Living Standards (North Wales)

Mark Tami Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

I rise today to discuss the living standards in north Wales—the dropping living standards in north Wales.

The TUC reckons that Wales has the lowest levels of disposable income in the UK and has experienced the highest falls in living standards in the UK. There has been a drop in living standards for 38 of the 39 months that this Tory-Lib Dem coalition has been in power. In constituencies in north Wales, the impact has been severe. Between 2007 and 2012, in Flintshire the average pay packet for a 40-hour week dropped by nearly £3,000 and in my own county of Denbighshire it dropped by more than £2,000.

The outward sign of the drop in living standards is, of course, the food banks—the food banks that many Conservative Ministers and MPs refuse to go to when they are repeatedly asked to do so in the main Chamber. I have been to food banks in my constituency and I praise the work of people who volunteer at them; they do a sterling job. I have visited the Wellspring centre in my constituency and shared soup with the people it provided food for. The citizens advice bureau in Denbigh set up a food bank; in fact, it is an award-winning food bank and I congratulate the CAB in Denbigh on it.

The Conservatives say, “Oh, food banks increased by tenfold under Labour.” They did, from 3,000 to about 34,000. Under the Conservatives, however, they have increased from about 40,000 to nearly 400,000—another tenfold increase. The food banks under Labour were peripheral; as I say, there were 34,000 of them, at most. Under the Conservatives, food banks are central. Since 2011, the Government have given instructions to jobcentres to refer people who have no money to food banks. Food banks are part of official Government policy—dare I say official Government philosophy? It is charity versus the state; charity taking the place of the state. It is the big society, or, as I call it, the “beg society”, where soup kitchens are here in the 21st century, having last been seen in the 1930s. As I say, I have shared soup with the people using them.

Will there be a return to the workhouse, the alms house, the deserving poor and the undeserving poor? The language coming from certain sections and certain MPs on the right—I do not include the Minister here today in that group—is disgraceful. I will give a case in point. The Education Secretary said that the people who visit these food banks

“are not…able to manage their finances.”—[Official Report, 9 September 2013; Vol. 567, c. 681.]

Could the Education Secretary himself “manage” his finances on £56 a week, if he was a young person, or on £71 a week, if he was over 25? I think not—that money would hardly cover the price of a bottle of Moët. The Government have the wrong priorities—while they are forcing people to use food banks, they are giving a £44,000 handout to people earning £1 million a year.

Of particular interest to people in my constituency and the other constituencies in north Wales is the issue of public sector workers, who are another group vilified by the Conservatives. There are huge numbers of public sector workers in certain constituencies in north Wales. The number of people who reside in my constituency, the Vale of Clwyd, and work in the public sector is 10,200—35% of the work force. In Ynys Môn, the figure is 10,100; in Clwyd West, where the Secretary of State for Wales resides, the figure is 9,000. Those public sector workers are not only vilified by the Conservatives but have had their wages frozen until 2015-16. There is no help to rebalance the economies that have been reliant on public sector jobs; there is no specific help or guidance from the UK Government for those constituencies.

Who are the losers from the drop in living standards? It is the young long-term unemployed. There are more than a million of them in the country. In an 18-month period from early 2009 to 2010, in my home town of Rhyl in my constituency we put 450 young people back to work through the future jobs fund, under a Labour Government. That scheme was abolished almost as soon as the Conservative Government entered office.

Children are big sufferers from the drop in living standards. An excellent Daily Post article from 18 July calculates that 24,400 children in north Wales are living in poverty and that the state will pay an extra £265 million a year in additional school costs, benefits and NHS costs. We are even seeing the disease of rickets creep back into the UK, for the first time since the 1950s. I have tabled questions about this—[Interruption.] I see the Minister huffing and puffing.

The disabled have also suffered because of a drop in living standards. This group has been vilified, as well. Disability is the only one of the five or six hate crime categories, which include sexual orientation, religion and ethnic origin, that has increased in the past year. The elderly are the other group to have suffered because of the drop in living standards. They are on fixed incomes. When their fuel bills increase by 8% or 7%, they have no way of paying them, except by cutting back on food or other necessities.

In north Wales, 8,178 people will suffer because of the bedroom tax, but there are not 8,178 single-person units in the whole of north Wales to look after them.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

Last week I heard about a case of a man, in a couple, who was disabled and on whom the council spent a small fortune creating a wet room downstairs. This couple is to be moved to a one-bedroom place. The council will, no doubt, have to spend money converting that and ripping out the stuff from the previous place. It makes no sense.

[Chris Ruane]

It does not make social sense or economic sense. The state will be paying £60 a week rent for many people living in council houses. If such people are moved into houses of multiple occupation in my constituency, the state will be paying £85 a week. The conditions in HMOs are far worse than on council estates.

Some 420,000 households in Wales are living in fuel poverty, 84,000 of them in north Wales alone. Household fuel bills have increased by £300 since the Government have been in power. Those who suffer most are on pre-payment meters. I was brought up in a household with pre-payment meters; we put a pound in the “leccy” if the lights went out. Those people will be paying an extra £50 a year, because they are not on direct debit. Every which way, the poorest are hit the most.

Fuel bills went up by 7% last year. In this current season, the first energy company out of the blocks is going to increase its prices by 8%, at the same time as chief executive officers in energy companies are having golden handshakes of £15 million or £13.5 million.

Under Labour’s home energy efficiency scheme, the energy efficiency of 127,000 households in Wales was improved, cutting down people’s bills and their carbon footprint. The great green hope from the parties in Government was the green deal, What a failure that has been! At the top of the green deal figures for the whole of Wales is Alyn and Deeside, where 19 households have been checked; at number two is Delyn, with 16 households; third is Wrexham, with 13; and at number four is Clwyd West, with 13. In the Prime Minister’s constituency of Witney, six households were assessed for the green deal. This policy was going to rescue those living in fuel poverty, but it has done nothing for them.