Inequality

Debate between Michael Meacher and Diana Johnson

Thursday 27th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Meacher]

This has inevitably been a rather short and truncated debate, but a useful one for all that. I think it fair to say that there is broad cross-party agreement that inequality is now out of control and further action needs to be taken. My hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) made the essential point that an increase in the ratio between top and bottom from 11:1 to 116:1, within one generation, cannot remotely be justified in terms of the performance of the British economy.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods) for making important points about the raft of measures that are still necessary to deal with poverty, including tax credits to deal with in-work poverty; the continuing unfair span of gender inequality; the need for the Government to press the issue of the living wage—some companies are paying it but far too many still are not—and the need, above all, to shift away from a low-pay, low-skills and low-productivity economy to a high-pay, high-skills and high-productivity economy.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool for observing that the relationship between executive pay and company performance does not justify these excesses and cannot remotely do so, that the voice of workers needs to be directly involved in the determination of pay, and that we do not currently have a productive economy to the degree that we need and that is clearly possible both socially and economically.

I am grateful to the Minister for her, as always, positive and bubbly tone, but I realise that she cannot go beyond her brief. I hope that if there is one lesson she will take to her right hon. Friend the Business Secretary, it is that he has to move from the action that he has already taken, which is valuable, to direct involvement of workers in executive pay. If we can get that message across, this debate has been worth it. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Speaker. It is reported in The Independent today that John Vine, the Government’s independent chief inspector of borders and immigration, has written to the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee expressing concern that the Home Secretary has been intervening to delay and manipulate the publication of inconvenient reports on the Government’s immigration and asylum policy, and compromising the independence of his role. Given today’s news of the continuing mess that the Government’s immigration policy is in, have you, Madam Deputy Speaker, had any indication that the Home Secretary will be making a statement to the House on this matter?