Lindsay Hoyle
Main Page: Lindsay Hoyle (Speaker - Chorley)Department Debates - View all Lindsay Hoyle's debates with the HM Treasury
(10 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr MacNeil
People who say that Wales’ tax take is not equivalent to its expenditure are quite short-sighted. They fail to realise that they are living in the United Kingdom, the tax take of which has not matched expenditure since 2001, and is not likely to do so until 2018. This is a UK that records a deficit year after year, and has a debt that grows year after year.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. Obviously, Mr MacNeil will want to catch my eye to make his speech. I would not like him to use it all up now, so shorter interventions.
Jonathan Edwards
The point that is often forgotten is that despite the fact that London is one of the richest parts of the European Union and that communities such as mine in Carmarthenshire are at the bottom of the European wealth league, public expenditure per head is higher in London than it is in Wales—that is until very recent figures, which showed that Welsh spending had caught up. It is an incredible situation. I could not make this up.
The way in which monetary policy is formulated is also in severe need of reform. The week before last, I tabled an early-day motion calling for the Bank of England, or the Sterling Central Bank as it should be renamed, to be reformed better to take into account the economies of the UK when formulating monetary policy. The Governor should appear for scrutiny before the relevant Committees of the devolved legislatures, and meet with the devolved Governments, just as he has to with the Chancellor and the relevant Select Committees in Westminster.
In addition, the four external members of the Monetary Policy Committee should be nominated by the four nations, rather than hand-picked by the Chancellor of the day from the self-serving banking elite. [Interruption.] I am grateful to my friends from Northern Ireland who supported that early-day motion. There is an interesting story in the Western Mail about the need for the Welsh Government and the Northern Ireland Assembly to collaborate in the event of Scottish independence, be it a yes or a no vote, to ensure that we are not bombarded by Westminster. I hope that it might be a small step on the road to greater collaboration. Instead, what we have is a drive towards regional pay in the public sector, introduced by the previous UK Government and now developed by the coalition, which ghettoises low-wage economies outside London.
Labour has gone a step further, with a pledge to cap benefits on a geographical basis if it forms the next Government. That means that the unemployed and disabled in Wales will receive fewer payments than those who happen to live in London. Wales will have lost more than £1 billion during 2013-14 due to cuts in benefits. Those include payments that people in work receive to top-up low wages. That money would have been spent directly in the Welsh economy, but is now lost.
Rather than hitting the sick and unemployed with a stick and labelling them “scroungers”, why do we not embrace the active labour market programme employed so successfully in Sweden? It is an interventionist policy, in which the Swedish Government spend twice the amount per capita that is spent in the UK, creating tailored action plans. The programme has productivity and mental health benefits, so it ends up costing the taxpayer far less, as individuals are moved from social security into employment, and it eases considerable pressure on heath services.
It is increasingly clear that the Treasury has been re-infected with the British disease of basing growth on inflating house prices backed up with taxpayers’ cash—the Help to Buy policy. Far from rebalancing the economy, the Treasury is reintroducing boom and bust. Instead of delivering an equitable share of infrastructure investment across the UK, the Exchequer lavishes London with its grand design projects, be it the Olympics, Crossrail 1 and 2 or High Speed 2. UK Trade & Investment does not deliberately channel foreign direct investment into the poorest parts of the state, unlike its German counterpart, Germany Trade & Invest, which has a statutory duty to do so. Is it not sobering that despite the cold war and a physical wall between the east and west of its country, Germany today is far more balanced in geographical wealth than the UK?
Other places have shown the way. Germany is a federal republic, and the constitution requires fiscal equalisation among the Länder. That is a timeless requirement on all parts of government, and policies are required no matter the era. After reunification, when poorer East Germany joined developed West Germany, a massive effort meant a variety of measures were implemented, including financial transfers to poorer regions and industrial development policies.
