Delivery of Public Services

Huw Merriman Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

I will keep to the eight minutes you have asked of us, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will take the opportunity to focus on three issues. Two of them, long waits for driving licences and backlogs at the airports, are mentioned in the motion; the third, delivery of rail, is not. However, while it may not have made it on to the motion, we are certainly all aware it was an issue for us last week and will continue to be so.

Looking first at the backlogs at the airports, there have been issues and challenges there. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury is absolutely right to say that we are not alone: Schiphol had a cancellation rate of about 11% during the period in question, while Gatwick’s, for example, was 2%. The situation has been poor across Europe, but it is particularly challenging for passengers to have their flights cancelled at the last minute.

One large reason for it is that only on 17 March did the industry get complete clearance for travel restrictions to be dropped in their entirety. Airlines were also required by Parliament to use 70% of their slots, or they would lose them. A combination of those two factors, and the fact that many airlines had taken out covid loans and had to start paying them back, led to a decision that they would ramp up over summer. However, it has been challenging for them to do so. There were 5,000 jobs lost in the international travel sector in this country on a monthly basis, and that has had an impact.

The airports collectively lost £10 billion, so it has been very difficult for them to ramp back up, and it takes a long time to get staff on to the frontline. It can take as much as three months to go through the vetting and clearance process. Of course, that has to be strict—it is for security—but I will shamelessly plug the Transport Committee’s recommendations here.

The first recommendation was for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to help with a personal statement where people cannot fill in all the parts of their five-year employment history as required. It is great to see that that is now in place. Many people worked in different sectors and parts of industry that have gone under during covid, and it has been difficult to get that five-year map. That is a great change, as is the ability to train workers while they are in their final vetting stage; again, the Government have accepted the recommendation for more flexibility. The ability to train more people within the line of sight has also helped. I praise the Government for the work they have done to make that easier.

However, the number of flights being cancelled at the last minute is just not good enough for passengers or for the industry. I welcome the steps the Government have taken to ease the 70% rule: for airlines that cancel with 14 or more days’ notice, that flight will go towards their 70% rather than counting towards them losing the slot. That is the kind of flexibility the industry needs.

I particularly praise Gatwick airport, which has taken the novel approach of capping the number of flights. It could see that the industry was trying to fly at 2018 figures but did not have the staff to do so, as I have just mentioned. The cap should make for a more bearable experience for passengers. The flights that are cancelled would just be those flying to the same destination on the same day; otherwise, the airlines would have to pay out. Sensible measures have been taken, and I welcome them. I would just say to those on the Front Bench: can we please get the Civil Aviation Authority more up-front powers? It is still going through the court process from the Ryanair industrial action of 2018 because it does not have the ability to stop poor behaviour when it occurs. However, I do welcome what the Government have done.

On long waiting lists for driving licences, as has been mentioned, drivers have been unable to take up work because there has been such a long delay to the paper-based process. According to the DVLA, at one point, due to social distancing, reductions in staff on-site and industrial action, the backlog got to 1.6 million. We have continued to write to the DVLA as a Committee and hold it to account. It last reported that the backlog was down to 890,000. It always has a run rate of 400,000 at any one time but assured us that the rate will get down to the business-as-usual rate by September. We will continue to hold it to account. At that time, it was the one sector of the civil service, or agency, that seemed to be struggling, and there are questions for the management as to whether people really can work from home in a manner that for other parts of the civil service and agencies seems to work quite well. Management are on notice that they need to do better.

The third aspect, which is not referenced in the motion but is so important, is rail. I talked about the 5,000 jobs lost each month in the airline industry because it had to make its own way through. We supported rail to the tune of £16 billion. There were no redundancies apart from a package of voluntary redundancy that was announced, and got a high uptake, last year. In direct contrast to what the airline sector saw, the rail system has been supported by us all. It is incredibly disappointing to see the strikes. I call for the unions to look at the reforms as not just a way of increasing productivity that will give their members a pay rise, but as making the railways safer for the workforce and for passengers. Why do we still require people on the track when technology can do it better, so it is safer for them and safer for passengers? We need both parties to work together to end the strikes. Rail is not being delivered, and it would have been nice if the Opposition had recognised that we all need to support it.

