Regional Pay

Debate between Rachel Reeves and Elizabeth Truss

Wednesday 20th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves]

The problem is that the Government are being a bit two-faced, with one person saying one thing and another saying something else.

The reality is that we are in a recession made in Downing street and it is hitting some parts of the country particularly hard. I quote from a recent report by the Institute for Public Policy Research on the state of the northern economy:

“The double-dip recession has hit the North hard, with unemployment rising and business confidence falling. This lack of confidence among employers has maintained the hiring freeze across the North, implying that upward pressure on unemployment is likely to continue for the rest of the year.”

The difficulties faced by workers and businesses in many parts of the country as a result of the recession that this Government have landed us in are being made all the more desperate by the Government’s short-sighted decision to dispense with policies and processes put in place by the Labour Government to support more balanced development across the UK. This is a Government who got rid of regional Ministers, shot down regional development agencies, and cut back on vital regional investments such as the loan for Sheffield Forgemasters. The only regional policy that they have left is regional pay, which will take more money out of some of the most deprived areas of the country.

[Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk) (Con)]

In the 1990s, Sweden moved from national pay scales to individual contracts. That was supported by the unions and resulted in a rise in some salaries for jobs where there was a shortage of workers—for example, kindergarten teachers—and it has been very successful. Is it not the case that other countries are moving to more competitive labour markets while we are moving backwards, as we did under the previous Government?

[Rachel Reeves]

I am sure that the 11,500 public sector workers in the hon. Lady’s constituency will know that she is sticking up for them.

Youth Unemployment and Bank Bonuses

Debate between Rachel Reeves and Elizabeth Truss

Monday 23rd January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. That is why, as part of Labour’s five-point plan for jobs and growth, we include a national insurance holiday for all small businesses taking on new workers—a policy that would help small businesses and the more than 1 million young people who are desperately searching for work.

[Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady accept responsibility for the failure to skill up our young people to take on jobs? For example, after the Labour party’s 13 years in office, we had the smallest proportion of 16 to 18-year-olds studying maths of any OECD country.

[Rachel Reeves]

People are not getting jobs at the moment not because they do not have skills but because the jobs are not available. In all our constituencies, five or 10 people are chasing every job. That is why unemployment is rising. Until the Government take responsibility for that, the numbers will get worse, not better.

The price that families struggling with the consequences of redundancy and young people forced to abandon their career plans pay is incalculable. We cannot go on like that. Maybe some hon. Members—we have already heard from many of them—greet the prospect of rising unemployment with a degree of fatalism, perhaps resignation. They may feel that the punishment being inflicted on innocent families and young people is the sad but inevitable consequence of austerity and economic adjustment. Indeed, as I said earlier, there is a grim familiarity about the figures, which bear a depressing resemblance to the record of previous Conservative Governments.