The same could be done from Westminster, but it has not been. The alternative is the approach favoured by the London parties, whereby investment is concentrated in London and the south-east, and wealth inequalities continue to rise. It is clear that it is time for a change. Where are the voices in support of such a change? Who will turn back the tide of growing inequality? We know that we cannot rely on the Tories in London, so unashamed are they in their love of banking and the financial elite. Where is Labour? Why is it not standing up against inequality? Its amendment seeks to wreck our motion, absolving it of its role in creating rising inequality over the past decade, but it is bereft of policies.
Last week, some of Labour’s Wales-based Members defended the UK as a redistributive Union. They are deluding themselves, both about their record in government, as inequality rose during that period, and about the current situation. A closer examination of their voting record would suggest that their rhetoric is unsupported by action. I cite their abstention on the Welfare Reform Bill, which introduced the cruel and dreaded bedroom tax; their abstention on a cut in the top rate of income tax; and their refusal to support any measure to help to promote measures to provide the Welsh Government with the economic powers that they need to move the Welsh economy forward.
Caroline Lucas
For the benefit of us all and to enable a more enlightened debate, it would be helpful if the Government stopped pretending that the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown)was responsible for the collapse of Lehman Brothers. I blame the Labour party for a lot, but the idea that the current economic crisis was somehow caused by that is ludicrous. It was a global economic crisis and—
Stephen Crabb
I applaud the hon. Lady for her attempt to rescue the reputation of the former Chancellor of the Exchequer and Prime Minister. The truth is that the trajectory of public spending was already far too high, even before the banking collapse. There was a structural deficit that placed at risk the stability of the UK finances even before the banking collapse.
Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
While Opposition Members would like to absolve Gordon Brown of any guilt over the collapse of the banking system, only this morning in the Treasury Committee we were looking still at the debacle of the Co-operative bank—
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. When I say “Order” I expect the hon. Lady to sit down. The intervention is becoming a ramble, but more importantly we are talking about a Member of Parliament, not by name I hope.
Stephen Crabb
The choice still facing the United Kingdom is either to stick to the long-term economic plan to secure a better, more financially secure future for hard-working people and their families throughout the country, or to listen to the Opposition parties and the motion before us calling for a return to the days of spending and borrowing beyond our means, leaving our children and their children to pick up the bill.
Mr MacNeil
Devil the fear, as my old Irish mother would have said, devil the fear—no chance at all. I think the hon. Gentleman will see, as he pays more attention to the words to come, that the only Tories on this side of the House are probably the red Tories.
I listed the books I mentioned earlier for a reason. We must be aware that we do not have to reinvent the wheel to get people more opportunities and chances in life. Much of the research and science has been done, and the information has been gathered. Perhaps if we stopped, looked and learned from what is around us we would stop falling into the same traps that different generations have fallen into. Why should inequality matter—why is it important? Is it merely because a number of influential professors with Nobel prizes have written books? I would contend that they have put intellectual bones on our instinctive emotions of sympathy and empathy for our fellow people when we see them in situations that disturb us and we think are wrong. This is why nations have international aid budgets and why we give to charity. Sometimes it can be argued that the money is not always best directed, but nevertheless it is useful in the main. It shows an underlying striving for fairness and is a reproach against inequality within the broad set of people.
My first engagement with the idea of inequality was in the religious education class in Craigston primary school at the age of seven or eight, or perhaps even six, with Mrs MacCormick, God bless her. Looking back, I often think that we were really doing philosophy classes rather than RE classes. The example given was this: “If you’re given a box of chocolates at home would it be best to eat them all yourself or share them with your brothers and sisters who have not been given any chocolates?” I have to say that this scenario created a tension in my mind given my great love of chocolates. As you can see, Mr Deputy Speaker, I do not have so much a sweet tooth as a whole set of sweet teeth. I was caught in the tension between doing what was manifestly right and what I really wanted to do on another level. The consensus quickly grew in the class that it was best to share—even among six, seven or eight-year-olds. I am pleased to see you nodding in agreement, Mr Deputy Speaker.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
I assure the hon. Gentleman that I was not nodding in agreement; I was just wondering whether there were inequalities within the chocolates.
Mr MacNeil
Very good, Mr Deputy Speaker.
