Cost of Living

Pat Glass Excerpts

Wednesday 16th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Phil Wilson]

Ministers do need to take that on board, because the state of bus services is not just an issue about people getting to work, getting to see their family or getting to medical appointments; it is also an issue for schoolchildren and their parents.

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

This issue is having an impact on every rural and semi-rural constituency across this country and it is having an impact on our future. Young people are now telling me that they are choosing courses on the basis of where they can get to, not on the basis of what the right course is for them or for the future economy of this country.

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[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I want to focus my remarks on the parts of the Queen’s Speech relating to rural affairs, particularly farming and the groceries code adjudicator, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Laura Sandys).

I hope that all of us, whatever our politics, would at least have been relieved and encouraged when we saw this morning’s unemployment figures, while not finding them the source of a desire to punch the air and celebrate. I guess that during the day most of us will have seen in our inboxes reference to the unemployment levels in our own constituencies; we always look at those, as I did. I can claim pretty much no credit whatsoever for the fact that Westmorland and Lonsdale has the lowest unemployment in England. When we look at these stats and what they mean for the cost of living and for people’s ability to keep their heads above water, we see that nothing is more important than whether someone has a job and whether it pays well. The latter is equally important. The fact that we have very low unemployment in our part of the world is a credit to businesses and the public sector, both local and national, but it overlooks the fact that our local average income is less than £20,000 a year while the average house price in Westmorland is £240,000. That means that the average person is earning a twelfth of what it costs to buy a home. That is why we have so many people on the social housing waiting list and why so many people find it a struggle. If someone lives on my patch, the chances are that they are in work but that they are still struggling because the cost of living is a significant problem given the nature of what it is to live in a rural area.

When we talk about the cost of living, it is worth reflecting on something that has changed drastically during the post-war period. In 1954, 33% of the average household budget was spent on food; today, that figure is about 11%. Of course, that progress is welcome, but it has not happened entirely for good reasons. It is good that food is less expensive these days—Members will be delighted to know that I do not claim credit for that either—but we need to remember that one of the reasons for that is the imbalance in the food market. We have a handful of very powerful retailers who do a good job; they do what any of us would do if we were given the freedom to do what the supermarkets are enabled to do. We have a handful of processors and many hundreds of suppliers. In such a market, as everyone knows, the powerful few are able to take advantage of the relatively powerless many. Let us be honest—the reason why food prices have been as they have over the decades has as much to do with exploitation as with progress.

[Pat Glass]

Last year, during the long summer holidays, I was told by the chief executive of the local hospital trust that children in my constituency had been admitted to hospital with malnutrition. Would the hon. Gentleman and his Government like to take responsibility for that?

[Tim Farron]

As a human being and as someone who is involved in politics, I do take responsibility and do not pretend that it is somebody else’s fault. It is not peculiar, two years into a particular Government, to point the finger at them for something that is a moral crime. If those things are genuinely happening—I am absolutely prepared to believe that they are—then we all take responsibility. One of things that I find unseemly about this world of politics in which we work is how we can sometimes be delighted at people’s misfortune because there is a political point to be made. I try to be reasonable, non-partisan and non-tribal, although I do not always succeed, and I try not to bracket together those in one party or another as having a collective psyche. However, similarly to the hon. Lady’s stance on this issue, I suspect, I observed earlier Labour Members cheering when someone mentioned that we are in recession, as if that were a good thing; I suppose that it might be seen as a political benefit. There was almost embarrassment on the part of Labour Front Benchers about the fact that there was some good news today on unemployment. We must be prepared to take collective responsibility for the things that are wrong and celebrate the things that are positive.

Let me therefore point out something that is wrong. Over the past month, there has been a drop of 2p a litre in the amount paid to dairy farmers for milk. That means that the average dairy farmer is now getting 3p to 4p less per litre than it costs him to produce it. At the back end of the previous Government’s time in office, I tabled some parliamentary questions which showed that the average annual income of a hill farmer, after all the relatively small payments that they get through the single farm payments scheme, was £5,000. Now, I do not know how many hours most hill farmers work each day, but the ones that I know work 16, 17 or 18-hour days. That means that they make about a quarter of the minimum wage. That is an outrage. I wonder whether the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) would take responsibility for that, given that it happened under her Government. Of course, we all bear collective responsibility and it is right to say so. The exploitation of dairy farmers, sheep farmers and farmers in general happens because of an imbalance in our market and because of market failure.

