The Economy and Living Standards

Russell Brown Excerpts

Thursday 12th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)]

To all those who have managed to find employment in the past 12 months, I say well done. To those on the Government Benches, however, I say that what we are seeing across this country is an unequal recovery. If the Treasury team look at the figures from the Office for National Statistics, they will see that the total number of hours worked each week across the UK has not increased anything like as much as it should have done, given that such a massive number of people are finding work. Those average weekly hours are being spread among more people, hence the unequal recovery across the country.

I am sick of saying that this time last year the average wage in my constituency was almost 24% beneath the national average, although thankfully the figure has fallen to just under 20%. The problems that we face were first discovered on the high streets of the United Kingdom, and if we look at those high streets today, we will see that in most communities there has been very little improvement.

The bedroom tax is costing this Government £4.8 billion more in housing benefit over the course of this Parliament, so something has gone sadly wrong. I want an explanation of what the bedroom tax was all about, because almost 400,000 more working people are now in receipt of housing benefit and trapped in a bedroom tax situation than in 2010. That is an increase of some 60% in England, 59% in Wales and 53% in Scotland. What was it all about? People have not changed houses, but they have had to pay more as they have not found suitable accommodation.

The Labour party in government will move on the living wage and we will ensure that—through public sector procurement—it will be introduced. We need to ensure that life is much better for the many families the length and breadth of this country who find it hard, and we need to ensure that we tackle the high levels of youth unemployment that depressingly still exist for some communities, in a way that will give young people in this country decent jobs, not jobs on zero-hours contracts or on two or three hours a week, which are not enough for them.