It is a slight concern of mine, however, that the captains of industry, as they get called, or the high-bonus City bankers or hedge fund managers, have never had that experience at a young age and have not engaged meaningfully with sympathy for the situation that others may be in as they gobble all the chocolates of productivity that our economy has produced, believing instead that they are self-made men and self-made women who worship their own creators.
Michael Connarty
I would be quite willing to brief the hon. Gentleman later about the technicalities of why the vote was not called on that particular night.
The hon. Gentleman is talking about a sociological analysis, but some people have moved on since then and done a socialist analysis. When society is divided into those who support capital and those who support labour, what happens is that the forces of those who have the power in the land—the landed classes—join with the merchant class to support capital, and they have succeeded in increasing the value of capital by driving down the cost of labour. That is why we have the inequality we have, and that is the structure of the society we—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. It is very good to have a lecture, but not during an intervention. If the hon. Gentleman wants to catch my eye later, I am sure he will be able to do so and give me a lecture then.
Mr MacNeil
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that interesting intervention. As an MP for a left-of-centre party—sadly, the hon. Member for North East Somerset is no longer in his place to hear this—I am asking how it is possible that our society and, indeed, many other societies, particularly in the English-speaking world, can tolerate inequality, which has now grown to levels beyond those of the 1920s. Has something primitive been transmitted to our minds through the media? The belief that the poor are poor because they are undeserving and have not worked hard enough is a primitive thought. People have to be helped, because we are complex creatures living together in society. People have deep psychological needs and some can suffer from the paralysis of feeling swamped or depressed when they feel stuck or trapped.
Yesterday’s report by the Living Wage Commission, “Working for Poverty”, looked into the scale and problem of low pay and working poverty in the UK. The first shocking statistic I stumbled on came from the work of the Resolution Foundation, which had tracked low-paid workers for a decade between 2002 and 2012. Despite working for a decade, only 18% of those people had managed to escape low pay in that 10-year stretch. In other words, people in low pay had a four in five chance of remaining there.
The report further notes:
“1.3 million employees remained stuck in low pay for the subsequent decade, and a further 2.2 million workers held higher paid jobs but returned to low paid jobs by the end of the decade.”
That is and should be depressing. Imagine the feelings of the people we eyeball who have been living with that reality on a daily basis for a decade.
There is good news and bad news. Over the past decades, the wealth of this and other countries in the west has grown as productivity has increased. The bad news is that the fruits of that productivity have been disproportionately distributed. According to the BBC’s wealth gap analysis, as the wealth pie grew and there was more to slice up, many people got roughly the same slice of the pie while others took a share that would embarrass a lion.
Between 1997 and 2007, the income of the top 0.1% grew by 82% to an average of £1.179 million annually; the top 0.5% saw an increase of 66.5% to an average of £452,000 annually; and the top 1%, which, of course, includes the previous two groups, saw their income rise by 60%, but their rise was only about a quarter of that of the 0.1%.
Meanwhile, between 1997 and 2007—the happy decade, as some in financial circles call it, before the crash of six years ago—the bottom 90%, which includes most of society, saw their wages rise by only 17%, a disproportionate slice of the economic pie. Another way of looking at it is that the fraction of pay the bottom 90% were getting in comparison with the top 1% had fallen by a fifth over that decade. As Professor Stiglitz says:
“A corporate CEO will not exert less effort to make the company work well simply because his take-home pay is $10 million a year rather than $12 million.”
The “Working for Poverty” report contains a series of nuggets and goes fearlessly into some thought-provoking factors.
Mr Jim Hood (Lanark and Hamilton East) (Lab)
I am quite amazed that the hon. Gentleman is surprised that I and many other hon. Members are against his nationalism. To put my comment last week in context, I said that despite the lying of the SNP Government and the Westminster Government here, I would not support nationalism and would therefore vote against his Government. He should not be surprised, because I have always opposed nationalism. I always will oppose nationalism, because I do not make judgments about people on the basis of the side of the road or the side of the bed they were born on.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I think the hon. Gentleman has got the message across.
