Oral Answers to Questions
Valerie Vaz Excerpts(11 years, 3 months ago)
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Danny Alexander
I dare say that the hon. Gentleman’s comments on sixth-form colleges will be echoed by many Members of the House. That is why, as I said in answer to the earlier question, the Government are taking steps year by year to equalise the funding arrangements. I am sure he will welcome that.
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
11. What recent assessment he has made of the extent of underemployment in the work force.
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Greg Clark)
The latest assessment was given in last week’s employment figures and showed that 90% of new jobs created were full time, and that the number of involuntary part-time workers fell by 23,000.
Valerie Vaz
The Minister will know that 70% of the jobs that have been created—the new jobs—are part time. The Office for National Statistics has said that 3.5 million people are underemployed. Is the figure of one in 10 people underemployed rising or falling?
Greg Clark
The hon. Lady is not quite right. In fact, the greater number of jobs created have been full time rather than part time. It is important to understand that the term “underemployment” refers to people who would like more hours even if they are employed full time. The fact is that 90% of people in work say they do not want any more hours. Most of the rise happened before the election. Since the election, the number of full-time jobs has increased faster than the number of part-time jobs.
Communities and Local Government
Valerie Vaz Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
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Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey). I thank everybody in the House who has looked after us over the year and wish them a very happy Christmas and a happy new year. I hope that this Christmas gig will become as popular as the “Doctor Who” Christmas gig.
I want to raise some planning issues that have upset my constituents, because I do not like to see my constituents upset, and then to discuss the national planning policy framework, which the hon. Member for Chippenham (Duncan Hames) will also mention. I am a member of the National Trust and have dealt with planning litigation. I have had to read planning policy guidance and planning policy statements, so I understand why some people want to streamline them. However, that should not be done to the extent that they are non-existent. They are comprehensive and, together with the local plans and unitary development plans, they came about as a result of careful consultation. Word is already out that the national planning policy framework will be a lawyers charter. Lawyers are rubbing their hands in glee.
Turning to Walsall South, I hear stories in my surgery of intimidation, threats and broken windows, all because some people oppose an application. I had many specific cases to raise, but sadly time has been cut short, so I will deal with just two. In my constituency, the green belt is already under threat. For example, officers said that the proposal for the Three Crowns inn site would involve unacceptable development in the green belt and there were no special circumstances to outweigh that. However, the planning committee let it go through, so three detached houses have been built on the green belt. That is a great cause for concern. My constituents told me that a substantial amount of time was taken up by speakers in favour of the development, but that they were allowed only three minutes.
That brings me to the long-suffering folk who live around 1 Woodside close. All previous applications have been refused by the inspector on the basis that development would have an adverse impact on the character of the local area. My poor constituents have had to put up with six applications of a similar nature. Of the last two applications, one for the construction of 13 flats was dismissed on 28 October 2010 and one for the construction of 14 flats was dismissed on 20 August 2011. Still the applicant persists without any response from the council. Clearly, the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 needs to be revisited by the council. The residents in Cottage Farm residents association feel that their views have not been taken into account. I will present a petition to the House at the end of the debate this evening on behalf of those residents. I admire their resilience and stamina.
That brings me on to the national planning policy framework. The Government want to promote well-being, but they put it at risk by putting the green belt under threat. The Chancellor wants to use planning to stimulate growth, but town centres are crying out for development. The Government appointed Mary Portas to look at what is wrong with our town centres and she has told them to make explicit in the wording of the NPPF a presumption in favour of town centre development. In Walsall town centre, 15.8% of shops are empty—an increase of 20% since February.
The NPPF will weaken the test that is applied to town centres. Under the sequential test, developers have to show that there is no suitable alternative site in the centre, but that does not apply to offices. The NPPF will relax brownfield targets; relax the requirement to plan for the efficient and effective use of land; reduce the protection of the green belt; remove the direction to direct offices to the town centre; and reduce sustainable economic development. The combination of those things will push development away from where it is most needed.
Valerie Vaz
No. I am sorry, but I do not have time.
