Lord Hain
Main Page: Lord Hain (Labour - Life peer)
Lord Hain (Lab)
My Lords, I strongly agree with the excellent points made by the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, on globalisation. I share his passion for engineering. In fact, I started studying engineering and then switched to political science and economics. It has been downhill for me ever since.
The report by the UN special rapporteur and the launch of the Deaton review should have been warning shots across the bow of the ship of state, demanding a radical change of course. The new annual report into living standards, poverty and inequality from the Institute for Fiscal Studies will, I am sure, be another volley in the same vein. However, so far, the only response from the Government has been to sound “steady as she goes” and plough on.
Ministers are in denial. They refuse to admit the stark reality of deprivation in Britain today, and they reject any responsibility for making it worse through their austerity policy. Two facts stand out: one charting the startling spread of dire need, the other showing how years of austerity have forced local authorities to take desperate measures to the detriment of their communities.
First, consider the number of food banks in the UK run by the Trussell Trust. There were 80 in 2011 and 400 in 2013. Today, there are more than 1,200—that is just those run by the Trussell Trust. Seven years ago, a third of a million people received at least three days’ emergency food from the Trussell Trust food banks. Last year, that figure reached a record level of 1.6 million. This is incontrovertible evidence of a land haunted by hunger, yet the Chancellor denies that vast numbers of people face dire poverty in Britain today. It is obvious that, sadly, he and his Cabinet colleagues have not got a clue about the misery experienced by millions of families and individuals, many of whom are in work.
My second fact speaks for itself. Since 2010, more than 700 council football pitches have been lost due to council funding being slashed. This is in addition to the sell-off of school playing fields. We keep hearing that exercise is the nearest thing to a magic bullet for promoting health and improved opportunity, but government cuts are undermining the very ground on which we stand, walk and run. In a sane world, Tory leadership candidates would now be unveiling plans for reducing poverty and inequality, but Brexit fever has them in its grasp, so poverty and inequality have played no part.
The Chancellor claims that the UK has started its journey out of austerity, but the fiscal squeeze that George Osborne used to boast about is set to continue remorselessly. The Office for Budget Responsibility has confirmed that the 10-year Tory budget cuts remain in place, a fiscal squeeze that will have taken over £150 billion of spending out of the economy in tax rises and public spending cuts by 2020. This squeeze has led the economy to grow more slowly than in the previous year for four consecutive years, with no improvement in prospect, entrenching massive inequality. The gap between rich and poor is now greater than ever before, in modern times at least.
To my astonishment, I recently read in the Times and the Financial Times that a Tory think tank called Onward had called for the next Tory leader to spend nearly £200 billion more over the next four years, by bringing national debt down more slowly. The author, Tory MP Neil O’Brien, a former adviser to George Osborne, said,
“it’s time to turn on all the taps and make sure that poorer families and poorer areas really feel the benefit of a growing economy”.
Those words deserve to be taken seriously but they are being lost in the Tory leadership contest, where everything, including poverty and inequality, plays second fiddle to Brexit or to unaffordable, opportunistic tax cuts for the well-off. Those will simply widen inequality, all the time deepening the Government’s scandalous indifference to the shocking crisis in elderly care and affordable housing.