Mr MacNeil
I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman has intervened, but I am surprised that he says he is against nationalism, because we live in nations. That is why we have the United Nations of about 193 nations. I am not sure exactly what structure he favours. Is he is in favour of the abolition of the Parliament in Westminster and of the UK state?
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman must sit down. I will be helpful: we have had a good debate about chocolates, and I want to get back to inequality. I certainly do not want to get bogged down in the rights and wrongs of abolition. I know that he is desperate to finish his speech on inequalities, and I am desperate to hear it.
Mr MacNeil
My speech is about making lives better for people wherever they are from and wherever they are worldwide. That is the important point to bear in mind.
The “Working for Poverty” report even touches on the untouchables of our society—football clubs. It states:
“Research from Citizens UK shows it would take a full-time cleaner 13 years to earn what top footballers earn in a week. Football clubs are important institutions in communities across the UK. They should be setting an example to employers nationwide.”
I must praise the columnist for The Observer Kevin McKenna who, like me, is a supporter of Celtic football club in Glasgow, the richest team in Scotland. Sadly, a few months ago, Celtic refused to pay the living wage to all its staff at the ground. It turned Mr McKenna’s stomach that those subject to such wage inequality could rub along, shoulder to shoulder, with people earning tens of thousands of pounds a week. That has also turned the stomachs of many football fans, especially given that Celtic had cashed in on the story of Brother Walfrid, a Marist brother who now lies at rest in Dumfries, who started Celtic as a means to help the poor of the Glasgow east end in the 1880s. I do not mean to single out Celtic, but to give an example of the toleration of those in even rich organisations for the shocking pay levels given to people the whites of whose eyes they see daily. Frankly, it removes the shine, lustre and glitz from the big football clubs of our land when we realise that gritty reality and see it up close.
Mr MacNeil
It is disappointing that more Members have not engaged in the issues of poverty and inequality. Cynics would say that if this were a debate on Members’ pay, conditions and benefits or any other reform of the House of Commons, the Benches would be full. Alas, we are debating a topic far removed from that. That is why I have tried to humanise the debate.
I was not going to read Becca’s story from the Living Wage Commission, but it is a cracker of a story. The report states that she
“lives in Leeds and has worked in minimum wage jobs since she was a teenager. Now in her thirties, she has a degree and wants to start up her own business, but she can not find the money or the time.”
She says:
“I have pretty much always worked for minimum wage. I worked in an office photocopying for two years, I have worked in customer service, I once sat watching a TV screen and counting cars on clickers. I’ve done all sorts.”
That is another example of a person who is trying to better herself, but who is—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I have a good feel for the examples, as, I am sure, does the House. This should be the hon. Gentleman’s speech, not just a speech full of examples from other people. I have allowed a few examples to go, but I have heard enough for now. I want to hear from the hon. Gentleman, rather than other people.
Mr MacNeil
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is because of my modesty and kindness that I want to share the wisdom of others. I do not see myself as the sole well of wisdom. [Interruption.] “Thankfully,” say my SNP colleagues.
We have to consider how poverty and inequality are affecting young people. I spoke to a young person recently who said, “It’s difficult being young. Houses are expensive. We have tons of student debt. The costs of living are rising and wages don’t go up. It’s sort of tough being young at the moment.” That young person was right. I was at university when student loans came in. I followed a demonstration against student loans that was led by a student who later became an MP. I later saw him on television backing Labour’s introduction of tuition fees in 1998. I cannot remember his constituency.
There has been a sharp rise in the number of 24 to 34-year-olds who are living at home with their parents. As Joe Stiglitz said, that is not due to a rush of filial devotion, but because they have no choice. The economic cards are stacked against them. Youth unemployment is high in many countries. It is too high in Scotland and higher still in the UK as a whole. Instead of getting on with their lives, the young find themselves in a holding pattern.
The SNP has done what it can in Scotland by keeping tuition fees at zero, which is saving families from paying £36,000 for a four-year degree. Families risk having to pay that if we vote no to independence. We know that there are cuts down the line and some people think that this is a something-for-nothing society and that certain things should be taken off the table. We do what we can with the powers that we have, but we want to do so much more.
