Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Gavin Shuker Excerpts

Friday 23rd March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Phil Wilson]

As I have said, I think that it is ideologically driven. The facts of the matter have been thought through, so my hon. Friend is quite right.

The previous Government turned their back on the wholesale devolution of pay determination at local level in 2003. A Treasury guidance note published in the autumn of 2003 stated:

“At the extreme, local pay in theory could mean devolved pay...to local bodies. In practice, extremely devolved arrangements are not desirable. There are risks of workers being treated differently for no good reason. There could be dangers of leapfrogging and parts of the public sector competing against each other for the best staff.”

[Gavin Shuker]

Does my hon. Friend also agree that one of the risks of this approach is that it will have a further deflationary effect in areas where money being spent in the local economy is vital to ensuring proper growth?

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Fuller]

That is a good question, which the hon. Gentleman should address to the Chancellor. I was not in Parliament at that time and I am not sure that that is what I would have said.

Much has been said about the granny tax. The one thing that grandparents want is what is best for their grandchildren. They understand that in tough times—this is because many of them have been through tough times—they have to give something to ensure that we will be stronger in future. That is what this Budget will deliver, and it is part of getting our economy balanced and back on the right track.

[Gavin Shuker]

The hon. Gentleman mentioned personal debt, about which I share a great deal of concern. Is he aware that under the Government’s plans personal debt will rise, not fall, over the coming period?

[Richard Fuller]

I think the hon. Gentleman is referring to unsecured personal debt rather than overall levels of personal and household debt. There is much for the Government to do, such as examining excessive rises in credit card terms and penalties for people who have to take on unsecured debt, and I believe they intend to do it.

We need to do more about our deficit, and I suggest again that one thing we can do for the sake of general fairness is consider creating a future fund that takes the pension obligations of our public sector workers and puts them into a fully funded scheme. It would take 20 to 25 years to accomplish that, but Australia, New Zealand, France and Norway are doing it, and it would show that this generation in Parliament understands its responsibility to the next generation of Britons. If we added that to our fiscal responsibility, we would be doing the next generation a great favour.

[Mrs Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)]

Investment in transport is absolutely essential for the future of our economy, which means that we need support for transport now and for future projects. I regret that no support was announced in the Budget statement for the maintenance of bus services, which are often important in getting people to work. Rising bus fares are a great burden, and in many cases essential bus services are simply being stopped. Nor was there any short-term relief from ever-rising train fares. I regret the absence of any measures in those areas, which are so vital to people today.

There were some encouraging statements about future transport investment. In the short time that I have available, I want to ask some questions about the meaning behind some of those headline statements. They are encouraging, but a lot lies behind them.

I first wish to refer to rail. I very much welcome the increased commitment to rail electrification. I listened carefully to what was said about Wales, and we would like to know exactly when rail electrification will come to Swansea, which was not very clear. I also welcome the commitment to more electrification across the north of England, and particularly the statement that part of the northern hub had now been agreed to.

Will the Government give a firm commitment to investing half a billion pounds in the northern hub, which is a major scheme to improve rail services right across the north, including places such as Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield and Newcastle. That £0.5 billion investment would produce a £4 billion boost to northern economies. We are still being told that the value-for-money studies are continuing, to assess whether the whole scheme can be made available. I remind the Minister that the Government are quite rightly investing £15 billion in Crossrail and £5 billion in Thameslink, yet the proposed £0.5 billion for rail right across the north is subject to scrutiny that has not yet come to a conclusion. I should like to hear a firm commitment to the northern hub today.

Major questions have been raised about the disparities in transport investment in different parts of the country. The passenger transport executive found figures showing that three times as much per head was invested in transport in London and the south-east as in the rest of the country. The Institute for Public Policy Research North, examining the implications for transport investment of the autumn statement, in which welcome new investment was announced, found that £2,700 per head was being invested in London and only £5 a head in the north-east. I accept that our capital city needs continuing major investment in transport, but given the needs of the country as a whole it cannot be right to have such wide disparities.

Will the Economic Secretary consider publishing the impact of spending decisions on transport across the country and in the different regions? All parts of the country need investment, but it is simply not right for the interests of the country overall that we continue to have an overheated south-east, while other parts are without essential transport investment.

The Budget contained announcements on road investment. More investment in roads—appropriate roads—is required. We are told that there will be a feasibility study on bringing private investment into our road system, but we need to know a great deal more about what that actually means. We are told that there will not be charges for existing roads, but would the widening of existing roads lead to charges? Is the policy not road charging through the back door, without the safeguards that were considered in the past when road charging as a national policy was under national discussion?

