Royal Mail

Debate between Huw Irranca-Davies and Vince Cable

Tuesday 1st April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

Yes, and I think that 140,000 employees now have shares valued at about £4,000 each. More important than the face value of the shares is the fact that employees have a direct and personal stake in the success of the company. That is why we did it.

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

Royal Mail has something like 2,000 properties in high-value areas of real estate round the country. It was valued at approximately £1 billion, when one of those sites in London is itself equal to £1 billion in real value. How come it was sold off so cheaply to the detriment of taxpayers and my constituents?

[Vince Cable]

I do not think the hon. Gentleman was listening to one of my earlier replies in which I made it clear that an independent valuation of those sites confirmed the authenticity of what was proposed. It was in the prospectus, and nobody has subsequently challenged that.

Job Insecurity

Debate between Huw Irranca-Davies and Vince Cable

Wednesday 5th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

Give me some time and I will happily take interventions. I am always generous with interventions and I will wait until a suitable point and give way to the hon. Gentleman.

The danger the hon. Member for Streatham faces is that of creating a cliché such as “triple-dip recession” or “no more boom and bust” that then proves to be positively cringeworthy when the situation changes. Labour’s slogan is now the “cost of living crisis”, and at first sight that is a plausible line of attack because, as I have always acknowledged, real wages fell in the wake of the financial crisis, the country is poorer and the consequences have been painful. The hon. Gentleman buttressed his argument by quoting from the Institute for Fiscal Studies that this painful process is likely to go on until the end of next year. That was what it said until quite recently, but I do not know whether he has seen its report today, which states that the cost of living crisis is to turn around this year. Inflation is now falling so rapidly and the economy recovering so quickly that it expects that turnaround to happen by the middle of the year. I fear that the “cost of living crisis” may be another to go in to the museum of clichés.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

Has the Secretary of State done an analysis of when the cost of living crisis might turn around in different regions of the UK, such as south Wales? What is his best guess on that?

[Vince Cable]

I will get on to regional variation. I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman raises the issue of Wales, because I was studying the regional employment changes and Wales has done relatively well against almost every other region of the UK. Despite the terrible history of unemployment in Wales, its unemployment level is now at the UK average. Its increase in employment levels is greater than in any other part of the UK, including London and the south-east. There is a good story in Wales as well as many very deep problems, which I of course acknowledge.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Huw Irranca-Davies and Vince Cable

Thursday 15th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

My hon. Friend touches on the core argument. We are talking about a very productive plant, which reflects well on the management, and also on the labour force, who have been consistently co-operative. Currently the plant does not operate at full capacity; the issue for the company is how to use that production in a way that minimises excess capacity. We are confident that the UK has a strong case in ensuring that existing production—but also new models, as he said—is secured in Ellesmere Port.

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

The Business Secretary has just described himself as being under attack from left and right on his proposals to weaken employment protection laws. Where on that spectrum would he put Fiona Dawson, the managing director of Mars UK, who has said:

“I would like to see something that makes it easier for the workforce but it’s got to be fair. So I would not support employees’ rights being removed. I think we’ve got to make sure that it is fair, not just for businesses but for employees as well”?

How does he respond to that?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Huw Irranca-Davies and Vince Cable

Thursday 2nd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

The chief executive was on a contract, which I think was negotiated when Labour was in government. It had five separate metrics, of which that was one. It is certainly true that, according to the provisional data, RBS has not quite met its gross lending targets, but the Merlin agreement has not yet run its course, and we shall await its findings with interest.

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

3. What assessment he has made of the prospects for growth in 2012.

[The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Vince Cable)]

The Office for Budget Responsibility produces independent forecasts for the economy and for the public finances. The OBR’s November 2011 economic and fiscal outlook predicts that the UK economy will grow by 0.7% this year and by 2.1% in 2013.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

I thank the Secretary of State for that answer, but consumer confidence is plummeting, the retail sector is struggling, the growth in jobs in the private sector is not matching the losses in the public sector, and in my constituency scores of people are chasing every single job. So if not Labour’s five-point plan for jobs and growth, what? This Government are not working.

[Vince Cable]

If the hon. Gentleman actually read the analysis produced by the Bank of England and, more recently, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, he would understand why the economy is growing slowly. The combination of higher commodity and oil prices last year and, more recently, the crisis in the eurozone is affecting all developed countries, many of them much more than the UK.

Postal Services Bill

Debate between Huw Irranca-Davies and Vince Cable

Wednesday 27th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

I shall come to the argument for not restricting private investment access in a moment. The simple point is that without private investment we will not get the capital investment that the Royal Mail needs to modernise. That is a simple argument, but I will develop it at length.

