Debate on the Address

Iain Wright Excerpts

Wednesday 8th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

It is an honour to follow the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) who, as ever, made a thoughtful and considered contribution. Speaking of thoughtful and considered contributions, let me pay tribute to the proposer and to the seconder of the motion.

The hon. Member for Mid Worcestershire (Peter Luff) mentioned engineering, and I agree with his point that Britain should regain its ambition to be a truly great engineering nation. I commend his efforts to bring more women into engineering and into the study of STEM—science, technology, engineering and maths—subjects. It is shameful that, in relation to encouraging women into engineering, this country is bottom of the league, so his efforts should have cross-party support. It is disappointing that the word “engineering” was not mentioned in the Queen’s Speech, but I hope that a long-term view will be taken on the importance of engineering to the competitive position of this country.

The hon. Member for Bristol West (Stephen Williams) made a thoughtful, considered and moving contribution. I was shocked and disgusted to hear that he prefers Duran Duran to the Smiths. While he was speaking I thought about the fact that Duran Duran’s first hit was “Planet Earth”, and it would be nice if Ministers sometimes came back to planet Earth and saw the effects of their policies in the real world and in constituencies such as mine.

Her Majesty stated that her Government would bring forward legislation

“to ensure sufferers of a certain asbestos-related cancer receive payments where no liable employer or insurer can be traced.”

The details of the proposed piece of legislation will need to be examined closely, but I warmly welcome the inclusion of the issue in the Queen’s Speech. My constituency of Hartlepool is the 16th worst affected constituency in the country for asbestos-related diseases. Incidence of mesothelioma, a legacy of our heavy industry past—especially in shipbuilding—is particularly high. Victims and their families have been denied compensation and suitable justice for far too long, often because the industry in the area has closed down, or successive firms either no longer exist or are impossible to trace. I have had tragic cases in my constituency of families not having the money to bury their husbands or fathers, because the insurance industry refused to pay out. During the passage of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, the Government did themselves no credit by requiring victims of asbestos-related diseases to surrender a quarter of the damages awarded for their pain, suffering and life-shortening illnesses to pay for legal costs. I hope that the announcement made today will help to make amends.

[Mark Tami]

Many of the people to whom my hon. Friend refers worked for sub-contractors, who have gone bust over the years. The process has been a very cruel one, and all previous Governments have something to stand up and defend, because we have let these people down. Let us hope that the legislation is of a proper nature and that we can end the misery.

[Mr Wright]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. The devil will be in the detail, but I hope that we can make amends. It is only 10 days or so since we commemorated workers memorial day, when we resolved to remember the dead and fight for the living. The proposed legislation is an important part of that, and I hope that compensation, fairness and justice will be provided.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

I agree with my hon. Friend that the issue is of great importance, and it is good to see the Government bringing forward such legislation. Not long ago, I received a letter from AXA trumpeting the work that it and the Association of British Insurers have done. Will my hon. Friend join me in impressing on the Government that the approach of the ABI will be incredibly important, and that the Government must not listen just to the insurers when dealing with this very important issue?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Wright]

I agree with my hon. Friend that, over the past few years, the stance of the insurance industry in general has not helped sufferers of asbestos-related diseases. We have to be sure that the proposed legislation, welcome though it is, provides justice and fairness for asbestos sufferers.

The areas of legislation and priorities that the Government did not include in the Queen’s Speech were deeply revealing. The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden, who is, I think, about to leave the Chamber, mentioned the purpose of a Queen’s Speech, which is to provide not only the legislative programme for the next Session but a strategic direction, outlining the priorities of the Government. As I said, there was no mention of engineering, there was no mention of manufacturing and there was not a word about an industrial strategy. There was no mention of the world-beating sectors that this country has and needs to enhance, such as aerospace, automotives, pharmaceuticals or the creative industries.

Tellingly, there was no mention in the Queen’s Speech of the national health service. Listening to it, I was reminded of the comments made by the then Leader of the Opposition, now the Prime Minister, in his contribution to the debate on the Address on 18 November 2009. He said:

“What about the three letters that should be in any Queen's Speech: NHS? Not a mention. It is clear that the national health service is not this Government's priority.”—[Official Report, 18 November 2009; Vol. 501, c. 15.]

If he was saying that in 2009, why is he not saying it in 2013? In his 2009 remarks, I think he was pre-empting his own lamentable record on the NHS. There was an opportunity in this Queen’s Speech for the Government to right the wrongs of the appalling Health and Social Care Act 2012 and announce its repeal, but they have failed to do that.

Her Majesty also stated in the Gracious Speech that her

“Government's first priority is to strengthen Britain’s economic competitiveness.”

I would welcome measures that would do that, but on the basis of the Government’s record and of the announcements made today, I remain unconvinced. If we are to address Britain’s competitiveness with the rest of the world, the Government will have to tackle the country’s growing lack of productivity relative to our economic rivals, but there was not a single mention in the Queen’s Speech of our declining productivity. In the decade from 1997 to 2007, this country was second only to the US in the list of rich nations in terms of the growth of GDP per hour. Now, we are second bottom, behind only Japan. UK productivity is now 16 percentage points lower than the G7 average—the widest productivity gap between ourselves and other leading nations for 20 years.

