High Speed 2: Hollins Green, Culcheth and Croft

Helen Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 8th May 2019 Westminster Hall

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the effect of High Speed Two on the villages of Hollins Green, Culcheth and Croft.

It is a great pleasure to be here under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I am grateful to have been granted this debate on the impact of the proposed High Speed 2 line on villages in my constituency. For the record, although I live in the village of Culcheth, our home is not one of those affected by the line. Nevertheless, many of us have believed for some time that what we call “the spur”—the Hoo Green to Bamfurlong section of the line—simply does not stack up economically, or in any other terms, and that the decision to join the main line north of Warrington, rather than north of Crewe, is flawed.

I have previously questioned the costings for that part of the line. I do not propose to go through all that again, but suffice it to say that if HS2 is seriously arguing that this part of the line will cost only 28.6% of the costs elsewhere, when a viaduct has to be built over the Manchester ship canal and the M62 and the East Lancashire Road have to be crossed, it is highly unlikely to be correct. In fact, many of us have believed for some time that the real justification for the spur was to avoid the constituency of a certain former Chancellor of the Exchequer, of this parish. Now, with the decision to make Crewe a main transport hub and to abandon plans for any depot at Golborne, it makes even less sense than it did.

Even so, neither HS2 nor the Government have taken full account of the concerns of people who live in the villages. One bit of the line was tweaked following representations from the owner of the Taylor business park just outside Culcheth. That mitigated some of the impact on some houses in Culcheth but increased the problems in Croft. However, the decision allowed the business park to be sold for an undisclosed sum, reported by local newspapers to be more than £19 million—without any gain, I suspect, to the British taxpayer, since the last time I looked most of the shares in the business park were held by a company registered in Belize. We often ponder why notice was taken of one person, and not of the representations of the rest of the community.

That part of the line, however, has serious implications for all three villages. That is what I will concentrate on today. For example, Wigshaw Lane is proposed for permanent closure. It is the route that leads from Culcheth to Croft, going on towards the centre of Warrington. Traffic will therefore be forced on to the other route towards town, which is the A574, despite the fact that that road is already at a standstill at peak times. An accident on the motorway or the East Lancashire Road can gridlock traffic all around the village. It is simply not sustainable to force more traffic on to an already congested road which is used as a cut-through by HGVs.

Importantly, Wigshaw Lane is also the direct link between Culcheth and Croft, and closing it will have a serious impact on people’s ability to access services in Culcheth village. For example, many people in Croft come into Culcheth to shop and to use the doctors’ surgeries there. Culcheth High School is the nearest high school to Croft and is attended by many of the young people from that village. They will be forced on to a much more unsafe route to school, and the road closure will have a particularly adverse impact on elderly and disabled people who come to shop in Culcheth.

There will of course also be problems for people who want to move the other way, from Culcheth to Croft and towards town. For example, the hospital is in the centre of town, and young people who want to access post-16 educational provision, whether at Warrington and Vale Royal College or Priestley College, need to go into the town centre. How people will get to early appointments in Warrington, or young people to classes, when the road is congested and often at a standstill is something that no one appears to have considered properly.

In fact, young people will be disproportionately affected by the closure because they move between the villages of Croft and Culcheth for sport and recreation, as well as education. Local air cadets, for example, are based in Croft. People go there from Culcheth and all around the town. The cadets are well respected—one member of my staff learned to fly with them—but the direct route there will be closed. Similarly, for young people who want to come from Croft to Culcheth to access after-school activities and sports facilities, there will be no direct route.

If that were not enough, another proposal is that the area known as the Oaks—which is on the alternative route, the A574—will lose more than 20% of its area. Culcheth Athletic junior football club has 23 teams that play there. The idea put forward by HS2, that they can all move to Shaw Street recreation ground in Culcheth, or the Culcheth sports and social club, which we call the Daten, is nonsense: four out of six pitches and the parking facilities are to be lost. It is interesting that the Government want people to be more active and for young people to take part in more sport and in the cadet forces, yet they are set on making it more difficult for them to do so in the area.

Another part of the community that will suffer a serious impact is the Catholic population. St Lewis Primary School is in Croft, as is St Lewis parish church. When the direct route is closed, young children will no longer have an even moderately safe route to school; they will be forced on to the congested A574. Older people and others who want to go to mass will be seriously inconvenienced. That is direct discrimination against the Catholic community, which goes against HS2’s declared policies.

If that were not enough, there is a proposal to put a construction depot on the A574, close to Newchurch Primary School and the residential houses that abut that road. That will increase not only traffic—yet again on a road that is already congested—but air and noise pollution for the primary school and the people who live in that area. Anyone who knows the villages would say that the proposal simply is not feasible.

As far as Hollins Green is concerned, there is a proposal to build a viaduct over the Manchester ship canal, despite the fact that on the nearby M6 the Thelwall viaduct often has speed restrictions because of high winds. It would be interesting to know how HS2 thinks that is feasible. Previous plans for a motorway in the area were rejected by the then Secretary of State on grounds that remain relevant to HS2: namely, that it would have an unacceptable environmental impact, and would cause a loss of green belt and a harmful effect on village life. That viaduct and its associated embankment will tower over the area. It will cut through a historic parish and it will destroy a network of footpaths between Hollins Green and Glazebrook.

As well as the environmental impact, there will be an economic impact on the villages. It might help the Minister if I explain that Culcheth is the centre village for Croft and Glazebury and, in some sense, for Glazebrook too. Lots of people from outside those areas come to the village because they are attracted by its mix of local shops and nice restaurants and pubs. When Wigshaw Lane had to be closed a few years ago for bridge repairs, there was a serious impact on local businesses, which lost a lot of trade. Culcheth also has a thriving night-time economy—because of the restaurants and so on. People come to the village from quite far away. That trade will be reduced if one of the main routes out is closed.

The new route will go straight through the Partridge Lakes fishery—a thriving family business built up over many years, which has also planted thousands of trees. Other businesses are situated there, too. For instance, there is a store that sells prom dresses—I think that is a thing now, although when I was growing up we just went to the pub when we left school. People come from all around to get their dresses there. There is a yoga studio and there is the Black Sheep Wools craft centre. The key thing to remember if those businesses go to the wall is that they encourage people to go to Culcheth village and spend money in the shops and restaurants. It would be a double whammy.

