Finance (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Guy Opperman and Ian Mearns

Tuesday 1st April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Ian Mearns]

I could not agree more.

Again, on employment, we have to wonder whether the Prime Minister and Chancellor are on the same planet as we inhabit in the north-east of England. Whereas unemployment figures for the UK are hovering around the 7% mark, unemployment in the north-east has only just dipped below 10%. That is the claimant count figure; it is not the count of people who are economically inactive, which is a much greater figure for a region such as the north-east of England. I baulk at the complacency from Government Members in the face of that, because it is having a dramatic impact on people’s lives.

[Guy Opperman]

I accept that there is a difference between the two types of job measurement, but let me give the hon. Gentleman the figures for Gateshead: the number of jobseeker’s allowance claimants is down by 21%, the total change over 12 months in the number of claimants aged 50 and over is a reduction of 13.5%; and the 12-month change in the number of claimants aged 18 to 24 is a decrease of 26.8%.

[Ian Mearns]

Those figures are interesting. It has to be said that economies such as the north-east of England look at the JSA figures and see that they have removed from them people sanctioned because of their benefits. The last estimate I saw was that almost 1 million people on JSA were in receipt of a sanction in the last counting period. In addition, some 600,000 people, on a conservative estimate, are now employed on zero-hours contracts. Our regional economy suffers from not only unemployment, but significant amounts of under-employment.

Despite the Government pledge to ensure that it is always worth working, it will be those in work who will most feel the squeeze of this Government’s policies. Average weekly earnings and gross disposable income in the north-east are the lowest of any English region. According to the latest Real Life Reform report, which has been conducted by the Northern Housing Consortium, the average spend on fuel among the study subjects has risen by 8.5% since only December and by more than 30% just since last September, and is now at an average of £32.62 per household per week in that study, which is of people on very low and modest incomes.

The Chancellor has made much of his personal allowance increase, but the Government continue to ignore the negative impact of their 24 tax rises between 2010 and 2015. I am not a natural bedfellow of the TaxPayers Alliance, but it believes that there have been 254 tax rises, particularly the hike in VAT in January 2011 from 17.5% to 20%. Even the Prime Minister accepts that VAT rises impact on the poorest, and he always knew that they would. On 5 January 2011, he said:

“If you look at the effect”—

of VAT—

“as compared with people’s income then, yes, it is regressive.”

In Exeter in 2009, the right hon. Gentleman, as the then leader of the Opposition, said of VAT:

“You could try, as you say, to put it on VAT, sales tax, but again if you look at the effect of sales tax, it's very regressive, it hits the poorest the hardest. It does, I absolutely promise you.”