Jobs and Business

Debate between Mark Hendrick and Kerry McCarthy

Friday 10th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

As many Opposition Members have said over the last few days, in this Queen’s Speech the Government have comprehensively failed to address the real issues and the scale of the challenge facing this country. They have missed a good opportunity to set out an economic programme that can rebuild our failing economy and address the rocketing cost of living.

That is not talked about enough, because the problem is not just the fact that people cannot get jobs and are struggling to find work; it is also that even for those in work, the cost of living, with rising fuel bills, food prices and rail and bus fares, alongside what is happening in the private rented sector—I could give many more examples—is having a major impact on people’s lives, yet the Government do not seem able to act.

There is a paucity of imagination and a dearth of ideas in the Queen’s Speech. As many have said, there is a very thin legislative programme. The Queen’s Speech could have contained several measures that were floated in advance of it, such as minimum alcohol pricing, plain cigarette packaging and the lobbyist register. I am sure the reasons why they have been dropped will be revealed in time, but there does not seem to me to be any good reason.

It was also disappointing that the Queen’s Speech did not include the legislation to enshrine in law the promise made in the coalition agreement to spend 0.7% of gross national income on the aid budget. As the head of advocacy at ActionAid said:

“The aid budget is a tiny proportion of Britain’s national income. Having it enshrined in law would provide poor countries with the certainty they need to plan their development and deliver the best value for money from UK aid. A constant debate about volumes of aid is not in the interests of either donor or recipient nations and the Government should have recognised this.”

[Mark Hendrick]

My hon. Friend will recall that I introduced a private Member’s Bill that would have put that 0.7% of GNI commitment into statute. It was scuppered by the Government twice, which was an absolute disgrace.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I share my hon. Friend’s disappointment that that Bill was not supported, and I was present in the Chamber during some of the debates on it. Although the Prime Minister has said publicly that he is determined to stick to the 0.7% target, the fact that he promised legislation and has now reneged on that sends out a signal that he is not absolutely committed to it. I have heard many calls from his Back Benchers saying it is wrong to have that 0.7% target and that the money should, for example, be moved over to the Ministry of Defence and be spent on defence instead. Given those ripples of discontent emanating from the Conservative Back Benches, the Prime Minister should have nailed his colours to the mast and made it very clear that the Government were not for turning on that target.

Just before Prorogation, the Government published a draft Bill on wild animals in circuses, but that, too, was not specifically mentioned in the Queen’s Speech. Animals in circuses might sound like a trivial issue compared with big topics such as jobs and employment and getting economic growth going again. However, this omission sends out a signal about the Government’s lack of will or nerve to introduce legislation. My view is that we could deal in just a day or two with legislation to outlaw wild animals in circuses. Almost 95% of the public back a ban, and when the House debated a motion on this on 23 June 2011, the Government made concessions to a Conservative Back Bencher who was pushing the issue, and said, “Yes, we’ll bring legislation forward.” That was almost two years ago, and now we have a half-hearted measure saying, in effect, “We’re going to bring forward draft legislation because this is such a complicated issue.” There are only 20 animals left in circuses in this country, but apparently this is so complex it has to be put out in the form of draft legislation and then examined by Committee, and the Government will not be able to bring in a ban until the end of 2015. That seems absolutely laughable given that there has already been a two-year delay. Basically, we should just get on with it.

One of the Bills that I was pleased to see in the Queen’s Speech was the Mesothelioma Bill, although I share the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) that it is not comprehensive enough and does not deal with all the details. When I was a junior lawyer—I think that it was 25 years ago, which is quite a scary thought—I acted on one of the very first mesothelioma cases. It took us six years to get resolution. One problem was that the deceased man in question—we were acting on behalf of his widow—had worked for some very small companies. He was a central heating engineer and it was absolutely impossible to trace those companies, because they were almost one-man bands and were no longer in business. However, for a period he worked for Vauxhall Motors. The breakthrough moment came. We could not find any living witnesses who could prove that the deceased man in question had worked with asbestos at that time. Then I happened to talk to my grandfather and it turned out that my grandfather had worked with him and knew him quite well, so we came up with a witness almost by chance.

Nevertheless, it was a struggle to get that case through. At the end of the process, the man’s widow received a settlement of about £80,000, which in the late 1980s was a considerable sum. However, she said, “If I had known the pain and hassle that I’d have to go through, and the endless meetings with solicitors, I really would not have done it.” We want to ensure that other widows and other people who are suffering from mesothelioma do not have to go through that process.

The consumer rights Bill has the potential to be a very interesting and useful piece of legislation. However, it will be quite difficult to pull together all the measures needed to tackle the problems. I am very supportive of the proposals of my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) on secondary ticketing. I hope that the Government will listen to them and take them forward. I have talked to my hon. Friend in some detail about the research that she has done on the problem, which affects many fans and musicians alike.

We have not seen the text of the consumer rights Bill yet, but I was interested that the commentary on it says that it will help people who want to switch suppliers or make purchases via the internet or the phone. In my surgeries, many people come to me who are just banging their heads on the desk because they cannot get a company to respond. I think I spent the best part of yesterday and the day before on the phone to a particular mobile phone supplier. I am very tempted to name and shame it, given the number of times that I was told I would be called back and was not. I was then sent a text message saying, “What’s your experience of the service we’ve provided?” I could give a 10 for “excellent” and a zero for “dismal”. Every time I tried to text zero, the message would not go through. Perhaps if I had tried to text 10, the message would have gone through and the company would have said, “Thank you very much, we are happy to have been of service.”

