Amendment of the Law

Rachel Reeves Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves (Leeds West) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to speak in the same debate as my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis)—the new Member for that constituency—who will be a credit both to his constituents and to this House. We should listen carefully to his words and his warnings.

Today’s Budget is equally noticeable for what it does and does not include, because the Chancellor has not heeded the many warnings showing that the Government’s economic policies are not working. Gross domestic product figures for the last quarter of 2010 showed that our economy contracted by 0.6%. Government Members blamed the snow, but it snowed in Germany, yet its economy grew by 0.4%, and it snowed in the United States of America, yet its economy grew by 0.7%. The difference is that we are cutting too fast and too deep and they are not.

Another warning can be found in last week’s unemployment figures, which showed that unemployment is the highest it has been for 17 years and that youth unemployment is the highest on record. The OBR today showed that unemployment is set to rise to 8.2% this year and 8.1% next year—higher than it was even at the height of the recession. House prices continue to fall and yesterday we learned that the consumer prices index has increased to 4.4% and the retail prices index to 5.5%. There are many warnings that the Government’s policies are not working.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

I have a quick question for the hon. Lady. Why, on the “Daily Politics” show approximately three hours ago, was she unable to name one measure in this Budget that Labour Front Benchers would vote against?

[Rachel Reeves]

We would like to vote, for example, on the bank bonus levy and other components of the Budget. My right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) set out today that we will consider areas of growth in “The Plan for Growth” green book. There are areas where we want to work with the Government but also areas where we disagree with what they are doing.

Given the warnings I have mentioned, it is hardly surprising that the independent OBR has today downgraded its growth forecast for 2011 to 1.7% and has revised growth for next year to 2.5%. Let us put that in context. Before the Chancellor’s first Budget last year, the OBR predicted growth in 2011 of 2.6%. That forecast has now been downgraded three times—to 2.3%, 2.1% and today to 1.7%. Every time the Chancellor gets to the Dispatch Box, the OBR has to downgrade its growth forecasts.

The Government will say that the only way to get growth back on track is to reduce the deficit, but we have also seen today that the OBR’s borrowing forecast is expected to be £44.5 billion higher over this Parliament as a result of lower growth and higher unemployment. Despite today’s opportunity to think again, however, the Chancellor will still not accept that plan A is not going to plan.

Although the Chancellor has no plan for growth, his implicit plan B, I think, was looser monetary policy, yet today’s Monetary Policy Committee minutes show a further split over whether to increase rates and yesterday’s inflation data show more pressure for a rate rise. Plan B is looking as forlorn as plan A, with householders likely to see a mortgage rate rise by the summer.

We have heard many times today that the Government cannot change course, but that is a fallacy. Jonathan Portes, the new director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, recently said that that intransigence

“relies on an odd view of market psychology, one that says markets have more confidence in governments that never adjust policy, even when it is sensible…history suggests the opposite: that the real hit to credibility comes from sticking to unsustainable policies”.

He is right. Now is the time—more than ever—for the Government to rethink their plan, which is sapping jobs and growth out of the economy.

We need to begin to build the Britain of the future, because confidence in UK plc requires a belief that we have a competitive economy that productively employs its resources, draws on our strengths across the sectors and regions and invests in science, skills, technology and infrastructure. Today’s Budget, however, does nothing to foster investment or hope. Although I welcome “The Plan for Growth”, which has been published today, and the announcements to relieve us of a further increase in fuel prices and to provide help for first-time buyers, the Chancellor could and should have done more.

Most of all, although the Chancellor has said repeatedly that he will be tough on the banks, page 103 of the Red Book shows that the bank bonus tax brought in £3.5 billion in 2010 whereas the bank levy will bring in just £1.9 billion this year. There is no guarantee that the banks will lend any more to small businesses because the Government agreed gross lending targets and no net lending targets. No wonder the Treasury spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats in the Lords, Lord Oakeshott, resigned, saying that if this was tough action, his name was Bob Diamond. The Government have washed their hands of any responsibility to help small businesses, which are being hit hard by the banks’ actions.

There are other areas where the Chancellor could have acted today. We need a plan for green jobs and there is still the potential for Britain to be a world leader, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) pointed out earlier, in the green technologies of the future, but the market requires certainty and we are losing the initiative to countries that are willing to provide it. We need action, not just words, on the green investment bank, yet today we found out that it will not be fully operational until 2015.

