Jobs and Growth

Oliver Colvile Excerpts

Thursday 17th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Paul Murphy (Torfaen) (Lab)]

The hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) hinted that the local elections results in May were not bad for the Conservative party. It strikes me that the loss of 1,000 council seats is not a ringing endorsement of the Government’s economic policy. What people were talking about in those polls was, of course, the economy.

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Paul Murphy]

I will not, because there is not enough time.

People were also talking about unemployment in those polls. Unemployment in my constituency is at 8.2%. That compares with 3% when the Labour Government were in power.

I will address my short remarks to the alternative. The Government have taunted the Opposition, saying that we do not have an alternative. Opposition Members have been arguing the case for an alternative. The Labour Government in Wales are giving us an alternative. For the past year, they have been doing the sort of things that are necessary to stimulate the economy and provide jobs.

The hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White) talked about small businesses. If he came to Wales, he would see that there is a small and medium-sized enterprises investment fund of £40 million. We have talked about the two-year-old regional growth fund in England, which has spent £200,000 to create just one job. In Wales, there is the £15 million Wales economic growth fund, which has already received 500 applications, including from my constituency, where a leading precision engineering company has invested nearly £800,000 in machinery, of which £250,000 came from the Wales economic growth fund. There is a £40 million stimulus package for young recruits and the skills growth Wales programme. There is capital investment for schools, social housing and energy efficiency. In England, the future jobs fund has been scrapped. In Wales, it continues as the jobs growth Wales fund, which will benefit 4,000 young people a year. Wales has its first ever national infrastructure plan, under which £90 million will be spent on capital projects.

Wales is also encouraging the third sector. In my constituency, the First Minister opened the Marie Curie Cancer Care national support call centre, which has created 140 jobs. This very morning, all Welsh Members of Parliament were invited to a meeting with Welsh university vice-chancellors. The universities in Wales are working with the Welsh Government, the UK Government and local government to create jobs. The contrast is between what the UK Government are not doing and what the Welsh Labour Government are doing. Why on earth cannot the Government here in England have the same sort of schemes we have in Wales to stimulate the economy and growth and ensure more jobs?

The mood is shifting. It shifted in the local government election results in England, Wales and Scotland. It has shifted in the United States, and in Europe with the election of François Hollande. The message that comes loud and clear from those countries and our own people is that we must change. The winds of change, as a Conservative Prime Minister once said, must now be heeded. Unless the Government understand the need for that change, it is simply not credible that any sort of growth will occur in the next few years.

The alternative is there, but the Government are reluctant, stubborn and foolish enough not to accept it. Unless they do, we will go deeper and deeper into recession.

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[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

Thank you for allowing me to speak, Mr Deputy Speaker. This is an important debate in relation to my constituency, which has a low-skills, low-wage economy. Before I go any further, I declare an interest. I still retain interests, although I no longer have an executive role, in a public relations communications company that I set up some 10 to 15 years ago. That company deals with community consultation and encouraging inward investment into inner cities and job creation.

As I said, Plymouth is a low-skills, low-wage economy, and 38% of the people who work in the city do so in the public sector. In my opinion, in their 13 years, the Labour Government created unsustainable public sector employment, which crowded out the private sector. It is difficult for a private sector business to compete for workers with good skills, because it cannot match the funds and wages available in the public sector. That is a very big problem. Unfortunately, from as early as 2001, the Labour Government were creating a structural budget deficit, which became increasingly apparent.

I am delighted that we in Plymouth have the third largest university in the country. It has established a really good reputation for marine science engineering. Earlier this week, upstairs, people might have seen the public exhibition run by Plymouth Marine Laboratory demonstrating exactly how our reputation for marine science engineering will be able to create jobs, as we need to do. As a country and as communities, we need to develop a clusterisation approach—that is, work to our strengths—but we must also develop our skills base. I pay tribute to two organisations: Plymouth university of course, but also Plymouth City college, which is doing an enormous amount of work in apprenticeships. A business that wants to set up and go into new areas needs the right skills base to sell its products.

We must stop looking only at Europe and the continent and start to look at the wider world—India, Brazil and, of course, China, but also the Commonwealth, with which we have great historical ties and where there are enormous opportunities. We need to concentrate on trade. We need to be like Muhammad Ali, who, as the House will remember, floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee.