Cost of Living

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Wednesday 27th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

We know that if we had continued the plans recommended by the Labour party, the country would be borrowing a lot more. According to the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies, Labour plans to borrow at least £200 billion more, which would push up borrowing costs for many hard-working families up and down the country.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree with the North East chamber of commerce, which said that the most important factor in raising living standards is to increase skills levels with an increase in skills funding and a doubling of apprenticeships? Is that not the true foundation of a long-term recovery?

[Sajid Javid]

I agree wholeheartedly with my hon. Friend, and I am sure he agrees that the Government were right to increase funding for apprenticeships, which are up by more than 1.5 million since the start of 2010.

--- Later in debate ---

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. We need to see much more action from the Government on securing decent employment and career paths for our young people, as we all want.

[Guy Opperman]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

I am sorry, but I will run out of time if I give way. I apologise to the hon. Gentleman.

The north-east has the highest proportion of people paid below the living wage—32% of workers are paid less—and research published by the Resolution Foundation has further confirmed that the north-east was the region where workers were most likely to be trapped in low earnings. The Office for National Statistics said:

“In April 2012, median gross weekly earnings for full-time adult employees in the North East were £455, joint lowest with Wales and lower than the UK median of £506.”

So people in the area that I represent are having to contend with lower wages, but they are also having to deal with rising prices. They are being burdened with not only increasing energy costs, but increasing costs for child care, for example. Energy prices have angered people throughout the country and all we have heard from the Government is excuses for the actions of the big six. When npower recently announced an eye-watering rise in electricity costs of 9.3% and in gas of 11.1%, The Journal, our local newspaper, reported that Dorothy Bowman, a campaigner for elderly people from County Durham, said that the price hike would leave householders with a stark choice. She said:

“They will have to choose food or heat, it will be too expensive for both. This is at the wrong time for people”.

She went on to say that npower did not care at all

“about their customers and the dire misery they are subjecting them to, they just care about their profits. If they were going to do this why not do it in spring, now people have no choice.”

She said the elderly would suffer, but so would young families living on a tight budget. I think she makes the point very strongly indeed.

In addition, The Journal reported on 25 October that an official at thinkmoney said:

“Regionally, problems with utility bills appear most severe in Northern Ireland, London and the North East.”

That is why we need Labour’s energy price freeze and long-term reforms to the energy market.

--- Later in debate ---

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

The cost of living is a legitimate subject for debate. I was interested to hear Ross Smith of the North East chamber of commerce comment on the solution:

“My answer to this is ‘it’s skills, stupid’—alas that doesn’t fit with easy election messages or election cycles.”

To be fair, that was a tweet, playing on Bill Clinton’s famous line in 1992 that, “It’s the economy, stupid”, so I asked Ross to expand on it yesterday as part of my consultation in preparation for this speech. He said that

“the most important factor in raising living standards in the long term is to increase skill levels so that people can play a more productive part in a stronger economy and be rewarded accordingly.”

I could not agree more.

To that end, we must look at apprenticeships, which surely can play a key part in any skills regeneration. The north-east is clearly leading the way. The number of apprenticeship starts in the north-east has increased by 11% since 2010-11, to 38,340. That was up from 18,510 in 2009-10 and 13,500 in 2005-06. In other words, it has trebled since the Blair Government. In my constituency, the number of apprenticeship programme starts has gone from 430 in 2009-10 to 690 in 2012-13.

Of course, it is not just about the number of apprenticeships; it is also about their quality. To that end, I am delighted that the Government have decided that one of the skills pilots will be in the north-east. In fact, it was the North East local enterprise partnership and the Adonis review that suggested the skills pilots that will go ahead. It is to be joined by the Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire LEP and the West of England LEP. It is a chance for businesses to engage with their skills and apprenticeship needs so that there is a focus on the particular parts of the economy where growth in jobs is needed in the long term.

