Finance (No. 2) Bill

Iain McKenzie Excerpts

Thursday 18th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Iain McKenzie (Inverclyde) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend has noted a number of ways in which people are suffering up and down the country. Does she agree that society suffers the most when the gap widens between rich and poor, that we are now seeing it stretched to the absolute limit, and that the Government either do not recognise that or choose not to do so?

[Cathy Jamieson]

My hon. Friend is a powerful advocate for the people in his constituency who are bearing the brunt of the Government’s policies, and he is absolutely right. It is important that there is no further widening of that gap. This is not just about the money in people’s pockets, important though that is, but the fabric of society and the relationships that people build in their local communities.

It is important to consider the impact on our high streets. For generations, local businesses have offered jobs and the convenience of shopping in the local high street, and have been involved in providing services there. They are now under pressure from the flatlining economy. Consumer spending has been constrained by high inflation and stagnant wages, leading to a 6% fall in real disposable income in 2008, with a devastating impact on our local high streets. Shops are lying empty, with a threefold increase in that trend since 2008. Household names such as HMV, JJB Sports, Blockbusters and Comet have been forced to close a large number of stores or to shut up shop completely. It is estimated that last year 1,800 shops were forced to close—a staggering tenfold increase on the year before. We have heard about the impact on the pub industry, and there has been a call for the VAT rate to be considered in that context.

Not only is retail suffering, but businesses of all kinds up and down the country are feeling the impact of the Government’s failed economic policies and the flatlining economy. That has led, and is still leading, to a lack of confidence, particularly in the construction sector, with many arguing that more must be done to get people back to work and to get projects under way. Sadly, Project Merlin did not deliver the new era of loans that it was supposed to. We learned this week that lending to UK businesses fell by £2 billion in December alone, and it is down by £18.6 billion over the past year, while businesses continue to suffer. The Business Secretary seems perhaps finally to be recognising this failure. He boasted at his party conference that he would set up a Government-backed bank to get billions of pounds to businesses that need it, but we are still awaiting the fine detail of what that bank will do and when and how businesses will be helped. They may well have to wait some time for it to be up and running.

I shall draw my remarks to a conclusion because I want to give other hon. Members the opportunity to raise issues on behalf of their constituents and put the case to the Government. There are things we can do to help businesses and individuals through these tough times. We could reform the funding for lending scheme so that banks can access the lowest rates of funding only if they increase lending to businesses as well as overall lending, and extend it beyond the end of 2013, as currently envisaged by the Government, to the end of 2014. Let us do what every other G8 economy has done and set up a state-backed investment institution to provide credit to small businesses where others will not by establishing a proper British investment bank. As we have argued, that could be done through a new network of regional banks like the German Sparkassen. That would also help to return SMEs to a local relationship with banking, with managers who know what is needed on the ground and have the discretion to make local lending decisions. Regional banks are committed to their regions and in touch with local business. We have called for, and will continue to call for, the Government to bring forward these measures to help boost our businesses and get our economy moving again.

Even if the Government accepted all those proposals and they were acted on today, the benefits would take some time to come to the fore and to be felt. However, the one step we could take now that would immediately make a difference would be for the Government to agree to reduce VAT to 17.5% to put money back into the pockets of hard-working people and give a stimulus to local economies. That would put something back into the pot to help the local businesses we have talked about, whether by reducing fuel costs or stimulating the economy such that people feel that they are able to spend again. We need to get consumers back out there spending their money, supporting our high streets and businesses, and helping our economy to grow again. It is for the Government to explain to the people of the UK why they will not listen to the arguments that have been advanced and are not prepared to take this action as a stimulus to the economy and to help to get things moving again.

--- Later in debate ---

I urge all Members to support the amendment to reduce VAT, which would put more cash into the pockets of the people most likely to spend it on the essentials in life. Such a measure would make life easier for everyone in this country, stimulate much-needed economic growth, reduce unavoidable costs such as fuel costs and provide much-needed respite for my constituents and for people across the country.

[Mr]

McKenzie: It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger.

It is blatantly obvious that families up and down the country are paying the price of the Government’s failure to come to terms with the economy and to create growth and prosperity for all. The cost of living has never been higher. I speak as someone who brought up a family in the 1980s, and I thought that times were hard then. I am now seeing those circumstances repeated in my constituency. My constituents, especially the working families, are finding it extremely hard.

One of the indicators is the rise in unemployment, yet again, across the country. That illustrates that times are doubly hard for those who can least afford it and who are struggling to get employment. In my constituency, we have been fortunate in keeping unemployment down. Before Government Members jump to their feet saying, “We did it for Inverclyde”, however, let me advise them that they did not. The reason that we have been so successful in reducing youth unemployment is that my Labour-led council has put its money where its mouth is and continued with the future jobs fund for the past two years, to ensure that our young people have a future. It has ensured that they have employment not just for a few weeks or months, and it has gone back to the employers and the young people to ensure that their employment is sustainable for years. Now, 80% of those given employment places have remained in them for more than a year, and we are glad that that success is doing something to alleviate unemployment among young people in Inverclyde.