Output and economic growth have flatlined for the past two and a half years, while manufacturing output, for all the talk of a Government reportedly determined to rebalance the economy, has declined by a tenth from its 2008 peak and has today fallen by 1.4% from 12 months ago. Productivity across the UK economy has fallen by 2.3% in the past year, and measures of output per hour in manufacturing fell by 5.2% between quarter four in 2011 and quarter four in 2012, the largest fall since records began. We will not address our competitiveness as a nation, and be able to compete with developed, fast-growing and ambitious rising nations in the globalised economy, if we do not address our productivity problem, yet the Queen’s Speech does not even see fit to mention it.

The single biggest social and economic issue facing Hartlepool is unemployment. The notion that some growth in private sector employment is cutting the jobless queue is ludicrous, bears no resemblance to the reality on the ground in my constituency and is deeply insulting for those proud men and women in Hartlepool who are struggling to find a job. Hartlepool wants to work, but Government policies are making it harder, not easier, for decent aspirational people to find a job.

The Gracious Speech talks of

“helping people move from welfare to work.”

The Government are cutting welfare but they are also cutting work. They are moving people in Hartlepool from welfare to poverty and destitution, and moving the prospect of work ever further away from my constituents.

Let me illustrate that with some statistics. The number of jobseeker’s allowance claimants in Hartlepool has increased by 25% since this Government came to power, and it now stands at about 4,700. For long-term unemployment, the situation is even bleaker. The number of people in Hartlepool who have claimed JSA for more than a year is up by 155% since the Government came to office. The number who have claimed JSA for more than two years has increased in the same period by a staggering 560%. One in four young men in my constituency is without a job or a training place, and the House will appreciate that the longer a person is out of work the more difficult it is for them to find any sort of work, let alone well-paid, meaningful employment.

Skills, experience, talent and potential are being lost in Hartlepool and elsewhere, possibly forever, as a result of this Government’s misguided and short-term views on skills and employment. It is economic ignorance at best, and indifference to the economic plight of people in constituencies such as mine at worst, to suggest that the Government agenda is helping communities such as the one in Hartlepool. The worst-hit region anywhere in the country for reductions in public expenditure per head is mine—the north-east—with an average loss of £566 per capita. Hartlepool has lost an average of £724 a head, making it the most badly affected town in a region that in turn is the most badly affected anywhere in the country.

In that context, it is just common sense that enterprise and the private sector will be hit hard. As Mike Cherry of the Federation of Small Businesses told the Financial Times in March:

“Taking more money out of already struggling local economies may well exacerbate the problem”.

I agree. That money is spent in local businesses. Take it away and the private sector in Hartlepool suffers enormously. It suffers disproportionately, with negative consequences for private sector employment and competitiveness, but the measures in the Queen’s Speech seem only to promise more of the same. That means that areas such as Hartlepool and other parts of the north-east will see still-higher unemployment, further contraction in economic activity and falling living standards and opportunities for my constituents.

If the Government were serious about aspiration and tackling welfare dependency, they would have included in the Queen’s Speech a jobs and training Bill, committing the Administration to helping people into work and providing a boost to families’ living standards and quality of life by providing meaningful and decently paid employment, as well as improving the competitiveness and size of our economy by increasing demand in all areas of the country, not just within the M25. If they were serious, they would also have announced a house building and modernisation of housing stock Bill, designed to provide the homes that we need in the 21st century. Yes, more homes would be built, but cold, leaky and inefficient existing homes could also be refurbished, which would provide a much-needed short-term boost and a long-term boost to the construction sector and employment for tens of thousands of people.

That brings me on to infrastructure. The Gracious Speech stated that the Government

“will continue to invest in infrastructure to deliver jobs and growth for the economy.”

However, businesses do not believe that the Government are making a difference. In a report by the CBI and KPMG last September, just 35% of businesses surveyed believed that coalition policies will have a positive impact on infrastructure investment, which was eight percentage points lower than in the previous year’s survey. Today’s announcement of more of the same—of no change when it comes to infrastructure—will not fill business with confidence.

In the past few days, the Public Accounts Committee has rightly criticised the Government’s policy on infrastructure, declaring that the national infrastructure plan is

“simply a long list of projects requiring huge amounts of money, not a real plan with a strategic vision and clear priorities.”

It is the lack of such a clear “strategic vision”—instead, the emphasis is on the short term and policies often change sharply and without consultation with industry—that means that businesses are not provided with the confidence they need to invest for the long term to improve our infrastructure and enhance our productivity and competitiveness for the long term. Short-termism is undermining our competitiveness and innovation, which is the true driver of competitiveness in the modern world. It is also compromising the modernisation of our energy and transport systems.

