Autumn Statement
Mike Kane Excerpts(5 months ago)
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Jeremy Hunt
I am always happy to engage with any hon. Members if they have concerns about the way the benefits system operates in terms of disincentivising people who would like to work but cannot do so. Caring responsibilities are an area that she has raised and I am happy to engage with her on that outside this House.
Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
Cumulatively, Manchester City Council’s and Trafford Council’s cuts since 2010 have been £443 million and £288 million respectively. The Local Government Association says that the funding gap will be £4 billion in the next two years. Was there anything in this statement that will stop the continuing crumbling of our local services?
Economic Growth
Mike Kane Excerpts(5 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the balanced and thoughtful speech by the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous). Securing high, sustained economic growth in every part of the country is an ambition we should all have in this House. The challenge lies in how we go about achieving that ambition.
The Government’s plan just is not working. At the start of the year, the Prime Minister and Chancellor promised to get the economy growing; instead growth is flatlining, as the shadow Chancellor mentioned. The Bank of England has downgraded its economic forecasts and the International Monetary Fund forecasts that the UK will have the lowest growth in the G7 next year.
Labour does have a plan: one that will grow the economy and get Britain building again. We need faster approval of critical infrastructure, we need investment in the industries of the future, we need to get more people owning their own homes and we must raise living standards. In my constituency, we have oven-ready schemes that would help achieve our ambition—schemes would unlock the delivery of more than 3,000 homes, enable the development of world-class health and care research facilities, and create thousands of jobs and opportunities across growth sectors. The Government are aware of those schemes, and should and could have supported Manchester and Trafford to deliver them.
The two town centres in my constituency, Wythenshawe and Sale, submitted bids to the last round of the levelling-up fund. In Wythenshawe town centre, Manchester City Council has invested £20 million in plans to provide a once-in-a-generation programme of regeneration, including more than 1,600 new homes—it should not be this difficult. Those homes will breathe new life, jobs and vital economic activity into the town centre.
In Sale town centre, in addition to the successful regeneration of Stanley Square by Altered/Space, Trafford Council has bought and is demolishing Sale magistrates court in order to build dozens of new and affordable homes on the site. It has regeneration plans for other locations in the town centre, including the leisure facilities and the public realm. However, both bids to the levelling-up fund—for Wythenshawe and for Sale—were rejected by the Government.
We have an approved masterplan for Wythenshawe Hospital in my constituency, which will see the transformation of the increasingly out-of-date hospital campus into a state-of-the-art health village, with affordable housing for nurses and an aparthotel. It will also create world-class research facilities in the health and care sector, a sustainable campus that delivers a commitment to be net zero by 2038, and other complementary uses, such as hotels, conferencing, training and retail. All of that will be done while delivering inclusive growth, which will derives maximum benefit through local job creation and employment and training opportunities, ensuring that it is local people who see the benefit, in addition to those in the region.
The delivery model proposed for the development of Wythenshawe Hospital is a financially driven, phased construction approach, using blended funding. That funding solution could leverage the many commercial, health and social-related investment opportunities afforded by the site’s prime location, while supporting the requirement of reduced levels of NHS capital. However, to realise this opportunity, Government and Treasury support is needed to unlock a technical solution to the current NHS capital regime. It is now more than 18 months since the approval of the masterplan and we have seen zero progress from this Government on a workable solution, although I am grateful to Lord Markham for engaging with me and with Homes England on this issue. This is not getting Britain building; it is blocking Britain building and flatlining our economic growth.
My area also has the Airport City masterplan. Manchester airport in my constituency is the largest UK airport outside London, and it provides international and domestic passenger and freight connectivity for the whole of northern Britain. I welcome the Government’s pledge in the King’s Speech to begin to look at consumer protection and the consumer experience in our airlines industry. The current transformation plan at my local airport will support 50 million passengers by 2030. There is still much to do; surface transport, the fabric of the estate and active travel all need to be addressed. The plan is set to deliver up to 5 million square feet and 16,000 jobs, with companies such as The Hut Group, Amazon and DHL already working on site.
