The Growth Plan

Debate between Kwasi Kwarteng and David Rutley

Friday 23rd September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

The focus of the growth plan is on growth—on getting our economy moving and getting to 2.5%. That is the lens through which I am looking at this problem. I am also happy to remind the hon. Gentleman that we are protecting the most vulnerable, through the energy intervention and other forms of support.

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

Growth sectors such as pharmaceuticals will no doubt welcome my right hon. Friend’s steps on corporation tax. Does he agree that supply-side reforms are also required, with the Department of Health and Social Care and BEIS working with greater urgency to approve and adopt clinically proven medical treatments to more fully realise the potential of the UK life sciences sector?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I am pleased to confirm to my hon. Friend that that is exactly what we need to be driving forward. We need to be accelerating the process so that we can deliver outcomes more quickly. I pay tribute to the fact that he and I have been talking about these issues for many years now. I am pleased that he remains as focused on growth as he was many years ago.

Ivory Bill

Debate between Kwasi Kwarteng and David Rutley

3rd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 4th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[David Rutley]

That is another excellent point. DEFRA officials work very closely with their counterparts in other countries. The conference in October will be a perfect opportunity to bring parties together. If further co-operation is required they will be ready to do that, but there is important work to do in the UK as well.

The Government want to ensure that if in future we decide to extend the scope of the ban, any legislation which applies to ivory-bearing animals or species is robust, proportionate, defensible, enforceable and, importantly, compliant with the European convention on human rights. We will therefore ensure that we gather and analyse evidence on the market for ivory from the other species. We therefore think that it is vital to consult on any proposals and gather views and evidence from stakeholders and the public. That would support an analysis that will focus on the impact of the measures—

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

Could my hon. Friend give the House any indication on timing for the consultation process?

Debate on the Address

Debate between Kwasi Kwarteng and David Rutley

Wednesday 27th May 2015 Commons Chamber

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans) and an honour to have been able to hear at least part of the maiden speech by the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara)—I congratulate him on having the courage to make it so early in the Parliament. All of us who entered the House in the previous Parliament realise how big a challenge that can be. I congratulate the Scottish National party on the support it has provided him with today, and also on its election victories.

I would also like to welcome new Members on the Government Benches, because we had a good election. I would like to pay tribute to many of them, but particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Suella Fernandes), whom I have known for many years. When we first met she was a little smaller than she is today—[Interruption.] I should explain that she was about five at the time; I am not commenting on any other dimension of her being. She was much shorter, smaller and a child—I think I had better stop there and move on. I welcome her to the House and am sure that she will do a fantastic job.

It is wonderful to see so many new Members. I think that it inspires us to realise why we are here: to represent our constituents. It is an honour to have been re-elected in Macclesfield with an increased majority and an increased share of the vote. I will do everything I can to honour my commitment to the people of Macclesfield. Like all other Members, I will do it with complete conviction regardless of the political affiliations of those I represent.

There was also an excellent vote of trust in the Conservative party in local government, as was true in many parts of the country. I am excited to work with local councillors in Macclesfield as we move into a new era of devolution, with the transfer of power to Manchester and increased demand, as today’s debate has shown, to see a greater transfer of powers to the counties as well. Government Members are absolutely committed to ensuring that the northern powerhouse is a real success. Macclesfield is famous for being a powerhouse for silk back in the Victorian days, and now we want to weave new economic threads in the life sciences and various other fields to help take the northern powerhouse further forward. I am pleased that the cities and local government devolution Bill provides us with a vehicle to help that succeed and flourish in the years ahead.

I am an optimist. In fact, in the previous Parliament the former Member for Edinburgh East, Sheila Gilmore, accused me of being over-optimistic—Panglossian, even—in my approach. Well, I have to say that it was Conservative optimism what won it on 7 May. The positive agenda that we took forward appealed to large swathes of the country and helped us win an outright majority. I am pleased that the Queen’s Speech today set out more reasons to be positive as we take our important agenda further forward. The Eeyores and sirens we heard in the previous Parliament, and whom we have heard today, have been proved wrong.

