Budget Resolutions
Debate between Michael Gove and Maria Eagle(3 years ago)
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Michael Gove
The right hon. Lady is right to point out that the Sure Start programme was always intended to help those who were most in need, but it was also intended to provide a universal offer. Inevitably, during the difficult period that we had after the 2008 financial crash, we had to make sure that we targeted resources accordingly, but after a period of retrenchment, we are now entering a period of renewal and reform. The family hubs are targeted not just at those who have children in the first 1,000 days of their life, which reflects superbly on the work of my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom); they are there to ensure that we have a comprehensive nought-to-19 offer. They go further than Sure Start children’s centres originally did—that is no criticism of Sure Start children’s centres—providing services that they did not.
Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State give way?
Michael Gove
I will make a bit of progress and then try to take more interventions, if that is okay.
It is also important to recognise that the Budget statement saw a significant increase in public spending overall. It is the case that no Government can be judged purely by how much they spend. How that money is spent is critical. Additional public spending without reform and without a focus on value for money is money wasted. But I do not think that anyone across the House can deny that, with reform and with a focus on value for money, additional public spending, appropriately targeted, can help to transform public services for the better. In this Budget statement, £150 billion more will be spent over the spending review period. That is a 3.8% growth, in real terms, and in the Department for which I am responsible there is a 4.7% increase. Alongside that, there are the biggest increases in capital investment from any Government for 50 years; the biggest block grants ever given, since the dawn of devolution, to the Governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland; and an increase of 6.6% in the national living wage, which takes it to £9.50 an hour. All Governments can face criticism and all Chancellors can be attacked, but I do not think it credible for anyone in this House to say that the package that the Chancellor unveiled last week is any way not equal to the challenges that we face.
The question for Opposition Members, including those on the Front Bench, is what they would do differently. If they argue that we should spend even more, where would they spend it? Which budgets would they prioritise? If they were to spend more, which budgets would they deprioritise? What would they cut to fund the additional spending? If they would not cut, would they borrow more? If so, how much more? With what impact on our credibility in international markets, on interest rates and on our capacity to fund our debt and deficit? Let us bear in mind that debt is falling and the deficit is being reduced as a result of the Chancellor’s shrewd approach.
If the Opposition were to borrow more, would they tax more? If so, whom would they tax? What credibility can they have on tax when we introduced a specific one-off increase to fund the national health service and social care—and the Labour party voted against it?
Those are all questions that Opposition Front Benchers want to avoid. To what lengths have they gone to avoid it? Well, earlier today I spent a few seconds on Twitter, not tweeting, but studying that social platform. In particular, I studied the tweets of my opposite number, the hon. Member for Croydon North (Steve Reed), who has been tweeting promiscuously and vociferously over the weekend—but what has he been tweeting promiscuously and vociferously about? Has he been tweeting about the spending review? Has he been putting forward alternative plans for local government, alternative propositions on levelling up, a new plan for housing or perhaps a new proposition on communities?
No. The hon. Member has only one tweet about the spending review. In contrast, he has tweeted five times as often about Crystal Palace football club. We are all, I think, in awe of Patrick Vieira’s success in ensuring that Crystal Palace could beat Manchester City 2-0 at the weekend, but however historic and unprecedented that victory is, I think we all have a right to ask whether, if Labour is silent on the spending review—if it has nothing to say by way of criticism or alternative—that is perhaps an indication of the success of the Chancellor in framing a Budget and a spending review right for this country.
Maria Eagle
Knowsley, which is one of the boroughs that my constituency covers, has gone from being the fifth most deprived local authority in 2010 to being the second most deprived now. One would have expected a Budget such as this, about levelling up, to focus particularly on giving necessary resources to Knowsley, but despite being a priority 1 area it has been overlooked for the levelling-up fund, having previously been overlooked for the future high streets fund and the towns fund. What does Knowsley have to do, now that it is the second most deprived area, to get some money from the Government so it can try to level up? [Interruption.]
