Cost of Living

Gerald Kaufman Excerpts

Wednesday 16th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

It was deeply refreshing to listen to the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) make—literally—a reactionary speech. We do not often hear such sentiments openly expressed in the House of Commons.

Although the hon. Gentleman claimed that he was seeking to bring us into the real world, he was actually creating a world of fantasy. He gave us two exemplars of countries with lower taxation rates. The first was Russia, one of the most corrupt economies in the world, and a country run to a large degree by corrupt oligarchs, where democracy is only marginal. In the United States, under their posturing President, taxation may be lower, but such is the extent of poverty that many, many millions of people live in abject poverty in slums, without jobs and food, under a Democrat President—something I never thought I would live to see. Statistically, the hon. Gentleman may claim those countries as exemplars, but I fear that in the real world not one of us would want to live in the United States or in Russia under the conditions that prevail there.

The hon. Gentleman talked about education, and young people rising from the ghetto. I represent a constituency that has some of the greatest deprivation in the kingdom. None of my constituents, whatever their income, would wish to be described as living in a ghetto, but the result of what the Government have done in two years, and what they propose in the Queen’s Speech, will be to turn parts of my constituency into a ghetto. I do not believe that the people I represent deserve the fate of living in such conditions.

The hon. Gentleman talked about cutting waste. Yes, of course all of us are strongly in favour of cutting waste, but it depends how we define waste. What the hon. Gentleman might regard as waste, large numbers of my constituents would regard as essential. For example, one of the best high schools in my constituency has opened a new kitchen—with finance from the Labour Government and Manchester council, although the building was completed under this Government—and the head teacher told me that for many of the children the meal they get in school is their only solid meal that day. We have to look at contexts.

I do not say this rudely. Just as the hon. Gentleman is an avowed reactionary, I am an avowed Keynesian. I believe in spending our way out of recession—while of course cutting out waste, as the hon. Gentleman recommends—because recession and poverty mean people out of work. According to today’s figures, just announced, 10.7% of people in my constituency are out of work. We have to give them benefits, however miserable they are to be, whereas if people had jobs they would be taking home money and paying taxes in order to fund the essential public services that the Government are attacking, downgrading and in some cases destroying.

In response to an intervention from one of my hon. Friends, the Secretary of State alleged that shameful scaremongering was coming from the Labour Benches, but the most shameful scaremongering of recent months was when the Prime Minister and the Minister for the Cabinet Office created a totally unnecessary panic about petrol supplies, which had appalling effects throughout the country. The Session that the Queen’s Speech covers will take us beyond the halfway point of the Parliament and into the run-up to the next general election, so one might think that the Government’s programme would deal with the problems and challenges of the present while looking to the future, including the cost of living issues referred to by my right hon. Friends the Members for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) and for Croydon North (Malcolm Wicks). No such luck.

The Queen’s Speech proposals are a combination of irrelevance and actual damage. The Government have no more idea how to deal with the cost of living problem and the severe economic problems they have created than before they created them. Instead, they are making the poor and deprived, and average families, pay the price for the massive handouts they are providing for their rich cronies, including big business and the banks. Their cronies do not worry about the cost of living. Sir Philip Green, an adviser to the Government, whose money is stowed away in Monaco through tax dodges, and Lord Ashcroft are not interested in what anything costs; they are only interested in how much tax they can dodge and in what they can buy with the money on which they pay little or no tax.

From young children to pensioners, from Sure Start to winter fuel payments—one of the most valued innovations of the Labour Government, but which the Conservatives opposed—this Government are already deliberately inflicting grave harm. Public service pensions, including those of the police, are being wrecked. Massive unemployment is being created; as I said, in my constituency, the figure announced today is 10.7%—the 47th worst constituency for unemployment.

The policing cuts are having devastating consequences. Inspector Damian O’Reilly, one of the greatest police officers in this country, and a recipient of the national award for community police officer of the year, told me that in my constituency the ability of the police to prevent and pursue crime, on both of which they have a first-rate record, will be harmed irreversibly. No wonder he and other police officers took part in the march last week. Today in Bournemouth the Home Secretary is being told by the chairman of the Police Federation that because of her policies, we are

“on the precipice of destroying a police service that is admired throughout the world”.

That is the situation under this Government.

Meanwhile, not only are the cruel cuts continuing while the cost of living continues to rise, but we are told that further cuts are planned—that this Government are planning £25 billion-worth of cuts, all targeting the most vulnerable in our society—and all this comes from Ministers who themselves will not in the slightest feel the impact of those cuts. The whole ethos of this Government was demonstrated a few days ago when it was disclosed that the Prime Minister had sent a text message—one of a barrage of such messages—to a wealthy and controversial crony, saying that they must avoid being seen together. And where? At the Heythrop point-to-point. It almost makes one laugh out loud—or should I say, lots of love?

