Debate on the Address
Debate between Simon Hughes and Meg Hillier(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Simon Hughes
No, this was two years ago. Labour won 258 seats and just under 30% of public support. We won 57 seats with 23% of public support. Labour and the Liberal Democrats combined did not make a majority. Indeed, Labour and the Liberal Democrats along with the next largest party, the Democratic Unionists, would not have made a majority—we would still have been short—whereas the Conservatives plus the Liberal Democrats made a majority, and the country needed a majority Government. We therefore did our duty, by agreeing to work with people who were normally our opponents, in the national interest, to deliver a common programme. We have done that twice in Scotland, working with Labour in the national interest, and once in Wales, again working with Labour in the national interest. I believe it was right to do so on all those occasions, and that it was right to do so on this occasion, too.
Meg Hillier
Given the Prime Minister’s not-so-ringing endorsement of Lords reform from the Dispatch Box, is the right hon. Gentleman absolutely sure that the coalition is still joined together in a common purpose?
Simon Hughes
The answer is yes, and if the hon. Lady will bear with me, I will deal later with Lords reform, as it is in the Queen’s Speech and the programme for the coming year.
We need to remember where we were two years ago: there was turmoil in Greece and in the eurozone, and our constituents were paying out of their money—not our money—£120 million a day just in servicing the interest repayments on our debt. That is not a way to use taxpayers’ money for the good. There was a financial crisis caused by a banking system that was entirely focused on short-term gain for the people at the top—as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills said regularly in the previous Parliament—rather than on creating long-term value for the many small businesses that provide work for most people across the country. The public finances were out of control, we had the largest public deficit in the developed world and the living standards of those on low and middle incomes were being eroded, which had been gradually reducing the spending power of the British consumer over the previous decade. The cost of living was spiralling; for younger people, certainly in constituencies such as mine, a home had become an unaffordable dream. The economic system often encouraged people to take as much as possible for themselves rather than incentivising them to create long-term value and spread wealth and work as widely as possible, and the economy was reliant on energy from scarce resources, the price of which was rising year after year.
Two years later, we are still not where we need to be. We have unacceptably high unemployment, especially youth unemployment, which started long before this Government came to office and was on a significant upward trend in the last years of the Labour Administration. We are in an economic recession and banks are still not lending enough to viable small businesses, as we all know from our constituency casework, whereas the pay of those at the top is rising more than can possibly be justified by their performance. We heard the figures just this week: an 11% increase in salaries at the top last year, whereas the increase for the working population as a whole was 1%.
It is therefore absolutely right that the Government continue to focus on doing all we can to promote economic growth and recovery, it is right that we continue with the programme we set out and it is right that we have a programme that, as the last Budget did, seeks to put more money into the pockets of those low and middle income working people and to make work pay. The programme should regulate the banks, encourage the growth of renewable energy and put the public finances back on a sustainable footing so that the spending priorities of the Government, about which we care—health care, education and support for the less well-off—can be adequately financed. No Government have ever invested in better schools or hospitals by bankrupting themselves.
It has been difficult and we on the Liberal Democrat Benches know that. There was no parliamentary majority for getting rid of tuition fees and we were not able to deliver that—it just became undeliverable. The Health and Social Care Bill, the Welfare Reform Bill and the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill needed significant changes and we changed them and made them hugely better—all of them. The evidence is there in the legislation that is now on the statute book.
The Budget was grossly misrepresented. Its most significant element was that many millions of people were taken out of paying tax. Many more will be lifted out of tax next year and the year after, so that nobody will have to pay anything in tax on their first £10,000 of income. It was also forgotten that last month pensioners had the largest increase ever in the state pension since it was introduced by the post-war Government. Then there was the youth contract, the huge growth in the number of apprenticeships, and the support for further education.
There has already been huge success, but we must ensure that we focus on the priorities. The Gracious Speech started by setting them out very clearly: economic growth, justice and constitutional reform. We are proud on the Liberal Democrat Benches that the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, my right hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Vince Cable), will see through the creation of the green investment bank in Edinburgh, for which some of us, as members of an environmental party, have argued for many years and will now see delivered. We are proud that the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, our right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr Davey), will introduce an energy Bill to give us low-carbon energy generation and to develop renewables, which have a fantastic future—not just onshore, but offshore, tidal, wind and wave, and not just around Scotland but in the whole of the United Kingdom. We are determined to deliver cheaper electricity and greater security of supply.
My hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George) and others have campaigned for ages for a grocery code adjudicator Bill, and we are delivering that. It will ensure that farmers, local suppliers and local growers get good value for their products and are not trampled on by the power of the monopoly supermarket in their area. The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my good and hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb)—a Liberal Democrat Minister for Pensions—and his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, with whom he works so well, are determined to deliver the new single tier pension to ensure that by the end of this Parliament people will have, rather than the sum of just under £100 a week they get as the state pension at the moment, about £140 a week. That is particularly valuable to women, the low paid and those who have been self-employed. After 30 years of work, people will have a citizen’s pension, for which we have always fought.
The Minister of State, Department for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather)and others are determined, as the Deputy Prime Minister has been, that we should have flexible parental care leave, flexible parental leave and the right to flexible working. Why? They are not just good for the parent and the child, but they allow the parent to stay in work rather than giving it up and to be able to mix work, home, children and a career. That is really important for women’s equality in this country. Why do we not have many women in this place or on boards? It is partly because we do not have those flexible arrangements.
Simon Hughes
First, I am surrounded by colleagues who say that those who believe social network websites are in trouble. Secondly, most things on them are wrong. Thirdly, they are sometimes libellous. Seriously, I understand the general point the hon. Gentleman is making. I am not a member of the Government and so cannot speak for them, but I can speak for my colleagues here. What we want is a package of constitutional reform that has a fair constituency system. There is an argument about how many constituencies there should be—I was never in favour of the number going down quite as far as it has done, but there was an argument for making it smaller—and there is a strong argument for having equal numbers, but there is an equally strong argument for Lords reform. I hope that Labour will support us in delivering both, and we will be watching.
Simon Hughes
No, because other colleagues wish to speak and I am bringing my comments to a close.
The new President of France said after he was elected on Sunday that his two priorities were a fairer country and support for the next generation, the young people of France. I think that those are good things for us to champion for our country from these Benches. We need a redistribution of wealth and of work, an end to the obscenity of top pay and a closing of the gap between rich and poor. We need to make sure that work always pays, to create more apprenticeships and a more skilled work force, to give more opportunities for employment and self-employment and to build the largest opportunity for infrastructure investment that we can manage, in all countries and regions of the UK, and the largest affordable programme for housing that we can deliver, particularly social rented housing, which is desperately needed in my constituency and elsewhere. I guess that there is not a single colleague who does not have constituents coming to their surgery every week pleading with them to find somewhere where they and their partner, or they and their parents, or they and their children can live. Young people need a decent careers and youth service, decent work experience, decent mentoring, good apprenticeships and good further and higher education.
To the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, I say, “You were right, of course, to take as many poor people out of tax as you have, but please do not again reduce tax rates for the well-off.” Whatever the balance of equity, it came across very badly, it did not look as if we are all in this together and the evidence does not show that any further reduction will do any greater good for the economy. We have had one Budget which does this and we know the outcome, but no more please. Let us take the poorer out of tax, not the people at the top.
To colleagues here who sometimes have disagreements with the Government—we all do—I say that we have to remain strong, united, determined, liberal and radical. We have to be committed to the things we came here for: the spreading of wealth and power and a cleaner, greener, safer and, above all, fairer Britain.
To the people outside who wonder what we are doing in this difficult coalition, I say that we are clear that we cannot achieve everything we want because in a coalition, by definition, that is not possible, but it is better to be in government influencing a huge amount than in opposition influencing nothing. We are determined to use our influence not unfairly, disproportionately or unreasonably, but this is a partnership of two parties. That is the deal and that is what we will stick to.
We won 16% of the vote in the local elections the other day; we won 23% in the general election. It is not an impossible task over three years to build confidence, but it depends on whether we can get the economy going, help growth, make sure that we are seen to be economically competent and deliver a fairer Britain.
I think that we can do it, and Asquith gave us something 100 years ago this year as an encouragement on our way. In his speech in Nottingham to our party conference, at a time when he was leading one of the greatest Governments in British history, he said this—