The Economy

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Wednesday 26th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

This Government have cut the deficit by over a third, so we will not take any lectures from the Opposition or the hon. Lady about that—notwithstanding the fact that when in office Labour failed to prepare our young to compete against the brightest and the best when it came to skills, jobs and education, and that was just the tip of the iceberg.

Since 2010, this Government have worked hard to turn this situation around. By working to our long-term economic plan, we have seen the deficit cut by over a third, income tax cut for over 25 million people, benefits capped to reward work, and 1.7 million more people in employment, while over 2 million more private sector jobs have been created and employment is the highest on record. We have created 1 million apprenticeships. The state pension has increased. More children are in good and outstanding schools. Over 50,000 families now have a home thanks to our Help to Buy policy. This is a good start, but we are the first to recognise that the job is far from finished.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I gather the Minister is visiting my constituency tomorrow, although her office was not prepared to tell us what she will be doing there; perhaps she can tell me now. May I urge her to meet some of my constituents, and go around some of the estates and find out what life is really like for those people, because it bears very little resemblance to what she is telling us now?

[Priti Patel]

I am looking forward to coming to the hon. Lady’s constituency tomorrow.

I have made it perfectly clear that we have made a good start but the job is not yet finished. The UK currently has the highest rate of growth in the G7; it is over twice that of Germany.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

We could spend a lot of time trading statistics about the economic recovery, the debt, the deficit and how much more the Chancellor is borrowing at this point in the economic cycle than he said he would. Those things are important but, frankly, they mean little to my constituents, who are tired of the blame game and of hearing the Government constantly saying that everything is the previous Government’s fault, given that they have been in charge for four and a half years. What matters to my constituents is their own jobs and living standards, and economic security for them and their families. It is about whether they can heat their homes, put food on the table, keep their cars running or afford the bus into the town centre to get to work, and keep a roof over their heads. The limited recovery that we have seen, which is barely bouncing along the bottom, is not being felt in east Bristol. That is why I asked the Minister, when she is in east Bristol tomorrow, whether she would be prepared to come and see some of that reality on the ground.

The unemployment figures seem to be moving in the right direction, which is good news. Labour has always had the ambition to move people from welfare into work as a route out of poverty. The right is fond of trying to caricature and misrepresent Labour and our voters as being wedded to welfare dependency. That is simply not the case. Labour has always been the party for workers; welfare for those who need it as an essential safety net and a support for those making the transition to work, and work for those who can and who, despite the misrepresentation, in 99% of cases desperately want to work. But under this Government we have seen a rising phenomenon of in-work poverty; a problem that is masked by the superficially encouraging trend in employment figures, but is undeniably there and is a feature of many people’s lives.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has just published a report on this year’s statistics. It says that it

“shows a real change in UK society over a relatively short period of time. We are concerned that the economic recovery we face will still have so many people living in poverty.”

It is estimated that about 13 million people in the UK are in poverty. Poverty among working age adults without children is at a record high, but about 40% of working age adults in poverty are working. So it is not simply an issue about moving people from welfare to work; it is about making work pay. Among children in poverty, most—more than 2 million—are in a working family.

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. Is not this why we need a more concerted effort on the living wage? She will know that during this Government’s lifespan, the number of people paid less than the living wage has increased by 1.5 million, and that puts enormous pressure not just on those families and individuals but on the social security system.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. Nearly 20% of working people in Bristol East earn less than the living wage. According to the Joseph Rowntree Trust, two thirds of people who moved from employment into work in the last year are paid below the living wage. That is why in Bristol we have been running a living wage campaign. We have finally managed to persuade the mayor of Bristol to introduce that at the council level, and we want to encourage the organisations that do business with the council, with procurement contracts and so on, also to do that, and for the private sector to follow suit. That is incredibly important.

[Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making an important speech about Bristol, and I was interested in her comments on the living wage. Will she accept that the living wage is equally important for seats such as mine in outer London, where those who travel into central London have recently been hit by a 38% increase in the cost of the tube as a result of the Mayor of London’s recent decision?

