Business of the House
Debate between Richard Holden and Lucy Powell(1 month ago)
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Lucy Powell
My hon. Friend raises an important issue that has been raised many times, particularly in the last couple of weeks, as we have heard about possible further post office closures. The Post Office contacted me after last week’s business questions to make it clear that no decisions have been made, but my hon. Friend is absolutely right to continue raising these issues on behalf of his constituents. We need banking hubs in our communities, and the Post Office is a vital partner in delivering them.
Mr Richard Holden (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
Yesterday, Ford announced that it is pulling 4,000 jobs across Europe, including 800 in the UK, mostly in Essex. On top of that, Nissan has announced big job cuts in the UK, and workers at the New Holland tractor plant in Basildon are concerned about the impact of the family farm tax. With vehicle excise duty now going up on both internal combustion engine vehicles and electric vehicles, with the lack of demand and infrastructure for EVs and with the national insurance hit on UK business, can we have a debate in Government time on the impact of Government policy on the UK automotive and vehicle manufacturing sectors?
Lucy Powell
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for raising the decision made by Ford in his constituency. As he knows, this Europe-wide decision was taken for commercial reasons, but we have asked the company urgently to share its plans so that we can think about the impact on the UK. I do not agree with his analysis of this Government’s policy in relation to manufacturing. We now have a comprehensive industrial strategy for the long term. Such a plan occasionally appeared under his Government, but was more recently completely deleted. For the first time in a long time, our industrial partners feel they have a long-term partnership with a Government who are on their side.
Business of the House
Debate between Richard Holden and Lucy Powell(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Lucy Powell
I am very sorry to hear about what happened in my hon. Friend’s constituency. This topic comes up regularly in business questions. We will soon be updating the strategic framework for road safety—the first time that has been done in more than a decade—and I will ensure that the Transport Secretary comes to the House to update us first on these matters, but in the meantime my hon. Friend may want to apply for a fuller debate.
Mr Richard Holden (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
Members may be surprised to hear that marriage between first cousins remains legal in the UK, despite the genetic issues and concerns about women’s rights. Norway banned the practice recently, Sweden is considering doing the same, and various states in America have banned it as well. I received a very good answer to my written parliamentary question on this subject, and I should like the Leader of the House to pass on my thanks to the Minister responsible for it. I am keen to build on work that I did in the last Parliament to ban hymenoplasty and so-called virginity testing—work that the last Government incorporated in the Health and Care Act 2022—but will the Leader of the House speak to the relevant Department to find out whether time can be made for an debate on this important issue?
Lucy Powell
These do sound like important issues. I know that the right hon. Gentleman has raised them in the past, and I am sure he will continue to. It is nice to receive some good feedback about a written parliamentary question, which is not exactly the norm during business questions. I do not think that, in the short term, we have any legislative vehicles for what he described, but I am sure that the issues would be a very good topic for a Westminster Hall debate, or possibly even a Backbench Business debate.
Budget Resolutions
Debate between Richard Holden and Lucy Powell(3 years, 1 month ago)
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Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)
In the days since the Budget, we have seen it unravel. The Chancellor tried to bury the reality—or should I say Burnley?—[Interruption.] You will get that one in the end. It is less levelling up and more hiking up: hiking up taxes, hiking up the cost of living, hiking up interest rates and inflation. The only thing it is not hiking up is growth. After 10 years of stagnant growth and stagnant wages, the forecasts for the next few years make yet more sober reading, with growth downgraded to a meagre 1.3% in 2024. Taken together, the rising cost of living, along with rising taxes, inflation and interest rates, mean that families will be worse off to the tune of £3,000 a year. You simply cannot claim an agenda of levelling up while presiding over an era of no growth and ordinary working people becoming worse off. A few tiny, piecemeal pots of cash to various places will not even remotely make up for that overwhelming tidal wave hitting those on modest and low incomes. This is
“not a set of priorities that is consistent with…levelling up”.
Those are not my words; they are the verdict of the IFS. This was
“an acid test for the government’s flagship levelling up agenda—and the Chancellor has fallen short... The country is no more on track to level up than it was yesterday.”
That is not my view, but the view of the IPPR North.
