Future Government Spending

Debate between Helen Goodman and William Bain

Wednesday 4th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman]

rose—

[Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Gauke]

I will give way to the hon. Lady. She will give us an answer.

Bankers’ Bonuses and the Banking Industry

Debate between Helen Goodman and William Bain

Wednesday 25th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman]

Is my hon. Friend aware that the Government have manipulated the jobseeker’s allowance figures by increasing the number of sanctions, which are now affecting some 25% of people who go to the jobcentre?

[Mr Bain]

I agree with my hon. Friend. In this country people want targets for abolishing long-term youth and adult unemployment, not targets in jobcentres for sanctions. We see that in our constituency offices when people arrive in a desperate state having been sanctioned because of edicts from the office of the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

The vision of a different economy was picked up by the OECD yesterday in its report. It stated that future growth and rises in living standards in this country will come only if our economy sees increases in productivity, exports and levels of investment. We must improve our skills record and, importantly, sort out more secure and long-term pathways to finance for business and industry in this country—real structural reform for our banks must happen in the next Parliament.

A high-skill, high-investment, higher-wage economy cannot be built when thousands of people are locked outside the labour market for long periods, with skills going to waste and promise left unfulfilled. In 10 weeks’ time—10 weeks tomorrow—my constituents and the rest of the country will go to the polling stations in the hope that change is on the way with a new Government. However, the House does not have to wait that long. By passing the motion today, it can send a powerful message to the Chancellor that a Budget that will command support in the country in a few weeks’ time must have the purpose of abolishing the scourge of long-term unemployment that is so destructive of long-term income prospects, and corrosive of the human spirit.

The House should do more. We must restore fairness to our taxation system and reintroduce that tax on highly paid financiers who have pocketed some of the biggest gains from this Government over the past five years. With the 50p tax cut, for the last few years they have had a Government who have been on their side. Now the British people, who are meeting the burden of high long-term unemployment costs through our social security system, need a new Government who are on their side instead.

With as much as £34 billion a year in taxes going uncollected under this Government, we need policies that maximise revenues and encourage excluded parts of our society back into the labour market. Sweden’s equivalent of the jobs guarantee policy was first introduced in 1983 under a social democratic Government, and it helped balance the books there in the mid-1990s while restoring the right to work to thousands of people. That jobs guarantee was followed in Norway, Finland and Denmark. We should match that ambition in this country by having more people in work and paying into the system, and becoming better off and improving our public finances at the same time.

With bonuses paid by the financial sector since the onset of the financial crisis in 2007 having reached £100 billion this year, and with a few at the top pocketing the biggest gains, the case for asking for a greater contribution from those people—given the taxpayer assistance that has been provided to the banks and financial sector since 2008—is unanswerable. With the Office for Budget Responsibility having revised down by £48 billion at the autumn statement the levels of revenue from income tax and national insurance from the next financial year until 2018-19, the case for more people being in work, and for the super-rich to pay their fair share, makes best economic sense. That is why it is right to increase the clawback period for bonuses paid to people guilty of misconduct in the financial sector from seven years to 10 years, and—crucially—to introduce penalties in law for breaches of the general anti-abuse rule on avoidance.

As the High Pay Centre has shown in recent months, the link between company performance and executive remuneration and bonuses at the very top is tenuous at best. Reform of corporate governance so as to have an employee representative on remuneration committees would help secure greater accountability over what highly rewarded executives receive, and the wider commercial and social obligations that they should have in mind.

Too often, pay structures reward failure when instead there must be a greater relationship with long-term performance. That can be dealt with by the Financial Conduct Authority and greater legal transparency on bonuses, and secured by reform of the laws and corporate governance. Through the taxation system, we in this House can do a great deal more to discourage irresponsibility in the financial sector, and secure justice for the disadvantaged by raising £1.5 billion to £2 billion through a repeat of the bank bonus tax, to fund the jobs guarantee policy that will help so many long-term and young unemployed people. But as has also come up in this debate, we also need to deal with the structural reforms in the banking system which are needed to restore proper channels of finance to small and medium businesses.

A British investment bank, constructed for the purpose and capitalised by some of the revenues we can expect from 3G and 4G licences in the future, is the best way to deal with the gap in the British economy and ensure stable finance for small businesses. As the OECD pointed out yesterday, ensuring consistent lending for businesses is vital for future growth, and policies such as funding for lending have not bridged the gap. They have not delivered the necessary impetus to net lending and the next Parliament and Government need to be much more ambitious on that front.

[Mr Bain]

I am citing evidence—I hope that the hon. Gentleman has been listening carefully—from the OECD and Bank of England reports that net lending to business has continued to fall. The OECD said yesterday that weak lending is a structural problem in the British economy. He might think that I am raising a straw man, but I hope that he is not accusing those organisations of doing so. It is their argument that this Government have left unsolved that structural weakness in the past five years. Tougher action is needed in the next Parliament to secure stable finance for our businesses, because that is how we will get the jobs and growth that will generate the tax revenues and lower the deficit.

[Helen Goodman]

If it is the case that some firms have high cash balances and others face shortages in investment, it is far from being an example of the success of the current banking system: it is a demonstration of its failure.

[Mr Bain]

Businesses have told me that the absence of a strong investment bank, such as they have in Germany, France, and South Korea and as the Federal Reserve acts in the US economy, is equivalent to our business having one hand tied behind its back. It is that structural flaw that must be addressed in the next Parliament, but it is absent from the Government’s thinking, given what the Minister said.

