Section 5 of the European Communities (Amendment) Act 1993

Simon Hoare Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

I was very glad to visit a successful business in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. I know that he is very committed to the development of business in his area. It is important that money spent is raised locally as far as possible. As a Government, we have rebalanced from central Government giving money to local government to more of that money being kept locally, whether through business rates retention or council tax. That is an important principle. However, we did recognise in the Budget that local authorities were under pressure. That is why we put in an extra £650 million, which can particularly be spent on adult social care and children’s social care where there is pressure. Of course, we will look at that balance in the spending review.

At the moment, we have a complicated landscape in the support offered to business. When there is a complicated landscape, it can sometimes be the big businesses that know how to work the system that end up getting the money. We need to move to a system where we have lower taxes and it is clearer and simpler to see where the support is. Of course, we are also investing in the infrastructure that helps business to succeed, whether it is local roads, fibre or rail. Ahead of the spending review, I am making visits around the country to hear from people on the ground to understand what the public’s priorities for public spending are. It can sometimes be easy in Whitehall to listen to the big lobby groups— the big organisations that have an operation here in Westminster—but I want to hear what people in Coventry and other places around the country think about what their priorities are. I have done a few of these sessions so far, and the topics that come up tend to be education, local roads, the NHS—for which we have already put in additional money—and police. We need very much to keep in mind what the public want to see our money spent on rather than just listening to the big organisations.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

I am delighted to hear my right hon. Friend mention education. May I press her to consider the fact that in our rural areas the funding per pupil is still not as it should be by comparison with urban schools? We have a huge number of Victorian schools, such as that which I visited earlier in the week in Motcombe in my constituency, where the maintenance of the buildings costs far more. We are therefore looking, in the comprehensive spending review, for a long-term increase in new money to deliver the first-class education to grow the entrepreneurs who will return the investment that we put into their education while they were at school.

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point about education funding and how important young people having a good education is to the future of the economy. In this year’s spending review, we are looking not just at how investment in physical infrastructure like bridges and roads improves our economy, but at human capital—where we need to put in extra money to make sure that children and young people leave school, university or an apprenticeship with the skills that will help them to get a good job and to live a successful and fruitful life. That is very important. In the past, Governments have been more interested in spending money on things that are sexy and new—the big new pieces of infrastructure—and maintenance has sometimes taken a back seat, but it is very important to make sure that all the existing assets we have, whether roads or schools, are fit for purpose. In the zero-based capital review, we are looking at the balance between maintenance and new infrastructure investment.

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[Peter Dowd]

My hon. Friend has obviously been reading Labour’s “Funding Britain’s Future” document, in which we picked up on that particular point. The hon. Member for Redditch mentioned tax cuts. Try telling that to people who have had 15% and 16% rises in their council tax, because the Government have shunted that on to the people. They are still taxpayers. Try mentioning to them that they have fantastic local services, when increases to their council tax do not even cover social care bills.

The Chief Secretary has bragged about the so-called Tory jobs miracle. However, she made no mention in the speech of the fact that it is built on insecure work, low pay and regional disparities. We have nearly 4 million people in insecure work and nearly 3 million people working under 15 hours a week across the UK. Workers in the north-east earn around £200 less than those in London, reifying the regional imbalance.

[Simon Hoare]

I hate to shoot the hon. Gentleman’s unicorn just as he has started to ride it, but 90% of new jobs created are full-time jobs. This is a total myth that his party keeps peddling. It belies the hard work, initiative and enterprise of the British people. Is it not time to stop misleading?

[Peter Dowd]

Try telling that to the 3 million people in insecure work. It is okay hon. Members jumping up and being outraged at the facts. The facts are stubborn, I completely grant them that. We are not living in the halcyon world that the hon. Member thinks we are living in. There are 3 million people living in insecure work. That is not acceptable in a modern society. The Chief Secretary has done nothing to help headteachers who having to close schools early or the 87 people a day dying while they are waiting for social care, or to assist the nurses, doctors, police officers, social workers, road sweepers, fire fighters, security services staff, civil servants or the back-office staff who keep all those services running day in, day out and night in, night out. Those are the so-called vested interests the Chief Secretary refers to in her regular speeches.

