Economic Growth

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Tuesday 14th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Hunt]

With respect, I think the hon. Member needs to look at the facts. We have given an average of £3,300 in cost of living support to families across the country this year and last. In Scotland, 700,000 households have benefited from our cost of living payments, which have reached more than 1 million pensioners.

I want to return to my main point about the impact of making work pay. As a result of that change, not only have a lot of people been lifted out of poverty, but unemployment has gone down by a million, after going up by nearly half a million under Labour, and the unemployment rate has halved. That is the difference: if we make work pay, as the Conservatives do, we lift people out of poverty and put people into work.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

What would the minimum wage be worth now if the right hon. Member’s party had succeeded in its attempts to wreck the legislation when it was introduced by the last Labour Government?

[Jeremy Hunt]

I simply say that we did not just build on that reform but improved it massively more than Labour proposed, because we turned it into the national living wage, which is far more generous than the original minimum wage.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

The King’s Speech opened with an aspiration to raise economic growth, but was devoid of a single clue to how the Government intend to achieve that. There is nothing about a skills development strategy, nothing to address declining apprenticeship numbers for 16 to 18-year-olds, and nothing on the investment required to get Britain working again. The Chancellor now wants us to believe that all will be put right in the autumn statement—methinks we’re going to need a bigger statement. The Government foisted Brexit on us without a plan to implement it, so what does the Prime Minister do in his hour of need? He brings back the planless man whose reckless behaviour caused so much difficulty. It is like Oliver Hardy asking Stanley for help.

At 6.7%, inflation is still a long way from the 2% target, with little evidence that Government action, rather than commodity price reductions, is accounting for the limited progress that we have seen. In fact, the interest rate rises forced on the Bank of England are more likely to damage business and living standards. Increased mortgages will cost UK households £9 billion over this year and next.

How will we raise economic growth with a Government who cannot even secure our ability to produce our own steel? Some 2,000 jobs are at risk in Scunthorpe while the Government do nothing. Just how safe and secure should anyone feel with a Government who have entrusted our steelmaking to the Chinese?

Last year, this country experienced what happens when Governments speculate with unfunded tax plans. There is always a price to pay when gamblers lose control, but it is the British people who are paying that price with wrecked living standards. The behaviour of the Conservative party has destroyed the prospects of families the length and breadth of this country. When will the Government take responsibility for the misery that they have caused? This is a Government of 25 tax rises, but what do we have to show for it? We have crumbling schools, an NHS on its knees, crime out of control, living standards plummeting and even life expectancy falling in 21st-century Tory Britain. The truth is that virtually nothing works anymore. There is hardly a family in the land, apart from the covid profiteers, who can claim to be better off than they were 13 years ago. Just think what we could do with the estimated £7.2 billion of fraudulent covid payments over which this Prime Minister presided and which this Government are prepared to write off.

Lest it appears that I think there is nothing of benefit in this King’s Speech, I welcome action to curtail drip pricing and subscription traps, which I hope will eventually be delivered via the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill. It is long overdue.

It is time that online businesses paid their fair share of taxes. It is time to breathe new life into our high streets by abandoning outdated business rates, and—I say this in Respect for Shopworkers Week—cracking down on retail crime, which, according to new research from Thruvision and Retail Economics, will reach £7.9 billion this year. It is turning shops into dangerous work environments and no-go areas for too many customers.

Let us think of the possibilities for jobs, growth and wealth creation in life sciences, creative industries, the green economy and financial services if only we had a Government who knew the value of an industrial strategy and were prepared to secure the necessary investments. Instead, we have a Government who make us a laughing stock over their inability to build a modern railway, and manage to let HS2 end up £30 billion over budget. Just who will be called to account for that incompetence?

I want to be able to offer hope to the brilliant Kath’s Café in Druids Heath as it struggles with increasing supply costs and customers’ declining living standards, to Cameron-Price, a great local manufacturing business that is toiling to find the skilled workers it needs, and to Loaf organic bakery, a popular and entrepreneurial venture, but without any Government support in the face of crippling electricity costs. We need a King’s Speech to offer hope to the homeless, to support well-paid jobs, to tackle the mental health crisis and to address the gangs and the scourge of antisocial behaviour disfiguring our communities. We need a King’s Speech to get Britain working again. This is not it.