Taxation: Families

Lord Graham of Edmonton Excerpts

Thursday 17th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Graham of Edmonton]

My Lords, it is a privilege and a pleasure to take part in this debate, which was so well introduced for our benefit by my noble friend Lady Hollis. I have known Patricia for many years. She is well—if not uniquely—qualified because in her city of Norwich she was the leader of the group. When we had a Labour Government she was a prominent Minister. It is the way of this House to bring together men and women who can speak from the heart. I cannot believe there is a person on the other side of the Chamber who heard the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, who did not agree with much of what she said.

The problem is, we are where we are now and how do we get out of it, from the point of view of families? I cannot possibly enter into the finite arguments about which policies are right or wrong. I have an inclination as to where I stand, as does everyone in this House. Since we are talking about families, I thought I would mention that I am the eldest of five children. In 1930 my father was made unemployed and he did not get another job until the war started in 1939. It was tough. In 1937 he had 37 shillings a week to feed the seven of us.

When it comes to a level of poverty, it is very difficult for someone like me to believe that people are in poverty with a capital P now. Everything is relative. There are people sitting on both sides of the House who have been Members of Parliament and know what I mean when I talk about surgeries. When I attended my surgeries in Edmonton, I would meet people who had big problems, mainly to do with housing but also to do with work. Twice in my time I left the surgery, went to my car and cried because I could do nothing about it.

I very much hope that we are moving towards a stage in this argument where calling the other side names is not the solution. We are all politicians and we all have a point of view but we will not solve the problem if we build up resentment. I was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, not far from Jarrow, where the marchers came from. That was how they manifested themselves. We all know that at the end of the day it did not do very much to change the Government.

I say to this Government that, of course, most of the time they are the masters, but not all the time. I sense that there is resentment with a capital R building up among more and more people, many of whom voted for this Government and are now suffering from the actions they are taking. I am not even arguing about the actions because if there was a Labour Government we may very well have carried out some of the policies.

When I was a boy, I came home from school and said to my parents, “Look what I’ve got”. It was a pair of boots. My dad said, “How did you get those?”. I said, “Earlier today two policemen came into the classroom. They whispered to the teacher and the teacher called us out: Tommy, Teddy, Billy, Wilfie”. On Tyneside, you did not say Wilf or Tom; it was Wilfie and Tommy. So I went out and there were two policemen with a great big wicker basket. In the wicker basket were pairs of boots. The policeman threw a pair to me and said, “Try these on”. On Tyneside, in my station in life, your footwear was what we called sandshoes—other noble Lords might call them plimsolls. They were sixpence a pair from Woolworths and when they wore out you put a piece of cardboard in the bottom. When the cardboard wore out, you put another piece of cardboard in, until your mam could find sixpence.

So I brought the boots home and my dad said, “Where have you pinched them from?”. I said, “I haven’t pinched them, Dad, I was given them”. He hit me again and said, “Tell the truth”. Finally they realised I was telling the truth. My dad smiled; my mam cried. Years later, when I was in the Royal Marines, I came home and said to Mam, “Remember the time I brought the boots home and you cried?”. She said, “Yes”. I said, “Why did you cry, Mam?”. She said, “Because I knew that the teacher had been asked to send out of the room the children that she knew were from poor families”, and that she had cried from shame.

If anyone wants to ask me why I am Labour, why I am a socialist, it is because we lived in a society that might have done something but did not care. It is about time all the parties recognised that it is a big problem. I am not blaming one or the other, but the solution that we have had from the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, is well worth studying.

When I was working for the Co-op, I was paying out the dividend and there was a big queue. I looked up and there was Jackie Milburn, the hero of Tyneside. He said, “Can I have some money from this passbook?”. I said, “I’m sorry, you can’t”. He said, “Why not?”. I said, “Because it is in your wife’s name. You take this form, get her to fill it in, come back and I will pay you”. He came back the next day and said, “How much can I get?”. I said, “There’s £7 and 17 shillings in the book; I can pay you £7 and 14 shillings because you must leave three shillings in the book”. He said, “That’s a week’s wages”. Playing for England and Newcastle in 1948-49, he was on the princely sum of £8 a week. We all have to try to take account of comparisons.

I mentioned the Co-op because the Co-operative movement deserves a lot of credit for starting self-help. Most people who worked in the Co-op were members of the Co-op. They would leave their dividend in the book until they had £4 or £5 and that was their nest egg. I think that the Government could do more to energise ordinary people to use the argument and the instrument of mutuality, credit unions and things of that kind. I hope the Minister will be able to recognise that there is a job of work to be done there.

In conclusion, there is no complete answer to this problem. I can understand people who think one way or the other, but in my view we should be past blaming the other side for what happened. All Governments find things that need to be done. The problem for this Government is that they are not doing what they said they were going to do. I rest my case.