We need regional economic strategies. The regional growth fund is estimated to be 10 times over-subscribed, and with a two-thirds cut to regional economic investment, cities and towns across Britain are missing out on opportunities to grow and diversify their economies. We risk another overheating in London and the south-east while the potential powerhouses of the north of England are being left behind. Although I welcome the enterprise zones, the evidence from the 1980s shows that such approaches move, rather than create, jobs. Of course, the funding for enterprise zones is a fraction of what the regional development agencies had to spend.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Does my hon. Friend agree that because the enterprise zones are being imposed on regions, unlike in London where the Mayor will decide where they are, entire areas of the north-east such as Northumberland and Durham will be completely excluded from them and the little help they will bring?

[Rachel Reeves]

I do agree. Of course, only half the plans were announced today, which was disappointing.

We need an approach to business taxation that fosters growth. Although the Government have trumpeted the cut in corporation tax, it has so far been funded at the expense of investment and manufacturing allowances, so while big businesses have benefited from a tax cut, start-up and investment-intensive firms have seen their taxes rise. If we are to create the jobs of the future, we need today’s entrepreneurs to innovate and that is where the limited funds should be targeted.

We also need greater investment in skills and education. Last year, 8 million people graduated from universities in China and India. No other country is cutting investment in universities, reducing the teaching grant by 80% and cancelling partnerships between business and universities, but that is what the Government are doing.

Last week, we heard that the youth unemployment figure is approaching 1 million and it beggars belief that the future jobs fund is closing its doors in the same month that youth unemployment has risen yet again. One in five young people—more in my constituency—now claims unemployment benefit. Today’s unemployment figures are likely to rise further and today’s Budget is bad news for young people up and down the country.

The public recognise the need for austerity, but they also want to know that the Government have learnt lessons from the crisis and are determined to build a fairer and more sustainable economic future. Britain could be a world leader in the jobs, technologies and industries of the future but only if the Government support growth. Today was the Chancellor’s opportunity to show that he understands the needs of businesses and families, but the OBR’s verdict was to downgrade growth for the third time in 2011 and for next year as well. The Government have ignored the wake-up calls. This Budget is a missed opportunity and I urge the Chancellor and his colleagues to think again about what is really needed to ensure that we emerge from this recession with a stronger, fairer economy for everyone in the country.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Thank you for your time restraint.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rachel Reeves]

The main thrust of my speech was to point out that growth had been downgraded and we did not know that until today. It was only when we heard the Budget that we knew that growth had been downgraded, for the third time in a row, to 1.7%, so I could not have written it earlier.

[Mr Jackson]

I know that the hon. Lady has some expertise on these issues. She can rest assured that my criticism will be confined mainly to the Leader of the Opposition, who delivered a master class in opportunism and vacuity. His loquacity was in inverse proportion to his intellectual insight. In his 15 minutes of speaking, no policy whatever was articulated.

The Budget is supported by the OECD, the International Monetary Fund and business leaders such as the deputy director of the CBI, John Cridland, and David Frost of the British Chambers of Commerce. It is about the Government putting in place the conditions for sustainable, balanced economic growth. Let us remember that the Institute for Fiscal Studies still says that public finances remain in a critical condition, but we have had no alternative whatever from Her Majesty’s Opposition. Indeed, we might have to call in Professor Brian Cox, the noted cosmologist, to search for the black hole where the Labour economic policy should be.

[Mr Jackson]

I will make some progress; I am sure that I can let the hon. Lady in a bit later. The priorities of the Budget are primarily to reduce the deficit; rebalance the economy, which was left out of kilter by the Labour Government, with an over-concentration on financial services, the housing market and public expenditure; reform public services; and grow, via initiatives such as the green investment bank, green expertise, knowledge, skills and jobs. If I may give a plug, yesterday a collaboration was announced between Peterborough city council and Cranfield university on a centre for renewable energy and biofuels, to be based in Peterborough.

We need to move towards a high-wage, low-taxation economy with less pressure on household incomes, and the Budget provides a road map for that. No one denies that we have had to make some very tough decisions in the comprehensive spending review and in last year’s emergency Budget. There were real-terms cuts in departmental expenditure; the cut to departmental expenditure will be, on average, 11%. However, we should remember that between 1998 and 2010, there was a real-terms increase in budgets in each Department of anything between 2% and 8%. The fiscal tightening between now and 2015-16 will mean that we have to reduce public expenditure and put taxes up, with capital gains tax, tobacco, fuel, the bank levy, consumer prices indexation and child benefit affected. Contrary to received wisdom among Opposition Members, the richest 2% will be hit hardest by the tax benefit and other changes.

