Public Services

Jonathan Reynolds Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a privilege to follow the distinguished hon. Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) and to be able to say a little in response to the Queen’s Speech on behalf of my constituents in Stalybridge and Hyde, Mossley, Dukinfield and Longdendale.

If I were to begin by saying something positive about the Queen’s Speech, I would say that it is good to have the opportunity to discuss some issues other than Brexit. Brexit is clearly very important, but in itself it does not solve any of the pressing issues in my constituency, and the neglect by Government of other issues in the last few years is now evident. But that is where my praise ends because, as I listened to the Queen’s Speech, I did not feel that this was a serious, considered programme for the future of the nation. It felt like something between a publicity stunt and a response to what people in focus groups list as all the things they dislike about the Conservative party. The last Conservative Government were notorious for being pretty soft on crime and reducing the number of police officers to unsafe levels, so this Queen’s Speech says, “We will recruit a load of police officers, even though there is no basic guarantee we will go back to the levels we had before we first came to power.”

The last Conservative Government presided over some of the most miserly funding settlements for the NHS—since 2010, there have been very low funding settlements by historical standards—so this Queen’s Speech says there will be 40 new hospitals, although apparently the number now is barely six.

Many Conservative MPs have mentioned school funding today. The figures for my constituency are very depressing and I have just had an email telling me that 83% of schools in the country will have their funding reduced, effectively, next year, so I am afraid I am not convinced on that point either. I feel that the British people will see through all this.

Of course I recognise, and am pleased, that there seems now to be a recognition that austerity must end and that it has caused real damage, pain and suffering, but I do not just want the Government throwing money around to address their brand negatives; instead, I want it spent on the things that will make a difference, and for me that has to start with in-work poverty.

The number of people in Britain in work who are in poverty is a disgrace. I want us to spend money on some of the burdens that working families have difficulty with, whether it is school meals, uniform costs, prescription charges or in much bigger terms the social care bill when you need support as an older person. If we have money to spend, we should spend it there, and then I want to see us target resources on measures that will raise investment, productivity and wages.

That means acknowledging that the Government’s strategy of cutting corporation tax to the bone to stimulate private investment has not worked. Other countries with considerably higher rates of corporation tax than us have much higher levels of corporate investment. What we have now is a tax base that is simply insufficient to meet the kind of public services that people in this country expect, because we need to invest big money in some areas. For me there is no bigger area than transport. We need new rail infrastructure and subsidies to build urban transport networks that are comparable with what this capital city has—every morning my constituents tweet me pictures of the overcrowding on the railways—but instead of that every day what we get is a daily menu of possible cuts to HS2.

Although I appreciate this is probably unlikely from a Conservative Government, I also think that there has to be an acknowledgment that, while the gig economy has many upsides, for too many people it makes them vulnerable because they have a fundamental lack of power and control over their own working lives. Whenever we on this side of the House propose an increase in employment rights, we are accused of wanting to return to the winter of discontent in the 1970s. I was not yet born during the winter of discontent, but I was a member of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee when we did an inquiry into the working practices at Sports Direct, and I will never forget the evidence we received in confidence from members of staff: workers not being paid the minimum wage, one woman who had to give birth in the warehouse toilets, and young female employees explaining that they were promised full-time employment contracts but only in exchange for sexual favours.

I am not in favour of a return to the winter of discontent, but I am in favour of making sure that such employment practices have no place in modern Britain, and that requires fair and independent representation in the workplace.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

This is one of the most shocking abuses I have heard of late. People in my constituency are losing 15 minutes of salary every time they have to leave the floor to go to the toilet. One of my constituents has been deeply distressed as a cleaner because, on emptying a bin, she found it was full of faeces and urine; people were using the wastebaskets rather than lose salary. That has to stop.

[Jonathan Reynolds]

That is completely unacceptable and I would hope there was agreement across all sides of political opinion on that, but the question I have is: will this post-Brexit free trade world deliver the employment rights that will combat that? At the minute I am, frankly, unconvinced.

I would also like to have seen some action in this Queen’s Speech on absolute poverty. I have no problem with universal credit simplifying the benefits system and I want a system with a taper mechanism that makes it cost-effective for people to increase their working hours if they can do so, but the five-week wait is pushing too many people into a level of destitution that is unconscionable by any reasonable standard. The charities say so, the Churches say so and, frankly, most of us say so, too, and I do not know what more evidence or arguments the Government need to see or hear before they are willing to treat people with the minimum level of dignity they should reasonably be able to expect.

Due to time constraints, I want to make just one more point about something that is in the Queen’s Speech: the proposal to introduce photo ID to cast a vote in elections, which risks being an injustice of significant proportions. It has already been said in this debate that 3.5 million people do not have access to photo ID, and if it is restricted to a passport or driving licence the figure is 11 million.

[Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

If in any such scheme local ID could be produced at no cost to the voter, would that not allay the hon. Gentleman’s concerns?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

It would, to be fair, go some way to doing that: if the Government were willing to say, “If there is a new standard of proof to be able to cast your vote, we will provide that free of charge to every citizen in this country before this measure comes into effect,” that would allay some of my concerns, but of course the cost of that would be significant and I have not heard anything mentioned that suggests that is possible.

[Steve McCabe]

It would be a national ID scheme.

[Jonathan Reynolds]

It would in effect be a national ID scheme, as my hon. Friend says, and that in itself has other implications. That is why the Electoral Reform Society has called this measure “dangerous, misguided and undemocratic.”

Occurrences of election fraud are, thankfully, very rare in the UK and, where they have occurred, they have been disproportionately Conservative party scandals, but that is not the point: the fact is that no one should be seeking to import the voter suppression tactics of the Republican party in the US. Yet it seems that, having failed to gerrymander the constituency boundaries in the last Parliament, this time the Conservatives are going to go straight to gerrymandering the electorate directly. I say to all fair-minded people: please think again.

It is uncertain whether this Queen’s Speech actually has a majority in Parliament. It is very hard to predict the future and perhaps we will know more about where Brexit is at after this weekend’s sitting, but I believe this country is crying out for a more ambitious agenda, one that rebuilds the basic sense of equity and national solidarity that all successful nations need. That is what my constituents tell me they want and that would truly be a Queen’s Speech worthy of the name.