Debate on the Address

David Lammy Excerpts

Wednesday 9th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

All hon. Members will have spent the past few weeks and months knocking on doors and will recognise that this Queen’s Speech is hugely important for many families across our country. Also, many in this House who are baby boomers—that does not include our current political leaders—and have benefited from free education, affordable housing and pretty good pensions will recognise that for those of younger generations, many of whom are currently unemployed, this is a critical Queen’s Speech. It is against that backdrop that I wish to make my comments.

I will start by welcoming the aspects of the Queen’s Speech that deal with family policy. It is absolutely right that we do something to support the many families in this country struggling with children with disabilities. Frankly, it is poor that successive Governments have not done enough, so I am pleased to welcome changes in that area of policy. Love is a key ingredient for any parent raising a child, and the hearts of all Members of the House must go out to young people who find themselves in circumstances in which they do not have parents. For that reason, it must be wrong that children from black and ethnic minority backgrounds languish in local authority queues waiting for adoptive parents. As the parent of two children from a mixed-race background, I know that such children fare particularly badly on those adoption lists. I welcome the changes that will make it easier for parents of any background to adopt young people in need of a loving home.

[Mr Edward Timpson (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)]

I join the right hon. Gentleman in welcoming wholeheartedly the measures to try to improve adoption in this country for children from all backgrounds. Does he agree that it is also important not to forget that there are children who are brought into the care systems who might have other permanency solutions to their upbringing that might involve long-term fostering or residential care and that we must also do more for those children to ensure that they do not miss out on the best possible childhood we can give them?

[Mr Lammy]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point about foster care and the need to support the many people across this country who give up their homes and time and offer love to the many children who pass through their homes.

May I also say, as chair of the all-party group on fatherhood, that it is important that in this House, on a cross-party basis, we make a renewed commitment to the importance of fatherhood? I also welcome the changes to care proceedings. If it is right and in the interests of a child, we must make it easier for fathers to have contact with their children. It is now well understood that the outcomes for young people without fathers are not good enough. In parts of this country and in parts of constituencies such as mine there is the phenomenon of the “baby-father”, whereby it is acceptable to have children but not be a father to them, and I welcome any moves in legislation to deal with that issue.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

I pay tribute to the right hon. Gentleman’s courageous stance on many of those issues over the years. Does he echo my view that we should also pay tribute to the love, care and courage of grandparents and extended kin, and that we should remove the impediments that they have to caring for their flesh and blood, owing to various difficult circumstances involving their own children, including drug and alcohol abuse?

[Mr Lammy]

The hon. Gentleman has taken up those issues in his constituency, and I too underline my support for grandparents, particularly given the complexities within families of drug and alcohol addiction.

But in the end the critical issues for most people, in relation to this Queen’s Speech and over the coming years, will be the reality that we are in a double-dip recession, will be what we are doing to get to grips with growth in this country, to provide jobs and to support small businesses, and will be how we are supporting young people. I am afraid that there has just not been enough in this Queen’s Speech to address those issues.

I do not have to tell the Prime Minister what happened in my constituency, as we have spoken on many occasions, but I say to him that currently in Tottenham 6,500 people are unemployed and 28,000 are on out-of-work benefits. The figures have actually got worse since the riots, and, although I have heard him at the Dispatch Box speaking about the Work programme, the youth contract and apprenticeships, I find that in all three policies there are weaknesses and flaws.

The Work programme is straining at the edges, particularly with the third sector attempting without funds to provide placements, and in Tottenham 90% of those who are unemployed are not eligible for it. How can it be the biggest programme since the 1930s, when most people who are unemployed in Britain are not eligible to participate in it? While the right hon. Gentleman lauds the youth contract, I warn him of a previous era, when we saw the failed youth training scheme and, as a consequence, many young people who graduated with certificates but no jobs. People in my constituency have a long memory, and what they want are genuine jobs.

As a former skills Minister, I am pleased to see the growth in apprenticeships, but the right hon. Gentleman will know that the scheme, to reach the figure of 450,000, includes many that people would not recognise as an apprenticeship. An apprenticeship should surely be a programme that lasts for at least one year. Currently, apprenticeships last for a maximum of 16 weeks, and many young people do not want something that is, in fact, a very short opportunity in customer services dressed up as a genuine apprenticeship, so I ask the Prime Minister to look at what is behind such apprenticeships if we are genuinely to retain the trust of young people.

I and other Opposition Members will of course scrutinise the enterprise Bill in its entirety, but, when I think of those shopkeepers on Tottenham high road who saw their businesses destroyed, I recall, as will the Prime Minister, that they faced hardships even before the riots. There were hardships with business rates and with footfall on the high road, and they were concerned about issues such as regulation—2,900 of them in the Tottenham constituency, paying their VAT and employing 30,000 people.

The number of self-employed people in my constituency has fallen from 14% to 7% in the past year. It is going in the wrong direction. I warn him that his absolute dedication to slashing public services is having a major effect in adding to the dole queues in constituencies such as mine.

We are not seeing more businesses flourishing or coming in and taking up the slack from the public sector; we are seeing something much worse. Look underneath the figures. The whole House should have serious concerns about anyone—young people, particularly—who faces unemployment. However, when the unemployment rate is three times higher among young black men, we should be gravely concerned.

We should also be particularly concerned that many women—older women, often black—are now joining their sons on the unemployment queues, having been employed in the health service, local government or other areas. I say to the Prime Minister that some communities depend on those mothers being employed and I am worried about the emergence of a picture worse than some of the scenes that hon. Members will recognise from the United States of America.

That is why we needed a Queen’s Speech that would seriously address those issues—stimulate the economy in the way required; wrestle with the issue of growth; and move our economy from over-dependence on financial services and retail. When I heard the Business Secretary arguing the case for the Sunday trading Bill, it was again apparent that the Government would rely once more on retail, consumerism, shopping and spending to get us out of this mess. We will need far more than that in this economy if we are to respond to the problems in constituencies such as mine.

What about the gaps in the Queen’s Speech? Given the importance of higher education to the UK economy and all we have invested to support young people making their way to university, why have the Government decided that a higher education Bill is not appropriate? The issue has been kicked into the long grass. Vice-chancellors and young people face uncertainty because we have not seen any Bill in that area of policy at all. Why are we going to spend hours, in this House and the other place, debating House of Lords reform when every Member knows that no one raised that issue with any political party on the doorstep during the campaign of the past few weeks? Is House of Lords reform really where our priorities should be?

[Mrs Eleanor Laing (Epping Forest) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the whole matter of House of Lords reform could be dealt with quickly in this House if, as the Prime Minister said a short while ago, the Government brought forward a Bill that simply brought the House of Lords into the 21st century without trying to create another House of Commons at the other end of the corridor?

[Mr Lammy]

I get where the hon. Lady is coming from, but I want to bring the Government into the 21st century. For that to happen, we need some real answers for the millennial generation who face decades of unemployment in this country. We have to say something about what we can expect for our graduates; we must not just talk the talk in terms of families, but recognise that the cost of living is going up, and we expect a Queen’s Speech that will address those issues.

Against that backdrop, this Queen’s Speech fails. I suspect that there are areas that the Opposition will be able to accept, but there are many holes in this Queen’s Speech. As the Prime Minister reflects and gets into the detail, I hope that the House can expect a bigger, more ambitious and more visionary legislative framework in the next Queen’s Speech.