Productivity

Steve Reed Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab)]

First, may I congratulate you, Madam Deputy Speaker, on your new role? I also add my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Harry Harpham) and the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Oliver Dowden), who made their maiden speeches during this debate. They were incredibly impressive contributions and I am sure the whole House looks forward to hearing much more from both of them over the coming years.

It takes British workers until the end of Friday to produce what a German or American worker has produced by Thursday, and yet British workers work some of the longest hours in the industrialised world. The fault lies not with our workforce, but with a Government who have failed on investment. After 2010, the previous coalition Government choked off investment in infrastructure, which damaged the confidence of the private sector to invest. They failed to reform the banking sector with regional and sectoral banks, so it remained difficult for businesses to secure the investment and borrowing they needed to grow.

The economy is becoming more global and more digital. We need a workforce with the skills to match the opportunities, but instead we have continuing cuts to further education, a failure to recognise the importance of vocational education, and pressure on schools to teach learning by rote instead of the flexible skills that young people need for tomorrow’s economy.

Low productivity leads to low pay, and low pay leads to job insecurity and growing levels of household debt. Just like before the crash, Britain now faces a credit bubble based on an unsustainable housing market. The huge increase of people in work forced to claim benefits to top up poverty pay illustrates just how shaky our economy has become.

It is in places such as Croydon that the Government should be looking to boost productivity. I hope the Chancellor will fully back our Labour council’s bid for a Croydon growth zone by agreeing to the local retention of business rate growth and stamp duty in order to kick-start a £9 billion programme that will create more than 23,000 new jobs, build 8,000 new homes and invest in one of London’s fastest growing tech hubs. Ambitious, creative investment such as that is the first step to higher productivity and a more efficient economy. But we cannot build sustainable economic growth on poverty pay, household debt, low skills and job insecurity. A failure to invest might create a short-term boost in profits, but in the long term it leads to decline.

The Government are planning legislation that will take away workers’ rights. It is a huge mistake to think that the only way to be pro-business is to be anti-worker. Our economy can succeed only if we are both pro-business and pro-worker. Instead of a fresh round of anti-union laws that leave people even more insecure, the Government should give workers a more direct incentive to share in the fortunes of their employer. Workers on company boards and the right to shares in an employer’s business would encourage the workforce to share in the sacrifices sometimes necessary to boost productivity. A bigger voice for workers would allow companies to benefit from the insights of their own employees.

One of the big causes of the crash was a lack of accountability in the banks, which led to cheating and uncontrolled risk. Improving the accountability of firms to their own workforce and customers could help reduce that risk in our economy. Britain has no statutory right to request employee ownership when a company is being dissolved or sold, and we lag behind the rest of the EU in legislating for workers on boards.

It is a crying shame that the Government treat Britain’s workforce as a problem to be contained, rather than a resource to be harnessed. Britain cannot build sustainable economic growth on low productivity, low skills, low pay and low investment. We need the precise opposite to give our people the opportunity to make the most of globalisation and the digital economy.