Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation
Debate between Meg Hillier and Neil Carmichael(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to speak in this important debate, not least because it covers two important subjects that I find of great interest—Europe and education. I intend to address them both.
First, let us canter through some of the statistics in the context of the changes that the Chancellor announced. The global economy is going through a very problematic period of adjustment. That has significant impacts on our own performance, and those are driving down some of the more ambitious assumptions made previously. That is why the OBR is so important. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) said that the OBR had been wrong on a scale of about £45 billion per year on anticipated debt. If we contrast that with the £8.5 billion that we pay to the European Union in net contributions, we see that it is a different scale of issue. However, that does not undermine the function of the OBR because it has to measure changes over a wide variety of different statistics, and does so remarkably well. We should salute that. We should also note that the Office for National Statistics is just as good at making predictions.
The Chancellor mentioned productivity—rightly, because that goes to the heart of the issue. He said that productivity growth is slackening. In this country we need even more productivity growth than we are seeing now because our deficit with other countries who are our competitors is quite significant. For example, the OECD says that we are 28% less productive than the Germans. That makes a difference when we set about exporting. If we are that different from the German economy in terms of productivity, then we are going to struggle with being competitive. We have to stop complaining about UKTI and stop worrying about what people are doing to us, and start recognising that we have to narrow this productivity gap.
The second point about productivity is that it matters in relation to life fulfilment, tackling poverty and so on, because the brutal fact is that if we are more productive through having greater skills and better deployment of training, we will get higher salaries and better wages. Through driving productivity increases in our economy, we will end poverty on the scale that has been mentioned today. That is our challenge, and it is a must-do. I am really pleased that the Chancellor is embedding it in this Budget. He has done so by addressing education, which I will turn to now.
More academies equals better schools. That is something that I believe and, I think, something that we will easily prove.
Meg Hillier
As the hon. Gentleman is probably aware, the Public Accounts Committee recently held a hearing on teacher training. We discovered that, after an eight-week course—sometimes it did not even last eight weeks—a staggering number of teachers who had not been qualified to teach certain subjects to a higher level qualified to teach them to our students and young people. Does he not think it is more important to sort out having qualified teachers in the classroom than to force every school into academy status?
Neil Carmichael
I could not agree more with my fellow Select Committee Chair. That is obviously a priority, but that does not mean that it is not also important to have good schools that are led well by headteachers who are focused on the right culture, standards and quality staff. We should have more academies and make sure that they operate in a well-structured multi-academy trust.
Energy Bill [Lords]
Debate between Meg Hillier and Neil Carmichael
Meg Hillier
First does not always mean best. We want the Bill to succeed in its aims, but if the hon. Lady looks at the detail of the Bill and reads the report of proceedings in the other place, she will observe the glaring gaps that I will shortly highlight. As I have said, the task is obvious and the challenge is great.
Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)
For the record, can the shadow Secretary of State tell us whether the level of fuel poverty went up or down under the last Labour Government, for whom she, of course, served?
Meg Hillier
The point is that this Government are removing Warm Front, and there will be nothing for the fuel poor; this Bill will not deliver for them.
The challenge is great. As the Secretary of State said, 27% of all UK emissions come from our homes. All Members are committed to an 80% reduction in emissions by 2050; there is cross-party agreement on that. However, during the Bill’s passage in the other place Ministers were offered opportunity after opportunity to make their proposals clearer, to introduce proper measures of accountability such as an annual report, and to safeguard consumers, but they rejected those offers of help, and we have not heard any further detail throughout the entire 45 minutes of the Secretary of State’s speech today.
Other Members may have longer memories, but I do not believe that this House has ever been asked to vote on the Second Reading of a Bill in which so much of the detail is unclear or not worked out. We are being asked to buy a massive pig in a poke, and that is simply not good enough. At the very least, the Secretary of State should concede the need for evidence sessions for the Bill, so we can shed some light on its murkier aspects, but he has refused to do so. As a result, Members will not have a single opportunity to discuss the Bill outside Committee. Today, the longer the Secretary of State’s answers were, the less we learned. [Interruption.] No, those are my words.
The key question this afternoon is whether the Government’s proposals meet the challenge. Sadly, my confirmed conviction is that they do not.