Queen’s Speech

Lord Morris of Handsworth Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Morris of Handsworth (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, pay tribute to the gracious Speech. It scanned the horizons of the social and economic landscape of our country. However, the economic landscape experienced by millions of our fellow citizens is a very different place. The strategy of the coalition Government remains unchanged: it is to reward the rich through the tax system and punish the poor through policies such as the bedroom tax. However, figures from the Office for National Statistics are an indictment of the Government’s policies. They show that 1% of Britain’s richest individuals have accumulated as much wealth as 55% of the poorest.

The coalition Government believe that they can eradicate poverty by making work pay, and it is true that the unemployment figures are coming down and more people are in work. That is to be welcomed. However, yesterday we heard from the coalition’s own watchdog on poverty, the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission. Its report states that the Government’s belief that they can end child poverty by 2020, mainly through the labour market, does not look remotely realistic. The Commission shows that 3.5 million children are expected to be in absolute poverty in Britain by 2020—almost five times as many as the goals set by the Government. The report states that even if parental employment reached 100%—

“far beyond what has ever been achieved anywhere in the world”—

there would have to be a substantial increase in hours worked, and current policies would not enable that to happen.

Many parents are the victims of in-work poverty, unable to command sufficient earnings to escape low incomes and moving in and out of insecure, short-term and low-paid employment. We hear similar stories from organisations such as the Trussell Trust, which recently reported that, of the 900,000 adults and children who visited its food banks last year, 30% were in financial trouble because of benefit delays and 17% had problems caused by benefit changes, while 20% of referrals at the food banks were a result of low family incomes.

Last year, the annual report of the New Policy Institute gave a comprehensive picture of poverty in the United Kingdom. It showed that, of 13 million people living in poverty, more than half were from working families. It is just not true that people who are living in poverty are shy of work. We have heard too much about those who draw the curtains at 9 am and get back under the duvet. No one bothered to ask about the bus drivers or those in our hospitals working very late and coming home in the morning, who are entitled to their rest. The New Policy Institute report concluded that the changes to the welfare system actually made poverty worse. For work to be the route out of poverty, work must provide a living wage. You can work as much as you like, but if your earnings do not equate to the accepted level of sustenance, you are in poverty. Although I welcome any sanctions against employers not paying the legal minimum wage, I look forward to the legislation or to any proposals that would lift the minimum wage to become a living wage.

I was also pleased to note that attention was promised regarding the reform of so-called zero-hours contracts. I am old fashioned and have always been led to believe that a contract has rights on the one hand and obligations on the other. It seems that this is a one-sided development for contracts in our employment sector. An employer has all the rights and the ability to exercise them, and makes all the demands, while the employee has no rights—only an obligation to respond to the employer’s demands. These contracts are misnamed. They are not zero-hours contracts but “no rights” contracts, and they should be described as what they are. How do you organise the family budget that depends on the uncertainty of a zero-hours contract, which means you have no idea when you will work or, indeed, how much you will earn? On this side of the House, we look forward to seeing the draft proposals that would make a difference to families and individuals and give some certainty in respect of the obligations that they may or may not take on.

There is a pattern throughout the policies that we are experiencing. The Government pursue families and individuals who have no means to fight back. Legal aid and access to justice are restricted, including for workers who might have a fair claim for unfair dismissal. As we heard earlier in the debate, the sanctions start with the inability to pay the fees for hearing a case of alleged unfair dismissal.

As I reflect on the gracious Speech, I wish that I could have heard how we can help those of our citizens in greatest need. It leaves me to conclude that Britain can, nevertheless, do better. For the sake of all our citizens, Britain must do better.