Economy and Jobs

Debate between John McDonnell and David Drew

Thursday 29th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

The hon. Gentleman currently chairs the Public and Commercial Services Union parliamentary group, which I previously chaired, and we have campaigned on that point for seven years. If we cannot staff up the unit that is meant to carry out inspections and ensure compliance with the minimum wage, how can we expect the minimum wage to be paid fairly?

Let us look at the desperate state of our public services. How can anyone in government take pride in the fact that spending per pupil is set to fall by 8% by 2019-20? More than 46,000 children’s operations have been cancelled over the past four years. Police numbers have been cut by 20,000 since 2010, firefighter posts have been cut by 10,000, and 20,000 soldiers have been cut from the Army. A record of pride? I don’t think so.

So we have a Government who cannot feed their people, house their people adequately or protect their children and older people from poverty. They cannot ensure that when people go to work they earn enough to live on, and they cannot maintain our basic public services. They are a Government who do not deserve to remain in office.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the shadow Chancellor agree that it is a scandal that local authorities that have retained their council stock—the Government and the Opposition agree, post-Grenfell, that we need more council housing—are faced with having to pay back money because of the bizarre and byzantine housing finance rules, even though they have built houses? Does he agree that we need to get rid of that scandal as soon as we possibly can?

[John McDonnell]

The housing situation in our country is in dire straits because of the lack of building. That is why in the popular Labour party manifesto, we promised to build 1 million new homes—half of those to be council houses—and to free up local governments to perform their traditional role of putting roofs over the heads of local people.

All this suffering by ordinary people under austerity, so as to protect the rich and the corporations, has been for what? By the Government’s own metrics it has significantly failed. The Government promised that the deficit would be eradicated in five years, but now it will be 15 years at best. They have added £700 billion to the national debt, leaving £1.7 trillion of debt for future generations. In the first quarter of this year growth fell to 0.2%, and inflation has now increased to 2.9%. Last year saw the slowest rate of business investment since 2009. Unsecured debt per household will reach a record high this year.