Walsall has a history of protecting employment land and has a sustainable settlement pattern. Manufacturers who are experiencing growth have not asked me to raise planning issues; they have asked for money for apprentices so that they can train them and fill the skills gap. This is not about housing either, because the Home Builders Federation holds more than 280,000 units with planning permission that are ready for development. Planning permissions do not deliver new homes. The problem of there being not enough homes is more to do with the stagnant property market, banks not lending and the boom in overseas investors investing in housing, not affordable housing.
Paragraph 16 of the NPPF states that the development of sites protected by the birds and habitats directive would not be sustainable. However, in the autumn statement, the Chancellor said that he wants to relax the habitats directive. I am on the side of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the National Trust, the Prince of Wales, the campaign by The Daily Telegraph, the Campaign to Protect Rural England and the people of Walsall South. Whose side are the Government on? With respect to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, I have a special phrase: this is not about being a nimby, but about being a NIGEL—“Not In the Garden of England”. We are all NIGELs now.
Finally, once land has been sold and developed, it is lost for ever. That is our heritage. That is what we leave to the next generation. I urge the Minister to think again.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
This Nigel would like to remind Members that they can accept two interventions with the usual injury time.
Global Economy
Valerie Vaz Excerpts(12 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Osborne
Of course I agree that we need demand. I think that demand comes partly from confidence, and that confidence comes from economic stability. If we think of the difference between the statement that I have been able to make today in the House of Commons and the emergency statements and emergency budget cuts that many Finance Ministers have had to announce in the last two weeks, we have, in a nutshell, the reason why we made the right decisions last year to get ahead of the curve, and why so many other countries are now trying to catch up.
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
Can the Chancellor explain how relaxing planning controls will stimulate the economy when offices, houses and shops are already standing empty in my constituency?
Mr Osborne
Of course we need to fill vacant properties, but we also need to allow new development. I think that we all want to protect areas of outstanding natural beauty in our country, and I have a constituency in the green belt, but planning decisions in this country are so lengthy, so bureaucratic and so costly that almost every study of the British economy that has been commissioned in the last decade has identified planning as an obstacle to further economic development. I think that we need to simplify those planning controls so that we can—yes—protect the countryside, but also secure decisions in reasonable time that allow development to take place. That is why we have introduced the presumption of sustainable development into the planning system.
Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Bill
Valerie Vaz Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
It is always a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore). Unsurprisingly, I shall speak against the Bill. As mentioned earlier, the Bill contains three main provisions: the abolition of the £190 health in pregnancy grant and the phasing out of the child trust fund and the saving gateway provisions.
The £190 pregnancy grant should be uncontroversial in its effect. It is a simple measure to ensure that, at this important time of their lives, women who face a huge physiological upheaval in their bodies as they nurture a new life, receive this additional money. They need it. We become deficient in many things—calcium and iron, to name but two—and this simple grant enables women to put back these vital foods to enable the proper growth of their unborn child and to ensure that they remain healthy when their baby is born. I have heard many Government Members, mostly men, say that we do not require decent food throughout the nine months, but in fact we do, because soon after that we have to feed growing children. The provision can be seen as an attack on women at their most vulnerable. As if that was not enough, the attack is on children as well.
By all accounts, the child trust fund has been a successful savings scheme, and I believe it will teach children to be fiscally responsible. The beauty of it is that every child, irrespective of the circumstances of their birth, has a trust fund. The facts are these: £2 billion is held in child trust fund accounts; 74% of parents have opened an account—sadly, in my constituency, the figure is down to 64%—and almost £470 million is paid in by grandparents. No one can touch that money except the beneficiaries, when they are 18. The money is there for them whatever their circumstances—whether they are looked-after children, the children of two-parent families, or the children of single parents—and no stigma is attached. It is not, as the Deputy Prime Minister said in 2009, a few hundred pounds in the hands of 18-year-olds; it is a solid account of savings over 18 years.
We want our children to grow up to be independent, fiscally aware and responsible. How much does the child trust fund cost? The answer is £524 million. In contrast, during four months in 2009, £2.3 billion was levied through the one-off tax on bankers’ bonuses. The new levy coming into effect will raise £2.5 billion. As the slogan goes, Mr Speaker, you do the maths.
