Better Jobs and a Fair Deal at Work

Ian Paisley Excerpts

Wednesday 12th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

I thank my hon. Friend for his warm words, and I agree with him. This is the task that this Government will meet head-on, and it is right that it needs to be an ambitious goal that we set ourselves to meet. Like him, I share an eagerness to get on with it and keep going—and he will know, like me, that we are already doing it. Indeed, we are making the most of our new-found Brexit freedoms to launch freeports, for example, creating jobs and growth in innovative new industries in places such as Teesside, which both he and I know very well.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

Will the Chancellor give way?

[Rishi Sunak]

I must now make some progress, because I am running out of time.

The Queen’s Speech gives people the skills they need to get good jobs and progress in their careers. Right now, 11 million adults in this country, nearly a third of our entire workforce, do not have a level 3 qualification. The Prime Minister’s lifetime skills guarantee will change that, giving every adult flexible access to fully-funded, high-quality education throughout their lives, and this will have a transformational impact on people’s lives and livelihoods.

This Government believe that we should value equally every path to a good career, not just a degree, so the Queen’s Speech provides landmark reforms to post-16 education and training. As I have mentioned, we have doubled to £3,000 the incentive payments for employers to hire new apprentices, and we are reshaping the system around the needs of employers so that people can get training in the skills we know the economy will need now and into the future.

This Queen’s Speech delivers two critical pieces of Treasury-sponsored legislation. The National Insurance Contributions Bill will introduce new reliefs to encourage employers to employ veterans, to incentivise regeneration and job creation in freeports, and to provide relief on NHS Test and Trace payments. The public service pensions and judicial offices Bill will make sure that dedicated public servants are fairly rewarded for their service, while making sure that the system is affordable and sustainable into the future.

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[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

Northern Ireland benefits from being part of the United Kingdom. Its people benefit and its economy benefits—they are part of the fifth-largest economy in the world. By contrast, after 100 years of independence and almost 50 years of membership of the European Union, the Republic of Ireland remains the poorest region of the British Isles. It has no national health service, 11% of its employees are in the public sector, and the rest of its economy is essentially a tax haven model, which washes through huge amounts of money for US corporations.

By contrast, Northern Ireland has significantly higher employment levels and a 20% higher standard of living than the Republic of Ireland, and of course we have the benefits of being part of the welfare state. Yes, we have a large public sector, which has cushioned us considerably during the pandemic, and which could not be supported by the Republic of Ireland if there was any move whatsoever towards a united Ireland. Therefore, Northern Ireland’s economic and social future rests surely and squarely with the Union. So, for all the talk of Irish unity, the stubborn fact remains that the Republic of Ireland could not afford Irish unity because the Union offers the people of Northern Ireland so much more.

It is important to say that during this year of our centenary because of the amount of attacks on the very existence of our country. Earlier today we had a question in this House about the state of Israel and Hamas wishing to wipe it off the map. As a member of a small state, I get that—I understand that—because there is clearly an agenda to abuse Northern Ireland by saying it should not really exist. Well, I am proud it exists, and I am proud that this Queen’s Speech will help us continue to grow our economy as part of this Union. It is important to say that.

However, the first and second quarters of this year have created significant challenges for Northern Ireland. One of the issues was dealing with the pandemic, which was well beyond the Government’s control, but the second issue is, of course, the Northern Ireland protocol, which unfortunately has blighted business opportunity for the first two quarters of this year.

I welcome Lord Frost’s comments earlier this week that the protocol is not sustainable, but once again we need more than just words. We have had lots of words. The Prime Minister told businesses they could “bin” the protocol; well, they can’t. The Secretary of State told us it would be light touch; it isn’t. We are now being told it is not sustainable. Well, if that is the case, I and my country would like to see actions over the unsustainable protocol. It needs to be put away, to put businesses out of their misery in Northern Ireland. I urge the Government to invoke article 16 and make sure we can move on from the societal and economic hardship that has been caused single-handedly by that protocol. I hope we can do that and do it fast. The people and parties who want to keep the protocol for a political points-scoring exercise while businesses suffer only seek to prove that Northern Ireland is somehow different, without realising that it is that difference that prevents the normalisation of both politics and our economy.