What choice do we have? Labour’s poisonous legacy and debt millstone left us with simply no alternative. In 2010-11, we had to borrow about £140 billion—perhaps around £10 billion less than expected. Only Ireland has a bigger cyclically adjusted deficit. Labour ran a structural deficit some seven years before the banking crisis in 2007-08, and we entered the financial crisis with the largest structural deficit in the G7. The national debt doubled between 1997 and 2010. In May last year, we were at significant risk of a downgrading in our international credit rating, with a catastrophic impact on public services, business and consumer confidence, a long period of stagflation, and a contraction in the economy.

[Rachel Reeves]

I want to enlighten the hon. Gentleman with two facts. First, in 1996, just before the Labour Government came into power, there was a structural budget deficit of 4%, whereas it was 2.5% in 2007. Secondly, he compares the UK economy with that of Greece, but does he recognise the figures that show that although bond yields in Greece increased from 7% to 12% between January and May 2010, in the UK, before the Conservatives came to power, they were falling?

[Mr Jackson]

The hon. Lady will know that the markets have recognised that the fiscal consolidation that the Government had to put in place as part of a policy of growth in the private sector and consolidation in the public sector has resulted in a lessening of the pressures in the gilt markets, with gilt yields down to 3.53% since May last year, and every 1% is £1 billion of interest payment. Of course, that is change in the pocket to Labour Members; we are spending £120 million on debt every day.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I was going to say that it was a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson), but we have heard a succession of speeches from Government Members that were not only economically illiterate, but stuck to the rhetoric pumped out during the general election. They seem unable to get away from that rhetoric even when the reality of what this country is facing hits them. We heard a rant from the hon. Member for Southend West (Mr Amess) and, frankly, a very strange speech from the hon. Member for Orpington (Joseph Johnson), who clearly had read something about the gilt market but did not quite understand how it works.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) on an excellent maiden speech. I think he will be a great asset to the House. He is a man of great courage in both his private and personal life and in the service of this country. I look forward to many more contributions of the standard he gave today.

I would like to focus on two issues: the lack of a policy for growth in the Budget and how that will not affect positively the economy of the north-east of England. Growth figures for the last quarter of 2010 show that the economy contracted by 0.6%, as was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves). The Government blamed snow for that, but she eloquently pointed out some great examples of economies that grew despite having weather that was far worse than it was in this country.

On top of that, last week we saw a 17-year high in unemployment, set against a continuing fall in house prices and an increase in inflation to 4.4%. It would not take an astrologer, as was mentioned earlier, or a genius to work out that the OBR was going to have to downgrade its growth forecast today. Initially, it said that growth would be 2.6%; then, that it would be 2.1%; and today, that it will be 1.7%. The lack of growth is the main risk to our economy, and let us be honest, the Budget was spun so much that we could have read or predicted most of it before the Chancellor even stood up at the Dispatch Box today to announce it.

The Government also say that the key thing they have to do is to reduce borrowing, but borrowing is now going up, so even by their standards the economic pill is clearly not working. What is happening now is both risky and dangerous to the UK economy, and, although history cannot be repeated precisely, we need to look back, because one of the key lessons we have learned from the 1920s and ’30s is that recovery from large financial crises is delicate, slow and stuttering. Now, as a precise result of this Government’s policies since May, growth is down and unemployment, borrowing and inflation are up.

[Rachel Reeves]

Does my hon. Friend agree with me and the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, Olivier Blanchard, who says:

“Unless advanced countries can count on stronger private demand, both domestic and foreign, they will find it difficult to achieve fiscal consolidation”?

[Mr Jones]

Yes. That is the entire flaw in the Government’s policy: the idea that they can cut public expenditure as deeply and savagely as they are going to, and that somehow jobs will be created in the private sector—something that will just not happen. It might happen in parts of the economy, but there is certainly no indication that it will happen in my region. In fact, the situation is even worse, because Durham university’s model shows that taking out 20% of the public services will lead to 50,000 jobs going in the north-east, with 20,000 of them actually in the private sector. Replacing those jobs, in addition to the 30,000 in the public sector, is going to be very difficult.