There is ample evidence of the successes, whether the opening of the engineering academy in Hexham by Egger, with 40 jobs created, the work done by Nissan, the 38 new jobs in the IT sector, the new apprenticeship jobs in Accenture, whose managing director came to see me yesterday, or the work done by Siemens, particularly in relation to the university technical college in Durham. I strongly hope that the LEP will carry that forward in such a way that the Adonis report will have a true impact.

One cannot address the economy, certainly in my region, which has 2.4 million people, without looking at the Adonis report. No other region in the country has addressed its strengths and weaknesses as the north-east has with that report. It was business led, written by experts, apolitical, hard hitting and realistic. It assessed both the strengths of the local area and the weaknesses. It celebrated assets but acknowledged that there have been successive failures, by successive Governments, to improve job numbers, address skills deficits, increase university starts and generally grow the economy. I am profoundly grateful to all its authors.

At the report’s heart lay a desire for more and better jobs, as it identified the crucial lack of private sector employment. However, as it states:

“More jobs alone will not re-balance the economy. The North East needs higher skilled and higher paid jobs to produce an economy which matches others and provides the quality of opportunities that its residents and young people need to prosper.”

How do we proceed to do that? We must support the necessary investment in apprenticeships, build on the skills pilots and consider the recommendations in the Adonis report—I will not repeat its 24 pages, Madam Deputy Speaker, despite the Irn-Bru you saw me have at the Scotland Better Together event earlier. The seven local authorities must be allowed to go forward. They are coming together and driving forward with a regional voice to match the likes of Manchester which has led the way so well in these matters in the past.

I cannot finish without addressing the motion. On the proposed energy price freeze, I entirely endorse the comment from my hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher) that one should always be wary of geeks bearing gifts. I accept that there is a need for long-term housing supply, but it is a shame that my two Labour authorities are keen to build on the green belt, rather than on the other available sites. I would certainly support action for young people, but it is this Government who have trebled the number of apprenticeships and set up the welcome north-east skills pilot. I find it very easy, therefore, to reject the motion.

[Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman referred a moment ago to brownfield sites in urban areas, but does he accept that not every brownfield site is economically viable, and is he aware of his local authority’s assessment of brownfield sites and their economic viability? Perhaps he could give some figures on the viability of the sites in that area.

[Guy Opperman]

I could speak for an hour, and have done so on several previous occasions in the House, on Labour-run Northumberland county council’s failure to provide brownfield sites and its proposal to build on the green belt, whether around Ponteland, Hexham or other sites in Northumberland. Alternatively, there is Newcastle—again a Labour council—which is proposing massive building on green-belt land. We campaigned extensively against the building of more than 10,000 houses on that land.

[Graham Jones]

Does the hon. Gentleman also accept that building on greenfield sites is sometime cheaper and so provides for affordable accommodation, and that brownfield sites, particularly contaminated brownfield sites, can be comparatively very expensive?

[Guy Opperman]

I have no doubt that building on contaminated brownfield sites can be difficult, but in my constituency, for example, the police authority has sold the site of a former police station that could be built on perfectly properly. For 20 years, taxpayers—that includes the hon. Gentleman and me—paid more than £1 million to keep the former Stannington hospital site secure, yet nothing was built on it. We now have former government sites being built on and providing homes, but of course that is not green belt. He was keen to make his point about brownfield sites, but he also spoke about greenfield sites. We have huge difficulties in the north-east with investment in and building on greenbelt sites by local authorities.

I have gone on too long and been distracted—

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

indicated assent.

[Guy Opperman]

The Opposition spokesperson chunters from a sedentary position. On jobs figures and the economy, she will doubtless be addressing the fact that in her constituency unemployment has fallen by 12.5% in the last year, that youth unemployment has fallen by 16.5% and that the number of apprenticeship has risen from 620 in 2009-10 to 1,170 according to the most recent statistics. That is real action to help people in the north-east.

[Angie Bray]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Guy Opperman]

I will not give way to my hon. Friend. I have great respect for her, but it would not be fair on those who have yet to speak.