I hope we can build on the promises in this Queen’s Speech, and I hope we can build on the bus building promises. The Government have an awful lot to do to meet the predicted 4,000 buses to be built during this Parliament, so they really need to get a move on.

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[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood) when he is talking about his work on the all-party parliamentary beer group, of which I am a proud member, but less of that for now.

I welcome the Government’s commitment to ban conversion therapy. I hope that that legislation will sail through the House, as long as the Government get it right. I also give a cautious welcome to the draft Online Safety Bill, for which we have been calling for many years. I just hope that the Government avoid their usual failing of caving in to the demands of foreign big tech companies.

I am extremely worried about the Government’s proposals to introduce a requirement for photographic voter ID. Let us call it what it is: it is voter suppression. It is straight out of the Trump playbook. It is sinister and authoritarian, and it will be opposed in this House.

[Ian Paisley]

I understand some of the hostility about this, but it was a Labour Government who imposed photographic voter ID on Northern Ireland, and it has actually increased voter turnout and reduced fraud. Let us not scare-tactic people out of their democratic franchise.

[Christian Matheson]

It was introduced in Northern Ireland because there was a specific issue, which the hon. Gentleman obviously knows about, concerning another political party, where there was clear, identified fraud. In the 2019 election, 49 million votes were cast and there was one conviction for fraud. This is not a problem and it does not require a solution.

There is too much left out of this Queen’s Speech. There is nothing on cladding for fire safety victims and those who are trapped in housing that is now worthless. There is very little on leasehold. It is good to see my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), my constituency neighbour, in his place. His leading work on this issue, along with others including the Father of the House, the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), has been outstanding, and I pay tribute to him. Instead, we get a planning free-for-all, which Government Members have referred to, that will cause chaos locally and, frankly, line the pockets of big Tory donors. There is nothing on energy-neutral building standards and changes to building regs to make housing built to tougher environmental standards. In fact, as we have heard, apart from rolling over the Environment Bill, there is very little on environmentalism and a green recovery.

There is nothing in the Queen’s Speech for local government, which has been at the forefront of the community pandemic response. The Government have chopped £9 billion off social care and local government has had to pick up that tab. I say to Ministers that they must not use local government to pay off the debts from the pandemic that will need to be paid off. In Cheshire West and Chester, we have lost £337 million in the past decade. Just recently, the Government cut 20% from the money to fix potholes, which is one of the Government’s big schemes.

We know the modus operandi of this Government when it comes to cuts. They cut the budget of the local council or the public authority—police or fire, for example—and then, when the local authority is unable to deliver the services, they criticise the local authority for having to reduce the quality of service. If that public authority has to increase council tax, the police precept or whatever it is as a result, they criticise it for putting up council tax to make good on the cuts the Tory Government have imposed. It is dishonest, and there is a dishonesty that runs through this Government.

Yesterday, the Prime Minister said from the Dispatch Box:

“We understand this crucial point: we find flair, imagination, enthusiasm and genius distributed evenly throughout this country, while opportunity is not. We mean to change that, because it is not just a moral and social disgrace, but an economic mistake and a criminal waste of talent.”—[Official Report, 11 May 2021; Vol. 695, c. 18.]

He is absolutely right, but the Conservatives have been in power for 11 years and the Prime Minister has been a member of the Government for most of that time. Since I have been here, they change their leaders every couple of years like some kind of tinpot regime and try to pretend that all of a sudden they are a new Government. But just as a snake will change its skin, slither away and is still the same snake, it is still the same Conservatives in charge trying to deny everything they caused in the first place. It is dishonest. They cannot abrogate their own failings. They should stop blaming everyone else for their own failings.

Finally, let me turn to fire and rehire, which has been a scandal of this pandemic. If employers came to trade unions and said, “We’ve got a problem. The bottom has fallen out of our business. Let’s work together and solve this together,” then trade unions would have gone for that. Instead, we see this awful practice. One of my hon. Friends spoke earlier about British Gas. Loyal and skilled employees with 15 to 20 years of service are being fired and rehired on worse conditions. There is nothing in the Queen’s Speech on that. The Minister responsible himself called it “bully boy tactics”, and he is absolutely right, but now is the time in the pandemic when it is becoming so common that legislation must be brought forward to ban this dreadful practice. If I am fortunate enough to win the private Members’ Bill ballot, I will bring forward legislation. I hope the Government will back me.