Mary Macleod
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Comprehensive Spending Review
Mary Macleod Excerpts(14 years ago)
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Stephen Williams
The hon. Gentleman is a thoughtful man who now sits on the Treasury Committee. Perhaps he thinks that this is a serious issue that needs to be tackled, but many of his hon. Friends seem to be in deficit denial. We have not heard thus far in the debate—although there are many hours to go—a single idea from the Opposition on how they would tackle the deficit, whether it is over four years or five years, which is a point of debate.
Stephen Williams
I am running out of time, so I will not be able to.
The Chief Secretary announced that the comprehensive spending review was designed to achieve three things. The first of those was growth, and today’s statement by the Business Secretary certainly builds on that. I welcome the £1.4 billion for the regional growth fund and the local enterprise partnerships that have been set up to replace the regional development agencies. In Bristol, the South West Regional Development Agency will not be missed, and I look forward to working with our local enterprise partnership for Bristol and the west of England. I welcome the fact that the science budget has been protected in cash terms, and the fact that £250 million extra is being put into apprenticeships—something that I spoke about repeatedly in the last Parliament, when I led for my party on these issues.
I also welcome the moves towards a low-carbon economy to ensure that we have stable and sustainable growth in future, with the green investment bank and the first investment in carbon capture and storage, which the previous Government pulled out of.
I welcome, too, the transport schemes that have been announced so far this week, but I look forward to confirmation next week, when we have the announcements on rail, that the electrification of the great western main line from Paddington to Bristol and to south Wales should go ahead in order to support growth and stability in Swindon, Bristol, the west of England and south Wales.
The second theme of the CSR is reform to the welfare system, which is absolutely essential. The need for that was recognised by the last Labour Government, but now Lord Freud is a Minister in the coalition Government and Lord Hutton is advising the coalition Government on how to achieve what the previous Government recognised but failed to tackle. It is a key principle that work should always pay: it should be clear to everybody that if one is in work one should be better off. However, the welfare system is a social contract between all of us, and, in addition, taxpayers must think it is fair for them to pay for it.
Stephen Gilbert (St Austell and Newquay) (LD)
Let me begin by reminding the House why the country is in its present position, and why the spending review has had to be so tough. We are in this position because the last Labour Government left the largest deficit in our peacetime history, and the largest structural deficit in Europe.
What does that mean? I will tell hon. Members what it means. This year, we will spend £43 billion on debt interest alone. That is £120 million every single day. For that money, we could build a new primary school every hour. We could triple the number of doctors in our hospitals. We could spend twice as much on education every year. I therefore do not see how it is tenable for Opposition Members to ignore the astronomical waste of money that those interest payments are leaving with us, and the unfairness of suggesting that we pass it to future generations.
Labour Members claim that they planned £48 billion of public spending cuts when they were still in government, but they forgot to tell us where those cuts would fall. Throughout the debate, I have been enlightened no further on what they would cut and how they would address the problem. I hope that, in the hours that remain, some Labour Members may come up with some ideas of their own.
The Government’s comprehensive spending review sets out £1 billion less of cuts in Government Departments. The remaining plan focuses on long overdue reform of a complex and byzantine welfare system that delivers unintended effects to people throughout the country—and, of course, tax rises. The important point, however, is that the spending review is also fair. The banking levy will raise £2.5 billion a year. The last Government did not do that, and they had 13 years in which to do it. Indeed, under the last Government bankers and lawyers often paid lower taxes than those who cleaned their offices. That is something else that was left to this Government to sort out.
Mary Macleod
Does my hon. Friend agree with the leaders of 35 of the biggest companies around, including Marks & Spencer, Microsoft, Diageo and Next? They say that they believe that
“Addressing the debt problem in a decisive way will improve business and consumer confidence”
and that
“The cost of delay…would result in almost £100 billion of additional national debt”.
Stephen Gilbert
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. Not only do I agree with those companies; I also agree with the CBI and the International Monetary Fund, which have commended these plans as the best way both to ensure growth and to deal with the deficit.
Let me be clear. The Opposition have every right to challenge and to resist the measures that the coalition Government are implementing. That is of course the Opposition’s job, but they need to come clean with the British public and tell this House and the public at large what their alternative is. They will not be taken seriously until we hear different ideas from them. Today so far we have heard special pleading on transport, child benefits, housing and myriad other topics, but we have not heard anything about the measures that they would put in place to address the significant problems that we face.
The spending review has had to be tough, and of course we and our constituents will feel it, but there are many positive policies that will help create a fairer, freer and more responsible country over the next few years. One crucial area is the fairness premium that was announced by my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister.
The fairness premium involves extending 15 hours per week of free education and care to all disadvantaged two-year-olds, and a £2.5 billion pupil premium, with extra money attached to the children who need it most. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Stephen Williams), who has left his place, when I was at school, I was eligible for free school meals, and I know what a difference extra money going to the pupils who need it most can make. The funding will not just benefit them. By driving up standards across our schools, it will benefit every child in every school. It could be used to cut class sizes, provide one-to-one tuition and catch-up classes, or used in any way the school sees fit, ensuring that every child gets the individual attention that they need and deserve.
As everyone in the House knows, performance at school is tightly linked to future outcomes. That is where fairness can start: the funding can make a difference in the early years. Giving this country’s poorest children the best possible start in life is the most effective way to lift them out of poverty and to help them to achieve their full potential. The fairness premium is therefore one of the most important policies of the spending review and I hope that it will be welcomed by Members on both sides of the House.
There is no doubt that the spending review is full of difficult decisions, but these are decisions that Labour Members shirked for the 13 years that they were in government. These are decisions that two parties coming together and acting in the national interest will be taking.
