Trade Union Bill
Debate between Iain Wright and Ronnie Campbell(9 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Campbell
No, I will not.
I sometimes wonder what the shareholders think of those companies. Have they got an opt-out? Have the shareholders got an “in” or “out” vote in the same way as is proposed for the trade unions? Let us be fair. I appreciate that these companies get a lot of money off the Government. I have the figures with me here, showing that these companies are getting subsidies worth £93 billion a year from the taxpayer. We have heard the Tories talking about the taxpayers—the poor taxpayers—but I can tell the poor taxpayers that they are getting diddled. The big companies are getting that much tax off them.
I had a look at the House of Lords.
Unemployment (North-east)
Debate between Iain Wright and Ronnie Campbell(12 years, 5 months ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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Mr Wright
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Just further up the coast in Hartlepool, we have a thriving renewable energy industry with great firms, such as JDR Cable Systems and Heerema Hartlepool, which can supply a lot of offshore wind turbine components. However, investors are crying out for certainty from the Government. They need policy certainty to allow them to invest for the long term. The Government are failing spectacularly on that.
Mr Campbell
Of course, we have Narec. One of the things that disappointed me was that companies coming to the north-east to look at the Tyne and the port of Blyth—I am sure Hartlepool and the Tees, too—have moved up to Scotland because they were getting more encouragement, more money and more funding. That is no good to us, because we need them to come to the north-east. That policy needs to change.
Mr Wright
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I mentioned the fantastic facilities and the great companies we have in my constituency. Gamesa, a Spanish wind farm manufacturer, was hoping to relocate to the UK. It looked at Hartlepool, but chose to go to a Scottish port precisely for the reasons set out by my hon. Friend. We need to come to terms with that and ensure that we have a Government who are fighting our corner in the north-east. I am not convinced that we have that at the moment. We do not even have a Minister to respond to the debate. That is deeply worrying and shows contempt for the people of the north-east.
Despite the huge potential in my constituency and the wider north-east, the unemployment situation is bleak. I know that in his response, the Whip will cling to the argument, like a dying man to a life raft, that today’s statistics show that employment in the north-east has increased by 3,000 on the previous quarter, and that unemployment in my constituency is down by 15, month-on-month. That is welcome news, but I would never say, as the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change did on a recent visit to Newcastle, that the unemployment rate was not as bad as it could be, or as it seemed. Again, that is deeply insulting to everyone in the north-east who has lost a job and is desperately looking for work. It shows a Government who are grossly out of touch with what the people of the north-east want and need.