It is so frustrating for people when they have to go through such minefields, and a lot of people end up stuck with services they do not want. There is another company I could mention on whose website it is almost impossible to find out how to go about cancelling a contract. When a caller phones up, the options are, “Press this if you want to pay your bill, press number two if you want to spend lots more money with us and number three if you want to change your address.” There is never a button with a message saying, “If you want to tell us to get lost, press this” or whatever. I am not saying that it should be compulsory for companies to have a “We want nothing more to do with you” button on their automated phone systems, but it should be made much more apparent to consumers how they can get out of such contracts. Otherwise, they are tied in for a very long time at considerable expense.

On the question of carry-over Bills, the Government have confirmed that they will carry over the Energy Bill. However, that Bill needs extensive changes to address not only the reality of rocketing fuel bills, which I have mentioned, but the issue of climate change. Again, anything on that issue is lacking in the Queen’s Speech. There is nothing to suggest that the Government want to be the greenest Government ever. There is little that will do anything to promote green investment and green jobs. That is a real missed opportunity.

I have real concerns about where the Government are going on green jobs. There was a complete shambles over feed-in tariffs, and I know from speaking to people in Bristol, where there are many companies that are involved in green technology, including research, that they do not believe that the Government are supportive enough of their efforts to make the UK, and Bristol, a real hub for that sort of work.

I have real concern about the policy on fracking. There are again suggestions in the paper today that the Government may be too close to people who have a very personal vested interest in making money out of it. In the forthcoming parliamentary Session, we need to have real scrutiny of whether fracking is the right way forward for our energy policy, taking into consideration environmental consequences such as disruption to local water supplies. There are a lot of unanswered questions about fracking, which the Government should answer before they pursue that path.

Energy bills are one of the biggest costs that families now face. A typical dual-fuel bill is now £1,420—up more than £300 since the Government came to power. The number of households living in fuel poverty is predicted to rise to 8.5 million in 2016—up from 4.75 million in 2010. The big six energy companies have rightly been accused of “cold-blooded profiteering” after figures emerged showing that they have more than doubled their retail margins over the past 18 months and are now earning a staggering average of £95 profit per household on dual-fuel bills.

In a recent debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) highlighted the case of a large supplier in south Wales, which has now increased its standing charge to £200 for both gas and electricity. That is hitting the poorest households hardest. They have to pay £200 before they use even 1 W of electricity. I hope that problem will be addressed, if not in the Energy Bill, then in the consumer rights Bill.

The thing most notably missing from the Energy Bill is a target for decarbonising electricity by 2030. By putting off the decision about decarbonisation until 2016, after the next general election, the Government are locking our economy into increasingly expensive gas, which is bad for carbon emissions and for energy bills. The Committee on Climate Change has said that the gas strategy set out by the Chancellor in December is “completely incompatible” with the UK’s legally binding carbon emissions targets, and should be “plan Z”. I wonder whether the Government have any intention of decarbonising our power sector by 2030. I also increasingly doubt their commitment to meet our legally binding carbon target of reducing our carbon emissions by 80% by 2050. Again, there was nothing in the Queen’s Speech to help us move towards that.

As I mentioned, the one thing that the renewable energy sector needs to enable it to create more jobs and encourage investment is confidence that the Government are committed to renewable energy and will support it over the long term. The lack of a target also puts the sector in a difficult position in that regard. It is deeply disappointing that the Government do not capitalise on a golden opportunity to drive economic growth and create jobs. A CBI report published in July showed that the UK could become a global front-runner in low carbon, adding £20 billion to annual GDP by 2015, and that a third of the UK’s economic growth from 2012 to 2013 came from green businesses. As the former Energy Minister, the hon. Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry), has said, extending uncertainty about that until 2016 will lead to higher capital costs and higher energy bills. That is backed by the Committee on Climate Change, which has said that

“continued reliance on unabated gas-fired generation carries the risk of electricity bills for the typical household being up to £600 higher than under a low-carbon power system over the next decades”.

In the remaining two minutes, I want to flag up what has become a topic of particular interest to me during the past year—food waste. There was an opportunity for the Government to bring forward in this Queen’ Speech measures that would tackle the issue. I was very disappointed yesterday when phase 3 of the Courtauld agreement, a Government-led commitment to reducing food and packaging waste, was announced. There is a target for retailers and manufacturers to work to reduce household food waste by just 5% by 2015, and to reduce their own waste—the waste that they create in the supply chain—by just 3%. Given rising food prices, and as people become better educated about the things that they buy, it is estimated that we will meet such targets anyway. So the target is meaningless. The Government had a real chance to push forward with measures to prevent food waste. Between 30% and 50% of edible and healthy food is wasted in this country, and half that waste is generated by the food industry. In Westminster Hall recently we heard the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), telling people how they could reduce food waste and stop throwing away food that was in their fridges. He told them not to keep bread in the fridge and offered other helpful little tips, but we need to tackle what the food industry is doing. It is the industry that should drive the level of change that is needed. If the industry will not do so and if the Courtauld commitment does not contain the targets that will make the industry act, there should be a mandatory obligation on large retailers and manufacturers to take steps to reduce their food and packaging waste. The Government could have introduced that in the Queen’s Speech but they did not.