In Hollins Green, the Black Sheep pub will have the route going straight through its car park. People go to that pub from outside the village, and it holds a thriving farmer’s market that brings people into the village. We are constantly told that HS2 is beneficial to the economy. I do not think it is beneficial to the economy of these villages. Although I keep asking questions about the economic impact and the assessment that has been made of it, I do not get very satisfactory answers. The cost-benefit ratio of the line is estimated at between 0.5 and 0.8, but with the effect on those businesses, many of which will experience a serious loss of trade and some of which may go to the wall, that analysis changes. I hope the Minister will look at that very seriously.

There will be an impact on people’s health. The loss of the footpaths in Hollins Green, the loss of access to the linear park, which is used by walkers and horse riders, and the loss of the fishery where people are welcome to walk around, look at the wildlife and have a coffee, will have a serious impact on people’s access to green space. HS2 accepts that most anglers tend to be older men and a high proportion are disabled, although the fishery has done sterling work with young offenders to try to get them interested in the sport. We know that being out in the open air is beneficial not only to our physical health but to our mental health. Many of those benefits will be lost in those villages. We will pay the price in worse health, but in the end the country will pay the price in increased costs to the NHS.

It cannot be right that HS2 can come up with plans that anyone who knows anything about these villages thinks are unworkable. They take no account of the traffic situation, the economy of the villages and people’s health. They are just not feasible. In addition, many of them ignore HS2’s own stated equalities policies, because they have a disproportionate impact on young people, older and disabled people, and the Catholic community.

There is a way out of this situation. As the costs escalate, Ministers need to look at the cost of this part of the line. In fact, in previous debates I have undertaken, Ministers did agree that the costs needed to be looked at. The original cost of the spur was estimated at £800 million, whereas joining the main line north of Crewe was estimated at £750 million. The cost of the spur has risen to £1 billion. The original justification for not joining the main line north of Crewe was that a lot of work would need to be done to make Crewe station viable. Since the Higgins report, it has been decided that Crewe will be a main transport hub, so that work will have to be done anyway.

The other justification for the route was having a depot at Golborne, so that trains could turn around and come out of that depot. There is no longer going to be a depot there. I urge the Minister to look seriously at that. It has been said often that HS2 is of great benefit to big cities but not much benefit to towns. There is something in that. By looking again at the possibility of running trains out of Crewe to Chester, north Wales, Liverpool and up through Warrington, many towns could benefit much more, and the impact on villages could be avoided. If the Minister cannot do that, I strongly urge her to look at HS2’s plans for building the line and the impact on those villages. I sincerely believe that they will be disastrous for village life and the whole thing needs to be considered again.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

The debate can last until 4.23 pm. Before calling the Minister to speak, I congratulate the hon. Lady on giving a detailed and knowledgeable speech for just under 15 minutes without referring to any notes whatsoever. I call the Minister.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) on securing this important debate on the effect of High Speed 2 on the villages of Hollins Green, Culcheth and Croft. She gave us a lovely picture of her constituency.

I sympathise with the concerns the hon. Lady has raised with me, my Department and previous Ministers, and with HS2 Ltd itself. I shall provide an overview of why the project is important and then move on to the questions she asked. If I fail to respond to them all, I hope she will allow me to correspond with her in writing to ensure that everything is down on paper. I do not doubt for a moment that she will continue to champion action on behalf of her constituency.

HS2 is a critical project for our country. It will be the backbone of our national rail network. It really will help to rebalance our economy, create opportunities for regeneration and lessen the north-south divide. The strategic case for HS2 is that it will increase capacity on our overcrowded rail network and improve journeys into and between the major towns and cities of the midlands and the north. It will connect eight of our 10 biggest cities, and it will more than double the number of seats from Euston in peak hours, carrying more than 300,000 people every day.

I know the hon. Lady raised concerns on behalf of her constituents, but we are already starting to see the benefits of HS2. More than 7,000 people are working on the line and more than 2,000 businesses are working to deliver the new railway. Opportunities for jobs and apprenticeships are being created across the country; I am pleased to say that more than 250 new apprenticeships have been created so far. The project is critical. It will connect half of our country’s population. Even though the hon. Lady’s constituents may be asking, “What’s in it for me?”, they are among that half of the population that the project will impact by helping to rebalance the economy.

HS2 is an essential component in the delivery of the Government’s and Transport for the North’s plans for Northern Powerhouse Rail. For example, the current designs for NPR use HS2 infrastructure into Manchester and Leeds. If we did not build HS2 phase 2b, we would need to send NPR back to the drawing board. The two projects are complementary and will work in tandem to transform connectivity across the north, bringing towns and cities together. If the hon. Lady does not want to take my word for it, I have a recent article by Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, and Steve Rotheram, the Mayor of the Liverpool city region, in which they talk about the benefits that I hope she will—

[Helen Jones]

rose—

[Ms Ghani]

Let me just go through the quote. I have many more—too many for this debate—but this one is important, because it mentions the benefits in the north. Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram wrote:

“The economic output of Greater Manchester could double to around £132bn by 2050”

because of HS2,

“contributing at least 40,000 new jobs. Liverpool city region forecasts £15bn of economic growth and 24,000 new jobs.”

You will be surprised to learn, Mr Hollobone, that we often read criticism of HS2. It tends to come from the press, which tends to be based down here. Importantly, in their article, those leaders of the north wrote:

“We don’t need London commentators telling northern leaders what we need.”

It is important to reflect what is wanted and needed beyond London and the south-east.

[Helen Jones]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way; she is very kind. However, I think she is making my point about HS2 benefiting big cities rather than towns. Warrington is in neither Greater Manchester nor Merseyside—it is in Cheshire—and it will not have a station on the line. As my constituents have argued, areas that are getting a station might be able to weigh the benefits against the costs, but for areas that are not getting a station and already have an hourly service to London, as we do, the situation is much more difficult.

[Ms Ghani]

The hon. Lady raises some important points. I note that she does not actually criticise HS2 but expresses a desire for a station. Unfortunately, if I provided a station to everyone who wanted one, the project would not be going anywhere very fast anytime soon. There are already 2,000 businesses and 7,000 people involved in the project, and at its peak there will be 30,000 people building this railway, so I do not doubt for a moment that every part of the country will be touched in a positive way, whether it is by the economic opportunities or the jobs that HS2 provides.

