Government Policies (Wales)
Debate between Huw Irranca-Davies and Owen Smith(9 years, 12 months ago)
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Owen Smith
My right hon. Friend is entirely right. Of course, it is not only the changes to welfare that are having an impact on people in Wales. A culture of fear and insecurity is increasingly becoming the norm in the workplace, with between 50,000 and 70,000 Welsh workers now employed on zero-hours contracts. Some 200,000 Welsh workers are self-employed. I note that the Secretary of State has said in the press today that those people are effectively entrepreneurs, but the reality is that they are people who are increasingly being forced into bogus self-employed status and counted as entrepreneurs by the Office for National Statistics.
Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)
My hon. Friend will know that there has been a rally today of UCATT, Unite and other unions—and I will take no jeering at union members by coalition Members on this issue—on behalf of construction workers. They are now working for bogus, so-called umbrella companies who sanction—take out of—their pay the employer’s national insurance contributions to annual pay, so they go home with a far smaller wage at the end of the week. That is despicable, but I remind coalition Members that it is a function of the sort of economy and the hands-off Government that we have.
Owen Smith
Yes, it is an economy of maximum insecurity for the work force and maximum security and flexibility for employers. Invariably these days the employers are umbrella companies, supply agencies or contract companies, and often people do not even know who is employing them. We do know that the number of self-employed workers in Wales has gone up by 17,000 since the Government came to power, but their incomes have crashed by more than a fifth. Similarly, in Wales there are now 71,000 part-time workers who wish they were working full time. That is up from 54,000—an increase of almost one third under this Government. Those are the hallmarks of the culture of insecurity—the culture of fear—in the workplace that is now affecting Wales and the rest of the country.
Wales Bill
Debate between Huw Irranca-Davies and Owen Smith(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Owen Smith
Absolutely. On previous occasions in the House I have outlined the difference between Wales and Scotland, in terms of the populous nature of our border, as well as the far greater problems that we will experience in Wales. I will touch on that later.
Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)
I agree with my hon. Friend on the Front Bench. There is an ideological difference between the idea that tax competition will inspire a race to prosperity and to the top, from which everyone benefits, and the opposite, in which nations and regions compete with each other in a race to the bottom. We do not want that for our constituents.
Owen Smith
I entirely agree. I have been at pains throughout our deliberations to make it clear that, in this Bill, we are being accommodating with regard to borrowing that we understand, but there are real concerns—they are not frivolous—about the benefit for our constituents of Wales having powers that could be misused, particularly by the Conservative party, to cut taxes in Wales in order to engender tax competition across the UK. We think that would bring little benefit but many risks.
Wales Bill
Debate between Huw Irranca-Davies and Owen Smith(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Owen Smith
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr McCrea. I had not spotted that you had arrived, for which I apologise.
The simple answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question is that this is, of course, the custom, practice and protocol in British elections for all institutions. I hear what he says about the interesting debate about whether, in an era of great cynicism towards and disinterest in and disengagement from politics, we ought to expand people’s opportunities to vote. Labour Members are looking seriously at that and have already suggested that it ought to be looked at, but for the purposes of this Bill and the principle under discussion, as opposed to the issue raised by the hon. Gentleman, it seemed simpler to stick to the customary practice of a Thursday. That is why we did not suggest a change.
Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)
Perhaps the hon. Member for Cardiff North (Jonathan Evans) will have an opportunity to table a probing amendment on that issue. Why does the Bill refer to five years? I understand that that is how this Parliament currently operates, but is there now an accepted body of wisdom that says that five years should be the default position of any democratic Assembly or Parliament?
Owen Smith
The reality is that the accepted, orthodox wisdom of electoral experts around the world, certainly in Britain, is that five years is probably too long and that four years would be more appropriate. Certainly in the history of this place, four years has been not the norm, but the exception. Ordinarily, over the long term, elections to this place have taken place rather more frequently than that. Our primary concern—this reflects the view of all parties in the National Assembly for Wales, particularly the Welsh Labour Government—was to ensure that the elections for this House and those for the National Assembly did not coincide on the same day, which would have been the case without the changes introduced by this Bill. Nevertheless, it struck us as important to probe the Government’s view of the degree of consent they ought to seek from the National Assembly and the respect they ought to show to devolution when making changes to an election that is not ours. I think that the view of most people—it is certainly the view of most experts—is that five years is too long.
Owen Smith
It is pretty straightforward. As I have said, there was an instance in Clwyd West of the abuse of natural justice and of what most people understand as democracy by a system that allowed people to enter the Assembly via the back door. That is supported by the evidence, and I want to enumerate some of the pieces of evidence, because they are extremely important.
Capital Gains Tax (Rates)
Debate between Huw Irranca-Davies and Owen Smith(14 years, 5 months ago)
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