Mary Macleod (Brentford and Isleworth) (Con)
It is good to have this debate on the comprehensive spending review following the gross domestic product growth figures and the news of the enhancement of Britain’s triple A rating, which was described by the Financial Times as
“offering a vote of confidence in the government’s austerity programme”.
For me, the CSR has summed up this Government’s intention to deal with the budget deficit in a way that gets this country back on a firm financial footing and invests in our future.
Earlier, I was appalled when the hon. Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) not only did not recognise that there were some women on this side of the House, and directed her comments to the gentlemen—as fond as I am of my hon. Friends, I thought she ought to have recognised the talent that we have on the Front Bench in the shape of my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary to the Treasury and elsewhere, too—but, more importantly, did not give us any one plan or any cut that we have come up with that she could agree with. She also did not come up with plan of action that showed exactly what the Opposition would do to get rid of the awful mess that we are in, which they created.
The comprehensive spending review is all about fairness and getting things back on track, ensuring that we get value for money and investing in the future. The general public appreciate that cuts need to be made, and that those cuts need to be right and fair, but that we need to ensure that we support those in need. That is what I believe we are doing. There is nothing fair about running a huge budget deficit and burdening future generations with the debts that we are not prepared to pay.
I have met several people in my constituency who are keen to work but who are prevented from doing so because they would be worse off. The time has come to make those changes and to ensure that we deliver real change for the future. The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) was talking about the impact on the local area in London, but let me tell him about my vision not only for Chiswick, Brentford, Isleworth, Osterley, Hounslow and Hammersmith but for the rest of London and for the country beyond. I want to build confidence in people, no matter where they come from or where they live. I want to ensure that we build skills for the future and that we build hope and aspirations, so that we can get people back into work again. That is what I believe that the comprehensive spending review will do.
Those of us who spent many hours, days and years in business know that we can get better value for money in the public sector. As part of this plan we will look at each Department to see where we can simplify how we do things, where we can remove duplication and where we can add value. Those things are possible.
It is also important that we do not forget those organisations that play a key role across our many constituencies. Let me bring one to mind: Refuge, which deals with domestic violence. When local authorities and others are considering their budgets and prioritising their spending, I want to put in a word for organisations such as Refuge, which need support because they provide valuable services to the local community.
Finally, I want to touch on our investment for the future—that is, investment in infrastructure, in people and in growth. I commend the Government for their announced investments in Crossrail and in many of our roads—including in the Hounslow highways private finance initiative, for which we have support—and for their many other investment announcements. I agree with our Mayor that London plays a vital role as the engine of the UK economy and that investment in the capital is critical to the well-being of the economy overall.
We are also investing in schools, with the announcement of capital funding for and the refurbishment of schools. Several schools in my community—Chiswick Community, Hounslow Manor and Oaklands—need that support. They also need the support for the additional places that they will need for the future.
In this comprehensive spending review, the Government have had to deal with the economic realities and they have not shied away from their responsibilities. We are committed to cutting waste and reforming public sector services while at the same time investing in infrastructure, people and businesses to make this country successful for the future.
Mr Hanson
No, not in view of the little time I have left.
More widely, there are cuts to front-line policing, putting at risk Labour’s record falls in crime and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) noted, putting extra pressure on health and education services, despite pledges to support them.
Mary Macleod
What is the right hon. Gentleman’s plan, and which cuts does he agree with?
Mr Hanson
I can see a pattern developing. Members who were not here in March of this year did not hear my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West outline his proposals.
Despite what the coalition would have us believe, this grossly unfair series of cuts is not inevitable—there is another way. The deficit was there because as a Government we faced a choice. Incidentally, the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr Cameron), as Leader of the Opposition, supported our deficit reduction plan and spending programmes. After much dithering, he supported us in taking measures to ensure that we did not let the United Kingdom slip into a depression. Members such as the hon. Members for Central Devon (Mel Stride) and for Watford do not realise that the official Opposition supported us in ensuring that we took action to help to support the banks to keep people in their jobs and to keep people’s mortgages alive.
That is unlike what happened in the recessions of the early 1990s, which I remember as a Member of Parliament, when we saw mortgages go up, houses repossessed, and jobs lost in their thousands. We took action to save those things on behalf of the British people, and we were proud to do so. The action that we took kept people in their jobs, kept people in their homes, and gave more businesses the support they needed than at any time during the 1990s. Through our action, inflation stayed at a historical low and plans were put in place to ensure that we saw a return to growth at the end of this year. We took that action to support the economy.
We need to bring the deficit down—certainly we do. We know that tough spending choices are needed, and in our Budget we looked at saving money on IT systems in the NHS, police overtime and welfare, and made £15 billion of efficiency and back-office savings on a range of other issues. They were important savings. [Interruption.] As my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) says, we raised money through a higher and more effective banking levy.
This comprehensive spending review debate is about choices. It is about choosing whether the banks bear more of a burden than our children. It is about choosing whether we cut public services spending deeply or quickly—and we would not. It is about targeting new tax rises to fund £7.5 billion of capital spending in order to support jobs now. The Government are making the wrong choices. We are not “all in this together”. They are gambling with jobs, gambling with growth, deepening unfairness, and increasing inequality. To cite a notable former Prime Minister, there is an alternative.
We announced our programme in our Budget in March, and we were elected—every single one of us—on that programme for the future. In the coming weeks and months, we will promote that alternative vigorously, expose this Government’s reckless policies and ensure that we stand up for the ordinary, squeezed, middle-class people of this country and the people on lower incomes. We will reject the cuts where it is appropriate to reject them and support efficiencies where they should be made. [Interruption.] Again, the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford was not listening to what was said earlier. He has not been here listening to the debates and the arguments. I urge him and the House to reject this comprehensive spending review, support the Labour alternative and ensure that we defend the poorest in our society.