In previous discussions on road charging, it was always assumed—and indeed stated—that if road charges were levied, there would be a compensatory reduction in road taxation paid by the motorists, but it appears that under the Government’s new plans, that reduction in taxation will go to the private sector investors as an incentive to them, and will not accrue to the motorist. This is a major issue. It has been suggested that bringing more private sector investment into roads by leasing or selling our road system would be similar to privatisation of the water utilities—that is what the Prime Minister stated. If it is, it could well lead to a great hike in charges. However, the leasing or selling could be more akin to the Railtrack situation, when maintenance in infrastructure was severely reduced, with tragic consequences.

[Gavin Shuker]

My hon. Friend mentions parallels with the water industry. Is she aware—many hon. Members may not be—that currently one third of household bills go, in perpetuity, on debt repayments for investment in the water sector?

[Mrs Ellman]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comment—he makes an very important point and underlines the importance of looking at the policy in great detail. We are told that there will be a feasibility study, but we do not know exactly when that will take place, what it will include, or what kind of consultation there will be. Asking the private sector to own, run and lease our road system is a major step, and detailed scrutiny of exactly what it means for the future as well as the present is essential.

I am pleased that the Government have made statements on their renewed commitment to aviation. If we are to succeed as a country, it is vital that we maintain a successful hub airport. We cannot continue to lose out to our European rivals. It is essential that we build on the hub and do not allow it to decay. Investment in our regional airports is also important. They are important to local areas, but many of them are suffering economically because of the general economic situation. If the Government are interested in aviation for the future, they must look at our regional airports as well as maintaining that essential hub airport.

Hon. Members have been told in the past that there would be a Government aviation strategy that we could debate and consider. That is mentioned in the statement, but the situation is exceedingly vague. I ask the Minister please to tell us this: when will the Government publish their sustainable framework on aviation so that those very important issues can be considered and debated?

In the short time available to me today, I have raised a number of important issues that need proper consideration. I hope the Select Committee on Transport will look at those matters in detail. The whole House will want to know exactly what those headline statements mean. Investment in transport infrastructure is essential for the economic future of the country, but that means the whole country. I hope the Government are committed to doing just that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am extremely grateful to you for calling me to speak on this auspicious day, a Friday sitting, to discuss the Budget, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am also grateful to follow the right hon. Gentleman—[Interruption.] Sorry, the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock)—

[The Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty's Treasury (James Duddridge)]

It is only a matter of time.

[Gavin Shuker]

It is only a matter of time, as the Whip says, so there is a top tip.

The reason I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for West Suffolk is that he promised to talk about some of the long-term reforms required in the economy. If we are to talk about the Budget, we need to talk not only about the long term, but about the capacity in the economy right now, and that is where I will briefly focus my remarks.

Labour Members have examined the Budget in detail and we see a wasted opportunity. We required a Budget for jobs and for growth in the short term that would lead to our prosperity in the long term. Instead, we got a Budget that has fought over the spoils. Two years into this Tory-led Government, we can see the effect that the coalition Government are having on our economic policy. Various Ministers and, indeed, Back Benchers, are fighting over, and leaking in the press, the measures in the Budget. They are fighting not over the scale of the fiscal challenge we face, but over what measures could be assigned to each individual party. It is almost as though, having slashed and burned, they are fighting over who wants to win the spoils for having scorched the earth.

The OBR has said:

“We have made no…material adjustments to the economy forecast as a result Budget 2012 policy announcements.”

The independent OBR accepts that growth will not be changed by this Budget. We all remember last year’s so-called “Budget for growth”, but we have still yet to see a strategy for getting growth in the economy, as the numbers clearly show: over this coming period, borrowing is to be more than £150 billion more than the Government announced just a year ago; the deficit reduction plan has gone from four years to seven; and the Government are trying conveniently to lay by the wayside promises that unemployment numbers would decrease in each and every year of this Parliament. What about the lie that the private sector will pick up where the public sector is being slashed away? We are being given a full body of evidence to prove that that is untrue. It is clear that in both policy and ideology the Government are struggling to get growth going because they are ignoring the lessons of history, particularly the lesson that when the public sector is cut back too far and too fast, fiscal policy has a deflationary effect on the economy. There is a real problem, but unfortunately we have been trapped in a paradigm by this coalition Administration which they cannot get out of.

