Working People’s Finances: Government Policy

Debate between Margaret Hodge and Bridget Phillipson

Tuesday 21st September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I pay credit to her for all the work that she has been doing to highlight these issues and the impact on families and children, and the much bigger economic impact when we do not get our childcare system right in this country.

Three thousand childcare providers have closed since the beginning of 2021 alone, denying families access to the childcare that parents need and denying children access to the early education that sets them up for life. Why is that? One major reason, as the Early Years Alliance has highlighted, is that information released through freedom of information requests makes it clear that Ministers have been knowingly underfunding early years providers, driving up costs while driving down quality. Childcare should be a vital part of our national infrastructure that should help our whole economy to grow and to recover. Yet, as my hon. Friend points out, Britain has some of the highest childcare costs in the developed world. Childcare must be affordable and accessible to families. If more people can work, our collective output will be greater. It is right for children, it is right for families, and it is right for our economy.

Incomes are going down, prices are going up, taxes are rising, rents are up, the cost of childcare is up, and petrol and diesel are more expensive again too. I represent a seat where there are no passenger rail services. If people live far from their jobs, they drive to work or get the bus. Fuel prices feed fast enough into the squeeze on living standards, and last week petrol was over 135p a litre. It is more than £10 more expensive to fill up the average tank than it was when the spending review was agreed in November. That makes an enormous difference to families when every single penny counts.

Incomes are down, prices are up, taxes are rising, rents are up, the cost of childcare is up, fuel is up, and rail fares are set to rise too. My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon) has set out the next steps we expect in the Government’s hammering of working people. With rail prices tied to July RPI inflation, and with inflation as high as it is, the cost of season tickets will rocket by almost 5% for long-suffering rail users next year—the biggest single increase in a decade. Again, it is not just the leap now but the decade of complacency before that tells the full story. The average commuter faces paying almost £3,300 a year for their season ticket—50% more than when the Conservatives came to power in 2010. Average fares have risen nearly three times faster than wages, and they are on course to rise again.

It is not just that families can afford less on food, energy, rent, childcare, travelling and commuting but that there is less to afford. Restaurants have closed. Shelves are empty. Shortages are real, and biting not just on families and their weekly shop but on our supply chains for industries too. What lies behind that? Not enough HGV drivers; long queues at our ports; more paperwork at the border; no agreement on food, animal and plant health standards when we left the EU; shortages of refrigerant, putting meat supply chains at risk: on issue after issue the Government were warned and warned again.

It is only three months since Ministers told the industry that concerns over HGV shortages were “crying wolf”. Last Christmas the roads around many ports were clogged for days. I meet businesses that have had to scale back ambitions for global expansion because it is not even worth their while sending goods to Northern Ireland any more. Again, these issues were not just foreseeable; they were avoidable. They were foreseen; they could have been avoided.

People are having less money to spend; having to spend more of what little they have paying more on tax, transport, fuel, rent and childcare; and having less in the shops than they can buy. There is a word for that: impoverishment. More and more people are being pushed into poverty. It is the policy of this Government to stand by and watch, and it will be the policy of the next Labour Government to turn it around.

[Dame Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)]

I have listened very carefully to my hon. Friend’s really excellent exposition of a whole raft of issues that have challenged living standards, and what is interesting is that not one Government Member has got up to challenge any of the assertions that she has made. Does she agree that that demonstrates that they have nothing to say and that the slogans they use to try to describe their actions belie the truth of the increased division and poverty that they are creating?

[Bridget Phillipson]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, who did so much in government to tackle issues of poverty and of child poverty in early years, in particular.

Conservative Members will have heard the same from their constituents as I have heard from mine, which is that life is getting tougher and they just cannot understand why, in the face of rising cost pressures, the Government are putting up their taxes, cutting the support that is available and making life harder. My constituents simply cannot understand why the Government are prepared to stand by and allow that to happen.