Budget Resolutions

Martin Whitfield Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Ms Eagle]

The right hon. Gentleman has just spoken; he can go off and advise his clients on investing their money abroad.

The Conservative party saw an opportunity to pursue a minimal state agenda in the aftermath of the global financial crash, and it has done so at great cost to many. It made a deliberate choice that cuts to public spending would bear 80% of the cost of eliminating the deficit and that only 20% would be accounted for by tax changes, and we now know that the cuts have fallen disproportionately on the most vulnerable and those least able to look after themselves. The Chancellor’s predecessor liked to claim that we are all in this together, but he cut the top rate of tax for his super-rich friends at the same time as ensuring that public sector workers had a decade of pay freezes and falling real living standards.

Meanwhile, the Government have systematically reduced the social safety net to tatters for some of the most vulnerable people in our society. By 2021, Wirral Council, which is my local authority, will have had its funding cut by 40% since 2010. Efficiency savings cannot cover cuts on that scale, and it is no surprise that that level of cuts has decimated council services such as adult social care, which for a second time was not mentioned in the Budget and saw a 26% cut between 2011 and 2016, meaning that essential social care for the elderly is not available and people in dire need are being left with little or no help. In education, real-terms funding cuts have led to a loss of £149 per pupil and 29 teachers in Wallasey alone. Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust is being told to cut £1 billion in the next five years. Merseyside fire and rescue service used to have 40 fire engines to save lives; it now has 28.

[Martin Whitfield (East Lothian) (Lab)]

I welcome today’s announcement on VAT for Scottish police and fire services, but does my hon. Friend agree that the reinstatement of the VAT exemption comes far too late, because there have been added deductions for years and years?

[Ms Eagle]

That is absolutely right. Merseyside police will have suffered cuts of £183 million by 2021 and is 1,000 officers and 700 support staff down. It is little wonder that crime levels are now the highest in a decade. Madam Deputy Speaker, I could go on, but I think you get the point. Austerity has exacted a brutal cost from the most vulnerable.

This Budget takes place against a backdrop of unparalleled uncertainty and danger for our country because this Government are paralysed by their own disagreements over Brexit. They are unable to resolve their own internal contradictions around the Cabinet table, let alone chart the path to a successful conclusion of the article 50 negotiations in Brussels. We have a Prime Minister who puts the interests of her party above those of her country, and half of the Tory party would rather that we crashed out of the EU without any deal than stay in a moment longer.

Duties of Customs

Martin Whitfield Excerpts

Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 20th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake]

The hon. Gentleman is right, and I thank him for pointing me in that direction. Clearly, there would be substantial economic problems associated with a border, but the fundamental problem would be the message that would be sent out to those who want to cause trouble, if there were to be a British presence on the border. That would be a step in the wrong direction in terms of a united Ireland and it could give such people a reason to resume the troubles. That is the major risk, which is probably why the Government and the European Union are both saying that progress is being made. No one wants to admit that this remains a problem without a solution, because of its potential to generate trouble.

I have referred in interventions to the port of Dover. Many Members will have visited it, as I have done, and I certainly recommend it. The first thing to know about the port of Dover is that it is not really a port. The port authorities clearly state that it is in fact a bridge. I have stood in the control tower and watched the trucks flowing virtually seamlessly—that is an interesting word; perhaps the Government could look at how things operate there—on to the ferries. They slow down and go into channels and if they are lucky they can drive straight on to the ferry while the trucks coming into the UK are being unloaded from the lower deck. There is nothing to stop those trucks getting on to those ferries. They are not booked on to a specific ferry; they just turn up and drive on to whichever one is there. The only checks that the UK is carrying out on trucks coming into this country are related to smuggling, and they are done on the basis of intelligence, rather than, for example, on the basis of checking one truck in every 100. That is why the system flows smoothly.

[Martin Whitfield (East Lothian) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech. Has he heard the often-quoted statistic that if each truck were held back by just two minutes, we would have a 17-mile tailback? Is he as pessimistic as I am in thinking that two minutes is a remarkably short period of time to stop each truck, even simply to ask where it is going?

[Tom Brake]

Absolutely; I do have those concerns. It is worth knowing that when the 17-mile tailback occurred two years ago, it was the result of just two French border officers not turning up for their shift. The 20 sq km lorry park—whose construction has now been kicked into the long grass because of the judicial review—would accommodate 3,500 lorries. However, 10,000 lorries go through that port each day, so a lorry park that would accommodate 3,500 lorries will not do very much if there is severe disruption at the port. That is why one of the options the port is considering is to create lorry parks all over the country. In the event of a delay, the port could text drivers in, for example, Leeds or Edinburgh to say, “Sorry, we’ve got a bit of a problem at Dover. Don’t bother coming, because if you do, the town will collapse. Just stay in that lorry park and we’ll tell you when it’s safe to come down.”

