Amendment of the Law

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I will try to be as quick as I can, but I want to highlight some of our concerns. In response to the right hon. Member for Bath (Mr Foster), who flung out a challenge about where the economic crisis started, I am sure he knows that it started in the United States. People will remember Fannie Mae and Lehman Brothers, for a start. How he thought the then Labour Government could tell the American Government what to do beats me. He should also remember that George W. Bush, the outgoing American President, who would be a Conservative in our terms, pumped $260 billion into the American economy.

I remind the right hon. Gentleman of that, but more important to me is the effect of this Budget and previous Budgets on the west midlands, where one in 10 people are unemployed. There has not been any coherent effort or real strategy from the Government to do anything about the restoration of manufacturing. If the Government point to what is happening at Jaguar, let me make it clear that that was well and truly under way under the Labour Government. At that time, we had a stimulus and we also had a scrappage scheme. That set Jaguar on the road and enabled it to recover. Incidentally, Jaguar is not doing very well in this country, but its exports are doing very well, as are those of other motor car companies. That is not a result of anything that the Government are doing here.

The Government’s new idea of driving down regional pay is a concern to many west midlands colleagues. I always thought it was a good thing to lift people up, not to take people down. The measure reflects the Government’s thinking on economic policy and the regions. At the same time, they are cutting public sector salaries and they are cutting pensions. Salaries have already been cut by inflation and workers will be hit very hard. The Government are also reducing the money going to local businesses, which rely on pay increases to revamp the local economy. From the perspective of Coventry and the west midlands, there is no change in the policies of this Government. The policies pursued by their predecessors in the 1980s have been dressed up with a different veneer, but it is the same old approach.

Police and fire services in the west midlands have been cut. It is difficult to get information about what the police and the Government mean by outsourcing. As I have always understood it, outsourcing means buying in goods and services. Leaving the police aside, does that mean that other services are to be privatised? We cannot get a clear answer on that. Over the next four or five years we are going to have a 25% cut in the fire brigade. That raises questions about the quality of services that will be delivered.

A large number of families in my constituency will be hit hard. More than 12,000 families claiming child benefit will either lose it or be affected by the freeze. There are 360 families who will lose their tax credits. Tax credits cut, child benefit taken away, and fuel duty rising—before the general election, this was the Government who were going to do something about fuel duty. Instead, they have started to increase it, which may affect the purchasing power of pensioners and families up and down the land. That means, in effect, that their standard of living will be drastically cut as the increase feeds through to food prices. The latest gimmick is VAT on hot food. Will that be extended in next year’s Budget to VAT on clothes and other goods that people buy? I am worried and chary when the Government start to go down that road.

In Coventry, we saw an 87% increase in long-term youth unemployment last year, and slapping VAT on regular purchases sends out a very sinister signal indeed. I have tried to cut my speech down as much as I can, so there are some issues that I shall not raise. The granny tax has been well documented, and I shall not go into it again tonight. In the west midlands, there are 390,000 income tax payers over the age of 65. Whatever did the pensioners do to the Tory party—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order.