As is becoming the theme with this Government, they will the ends but they have no plan to will the means —that is otherwise known as rhetoric not matched by reality. That view was echoed in excellent speeches by my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge); my hon. Friends the Members for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma), for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock) and for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater); my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne); my hon. Friends the Members for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd), for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) and for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe), my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper); and my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith), for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery), for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western), for Slough (Mr Dhesi), for Lewisham East (Janet Daby), for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter) and for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy).
A plan for real levelling up begins with a plan for real and sustainable growth, disproportionately focused towards the people, places and industries most in need of it. That means a programme of real investment and a strategy. I know that the Secretary of State is not here this evening, but I am pleased that, in lauding the spending increases, he has finally accepted our view that we cannot cut our way out of a crisis. If only he had realised that before 10 years of austerity, which have left a million more people in poverty and the fabric of our public services in tatters. But it is obvious from today’s debate that most behind him have not had the same epiphany.
Given that the Resolution Foundation says that this must be a decade of high investment as we transition to net zero, it is astonishing that in the Chancellor’s flurry of giveaways there was almost no mention of green investment. The huge upheaval and change that meeting our net zero targets requires is the once-in-a-generation opportunity to truly level up and to create a fairer, better distributed economy—it is an opportunity this Government are frittering away. This is about winning the green global race in the sectors that power our regions, such as steel, aerospace, wind and wave, but there was not a single mention of that in this Budget. It is also about reducing demand and, in so doing, reducing the cost of living crunch through a major drive to retrofit homes and switch to green energies, but there was not a flicker about that in this Budget. It is also about investing in people, especially those who need it the most. The Government’s own report on lost learning during the pandemic, published just last week, shows the stark regional inequalities, with children in the north-east and Yorkshire and the Humber losing 15 times more learning than those in London, but that was not referred to in the Budget. Its stark findings should be at the heart of any Budget that claims to be levelling up. The Government cannot level up without a serious programme of catch-up.
On transport, at last we see some recognition for buses, but a major test of levelling up will be the Government’s commitment to Northern Powerhouse Rail and the eastern leg of HS2, neither of which was mentioned at all by the Chancellor. The Government should listen to the excellent speeches today from my hon. Friends the Members for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane), for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) and for Bradford South (Judith Cummins), and my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) on this topic.
Key to addressing the deep divides in Britain is tackling the housing crisis, which was so brutally exposed during covid. Yet again, we see lofty ambitions not met by any kind of real plan. If the Chancellor’s announcements on housing sounded familiar, that is because they are: we have heard them all before. That £5 billion to address the building-safety crisis was announced back in February. It is a lot of money, but it is not working. The huge bills for leaseholders keep rolling in, insurance costs are soaring and mortgages are still virtually impossible to get. It is not about the cash; the fundamentals need to be fixed and the Government are not doing that. It is no surprise, then, that the Secretary of State did not even mention that today.
The funding for so-called affordable housing was another recycled announcement. The Government’s spin cycle goes round more often than a Hotpoint spin dryer—
Lucy Powell
The hon. Gentleman might groan, but he was not here for the better jokes at the beginning of my speech. In future, he needs to be here at the beginning of the wind-ups—that is one of the rules of this place.
If the Government’s record is anything to go by, they will deliver neither truly affordable homes nor levelling up. Their house building targets look dead in the water. Their definition of affordable is anything but, aligned with overheated markets, not with what people can actually afford. The Secretary of State made no mention of social housing in his speech; perhaps that is because he is projected to build only 6,000 new ones a year—far fewer than the number lost through the right to buy. The Secretary of State heralded the brownfield sites fund, yet he did not mention the fact that more than three quarters of that money currently goes to the south-east. That is hardly levelling up. Without reform of the arcane compulsory purchase order laws, too much of that cash will end up in the hands of the speculators who buy up land on the cheap.
For hard-pressed renters hit by the pandemic, we heard the Chancellor take credit for a small relief fund, but he failed to mention that he has also frozen local housing allowance again. Add that to the cut in universal credit and the almost 1 million renters who already face a gap between their income and housing costs now face real hardship. It is no wonder that we have seen homelessness rise on the Government’s watch—