[Kerry McCarthy]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. I will come in a moment to some of the living costs that are hitting people’s pockets hard. In Bristol, First Bus announced this month that the price of a day rider ticket would increase by 10%. That may not seem a huge amount, but when people are squeezed to the last penny and are struggling to afford to go to work and for work to pay rather than being on benefits, such transport fare rises make a huge difference to their weekly outgoings. That is another part of the jigsaw puzzle of how people are struggling to make ends meet.

My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) mentioned zero-hours contracts, and constituents have come to see me recently about the uncertainty in which those place them. Usually people would be added to the payroll in the middle of the month and paid at the end of the month, but if people do not know until the end of the month how many hours will have been worked, they end up being paid a month in arrears. I had a woman come to see me the other day who had started work in September just too late to get on the payroll for that month. She could not be paid for the full month in October because she would not know until the end of the month how much she had worked, so she would not be paid until the end of November. Not only did she have to cover the period without an income, but it was impossible to plan ahead. It was impossible to claim in-work housing benefit and difficult to asses what she was entitled to in child care tax credits and other tax credits. It meant that she had to employ a childminder without knowing whether she needed that or could look after her child herself.

My hon. Friend mentioned season tickets. How does someone know whether it is worth buying a monthly season ticket to travel into work without knowing how many hours they will be working? All these things add up to make life incredibly difficult for people on zero-hours contracts. It is exploitation and it has to stop. Workers are being underpaid and underemployed. They are being treated as just another inanimate resource rather than the human beings that they are.

Some 1.4 million contracts do not guarantee a minimum number of hours and 1.4 million adults are in part-time work because they cannot find full-time work. In the last year, not a single employer has been prosecuted for paying below the minimum wage. The last successful prosecution was in February 2013, which was only the second prosecution under the coalition Government. Last year, the TUC estimated that 350,000 workers were paid less than the minimum wage. Again, that has to stop. These laws are there to protect workers and to ensure that work pays, and they are simply not being enforced.

The Joseph Rowntree report

“highlights the way the housing market has had a negative impact on people in poverty. There is not enough social housing”—

as we all know—

“which means more people in poverty are living with insecure tenancies in the private rented sector. The number of private landlord repossessions is now higher than the number of mortgage repossessions.”

The number of working people claiming housing benefit is rising and the amount that they need to claim is increasing too. Last year, the south-west of England saw the biggest increases in rent, with a rise of nearly 5%. Bristol is second only to London in yearly house price growth, with average prices in our city increasing by more than 13% last year. On top of that are the increases in transport costs. Between 2010 and 2013 energy prices for households rose by 37%.

Finally, there is food poverty, which Madam Deputy Speaker will know is an issue dear to my heart. In the UK, more than 4 million people are affected by food poverty. UK food prices increased by 43% in the eight years to July 2013. We all know that more people are having to use food banks. According to the Oxfam and Church Action on Poverty report “Below the breadline”, the three main food aid providers gave more than 20 million meals in 2013-14, a 54% increase on the year before. Problems with the social security system, such as delays and sanctions, continue to be the biggest overall trigger for food bank use. About 45% of people who use the service do so because of problems with the benefit system. Despite repeated questioning of various Ministers, including even the Prime Minister, the Government refuse to accept that it is the failings of their own welfare system that are driving people to the food banks in poverty.

Another emerging trend is the 22% of Trussell Trust food bank users referred because of low income—compared with last year 51,000 more people were referred owing to low income. Again, this is in-work poverty. These are not people who are playing the system, who, as one Minister said, are making use of the food banks simply because they are there so that they can spend their money on beer and bingo. These people are doing their best to try to get by in work but simply cannot afford to feed their families without resorting to food banks.

My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) has outlined some of the measures that Labour would take in terms of taxation and trying to raise incomes to address some of these problems, but above all it is a question of priorities. The Government have completely the wrong priorities—giving tax cuts to millionaires rather than tax cuts and support for people at the lower end of the income scale who are the ones who really need it. Cutting the 50p tax rate did nothing to help the people in my constituency who are struggling to get by. I urge the Government to rethink this because their priorities at this time are simply wrong.