No-deal EU Exit Preparations
Debate between Toby Perkins and Chris Heaton-Harris(5 years, 8 months ago)
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Chris Heaton-Harris
It does rather depend on what aspect of people’s lives will be affected, so there is a huge range of information both online and now available in advertising as well, where people will be able to see what will happen in circumstances such as if they were concerned about taking their pets abroad or about their holiday. That is all available online.
Toby Perkins
It is patently obvious that the Government are not remotely prepared for us to leave without a deal, and at the same time we have a Government who are ploughing on with a plan that has been twice rejected, refusing to bring votes and refusing to stick to commitments they have made to this House. If the chief executive of a major FTSE 500 company or a hospital were to run a major project in anything like as shambolic a way as this every single Member of Parliament would be demanding they resign; why doesn’t the Prime Minister resign?
Chris Heaton-Harris
It is the Leader of the Opposition who did not want to prepare for no deal in any circumstance whatsoever and did not want to spend any money on getting this country ready in case we were to leave without a deal. So if the hon. Gentleman should call on anybody to resign, it should be his leader, the Leader of the Opposition.
Infant Class Sizes
Debate between Toby Perkins and Chris Heaton-Harris(10 years, 2 months ago)
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Toby Perkins
The hon. Gentleman talks about a divisive education system, but I have never seen a more divided education system than the one that has been set up by this Government. We have seen an incredibly divided, fragmented system. We have seen schools that do not want to be academies forced into it because they cannot afford to be anything else but academies. The Opposition made it absolutely clear that we support parents getting involved in their schools, but the ideological approach of setting up free schools in a place that already has adequate supply and at the same time seeing infant class sizes at the disgraceful level that has been discussed in this debate is an utterly divisive way to approach education policy.
National Audit Office reports demonstrate that fully two thirds of all of new places created by the free schools programme have been created outside the areas with the most need. Extraordinarily, that has left some local authorities in a position where they want to build a new school to manage a primary places crisis, only to be told that the Department for Education will allow a new school to be built only if it is a free school and only to find out that nobody wants to build a free school in that area. That approach is utterly against the best interests of our children.
Free schools were supposed to fill gaps in the market, but they are in fact doing the opposite and are stacked up in places where there is already sufficient demand. We have seen the consequence of that approach in my constituency. Across Derbyshire, the number of infant school pupils who are in classes with more than 30 children has increased by 117% since this Government came to office. A freedom of information request to the Department for Education exposed the full scale of the class-size growth scandal. How pitiful the Prime Minister’s promise to cut class sizes now looks.
In Chesterfield, schools are grappling with class sizes that were absolutely unimaginable under a Labour Government. Hollingwood primary school has one class of 36; Hasland Hall infant school a class of 39; Abercrombie primary school a class of 44; and Walton Holymoorside, just over the border in North East Derbyshire—it is the school to which my own children went—a class of 36. For anyone who remembers the huge class sizes that we had under the last Tory Government—the one that actually won a general election—those figures will come as no surprise.
Chris Heaton-Harris
The hon. Gentleman is a very nice bloke. I am sure he is an excellent MP for his area and a great parent, but does he think that his children’s education was bad because they were in slightly larger classes? If so, what did he do about it?
Toby Perkins
That is a very interesting way of putting it. The education provided by my children’s school was very good. The hon. Gentleman seems to be making the case that class sizes do not have a lot to do with the quality of education. If that is the case, then he will obviously be saying to the voters in Daventry, “Vote Conservative to get higher class sizes.” Evidence suggests that class sizes are an important factor. Anecdotal evidence from teachers points to the fact that they find it a lot more difficult to perform their role in huge classes. Obviously, he is making an alternative case, and he will have to take that to his electorate and see what they think about it.
As I was saying a moment ago, anyone who remembers the huge class sizes under the last Tory Government will not be surprised by these facts. The speech by the hon. Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) complaining about the private finance initiative took my breath away. The reality is that in 1997, the Labour Government inherited a state education system that had been chronically underfunded. The quality of the school estate was disgraceful. Over 10 years, the Labour Government had to pay off the deficit that had been left behind by the previous Conservative Government. At the same time that we were radically trying to improve our health service and education system, we were also reducing the deficit that had been left. It is absolutely outrageous for the Tories then to say, “It’s a shame you didn’t pay for it all out of Government funds. You tried to bring in the private sector to support some of the building of the schools and you shouldn’t have done that.”
