Business and the Economy

Lilian Greenwood Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Lorely Burt]

There is a lot of due diligence to be done so that we do not waste taxpayers’ money.

Opposition Members might agree that we have to be fair to employers and to the work force. Liberal Democrats seek a balance to ensure that staff can achieve their full potential and have a home life as well as a work life. Unlike some in the Chamber, we are not in the pockets of the unions, but seek to work with the unions and with management to achieve fair outcomes and fair rewards. We will extend the right to request flexible working, and entitlement to parental leave will be shared. All parties bemoan the fact that we often lose female talent when the babies come along; now there will be no point in employers discriminating in recruitment against women of child-bearing age. Both men and women will be entitled to parental leave. That is one small step for equality.

However, Liberal Democrats would say that in some areas the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of the employee. Some employees take advantage of, and try to play, the employment tribunal system, which has become clogged up with cases waiting to be heard, costing time and money and causing stress for all. New legislation will put a greater emphasis on conciliation and give employers longer to give underperforming employees a chance, before the spectre of the unfair dismissal tribunal looms.

Clearing away unnecessary regulation is a big job, and we have already started. We will reform the competition regime by creating a powerful new body to enable the speedier prosecution of anti-competitive behaviour. We are also taking action on executive pay. If there is one thing that really bugs the British worker, it is seeing overpaid executives getting even more for even poorer performance, so we will give shareholders the power to exercise greater control over executive pay through binding votes.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Lorely Burt]

I am sorry, but I cannot give way again.

I think that all hon. Members are looking forward to the Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill, which at last offers some fairness for producers at the mercy of the powerful supermarkets. Then there is the green investment bank. It has £3 billion at its disposal for investment, but Liberal Democrats would like it to have greater powers to act like a real bank, investing and borrowing as well as lending, and we are working on that.

All that will be to no avail if we cannot sort out the biggest problem still faced by business today: access to finance. Project Merlin has had some success, with £195 billion lent by banks to business, but we need more. Liberal Democrats will be doing all we can on policies to widen the range of banks and lower the almost insurmountable barriers to entry for new banks. We want to introduce more peer-to-peer lending, such as the funding circle, and would like to examine the feasibility of community banks.

Perhaps the most important piece of legislation of all is one that will stop a repetition of the banking crisis that resulted in the house of cards that the previous Government allowed the finance industry to build tumbling down. The Business Secretary foresaw it all: he warned Labour that light-touch regulation, over-optimistic ratios, complex financial instruments that few could understand, banks that were too big to fail and banks whose casino and retail arms were wedded would bring disaster, but not even he could have imagined the scale of the economic crisis that gripped the UK, America, Europe and large parts of the world and made them much worse off. The crisis is taking longer to sort out than anyone hoped.

We need only look across the continent at Greece, Spain and Italy to see what would have happened had we not gripped the situation there and then. Too far, too fast? It would have been “too little too late” if the Labour party had had its way. We would be paying treble the current interest rates, with much higher unemployment and much higher bond yields, as those countries have today. We are sorting it. The little blue and yellow tractor is taking the strain and pulling us out of the mire that the Labour party helped to create.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

I want to speak about my constituents’ priorities, which are unfortunately not addressed in the Queen’s Speech.

Nottingham city council and NHS Nottingham City jointly commission the Nottingham citizens survey, an annual survey of city residents which gathers views on a variety of subjects including the things that make people believe that Nottingham is a good place in which to live—such as its excellent public transport system and NHS services—and the improvements that are most needed, which include more crime-cutting, the provision of more activities for teenagers, and better job prospects for residents.

It is interesting to note that job creation made it into the top five items only this year, but it is hardly surprising. Thanks to the Government’s failed economic strategy, the UK is now experiencing a double-dip recession. More than 2.6 million people are out of work, 3,500 of my constituents are stuck on out-of-work benefits, and long-term youth unemployment in my constituency has risen by 133% in the last 12 months. Sadly, the Government will not address those priorities over the coming year.

At a time when my constituents want to feel safer in their homes and on the streets, the Government are continuing to cut funding for our police force. Last week, like many other Members, I met police officers who had come to protest about the Government’s plans. All those officers—from neighbourhood policing teams, from our city centre response team, and from intelligence and surveillance units—had front-line roles, and they had a simple message to deliver. They described the cuts as catastrophic, and told me that they no longer had the resources with which to do their job properly. How can our police forces continue to cut crime if they do not have the resources that they need?

Opportunities for young people are also a cause for concern among my constituents. That is not surprising, given cuts in youth services, the loss of work experience opportunities and careers guidance, the scrapping of the education maintenance allowance, the tripling of tuition fees, the undermining of vocational qualifications, and the sharp rise in youth unemployment. What hope does the Queen’s Speech offer young people in my constituency? None.

I recently attended a round table at Nottingham Forest football club with business leaders and representatives of the voluntary sector and local councils to discuss skills and opportunities for young people. While there was a real collective will to work together in our city to give young people a hand up, there was also frustration about the Government’s failure to provide the support that would enable them to get on, help them to gain the skills that they needed, and create the economic conditions that would provide jobs for them to do.

As for the need to boost business and create jobs, what does the Queen’s Speech offer? Nothing. When the Government talk of reforming employment rights, they mean making it easier to sack people. At a time when families are already facing a cost-of-living crisis and consumer confidence is at its lowest level for a generation, creating further insecurity is exactly the wrong thing to do. It was not the UK’s system of employment law that sent our economy into recession; it was the Government’s decision to cut public spending too far and too fast. It is this Government’s choices that have landed hundreds of people in my constituency on the dole; it has been this Government’s choice to freeze wages, and now to threaten cuts to real incomes in the public sector by hiking up pension contributions and introducing regional pay; and it is this Government who have raised VAT to 20%, allowed train companies to hike up rail fares and cut support for the bus industry, leading to fare rises, all taking money out of my constituents’ pockets and undermining the retail sector, which is so important to Nottingham’s local economy.

So what have the Government done? Well, Nottingham has an enterprise zone, but it has still to deliver a single new job. We have yet to receive a penny from the regional growth fund, and the Government have scrapped our successful regional development agency. No wonder businesses have slammed the Queen’s Speech for failing to offer an industrial strategy or real measures to boost growth, and we are still waiting for the Government’s previous measures to make the slightest bit of difference.

So here are some questions that people in Nottingham would like the Minister to answer. How will the Government’s programmes support our city’s economic growth plan? How will they ensure that young people in Nottingham have real opportunities to obtain skills and jobs? How will the Government help boost investment in our city’s vital retail sector? How will they ensure our enterprise zone actually delivers new jobs? How will they support the growth sectors in our city’s economy—health and life sciences, digital content and low carbon—to help us attract high-skill jobs in the future? Will the Minister’s Government support investment in the midland main line for both line speed improvements and electrification? Will he ensure that Nottingham benefits from the improved connectivity offered by high-speed rail? Will he support the development of high-speed broadband, which is needed to boost our digital media sector? Finally, will he listen to the views of Nottingham citizens, and prioritise the needs of the many people I represent who are suffering the effects of a recession made in Downing street and this Government’s other disastrous policy choices?

[Several hon. Members]

rose—