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Vince Cable]

I shall take the hon. Lady through the arguments step by step, but the situation has deteriorated badly. I think that she lost seven post offices in her constituency, so she will know that the situation is not satisfactory and that the status quo cannot be maintained.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

rose—

[Vince Cable]

I shall take further interventions later but I want to proceed with the next step of the argument.

Let me dwell a little on Royal Mail’s financial problems. When I came into government I was left in no doubt as to the real difficulties. I asked Richard Hooper to update his report from December 2008 because I wanted to ensure that the conclusions were still valid—and they are. Let no one in the House be under any illusion regarding Royal Mail’s predicament. I recognise that there has been some progress. Opposition Members who represent areas with sorting offices will know that unions and management are now working together better—we acknowledge that—but that the pension deficit has ballooned. It is now more than £8 billion and Royal Mail has, proportionately, the largest pension deficit of any major company in the United Kingdom. In addition, it loses almost £1 million a day on its trading activity. It is an inefficient business in a market that is declining faster than anyone predicted. Hooper now forecasts that letter volumes could fall by as much as 40% in the next five years if nothing is done. That is why we are moving further and faster.

--- Later in debate ---

[Vince Cable]

I assure my hon. Friend that will be the case. My colleague the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr Davey), who has responsibility for postal services, will spell out later today and in Committee exactly how the process will operate. My hon. Friend is right: at present the deregulation provisions do not give the Royal Mail sufficient protection against unfair competition. We want to make sure that there is more protection in the deregulation process.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Vince Cable]

I shall take one more intervention before I move on.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way; I do not know why he was so reluctant to take my question earlier.

I do not have an ideological argument with the Secretary of State. My point is about the argument that he has failed to address. Why is full privatisation needed, rather than the proposal that we put on the table? He has not addressed that point. It is not Red Huw from Ogmore making this argument, but the large majority of Liberals. Conservative voters are saying the same thing: why full privatisation?

[Vince Cable]

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that this is not an ideological question. I shall come to the share sale issue shortly, but I have no ideological stance on it. I see a role for public ownership in certain circumstances: I think I was ahead of most Opposition Members in pursuing public ownership of the banks during the crisis. There is a role for public ownership in certain circumstances, but this happens to be a case when it serves no useful purpose, and we are quite prepared to adopt a pragmatic approach to get the best provision for Royal Mail and the universal service, and the best value for the taxpayer. We have no ideological hang-ups, and I am glad that the hon. Gentleman does not either.

--- Later in debate ---

[Vince Cable]

I have taken a substantial number of interventions and I want to proceed.

I know that these proposals mean setting out on a new course, and that before any changes can be made the network will have to be put on a secure financial footing. Subject to consultation, it is the right outcome for the network. I hope the Post Office can make the transition before the end of this Parliament.

Let me further reassure the House about how we shall put the Post Office on a more secure financial footing.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

rose—

[Vince Cable]

I will take interventions at the end of the next section of my speech. I have already given the hon. Gentleman answers to some of his questions.

Communities up and down the country have rightly been concerned about the shrinkage of the network over previous years, and despite the efforts of Opposition Members—notably the shadow Chancellor—there has been remorseless decline over the last three decades. The previous Government’s closure programmes shut 5,000 post offices. I commend Members on both sides of the House who fought against those closures. Those days are over. I echo the words of the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) from some years ago:

“We had a choice. One was to continue to watch decline turn to crisis and crisis turn to collapse, leaving it as someone else’s problem down the road.”—[Official Report, 15 February 2000; Vol. 344, c. 870.]

This Government do not believe in passing on the problem, so we shall fund the post office network, and when I say “fund” I do not mean setting aside millions to buy off sub-postmasters when we close their business.

The option of keeping the network on a care and maintenance basis and letting it decline is one we have rejected. I can today announce £1.34 billion of new funding for the Post Office over the spending review period. The funding will be used to reform the current network, to change the underlying economics, and so reverse the years of decline and secure its long-term future. I am grateful in particular to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury for his understanding, even in a tough spending round. I repeat, there will be no programme of closures under this Government and the Post Office will be able to invest, improve its offer and win new revenue streams.

--- Later in debate ---

[Vince Cable]

Yes, indeed. That is the outcome. For the past decade I and many on the Opposition Benches have been involved in fighting for our local post offices. In many cases, constituencies have seen the loss of a dozen post offices. That will come to an end.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

On that very point, I am grateful for the clarity of the right hon. Gentleman’s response, although the figure seems less than the support that the Labour Government put into the post office network. An individual in my constituency has just successfully kept a branch open with the investment of tens of thousands of pounds of his own money, as well as funds from the Welsh Assembly Government and some Post Office Ltd money. Will he be an independent trader under the umbrella of Post Office Ltd, or some sort of commercial, co-operative, mutual whatever? He has just put a lot of money in, and the Secretary of State does not seem to be clear.