Michael Gove
The hon. Lady has made an important point. There are specific and long-standing issues in Knowsley and other parts of Merseyside that we need to address as part of levelling up. However, I think she does herself down slightly, because I understand that thanks to her advocacy in her constituency two levelling-up bids succeeded, and although they do not affect Knowsley, they do affect Liverpool. Some £20 million has gone towards helping Liverpool City Council with regeneration, and £37 million has gone towards recovery. Those sums are not insignificant.
Nevertheless, I take the hon. Lady’s point about Knowsley. I think it important to remind her, and indeed the House, that the £1.7 billion in the levelling-up fund which was allocated by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor is just one third of the total sum allocated over the course of the spending review, and I look forward to working with her and with other colleagues to make sure that the remaining funds can be allocated effectively.
European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill
Debate between Michael Gove and Maria Eagle(7 years, 9 months ago)
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Michael Gove
No such statement was made by any Cabinet Minister and I hope the hon. Lady will withdraw.
Maria Eagle
I do not intend to respond to the right hon. Gentleman. He had his chance earlier.
This authoritarian demeanour is alien to our British tradition, and the sooner the new Government realise it and mend their ways, the better. Secondly, the nature of the exit that the Government seem intent on pursuing has influenced me. I think that this extreme, right-wing exit that they are pursuing, without any authorisation from this Parliament or the people of this country, will damage the jobs and economy of the UK, undermine our standing and position in the world and hit the poorest, like many who live and work in my constituency, the hardest.
I disagree that the Prime Minister should simply give up on single market membership—something that has benefited and could continue to benefit our people as workers and consumers greatly—without even bothering to negotiate on it, even though she was elected on a manifesto in the 2015 general election that promised to stay in the single market. It said:
“We are clear about what we want from Europe. We say: yes to the Single Market.”
Why did the Prime Minister not make pursuing membership of the single market part of her negotiating position?
Thirdly, although we have recently been given vague promises of further votes in this place after the negotiations, it remains unclear to me whether they will be meaningful in any way. This Bill therefore represents the only real opportunity at present that parliamentarians have to make their concerns known and shape the kind of exit that we get. I think the Government intend it to be the only opportunity we get, and let us remind ourselves: they did not intend that we should have this one. Once article 50 is triggered, time is set running and at the expiry of two years, the UK is out of the EU, unless all 27 countries agree to some alternative arrangements for those negotiations to continue in the interim. Simply by the effluxion of time, whatever the state of the negotiations, the reality will be that we are out—over a cliff edge, over a precipice. The right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) let the cat out of the bag in his speech, and the Government themselves argued before the courts that the process is irrevocable once set in motion.
Had the Government produced a White Paper following consultations about what kind of exit we should seek to secure and had they tried to reach a consensus across parties on what was best for the country, in order to bring it together and reconcile the 48% who voted to remain in an open and meaningful way, the triggering of article 50 may not have seemed the watershed or the last possible point of parliamentary influence that it now seems. The Government have had plenty of time to undertake such a process, but they have spent it telling parliamentarians that “Brexit means Brexit”, pointlessly appealing the High Court judgment—with an entirely predictable result—and refusing to say anything of substance on the grounds that it will compromise our negotiating position. The effluxion of time is what will compromise our negotiating position. What pressure will there be on our partners to agree to anything, when by simply biding their time we will be expelled, perhaps without any of the agreements we seek?
Fourthly, I represent a city and a constituency that voted to remain, and I feel the need to represent the views of my constituents on such a momentous issue. In Liverpool, we have seen over many years the advantages of EU membership at first hand. As the Tory Government of Margaret Thatcher genuinely considered organising the “managed decline” of Liverpool in the early 1980s, when I was growing up there, it was the European Economic Community that began to send what over the years became billions of pounds of structural funds to help the regeneration of the city.