Mortgages: Eligibility

Martin Whitfield Excerpts

Monday 23rd October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Martin Whitfield (East Lothian) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone, and I compliment the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) on obtaining a debate on this petition. I also compliment the 147,307 people who signed it, including 145 people from my constituency of East Lothian. It is a timely petition that was curtailed by the arrival of the general election, so it would be interesting to see how many people would have signed it if it had flowed its entire length.

We are all aware that the financial crash, and indeed the role in the crash of reckless lending on housing in other countries, led to this problem. We are also aware that lenders sought security and safety in the securitisation of those loans, so they did not feel the risk of lending to high-risk borrowers. The result for people today is a tightening in the rules of borrowing and the imposition of affordability tests for mortgages. The link between a poor credit history and an inability to pay a mortgage was made, and in many people’s eyes it has been strongly established.

That brings us to credit reference agencies, which sit at the heart of this problem. We have already heard in a number of speeches about the need for a credit history in order to borrow a mortgage, which is a credit in its own right. In calculating the scoring, the credit reference agencies do not, by and large, take into account rental payments, and therein lies the problem. We have just heard imaginative ideas about how that can be put right, and it is important that we consider them, because the failing, which those who signed the petition are pointing to, is one of removal of choice from individuals.

If we go back a number of generations, the bank manager would have known the person to whom the money was being lent. As we moved forward, that role moved to the assistant bank manager and the lending manager. The process is now controlled by algorithms. Forms are filled in online, or filled in on paper and transferred online, and the decision about whether someone can have a mortgage rests with the algorithmic decision on their credit rating, on any court action and on any previous history that is registered up in the cloud.

The lack of individual input into that process means that many people with a long history of paying rent on time and in full are unable to take advantage of the financial sense that they have demonstrated, perhaps even over decades. We need a system that reintroduces an individual into the process, so that they can look at it. Paying rent is not a credit, but in the mortgage affordability test the payment of rent—weekly, monthly or quarterly—over a long period of time shows that the individual can afford that rent.

There are questions about whether or not prices rise, and about whether or not something catastrophic happens to the house someone is in, so that suddenly the roof needs repairing. However, many people who rent have taken out insurance for their possessions against theft, so to suggest automatically and across the board that those people who have paid their rent are unable to encompass the budgeting needed for a mortgage is a fallacy.

In addressing this matter, we need to reintroduce individual case assessment. It is not beyond the wit of credit reference agencies and mortgage lenders to do that, and they should examine that suggestion. The imaginative ideas that have been proposed can be looked at and developed. However, to write off many people who have such consistent evidence of being able to afford a mortgage, simply because the element of rent is not credit, is disingenuous. I would be grateful to the Minister if he addressed that.

Devolved Powers in Scotland

Martin Whitfield Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Martin Whitfield (East Lothian) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Hollobone. I thank the hon. Member for Stirling (Stephen Kerr) for securing this debate. To have power and not use it is a crime. For a Government to have power and to let it lie in abeyance for so long is to mistrust and ill-serve the people who voted for them.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

Power unused is the approach of the Labour party in Scotland, which sent billions of pounds back to Westminster. They had money, and they did not use it for the good of Scotland. They handed it back.

[Martin Whitfield]

I hear the hon. Gentleman’s intervention, and I thank him for the extra time. Devolution under the Scotland Act 1998 created the Parliament that sat on 12 May 1999. The first Act passed was the Mental Health (Public Safety and Appeals) (Scotland) Act 1999, and it is interesting that we still talk about the need and desires for mental health services to this day.

From the formation of the Scottish Parliament we are now in a position where in a recent poll, 19% of people in Scotland seemed to indicate that they want devolved powers returned to Westminster. That is an appalling state of affairs. After this length of time, instead of an increasing number finding confidence and security in our Parliament in Scotland, one fifth of the population wants to go back to what they had.

I want to look at the powers in relation to one industry that concerns my constituency greatly, which is timber. Businesses north of the border can draw down from the apprenticeship levy if and only if they have an approved training provider. Businesses south of the border can draw down for the individual apprentices they have. In my constituency, we have a forestry business that can produce 10 million trees a year, but the number of apprentices within the industry is so small that there is no provider, so the businesses cannot draw down on the levy and they get no financial support.

Other industries in my constituency have apprenticeships that cross the border. The nuclear power station wants to send its apprentices around the whole fleet, and that causes problems, because it can draw down on the apprenticeship levy south of the border, but not north of the border. This debate is very timely, and the discussion needs to be across the border so as to facilitate the best interests of those in Scotland and of the United Kingdom and its economy across the board. Maybe it is time we stop screaming and shouting at each other and sit down and talk and act in the best interests of both Scotland and the United Kingdom.