Again, the Queen’s Speech could have announced firm plans to tackle that issue. It could have announced a British investment bank Bill, which would create the real conditions for patient capital and for lending to new and to small and medium-sized businesses that have the ideas and the innovation to grow our economy. It could also have provided an infrastructure commission Bill, to give a long-term, independent and clear set of priorities for the infrastructure that is needed in this country to allow the economy to function better. It did not do so.

I started my speech by welcoming a measure in the Queen’s Speech and I will end in the same way. One of this country’s competitive advantages, which sets us apart from some of our rivals, is our rule of law, and within that is the long-established and stable framework for intellectual property. Investors and creators come to this country, providing jobs and new, innovative business models, in the knowledge that their ideas—their designs and other creations—will be protected in law. There is a link between design, innovation and competitiveness in manufacturing that is much-needed in the 21st century.

The Government have had a tendency to consider intellectual property as somewhat about red tape or bureaucracy, rather than what it is—legal protection. In the previous Session, we saw the incoherent and ill-thought-through changes to copyright in the Bill that became the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 on which—thankfully—the Government had to back down. The intellectual property Bill announced today, with its proposals to reform design law, can be cautiously welcomed as a means of protecting design rights. I hope that no amendments will be made to it at a late stage without their being discussed with industry or being thought through properly by Ministers, which happened with copyright during the passage of the 2013 Act. However, the general direction of the intellectual property Bill announced today seems to be sensible.

For all that, for all my talk of welcoming certain measures and for all its rhetoric about improving competitiveness, the Queen’s Speech seems to do very little to encourage enterprise, innovation or entrepreneurialism. Given the fact that our competitors are doing more in that field, not less, the Queen’s Speech is a huge lost opportunity, which in the fierce global economic race we can ill afford to miss.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hughes]

There are all sorts of reasons. The hon. Gentleman must know that the last quarter has just been on the right side of zero. Growth has been small but positive. We avoided the triple-dip recession that people were saying was likely, given the terrible winter and the dreadful weather we had. The answer is that there has been a combination of failure.

The banks failed the economy at the end of the last Labour Administration. They were not sufficiently dealt with or regulated by that Administration, and they still have not got into a position where they are lending our constituents and small businesses in the right places the money to enable them to invest. Every single colleague around the House tells tales, rightly, of how difficult it is; people come to see us and tell us that they do not get the investment.

We have not been selling enough around the world, which is one of the avenues by which we must earn our way. That is why the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Business Secretary and others have been out and about, going not just to our traditional trading partners but to the large, developing partners—Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, India, China—to develop our trade. That is why we are working very hard to get an EU-USA free trade agreement, to deliver growth.

The answer to the question is that the economy has been faulty as a result of a combination of historic and more recent factors, but the Government are seeking to do as many things as they can. Last year, the green investment bank was another initiative to get growth going in an economy in which the Energy Bill this year is likely to assist in the creation of up to 250,000 new jobs in green energy. That is really valuable and important. The hon. Member for Hartlepool called for a Bill to set up another form of investment bank. The Government have, as he knows, a plan for further investment lending to companies as well as the green investment bank, and that is welcome.

So jobs are up; apprenticeships are hugely up. The state pension is significantly up—higher than at any stage since Lloyd George introduced it. The income tax threshold is significantly up, from £6,500 more or less when we started, to nearly £9,500 this year, and next year to £10,000 before anyone pays any tax. Inflation is still low. Interest rates are very low, and that is hugely important for people with mortgages and businesses borrowing. Crime is at its lowest level for many years. Those are significant achievements, and I think we should be proud of that. It shows that many of the things that the Government have done over three years are working.

[Mr Iain Wright]

Given what the right hon. Gentleman has said about those “significant achievements”, do people in his constituency think they are better off now than three years ago? Does he think that living standards are rising?

[Simon Hughes]

No; many people’s living standards are not better than they were three years ago, but we have been dealing with what my right hon. Friend the Business Secretary calls the greatest economic heart attack we have had in his lifetime and mine. My constituents have seen, over several months, unemployment come down—not consistently, but there have been months when it has come down and youth unemployment has come down. They have seen an economy that is picking up. The construction industry in my patch is powering ahead; although I appreciate that it is not the same around the country.

But what my constituents have not yet seen, and what the Government are trying to deal with, is the inequitable opportunity and an inequitable distribution of the available wealth. One thing that the Liberal Democrats need to continue to argue for in the coalition, and which I hope the coalition will buy, is that we need to deal with the inequity in Britain whereby there are still people a mile and half from this building, in the City, and in Canary Wharf a bit further away, who have bonuses that are completely without justification, while there are many people on the minimum wage and struggling to get work. We need a redistribution of wealth—I am not ashamed to call for that—and a redistribution of the profits, and we need the banking industry to understand that it has to pay itself reasonable wages. The European Union has the right idea, in my view—not a view shared by the Chancellor—in seeking to make sure that we limit the bonuses given to people across the financial sector so that they do not, in effect, take far more than they deserve.