who do not always match it by voting with us to support investment in our key public services. He rightly said that every Member should acknowledge the problems we face and should work together on the issues, and I strongly agree.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Daly), in a similar vein, pointed out some of the issues facing both the Welsh Government and the Westminster Government, including on the national health service.

My hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Anna Firth) spoke of the great success of the vaccine programme. She rightly spoke with great respect of national health service clinicians and staff in her constituency, and she covered some of the innovation they are driving in Southend.

My hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Paul Bristow) spoke of the importance of employment, and I echo and wholeheartedly agree with what he said about the hard work of staff at Her Majesty’s Passport Office, particularly in his constituency.

Let me turn to some issues that came up a number of times, starting with passports. We discussed the subject of passports across these Dispatch Boxes during an Opposition day debate two weeks ago. On that occasion, hon. Members may recall my acknowledging that although 98.5% of UK passport applications are being processed in 10 weeks, some of our constituents have clearly not received the level of service that they rightly expect. It is incumbent on us to do everything we can to address that.

To give some background, in a normal year before covid, some 7 million people would apply for a passport. During the period of covid, that number came right down. The projection is that 9.5 million people will apply for a passport this year, which is an unprecedented rate of year-on-year growth. The hard-working staff in HM Passport Office really have stepped up to the plate. In March, April and May, around 3 million applications were processed. I acknowledge, absolutely, that there have been difficulties with specific cases. The hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw spoke with compassion about a particularly compelling case. If she comes to me after the debate, I will make sure that she is put in touch with a Minister to discuss that further.

When I spoke about this two weeks ago, I said that on the most recent reporting, 650 additional staff had been added to HM Passport Office since April 2021. That figure, on the most recent statistics, is now up to 850, with the recruitment of a further 350 staff in train. Suppliers and contractors have also increased their resourcing and we have added a further service desk and added capability on couriering. The service has continued to improve, and more passport applications are being processed now than ever before.

[Darren Jones]

Will the Minister confirm whether civil service cuts will apply to the Passport Office after that period of recruitment?

[Damian Hinds]

It would be quite wrong for Ministers to stand at the Dispatch Box and give analyses of and running commentaries on what is a sensible and important exercise to go through—[Interruption.] Well, it is. We have just been through two enormous events—leaving the European Union and the coronavirus pandemic—which have involved all manner of changes in how the civil service operates, some of which are temporary, whereas some are more sustained. Meanwhile, there have been opportunities, as there always are, to look afresh at how we do things. It is right for Government to do that on behalf of our taxpayers and all our electors, to whom we have a duty to spend taxpayers’ money as efficiently and effectively as we can.

Let me turn to airports, which a number of colleagues spoke about, and particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle. There has been a sharp increase in passenger demand after a very suppressed period. That has put considerable pressure on the aviation sector, resulting in some passengers experiencing unacceptable delays and, in some instances, airlines cancelling flights. As Members on both sides of the House have noted, we have seen some of these effects in other countries, including members of the European Union.

A number of operational challenges have contributed to the situation, including staff shortages, crew availability and issues relating, in some cases, to covid restrictions still being in place in other countries. Although the private sector—the aviation industry—is responsible for resourcing airports and airlines, we rightly work with that important sector, which supports a lot of jobs and prosperity, sustains business travel, brings tourists to this country and generates a lot of export earnings. We have worked with the sector to support it in a number of ways.

On 29 April, we laid a statutory instrument to make use of our new Brexit powers to allow Ministers greater flexibility over regulation. That allowed for temporary changes to permit certain training to be undertaken while background checks are completed, helping to speed up recruitment but without a change in security assurance. Having listened carefully to the industry, we were also able to agree that HMRC employment history letters could be used for a time as a suitable form of reference check, with safeguards, to reduce the time that recruiting takes.

On the inbound side, which is an area of Home Office responsibility, Border Force is working to a projection that demand will go back to pre-pandemic levels and is staffing accordingly. Our collective focus must be on ensuring that people can get away for business travel, to help to create prosperity, and for their well-earned summer breaks, on time and as hassle-free as possible.

On driving licences, let me first say that if the right hon. Member for Dundee East comes to me with the case that he mentioned of the community mental health nurse in his constituency, I will make sure that a conversation takes place with the appropriate Minister. More than seven in 10 people apply online for driving licences; there are no delays in those applications. The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency is also back to normal times for vehicle registrations and non-medical driving licence paper applications. The remaining area in which more improvement is needed is applications from those with a medical condition. As colleagues may know, that part of the operation was hit by industrial action, but it is anticipated that it, too, will be back to normal timings by September. In the meantime, the DVLA continues to recruit more staff and utilise overtime to reduce medical application delays, and has opened further customer service centres in Swansea and Birmingham.

On the national health service, it is true that following the disruption of covid, the elective waiting list has grown in England, in Wales and across the United Kingdom, as it has grown in other countries. I place on record my enormous appreciation, gratitude and admiration for everybody who works in our national health service: their contribution throughout the pandemic has been absolutely exceptional. GP appointment numbers have now recovered to pre-pandemic levels; as of April, there were 1.26 million GP appointments per average working day. The Government plan to spend more than £8 billion to support the NHS to provide the elective care that was delayed by the pandemic. With the additional £1 billion that we announced for the second half of 2021-22, that could fund the equivalent of approximately 9 million more checks, scans and procedures.

There is no doubt that these are difficult times. Covid-19 was a major, indeed unprecedented, time in global history. The war in Ukraine is devastating for the people of Ukraine, and the economic shockwaves are felt far beyond, too. As Ministers, we are here to be held to account for the Government’s response, quite rightly, but I must say to the Opposition that they cannot just will away these huge global challenges with wishful thinking and fantasy economics.

Calmly and determinedly, this Government are stepping up to face these challenges head on. We do not underestimate the scale or complexity of them. We will not waver. We will weather these storms. With the fortitude of the British people, the creativity and belief of British business and the innovation of British entrepreneurs, we will emerge stronger than ever. The British people know that dedicated public servants are working flat out for them. They can be assured that they have a Government who are taking the difficult decisions and who are on their side.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House notes that UK economic growth is forecast to grind to a halt next year, with only Russia worse in the OECD; further notes that GDP has fallen in recent months while inflation has risen to 9.1 per cent and that food prices, petrol costs and bills in general are soaring for millions across the country; believes that the Government is leaving Britain with backlogs such as long waits for passports, driving licences, GP and hospital appointments, court dates, and at airports; and calls on the Government to set out a new approach to the economy that will end 12 years of slow growth and high taxation under successive Conservative governments.