I think that it is really important that the Labour party takes time to reflect on why the electorate did not give it the support that it hoped and expected to get. The Labour party was not trusted with the economy. Moreover, it was not trusted with the task of spreading opportunity to other people and improving social mobility. It goes beyond economic credibility into those other areas. Of course, we have since heard several Labour Members talk about aspiration. It is sad that that is focused on their own leadership aspirations, when in fact they should be thinking about the aspirations of the people they represent. That accusation could not be made against the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann), or indeed the hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound), but there are others who I think should be looking at their own agenda and at what they should be doing as a party.

I welcome the Government’s commitment to backing those people who want to work hard and get on in life. That is what our election campaign was about. As the Prime Minister tweeted on 30 April:

“We’re the party of the first chance, the first job, first pay cheque, the first home”.

He could have gone even further; I am sure that the issue was the restriction to 140 characters. We are the Government of the first-time entrepreneur, the first-time employer and the first-time exporter. During the last Parliament, I held a debate on encouraging more entrepreneurs to become first-time employers. Like other Members in the free enterprise group and elsewhere, I have written about the importance of social mobility, which Conservatives feel absolutely passionately about. We need to break down the barriers to first-time businesses, first-time employers and first-time jobs. I am delighted that the Prime Minister has given that issue such a clear focus in the Queen’s Speech.

I hope that when the Bills on enterprise and schools are published and debated, we will see more detail on what can be done to make it easier for those with no family history in enterprise.

[Kwasi Kwarteng (Spelthorne) (Con)]

What are my hon. Friend’s views about the job creation in his constituency and across Britain that we have seen in the past five years and that, hopefully, we will continue to see in the course of this Government?

[David Rutley]

In Macclesfield alone, unemployment dropped by 50% in the past year, which is a huge step. That has come from an unrelenting focus on what I call the four “e”s in an enterprise economy. The first is entrepreneurs; we have a massive over-index of entrepreneurs and the self-employed in Macclesfield. Then there are employers, exporters and, of course, employees—we must help each of them take the first step on their journey, encouraging them so that they see real success in their careers.

It is important to focus on the fact that more people are moving into self-employment. That tremendous change has taken place in just the past 12 or 14 years. Some 4.5 million people are now involved in self-employment: 14.5% of the total workforce, up from 12% at the start of this century. Anybody who has read the work of the Royal Society of Arts and Demos recently will realise that the trend is here to stay.

The pull of self-employment—the flexibility, freedom and dignity—helps make it an attractive option. In the past, some might have said that the push factors, such as redundancy under Labour’s great recession, were decisive. That has changed now; the issue is about the pull factors. We need to encourage more people to take the step. We should give them the information and support that they need, so that they want to become not only self-employed but first-time employers, helping out with first-time apprenticeships as well. I hope that under the enterprise Bill and other legislation more work will be done to support the self-employed in this country.

We need to ensure that enterprise is about what happens not only in this country, but Europe—particularly the European Union. Reform of the EU is not simply in the UK’s national interest, although that is our first concern, but in the interests of the EU as a whole. The world is changing and the EU must change to embrace it. There are clear opportunities and real challenges in the global economy in the 21st century. There are also compelling organic reasons for the need for reform. Many more eurozone countries want to pull together in ever closer union; I would not want to countenance that, but they are moving in that direction. States such as the UK that are rightly very much outside the eurozone need to make sure that the relationship between countries in and outside the eurozone is better defined. This is an important time for the debate about the renegotiation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I am very pleased to have been enlightened. I thought that it might have something to do with Yorkshire, but, although my knowledge of British geography is poor, I understand that Scotland is slightly further to the north.

I welcome the Scottish nationalists. The election result has clearly been fantastic for them, and it has done a signal service to us, because it has severely depleted the number of Labour Members of Parliament. I look forward to hearing the contributions of members of the other “party opposite” during the current Parliament.

I think that, during this Parliament, we should focus on the economic question. The deficit, to which I referred at the beginning of my speech, is still £90 billion. That is an awful lot of money, and it means that we, as a country, are borrowing nearly £2 billion a week. What was said by some of the other parties during the election period was an exercise in complete fantasy. It was as if the deficit did not exist. None of the Opposition parties addressed the fact that we must reduce Government spending over a Parliament, and I think that, ultimately, that was responsible for the Conservative majority and victory. As I said earlier, it was clear that one party was going to adopt a mature and balanced approach to deficit reduction. As far as I could see, all the other parties had their heads firmly in the sand, and were not addressing the big question.