What are we seeing? A number of tiny interventions, programmes and schemes. Let me go through some of the most eye-catching ones. I was on the Public Bill Committee that considered the legislation introducing the national insurance holiday regime, but only 3.3% of the businesses that the Government said would be helped have been helped under that scheme, so it clearly is not working. We have a much better plan to recycle that money to make sure there is a proper cut in national insurance across the country. Credit easing has yet to help a single business. The business growth fund has six regional offices, with 50 jobs having been created, but there have been just six investments in businesses to get business moving. The export enterprise finance guarantee has helped just six exporters since it was introduced.

In the absence of a clear ideology to get growth growing in our economy what we see are hundreds of tiny measures, none of which is actually giving confidence to business to invest. Roosevelt talked about the alphabet laws when he came to power and about the scale of the challenge that he faced in the States in the 1930s. What we have from this Government is alphabet soup: a series of initiatives, all with long and good-sounding titles, but no actual significant movement in the economy to get growth going. What we are left with are just words, and now they take money out of the pockets of those who are most likely to spend and instead choose to put it in the pockets of millionaires and of people who are already very good at avoiding paying tax in the first place—people who are likely to save it, spend it abroad or spend it in areas that are not going to stimulate the economy. Even those people are calling for action in the economy to get growth growing and not necessarily to reward themselves when growth is not there currently.

Let us consider the situation in the US, where its leader has explicitly talked about the dangers of the austerity narrative and has specifically said that to cut too far, too fast would be detrimental to the US economy over time. And what do we see there? Unemployment falling month by month and significant growth in the economy, just as, funnily enough, there was in this country in this Government’s first few months because they inherited that from the previous Government. Most crucially, capacity in the US economy is being protected. Look at its auto business: many Republicans said it should be let go to the wall but the Democrats stepped up and said, “We will protect it.” Why? Because if capacity is protected in the economy, the ability to keep growth going is retained throughout. We have seen a big turnaround there.

When we go into periods of recession or depression, businesses try to hold on to their ability to manufacture or to keep going for as long as possible—perhaps for six, 12 or 18 months—without laying people off. After a while, however, when it is clear that no lifebelt is coming from the Government, businesses start to lay people off, so a 2,000-employee business becomes a 1,500-employee business. That means that when the growth comes back, it is much harder to manufacture to the previous level. That is the legacy that the Government will leave us to pick up the pieces of—an economy with much less capacity to manufacture and grow to meet the long-term challenges we face. For all the talk of clearing up or picking up the pieces from the global financial crisis and the reforms that are required, we must remember that if our economy does not survive this period, we will not have the foundations for growth in the future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills), not least because he aptly demonstrated the huge complacency that exists on the coalition Benches about the need for economic growth. However, I am sorry that the Secretary of State is not in her place, because I am extremely worried about her, on two counts. The first is that she seems to be inhabiting a fantasy land where we are actually experiencing economic growth, and the second is that she seems completely unaware of the fact that we have had a global economic crisis in the past few years, so we need a growth plan to recover from it.

I would have liked to contribute something to the debate about transport, but alas I cannot, because I am afraid the Budget delivered absolutely nothing to meet the transport needs of my constituents. There was no support at all for buses, despite the fact that our bus network is in crisis. I know from my constituents that despite the fact that we have precious few jobs in the area, with 10 people chasing every job vacancy, people are losing jobs because they cannot get buses to work. Care workers—

[Gavin Shuker]

Is my hon. Friend seriously trying to convince the House that she does not have a cable car in her constituency?

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

Alas, I do not have a cable car, but that is a great idea for a new business in my constituency, although where it would take people from and to, I am not exactly sure.

There is no support for transport, despite the fact that business leaders in the north-east have expressed concern that a failure to invest in the region’s transport network could stifle long-term growth. They have made a point that without the right transport and energy supply infrastructure, the region could struggle to realise its full potential. I hope the Minister will take on board these matters in her comments.

What do we know from the analysis of the Budget so far? I have with me an extract from the Financial Times, which concludes that that it is a Budget “without economic significance”. It also says that the Government have absolutely no plans in place to change the unhappy outcome of the slump, and that includes, critically, no plans for the north-east of England. What we do know is that the unemployment figures for the north-east are much higher than those for the south-east: 10.6% in the north-east, compared with 6.6% in the south-east. IPPR North has said that it is the largest gap since the labour force survey began. One might have expected the Red Book reforms to prioritise the north-east in support of economic growth, but in fact there is only one mention of the north-east in its many pages dealing with growth, compared with seven mentions for London. I want to see economic growth in London. It is our capital city and it is important that it is supported. However, that does not excuse giving no attention to the north-east apart from one mention of Newcastle. County Durham is not mentioned at all.

