Cost of Living

Nicholas Dakin Excerpts

Tuesday 14th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

It is a real pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham), whose optimism I greatly admire. I respect him for recognising that not everything in the garden is as rosy as he sometimes sees it.

Many people in my area are struggling to make ends meet as the economy continues to flatline. Having inherited an economy with slow but steady growth, the Government immediately took action to depress demand and deepen the recession by hiking VAT, cutting services and taking spend out of the economy. Sadly, I see nothing in this Queen’s Speech to put more demand back into the economy. MPs in all parts of the House are saying, like my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Jim Dowd), that it is a thin Queen’s Speech, the thinnest they can remember—light luggage, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) put it. It certainly looks pretty anorexic to me. There is nothing on tackling the crisis in youth unemployment, nothing on housing when new home completions are now at their lowest level since the 1920s, nothing to stop the undercutting of wages by tackling the exploitation of immigrant labour, nothing to back small businesses struggling to get credit, and nothing on living standards while families see the costs of energy bills and train fares rise out of their reach.

The Children’s Society draws attention to the Government’s own impact assessment estimating that as a result of not uprating benefits in line with inflation, 200,000 more children will be pushed into poverty, including 100,000 in working families. This should not be happening in one of the richest countries in the world in the 21st century.

[Lindsay Roy (Glenrothes) (Lab)]

Would my hon. Friend like to add that there is nothing to tackle the mushrooming of food banks, which is calamitous in a society such as ours?

[Nic Dakin]

I was about to come to food banks. My hon. Friend is exactly right. There were no food banks in the Scunthorpe area when I was elected, and now three have opened up across north Lincolnshire. That illustrates the needs of people locally, and it is matched across the country. Although we recognise the excellent work that volunteers and trusts do, it is a shame on us that it is necessary in the 21st century in one of the richest countries in the world.

Some 1.2 million young people living in poverty do not receive free school meals because their parents are in work. The Queen’s Speech should have taken the opportunity to ensure that everybody who needs a free school meal can have one, including 16 to 18-year-olds who attend colleges and are not eligible for free school meals even though they would otherwise meet the criteria. That is a huge shame, especially when the scrapping of education maintenance allowance has made life so much more difficult for those 16 to 18-year-olds in continuing their education.

This year, according to the debt charity StepChange, there has been a dramatic rise in the number of families seeking help with their utility bills, council tax and rent arrears. Over a third of those seeking help from the charity are in arrears on at least one household bill. That is staggering. At the same time, the charity has seen the number of people seeking help with payday loans double. In 2012, it helped 36,413 people with payday loan debts, almost 20,000 more than in 2011. The payday loan debts of those seeking help from StepChange were, on average, £1,657, up from £1,267 the previous year. One hopes that the consumer rights Bill announced in the Queen’s Speech will take action to tackle the outrage caused by the payday loan industry. It should also provide an opportunity to tackle energy prices, rail fares and unsolicited phone calls and text messages from companies up and down the land. All those measures should be included in the Bill, and I hope they will be.

In the meantime, the capacity of trading standards bodies throughout the country to tackle such things locally has been decimated, which is a cause of real concern. There is also chaos as a result of how the Government have dealt with Consumer Focus: they scrapped it three times before appearing to rebadge it recently as Consumer Future. I hope that the consumer rights Bill will tackle the issues raised by Which? and other organisations that know what they are talking about, such as competition abuses and damages.

I will finish now because, despite what Madam Deputy Speaker said, I appear to have been given an extra minute after taking an intervention. All in all, the consumer rights Bill gives us an opportunity to make much needed changes as soon as possible.