Draft Financial Services Bill (Joint Committee)

Debate between Stewart Hosie and Lord Mann

Monday 18th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[John Mann]

The hon. Gentleman is rather intemperate. Here we are having a good and important debate, and I anticipated an informed intervention from him. Instead, he merely wishes to curtail debate on equality. That says something about these new Conservatives, the partners of the Liberal Democrats—

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

I am all in favour of gender balance on Committees, but the hon. Gentleman is a member of the Treasury Committee, which has only one lady member. I do not recall him ever making the point that he or his Labour colleagues—all of whom are men, of course—should be replaced by women.

[John Mann]

The hon. Gentleman is not an hon. Friend of mine—to use the parliamentary language—so he is not privy to the debates and discussions in the parliamentary Labour party. However, I assure him, and the House, that this is an issue that I have raised. It is one of the traps that the House has set for itself, in the same way as it has with this motion. How do we achieve gender balance? I intend to make some suggestions about what we can do if the amendment is passed, and why that is so important.

Budget Responsibility and National Audit Bill [Lords]

Debate between Stewart Hosie and Lord Mann

Tuesday 22nd March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Hosie]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point about the nature of employment, but I am not sure whether the growth mandate to which amendment 1 refers would help. There were years under Labour in which there was net growth, but the Labour Government still managed to lose 1 million manufacturing jobs in those years—this was before the recession—and I am not sure how the growth mandate would have helped to inform us that we had lost those jobs, given that net growth was being identified and, presumably, reported on, as it would be by the OBR.

[John Mann]

We, like other countries in the western world, are losing manufacturing jobs because of our refusal to deal with Chinese imports and the consumer myth of buying ever cheaper from China. The inherent trade imbalances and problems that accrue as a result will come back to haunt us, and while I know that the Government will want to allocate time to discuss that vital subject in the near future, it is slightly outside our present debate.

The hon. Gentleman is partly right and partly wrong. While it would be wrong to discuss policy issues relating to the economy now, if the statistics had been broken down at that time to allow his assessment to be made more accurately, it is rational to assume that the situation could have been debated more regularly and in a more informed way. That might have had a positive impact for Opposition Members such as him as well as Labour Back Benchers. Indeed, such information might also have informed the previous Government’s policy making, which explains why amendment 1 is in the Government’s favour.

We need to know about job creation and what jobs are available not only in London and the south-east, but in other parts of the United Kingdom. I have talked about immigration, but there is an equally vital factor for economic and social policy: the blurring, albeit for rational reasons, of retirement age. We have to consider early retirement, late retirement and the retirement age itself, as well as the vital question of pensions. Some employers in areas such as mine have deliberately targeted getting the over-60s back into employment. That is perfectly rational, and it is good for those people, for the social economy and, perhaps, for the economy overall. We need the information, however; not because that is a bad thing, but because we need to know whether the new jobs in our regions and constituencies are getting those people who are deemed to be retired into the labour market, as opposed to people who are not working—whether they want to work or not. If we are to crack the problem of those who choose not to work, or who are incapable of getting work—again, the rational employer goes for the person with work history—such understanding will be vital to our economic and social policy. I put it to hon. Members that the rational employer is far more likely to employ a 67-year-old with an excellent work history who is re-entering the labour market, perhaps in a part-time job, than a 57-year-old who has been unemployed for 10 years.

The decisions taken by employers and those individuals who wish to re-enter the labour market are not necessarily matters for us, but the consequences of their decisions are important to us, and especially to economic policy making. An understanding of the precise breakdown of new jobs and job losses is fundamental to economic policy making. Several of the economic assumptions that can be made about consumer behaviour, pensioners and wage demands flow from such analysis. That is why, as a slight aside, it would be foolhardy not to give the Treasury Committee a role in all five OBR appointments, because such a role would ensure that if a Chancellor were so foolish as to skew the appointment process towards people with a certain mindset or from a certain discipline in economics, as opposed to trying to achieve a balance, that Chancellor could be corrected through appropriate cross-party decision making. I am talking about any Chancellor—the present one, whoever replaces him in future reshuffles and our Chancellor, when we are in power. It is vital that there is an evidence base that stands independent of the Government so that we can all decide how to vote on the various measures that the Government bring forward. How can we possibly make an informed decision otherwise, except by political instinct, which is important but insufficient compared with having all the information?

I am therefore puzzled by why the Government are not leaping to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East for tabling the amendment. Labour Members might see the fact that his approach would help out such a Tory Government as somewhat treacherous, but this is clearly the new politics. It is coalition gone mad when a Labour Front Bencher is putting forward a proposal that would help Conservative Back Benchers, the handful—a tiny number—of Liberals who are anywhere near government and the Government themselves.

Let me give another example about policy making. Who knows what will be determined about petrol policy tomorrow, but that is a good example of something that should be covered by the OBR’s analysis. We need to know what has happened, including in the past, so that we can assess the impact of VAT on petrol, as well as on petrol duty, and the changes to petrol duty itself. The Chancellor might decide not to cut the price of petrol and yet not to increase it further, even though the price paid by drivers such as myself has gone up by ten quid since he became Chancellor. If he decides not to increase the price further, we will need to see a breakdown of the relevant information. We could go back through history, although I can guarantee that such a consideration will not be in the report that the OBR produces tomorrow. I could assist the office, however, because I have statistics that demonstrate that 70% of the existing tax on petrol was brought in by Conservative Chancellors since 1973. One might ask why Conservative Chancellors pick on the motorist to such an extent, but that is a debate for tomorrow rather than today, although I know that you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and others in the rural community will want to know why that is the case.

The point, in the context of the amendment, is that we must know precisely what is going on. I imagine that Conservative Back Benchers would be shocked to find out that Conservative Chancellors are responsible, as of today, for 70% of the tax on petrol. If the OBR had the mandate, however, those statistics could be laid out for us at every Budget and the pressure would be on. The pressure would, of course, be on Labour if the reverse had been the case and Labour Chancellors such as my right hon. Friends the Members for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) and for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling) had been responsible for the rise.