Independent Living Fund

Debate between Jim Cunningham and Ian C. Lucas

Tuesday 9th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Ian C. Lucas]

That is absolutely the case. I will be pointing out that that is exactly what has happened in some cases.

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

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate, which is very timely in considering some of the hardships involved. The problem with devolving such funds to local authorities is, as the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) mentioned, the background of a lack of resources. Local authorities are placed in the situation of having to prioritise things, and that could inflict further hardship on people who rely on the fund. I have heard about many such cases.

[Ian C. Lucas]

Absolutely. It is about those difficult decisions that local authorities have to make to balance their budgets. If they are given a budget, the temptation is to do the best they can with their money but to trim, which can have a real and adverse impact on the individuals concerned.

My own efforts to get to the bottom of the financial position of disabled people who previously received money from the independent living fund have, I am afraid, met with little success to date. I tabled some parliamentary questions and the Department for Work and Pensions blandly said in response that there was no central record of the amounts received by individuals following the closure of the fund in England. If one was cynical, one could say that that was convenient but anyway, frankly, it is just not good enough.

My concern, to pick up on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham), is that we are in an era of declining local government budgets and are dealing with some of the most vulnerable people in our society, who were previously in receipt of funding from the independent living fund that enabled them to live their lives in the community. In many cases, however, they now receive less money than they did previously.

Zero-hours Contracts

Debate between Jim Cunningham and Ian C. Lucas

Wednesday 16th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

rose—

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

Does my hon. Friend agree that wages have been cut by about 5% in the three or four years since this Government came to power, and that it was the bankers who started it? More importantly, does he agree that zero-hours contracts are a throwback to the 1930s when miners and dockers had to turn up to work not knowing whether they would get a job. This is a modern veneer on an old, tried and tired system that was chucked out many years ago.

Aerospace Industry

Debate between Jim Cunningham and Ian C. Lucas

Wednesday 12th September 2012 Westminster Hall

[Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to appear under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Turner. This is the first opportunity that I have had to welcome the hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon) to his new position as Minister. His closeness to the Chancellor has clearly paid off—congratulations to him.

Aerospace has been much in the news of late, particularly with the ongoing debate on airport capacity in the United Kingdom. My immediate motivation in asking for the debate was that the discussion on airport capacity has largely excluded mention of the importance of the UK aerospace industry. I hope that deficiency will be addressed and remedied this afternoon. The UK aerospace industry is a great national success. We are the premier aerospace manufacturer in Europe and second only to the United States worldwide. We hold 17% of global market share, which generated £24.2 billion of UK revenue in 2011—75% of which was exports.

I have two fundamental points about our world position in aerospace. First, it has been very hard won. It is the result of long-term policy and investment decisions made by Governments of different political persuasions and by the sector itself over many years. Secondly, it is a valuable resource. Developed and developing economies are ambitious to eat into our market share. China and Russia see the importance of the aerospace industry and are anxious to move into it. Companies such as the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China and the United Aircraft Corporation are ambitious to take part in the expanding world market.

I have read “Reach for the skies”, and I must say that it is an excellent document. A civil servant once told me that he did not think that a change of Government made much difference; I would not quite go along with that. The document is impressive and a welcome template for the future of our aerospace industry—as a former aerospace Minister, I want to put that on record. It is persuasive, and in preparing for the debate, I spoke to a large number of representatives from the industry, and it is striking how widely supported it is by those to whom I spoke.

The document owes a lot to the model the previous Government established for the UK automotive industry. The establishment of the Automotive Council made the UK the investment destination of choice for the world automotive sector in the past five years, not only the past two. The recent announcements by Honda and BMW—trumpeted by the Prime Minister—followed earlier decisions on investment by Nissan, General Motors and Toyota, and are testament to the attraction of the UK.

The Automotive Council has been a success for important reasons. First, it has buy-in at a very senior level from both Government and industry. Secondly, it has shown a capacity to identify the policy required and to implement it. The most obvious example is the car scrappage scheme, which the Government implemented quickly and efficiently in response to a crisis in the automotive sector in 2008-09. The long-term consequences of the framework for developing effective policy are reflected in the recent inward investment decisions made by businesses based abroad.

Thirdly, there is a spirit of co-operation in the industry between management and the work force. I despair at some of the rhetoric that I hear from the Tory right about fire-at-will policies. Such policies will undermine successful employment relations in successful businesses and do nothing to improve skills development. I urge the Minister to make early visits to plants such as Halewood on Merseyside, where the close working relationship between trade unions and management is creating an effective workmanlike atmosphere in which real progress is being made.