Unfortunately, however, there has been little impact on those who have been unemployed for more than two years, and the Government have offered them no assistance other than shipping them off to a private firm to be placed in employment somewhere for a week or two. It is clear that only Labour can guarantee those people a job with a living wage.

Prices are rising faster than wages. The Office for Budget Responsibility has confirmed that, by 2015, people will be worse off than they were in 2010. That illustrates the result of this Government’s policies. Most people in my constituency feel that, while Ministers might have read economics at university, it is they who are actually living the economics, day in, day out. The cost of living has never been higher, and that is partly due to increased food prices. I encourage any Member to go round their local supermarket and do their weekly shopping, as I do. I see less and less going into the trolley, and more and more going into the till at the end of my shopping trip. Even those families who are thrifty and who shop around and buy own-brand items are seeing a dramatic increase in their food bills. They are being pushed into using food banks, which is another indicator that times are indeed hard.

In my constituency, we have the i58 project, in which one of the local churches has been running a food bank since last September. I was staggered when I visited it at Christmas. It thought that the numbers of people being referred to it had peaked at 1,000—mine is not a large constituency, after all—but the figure has continued to increase in the new year. It is deeply regrettable that we are not seeing any reduction in those numbers. Ever more families, including working families, have been referred to food banks.

Even with the steps we have taken in my area to insulate homes to try to keep energy bills as low as possible, there have been dramatic increases in households’ energy costs. That seems to happen year in, year out. There seems to be no stopping the price rises introduced by the energy companies. These ever-increasing bills spread fear, particularly among the elderly and those on low incomes. People are struggling to pay to heat their own homes. In my area of Scotland, investment in home insulation has been in place for four or five years, yet people are still struggling to pay their energy bills.

Rents have increased recently, too. Not enough homes are being built, so increasing numbers of people are unable to find social rented accommodation. They are pushed into the private sector, which has taken full advantage by pushing up rents time and again. That, too, is having a dramatic impact, particularly on those who can least afford to pay.

We have already heard about the high fuel prices. Those who are fortunate enough still to be able to afford to run a vehicle find that the price of petrol at the pump increases year after year. A number of approaches to the Government have been needed to get them to halt the increases in prices, but we continue to ask for VAT to be removed from fuel. That has one of the biggest impacts on fuel prices, as was pointed out in an earlier intervention. It was also pointed out that we can drop VAT, on an individual basis, from fuel.

There is more evidence of hard times to be seen on the high streets, with shop after shop closing, and brand name after brand name disappearing. The shops that are replacing them are loan shops, bookmakers and pawnbrokers, which shows that those on low incomes are increasingly having to make visits—perhaps on a weekly basis—to such shops in order to bridge the gap between what they are receiving and what they are having to spend on the bare essentials.

The way to deal with the increasing costs of living is through employment. All wealth comes from employment and we must make sure there are as many jobs as possible. We must create jobs by stimulating the introduction of projects throughout the country. We welcome the large projects, of course—we had great success with the Olympic games, and in Scotland I am sure we will have great success with the Commonwealth games—but the smaller projects in and around our communities need to happen as well, to stimulate local economies and get things moving. We all know of shovel-ready projects in our areas that need to go ahead, but they are not progressing.

Last year, the Government gave additional funds to the Scottish Government for shovel-ready projects. Where that money has gone remains to be discovered, as to date only £10 million has seen the light of day in projects across Scotland.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

What my hon. Friend says highlights one of the advantages of the proposal to cut VAT. Even with the best will in the world, investment in infrastructure can take a long time to get through all the resistance, which is why even now, after up to three years of trying, we are still not seeing the full benefits of that, whereas a cut in VAT would have an immediate effect on the high street, and on construction and many other sectors of our economy. That highlights why it is so important that the VAT cut should go ahead.

[Mr McKenzie]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I visited some of the employers in my area in the Easter recess. Time and again they told me they needed a stimulus to the local economy from a VAT cut, to get people spending and buying things. My local construction firms in particular said they needed a reduction in VAT to get people to consider going ahead with smaller projects such as house improvements, thus creating employment locally. They felt a VAT cut would serve to stimulate that local growth and get things moving; otherwise, they could see only a bleak future, if any future at all, for the construction industry. They also brought up the continuing difficulty of being closed out of local and national Government contracts. The procurement process still seems to be far too complex and to exclude the small and medium-sized businesses that could stimulate the local economy.