Let me turn to the questions the hon. Lady raised. She made a robust argument about the Golborne link. The Government will continue to invest in upgrades to the conventional rail network, including the west coast main line, in addition to their proposals for the development and delivery of HS2. However, only HS2 will be sufficient to meet the long-term growth in demand that is forecast on the existing network. HS2 is the right intervention to address the capacity constraints on the west coast and east coast main lines. The Government have already considered alternative schemes to HS2, including upgrading the existing railway, but no other option can deliver the same scale of benefits as HS2 phase 2b.

The Golborne link is the most effective way to deliver the much-needed capacity on the west coast main line. It has two key purposes: it avoids a constrained section of the west coast main line, improving capacity and reliability on that line, and it delivers faster journey times for destinations north of the connection, such as Wigan, Preston, Lancaster, Cumbria and Scotland. The hon. Lady mentioned costs and benefits. Proposed alternatives to the Golborne link would reduce the benefits of HS2 without necessarily saving money. Early analysis shows that delivering the same benefits, such as the published journey times to the north and Scotland, without the Golborne link may add an extra £0.8 billion to the cost of HS2.

Let me move on to some further points the hon. Lady raised about HS2 and Warrington. HS2’s arrival is becoming integral to local plans in Warrington and the surrounding area. Warrington stands to benefit from HS2 services, which will cut journey times between Warrington and London to just over an hour, supporting enhanced growth in and around the town. HS2 is already driving employment opportunities, with approximately 80 businesses in the north-west now working on the early stages of the project. Decisions about service patterns will be taken in the future, taking into account factors such as demand and local considerations. The HS2 indicative train service specification shows Warrington Bank Quay being served by one HS2 train per hour in phase 1, which it will continue to receive when phase 2b opens.

I turn now to some of the important local points that the hon. Lady raised. I must place on record the fact that she has campaigned on behalf of her constituents by writing to raise arguments with the Department, especially since I have been there, and no doubt with the previous Minister, too. The local issues she has raised are very important to the Government and HS2 Ltd. I was particularly struck by some of the cases she made, and I will raise them directly with HS2 Ltd. I will ensure that I get a detailed response to all the points she raised if I am able to; otherwise, I will invite her to have a conversation with me about anything that is outstanding.

We are mitigating particularly in the following areas. On Wigshaw Lane, we are acutely aware of the issues the proposed road alignment presents and are currently working on alternatives. HS2 Ltd is already engaged with Warrington Borough Council on the closure of Wigshaw Lane. It is also looking to change the alignment of the viaduct in the Hollins Green area to move it further away from Hollinfare cemetery and the local community. The alignment of the viaduct would also be adjusted north and south of that point.

On the construction compounds near Hollins Green, the location and dimensions of some of the compounds shown in the working draft environmental consultation are being considered in the light of local feedback. That includes trying to reduce the size of compounds in the area. Developments to the design will help move compounds further away from residents in Hollins Green. The details in the draft code of construction practice, which formed part of the working draft environmental statement consultation, will help provide residents with reassurance about some areas of concern with construction compounds.

More broadly, we have already consulted on the working draft environmental statement for phase 2b. That consultation, through which we sought views from local stakeholders and residents along the route, closed at the end of last year. My officials and HS2 Ltd are analysing the responses and will continue to listen to the concerns of local people through HS2 Ltd’s engagement teams and meetings with local councils. I will ensure that the hon. Lady has a link into the HS2 Ltd team so she has an individual to direct her concerns to, and ensure that community meetings take place at the appropriate time.

The hon. Lady raised an important point about the viaduct versus the tunnel. That issue has been raised by many local stakeholders. Boring under the canal would require a particularly large land take either side of the canal to support tunnelling to the depth required. That means that much more land would be required in the area by a tunnel than by the proposed viaduct. That would have an impact on land and property in the area. The soil conditions in the area would also make tunnel construction difficult; the area around the tunnel is peat, so the tunnel would have to be very deep and constantly drained.

The hon. Lady made an interesting point about the depot no longer being situated at Golborne. The decision to relocate the depot to just north of Crewe was made in response to consultation feedback—particularly from local stakeholders—about open spaces and public amenities. The route through this area is still the Secretary of State’s preferred route and is not dependent on the depot being located at Golborne; that is a completely separate issue.

The hon. Lady raised an important point about the environment and the mental and physical health of her constituents. HS2 Ltd has a target to ensure that there is no net loss of biodiversity. Substantial funds are in place in the earlier phases to ensure that we are greening as we go along. HS2 launched a green corridor along phase 1 of the route, which includes 3,340 hectares of wildlife habitat, a 33% increase on existing habitat. HS2 is also committed to planting 7 million trees and shrubs along the line.

The hon. Lady mentioned pitches. HS2 Ltd is aware of the reduction in available pitches and is exploring options to re-provide those. I was moved by the points she raised, so I will keep a close eye on that and do my best to ensure that we get a positive outcome. Otherwise, I am more than happy to meet her to ensure that her points are, at the very least, heard and responded to by HS2 Ltd.

As I said earlier, this project is crucial for our country, especially in smashing the north-south divide. I appreciate that that will not provide succour for the hon. Lady’s constituents when she returns home this weekend. The Government are already spending more than £48 billion on our existing rail network, but that is not enough. We need to build extra capacity. HS2 is not just about passengers; it is about freight, taking cars off the road and encouraging people to use the railway instead of taking flights.

I am loth to read out another quote, because the hon. Lady will say, “It’s not close to home for me,” but let me reference Judith Blake, the leader of Leeds City Council, because it is appropriate.

[Helen Jones]

That’s definitely not close.

[Ms Ghani]

It is not about being close; it is about the importance of the project for our whole country and for the north in particular. Judith Blake said HS2 is

“the opportunity to transform the prospects for the north—perhaps a once in 200-year opportunity.”

Politicians are often criticised for not thinking long term, planning for infrastructure on a large enough scale or understanding what our country needs going forward. HS2 addresses that. It is a large project. I understand the hon. Lady’s concerns, but HS2 Ltd is tasked to ensure that it mitigates its impact on the environment and communities.

