Finance Bill

Debate between David Lammy and Richard Graham

Tuesday 6th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

Let me begin by congratulating the new hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans) and expressing some solidarity with him, given what he said about his background and experience of growing up on a council estate. I am sure that his constituents will be very well served by the effective way in which he makes his remarks.

In a few days it will be my birthday, and as I inch towards the fourth decade of my life, it occurs to me that the economic downturn that we are experiencing now is also my fourth. The truth is that I do not remember the first recessionary period in the early 1970s, but I have strong memories of the recessions of the early 1980s and early 1990s. I think back to what it was like growing up poor and black in my present constituency in Tottenham, and the hardship experienced by my family and many others at the time. I remember my father losing his business in the early 1980s, and the depression and the booze that followed.

Children do not always quite understand these things as they are growing up, but I remember, in about 1982 or 1983, coming to understand that there was far less money in the home. The fridge seemed much less full, and—although I do not want to suggest that my parents were not generous—the presents at Christmas were not what we might have seen in the commercials on television, and not what we might have liked. I think that the VAT rise had something to do with it. Although Margaret Thatcher had said that she would not change the rate before the election, she raised it from 8% to 15%. I also vividly recall the freezing of child benefit for successive years, and how hard that was for my mother. More than anything, however, I remember the restlessness, the fecklessness and the worklessness of the broader community and the explosion of violence that we experienced in my community as a direct result of that, leading to some of the worst images that this country has ever seen or experienced.

[Richard Graham]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that, in that context, it is particularly regrettable that the Government of the last 13 years left us with more than 1 million unemployed young people—an absolute record?

[Mr Lammy]

Unemployment at that time in my constituency was running at 20%, and in some communities, particularly the black community, the rate was double that. It is because of the situation then that young people like me, growing up in constituencies like Tottenham, forged such a huge solidarity with colleagues and friends in different parts of the country. Although those areas seemed very different from Tottenham, the assault on manufacturing industry and the attitude to former mining and steelworking towns led us to forge a solidarity that remains on these Benches today.

In the 1990s I qualified as a young lawyer, but I did not go straight into employment because, yet again, the country was in recession and the employment was not there. I went to the local unemployment benefit office hoping that I might become a barrister, but not sure whether that would actually happen. My mother was now struggling on her own with a 15% interest rate, and the shops up and down Tottenham high road were boarded up because of bankruptcy. That was the backdrop in the 1990s. We experienced two recessions that had huge social consequences—social consequences that I deeply fear could be repeated as a result of this Finance Bill.

[Richard Graham]

The right hon. Gentleman is very generous in giving way. Given his experience in the early 1990s, is it not an absolute tragedy that he was part of a Government who, having promised to abolish boom and bust, landed us with the largest recession not just in his lifetime, but in the lifetimes of three generations?

[Mr Lammy]

The hon. Gentleman paints a fantasy picture of history, and takes the banks out of context. I will return to that in a few moments.