Wythenshawe and Sale East has a plan to get Britain building and to grow our economy. We have a world-class airport, an Airport City enterprise zone, the Wythenshawe Hospital masterplan and plans for the development of Wythenshawe and Sale town centres. This is the Prime Minister’s first King’s Speech, yet he has nothing to say on housing and it includes more division and more of the same. What is needed to deliver the economic growth our country needs is change. Change is the question at the next election and the answer is Labour. A Labour Government will offer a decade of national renewal and replace the 13 years of national decline that we have had.
The Growth Plan
Mike Kane Excerpts(1 year, 7 months ago)
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Kwasi Kwarteng
The growth plan is about growing the economy, and we are not going to grow the economy by increasing taxes indefinitely.
Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
The Chancellor mentioned that his energy package would cost £60 billion for just six months, but the Prime Minister promised that the package would go on until 2024—a £240 billion borrowing requirement to fix the broken energy market today, saddled on future generations. Does the Chancellor think that is a price well worth paying?
Kwasi Kwarteng
I think the hon. Gentleman has got the mathematics slightly wrong. The business support is for six months, and the household support is for two years. Those are two things that need to be disaggregated. On long-term pricing, of course, nobody in this room—indeed, nobody in the world—has any idea what the price will be in two years, so it would be misleading to put a price on that.
Cost of Living Increases
Mike Kane Excerpts(2 years, 1 month ago)
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Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Do I understand rightly that Labour’s fully costed windfall tax on the energy companies is opposed by both governing parties in Scotland?
Ian Murray
It certainly is. To correct the Minister—I hope it is not the third time already; I am on only the second page of my speech—she assumed that the SNP motion backed a windfall tax on oil and gas, but it is actually the opposite. The motion is not to back a windfall tax on oil and gas, but to back a windfall tax on everything but oil and gas—maybe the SNP can clarify that later.
This Chancellor is also presiding over the largest hit to disposable income since the second world war. How are any of those policies helping, alongside, as we have already heard, the largest ever overnight reduction in support for the poorest households through the reduction in universal credit and the scrapping of the triple lock for pensioners? They are making people poorer and taking more money out of their pockets at a time when everything is going up—a cocktail of Government decisions that mean the discussions around the dinner table for many families are about the worry of paying the rent, the mortgage or the energy bill or for the weekly shop or to fill the car they need for work.
Families face a perfect storm of the Government’s own making: rising taxes, rising bills and rising inflation, and lower wages in real terms. This is all the result of over a decade of Conservative mismanagement of the economy. They like to think they have been in government only since 2019, but they have now been in place for 12 years. The policies of a succession of Tory Chancellors have created a low-wage, low-growth insecure economy.
I want to talk for a minute or two about the Scottish Government’s role in this. As the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Stephen Flynn) rightly said when he moved the motion, the Scottish Government have a stake in this and I am grateful that the SNP has brought this debate to the House. The SNP is correct to point out the lack of action by the UK Government in trying to tackle this, as we have all discussed, but it is not an observer in this crisis as it is in government and can also help.
Scots are facing the prospect of higher council tax bills, because for over a decade the Scottish Government have decimated local government funding and spent 15 years promising to scrap the council tax—a promise that they continue to break at every election.
Covid-19: Government Support for Business
Mike Kane Excerpts(2 years, 4 months ago)
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Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
Sacha Lord, Greater Manchester’s night-time economy adviser, just said:
“100,000’s staff hours are being slashed up and down the UK, due to cancellations. A large proportion”—
of those staff—
“are on a living wage.”
He says that the silence from the Chancellor is “deafening” and it is, “Unforgivable and Unforgettable.” Does the Minister agree?
Oral Answers to Questions
Mike Kane Excerpts(3 years, 3 months ago)
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Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)
Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Jesse Norman)
The self-employment income support scheme was designed to target support at those who most need it while protecting the taxpayer against error, fraud and abuse. The Government recognise that some of the rules and criteria that have been vital to ensuring that the scheme worked for the vast majority have meant that, in some cases, people were not able to qualify. This is one reason why the Government put in place a much wider £280 billion support package, including increased levels of universal credit, bounce back loans, tax, deferrals, rental support, mortgage holidays, self-isolation support payments and other business support grants.
