The Economy and Work

Justin Madders Excerpts

Thursday 26th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

We cannot talk about the Queen’s Speech unless we know what the alternative might look like. This is what the Labour party says about itself: it says the Labour party is becoming increasingly

“irrelevant to the…working people in the country.”

If we think Labour has learned any lessons, this is what has happened today. The leader of the Labour party has today appointed someone called Andrew Fisher as the head of policy for the Labour party. This is a man who campaigned against Labour candidates at the general election in Croydon. This is a man who took part in the 2010 student riots and boasted about breaking through police lines, scaring the police and hurling abuse at them. This is what his economic policy consists of: public ownership of all land in the country; nationalising all banks; and returning to a three-day week. This is the man who has just become the Labour party’s head of policy.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

It is interesting that the Chancellor is talking about Labour’s future when his own is so shrouded in uncertainty. On his own record, has debt as a percentage of GDP gone up or down since he became Chancellor?

[Mr Osborne]

An 11% budget deficit means the debt is added to every year. Until the deficit comes right down, we cannot get the debt down. That is what we are doing and why we want to avoid an 11% budget deficit.

Another sign of how the Labour party is changing is the motion it is asking us to vote on tonight. It contains an intriguing clause that relates to Scotland. It states that they

“regret the refusal of the Scottish Government to use its new tax powers to put an end to austerity in Scotland”.

That is code for Labour wanting to put up taxes in Scotland. If it does not want the Scottish Government to use their tax powers to put up taxes to put an end to austerity in Scotland, how does it propose to do it? Labour fought the election in Scotland proposing a 1p increase in the basic rate of income tax. That was the Scottish Labour party’s policy, which was so successful in that election. Here, the UK Labour party is putting that into a parliamentary motion and asking the Labour party to vote on it tonight. We have a report from the Labour party saying that it is irrelevant to working people; the head of policy wants to nationalise land and return to a three-day week; and the parliamentary Labour party will be voting tonight to increase the basic rate of income tax. That is the state of the Labour party today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

There is a growing army of people in this country for whom the economy is no longer working. They will have looked hopefully at the Government’s plans for the next year and found that there is nothing there for them. It is simply not good enough that we have a Prime Minister who is happy to sacrifice an entire parliamentary Session tinkering at the edges because he is too afraid of causing even more divisions in his own party. How much of what is in this agenda will even see the light of day anyway? This Government have made 24 U-turns in the past year alone. It is unprecedented to see a Government offer so little so soon into a new Parliament. Just a year after a general election, we have a zombie Government and a Prime Minister who cannot wait for it to be 28 days later.

Yet there are serious problems that need to be tackled now. For the first time in a decade, child poverty is rising under this Government. There has been a worrying increase in the number of children relying on food banks—up by 13% in my constituency in the past year alone. What was the Government’s response? They rebranded the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission by removing “Child Poverty” from its name, and attempted to remove the statutory duty to measure child poverty at all. The chair of the commission notably said that young people now face an “existential crisis”—a crisis that this Government seem determined to exacerbate.

What will our economy look like for the workers of tomorrow? The sad reality is that manufacturing in this country is in long-term decline, and I see nothing from the Government to rebalance the economy either on a sectoral or a geographic basis. In my constituency, economic growth is hampered by the lack of investment in key infrastructure projects such as the electrification of the Wrexham to Bidston train line or improvements to the M56 motorway, yet grandiose schemes continue to take shape elsewhere in the country. Getting better connectivity in my constituency is undoubtedly the key to unlocking growth, but we are told that any improvements to the M56 will not even be considered until the end of the decade, and there is currently nothing on the horizon to improve the rail line. People in parts of my constituency have no reliable access to public transport at all, yet Crossrail alone is earmarked to receive nine times more funding than all the rail projects from the north’s three regions combined.

What of the growing ranks of the self-employed? Julie Deane’s independent review for Government on self-employment appears to be gathering dust on the shelf. The review found that the number of self-employed in the UK is at an all-time high of 4.6 million, and that the number is growing and the trend set to continue. That group now represents 15% of the UK workforce, making a considerable contribution to the country’s economy.

The report makes a number of important recommendations and I want action to be taken on one in particular:

“Government should consider extending support to the self-employed in areas where there is discrepancy between support for the self-employed and support for employees.”

It also makes a recommendation with regard to those who are self-employed through necessity. There is no doubt that there are people who should not be classed as self-employed, but because they are classified as such they are offered no basic protection, such as the minimum wage. Urgent action needs to be taken on the reclassification of self-employment.

In conclusion, this has been a missed opportunity to tackle the inequalities that exist by region, gender, age and employment status.