Finance Bill

Debate between Mike Amesbury and Alex Sobel

Report stage & Report stage: House of Commons & Report: 1st sitting & Report: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 1st July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I come to the debate more with sadness than with pleasure, having read the progress report from the Committee on Climate Change on how the Government and the country are doing. The report is absolutely damning of the Government’s performance. It says that they are not even meeting the 2° warming target, they are failing the commitments that we made in Paris five years ago, and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) said, they are not expected to meet the fourth and fifth carbon budgets. The report goes on to say that many national plans and policies are not acknowledging the long-term risks of climate change, and that many Government Departments are not acknowledging those risks.

I am going to talk about a few different areas and measures, hopefully not for too long, to let other colleagues fully take part in the debate. We have with us a Minister who has spent time at the Department for Transport, along with my neighbour the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones), who was a long-serving Minister in that Department, so I will start there.

I am pleased that there are measures such as clause 83, which exempts electric vehicles from vehicle excise duty, and clause 82, which deals with the calculation of cars’ CO₂ emissions, but is that enough? We are talking about a country still addicted to petrol and diesel vehicles. Just look across the North sea to Norway. We have to thank the Norwegians, because their No. 1 selling vehicle is the Nissan Leaf. They are therefore supporting Nissan jobs in Sunderland with their Government measures, yet we are not sufficiently supporting them with ours. Those two measures in the Bill will not be enough to make Nissan Leaf the top selling car in the UK, which is what the Government should be aiming for. Not that I am particularly promoting Nissan—this goes for any electric vehicle. I have no interest to declare in relation to Nissan; this is about British jobs. We should look to Norway and its measures on sales tax, charging points and other things, which have meant that the majority of vehicles sold in Norway are electric.

Looking forward to COP next year, the reason why Paris was so successful was that the French showed global leadership, through domestic policy and diplomacy. The problem we will have is that we are not showing the same global leadership in domestic policy. We are a global leader, rightly, in reducing the use of coal-fired power stations, which will effectively have ceased in this country by the time we get to COP. However, we are not a global leader in any other area, so how can we secure a world-leading agreement in Glasgow next year? It is incumbent on the Treasury to introduce incentives to ensure that we reach those points, so that we can show that our measures work. It is not enough to talk a good game; we have to deliver.

Let me turn to some points drawn up by the all-party net zero group, which I chair, which should be instructive for the Minister. They are points that he should take on board and that hopefully the Government will look into. One thing we have seen in the renewable energy sector is a lack of confidence, because in many areas the Government have withdrawn support or not introduced it. One area where I would say the Government have done well and are world leaders is offshore wind. Contracts for difference have made a huge difference. However, we do not have the same confidence in other areas of the renewables market.

What has happened with solar feed-in tariffs has removed confidence from the solar market. Support for green hydrogen and the renewables to create it has not come forward in the way that it should have. My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin) mentioned the tidal barrage. Again, we are not talking about value for money; we are talking about a world-leading project that could create new technology that we could export. We are not thinking broadly enough about these measures, and the Treasury needs to rethink them.

Obviously we are in the post-covid period, and we need to think about retooling our workforce, because of the many people unfortunately losing their jobs and the Government’s own agenda of levelling up areas. I want to give one example of where that might really work. Not far from my constituency, in East Yorkshire, we have a plethora of factories that build caravans. I will come to the construction industry later, but the way in which we build houses is the 19th-century way of doing it. In fact, we have been building houses in more or less the same way since the Romans. Why are the Government not incentivising the repurposing of those factories to build modular, Passivhaus standard, zero-carbon homes, creating jobs in areas neighbouring coastal resorts, a lot of which are going to lose jobs, and making available houses at different specs for a wide range of people, from social housing right through to the most expensive types of houses in this country, all of which could be implemented quickly? The Prime Minister said, “Build, build, build”, but it is not enough just to build; we have to build in a way that creates a green recovery.

There is a real dilemma around how we incentivise the construction sector. If someone has a property—a terrace, a house or even a heritage property—and wants to refurbish it and put in green measures, they have to pay VAT. If they want to demolish that property and build a brand new one, they pay no VAT. Is that not perverse? Should the Minister not be looking to fix that? We have systems and financial incentives in place that are going to create more carbon, not less.

I will finish soon as I want to give colleagues a chance to speak. Every Department’s plans should include a green fiscal rule or measure that every single policy has to meet. Every time the Treasury or another Department are putting forward a new policy, they should be asking whether it will reduce carbon, and help to meet our fourth and fifth carbon budgets—and the carbon budgets after that, if we get to that stage. If it does not, that policy should not be coming forward, because we only have one chance to do this. There is no planet B. There is no second United Kingdom. We need to be doing this now and in the best possible way.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

Yesterday, like a number of Members across the House, I was lobbied—by 15 residents, in my case. The time is now.

Today I spoke to 180 delegates of CPRE, the countryside charity. The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) was there as well. Those people told me what they wanted fed back to Ministers about the progress they would like to see in the green economy. They are frustrated with the lack of progress, and determined and ambitious to ensure that we get to net zero a damn sight quicker than the Government’s current targets suggest. They are keen to protect our green spaces and environments, and, in turn, to create great green jobs. Where there is development, they are determined that we have a brownfield-first policy, and that the houses built are genuinely affordable and carbon neutral. Picking up on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel); there are some great examples of modular houses that we can build at scale and create the jobs, jobs, jobs that the shadow Minister spoke about.