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

Will the Minister extend his visit to Jaguar Land Rover, where the trade unions recently played a big part in securing more than 1,000 jobs in the west midlands? That was no mean feat for trade union co-operation.

[Ian Lucas]

Absolutely. That is an excellent point. In his new role, I am sure that the Minister will see such examples if he visits those factories and others across the country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Lucas]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He knows the great Brian Fleet from Airbus very well. The first time I met Brian in 2001, shortly after I was elected, I raised the issue of emissions, which took him slightly aback. He was able to give me a very good response on the work that Airbus was doing back then to combat the emissions challenge. That has come to fruition with the A330—an incredibly impressive piece of engineering—and that project has very ambitious goals for addressing the climate change challenge. As a nation, we have the advantage that we can produce more fuel-efficient, lighter aircraft than anyone else, and we should use that to increase the strength of our industry.

There is, however, a threat. I am advised that China has suspended orders of 45 A330s from Airbus, which amounts to $10 billion of business. That might have a real impact on Airbus jobs across Europe and also act as a barrier to environmental progress. The aerospace growth partnership must also work hard to identify the deficiencies that exist in the UK aerospace sector. The industry is open about those deficiencies and wants to work with the Government to address them.

Recent investment decisions—such as the one in June to shift the conversion of 14 A330 multi-role tanker transports from Cobham Aviation Services to Airbus Military in Madrid, costing about 300 UK jobs—have sent out warning signs. It is important to appreciate why that is happening. There was the real worry about the failure of the UK to win a £13 billion military aircraft contract with India, which the French press called

“the biggest arms contract of all time in the subcontinent”.

The UK lost that contract. I hope that the aerospace growth partnership will consider key decisions made by international investors when such investments happen and, if they go abroad, look at why they do so.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

Another issue that affects not only the aerospace industry but manufacturing in general is the law of unintended consequences. For example, the EU’s introduction of new financial regulations, even though we all think that they are necessary, can mean—I hope that the Minister will address this—that when companies, such as manufacturing ones, borrow from a bank to hedge against changes in exchange rates and so on, that can have a major impact because it affects their liquidity, which is a big concern in manufacturing at the moment.

[Ian Lucas]

Indeed it is. I am sure that the Minister will address that point in his closing remarks.

It is imperative to have the continuity that I hope we are seeing in aerospace policy taken forward from today. Above all, aerospace is a long-term business that needs long-term approaches from the Government and from industry. What is very encouraging about the aerospace growth partnership is that, as a Minister who had responsibility for aerospace in the previous Government, it has so much in it that I am pleased to support. I am, however, concerned about whether the Government as a whole buy into such an approach. Last weekend, the Minister said:

“Deregulation and privatisation worked before”.

Will he please clarify what particular deregulation he intends to apply to the aerospace industry, and how that will help Britain to compete?

One identified weakness in UK aerospace is access to finance. I take a contrary view to the UK Government about the banking deregulation of the late 1980s, which was one reason why British banking has been so unresponsive in its support for manufacturing companies. Banking deregulation since the late 1980s has reduced competition between banks, and the welcome recent expansion of challenger banks is a development that could assist supply-chain development in the UK. I am very pleased by what the Secretary of State has said about a business bank that would build on the initiatives of the green investment bank—it would also build on developing Labour policy—but such a bank must not just be a rebranding of existing funding mechanisms. Will the Minister say whether such a bank would be able to raise capital to support the aerospace industry?

Those are all Government initiatives that business has identified as necessary to address deficiencies in the banking market. That market, which has built up since the 1980s, has produced a situation in which businesses, especially smaller and medium-sized ones, have been starved of investment. The advantage of the aerospace growth partnership is that it has identified a defect in the industry and is working in partnership with the Government to address it. The last thing that the industry needs is a raft of soundbites born out of the dogmatic attachment to laissez-faire that the Secretary of State deprecated in the Chamber on Monday.

The industry also needs an effective Department that not only says the right things, but does them, too. Earlier, I mentioned the success of the car scrappage scheme, and in aerospace there has been repayable launch aid investment, which is a key factor in the continued success of the British aerospace industry. Contrast that with what the Public Accounts Committee said this week about the regional growth fund and the role of this Government—that

“the Committee was highly disappointed to find that so few final approvals had been given and so few projects had actually started. The Committee was particularly concerned that with £1.4 billion set aside for the Regional Growth Fund, of the £470 million so far paid out by Government, £364 million has been parked with intermediary bodies via endowments and a further £57 million paid to other intermediaries. Only £60 million has been spent on front-line projects.”