I welcome the opportunity the debate has provided once again to reflect on how important HS2 is. We must remember that it has cross-party support: when the Bill for phase 2a went through Parliament, only 12 MPs opposed it. It was in all three main political parties’ manifestos. It is right that we continue to focus on delivering it, and it is also right that HS2 Ltd works appropriately, with humility and sympathy, with the communities it will be building the line through.

Question put and agreed to.

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Elizabeth Truss)]

Mr Speaker is right: the only way is Essex. My right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) is a great champion of the fantastic county of Essex, and she will have noticed that the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has already launched a fair funding consultation on local government spending. In the spending review, we will, of course, look at the different funding streams and make sure they are fair for all parts of the country.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

T2. In the north, we face years of disruption on the trans-Pennine line, but there is no money for electrification. In London, the Government bail-out Crossrail to the tune of £1.4 billion, in addition to what they have already spent. When is the Chancellor going to act to tackle these inequalities in transport infrastructure spending, which are damaging the economies of the north of England?

[The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Robert Jenrick)]

The hon. Lady is incorrect. Over the course of this Parliament, infrastructure spending will be highest in the north of England—higher than in London, higher than in the south-east and significantly higher than under the last Labour Government.

Public Sector Pay

Helen Jones Excerpts

Monday 4th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petition 200032 relating to public sector pay.

It is a great pleasure to be here under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson.

When Conservative Members talk about public sector workers, it is common to hear them refer to them as if they were somehow a drain on the economy. They try to make a distinction between public sector workers and taxpayers, as if somehow to be fair to one is unfair to the other. That is nonsense, for two reasons. First, public sector workers, like most of us—or at least those of us who cannot afford obscure offshore tax avoidance schemes—are taxpayers and, secondly, in a modern economy the private sector and the public sector are interdependent. It is not possible to run a 21st-century economy without a healthy, educated workforce. The security that is provided by our armed forces, the police and the fire service is as essential to businesses as to individuals, and the rule of law they maintain, along with the courts and the Prison Service, provides the essential stability that allows businesses to grow and invest.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the speech she has started to make. Does she agree that one of the great betrayals and causes of instability is the constant promise that the pay cap is temporary, when all the time it has continued, and seven years down the line here we are?

[Helen Jones]

My hon. Friend is right, and I will come to that issue later.

None of us could function day to day without, for instance, the people who sweep our streets and empty our bins. I mention them because their hard and unglamorous jobs—as many public sector jobs still are—often get overlooked when we talk about the public sector. We understandably see documentaries about hospitals and schools, but I would like to mention those people who are now officially refuse disposal operatives, but in my neck of the woods are the binnies. They do a grand job.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the way in which she is introducing the debate. As Chair of the Petitions Committee, she always introduces these debates with great force and eloquence. In addition to the points she has made, does she agree that public sector workers are also consumers? It is essential that they are appropriately rewarded, as consumers, for their work so that they too can contribute to stimulating the economy, including the private sector.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Jones]

My hon. Friend is right and, again, I will come to that matter later.

When we are told that only the private sector generates value in the economy, we should ask, “Yes, but who looks after your workers when they are sick? Who do you call if you are burgled or are the victim of fraud? Who do you call if a fire starts in your building? Who educated the workers you employ?” The answer is, of course, “the public sector”. There is something else about the public sector that cannot be measured so easily: it has contributed more to human improvement and happiness than it is possible to say. Without our teachers and our classroom assistants, for instance, so many hopes and aspirations would be stifled. Having a national health service has freed many families from the fear of being ill and not being able to pay the doctor. The improvements that NHS staff have made in preventing and tackling disease have vastly increased everyone’s quality of life.

Something else about the public sector is that its workers are often ready to go the extra mile, precisely because they believe in the notion of public service. We see that in teachers and classroom assistants, who put on extra classes in their own time to help children who are struggling or to help the very brightest achieve their potential. We see it in an NHS support worker, who will bring in a card or a small gift for an old person on their birthday because they know they have no one else. We see it in a police community support officer who will go around to reassure a victim of crime or antisocial behaviour, even when they are off duty. Nor should we forget that we saw it in this House when Westminster was under attack from terrorists. The staff of St Thomas’s Hospital ran—they ran—across that bridge, heedless of their own safety, to help others, and a very brave man, Police Constable Keith Palmer, lost his life defending us. After such incidents, a lot of gratitude is expressed to public sector workers, and rightly so, but gratitude does not pay the rent or the mortgage, or put food on the table. It does not buy a new uniform for the kids, or a day out.

[Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend. Aintree University Hospital is in my constituency. Nurses have had a 14% pay cut in real terms since 2010 and one in four of them is taking on additional employment to make ends meet. What does that say about the state of our economy?

[Helen Jones]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Gratitude for public sector workers is not enough; they also deserve our respect. Respect involves paying them a decent wage for the job they do but, sadly, under this Government their wages have been continually held down.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

Many of the arguments my hon. Friend has made up to now would have been recognised and endorsed by traditional Conservatives. Is it not unfortunate that, having imported the anti-state ideology from the US Republicans, they now see the state and public service as the enemy rather than a key part of the mixed economy?

[Helen Jones]

I could not have put it better myself. The result was that one of the Conservative Government’s first actions was to announce a two-year freeze on public sector pay from 2011-12. They followed that up with an announcement that public sector pay would be capped at 1% for the following four years and, in his 2015 summer Budget, the Chancellor announced a further four years of the cap, saying that he would fund public sector workforces for a pay award of 1%. That did not mean, of course, that everyone would get even 1%: a letter from the right hon. Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands), then a Treasury Minister, made it clear that the money was first to be used—as if—to address recruitment and retention pressures in the system: “there should not be an expectation that every worker will receive a 1% award”. What that meant, of course, was that those people in areas where there were retention pressures received less, and those in areas where there were many people on the minimum wage—46,000 in local government alone—who had rightly to receive a pay rise, received less. Even if a public sector worker got the 1% pay rise, their wages were still declining in real terms. A public sector worker on the median income who had their pay determined by the pay cap would, by 2016, have lost £3,875 in real terms. Real-terms losses of between £2,000 and £3,000 are common throughout the public sector.