Tory Governments always end the same way—divisions over Europe leading to paralysis, waiting times in the NHS reaching critical levels, hollowed out local government unable to serve the needs of their local communities, and six-year-old children being educated in classes of 44. We can change the faces but they are all still Tories.
The choice for the British public at the next general election is clear. They can back the ConDems, get an ideological commitment to expensive free schools, a refusal to retain laws that keep class sizes down, weakened local authorities, demoralised teachers, a fragmented system that betrays our children and the threat of ever more children crammed into large class sizes. Alternatively, they can choose a Labour future where we transform standards with a qualified teacher in every classroom, a commitment to every child, new schools where they are needed most and real action on class sizes. Why wait until next May to give parents that choice? No one wanted this Government, not even most of those who are in it. Our children deserve better, so let us have a general election.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation
Debate between Toby Perkins and Chris Heaton-Harris(14 years, 5 months ago)
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Chris Heaton-Harris
It certainly contributes to tax income, but if we were to rely on only the public sector, an ever diminishing circle of tax income would come into the Exchequer and, in the end, we would not be able to pay for anything.
The way out of this mess is undoubtedly to boost and revitalise the private sector, so I welcomed the announcements in the Budget on regional job creation and the measures to cut waste and unaffordable cost from the public sector. That is exactly what our European partners and competitors are doing. Jean-Claude Trichet, the president of the European Central Bank, told the European Parliament—my old place of work—that firm control of Government spending and tax policies is essential to restore the confidence of households, businesses and investors. He said:
“We are in a situation where a lack of confidence is operating against recovery. A budget policy which you”—
if he were addressing the House, I assume that he would mean Labour Members—
“might describe as restrictive from a certain point of view is in fact a policy which we would call confidence building.”
He went on to say that if public finances continue along an unsustainable path,
“households are going to be frightened. They will not spend or consume as much, companies will not prepare for the future and investors will know they are going to have difficulty getting a return.”
Those investors have choices: they do not have to choose the United Kingdom or, indeed, Europe, as other markets are becoming increasingly attractive. France and Germany—in fact, nearly all our major competitors—have taken tough measures to sort out their public finances, and make their economies strong and attractive to future investors. We would weaken the chances of prosperity for our children if we did not do the same.
As the Chancellor noted, we need to increase the incentives to work. Welfare costs under the Labour Government rose by nearly 40 per cent., but there are still more than 5 million people on out-of-work benefits. Youth unemployment is a massive problem—1.4 million people under 25 are unemployed—and Labour’s spending to alleviate poverty failed, and has fractured society. Many people thought that the previous Government built barriers based on welfare payments that disincentivised individuals from finding a job. At the same time, those who are working pay more in tax, but why should they work hard to do the right things for themselves, their communities and their families when people who choose not to do so seemingly have everything that they do? It is a terrible disincentive.
I am a bit of a supply-side economist. I do not like tax rises, but anyone who looks at our structural deficit will understand that we need to remove as much of it as we can as quickly as possible. I will swallow my pride on the capital gains tax rise, but I note that it is a voluntary tax—people can sit on their hands and not realise the value of their shares, their property or whatever it might be. I certainly welcome the cuts in corporation tax, but I accept that the cuts in departmental budgets will be tough. I suggest that there is a great deal of waste to remove, especially from middle and upper management in some Departments. I recently received a letter from a constituent who works for the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency, who said that the directors, who were all based in the Bristol headquarters, travelled to Edinburgh for meetings, for no reason other than that it was a nice place to go.
Toby Perkins
The hon. Gentleman is raising an issue that many of his colleagues have raised, and said that somehow under a Labour Government there was profligate, wasteful spending that could easily be tidied up—[Interruption.] They all agree, and I am glad to hear it. Why, therefore, have the Government cut not that wasteful spending but the future jobs fund, thus pulling the rug from under the economic recovery? Why has the Sheffield Forgemasters loan been cut? Why do they not cut this waste, rather than all the things that will hit the poorest people most?
Chris Heaton-Harris
If only we had the money to spend on some of those projects, it would be wonderful but, unfortunately, your party spent it all. If you live in Northamptonshire, you can see areas—
Industry (Government Support)
Debate between Toby Perkins and Chris Heaton-Harris(14 years, 5 months ago)
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Toby Perkins
No, I should like to make progress. Other Members wish to speak.