The OECD also raised a further problem—the risks that the shadow banking sector could cause to our banking sector. We heard nothing from the Minister about closing loopholes that hedge funds have been able to exploit or about strengthening the tools to oversee the shadow banking sector, given the potential risk to financial stability that the OECD mentioned.

The debate is important because the Government have the perfect opportunity in the coming weeks to aim for fairness, with a proper jobs guarantee policy, and a bank bonus tax that would extend opportunity as well as responsibility. If they fail to take that opportunity, Labour will take our case for change to the country and the British people. I am confident that they will vote for change and vote for a new Government on 7 May.

European Union (Referendum) Bill

Debate between Helen Goodman and William Bain

Friday 8th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bain]

That is a pertinent and well made point.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

Further to the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), is it the case that the Bill has received no pre-legislative scrutiny and that no evidence has been taken?

[Mr Bain]

Sadly, that is correct. Before I became a Member of this House, I watched with great enthusiasm the passage of equivalent pieces of legislation, such as the devolution legislation of 1997, the Human Rights Act 1998, the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the House of Lords Act 1999. Those Acts were of prime constitutional importance and they were well scrutinised by this House and the implications were well debated by Members. We have simply not seen that with this Bill.

Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Debate between Helen Goodman and William Bain

Monday 21st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bain]

I would welcome any measures from any tier of Government that would increase the level of training and skills provided to my constituents and those in other Scottish constituencies. I have to say to the hon. Lady, however, that I have two major colleges in my constituency—North Glasgow college and John Wheatley college—which have seen staggering levels of cuts introduced by the Scottish Government. That is driving more young people in my constituency into unemployment and creating the very figures that allow those on the Treasury Bench to produce measures such as those in clause 1.

Even in constituencies such as mine, it is still the case that people move in and out of unemployment. The calculated framing of this debate by the Government, based on the fabricated and manufactured premise that there is a monolithic army of the permanently idle, unwilling even to open their curtains, and defrauding the system, wilfully ignores that fact. Fraud in the benefit system is only 0.7%, and many unemployed people, including many of my constituents, are struggling hugely on just £71.40 a week. Unemployment benefit as a proportion of average income has fallen from 22% in 1979 to a mere 15% now, so the argument from those on the Treasury Bench that unemployment benefit is somehow unaffordable and that it cannot continue into the decades to come is simply a false premise to put to the Committee tonight.

[Helen Goodman]

Would my hon. Friend like to point out to Government Members that, in the days when jobseeker’s allowance and its predecessors represented a higher proportion of earnings than now, we also had lower unemployment?

[Mr Bain]

That is absolutely right. We also had lower levels of long-term unemployment than we have now. As I and other Members have pointed out, high levels of long-term unemployment decrease the earnings potential of the people afflicted by that social evil.

Only today, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation published a survey of poverty in Scotland which revealed that a baby boy born in the richest 10% of Scottish neighbourhoods has a life expectancy 14 years higher than that of a baby boy born in the poorest 10% of such neighbourhoods. Having a 4% real-terms cut in unemployment and other out-of-work benefits of the sort contained in clause 1 is going to make those figures in Scotland even worse. I urge the Government to think again, to accept amendment 12 and to reduce the terrible social damage that will be caused if this measure becomes law.

I hope that, at this eleventh hour, the Government will decide to make policy on the basis of evidence, rather than reintroduce some Victorian distinction between the deserving and the undeserving poor. I urge them to think again about the impact that clause 1 will have, ensuring that 90% of those in out-of-work benefits will, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, be an average of £215 a year worse off. They should consider the effect that will have not just on high streets in our towns, villages and cities but on the local shop. They should think about the amount of economic demand that will be taken out of local communities, the jobs that will go as a result of the passing of this measure in this form tonight.

The Government ignore the inconvenient truth that out-of-work benefits constitute just 3% of the welfare budget, and that outside of pensions, most welfare spending ensures that work pays for many of our citizens. Nearly three in 10 of my constituents earn less than the living wage of £7.45 an hour. Although introducing a living wage in those parts of the economy where it will work would save money in lower tax credit costs, we, like many other countries, need a strong tax credit system to reduce imbalances within the labour market that would otherwise cause unacceptable levels of inequality. The simple truth is that most poverty in Britain today is among the working poor. It is mainly the working poor who are losing out as a result of these measures. They will be the biggest victims if this iniquitous Bill were to become law, with a real-terms 4% cut in their living standards.

In Scotland, as a result of these measures, some 261,000 working families, nearly one in five, would lose an average of £259 a year by 2015—the antithesis of work paying for those 261,000. About 70% of the tax credit cuts will affect working families in Scotland. The median wage in my constituency is less than £17,600 a year, and many thousands of people will be savagely hurt by clause 1, as Citizens Advice outlined in its submission. A couple on just £13,000 with two children will lose nearly 5% of their income as a result of this Bill, completely overwhelming any benefit from increasing personal tax allowances, which is worth just 13p a week to them.

This debate is not just about the measure before us; it is a debate about the values of this Government and the priorities of our society. This Bill impoverishes the poor, without reducing the deficit; it makes inequality worse, adding 200,000 to the child poverty figures, leaving 1 million more children in poverty by 2020. This clause is a provision that will cause enormous hardship to some of the poorest people in society, and it will devastate economic demand in constituencies such as mine. I urge the Committee to endorse amendment 12 and to vote against clause 1.