Budget Resolutions
Debate between Kevin Foster and Angus Brendan MacNeil
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian C. Lucas). I felt as though I were being given a history lesson rather than engaging in a Budget day debate. However, one part of the history was missing: the years between 1997 and 2010, when the hon. Gentleman sat on this side of the House as part of a Labour Government. If certain things were so bad, the Labour Government would surely have rushed to change them, but, of course, they did not.
As for the idea that there are “only three banks”, the hon. Gentleman might want to pay a visit to a branch of the Nationwide Building Society some time soon, or even visit the Coventry Building Society, which is not so well known throughout the country, but which now has customers in virtually every postcode district. It is also proud to say that it was the largest lender not to lose money on the sub-prime market.
However, it was not the history lesson on which I was planning to comment. I was planning to comment on what has been said so far in the Budget debate, and to welcome what we heard from the Chancellor earlier today. In particular, I note the growth projections. Given some of the prophecies of doom that we were hearing from all sides this time last year, when we were being told what might happen if we voted to leave the European Union, the rise in those projections is welcome.
Kevin Foster
I hear a heckle. It is true that we have not left yet, but most businesses do not look at what is happening immediately; they look at what will happen in a year’s time, or in two or three years’ time. The fact that businesses are still prepared to invest—and we have seen major investments coming into this country—shows that there is a confidence in the economy that has not been shaken by the vote, which is very positive.
Kevin Foster
I am sure that, as ever, the hon. Gentleman was seeking to be helpful with that intervention. Let us be blunt: the root of our economy is its size and overall growth. That is what we base our public services and funding on, and what we build our whole economic structure on, and it is strange to say that that is negative. Actually, we should be looking at things such as the living wage, and the fact that we are implementing and targeting tax changes for those on lower salaries; many people in my constituency of Torbay will benefit from that. I can understand, however, why there might be some uncertainty about the future among employers north of the border, particularly given the SNP Government’s intention to try to rip Scotland away from the single market of the United Kingdom. If anything is going to take growth down for Scottish companies, that will. [Interruption.] Well, we hear the shouting—
Mr MacNeil
Canada exports 75% of its products to the United States of America. Is the hon. Gentleman arguing that a country should be united, with the same Government, with its chief export destination? That logic will ultimately lead to one global Government, as all countries will have to join with the country they are majorly exporting to. The hon. Gentleman is promoting a fallacy—a Tory fallacy, obviously.
Kevin Foster
It is interesting to hear the example of Canada; of course, there is a part of Canada called Quebec that rightly rejected nationalist arguments in two referendums, and I hope there will be a parallel situation in Scotland if the SNP is daft enough to call another referendum.
I say this about international trade and how we do well: I know the hon. Gentleman will be greatly looking forward to working as Chair of the International Trade Committee and as part of the United Kingdom to make sure we get the best deal we can out of Brexit. We will all look forward to receiving his Committee’s reports.
Kevin Foster
I will not give way again, because I have already given way twice in the first two minutes of my speech.
The Chancellor made a joke about spreadsheets and his nickname of “Spreadsheet Phil,” but what I quite liked were the tables, and in particular chart 1.2 showing the consistent reduction in unemployment. That again shows one thing that we have always known about Conservative Governments: we find unemployment a lot higher than it was when we left office, and then proceed to reduce it again while in office, giving more people the stability of an income, and making a difference.
To focus on the key issues for my constituency, I greatly welcome the additional funding for social care. I am a member of the Public Accounts Committee, and we published our report on the NHS and social care last week. There is clearly a need for a long-term debate about how we manage the future liabilities and pressures that will come on those services.
We debated what that means for the future of local government in the Local Government Finance Bill Committee. All of us want to know that when we or our loved ones reach our 70s, 80s or 90s—one of the greatest successes of the NHS is that more people are doing so—the social care will be there. [Interruption.] I will not be cruel enough to point to one particular Member who was making these comments—[Interruption.]—although I will mention the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West (Rob Marris), who is chuntering from a sedentary position. To return to the subject, it is right that the Chancellor recognised that challenge, particularly in communities such as Torbay; we do need to make sure the funding is in place.
I would, however, disagree with some of the comments about having a national care service, because I want to see an integrated care service. If we were setting up the NHS and social care system today, we would not set it up with a split between local government and the national health service for services which we would all refer to as healthcare services.
I particularly welcome the measures on business rates. The discount for pubs is welcome, but I am keen that we must not penalise those who have been most successful. When we look at how we value these things in future, moving away from purely property taxes, we must not hit those who have been very successful, and there has been a debate about that in relation to pubs. The revaluation is broadly welcome, however. Torbay was not served well at all by the revaluation in 2008; our high street was clobbered with rates that are totally beyond likely rental incomes, particularly given that landlords end up offering discount “pay the business rates” deals rather than rent in order to get units occupied. The revaluations will see much of that corrected.
