Stephen Doughty
Main Page: Stephen Doughty (Labour (Co-op) - Cardiff South and Penarth)
Mary Macleod (Brentford and Isleworth) (Con)
The Gracious Speech by Her Majesty the Queen gives us a programme for the year ahead in Parliament, and today’s motion on the cost of living is immensely important and integral to the world we live in today—especially, I would argue, in the wonderful, creative capital city of London. The UK is ranked 18th in the world for the cost of living. Norway tops the ranking followed by Switzerland and Australia, and Japan and France are also above the UK. Real household income has almost doubled in the past 55 years, and living standards have been transformed. In 1970, fewer than one in three houses had central heating, but that is now 96%; just one third of people had a telephone, but that is now 87%; and 65% of people had a washing machine, which is now 96%.
Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
The hon. Lady cites interesting statistics, but is she aware that figures came out today showing that Britain has dropped seven places down the world family income table to 12th, which shows the squeeze that the Government are putting on hard-working families?
Mary Macleod
If the hon. Gentleman bears with me, I will come shortly to what the Government are doing to help hard-working families.
The consumer prices index is steady at 2.8%, which is less than half its peak rate of 5.8% in September 2008. However, it is true that, in recent years, consumers are paying a higher percentage of their household income for essentials such as energy, fuel, child care and housing.
The right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) could not answer the question about borrowing, and nor did she apologise for leaving the country in the state she left it when the current Government took over in 2010. What are this Government doing? First, they are dealing with the budget deficit to ensure low interest rates and stability. Interest rates are at an historic low, benefiting all those who pay a mortgage. Mortgage rates are about 3.5%; in 2000, I was paying 7%.
Secondly, the Government are putting money back into people’s pockets by lowering tax. As I have said, they are raising the personal allowance to £10,000 in April 2014, and taking 2 million people out of tax altogether. That will mean that 4,900 Brentford and Isleworth residents in west London have been lifted out of tax by the Conservative-led Government since 2010, and that 49,000 people in my constituency will be more than £700 better off each year.
Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
As a new Member in my first Queen’s Speech debate, I was naively looking forward to having a busy and meaty legislative programme to discuss. How wrong I was. Instead, we have a Queen’s Speech that clearly demonstrates the disagreement, division, lack of vision and lack of ambition of this sorry Government. Not only are they running out of business, they are running out of reasons to exist.
Many of my constituents will be looking at the chaos over Europe this week and asking why the Government are having to spend so much time fixing divisions on their own Benches, instead of fixing the stagnating economy and taking action on jobs, prices, and the concerns of small businesses. They will be asking why the Government are not taking action over the increasing squeeze, not only on the poorest and most vulnerable in our society, but on hard-working families across my constituency and the country, who are increasingly struggling to get by.
Figures from the House of Commons Library show that wages in Wales have fallen by £1,700 since 2010—the biggest fall among the UK nations and equivalent to an 8% cut. Real wages are forecast to decline even further due to rising inflation over the coming months. The consequence, as Office for National Statistics figures show, is that Wales has the lowest household disposable income of any UK nation.
That is why my constituents will be amazed to have heard Lord Freud’s evidence to the Select Committee on Welsh Affairs this morning. When asked how my constituents and people throughout Wales should pay the bedroom tax, he said they should go out and make some money. How out of touch can he be? People in my constituency work hard, but many find well-paid work or any work at all difficult to find, thanks to the Government’s stagnating economy and the slowest recovery for 100 years.
People are not only struggling with low wages; many find it extremely difficult to cope with rising transport, food, fuel and energy bills. Some 420,000 families are in fuel poverty in Wales—I am sorry to say that the proportion is higher than in any English region—and yet the Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs told a Committee a few months ago that food poverty was not a useful concept, which was extraordinary.
The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change was unwilling to make a causal link between Government policies and food banks, but I will make that case and underpin it with evidence. Food banks in Wales trebled in the past year, and their use has increased by 118%. A survey by the Trussell Trust, which asked people why they accessed food banks, revealed that 45% did so because of benefit changes and delays; nearly 20% did so because they were on a low income; and one in 10 did so because they were in debt. My hon. Friend the Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) spoke earlier of the terrible increase in the use of payday loans. In Wales, from 2007 to 2012, payday loans rose from 17,000 to 30,000. What a sorry indictment.
Those statistics are reflected in the stories of constituents who come to see me in my surgeries and whom I meet on the streets of Cardiff and Penarth every week. One constituent was subjected to a break-in the other night. I asked her about security lighting and putting on lights to deter would-be burglars. She told me that she often had to sit in the dark to save on her electricity bills. A middle-aged man hit by the bedroom tax told me he would consider stealing food from the shops. Another constituent was looking hard for work, but had to cut back on their travel, fuel and internet usage at exactly the wrong moment in their job search.
The tragedy is that we could have had an alternative Queen’s Speech—one with a jobs Bill featuring a jobs guarantee; tough measures on energy prices; and measures properly to enforce the minimum wage and stop the undercutting of wages. The Government could have focused on the concerns of people throughout the country, and not on divisions on the Government Benches.
I shall conclude on one other disappointment with the Queen’s Speech. In 2010, the Prime Minister promised that he would not balance the books on the backs of the poor. Thousands of campaigners up and down the country are looking to him to hold to that promise. Rob Green, from my constituency, works with Results. He makes the case forcefully for the Government continuing their investment in tackling hunger and under-nutrition in the poorest countries of our world. Where is the 0.7% Bill in the Queen’s Speech? Why has the Department for International Development underspent by 8% this year? Why is No. 10 briefing sweet words to disgruntled Back Benchers via the Daily Mail that the aid promise will be met, but only through a cash-grab by other Departments? What do the Liberal Democrats have to say for themselves? They back the Government, but that was a key promise of theirs. Hollow promises, smoke and illusions are just not good enough. Like the rest of the Queen’s Speech, that failure is symptomatic of a weak Prime Minister, a weak Deputy Prime Minister and a weak and discredited Government.