My last point is on the impact of inflation. In all three sectors I have talked about, industrial action has been occurring or is ongoing. Inflation-busting pay increases are completely counterproductive for those who are seeking them but also for the wider public who have to pay for them, because all they do is put up inflation even more and take away the pay rise at that end. They also have to be paid for. Let me give an example. The refuse strike at Wealden District Council in my constituency has been settled at a cost of 27%. That will be paid for by all council tax payers in my constituency. The last increase in council tax has all been eaten up by the previous pay settlement, so there will not be enough to fund this one, and all the benefits we could bring to the district council are being taken away. How will it be paid for? The council cannot go into deficit and therefore there could be job losses, so one person’s pay rise is somebody else’s job loss.

With the cost of living challenges, I understand that there will be pay demands in the public sector, but we all know—certainly Conservative Members do—that somebody has to pay for that, and it will be all our voters. We also know that inflation breeds inflation, and so it knocks out the pay rise. It effectively becomes a zero-sum game. I hope that all of us in Parliament can call for restraint—for people to be sensible and reasonable, and try to find productivity gains to pay for those increases—but if we are not careful things will get very bad indeed in the public sector and that will not benefit anybody in this place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

I would like to start by thanking all the hard-working people who keep our public sector and our public services going day in and day out. They are not responsible for the fact that our country is so bogged down in backlogs and bureaucracy. Indeed, as we have heard throughout this debate, their professionalism and dedication to public service stand in stark contrast to the shambolic performance of this Conservative Government.

I would also like to thank hon. Members, particularly those on the Opposition Benches, who through their speeches and interventions in this important debate have expressed genuine concern on behalf of their constituents about the desperate state of the Prime Minister’s backlog Britain, as opposed to those who have attempted to defend the indefensible.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) made a thoughtful speech and pointed out that if Ministers were running a business it would be bankrupt by now. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hall Green (Tahir Ali) gave a barnstorming speech: “Welcome to backlog Britain, thanks to 12 years of a Conservative Government.” is the line that came through very clearly. My hon. Friend the Member for Reading East (Matt Rodda) called on the Government to learn the lessons and focused in particular on the chaos of the Passport Office. My hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) recounted the appalling costs to his constituents of the backlogs and dysfunction at the heart of this Government, demonstrated by the failure to answer his basic parliamentary questions.

Conservative Members consistently attempt to blame covid and the lockdowns for the mess in which we now find ourselves, but backlog Britain cannot be blamed simply on covid and the lockdowns. The reality is that the underlying causes of the mess we are in predate the pandemic and the challenges we now face have got worse since the end of lockdown. That is because backlog Britain has been created by two basic failures: first, a failure of resilience caused by a decade of underinvestment by the Conservatives in British businesses and public services; and, secondly, a failure of governance caused by Ministers walking away from their responsibilities and utterly failing to plan for the end of the covid restrictions. The combination of those two fundamental failures with the fact that we have a lawbreaking Prime Minister who has lost the confidence of 40% of his own MPs and has basically become a national embarrassment provides all the ingredients for a catastrophic breakdown in the systems and institutions that keep our country going.

On the failure of resilience, the decade leading up to the pandemic was defined by a staggering lack of investment by the Government in the private sector, which led to low growth and weakened British business—so much so that Britain became the European capital for hostile foreign takeovers. The Conservatives failed miserably to meet the average growth rate for similarly developed countries and as a result the Government unlocked less private investment than in all but two of the 38 comparable countries. If the Government had matched that growth rate, the Treasury would now have £12 billion extra in the Exchequer, and if they had matched the growth rates achieved by Labour Governments between 1997 and 2010, they would have an extra £40 billion to spend.