Looking ahead to the future, it is easy to say, “Let’s consider a fundamental change,” but as those of us on the Public Accounts Committee who had the pleasure of taking part in the inquiry into Google know, there is an issue with how we make sure that taxation follows the modern economy. It is much easier to say that a physical building on a high street or an industrial estate should pay x amount of tax, but that is more of a challenge with regard to websites based on overseas servers that allow companies to route their orders and billing and invoicing operations more easily. I hope we can have a sensible and positive cross-party debate about that.
I have two grammar schools in my constituency and one just outside it, so I welcome the support for them. The funding formula presents a challenge, in that a lower percentage of pupils in Torbay grammar schools are on free school meals than those in other secondary schools in the area. The plans to encourage them to increase that rate are welcome, and the three headteachers are absolutely committed to doing that. It is unlikely that we will see a new grammar school in the bay—that has always been clear—but Government support for them is welcome and positive.
Although I felt that going to university was the right choice for me, it is vital that we up-value technical education, so I was pleased to hear about the proposed T-levels. Tomorrow night I will be at the South Devon College apprenticeship awards, presenting awards to those who have done an apprenticeship. It is good to think about how we can get them more recognised. As has been said, they are solid qualifications that an employer can look at and understand in the same way as a degree, an A-level and a GCSE. They also have appropriate rigour. Some people think that a technical qualification is easier, but it is not. When I first spoke about encouraging degree-level apprenticeships, someone wrote on my Facebook page, “Is that like a YTS?” That just showed a complete lack of knowledge about how demanding a top-end apprenticeship is compared with quite a lot of university degrees. It is absolutely vital that people know what is available.
The Chancellor has put forward a solid and effective plan. I welcome the fact that we will continue to meet our manifesto pledges on allowances, particularly the basic allowance on income tax. I also welcome the overall tenor of the Budget: it is a positive statement about Britain’s economic future and many people will want to get behind it. We have only to look at this morning’s opinion polls to see that people have confidence in this Conservative Government and no confidence in the alternatives.
UK's Nuclear Deterrent
Debate between Kevin Foster and Angus Brendan MacNeil(7 years, 9 months ago)
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Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan), even though I disagree with the points that he made.
This is an interesting debate for me, because when I was growing up my father worked in the Devonport dockyard on the refits of the Vanguard-class submarines. I remember the campaign back in the early 1990s to get that refit work done in Plymouth rather than having it end up in Rosyth, and we can still see the hole that exists there.
Mr MacNeil
Given that we have heard in the past that it was too dangerous to put the nukes in Devonport, as a keenster on the nukes, would the hon. Gentleman have nuclear weapons based in Devonport?
Kevin Foster
Before the proposal for independence was rejected in the referendum, there was a debate about whether we would have the nuclear weapons in the south-west, and I think most people said, “Yes, of course we will.” Other MPs representing the south-west have spoken in the debate, and we would certainly welcome the jobs and investment involved.
Let us be clear about the choice before the House today. It is whether to have a deterrent. I have listened to some of the alternatives that have been put forward today, and I think the hon. Member for Birmingham, Hall Green (Mr Godsiff) would find it useful to visit Coulport and see what is actually there. That might help his knowledge. It has been suggested that we might put something on an Astute-class submarine. I think it is safe to say that no nation, seeing a cruise missile coming towards it, is going to wait until the thing detonates to find out whether it is a conventional missile or a nuclear missile. That proposal would also involve far more risk to the submariners, because they would have to get much closer to the country that we were deterring. The operations would also have to become more sneaky. People might think that a submarine might want to act sneakily in order to remain hidden, but that is not the case. The idea behind a ballistic missile capability is that it assures people that we can provide a credible deterrent and a credible response to a nuclear attack, either on ourselves or on our allies, but also that it provides other nations with an assurance that we are not planning a sneaky first strike. If we had the kind of technology that some have suggested, it would simply undermine the situation and provoke worry and fear in others.
It is also worth looking at what we have done to reduce our own nuclear weapons. The RAF no longer has strategic bombers, and we have also removed the weapons from Royal Navy shipping. I think that we are the only one of the declared nuclear powers that has nuclear weapons on one platform only. That is the real way to reduce the nuclear threat, not through some gesture towards disarmament.
Is the nuclear deterrent still needed? To answer that question, we need to look at the alternatives. One of the alternatives put forward is to rely on article V of the north Atlantic treaty—that is what the SNP proposes. NATO is not just a conventional alliance but a nuclear one, yet the SNP would wish to join it. I find it interesting that the SNP wants a nuclear-weapons-free Scotland, yet when I enjoyed all 670 pages of “Scotland’s Future”—the White Paper for independence—I found that it contained the classic comment that the SNP would still allow NATO vessels to visit without confirming or denying whether they carried nuclear weapons. In effect, the SNP’s own version of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” A big ballistic submarine could still pull up, but that would be all right, because the SNP would not have asked the question.