A midwife on band 6 will have seen a real-terms decline in her wages of 12.1%. Midwives are leaving the profession at a previously unseen rate. They are leaving the register in serious numbers. A teacher outside London will have lost 10.4% and a band 5 nurse will have lost 11.9%. If the pay cap continues until 2020, there will be a further real-terms decline in wages. A social worker will lose £3,533. A border guard—I thought the Government wanted to secure our borders—will lose £2,520. A firefighter will lose £2,766. The reason for those falls is not hard to find: while wages have been stagnant or hardly rising at all, prices have been rising at a much faster rate.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an incredible speech, and I thank her for giving way. On the point about rising prices and falling wages, I want to tell her about a police officer who contacted me. He said that after 20 years of service, he never thought he would be in a position where he was struggling to look after his family. He ended with a question:

“Do we really want a police force that is stressed out and humiliated by not being able to look after their family?”

The clear and simple answer to that is no, we do not.

[Helen Jones]

Indeed. The situation my hon. Friend mentioned is true of many people in the public sector. Between 2010 and 2016, food prices went up by 8.5%, electricity went up by 27.7% and gas went up by 24%. These are not things that people can do without; they are essential for a decent life. Note that I am not talking about an extravagant life; I am simply talking about a decent life.

[Ian C. Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case. The continuous process since 2010 is taking money out of local economies. All the salaries she is referring to are normally spent on our high streets and in our local businesses. They are being hit hard by the Government’s sustained deflationary approach.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Jones]

My hon. Friend is right. I will come to the effect on local economies in a moment. In the meantime, we should note that the costs of going to work have risen since 2010. Bus and coach fares have gone up by 25%. Many low-paid public sector workers are reliant on public transport because they cannot afford to run a car. The cost of a nursery place for a child under two has gone up by 21% on average. In big cities, it has gone up much more. For a child older than two, the cost has gone up by 19.6%.

In addition, public sector workers have seen other attacks on their wages. In many cases, their pension schemes have been changed. They are now having to pay more pension contributions than before. Those on lower pay have been hit by changes to tax credits and will be hit again by the universal credit system. Even when we take into account increases in the minimum wage and changes to the tax threshold, the changes to tax and benefits that the Government have introduced have hit poor working families even harder than those out of work. So much for having a system that makes work pay.

The real effect that those things have on people can be seen clearly in some of the evidence gathered by the trade unions. A Unison survey in 2015 showed that 73% of respondents had had to borrow from family and friends to get by. Some 17% had pawned items and 23% had had to move to a cheaper property or re-mortgage. Some had even used food banks. When those in the public sector—people we collectively employ—are having to use pawn shops and food banks to get by, it shames us all. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]

Many other staff have real issues, too. In its document on the pay cap, the TUC interviewed a number of people about their experiences. A midwife on £23,000 said she could no longer have a night out or buy gifts for family and friends. An ambulance control worker who works part time—colleagues may have been in an ambulance control room; I can imagine few more stressful jobs—found that his family was £200 a month worse off because of changes to tax credits. A dental nurse had seen her national insurance contributions go up by £28 and her pension go up by £10. That does not seem a lot, but it is a hell of a lot of money for someone on a low wage to lose each month. It is the difference between getting by and not getting by.

[Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a hugely important and informative speech, as she always does in her role as Chair of the Petitions Committee. On the trade unions point, the Royal College of Nursing has run a campaign in Wales asking the British Government, not the Welsh Government, to fund the public sector pay rise, because the Welsh Government have sustained £1.6 billion of cuts by the British Government to the block grant since 2010. Does she agree that it is not for the devolved Administrations to fund the pay rises? It is for the British Government to step up and increase the funding for our public sector workers to ensure they get the pay rise they deserve.

[Helen Jones]

My hon. Friend is right. This Government have been very good at trying to place the blame elsewhere for a policy they introduced. In fact, so bad have things got that last year the chief executive of NHS Providers told the Health Service Journal that one trust had tracked where its low-paid workers were going when they left. They were leaving to work in supermarkets because the pay was better.

Of course, it is not just pay that has caused problems for public sector workers. While their pay is being held down, they are being asked to do more with fewer resources, and they worry about that because they are committed to their jobs. The TUC report includes interviews with various people. One midwife said:

“The pressures on wards, the size of our caseloads and the level of pressure means we worry about making mistakes.”

Another said:

“I’ve seen people walk away from the profession because they can’t take it anymore. It all affects the continuity of care for the women in our care”.

A firefighter told the TUC:

“My station used to have fifteen firefighters and two vehicles on each day. Now there are only six firefighters and one frontline vehicle.”

That combination of pay restraint leading to real-terms cuts and increased pressure on public sector workers means that in many areas we are now having serious difficulty recruiting and retaining staff.

The school workforce census in 2015 showed that one in 10 teachers had left the profession in the previous year. We now know that one quarter of newly qualified teachers leave within three years. That is the highest since records began, and that is not surprising, because they are under enormous pressure. The Government have tried to deprofessionalise the job. They have taken away the checks and balances that used to ensure that heads did not behave unreasonably. Not all bosses are saints, even in the public sector. Cuts to schools are changing the balance of the workforce. We used to have that balance between young teachers coming in with new ideas and older, more experienced staff who could support them, but that is subtly shifting because schools cannot afford to employ the more experienced staff.

I know of one woman, fluent in two languages, who could not find employment when she wanted to come back into teaching after looking after her children. She can only find a job as a teaching assistant. That is a scandalous waste of her experience and qualifications. The Government got rid of lots of prison officers, and now our jails are at risk of serious violence, yet they are having difficulty recruiting more staff because the pay is poor. The NHS has shortages in various areas—accident and emergency, anaesthetics and psychiatry, for example—and the Government’s response when trusts bring in locums or agency staff is to blame the trusts for spending too much money. In fact, the cure is in the Government’s own hands: recruit staff, train them well and pay them properly. That means not only abandoning policies such as refusing to give trainee nurses a bursary, but stopping treating staff as the enemy, as the Health Secretary did in the case of the junior doctors, and it now seems that he plans to do that again to other staff.

In the Budget the Chancellor announced the Government would fund a pay rise for nurses. It applies to all the “Agenda for Change” staff, although we are used to the Government forgetting that cleaners, porters, lab technicians, support workers and a whole load of other staff work in hospitals, and without them our doctors and nurses could not do their jobs. However, the Health Secretary immediately announced that he wanted to change the conditions of work for staff, particularly their unsocial hours payments, so the Government are giving with one hand and taking away with another.