The Chief Secretary recently visited Felixstowe, Walsall and Tadcaster—commiserations to the people of Felixstowe, Walsall and Tadcaster. She said that people want

“the local roads fixed and not to have to sit in a traffic jam.”

Well, the Government are in a big jam at the moment. She went on:

“They want a less crowded commute into work. They want the basics sorted.”

This is after nine years of Tory Government! Where has she been? Did she really have to ask that question? A report today highlights that there are 2 million potholes out there with a £10 billion backlog of repairs under the Tories. No wonder people are sitting in traffic jams—they cannot get through the road for potholes. That is the reality under the Tories. Anyone with a scintilla of awareness already knows the answer to that. The good people of north Lincolnshire were certainly aware of it when I was in Crowle on Saturday, campaigning to rid them of their useless Tory council with the excellent Labour candidates. They want the Transport Secretary to do his job, and they want the Chief Secretary to do hers.

What about productivity—another abysmal failure of Tory economic policy? Productivity remains weaker than in most other advanced economies. The fact is that the Government have failed to prepare the UK economy for the future. Britain’s infrastructure ranks behind that of Germany, France, the USA and Japan in terms of quality, and its rate of public investment is among the lowest in the OECD.

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[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the Chief Secretary to the Treasury.

[Elizabeth Truss]

Shadow.

[Simon Hoare]

I mean the shadow Chief Secretary. [Laughter.] Of, course, it is a pleasure to follow the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. It is a greater pleasure to follow her shadow, the emphasis being on the word “shadow”—it is sort of me and my shadow. I call him a friend; I think we get on pretty well when we have a gossip in the Tea Room. He is known for his great sense of humour, and it was deployed beautifully in his speech, which started as a serious attempt and then descended into some sort of 1890s music hall act slightly on its way out—rather like the Labour party and its economic manifesto. I am sorry he did not talk about the need to ring-fence anything in the Budget for the re-education of Treasury officials, which the little red book and Chairman Mao will doubtless be planning the curriculum for even as I speak.

I rise to make a few points to the Treasury Bench. This is a key time in our national economic affairs. The challenge/opportunity of Brexit, including the need for a deal to ensure an orderly withdrawal from the EU, will provide a fundamental foundation for maintaining economic growth and jobs, as my right hon. Friend referenced. From those jobs, of course, come the taxes that pay for the nurses, the doctors, the teachers, the roads and any other project the Government wish to support. We are approaching, if we have not already arrived at, that opportunity which comes with having fiscal headroom and permits choices to be made.

In the last few years—let us be frank—it has been economic management by necessity. We have been trying to deal with the task that we were bequeathed, not by choice, but which the electorate trusted the Conservative party to resolve. Treasury Ministers past and present deserve the nation’s thanks for facing into those difficult decisions. It is all too often characterised, sometimes by the hon. Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd) and his colleagues, as an ideological pursuit by the Conservative party that in some way engenders jollity and laughter. I believe that all politicians enter public office and service to improve lives and the lot of our constituents. More and more of our constituents, as they get older, look to public services, and it should always be a matter of pride for a Conservative Government with a sound record of economic stewardship to deliver quality public services as efficiently as possible.

The end of the legacy of the crash and everything that flowed from it now provides that opportunity for choices. I would characterise those choices as needing the striking of a balance that is both sensitive and sophisticated. With my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor at the helm of the Treasury, I think we have both those characteristics, although I will not say which of them is sensitive and which is sophisticated—probably they will meld into the two. That is important, though, because we now have an opportunity to choose.

My right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary and I are very much children of the 1980s—our views and thoughts were shaped by the economic miracle that Mrs Thatcher and Geoffrey Howe worked—but we must appreciate that times have moved on. I am very struck by the fact that people in an earning bracket such that 25 or 30 years ago they would have looked to private health provision and education now look to and use state provision. I applaud that. I used the NHS. I had an operation at Dorchester last week, and I use my local education service—we have three girls in our local primary school. It is important to bear that in mind.

