Amendment of the Law

Susan Elan Jones Excerpts

Friday 23rd March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

I am most grateful to you for calling me to speak in the Budget debate, Mr Speaker. I do not propose to retread old ground, and I shall confine my remarks to how the Budget will affect my constituents. The backdrop to my observations is the fact that unemployment has gone up by 12% since May 2010, according to the claimant count figures from the Office for National Statistics. The latest figures show that 1,811 people in my constituency were unemployed in February 2012. Those same statistics show that unemployment has risen for 15 of the past 21 months, and job losses have included 150 highly skilled jobs at Tetrapak.

A major supermarket is opening in Cefn Mawr in my constituency next Monday, and I welcome that. I welcome the fact that about 100 new jobs will be created, although most will be part time. What I do not welcome is the news that 11 people were chasing every single one of those job vacancies. That is the sort of economic climate people in my home area are facing. It is why it is living in cloud cuckoo land to think that our 41 local Remploy staff will wander straight out of the factory that the Government want to shut into a land of milk, honey and stable new jobs. That is deeply wrong, unjust and immoral, and if the Tory-Lib Dem double act in Westminster will not do anything to put it right, it is vital that they play ball and devolve it to a Labour Government in Wales who will.

What people in my home area know all too well is that we need more of the wealth that private sector jobs create. There is a strong work ethic in our area, which runs deep in our twin industrial and agricultural heritage. We do not expect something for nothing, and these strong cohesive communities are very cross—rightly so—when anyone says we do. This is why we are so concerned about unemployment, and why we know that however many courses people take, however much work experience they get and however many boxes are ticked, what really matters is how many real jobs are out there—jobs that create prosperity and purchasing power, jobs that are for personal fulfilment and challenge, jobs to promote well-being and cohesion in our communities.

Yes, purchasing power is vital in all this. What did construction companies think when the Government swooped up the VAT rates? Let us remember the VAT tax bombshell—I mean the real one that happened on 4 January 2011. The builders and tradesmen in small and medium-sized enterprises certainly remember it because it had a major effect on their businesses.

The Minister spoke about people with business experience, so I will provide her with an example. Mike Learmond, regional organiser for the North Wales and Chester Federation of Small Businesses, put it like this at the time:

“Small firms will be hit hard by the rise in VAT, as unlike big businesses they can’t absorb the increase. Thus small firms will have to pass the full cost on to customers, reduce stock levels or find cost savings elsewhere—potentially costing jobs and undermining the Government’s private sector led recovery.”

Well, 1,811 people in my constituency know exactly what he meant by that.

In a Westminster Hall debate on micro-businesses in January this year, I was most interested when a Conservative Member with clear expertise in this area, the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris), made this very thoughtful point about VAT:

“We have on a number of occasions talked about the possibility of reducing rates for restoration and repair of houses, bringing the rate down to 5% rather than the full 20%. It seems to me that, given the pressure on the Government to increase the available housing stock, now is the time to look at that again.”—[Official Report, 25 January 2012; Vol. 539, c. 137WH.]

I agree with her totally and am heartened that my own party has pledged itself to a one-year VAT cut to 5% on home improvements, repairs and maintenance to help home owners and small businesses. In the interests of small and medium-sized businesses, enterprise and support for the work ethic, I am bitterly disappointed that the Chancellor has not used the opportunity of the Budget to do that, as he could have done.

On purchasing power, I am at a loss to understand quite how this Government’s apparent embrace of regional pay, which means pay cuts to my constituents and the people of Wales more widely, is supposed to create an environment in which private sector businesses will flourish. There is also, of course, a deeply moral issue. If a policeman or woman in my constituency is serving the public—whether it be in my constituency or elsewhere, as when they travelled down to London in vans to support the Met police during last summer’s riots—it is right that those servants of the public be paid the same rates. [Interruption.] I wonder whether there will be a real intervention. Perhaps not. In many ways, there will be rightful anger and disappointment at the missed opportunities of this Budget.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

rose—

[Susan Elan Jones]

Oh, it looks as though there is going to be an intervention. No? Yes, please. No, okay. [Interruption.] I thought we were going to have an intervention, but—[Interruption.]

[Dr Coffey]

I had assumed that the hon. Lady would resume her seat if she had accepted my intervention. She might want to consider the fact that London police officers already receive London weighting, as do other public officials. I remind her, too, that it was her Government who introduced regionalised pay for the Court Service; the last Labour Government started it.

[Susan Elan Jones]

It is a great pity that the hon. Lady has been so interested in following the Conservative party’s crib sheet that she has not read about what happened. The circumstances were very different with the court system, and 50 local rates were reduced to five—it was totally different and it standardised the pay far more. [Interruption.] Oh dear, I fear that the hon. Lady will have to wait a little longer to be promoted to a Parliamentary Private Secretary.

As I was saying, I believe that there will be rightful anger and disappointment at the missed opportunities of this Budget. About 14,000 millionaires—we saw some of them on the Front Bench the other day; it looks as though the servants are on duty today—will be rubbing their hands with glee at the £40,000 tax cuts they are receiving, while small and medium-sized entrepreneurs, teachers, nurses, police, families and pensioners are collectively faced with a £3 billion stealth tax, and are adversely affected. The 1,811 unemployed people in Clwyd South will rightly feel let down this week by a Tory Government, aided and abetted by those spectacularly useless Orange Book Lib Dems. Let us hope that, even at this late hour, this Government will put working families and those who want to work ahead of their ultra-rich cronies.