Jesse Norman
The message would be that the Treasury is doing everything it can to protect jobs, families and livelihoods in the face of the worst pandemic crisis that we have experienced in recorded history. It is important to say that, in the case of this scheme, we have spent considerable time engaging with groups that have brought forward potential ways of addressing some of the gaps in support that may exist. As I mentioned, we have had meetings in December and evaluated suggestions all the way through last year, including a concrete suggestion in relation to the directors income support scheme, so we are heavily leaning into this issue.
Mike Kane [V]
I want to raise the case of my constituent, Teresa McGeough, who is a newly self-employed special educational needs expert. She has not been eligible for any financial assistance during the pandemic. Does the Minister think that the Government are doing enough to help people such as Theresa and others?
Jesse Norman
As I have said, the Government are doing everything they can and have been working round the clock for a year to address the full needs of the country across all the different aspect of our economy and society, including through support for the self-employed.
Additional Covid-19 Restrictions: Fair Economic Support
Mike Kane Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
Not since the Peterloo massacre of 1819 has the state displayed such coercive power over the people of Greater Manchester. Oh, the irony of those talking about one nation Conservatism. It was Mayor Burnham who stood on almost exactly the same spot as Disraeli did in 1872 and spoke for a nation about what you are doing to our cities through this tiered system.
What we have seen this week has been nothing short of chaotic and incompetent. On Monday last week, the Secretary of State for Health told Greater Manchester MPs that we would be going into tier 2 lockdown—we had been there for 12 weeks, since July, without any support. Do you know what? He had unanimity in that room—he had our full support. Do you know what else? That night, The Times leaked that we were going into tier 3. That was leaked to the national press. Seven days of negotiation follows—we are just seven days older—and, to make it worse, The Guardian then leaked that we were running out of intensive care unit capacity. What the Government have forgotten is that the former Chancellor, the former right hon. Member for Tatton, gave us devolved function over some of our NHS services, so we know exactly what is going on in the hospitals. I am looking up at the Press Gallery—the Manchester Guardian should have known better than to be leaking against the city where it was founded after the massacre. This makes us so angry, up in the north.
The Government came to power on the promise of levelling up; those watching from Greater Manchester today will be reflecting on the emptiness of that promise. Tier 3 restrictions will hasten a tsunami of mental health problems already being reported to me by local general practitioners. Along with protecting people’s incomes, the Government need to prevent a mental health crisis.
We in this place are asking so much of the British people, who have gone through so much for us. The coronavirus has them at their wits’ end. Another local Wythenshawe hero from my constituency, Marcus Rashford, will be the subject of the next debate in this House. We are going to heap poverty upon the poverty of the people who go into tier 3 restrictions. The Prime Minister does not know how an area gets out of tier 3 restrictions —he did not know the answer today when challenged by the Leader of the Opposition. Not only will we face further poverty in areas that go into tier 3 restrictions, but we are now cutting off the food supply of the youngest people. Marcus Rashford is teaching the Prime Minister a thing or two about how to bring people along when tackling such an important issue.
This week, the city of Manchester has had a 17% reduction in reported coronavirus cases. The conurbation as a whole has flattened off, yet we have been in these measures for 12 weeks—since July—and now the Government want to shut us down altogether for the next 28 days, with no end in sight.
When I was a young councillor in the early ’90s, Manchester was a dying industrial mill town, after over a decade of Thatcherism. We have pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps to regenerate our airport and our city and to bring back the jobs that we lost in the lost ’80s. We are now an international cosmopolitan city, and you are drawing that away from us. You are pulling the rug from under our feet by making our citizens materially worse off. This has to stop.
Economic Update
Mike Kane Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Rishi Sunak
As previously discussed, depending on people’s particular employment circumstances, they might well be eligible for statutory sick pay even though they are self-employed or in the gig economy. We have already taken measures to ensure that they are eligible for those benefits and for employment and support allowance from day one, rather than day four and day eight respectively, and we have further strengthened the safety net with an investment of £1 billion.
Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
Hundreds upon hundreds of aviation workers in my constituency were sent home today. Coronavirus has devastated the airline industry. Because they had less than three years’ experience, 21 days’ pay is all they get, with no prospect of a job going forward. Can the Chancellor give us more information on the aviation package that he has announced tonight?
Rishi Sunak
We are in active dialogue with the key companies in the sector, both airlines and airports, to discuss what specific support might be required. In the circumstances, it would not be appropriate for me to comment on the measures that individual companies might want to engage with us on, but the hon. Gentleman can rest assured that we are working hard for the industry.
Social Mobility
Mike Kane Excerpts(4 years, 2 months ago)
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Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I welcome the Minister to her new role. I know from my time on the Front Bench that she takes a keen interest in education. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Sir David Evennett) on securing the debate. He has a long-standing interest in this matter and has raised it on the Floor of the House on numerous occasions. I just hope that his colleagues at the top of the party will continue to listen. He is right that it is a moral argument, which was made crystal clear in his comments.
I am a First Generation ambassador for Manchester Metropolitan University and have trained numerous working-class young people at A-level about going to university for the first time. Several of them will visit Parliament in the next few weeks. We raise money from the private sector to help the programme, and I am proud of the work that I do as a constituency MP on this matter.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) mentioned social mobility. I have to say that I disagree with his saying that London is the economic and cultural capital of Great Britain. As a Manchester United fan, he should know better. However, it was an excellent speech. He said that opportunity has gone backwards and social mobility is going backwards. I thank him for his work in Parliament on this the subject.
The hon. Member for Henley (John Howell), as ever in education debates in Westminster Hall, made really good points about apprenticeships and how important they are to working-class communities getting on. I visited Airbus in Broughton recently and saw working-class young men and women obtaining level 4 and 5-equivalent degrees on the shop floor and coming out with no debt whatsoever. He also spoke about social housing, which was key for me. I had a secure tenancy growing up, even though I grew up in a council flat on a council estate in Manchester. How many young people nowadays get that?
What my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock) said about music resonated with me. She has one of the best choirs in Europe in her constituency. Music, arts and culture are a great way to raise aspiration. She is a fantastic representative of a coal-mining community, and she said that those communities need sustained and long-term investment. I thank the hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott) for her ambassadorship for the Sutton Trust. She is right: we need more working-class kids going to Russell Group universities. I have some appalling statistics of free-school-meal kids who cannot really get into my fantastic local Russell Group university. The numbers are so few. We have to work harder.
The hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) clearly said that the education of women is key to raising social mobility. However, with austerity, the economics we have had and the lack of social justice, it is no wonder that it is stalling. It is worth noting that there was no explicit reference to social mobility in the Queen’s Speech. It has stagnated. That is not my view; that was the view of the Social Mobility Commission, which is part-sponsored by the Government. Members may recall that the board of the Commission resigned en masse in 2017 because it thought that the Government were not taking this seriously enough.
A 2017 Social Mobility Commission report stated:
“There is a fracture line running deep through our labour and housing markets and our education system.”
In other words: our society is divided and unequal. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston pointed out, the then social mobility commissioner stated that appointments to key commission roles were left vacant for years, and went on to say in an interview in The Sunday Times that the Government had shown
“indecision, dysfunctionality and a lack of leadership”.
It took more than six months for the Government to appoint a new commission, so there was no doubt at that point that the Government were not prioritising the issue. However, the new commission revealed that more than half a million more children were living in poverty than in 2012. Furthermore, levels of social mobility remained “virtually stagnant” since 2014—almost five wasted years.
I am extremely proud of my country, but the report by the United Nations special rapporteur that was published last year made me feel ashamed. The report described how our social safety net had been badly damaged by drastic cuts in Whitehall, how the glue that held British society was coming unstuck, deliberately removed and replaced with a harsh, uncaring ethos.
Mr Peter Bone (in the Chair)
Order. I am sorry to interrupt the shadow Minister, as this is an important debate, but we have limited time. He is over his five minutes.