Jobs and Growth

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Wednesday 12th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

As ever, it gives me great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies), who talks about learning lessons. Following the erudite economic contributions that we have heard from many hon. Members, I am going to talk about the real lessons of human life in my constituency.

First, let me give some numbers. Over the past year, claims for jobseeker’s allowance in London increased by 10%, compared with the UK as a whole at 8%. Those figures are pretty bad, and today’s unemployment statistics underline the general trend. In my constituency, the figure increased by 18%. If one looks more closely, it gets worse. The number of claimants under the age of 24 increased by 18.1% in the past year, and for someone who is over 50 the outlook is bleak. The increase in the number of claimants in that group was 29.2%. That is right—nearly a third more over-50s are seeking work than a year ago.

I will focus on people and their lives, and on the families who are affected by this Government’s policies. About one in three residents in the borough of Hackney, which I represent with my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), are under the age of 24. Therefore, as well as the percentage increases, a significant number of young people in both constituencies are affected by the Government’s reckless programme.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady explain how abandoning our deficit reduction plans, losing our triple A credit rating, and forcing up interest rates to UK plc, homeowners and business will lower unemployment?

[Meg Hillier]

That question demonstrates the detachment of this Government and their Back Benchers from the reality of human lives. If the hon. Gentleman will let me develop my argument, I will point out that there are real challenges for people. There is an alternative plan, which my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor and his colleagues have laid out, and I back it.

I have met young people who have already been made redundant in their early 20s and others who have done everything that the Government have asked of them, such as working hard at school. Our borough has seen huge improvements in schools and education, and its results are improving. Our young people are increasingly going to university, which was pie in the sky for many young people when I was first selected for my seat. And still, there are no jobs. We risk having a lost generation, although not like the lost generation that the hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon) spoke about, because we made great strides in government, although there is still more to do on skills. We risk a lost generation of young people who have achieved a lot and still cannot get a job.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the most alarming consequences of the Government’s economic policies for those of us in inner-city communities is how hard the cuts hit the public sector and women workers in the public sector? Particularly in inner-city London, disproportionate numbers of public sector workers are black and minority ethnic, and there are no private sector jobs for them to go into. Those people are often the head of their household and the only earner in their household. They are the sacrifices of this misconceived economic policy.

[Meg Hillier]

I could not put it better than my hon. Friend and I will not try. She is absolutely right.

Young people who have never worked are now desperately seeking even unpaid work experience. What have this Government done in response? They have cut the future jobs fund so that there is no more chance of employment and no more try-before-you-buy for employers. They have cut education maintenance allowance and increased student tuition fees. Just as young people in Hackney are emerging from school, ready and qualified for university, they are losing the help that they had.

The cuts programme is so deep and so fast that it gives no hope. It does exactly what my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington said: it cuts the jobs that were providing for so many households in my constituency and keeping our local economy going.

Although the Chancellor is not in his seat, let me tell him about real people. Last week, I met a 16-year-old who said to me, “I really want a Saturday job because I want to grow from a boy into a man and this will help me.” He also told me that he wants and needs to contribute to his household’s increasingly squeezed income. He is losing the education maintenance allowance that he would have been entitled to and he is very worried.

There is the sixth-former who used her education maintenance allowance to top up the family’s electricity key on a Thursday so that she could keep the lights and heating on until the end of the week for the basics of study and existence. There is the teenager who attended school on alternate days because he and his brother had to share a pair of school trousers. Thanks to EMA, he is now at university, where he has escaped from his chaotic family background and is ready to succeed. I hope that there will be a job for him when he leaves.

There is the woman who is working to bring up her children and is using an expensive prepay meter key.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Meg Hillier]

I am afraid that I will not.

That woman told me that she uses the prepay meter key because of her fear of a large quarterly bill at the end of the autumn, even though she knows that it costs more. She is doing what the Government tell her to do. She is a single parent with four children who is working to support her family, but she lives in fear of the bills every day. There is the man who came to my surgery on Monday. He has a job offer, but he faces the choice between a job and a home because of the Government’s short-sighted approach to housing benefit.

Where are the private sector jobs? In my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, most small businesses employ fewer than six people and they are struggling. I have been up and down my high street many times since the events of 8 August, but it is not just those events that have caused problems. Businesses are struggling with footfall and because people do not have disposable income to spend. They are worried about what will be down the road.

The Federation of Small Businesses has been very critical of the Government’s approach, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) indicated. Businesses on the high street need quantitative easing, including those that are being incubated by entrepreneurs in my constituency. The Prime Minister is very fond of talking about creating a silicon valley when it suits him, but those high-street businesses are exactly the sort that could be creating jobs for young and older people in my constituency. However, they risk being throttled at birth, or if they do survive—I wish them well and hope they do—they risk not growing at the rate that they could with the right support from Government.

[Richard Fuller]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Meg Hillier]

I am afraid I will not.

Families are being squeezed. Prices are going up, with food prices having increased by 6.1% in the past year. For those who drive, petrol has gone up. Energy prices have gone up, VAT is at 20% and we are seeing a huge hike in fare prices thanks to the Tory Mayor of London. If people have a job, they are worried that they will not have it in future, and they are worried because they will not be getting pay rises. Families in my constituency have nowhere to go to get the extra money: not for them the easy credit that is available to many or the bank overdraft that is available at the end of a phone call; not for them the rich family member who can help them out or a cushion that they have saved over years of work, because they have been living a difficult existence as it is and are now squeezing until the pips squeak. They cannot squeeze any more out of their household budgets.

This Government are cutting too far, too fast, and it is not working for families, for young people or for businesses. It is not working at all, nor, sadly, are far too many of my constituents.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—