A very wise old headteacher once said to me—in the days when headteachers stayed around a long time, rather than getting burnt out and leaving—“People say the most important thing in school is that the children are happy, but I think the most important thing is that the staff are happy, because if the staff are happy the children will be happy and well taught.” That needs to be applied in other areas as well. Public sector pay has dropped 15% from its peak, and has lagged behind growth in the economy as a whole since 2016. It is now at its lowest level relative to the private sector since the 1990s, when, funnily enough, there was also a Conservative Government in power. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian C. Lucas) has said, that has had a huge effect on regional economies.

If we take average public sector pay and look at the number of full-time equivalent workers in a region, we can estimate the loss. The north-west has lost £3.7 billion from its economy; the midlands £3 billion; and London a whopping £9.1 billion. That is all money that would have been spent in local businesses, protecting local jobs. Most of the people we are talking about are low paid and the extra money they get is spent on essentials, but the Government choose to ignore that. They have several excuses, or explanations, depending on one’s point of view. First, they try to say that public sector workers have better terms and conditions than the private sector. Well, they no longer have better pensions—although most of them never did—as their pensions have been changed. Estimates of private sector pay are always depressed by the fact that some areas of the private sector have very low pay indeed. The Government know that, because their statistics authority told them so in 2016 and showed that on a like for like comparison public sector workers are on average paid 5.5% less than in the private sector, not more.

The second attempted explanation usually implies that public sector workers have cushy jobs and have it easy. Tell that to a police officer in the inner city, a nurse in A&E, someone who cleans in a hospital, or the bin men working out in the rain and snow this winter. Cushy? Most Conservative Members here would not last a week. In fact, I do not think many of us would last a week. The jobs are hard.

The third explanation says that all this is dreadfully, terribly regrettable, but necessary to get down the debt. We need to say that that is simply and absolutely wrong because during the time of the public sector pay cap, debt has increased, not diminished. It has increased by £496 billion. So if the answer to debt is a public sector pay cap, someone is asking the wrong question. The Government fail to take into account the tax that the public sector generates. It has been estimated that for every 1% increase in public sector pay, at least £710 million worth of tax receipts are generated, possibly as high as £800 million, cutting the amount that is spent on tax credits and benefits. That reduces the total cost of a 1% increase to around £600 million. Opposition Members will say, “That is a lot of money”, which it is, but it is a drop in the ocean compared with what the Government have spent on reductions in corporation tax.

The total of the reductions in the main rate of corporation tax, the small profits rate and the combined rate costs the country £16.5 billion a year on current prices. So there we have it: tax cuts for big companies and pay restraint for public sector workers. Nothing could tell us more about the Government’s priorities. They also ignore the fact that public sector pay increases generate more jobs in the wider economy and at least £470 million in the wider economy, probably nearer £800 million, and that supports at least 10,000 full-time equivalent jobs in hospitality, transport and retail. The truth is that the policy is based on a failed economic model.

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is typically making a powerful and eloquent case, which I agree with. Does she agree that another excuse the Government frequently use is that it is not down to them, but down to pay review bodies? The difficulty with pay review bodies, which are generally a good thing, is that they are not required to close the gap that already exists, but to consider relativities as they stand at the moment. Is it not time we had a proper review that looked at all the issues my hon. Friend has mentioned and that accepted that public sector workers are important to our economy, our safety and our everyday existence?

[Helen Jones]

My right hon. Friend is right. The cap has depressed the wider economy. It is now starting to depress wages in the private sector, and it is seriously depressing public sector workers. It has failed all round. The Government need to accept that they have failed and should stop trying to put the blame elsewhere. They announced, for instance, that the police can have a rise, but they will not fund police authorities to pay for it. Council workers can have a rise, but they are cutting the money available to local authorities. Health service workers can have a rise, but they will take it back from somewhere else. The Government must stop making excuses and recognise that the policy has failed.

Two things need to happen: first, all of our public sector workers should at least get a proper living wage: not the spurious national minimum wage, but a real living wage. We cannot run public services on the backs of poorly paid workers any longer. Secondly, the Government need to let proper negotiations begin in the various pay review bodies. My right hon. Friend is right: at the very least they should look at the discrepancies that have been created and how far public sector workers have fallen behind. Then they need to fund those pay rises. That would be good for public sector workers, the wider economy and our regions, and in the end it would be good for our country. It is time to abandon the policy and give people a decent wage.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak in the debate. I had not intended to speak, but having listened to all the contributions from my colleagues, I felt it was worth making some remarks and perhaps focusing on some of the services in my constituency that have been most affected by public sector pay restraint. It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones), who opened the debate with facts and figures and opposed the ideological drive behind so much of what the Government have done in their seven years in office—not least holding down public sector pay.

I declare an interest as a proud member of Unite the union, and I am grateful for its support before the recent general election. I am especially privileged to speak in the debate as someone whose mother has served our national health service on the frontline for more than 40 years. That is something I am incredibly proud of. It is an honour to meet people who my family and relatives, who work in our public services, have spent their lives helping and supporting. That is some of the most valuable work done across our society.

I do not have great facts and figures, but I will mention a few services in my constituency. Merseyside police has lost 1,000 police officers and £100 million from its budget. The effects of that can be read in the pages of the Liverpool Echo¸ which show rising crime, criminals developing in confidence and ordinary people feeling insecure in their homes and on the streets. The Prime Minister had the audacity to claim that police budgets have been untouched and that police pay has increased, which led the Police Federation to say she has

“lost touch with reality”.

I could not agree more. The Police Federation puts the pay cut at 16% for our police officers. There have been cases in my constituency and across Merseyside of some of the worst violent attacks on our frontline police officers. To think that we cannot even afford these people a decent standard of living in 2017 is absolutely outrageous.

I recently visited Walton Prison, which is in my constituency. Under this Government, 7,000 prison officers have been cut—one in four—and the ensuing crisis in our prisons has led the Government to look to recruit 2,500 new prison officers across our prison network. This year, prison officers have been awarded a 1.7% pay rise. That is still a cut of £980 in real terms; they have faced such cuts every year since 2010. The evening before I visited Walton Prison, three new recruits had been violently attacked. One reason we cannot maintain safe standards and retain new staff in our prisons is because prison officers’ pay has been depleted and the worth and value of the job is not recognised by the Government. It is time for change.