This, in terms of cost of living, public services, creating unemployment and not creating wealth, is not only the most incompetent Government of my political lifetime, but the most right-wing that this country has had, with the connivance of the Liberal Democrats, since Neville Chamberlain in the 1930s—the most corrupt, but the most arrogant. The Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Home Secretary all refuse to sully their lily-white hands by replying personally to letters from Members of Parliament. The Prime Minister threw an infantile tantrum when he was called the other week to this House to respond—incompetently, inadequately and offensively—on a further example of current Government corruption.

The contrast with previous Conservative Governments is stark. Conservative Cabinet Ministers such as Douglas Hurd, Michael Heseltine, Willie Whitelaw and Margaret Thatcher all made themselves available to MPs seeking access on behalf of their constituents. Indeed, Margaret Thatcher issued an open invitation to MPs to come to No. 10 and discuss employment problems in their constituency with her. This Government, neither party of which has a majority and neither party of which has a mandate, are behaving in a far more right-wing way than Margaret Thatcher did when she had an overall majority with big electoral victories, which she scored over the Labour party at its worst.

If the Home Secretary, the worst in my experience, had been willing to take a hands-on approach to immigration problems, we might have avoided the awful crumbling mess in border control that she personally has created and which is in danger of humiliating this country as the Olympic games approach.

Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats pursue irrelevancies, seeking always to advance not the interests of our constituents, but their own party’s self-interest, with an obsession with constitutional change which is irrelevant to the lives of our constituents, such as the alternative vote, on which happily they were defeated, and now the House of Lords, their action on which would gum up the parliamentary works—which might not be a bad thing, considering what damage the Government would otherwise seek to legislate.

[Dr Huppert]

I hope the right hon. Gentleman realises that he is the one who has raised this obsession. It was in his party’s manifesto as well, so I am sorry he feels that way. We have been focusing on things such as giving 24 million people who are poorly paid a tax cut, lifting the lower-paid people up. Will he welcome that as a Liberal Democrat obsession that will help many constituents across the country for all of us?

[Sir Gerald Kaufman]

What I would welcome would be for the hon. Gentleman, as parliamentary representative for a university city—the second university as between Oxford and Cambridge, naturally, but not a bad university in its way—to go to his constituency or stand up here and apologise for the deception of the Liberal Democrats on the issue of university fees.

[Dr Huppert]

I will make no apology for the fact that I voted against fees. I will make no apology for the fact that I campaigned against them when Labour introduced them, having a large majority and having promised not to do so, and when they tripled them, having promised never to increase them again, and claimed that they had legislated against them. Will the right hon. Gentleman apologise for that deceit?

[Sir Gerald Kaufman]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. Before the right hon. Gentleman resumes his speech, I remind the House that this is not a general debate; it is a debate on the cost of living. Touching on one or two other things I will allow, but not an in-depth debate on other matters.

[Sir Gerald Kaufman]

I am grateful to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for that reminder, and I am sorry that I was diverted by the irrelevancies of the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert). I will simply say to him that if he is talking about higher education, it is not only university fees, but the education maintenance allowance, the withdrawal of which is depriving thousands of my young constituents of getting advanced education.

[Mr Leigh]

rose—

[Sir Gerald Kaufman]

Oh, I must give way to the hon. Gentleman, if Mr Deputy Speaker will allow me to do so.

[Mr Leigh]

Will the right hon. Gentleman be too alarmed if an old reactionary like me supports him on House of Lords reform?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Let’s not go there.

[Sir Gerald Kaufman]

The hon. Member for Gainsborough knows that I would have responded to him, but I have been banned from doing so by the Deputy Speaker, and I must maintain my cringing relationship to him.

On issues such as the cost of living, which was very much to the fore in my city, the Conservatives were obliterated in Manchester and the Liberal Democrats were massacred the week before last. One Liberal Democrat now ex-councillor in a formerly safe Liberal Democrat ward moaned at a hustings meeting that he was local and had nothing to do with the Government. But it did him no good.

The Roman historian Tacitus said of the emperor Galba, “Capax imperii nisi imperasset”, which, for those who did not have a public school education, translates as, “He would have been judged capable of government had he not governed.” Tacitus said as well, “Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant”—“They make a wilderness and call it peace.” That will be the epitaph on this Government.