Better Jobs and a Fair Deal at Work

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Wednesday 12th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

I had not planned to speak today, but last Thursday the good people of the west midlands decided that they needed me fighting their corner from the cockpit of the west midlands, rather than from the office of the Mayor, so this afternoon I plan to crack on with a word for the Mayor and a word for Ministers.

To the Mayor, Andy Street, I offer my warmest congratulations. In a year of tragedy, he, too, was hit by personal tragedy, but despite that he continued to work and campaign with grace under pressure. Grace under pressure is what Ernest Hemingway called courage, so I congratulate the Mayor both on his conquest and his courage. He has now earned the right to lead and, I hope, also heard the duty to listen. Forty-six per cent. of my region voted Labour. Labour controls the three great cities of the west midlands, along with the borough of Sandwell.

We also now have challenges, which are multiplying. Healthy life expectancy was falling in our region before covid hit. We have the worst youth unemployment in the country. We have the worst unemployment in the country. Exports were falling £2 billion a year before covid struck. That is why we need the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his colleagues in Cabinet to work with the Mayor and Labour leaders in the region to now back some of the most popular ideas that we proposed, which were to lead green Britain and to bring back industry. Once upon a time, our region was the workshop of the world. In this century, we have the potential and the ambition to become the green workshop of a greener planet. There is a win-win to be had with the Government’s 10-point plan, but there are five action points that we need the Minister to drive through in the weeks and months ahead.

First, as the shadow Chancellor, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), said in a brilliant speech, we have to get the gigafactory built at Coventry airport. There are 16 gigafactories already up and running or being built in Europe. In jeopardy are 110,000 jobs in the automotive industry. The window is closing fast and, Chancellor, we need to act quickly.

Secondly, we have to devolve the budget for retrofitting. The green homes grant is what is known in Treasury parlance as “a shambles”. We have to devolve at least £4 billion to the west midlands so that we can make sure that everybody not only has a roof over their head, but has a home that is warm and a home that is green. In so doing, we could create hundreds of thousands of jobs for people without work.

Thirdly, we need a new deal on skills. Apprenticeship numbers have collapsed by 40%. We will have to retrain a generation or two of workers, but at the moment we have the ridiculous situation of the Department for Education handing unspent apprenticeship budget back to the Treasury. We have budgets such as the national skills fund and the national prosperity fund all being dictated from Whitehall. Just hand the whole thing over to the west midlands and trust the people of the west midlands to implement these plans properly.

Fourthly, we need to devolve energy powers, because there are currently firms in the Black Country that have power cuts in the middle of the day because our energy system is so outdated. Fifthly, we need a new deal on transport, because there is a £1.1 billion black hole in our transport spending proposals. Those are the five necessary steps for which the Chancellor should be taking personal responsibility if he is serious about levelling up not simply the country but regions like the West Midlands.

Finally, I wish to make an unashamed special plea for the people of east Birmingham, the part of the country I serve, where five generations of my family have lived and worked. It is the place with the worst unemployment in Britain. I want to work with the Mayor, Labour leaders and the Chancellor to drive through the proper gateway around the new hospital for Arden Cross, because we know that health policy is economic policy. We need the new east Birmingham tramline—all 13 km of it—finally to be built. We need to retrain workers for an ambitious programme of retrofitting. High Speed 2 needs to be instructed to hand back the land at the second biggest industrial site, at the heart of three constituencies with high unemployment, so that we can crack on with building jobs. Crucially, we need the Chancellor’s support for a new towns fund based around the Bordesley action plan.

East Birmingham is a place the size of Nottingham—it could be the fifth or sixth biggest city in the country. Not all fairy tales begin with the words “Once upon a time”; some fairy tales begin with the words “When I am elected”. What we now need from the Government, the Mayor and Ministers is action, not words.

[Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)]

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne). We do not agree on everything and I have spent the past two years working hard for his opponent, Andy Street, who was elected last Thursday, but I thank him for what he said and for what was a decent and fair campaign in the West Midlands that dignified democracy and did all the main candidates considerable credit.