[Helen Jones]

I know from staff at Risley Prison in my constituency that prison staff are now unable to take time off when necessary and that whole wings are locked up for half a day, meaning that prisoners cannot access education or work. Does my hon. Friend agree that, as well as that being unfair to the staff, it does not help us to reform prisoners—it makes it more likely that they will reoffend?

[Dan Carden]

Having seen that at first hand, I could not agree more. It is worth noting that the Prison Officers Association is lobbying Parliament tomorrow; I hope many colleagues can get along to that.

I must touch on Aintree Hospital, which is also in my constituency. Nurses there have faced a 14% pay cut since 2010, and one in four are taking jobs outside their employment as nurses to make ends meet and to pay the bills. The effect of the pay cap on our hospitals is to cost us more, as hospitals are having to recruit nurses through agencies at a much higher rate than if they were recruited through the hospital itself. The economics of this fall apart as soon as we put them under any scrutiny.

Some 70% of the public—or more, I believe—support the calling of the debate, and the reasons for that are clear. We have seen the worst squeeze in living standards for generations, the worst wage growth since the steam engine was created and the worst decade for productivity since the Napoleonic war. The damning statistics on wages and productivity point us towards the truth: we cannot cut our way to productivity and we cannot reduce workers’ rights and pay to increase productivity. We need to respect workers, give them decent standards of living and actually create decent places of work. We can do that, first and foremost, in our public sector.

Since the 1970s, the percentage of GDP taken as profits and not paid as wages has risen through the roof; the paradise papers showed examples of profits being extracted from our economy and the money vanishing. When we talk about what money we have to share around for our constituents—in their pay and in benefits—we are talking about a smaller and smaller amount every year.

I remind the House of where the Government started back in 2010. This is not a new problem, and the Government were warned about where we would get to. It was this Government who talked about strivers versus skivers. It was this Government who sought to pit public sector workers against private sector workers, telling them that they were against each other in the race for decent wages and decent living standards. It was this Government who sought to pit unionised workers against non-unionised workers.

We are getting towards the end of the race to the bottom that the Government have started us on.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Jones]

I will come on to the process ahead. Despite the difficult economic circumstances from 2010, the Government have continued to invest in our public servants. We are helping them, alongside all others, to keep more of their money by increasing the personal allowance. That is a significant change. In 2010, the personal allowance stood at £6,475, but in the Budget only a few days ago, the Chancellor announced that in April 2018, the allowance will rise to £11,850. That means that public sector workers on a basic rate of tax will be £1,075 a year better off compared with 2010.

[Helen Jones]

Does the Minister accept, first, that most of the money spent on raising the tax threshold actually benefits the better-off? Secondly, does he accept that the combined effects of the Government’s tax and benefit changes, even when raising the tax threshold is taken into account, has been to hit low-paid families in work hardest?

[Andrew Jones]

I do not accept that. I have looked at the distribution analysis and what the hon. Lady said is simply not the case.

We have not just helped through the personal allowance. We have invested a further £100 million to recruit 2,500 extra police officers, and in July, my right hon. Friend the Education Secretary announced an additional £1.3 billion for schools to support the transition to the national funding formula. Let us go back to the NHS; in the Budget, the Government announced an additional £6.3 billion of new funding for the NHS. As I mentioned, we reconfirmed in the Budget the ending of the 1% public sector pay policy. That means that the Government are no longer pursuing a one-size-fits-all policy on pay for public servants.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Jones]

It has been a great pleasure to listen to this debate. I thank all hon. Members on this side who have spoken. I feel sorry for the Minister, who is normally a reasonable soul, because he has been sent here to defend the indefensible. As hon. Members on the Government side have slipped away, I thought at one point that he would be left solely with his Parliamentary Private Secretary, chuntering from a sedentary position behind him. The hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp) ought to learn that PPS’s are supposed to be, like Victorian children, seen and not heard.

We have heard from the Minister, once again, the same warm words for our public sector workers: hard-working, talented and committed. What we did not hear from him, significantly, was an agreement to fund a decent pay rise for them. Once again, the Government are deflecting blame. They say, “Yes, you can have a pay rise. Go away and negotiate it; we’re just not giving you the money for it.” That is the problem; that is what they have done all along. I say again that our public sector workers deserve better than that. They deserve far more than warm words. No one is asking for them to be paid an extravagant salary, merely a salary that enables them to live decently. That should not be too much to ask in 21st-century Britain, but it appears that it is too much to ask from this Government.

It is significant that no Conservative Members made a speech during this debate. They too must know that the policy is indefensible. They have public sector workers in their constituencies; they must have seen what is happening to them. They should not be complicit in this policy. They need to tell their Government and their Whips Office that this situation cannot continue. We on this side are clear that public sector workers ought to be able to negotiate a decent pay rise and have it funded; it is time for those on the Government side to realise that as well. Otherwise, their warm words about people in the public sector will be seen as so much hot air.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered e-petition 200032 relating to public sector pay.

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jane Ellison]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right to draw the House’s attention to the importance of prioritising vulnerable claimants. HMRC held a further drop-in for colleagues recently, on 19 October; it was attended by 15 Members, and a number of complaints and issues were raised, which we are on the way to resolving.

On restarting claims, the key is to get the right information. HMRC has taken back a vast number of cases, and I will say more about this tomorrow. The priority is to get the right information, to get claims started again as soon as the facts are established.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

When the Minister wrote to me after I asked a previous question, she said:

“Amounts to be paid to the supplier are reduced if actual performance fails to meet standards set in the contract.”

Does that include penalties for withdrawing tax credits when they should not have been withdrawn?

[Jane Ellison]

The terms of the contract between HMRC and Concentrix are obviously in the public domain, and it is right that when performance is not as per the contract there are associated deductions, but I will be in a position to give the House more information about the contract in tomorrow’s Opposition day debate.

Tax Credits: Concentrix

Helen Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 14th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jane Ellison]

I hope I can give that reassurance for the future. To date, it has always been the case that, when the Government contract a supplier to provide a service, it should be provided to the right standard, and that contracts are monitored and we ensure that service levels are acceptable to Members and their constituents.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

Despite what the Minister has said, I have constituents who have had their tax credits cut off with no prior notification, and who have spent up to 70 minutes on the phone trying to get through, which is a huge drain on their resources. Will she tell us whether the contract included penalties for Concentrix if it did not provide an acceptable service level or answer calls within a set time? If not, who will take the responsibility for negotiating such a flawed contract?

