Protection of Jobs and Businesses

Sarah Olney Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Christine Jardine]

I thank my hon. Friend for the excellent point he makes. I know the impact on Edinburgh West of the loss of the festivals, and tourism is one of the sectors that will struggle. My fear is that if the scheme is withdrawn, we will simply have spent billions to delay the pain for those sectors, with nothing to lessen it in the long term and nothing to prepare for worse to come. Aviation, hospitality, the arts and tourism are all struggling sectors. We need the scheme not only to continue, but to do more. We need it to invest not just in staving off the crisis, but in creating a new, stronger, greener economy. If the job retention scheme is to be truly successful, that is where the bridge must lead us.

[Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government must take urgent action towards their target of net zero carbon, and that now is the time to invest in the transition away from carbon-emitting industries and create new green jobs?

[Christine Jardine]

I certainly agree with my hon. Friend, and I believe that this crisis may, ironically, afford us the opportunity to do so. That is why we cannot afford to cut off the job retention scheme in October. We need it to help us through that transition into the post-covid economy, whatever it looks like. None of us knows what that will be. None of us knows which sectors of the economy will survive or even thrive, and which will struggle or collapse.

That is the one point on which I take issue with the Labour motion. How do we know which sectors to target, and if we target, who do we leave out? Which industries do we allow to go to the wall? Which employees do we throw on the scrapheap? I come originally from Clydeside. I know—the memory of it is seared on my consciousness and runs through everything I do in politics—the damage that is done to lives when an industry dies and those who depended on it have nowhere to turn. We cannot allow that to happen to another generation.

If this virus has confronted us with the challenge of a lifetime or of a century, it also offers an opportunity, because we are now as close to having a blank sheet of paper as we are ever likely to be. Use the job retention scheme and the structure of support, and develop it further. Furlough people while we begin to transition and develop our future. Use the scheme as the basis of the Government’s strategy, for which we are all waiting.

It has been calculated that keeping the scheme going until June of next year would cost £10 billion. Surely, that is a drop in the ocean compared with what will be lost if we do not. In that time, we can ensure that the industries and employers that can survive do so, and we can help the others to transition. Instead of mothballing companies, encourage them to work. Look at the flexible schemes in Germany, France and Austria, and at what they are doing to protect their economies. Let us use the time we have to upskill and retrain.

We need to innovate our way out of this, and we can. We need to create new industries and green jobs, investigate hydrogen power and encourage our aviation industry to be greener. We must make wellbeing the measure of our economy, and quality of life the measure of our success. The world and its economies are changing around us. The job retention scheme has given us time and we need to ensure that we use it properly. We must turn the birthplace of the industrial revolution into the home of a new green revolution.