Above all, the child trust fund fosters a savings culture in which children know that something has been put aside for them. In my view, that will make them better citizens. To paraphrase a slogan that is used, we can say to them, “This is what the state has done for you. What can you do for the state?”
My biggest concern is that the proposal was not put before the electorate, and the people did not have a say. Our children are our future. Let us give them a future, for the good of the country. I urge all hon. Members to vote against the Bill.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation
Valerie Vaz Excerpts(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman). He does his family proud. They will be very proud of him and the speech that he made today. It is also a pleasure to listen to all those who made their maiden speeches. They will do their constituents proud.
Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to speak in the Budget debate. There was an audible gasp around the country, and that was just from the parents whose children had finished their GCSEs, and that includes my own daughter Liberty, my nephew Luke and 630,000 other 15 and 16-year-olds. They have worked hard and given up many activities, so that when August comes no one can say that they did not work hard and that exams are getting easier. When they end up here, as some of them will do, I hope that they will not condemn us by saying that we just taught them how not to pass exams and did not give them a decent education. We should acknowledge the efforts of their teachers, too. My husband Paul is waiting for an Ofsted inspection, so there is another major event in the family. I was pleased to invite his school, St Mary’s Roman Catholic primary, to the House. They came on Monday, and were greeted by their MP, the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Mary Macleod).
The Secretary of State for Education could learn something from those young people. He seems to misunderstand the word “free”. He wants people to set up free schools, but they are not free; the money is coming from the public sector and coming from taxpayers so that some people can say, “We’re setting up vanity schooling;” and that is just what it is.
Much has been said about public sector workers, and it is here that I have to declare an interest because I have friends and former colleagues who work in the public sector. I know how hard they work. They work beyond their contractual hours, and when there is a recruitment freeze, they pick up the slack and carry out the work created by the vacancies. They went into the public sector because they wanted to serve the public, and their only perk was a decent pension. They have never had a large wage compared with those in the private sector. They are the people who serve the House, who turn policy into legislation and who defend the Government. Instead of being accountable to members of the public, they seem to be accountable to accountants. They know where the budget can be trimmed. Every single minute of their working day is accounted for.
Public sector workers work beyond the call of duty just to ensure that the wheels of this country turn. They always act in the public interest and are committed and loyal to this country. I note that the Government want to hear from them about how to make cuts, but that old cliché of turkeys voting for Christmas comes to mind, because no one will say, “Here, have my job. Take this as a cut.” The Government should carry out a skills and policy audit of each Department, because that way they can decide their policies and priorities. I note from the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s speech that he has asked Will Hutton to look at plans for fairer pay throughout the public sector, and I ask the right hon. Gentleman to extend that remit to those private companies that received public money in the bail-out.
Will Hutton said himself in an article in The Observer that even John Lewis, the founder of the department store, thought it extraordinary that a chief executive should receive almost 20 times’ the pay of other workers. President Obama’s pay tsar is doing exactly the same in the United States, and Will Hutton’s remit should be used to renegotiate the payouts and compensation made to those who have received exceptional taxpayer assistance.
Much has been said about the private sector mopping up after the public sector, but the reality is there to be seen in my constituency. On Saturday I met a delegation of workers from Maple Leaf Bakery in Raleigh street. They told me how they are under pressure to sign a new contract at different hourly rates. If they do not, and even if they put in a letter of protest, they will be sacked, so they either accept the new rate or go. The rate has been reduced from £8.48 an hour to £6.88. Those people make our daily bread. I met them, and some have been at the factory for more than 37 years, so they have the skills. If there had not been a minimum wage, who knows what their pay would be? ACAS has been involved, and all that the workers want to do is work. They have a way forward and have suggested a team to look at ways of reducing waste, upgrading the plant and cutting the number of managers. Its parent company in Canada is making a loss, but the company in my constituency makes a profit. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner), commonly known as the beast of Bolsover, is sadly not in the Chamber, but he described the events of the economic meltdown as an “economic tsunami”. I could not put it any other way.
People forget that when the Prime Minister attends the G20 summit at the weekend, he takes with him the legacy of my right hon. Friends the Members for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) and for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling), who did not blink in the face of the huge financial pressures and meltdown but steered the ship of state into safer waters. That is the true legacy of the past 13 years.