--- Later in debate ---

[Miss Smith]

Mr Deputy Speaker, it may take more time than I have to list all the counties of the UK, although I would be happy to try if you were to be charitable with me. I think the point about the Budget is that it lays out what the Government are doing across the country, and it lays out what the reality is. I will explain the reality, and that is that 226,000 new jobs were created in the private sector last year. That makes over 600,000 since we came into government. The Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts that from the start of 2011 to 2017, a total of 1.7 million jobs will be created in the market sector. That is private sector growth built on a foundation of economic stability.

I will explain how we have gone even further to encourage greater growth—unless the hon. Member for Luton South (Gavin Shuker) would like to do that job for me.

[Gavin Shuker]

I am delighted to raise a very important point, and I hope a non-combative one. What is the Government’s position on the child poverty targets, enshrined in law, by 2020?

[Miss Smith]

This Government take child poverty extremely seriously, and this Government of course— [Interruption.] I beg your pardon. Is the hon. Gentleman still chuntering? Would he like to clarify his question?

[Gavin Shuker]

I will help the Minister. There is a legal framework in place, under laws passed by the previous Government, to hit child poverty targets by 2020. Will she give Her Majesty’s Government’s position on that target?

[Miss Smith]

I certainly join the hon. Gentleman in seeking to combat and take out child poverty, but it is this Government who will do that on the basis of our work through the Budget to put private sector growth at the heart of the recovery. The Government will consider all the matters that feed into poverty and not simply transfer income from one side of a line to another.

Let me outline the other key things that we are doing in the Budget. We are overhauling the planning rules, cutting corporation tax, restoring our international competitiveness and creating an invitation for investment in the UK’s economic future. As the House knows, the Government have already set out plans for some £250 billion of infrastructure investment in the next decade and beyond. That is critical to renewing our infrastructure network, which enables Britain to compete with emerging giants in the global market.

The Chancellor provided further details on those ambitions. They include taking forward a feasibility study into ownership and financing models for the road network; supporting Network Rail to invest a further £130 million in the northern hub rail scheme, and providing up to £150 million to projects in core cities, as well as Growing Places funding to empower communities and businesses to lead development in their areas.

Various hon. Members asked questions. I single out those of the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman), the Chairman of the Select Committee on Transport, to whom my right hon. Friends will be happy to write to answer her specific questions. I thank other colleagues for their contributions. They will appreciate that I am now rather short of time owing to the pressing matters that Opposition Members raised.

As we invest in our physical infrastructure, it is also important that we invest in our digital infrastructure. That covers matters such as mobile coverage and broadband. It also means pushing such investment into cities; some cities will come forward for the super-connected cities initiative.

We want to help build on our long and very rich history of scientific and technological leadership. It is essential to sustain that and capitalise on our strength. It is also essential that we make the UK manufacturing supply chain more competitive. That sort of investment provides a springboard for entrepreneurs and manufacturers to lead a private sector recovery across all sectors and all parts of the country.

Just as we encourage businesses to expand at home, we must also focus on helping British businesses to expand overseas in ways in which my right hon. Friend the Chancellor set out last week. We can go further on exports—we aim to double our nation’s exports to £1 trillion by the end of the decade. We will not sit idly by while China, India and Brazil forge ahead.

Of course, if we want our businesses to take those risks to invest and hire new workers, we must ensure that they have access to finance. That is why the Budget contains the national loan guarantee scheme, on top of our deficit reduction strategy, which has earned market credibility and low interest rates. We are ensuring that the full benefits of those low interest rates are passed on to businesses throughout the UK.

It is this Government who are taking the decisive action needed to make Britain the best place to start, grow and finance a business; who are putting ingenuity, innovation and the enterprise of people in businesses at the heart of our recovery, and who are restoring our competitiveness and putting the UK at the heart of the global market. We are unashamedly backing business in the Budget by creating the most competitive tax system in the world, removing the bureaucratic burdens on businesses and investing in infrastructure.

My hon. Friends have already mentioned GlaxoSmithKline. I could add Nissan, Jaguar Land Rover and Tesco, which have announced that they are creating thousands of new jobs in the UK.

The Government are building a sustainable and prosperous economy in a recovery that builds on our strengths across all regions of the country and all the creativity and productivity of our private sector. We are also putting money in the pockets of low-paid workers. As the Chancellor said in his Budget speech, the Opposition borrowed us into trouble, we will earn our way out.

Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.— (Mr Dunne.)

Debate to be resumed on Monday 26 March.