Low growth meant less money to invest in public services. NHS waiting lists were already at record highs, and as the shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden), pointed out in his opening contribution, there were already more than 100,000 staff vacancies while court backlogs were already growing by 23% in 2020. Lower growth inevitably meant weaker public services and less flexible local government, resulting in a less resilient economy and public sector. It also left our critical national infrastructure dangerously reliant on China for everything from personal protective equipment to our nuclear energy supply.

Resilience is about being able to absorb and bounce back from shocks when they hit, but that lost decade of underinvestment removed our shock absorbers: the British state was surviving hand to mouth—it was walking on thin ice; it was hollowed out by the toxic combination of incompetence and indifference that has characterised successive Conservative Governments since 2010. And now we see that this ice is breaking and the result is backlog Britain.

[Huw Merriman]

Given that there have been four Conservative election victories—or, at least, four Conservative Governments—is the hon. Gentleman saying that the people cannot be trusted, that the Conservative Government are not as bad as he says, or that the Labour party has been particularly hopeless at giving an alternative message? It must be one of those three things.

[Stephen Kinnock]

The British people participate in democratic elections, and when we see the desperately bad results that this Conservative Government are delivering, I am absolutely confident that at the next general election they will deliver a landslide Labour Government. Then we will see the changes our country needs, rather than the incompetence and indifference we see from the Conservative party.

That leads me to the second fundamental failure: the failure of basic competent governance. Mr Deputy Speaker, you do not have to be Mystic Meg to know that when the pandemic abated, the lockdown restrictions would be lifted. We all knew that GP, A&E and hospital waiting lists were skyrocketing, with 4,500 fewer GPs to take appointments than 10 years ago. We also knew that the court backlog was at a record high, with the victims of the most serious violent crimes, including rape, having to wait two or three years for a case to come to court. We also knew that people would want to go on holiday and that they would need passports.

There was no need for a crystal ball—it was happening in front of our very eyes—but while AstraZeneca and the NHS were rolling out the vaccine at speed, the UK Government were patting themselves on the back and wheeling suitcases full of booze into No. 10. Backlog Britain represents a shameful dereliction of duty by a Prime Minister who is utterly out of his depth. Instead of meeting Britain’s challenges, he prefers Government by gimmick. There are lots of big, flashy announcements, but nothing ever seems to get delivered. The Northern Ireland Protocol Bill is not designed to solve any of the immediate problems, and it will take months to get through Parliament. The Bill of Rights is an empty distraction that will just increase the backlogs in the courts system, and the Government have sent £120 million of taxpayers’ money to the Rwandan Government for a press release.

There is a world of difference between campaigning and governing, and the Government appear to be permanently stuck in campaign mode, constantly hunting for wedge issues that will enable them to pick fights and sow division, inflaming tension, rather than building consensus. They are not even campaigning for the Conservative party. No, their campaigns are focused on one aim and one aim only: throwing red meat to Back Benchers so that the Prime Minister can carry on squatting in Downing Street.

One of the many fundamental differences between Government Members and Opposition Members is that we believe in an active state. We believe that the state should work in partnership with the private sector and civil society to facilitate sustainable economic growth and the smooth running of the systems and institutions that underpin and empower our economy and our communities. We believe in investing to help the private sector to grow so that British businesses can create jobs, improve productivity and compete internationally rather than sell out to the highest foreign bidder We believe in investing in public services so that NHS hospitals do not have to choose between treating covid and screening cancer, and we know that the backlogs are clogging up our courts, our ports, our A&E departments, our GP surgeries, the Passport Office, the DVLA and our asylum system. That is holding our country back.

Government Members do all they can to avoid any state support whatsoever. They see government as the very last resort, and the result is the mess that we are in. The result is backlog Britain.

A Government who fail to plan are a Government who plan to fail. A Government who fail to build resilience are a Government who leave us exposed to shocks. A Government who blame anyone and everything for their own failures will never step up and take responsibility for cleaning up the mess they have made, and a Government led by a man who is utterly unfit for public office are bound to end in disaster. Backlog Britain is the consequence of all those failings. The British people deserve better than this.