amendment of the law

Debate between Iain McKenzie and Nigel Evans

Monday 25th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Iain McKenzie (Inverclyde) (Lab)]

The coalition Government have spent their time in office since 2010 telling us over and over again that they are trying to get the country’s finances in order. We have had their austerity, their new taxes and their extreme cuts, and yet two years later, our borrowing is still growing at an alarming rate. Despite the Government’s austerity, the Chancellor is expected to add billions to the national debt over his five years in office. Since his spending review in 2010, the UK economy has grown by just 0.7%, compared with the 5.3% forecast at the time.

Last year, the UK economy went through a double-dip recession. The Government’s failure on deficit and debt reduction is colossal. Lack of growth has meant huge Government borrowing to pay for the cost of their economic failure. The Chancellor has failed the test he set for himself. The economy is flatlining, prices are rising a lot faster than wages, the deficit is going up, and the UK has lost its triple A credit rating. Instead of delivering a credible Budget that demands confidence in our economy, the Chancellor delivered a downgraded Budget with no plan for jobs and growth, and a Budget that hits hard-working households further.

A wiser Chancellor would have been less dogmatic about the rightness of his policies and so left room to manoeuvre when he saw them failing. However, last Wednesday’s Budget was the work of a Chancellor who is in a hole but continues to pretend that the only way forward is to keep digging. We needed bold and decisive action last week, and a Budget that would kick-start the economy and help millions of people up and down the country who have been struggling to cope financially. I wonder whether Government Members know what that means: it means broken Britain, it means businesses closing their doors, it means small communities struggling to create local growth, it means a choice between paying the bedroom tax and eating, and it means national failure at the hands of this Government.

In my constituency, more than 1,000 people are being referred to local food banks. Food banks in 21st-century Britain is the reality of this coalition. Instead of borrowing to help millionaires, the Government should be borrowing to help jobs and opportunities, and to stimulate economic growth across the country. The Chancellor could have brought forward infrastructure investment in schools, roads and transport to get construction workers back to work and to strengthen our economy for the future. Those measures would boost growth, get builders back to work, build the homes we desperately need and create apprenticeships for our young people.

Britain needs a radical Budget for homes, jobs and growth, not another false dawn. We face the biggest housing crisis in a generation and the Government’s housing and economic policies are just making it worse. House building is crucial to economic recovery. Helping families to get on to the housing ladder should be a priority for the Government, and that is why we have been calling for this action for more than two years. The Government’s record on housing offers little hope to hard-working families who are struggling to get on to the housing ladder. Under this Government, house building has fallen, rents have risen, home ownership is becoming a harder goal for young people to achieve and, most worrying of all, homelessness has risen. The Government failed to back Labour’s call to use the money raised from the 4G mobile spectrum auction to build 100,000 affordable homes to stimulate the economy and help tackle the ever-growing housing crisis. The Chancellor could also improve existing housing stock by cutting VAT on home repairs, maintenance and improvements to 5%. I might add, however, that without a job it is impossible to buy a home or to improve it.

Next month’s planned tax cut for millionaires should be scrapped. When the Government came to power in 2010, the message was that we are all in this together. I wonder if my constituents who have lost their jobs and the millions who rely on food banks would agree that we are all in this together. What about the millionaires looking forward to a tax cut? Well, they are definitely in it all together.

Companies are not investing and people are not spending because they lack confidence in the UK economy. Economic confidence comes from believing that tomorrow will be better than today. The problem the Government have created is that the country no longer believes in a better tomorrow. In short, we desperately need a Labour Chancellor to deliver a Budget that supports hard-working families and struggling businesses. We need a Government who have a long-term plan for jobs and growth to build a better and fairer tomorrow.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I thank Members for their co-operation. We now will get the last two Members in.