[David Rutley]

My hon. Friend is making an impassioned speech. Did he find on the doorstep, as I did in Macclesfield, that people were genuinely anxious for debt to be reduced because they believed that, if we did not get to grips with it, the debt would be passed on to future generations—to their children and grandchildren? I think that that is what helped us. Does my hon. Friend agree?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I found many things on the doorsteps in Spelthorne, where people spoke passionately about a range of matters. However, my hon. Friend is right. The issue of the deficit—the fact that, if we continue to build up debts, our children and grandchildren will have to pay them off, or at least service them by paying interest through taxation—was widely understood in my constituency, and I think that it contributed largely to the increased majority that I, along with many other colleagues, won in the election. It was remarkable to see Conservative majorities of, in some cases, 20,000 or 25,000, not only in the south-east but throughout the west country—where the Conservatives performed very well—and even in the midlands, where a number of incumbent Labour MPs lost their seats. I am sure that pollsters, historians, and other academics and experts will view that as an extraordinary result, and I think that it marks a shift in the political dynamics of the country. Of course, Scotland had its own result, which was remarkable by any standards.

The Economy

Debate between Kwasi Kwarteng and David Rutley

Tuesday 11th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng (Spelthorne) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. You have not been in the Chair for the whole of the afternoon, but I am pleased to see you there now.

Clearly, we have stated our positions at the beginning of this debate. The Labour Opposition have spoken eloquently about the need for growth and Government Members have commented on the mess in our public finances that we inherited in 2010. The gravity of the situation in 2010 should not be underestimated: our deficit to GDP ratio in 2010 was higher than it had ever been in peacetime conditions. That was a function of probably the worst management of public finances that this country ever had the misfortunate to live under.

I am very pleased to follow the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling), who served at the tail end of that Administration as Chancellor of the Exchequer. To use a cricketing metaphor, he was very much like the night-watchman who is sent in when the team has collapsed to 70-8 and the light is pretty dim. He did well in trying to steady the ship, but we have to look at the damage that had been caused in the public finances before he took over his post and at what the Labour Administration did not only from 1997, but in particular from 2001 to 2007, during which time they ran a deficit in each consecutive year for seven or eight years before the crisis happened. No academic textbook and no economic school of thought thinks that it is a good idea to run a deficit when the economy is growing. In 2004, the economy was growing at 3%; it was going at full rate, jobs were being created and investment was taking place. What was the deficit then? It was 3%; even under the Maastricht criteria, the previous Government would have failed. No Keynesian in his right mind, and certainly not John Maynard Keynes himself, would have ever contemplated running a deficit of more than 3% when the economy was growing at 3%.

[David Rutley]

Will my hon. Friend confirm that even former Prime Minister Tony Blair felt, on reflection, that Labour was spending too much when it was in office?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

Absolutely. The former Prime Minister has said that on a number of occasions. I have been on record as saying that the first Labour Administration between 1997 and 2001 was, I freely admit, a very conservative fiscal Government. As the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West well knows, during those four years the budget was never in deficit. We ran two years of surpluses and the budget in the other years was balanced. It was only after 2001 that the disaster occurred, that the wheels spun off the car and we suffered under a profligate traditional Labour tax and spend regime. I use the phrase “tax and spend” very gingerly, because the taxation never covered the spending.

That was precisely the reason why the Government ran those deficits—to pay for their projects, to pay for greater spending. They were required to borrow money. I remember that in 2001 one of their favourite columnists, Polly Toynbee, said that Labour would have to tax more in order to spend the money. At least that was an honest position. She was suggesting that Labour should try and balance the budget at a higher level of spending. I and my colleagues might want to balance the budget at a lower rate of spending, but both Polly Toynbee and those on the Government Benches would accept is that it is a road to disaster to borrow yet more money in order to spend on grand projects or whatever utopia the Government want to build in this country. We now have the consequence of this recklessness—of Government Ministers at the time spending more and more money and running 3% deficits.