[Vince Cable]

I am surprised to hear Opposition Members speaking against mutualisation and co-operation. I thought that was at the heart of the Labour movement’s values. We will consult on how, in practical terms, the post office network becomes a mutual structure. I made that clear. By shifting us into the structural arguments again, the hon. Gentleman is taking away from the considerable importance of the announcement that has just been made, which is that the process of remorseless and endless closures—I think he has had seven in Ogmore—is going to come to an end.

Capital Gains Tax (Rates)

Debate between Huw Irranca-Davies and Vince Cable

Wednesday 23rd June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

The hon. Gentleman says that a gamble is being made. Certainly there is a risk. There are risks in tightening fiscal policy too quickly, but there are also risks in doing nothing, or in doing less. We have had to balance those risks, and we have concluded that we must act.

Since the questions are coming from Labour Members, let me now give the other reason why I feel strongly about the need to act decisively in the way in which the Chancellor acted yesterday. Thirty years ago, as an adviser, I occupied the office that I now occupy as a Minister. It was the end of a Labour Government who had chosen to ignore the build-up to a major financial crisis. As some people will remember, the painful measures—the taxes, welfare cuts and spending cuts—were not taken by choice. They were imposed from outside by the International Monetary Fund. Because I was there at the tail-end of that Government, I saw the consequences, not the least of which were the massive divisions that opened up. People in the Government such as Denis Healey, Roy Jenkins and my boss, John Smith, believed that the Government had to be responsible, but there were a lot of others—I sense a growing echo of this feeling on the Opposition Back Benches today—who said, “We don’t need to do anything, we can fight the gnomes of Zurich and drive them underground, we can ignore the rest of the world and we do not need to act.” It was a disastrous alternative strategy, and the Labour party is in great danger of returning to that territory.

That is why I have come to the same position as the Chancellor of the Exchequer. We come from different political traditions; I do not try to hide that. As it happens, my role models as Chancellor of the Exchequer include Sir Stafford Cripps and Roy Jenkins, because they understood the need for sound public finance and they combined tough action on budgets with fairness. That is the tradition that we have continued.

Let me list some of the measures in this Budget with which I am proud to be associated. There is the lifting of the tax threshold by £1,000, towards the £10,000 mark. There is the action on capital gains tax, which is not just a tax-avoidance measure, but is about fairness. We have acted on public sector pay not just by freezing some salaries but by giving special help to people on low pay in the public sector. We have introduced the bank levy. We have done what the Labour Government failed to do in 12 years and introduced a triple-lock to protect pensioners—the shadow Deputy Leader of the House, the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley), could not quite get her head around what the triple-lock is—and in addition supported pensioners through improved pension credit, which is a major cost on the budget going forward. We took action to head off any increase in child benefit, too.

Let me read a comment on child poverty made not by a politician, but by Barnardo’s, one of the leading charities. Yesterday it said:

“There’s some pain in this Budget for the poorest families, but we recognise the government has done what it can to protect the most vulnerable.

Our calls for child tax credits to be redirected away from more wealthy families to the poorest have been heard—an action we highly commend.”

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

I do not doubt the right hon. Gentleman’s motives during his journey over the years and the past few weeks, but does he give credence to the fact that there is an alternative that could minimise the risk to his communities and mine? It is not to do with rejecting an agenda of cuts, efficiencies or reprioritisation; it is to do with timing. It is not just me saying that, or the “dupes” on the Labour Benches. Paul Krugman, “Danny” Blanchflower, Will Hutton and many other economists are saying, “Minimise the risk; just delay, and make the decisions at the right time.”

[Vince Cable]

I think that the gentlemen to whom the hon. Gentleman refers are mostly talking about competitive deflation in the world economy, which is, of course, absolutely disastrous. The Chancellor referred in his speech yesterday to the fact that other countries that are in surplus have to do the opposite of what we are doing in terms of fiscal consolidation. The Chancellor made that very clear in relation to action to be taken by the Chinese and action that should be taken by countries such as Germany. Of course we understand the wider context.

Let me return to the criticisms about value added tax. The shadow Chancellor put the question in a personal way when he asked why I was supporting the increase in value added tax. The three of us—the shadow Chancellor, the Chancellor and myself—went around the television studios during the election campaign; we were the three Chancellors, a bit like “The Three Tenors”. We had our several encounters and each of us was asked time and again, “What do you think about value added tax?” As I recall, all three of us gave an identical answer: “We have no plans to increase value added tax, but we have not ruled it out.” The reason why we are now having to confront the matter is that there is a bigger structural deficit than was appreciated and action had to be taken. That could have been a tax measure, or it could have been a spending cut. Is that what Labour Members are saying? Do they want more cuts in spending? Do they want another tax? What do they want?