Jobs and Growth

George Mudie Excerpts

Thursday 17th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr George Mudie (Leeds East) (Lab)]

Before I begin my remarks on the Queen’s Speech, I should like to compliment my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (David Miliband) on his very good speech. We all have opinions, but to put the facts in such a clear fashion that cannot be argued with proves why he is a loss sitting on the Back Benches. I am not a natural supporter of his, as he knows, but the Front Bench is his place, not the Back Benches—[Interruption.] It is a shame; that is absolutely right.

This Queen’s Speech is almost a re-run of the Budget speech. There are three financial Bills: the pensions Bill, the banking reform Bill, and the enterprise and regulatory reform Bill. This last has parts that may be acceptable, although they will have to be teased out and looked at, but other parts are worrying. Of the remaining Bills, some are good or desirable in their own fashion. In the context of the dangers and difficult problems facing the British economy and the need to get growth and a rebalancing of the economy, the Queen’s Speech offers very little. That is very disappointing, and it will make the public, who are worrying about their families, their homes, their futures and their children’s futures, wonder about how out of touch the House of Commons is with their worries.

The Queen’s Speech projects our spending the majority of our time on a Bill to reform the House of Lords. How sensible will that seem to the families out there who are treading water financially? We must remember that 80% of the public sector cuts are still to come, so we are not at the worst stage; we have almost not even started. Yet this Bill, on which there is no consensus in the House and which is fiercely opposed by Members from all parties, will take up a lot of time here and in the House of Lords. One wonders why we are doing it. The public will ask, “Have they nothing better to do?” As a result, we will not have a social care Bill in this Session—that is a disgrace—and nor will we have a higher education Bill, which would be crucial to the growth strategy. No one can say that the Government have got their priorities right.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling) got something that Labour Members have long wanted—an acceptance from the Chancellor that growth is necessary to run alongside the cuts. That was quite an achievement and quite good news. The sad news, however, is that when the Chancellor read out all the measures that he felt would deal with growth, they were all on the supply side, not the demand side. It is clear that the big corporates are flush with money and could invest today and tomorrow, but they are not doing so because they have no confidence in the economy and there is no demand in the economy. The sooner that confidence is brought back, and the sooner the Chancellor understands that he has to put demand into the economy to get people into jobs with money and the confidence to spend, the better.

[Jim McGovern]

I thank my hon. Friend—a fellow former Lawside RC academy pupil and Dundonian—for giving way. From 2005 to 2010, I never had any business people coming to my surgery. Since 2010, an ever-increasing number of have been coming to tell me that they are not getting a fair deal from the banks. Does my hon. Friend share that experience?

[Mr Mudie]

As a member of the Treasury Committee, I can tell my hon. Friend that we argue every month with the Governor of the Bank of England and appeal to him to do something about the banks, which are not lending to small businesses at the level that they promised and have been allowed to get away with it without any complaint from the Government.

If Government Members think that it is partisan to say that there is no plan for growth and no understanding of growth, let me read out what the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills said in a letter to the Prime Minister regarding industrial policy. He wrote:

“I sense however that there is still something…missing—a compelling vision of where the country is heading beyond sorting out the fiscal mess; and a clear and confident message about how we will earn our living in future.”

He clearly and comprehensively set out five areas where there should be investment, the final one being investment in the construction of houses, which he said would get people into work and have an effect on the supply chain. None of those issues appears in the Queen’s Speech or was addressed in the Budget. If the Government cannot trust and listen to their own Business Secretary about how to get an industrial policy for growth, what chance do the people of this country have?