Apprenticeships

Debate between Iain McKenzie and Nigel Evans

Monday 19th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Iain McKenzie (Inverclyde) (Lab)]

In the current economic climate for young people, this debate is very welcome. I speak with experience of apprenticeships, having spent the first four years of my working life as an apprentice and having had the good fortune to go on to discover a second career as a modern apprentice. That is why I have been engaging regularly with companies in Inverclyde, trying to encourage them to start thinking about increasing the number of apprenticeships or about starting an apprenticeship scheme.

Inverclyde is not as bad as some constituencies with youth unemployment, but that does not reflect what is happening in Scotland overall, nor in the UK as a whole. Youth unemployment has never been higher, and the statistics are frightening. Youth unemployment has risen to 1.027 million, the highest since records began in 1992, beating the previous record set only a month ago.

The young continue to bear the brunt of the lack of jobs in the UK, and many are thinking about emigration as a way out. Too many young lives are being wasted on the dole queue; long-term unemployed young people are the most vulnerable, with many trapped in a vicious cycle of joblessness, anxiety and depression. We desperately need to get our young people into training and apprenticeships. They need every chance to improve their skills to get them into good jobs.

The other week, I visited a project in my constituency in which young people are applying themselves to the renovation of community facilities and to learning new skills in the traditional trades of electrician, plumber and joiner. Those young people are determined to succeed; they are not sitting back on benefits. They ask only for the opportunity to learn the skills that they hope will get them employed as apprentices.

The Government need to do more to help our young people. They have dropped Labour’s guarantee of an apprenticeship place to young people who want one and they have failed to expand apprenticeship places for school and college leavers. The Government should be doing everything that they can to support opportunities, helping young people to improve their skills and get good jobs. Instead, they are leaving Britain’s youth on the dole queue, instead of taking constructive measures today. We need a highly skilled, highly educated work force to meet the challenges of tomorrow and compete with the advanced nations of the world. We need value added skills to compete with the economies of Brazil, India, China and other emerging nations in the world.

Apprenticeships are a valuable way of giving young people skills and training in jobs. They offer an on-the-job learning opportunity; they enable young people not only to learn about their chosen trade or profession, but to learn it on the spot and talk to colleagues who are already skilled and experienced in their particular area.

Apprenticeships can offer so much, and there is no reason why they should not be expanded to cover a wide variety of jobs and professions. We need to get Britain’s companies on board. The Government are cutting apprenticeships back when they are needed more than ever. It is so short sighted; the Government need to make more apprenticeship places available. Labour has a plan for our young people, even if Government Members do not. Any company wanting to provide goods or services to the public should be required to have an apprenticeship scheme before they can win a contract. My council in Inverclyde already does that, and to great benefit.

Labour’s jobs-for-contracts scheme would increase the number of apprenticeships by thousands and give immediate help to many of the 1 million unemployed under-25s. This simple idea—creating apprenticeship places through public procurement—would provide immediate help to alleviate youth unemployment. The Government spend £220 billion a year on goods and services from the private sector; from construction to business support services, the Government are the top single contractor in the UK. That means that they have a unique tool at their disposal to get young people into work. The Government should reverse their decision to abandon apprenticeships in Government procurement and instead do everything that they can to create new apprenticeships.

When Labour was in government, it rescued apprenticeships, increasing their status and nearly quadrupling the number of places from 75,000 in 1997 to 280,000 in the last year we were in government. Labour plans to repeat the bank bonus tax and use the funds to provide jobs and apprenticeships for young people, as well as for a temporary reversal of the VAT rise, would help kick-start our economy and provide the growth and jobs that we so urgently need.

Public money should always be used to maximise social and economic benefit. In 2009, the Labour Government drew up the Office of Government Commerce guidance, “Promoting skills through public procurement”. This Government have scrapped that, denying high-level apprenticeships in key industries for young people. Labour’s plans on apprenticeships would work for young people and get them into work. Getting our young people into apprenticeships is the best way to put Inverclyde, Scotland and the UK on the right course for the future.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. To accommodate more Members, the time limit on speeches is being reduced to five minutes.