Debate on the Address

Debate between John Redwood and Michael McCann

Wednesday 4th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was right to say that what matters most in the year ahead is that the economic recovery, which is now under way and speeding up, needs to be supported and developed. The whole House agrees that we want people to be better off. Their living standards were cruelly squeezed in the great recession between 2008 and 2010, and in the early years of the coalition Government there was some further loss of real incomes. It now looks as if that is beginning to change, and the way it can best change is if there are more jobs so that more people move from being out of work and into work. Under my right hon. Friend’s important policy, it will always be better to be in work than to be out of work.

As the recovery extends, wages will go up and there will be more better jobs available. Very often the best way to get a well-paid job is to start off in a not so well-paid job and to work one’s way up. Many of us have had to do that, and it will be increasingly possible as the recovery gets under way. I see that Labour Front Benchers think that that is ridiculous or funny. They should live in the real world and understand that economic recovery is good news for people’s potential living standards. None of us thinks that living standards are anywhere near where we want them to be. We need to develop that recovery.

The Queen’s Speech was right to have a limited number of measures. We have a short year before us and it is often not possible to do things through legislation. We need things to develop as the marketplace has its way.

[Mr McCann]

Perhaps the reason for the wry smiles on people’s faces is that, although there are opportunities for people to start in low-paid jobs and to progress to higher-paid ones—many people have done that in their lifetimes—in the current economic situation many people who work in my constituency are lucky if they get a few hours a week on a zero-hours contract. It is unlikely, therefore, that they will be able to meet the aspiration of starting off in any paid job, never mind anything else. That is why Members on the Opposition Benches have wry smiles.

[Mr Redwood]

I think that is churlish. As the Prime Minister has pointed out, using constituency after constituency as examples, people are getting back into work. Some are not in the jobs they would like or for which they are being paid nearly enough, but the way to work on that problem is to get behind the economic recovery.

The Gracious Speech promoted three big things that are important in that connection. I am glad that Labour now agrees with many of us that the opportunity and right to own one’s own home is one of the most important things. Many people have that ambition and all too many of them are not able to afford it at the moment, so measures in the Gracious Speech and elsewhere that can help create more opportunities for young people in particular to buy their first home and for others to improve their home, or even to have their first home in later life, will be very welcome.

Part of the answer is sensible rates of building, which in turn produces opportunities. I visited a construction site in my constituency, where the Prime Minister will be pleased to hear a lot of houses are being built. Not all my constituents are delighted about that, but those seeking a home are. We are already seeing many more jobs for plumbers, bricklayers and carpenters, and wage rates are going up, because those people are in demand. That means that they have a better living standard after the period towards the end of the last decade and the earliest part of this decade in which their wage rates were very badly cut or squeezed.

Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Debate between John Redwood and Michael McCann

Monday 21st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Redwood]

The hon. Gentleman shouts “Where is the work?”, and of course we need more work. There are a lot of jobs on offer and we wish people well in applying for and getting them. I accept his implied point: in some parts of the country work is very scarce and we need economic policies that promote it. That is where lower taxes can be extremely helpful, and I urge my colleagues on the Front Bench to do more, if they can, because if more money is circulating in people’s pockets, bank accounts and purses, we will have more spending in the economy, which will help.

[Mr McCann]

The right hon. Gentleman’s idea of compassion is almost as convincing as his attempts at the Welsh national anthem. Does he concede that the Government have proposed to put benefits up by 1% because of his Government’s economic failures?

[Mr Redwood]

That is not my case at all. My case is that the Government inherited an impossible financial position: the public sector was spending and borrowing far too much and the economy had been performing very badly, with a collapse in living standards towards the end of Labour’s period in office that was the biggest that any of us in this House had witnessed in our lifetimes.

My right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench are trying desperately to come up with a series of policies that promote growth and restore a greater degree of normality. The Committee must recognise that the model that sustained growth from 1945 through to 2007 was comprehensively broken when Labour broke the banks and nationalised them. Until we sort that mess out, we will be dealing with very unpopular and difficult choices, whoever is in government.