We need real and bold investment in our cycleways and pathways, and affordable transport, until the point that it is in our DNA to ensure that our buses are electric, that we get more people working on buses and that our railways get people from A to B, which they clearly do not do currently. At Northwich station in my constituency, people who are disabled or have mobility problems cannot get to the other side of the tracks. That affects their mobility across the conurbation and productivity in terms of sustainable growth.

People have spoken about renewable energy, including the decision on the tidal lagoon. That was a retrograde step; the lagoon should have been invested in. There is a similar situation in Merseyside, where Mayor Steve Rotheram is taking forward a project. I sincerely hope that the Government can escalate that problem—not only for Merseyside, but for the whole nation.

Finally, on renewable energy, people have mentioned hydrogen, which is a real growth industry in my community in Weaver Vale. I would like to see the Government actually escalate such support and put some speed behind it. I would also like to see a recovery plan, which again is about jobs, jobs, jobs, but also about building back better and certainly building back greener with more ambition.

Public Sector Pay

Debate between Mike Amesbury and Alex Sobel

Monday 4th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Hanson. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) for so eloquently leading the debate. As a GMB member, I feel privileged to be able to speak in a debate on pay and pay inequality, because it is surely one of the most important issues facing the United Kingdom today. I have had hundreds of emails from Unison members and hundreds of postcards from members of the Royal College of Nursing on this very issue. In summer 2016, the Prime Minister promised to fight against what she called the “burning injustices” in British society. This weekend, the four key members of the Prime Minister’s Social Mobility Commission resigned, citing little hope that the Government could deliver a more equal society. What more damning indication is there that the Government are failing?

[Graham Stringer in the Chair]

It is clear that this country has a problem with wealth inequality. A recent report by the Resolution Foundation states that 1% of adults own 14% of the nation’s assets. At the other end of the scale, 15% of the British people own no assets at all. The reality now is that wealth inequality is hitting public sector workers—our social workers, police officers and firefighters—who are the very backbone of our society. That is largely down to the public sector pay cap: one of the most iniquitous policies the Government have come up with, and a policy not just of this Government but of the previous coalition Government with the Liberal Democrats—one might note that they are not in the Chamber.

In 2010, when the coalition Government was formed, the country was told it needed to make sacrifices to reduce the national debt. David Cameron’s exact words— I am sure we all remember them—were:

“we’re all in this together”.

Seven long years later, debt is still rising. The date for the eradication of debt, as my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Laura Smith) said, has been pushed further and further back; and all our public sector is in crisis, because of the harsh austerity economics of those two Governments. All in all, the cost of living has risen by about 22%, while public sector pay has not just stagnated but fallen back, in real terms.

The Government have created a system in which the people we rely on most cannot afford to live in 21st-century Britain. To me, that does not scream of a society where we are all in it together; I am sure it does not to the other Members in the Chamber, either—or perhaps that is not true of all of them. Is it not entirely reasonable for public sector staff to ask what their sacrifice has been for? Is it not reasonable for nurses to ask why more and more of them are having to take second jobs, or use food banks, to feed their families? Is it not reasonable for firefighters to ask why 27% of their colleagues have contemplated suicide because of the stress of reduced budgets and increased pressures? Is it not reasonable for teachers to ask why teaching staff and their families across the south of England are ending up homeless because their wages have stagnated while rents have sky-rocketed?

I recently spoke to one of my constituents, who has worked in social care for more than 20 years. He explained the effect that what is essentially a seven-year wage cut has had on his life and his family’s lives. He could have put a down payment on a house, paid for his child to go to university, or saved up for a more comfortable retirement. Yet, despite it all, he told me how they would have accepted a temporary pay cap, to protect the services that he has dedicated his life to. He is not unique; that is the norm for public sector workers, not just in Leeds North West but throughout the country, and I am proud of him and all public sector workers.

While such people have had to make money stretch further, the services they work in have been slashed and they are working twice as hard for less money to keep cash-strapped services from collapse. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has warned that the public sector faces a recruitment and retention crisis as a direct result of the pay cap. On any one day there are 90,000 vacancies for social care jobs in England. Just under 340,000 social care employees leave their job each year. Schools have been forced to increase money spent on advertising for teachers by 61%; that is money being wasted in the education system on recruitment rather than being spent on retaining excellent teachers.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

Would it make sense for the Government to reverse the ludicrous tax cuts for the incredibly wealthy and corporations, amounting to some £19 billion, to fund public servants and end the pay cap?

[Alex Sobel]

That is an excellent point, and if the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) had stayed in her place she would have heard her question answered by my hon. Friend. It is right: corporation tax rates have fallen consistently, but large corporations have not paid their burden of taxation. If they did, it would be to the good of all society, including their own workers and shareholders.

The Metropolitan police have had to take the extreme measure of asking retired police officers to return to work to help them cope with demand. The argument is not only a moral one—although it is a moral one; clearly the pay cap is a false economy, and maintaining it is costing billions. It is not just the recruitment crisis that is costing the country billions; the TUC has also shown that the pay cap has meant public sector staff spending £48 billion less on the high street since it was introduced in 2010, undermining private sector as well as public sector jobs and pay. I have a simple question for Conservative Members—those who are left: who will you turn to when there is no one to put out the fire in your house, when no one keeps criminals off your streets, and there is no one to care for you when you are sick, old or unable to care for yourself? The hypocrisy of the Government is staggering. Praise is lavished upon public sector workers, but is not reflected in their pay packet. Praise does not pay the rent, feed a family, or heat a home.