First, I am a fan of the mayoral system and think that Andy Street will be best placed to secure the right economic judgments and the jobs, training and levelling up. As has been said already in this debate, levelling up is not just geographical but generational. This is first young generation since the world war one that does not believe it will be better off than its parents’ generation. That is an important issue. The devolution of power—which is, of course, part of the answer to the constitutional questions about Scotland, Ireland and the United Kingdom—is very important and it works well in the West Midlands. I strongly encourage the Chancellor to give Andy Street every possible support in the work that he is doing.

In particular, in the royal town of Sutton Coldfield we would like levelling-up funds. I hope very much that we will be in the second tranche, because public spending is critical to securing successful development, sometimes in places that are ostensibly quite well off but need that spending if they are to succeed. Areas such as mine have to go through Birmingham City Council and there are inevitably political difficulties and differences of emphasis. I urge the Treasury to consider that.

Secondly, on the 0.7% aid target, I very much hope that the Chancellor will have heard yesterday the words of the former Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May); the Father of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley); and others in the House. The Gracious Speech quite rightly calls for girls’ education, which is probably the most effective way of changing the world, but on girls’ education—the Prime Minister’s particular priority—we have seen a 25% cut, with funding set to fall from £789 million in 2019 to a projected £400 million this year. That is a very substantial cut. Funding for UNICEF, which looks after children and was assessed in the British Government’s multilateral aid review to be the best UN agency, has been cut back by 60%. These are very serious issues.

[Liam Byrne]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his kind words. Does he agree that at the G7 and later this year at COP26, Her Majesty’s Government would stand a far better chance of encouraging sign-up to the new International Development Association programme if, ahead of those important events, they were prepared to commit to the 0.7% target?

[Mr Mitchell]

The right hon. Gentleman knows very well my strong support for the 0.7%. The point that I am making is that the damage being done to Britain’s reputation, quite apart from the damage to the poorest people in the world, is very severe indeed. I worry that the Treasury does not fully appreciate these factors.

The Chancellor generously gave way to me earlier and I asked him whether he would consider reinstating the 0.7% once the economy reaches pre-covid levels. He said that the damage that was done might be too great for that. I hope very much that he will think about those words. He also mentioned that we have given £400 billion of taxpayers’ support—quite rightly and highly effectively, thanks to his successful stewardship—to our efforts to combat covid. On the cut that he has made to 0.5%, we are talking of 1% of that £400 billion, but the damage that this is doing to Britain’s reputation, quite apart from the damage it is doing to the poorest people in the world, is very savage indeed.

I therefore urge the Chancellor to announce as soon as he can that we will stand by our promise that we made just a year ago in the general election and by the promise that the British Government made on the floor of the General Assembly at the UN, and that we will no longer seek to balance the books on the backs of the poorest people in the world.

The third point that I wanted to make was mentioned in the Gracious Speech, and it is about social care. I am obviously disappointed that the Government have not yet set out quite how they wish to proceed on this matter, but it seems to me that this is a major and important reform that needs to be agreed by all parties. Like pensions legislation, it has a long tail. However, much of the work has already been done by Sir Andrew Dilnot. I hope that the Government will look carefully at those plans and decide whether they are able perhaps to tweak them, but to implement them.

In my constituency, we have big plans for the Royal Sutton Coldfield Cottage Hospital, but those plans require us to understand what the national social care priorities will be. I hope that this legislation will come forward, possibly with the assistance of my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt) and his experienced Select Committee, who might have a role in assisting the Government in refining those plans and aspirations.

The final point that I want to make is about assisted dying. I am the co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on choice at the end of life, and I know that there are very strong feelings in the House on this issue. I greatly respect those who completely disagree with me on the matter, not least since I have completely changed my own mind since I first entered the House many years ago.

Those of us who are supporting Dignity in Dying want a very tight and narrow change made to the law. We believe that this could be the great liberal reform of this Parliament; 84% of our constituents want to see this sort of reform introduced. Significant advances are being made in southern Ireland, Scotland, New Zealand, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Germany and Australia, so I ask that we as parliamentarians consider allowing our constituents who are terminally sick and within six months of dying to be able to exercise their own choices, and not be forced to endure a level of pain and indignity that they do not wish to suffer.