An exciting proposal in the White Paper that will tackle inequality is to follow Sweden’s example on child care. Parents of early-years children in the UK face the highest child care costs in Europe. Parents in Scotland spend about 27% of household income on child care, compared with the OECD average of 12%. Independence would give us the opportunity to make transformational changes to the way in which Scotland provides child care services. That will allow women, in particular, to work without worrying about the cost of looking after their children. With independence, the benefits of their work, such as economic growth and tax revenue, will stay in Scotland and contribute to the costs of child care provision.
The Scottish Government plan to have a universal system of high-quality early learning and child care from the age of one up to school entry. At the end of the first year of an independent Scottish Parliament, every three and four-year-old and vulnerable two-year-old will be entitled to 1,140 hours of child care. That is the same amount of time as children spend in primary school each year and is equivalent to 30 hours per week over 38 weeks. That is an important aspiration. It demonstrates one way in which we should be moving our society forward. It would certainly be a way to reduce inequality.
It has been argued that inequality has caused the rise in household debt because people try to keep up with the Joneses. There are more pernicious examples of what inequality can do. Professor Paul Krugman states:
“Before the financial crisis of 2008 struck, I would often give talks to lay audiences about income inequality, in which I would point out that top income shares had risen to levels not seen since 1929. Invariably there would be questions about whether that meant that we were on the verge of another Great Depression—and I would declare that this wasn’t necessarily so”.
In the end, it turned out that that was the case. Once again, we are not arresting the growth in inequality. Are we on the verge of repeating the same mistake? I wish that we would learn, but we seem not to be doing so.
Some voices in the world are talking about inequality. Yesterday, the mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, made a speech about tackling inequality in New York. My only criticism is that, when one looks at the detail, it is quite timid. The Pope has said:
“The promise was that when the glass was full, it would overflow, benefiting the poor. But what happens instead, is that when the glass is full, it magically gets bigger nothing ever comes out for the poor.”
The church and nation committee of the Church of Scotland addresses that issue frequently and, as I said, the Church of England’s Archbishop of York has also done great work. A number of US Senators are aware of the problems and what is happening.
In my view, Governments should concentrate on growth and jobs. The deficit obsession and austerity cult has taken demand from the economy and probably led to a slower recovery—we have probably lost years as a result of the policies that were followed. We cannot fully prove that because we do not have a controlled environment in which to do so scientifically, but the feeling among many economists is that growth has not returned as strongly as it should have done, and that when it did come back it was three years delayed.
We are in food-bank Britain; we have the bedroom tax hammering people. VAT, one of the most regressive taxes, has been increased to 20% in this Parliament. That is a real shame and something that hits people disproportionately. We have had the cut to the 50p tax rate. That probably cost £4 billion to £5 billion in revenues, although the Commons Library has stated that behaviour alteration should mean that it will cost only £0.5 billion. Only £0.5 billion? That means that the cut to the 50p rate of tax has cost the Exchequer and not raised any extra revenue.
In the debate last Thursday—I am coming to a conclusion, Mr Deputy Speaker—it was sad that many of those Members who had the opportunity to speak in a very time-limited debate made no real mention of the future, and there was no mention at all of poverty. Unfortunately, we seem to have made a god of money, and we treat those who do not get hold of it as somehow inferior beings. In fact, as somebody once remarked, the cure for cancer might well be found in a child living in a poor household. They should be given a helping hand and an opportunity for their future because—who knows?—they could help us some day.
I have a couple of final reflections. It was said of Nelson Mandela that he not only liberated the blacks in South Africa, but also the oppressors. When I look at inequality I see, of course, great insecurity at the bottom, but I also see insecurity at the top. People realise that when the safety nets are removed, they themselves are a step or an accident or two away from going down. If those people do not have a society with safety nets in place for their own security, they can never fully relax. They need to get more and gather more because—who knows?—they, a relative or a friend might need it.