Everyone in this House ought to be committed—I am sure that we all are—to fair trade. However, there is something peculiar about the fact that we can wander down one aisle in a shop and buy some Colombian fair trade coffee, and feel good about ourselves for having done so, and then go down the next aisle to buy the milk to put in that coffee, which has been ripped out of the hands of some underpaid Cumbrian farmer. We want fair trade for British farmers, as well as for farmers across the world. Fair trade at home matters. That is why the announcement in the Queen’s Speech of a groceries code adjudicator with teeth is a massive step forward for rural areas and for food producers of all kinds. It is fair and just to do that, but it is also sensible because unfairness damages us all.

Over the 15-year period of 1995 to 2010, which is not entirely coterminous with the Labour Government, there was a 50% drop in the number of dairy farmers in this country. Over the past 30 years, there has been a 25% drop in our country’s capacity to feed itself. If we do not take account of that, we will go down together. It has happened partly because the supermarkets and the food processors are too keen to make a quick buck at the expense of the exploited supplier and producer, rather than looking to the long term.

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[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

Apart from half an hour when I nipped out to a meeting, I have sat through the entire debate. Two things have characterised this debate. The first was at the beginning of the debate, when the two parties of government appeared to blame each other for what was happening. At times, it was like watching a Punch and Judy show.

Putting that aside, the thing that has characterised the debate the most is that Members seem to be living in two completely different worlds. My hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) and my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) spoke passionately about the impact of the Government’s policies and cuts on people in their communities—those who are living on the margins, families who are barely keeping their heads above water and even those who have gone under. I even recognised what the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry) spoke about. From listening to other Members, it appears that while those parts of the country are slipping under, others are living in clover as a result of the Government’s policies.

The Queen’s Speech was a lost opportunity. I would have liked the Government to have included some measures for growth, particularly in the construction industry. Those of us who have been around for a while know that in the past we have built our way out of recessions. Tax reliefs on construction and capital projects would have been a good place to start if the Government were serious about growth.

I would have liked the Government to have announced investment in social housing in the Queen’s Speech. In the north-east, 1,900 people are classified as homeless. The north-east is not a region that is usually associated with homelessness, but the combination of high unemployment and stagnant growth is forcing those at the bottom of our society out on to the streets. The Queen’s Speech contained nothing to help with that tragedy.

There was nothing in the Queen’s Speech to support families who are struggling to feed themselves and to heat their homes. The number of food banks in this country has risen from fewer than 10 in 2010 to more than 2,000. The number is growing daily as communities recognise what is happening in their midst and organise themselves to help the most vulnerable. I am involved with the Food4U food bank in my constituency. It is not the feckless or the workshy who are queuing up for food parcels, but decent families who have faced recent redundancies and who have to wait for up to six weeks for their unemployment claims to be processed, and the disabled who are appealing against employment and support allowance decisions and who face a wait of up to 13 weeks for their appeals to be processed. In the meantime, those families are left with nothing to live on, except what their neighbours and communities collect for them.

Since 2010, the Government have shown themselves to be firmly on the side of vested interests. They have shown that in banking, the rail industry and the fuel industry. They stand firmly with the big six energy companies, the rail companies, banks and millionaires; not with the ordinary people of this country who are struggling to bring up their families and pay their bills. The Secretary of State said at the beginning of the debate that he is holding the big six to account, but he could not give us any details. Quite frankly, the secret deal with the big six is not fooling anybody. Instead of supporting British industry, such as the solar industry in my constituency, the Government stand firmly on the side of vested interests and against the consumer. In the solar fiasco, the defence of the big six energy companies and their failure to tackle big bonuses in the water, communications and banking industries, the Government have shown again and again that they stand on the side of vested interests and against the consumer.

I will make one final point because I want to leave time for other people. I want to give a message to the junior partner in the coalition Government. My constituents are desperately worried about their jobs and about how they will make ends meet. One constituent told me at the weekend that it costs him more to fill up his car than to pay his mortgage. People are worried about the cost of heating and fuel. Rail fares are rising. Despite the Government telling us that rail fares have gone up by only 1% above inflation, people tell me that their rail fares have gone up by 11%. People are worried about their public services. They see their libraries closing. They are frightened when they see the police on the streets, marching against 20% cuts in police budgets. They are worried about the impact of rising crime. They are worried about cuts in health and in school budgets. What they are not worried about is reform of the House of Lords. The House of Lords may be of interest to Liberal Democrats and political anoraks, but it is of no interest whatsoever to most of my constituents, who do not have the time to intellectualise about political reform because they are too busy worrying about how they are going to feed the kids, put fuel in their cars and pay their bills.

This Government are out of touch with ordinary people’s lives, they are firmly on the side of vested interests and they are at war with themselves. They need to go now, before they do any further damage.