My right hon. Friend is right to point to the need for competitive taxation, whereby we can take people out of tax such that they have more money to spend, and it is absolutely right that our policies focus on those on the lowest incomes, but it is also right, in a fair and equitable society, that those who can should shoulder the burden, in a competitive way, to make sure we can deliver those services that people are looking for. I think it is too easy a prescription merely to say that we must pursue an agenda of tax cuts, as if British society had not evolved since 1985, 1986 or 1987. That is where the balance needs to be struck. It may be the balance between a liberal Tory and a more Thatcherite Tory—I do not know—but it needs to be struck.

As other Members have pointed out, as a result of a period of austerity we are now in a period in which the fiscal headroom allows for additional investment. The spring statement was helpful, and what my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary has said about an average increase of 1.2% in departmental expenditure was also welcome. However, we would be foolish to ignore the fact that we are now having to claw our way back from a period in which spending has been—albeit quite justifiably —capped.

Any Member whose constituency contains a prison will notice that the fabric of the prison estate has deteriorated. Some people might say that that is a good thing because we are talking about prisoners, but I am inclined to think that if we are serious about bringing people back into society—the redemption strategy—we need to provide a satisfactory prison environment.

In an intervention on my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary, I mentioned schools and the need for the long-term provision of new money in the comprehensive spending review. It is great that we are offering the widest and deepest range of free-at-the-point-of-use educational opportunities in our country, and when T-levels come on stream, it will become even wider and even deeper, but it is folly to suggest that we can continue to provide that, and can make the necessary investment to deliver a happy, educated, productive next generation, with the fiscal envelope currently enjoyed by the Department for Education.

[Matt Rodda]

The hon. Gentleman is making an interesting and thoughtful speech. Has he considered the Government’s policy of placing additional pension demands on schools in an unfunded way? If so, what does he think of it?

[Simon Hoare]

In an intervention on the shadow Chief Secretary, the hon. Gentleman referred to something that I am sure we have all heard from headteachers in our constituencies. Whether we are talking about national insurance, about pensions or about the demands of special educational needs, although increased DFE expenditure is going into most of our schools, it is nowhere near enough. We are asking schools to do more for more pupils with not quite as much money as they need. That is why I make the distinction. I welcome the increase, but new money is required, particularly as the range and the choice become wider and deeper.

I challenge anyone who represents a rural constituency, as I do, not to share my views on rural schools. I was delighted when the Chief Secretary took my point about the needs of maintenance. The costs of heating and running a whole estate of Victorian primary schools are greater than those in new build, perhaps in an urban setting, although that is not to say that there are no Victorian schools in urban settings. Such schools do not provide a good learning environment. Last month, I visited Motcombe primary school in my constituency. In a small classroom, one child is effectively being fried against a not particularly adequate heater, because the school does not have enough money to replace the heating system.

We must make a balanced judgment: we must aim to take those at the lowest end of the earning spectrum out of taxation, while also investing properly. We must strike that sensitive and sophisticated balance. My right hon. Friend was absolutely right: it is not just the big and sexy that we must consider, but schemes for local roads such as the C13 and the A350 in my constituency, and support for those who wish to remedy the rural broadband and mobile blackspots, which could become engines of economic growth and entrepreneurialism.

That takes me to my closing point, to which the hon. Member for Bootle alluded. Some of our recent debates appear to have pitted my party against the Government. I am sorry—I meant to say “against business”. [Laughter.] That was not a Freudian slip—or perhaps it was.

Business is the engine that generates the tax that delivers the services. We cannot have a hostile viewpoint; we cannot have a hostile environment for UK business to flourish. Without a flourishing business sector, without the freeing up of the entrepreneurial spirit that underpins the British character, the proceeds of growth—

[Peter Dowd]

rose—

[Simon Hoare]

I am drawing to a conclusion.

We all want to see the proceeds of growth and the investment in our public services that is required.