That struck me very strongly when I was at Alabama state university on an exchange programme with a US Congressman and we went to see a game of American football. We were taken to the president’s box of the university, and there were people who had made it in life. I met a man from Leeds, but it struck me that despite having made it, the talk was all about health insurance, health care, and what sort of plan people had—conversations we do not have in this country. In reality, there was deep insecurity because the social nets were not there to help everybody. When the nets are not there for the poorest and most vulnerable, we, our friends, our relatives, the relatives of relatives and friends of friends, are all but one step away. It is not a nice situation to be in, and I could see the fear in the whites of their eyes. Even though they personally had made it in society, there was massive insecurity around them.
Just as Nelson Mandela liberated the blacks and the oppressors, so too does the arresting of inequality liberate the poor and the rich—not quite in equal measure, but it certainly liberates them both from the insecurity that inequality brings to us all. We should work to get rid of inequality, and I hope that when we have independence, we can prove that one of the best ways of fighting inequality and poverty is through the prosperity that I expect we shall bring to Scotland.
Guto Bebb
There is certainly an argument that to increase the minimum wage when, as things currently stand, the Government have already taken tax out of the minimum wage, would look as if they were kicking businesses for the sake of kicking them. I have supported the fact that the Government have increased the personal allowance dramatically, which has made work pay for people in many circumstances, but my point is that taking time over a decision is not something we should be ashamed of. Indeed, we should be proud of taking time to make the right decision on something that is so important for a constituency such as mine, where 27% of the working population are either self-employed or work for small businesses.
I must take issue with a few points raised by the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) in his opening remarks. He began his speech by talking about Hywel Dda, who was indeed classified as one of the better Welsh kings. I was, however, surprised to hear the hymn of praise to a royalist from an avowed republican. Indeed, in terms of Hywel Dda, or Hywel the Good, being good, perhaps the true title should be Hywel the not-so-good. In addition to being the man who classified and created Welsh law, he also ordered the execution—the murder, I should say—of his brother-in-law in order to take over the kingdom of Dyfed, which is the current constituency of the Under-Secretary of State for Wales, my hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb). Furthermore, so as to extend his kingdom to the north and take over the whole of Wales, he also dispossessed the two sons of Idwal Foel from Gwynedd. When giving examples, I think we must put the man in the context of his time. It is interesting to highlight, however, that the Hywel Dda laws were in many ways ahead of their time in trying to achieve a level of equality between the sexes—not something that we saw in other parts of the United Kingdom for a very long time.
I also take issue with the comments by the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr about a proportional system of electing people leading to greater engagement with the political process. It is an attractive argument, but one that can be rejected simply by looking at the situation in Wales. We have 40 Members of Parliament who are elected on a first-past-the-post basis, and 60 Members elected to the Welsh Assembly, which uses a version of proportional representation. In a constituency such as mine, however, 70% of the electorate—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I am a bit worried that we are getting in to a debate on proportional representation. I presume the point is linked to fairness and equality somewhere.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. In fairness, the hon. Gentleman has had a good day. He has made a lot of interventions and he spoke for almost an hour, so to try to make another speech is unacceptable. A lot of Members want to get in.
Guto Bebb
I reject the hon. Gentleman’s argument. To have more equality, we need more jobs and economic opportunities. The hon. Gentleman argues that that would happen with more Government spending as a proportion of the economy. If that was the case, then Wales would be, by a long stretch, the most successful part of the United Kingdom, because there is no part of the UK more dependent on the public purse. The dependency on public spending in Wales has led to failure not over the past three or four years, but over a 15 to 20-year period. It has not led to economic growth or prosperity, and it has not led to economic opportunities. Indeed, the very reverse is true: the size of the state in Wales is one of the reasons why the rebuilding job being undertaken by the Westminster Government is so important. In a Welsh context, we have created an economy that is unbalanced and has not created the variety of jobs needed to support our young people and ensure that we have an equal society. I argue very strongly that anybody who says that the answer to all economic issues in a Welsh context is more public spending is simply wrong.