My background as a small business owner and now as an MP in the east midlands, in a coalfield and manufacturing area, gives me a broad perspective on the debate. That broad perspective is one of the things lacking in the arguments that we hear from the Government Benches. People seem to fail to understand that the private sector and the public sector do not live in two entirely opposite worlds that never have anything to do with each other. As a business man, I rely on people buying products from my firm. Some of those people might be doctors, some might be teachers, some might work in private industry. What all of us who run a business need more than anything else is a strong economy and a strong environment in which to do business.
Of course, everyone running a business and everyone in society wants to pay less tax. More important than a small cut in corporation tax is an economy supported by Government to run successfully. Hon. Members should remember that corporation tax is 5 per cent. lower now for big firms than it was in 1996-97. All the parties are talking about manufacturing, yet only Labour has put in place the financial means to support manufacturing and to boost industry, which is what should be happening.
I was pleased to hear the contribution by the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), who I think might be joining the proud tradition of Tory rebels over the years in his call for more support for industry. He said that the British Government should support our manufacturing firms in the way that the American Government support theirs. I hope that he will continue to stick to that line after he has spoken to his Whips.
In our area, the East Midlands Development Agency is not, of course, the whole solution, but it is an important contributor. In Chesterfield, there is an organisation called CPP that employs 270 staff. When I went to visit it before the election, people there told me that they were able to carry out the initial set-up only because of the support of the development agency, which put in £1.7 million.
The east midlands engages in more manufacturing than any other area. The Secretary of State has said that he wants his Department to be the Department for growth, but cutting investment allowances will not speed the growth that we need in our economy. I was horrified to hear the hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan), who is not with us at the moment, say that she keeps speaking to people who tell her that the East Midlands Development Agency is not contributing and is not doing a good job, and they want to get rid of it. In fact, for every £1 the development agency puts into the local economy, we get £9 of benefit coming back. I do not know who the hon. Lady can have been speaking to, because local businesses and business organisations are queuing up to support it.
Chris Heaton-Harris
As a fellow east midlands MP and a former east midlands Member of the European Parliament, I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. Will he at least acknowledge that lots of the money that is invested by the East Midlands Development Agency goes to the so-called golden triangle, which his constituency falls within, and that areas in Northamptonshire and Lincolnshire have suffered because they have not been getting the inward investment that they might well have got had there been a local enterprise partnership?
Toby Perkins
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman knows his local area better than I do. I do know, however, that Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire chamber of commerce has spoken out strongly in saying that it would like the East Midlands Development Agency to be left in place. It is up to Members in other areas to ensure that they get schemes before the agency and try to work with it in a positive way. The current lack of certainty from the Government will not lead any organisations to think that they should be talking to the development agency, as they cannot be sure that it will even be there in a few months’ time.
Pat Zadora, the chair of the east midlands business forum, has said:
“We can’t speak for other areas of the country, but there can be no doubt that”
the East Midlands Development Agency
“has been extremely effective. The all-important private sector has forged a strong and helpful relationship with the agency and we believe it has made a positive contribution to the regional economy. There are a number of instances where we believe Emda’s intervention has been crucial in resolving key issues and unlocking opportunities to develop strategically important sites.”
The hon. Member for Mid Worcestershire (Peter Luff), when he was Chair of the BIS Committee, said that every business organisation that he had spoken to, from the Federation of Small Businesses to the CBI, said that development agencies help the economy, and that abolition would send completely the wrong message. We absolutely support his comments. The manufacturers’ organisation, the EEF, argues against a more local approach, saying:
“Local authorities lack the critical mass, the funds and the ability to step outside local politics to identify the priorities for their region, to set out how best meet them and to make it happen.”
What we need now is consistency from the Government. We need to see that there is support for our industries. Business wants Government to take a proactive role, but it also wants support to be there through measures such as investment allowances and the excellent car scrappage scheme that the Labour Government put in place—an example of Government investment supporting private industry. The Secretary of State is saying that he wants to send a clear and decisive message, but in fact he is painting a confused picture. His approach is not supported by manufacturing companies, which want to see Government driving growth, or by local businesses and business organisations in the east midlands, which are saying that we need investment in allowances, in development agencies, and in our manufacturing sector. They need a strong and unequivocal message from the Secretary of State, and in that regard he is failing them.