Jobs and Growth

Elizabeth Truss Excerpts

Wednesday 12th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ed Balls]

I will return to the hon. Gentleman and his party in a moment. They gave the Government some very good advice 18 months ago, but unfortunately it was not heeded.

[Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman has talked about infrastructure and the A11. Labour cancelled the road-building programme, whereas we are breaking new ground on the A11. In addition, so much red tape was put in place that we are now 83rd in the world for regulation. Does he think that is helping small businesses in our country?

--- Later in debate ---

[Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk) (Con)]

We have heard eloquent speeches about the western debt crisis, but underlying that we have a competitiveness crisis, because the west has built up debt while the east has saved, and there is a gross imbalance.

The legacy of 13 years of Labour Government is one of red tape, meddling and taxation. We are now 83rd in the world for our burden of regulation and 94th for our burden of taxation. We are 28th in terms of infrastructure. In maths, we are 28th, and in science, we are 16th. We have the highest child care costs in the world. Labour made the labour market much more inflexible and made life much more difficult for working parents. In 1997, there were 100,000 child minders in the market; by 2010, that figure had reduced to 55,000 because of the burden of regulation on the sector. Child minders were the cheapest and most flexible way of providing child care. A lot of people have struggled to get child care because of the costs that Labour imposed on the market.

In education, we saw a denigration of traditional subjects such as maths, science and languages. Whereas those in the rest of the world were encouraging students to do those subjects, in Britain the numbers dropped, as did the quality. We have the lowest proportion of 16 to 18-year-olds studying maths in the OECD. Labour Members have talked about youth unemployment, but what about their appalling record in education, which means that many of our young people have left school without the skills they need to work in today’s workplace? Many employers care most about languages, yet the proportion of those studying languages at GCSE dropped from 79% to 44%. The shadow Chancellor used to be the Education Secretary; he did nothing in that job to improve the skills of young people.

Then we move on to infrastructure. Huge amounts of money were wasted on wasteful schemes such as Building Schools for the Future. Meanwhile, in 1997 Labour cancelled the road building programme, leaving roads such as the A11 undualled and the economies of counties such as Norfolk held back. Luckily we have a new Government who are putting in that infrastructure, and that work is starting next week.

The Opposition talk about living standards, but how are we to get our living standards up if we cannot produce goods competitively with the rest of the world? At the moment, we are buying more goods and services from those in the rest of the world than they are buying from us. That is a legacy of the previous Government’s supply-side policies.

What do we need to do? First, we need to reduce regulation. The Chancellor is absolutely right about lengthening the period for applying for unfair dismissal. We heard nothing from the Opposition about their view of this crucial issue; they have not made up their minds about employment regulation. I want parents, not bureaucrats, to be in charge of systems such as child care. We need to get rid of the bureaucracy that has raised the costs and limited the supply of child care. No new places have been provided since 2005, and that is a Labour party legacy.

We need a massive focus on improving maths and science in our schools. All the leading countries—Germany, Canada and many Asian countries—insist on rigorous subjects until the age of 16, including languages, history and sciences. The Opposition have done nothing but oppose the English baccalaureate that brings those subjects in.

It is going to be a long, hard slog to get our country back on track after the huge misuse of capital, the inflexibility and the regulation of our labour market of the past 13 years, but we must do it. Britain has to stop comparing itself just with other countries in Europe; we have to compare ourselves with rising countries across the world. We have to be humble enough to learn lessons from those countries, rather than just looking over our shoulders.