[Jane Ellison]

Waiting 70 minutes to have a call answered is clearly not acceptable. I can imagine the distress that would cause somebody trying to get through. If you will forgive me, Mr Speaker, and if the hon. Lady will let me, I will write to her about the points she made about the contract—I do not have that detail to hand, and I need to assess what we can say given commercial confidentiality. If I can give her the answers she seeks, I will do so, but I will write to her if that is acceptable.

HMRC and Google (Settlement)

Helen Jones Excerpts

Monday 25th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

Does the Minister not accept that this deal with Google, which most of us believe to involve a corporation tax rate of less than 3%, simply encourages tax avoidance by companies? If the issue was the amount of economic activity and assets held by Google in the UK, why are the Government not prepared to test that in the courts if necessary, and call its bluff?

[Mr Gauke]

HMRC has been conducting an inquiry in this specific case for a number of years, and has reached the conclusion that it is satisfied with the position that Google has reached. As for the additional payment, it is based on the facts that HMRC has seen, and on the detailed inquiry and exhaustive work that it has undertaken over many years, not numbers drawn up on the back of an envelope.

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 16th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) is a huge champion of Plymouth and the south-west. We will have time to address the south-west in questions.

The Heysham link road is a major achievement for my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (David Morris). People have campaigned for it for 70 years. I happened to visit about a week before the general election with the Prime Minister. Because of my hon. Friend’s fight for infrastructure and jobs in his seat, he is back in the House doing his job.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

22. Despite the Chancellor’s talk of a northern powerhouse, will he admit that output per hour in the north-west is still lower than the average for England, and lower than it was in 2007? Is it not true that his plan to improve the economy of the north-west has drastically failed that region?

[Mr Osborne]

The north-west has seen a huge increase in employment—it has had the fastest rate of employment growth in the entire United Kingdom. I would have thought the hon. Lady would welcome that.

The northern powerhouse initiative was instigated by me and the Labour and Conservative council leaders of Greater Manchester. It has been done on a cross-party basis. I would like to think that, at the beginning of this Parliament, we can work across the party divide, including in this Chamber, to bring about that major rebalancing of the British economy, which has eluded Governments for many generations.

Future Government Spending

Helen Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 4th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Chris Leslie]

The reason Conservative Members are getting so irritated is that they do not like being reminded that it was a global banking crisis. They like to airbrush that entirely from the record. That has been their strategy throughout, but we will not let them forget that there was a banking crisis across the globe. We needed to take greater action to regulate it, but I did not hear Conservative Members calling for stronger regulation of financial services; the truth was quite the opposite.

If we had a rational debate, we would see the connection between living standards, growth and the health of the public finances.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

rose—

[Chris Leslie]

I will give way in a moment.

I am afraid that Conservative Members are not driven by rationality when it comes to a strategy for dealing with the public finances. They are driven by dogma. [Interruption.] Oh, yes. They are on an ideological crusade to shrink public services as a percentage of national income. Their plan, when they stand up to talk about these things, is not about eliminating the deficit at all; it is beyond that. The guiding principle of the Conservative party is a desire for public services actively to decline year after year after year.

That is why so many Conservative Members have joined that fabled Conservative group, the Free Enterprise Group of Conservative MPs. The hon. Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) is not in the Chamber, but he has famously called for massive reductions in public spending. The Economic Secretary, who will wind up the debate, is also a member of the Free Enterprise Group, as is her colleague the Exchequer Secretary and the hon. Members for Macclesfield (David Rutley), for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier), for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) and for Dover (Charlie Elphicke). I am sure there are others, although perhaps of a lower ranking order within the Free Enterprise Group structure. [Interruption.] Well, I am not a member of the Free Enterprise Group of Conservative MPs and, with members like that, I am quite glad I am not.

That organisation reveals the true face of the Conservative agenda. It believes very much in shrinking the state and it is driven by that fundamental belief. It is highly dogmatic and has used the financial crisis as a pretext for reducing the level of public investment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Leslie]

We need to tackle the blatant unfairness of the rigged funding formula for local government finance, which the Labour party has committed to do in government.

[Helen Jones]

Will my hon. Friend remind Government Members that when the Government introduced their Local Government Finance Act 2012, they deliberately set up a system that penalised the poorest councils more than the richest councils, they took no notice of the amount of council tax that could be raised from different boroughs, and in doing so they destroyed the social services system, which is now leading to people remaining in hospital when they should be out—a prime example of a stupid cut which costs more in the end? [Interruption.]

[Chris Leslie]

Government Members are trying to shout down my hon. Friend because they do not like to hear the truth. The truth is that many of our public services are affected by the support and the funding formula given to local government. She is right to highlight the impact—

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 9th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

My hon. Friend is quite right. He will be as delighted as we are that we are now allowing people to pass on their unused ISAs to their spouse or civil partner free of tax, and their defined contribution pension schemes are also to be free of tax to their successors. This was a great move, allowing people to decide what they do with the money they have saved during their lifetimes.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

Most pensioners in my constituency do not have enough savings to put money in an ISA, but can the Minister confirm that owing to recent measures announced by the Government, those who receive the savings element of pension credit will, because of its interaction with pensions, receive only an 87p rise?

[Andrea Leadsom]

The hon. Lady should welcome the fact that this Government introduced the triple lock for pensioners to ensure that, instead of under the last Government when they received only the increase in average earnings, pensioners under this Government will receive an element for inflation, average earnings or 2%, whichever is the higher.

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 4th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

My hon. Friend is right to point out that irony. Under this Government, we have just seen the biggest drop in unemployment ever. In particular, long-term unemployment and youth unemployment are dropping fast, giving hope, prospects and a decent wage to so many in our country. We should be celebrating these things and definitely not letting Labour put them in jeopardy.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

Twenty per cent. of my constituents earn less than the living wage. People are working at two or three jobs and still cannot make ends meet. When is the Minister going to recognise that her so-called vaunted increase in employment is based on people earning poverty wages?

[Andrea Leadsom]

I completely refute what the hon. Lady says. A lot of the particularly big increases in employment have been among very young and older workers, who tend to earn less, but is not that great news for the longer-term prospects of those young people, who are off the unemployment register and developing skills for the future?