Debate on the Address

Wayne David Excerpts

Wednesday 8th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Redwood]

I think that the Government need to re-examine the whole carbon tax regime, which is not imposed by our Asian or American competitors, and the balance of power generation for electricity, because we seem to choose to generate a rather high proportion by extremely expensive means. I would impose this simple test: is it going to work and is it going to be cheaper?

The Government would be wise to understand that we may not be too far away from an unfortunate conjunction of events on a cold winter’s day when there is no wind blowing and we are very short of energy. I am worried that a number of our important old power stations are being pensioned off or forcibly converted before we have put the alternatives in place. As the Prime Minister has rightly said, that should have been done by the previous Government, who spent 13 years arguing over whether to have new nuclear or new gas and did not put in place the replacement and back-up power that we clearly need with a strategy that relies heavily on wind and other intermittent renewables and where an EU set of rules requires us to close down prematurely a series of older power stations that we might still need.

Indeed, I would hope that one of the new energy Minister’s urgent decisions will be to ask for permission or derogation to keep open some of the older power stations for another two or three years while the Government put in place the necessary permits, licences and investment framework for the replacement power stations—which will, I think, have to be gas powered—in order to ensure back-up and security of supply. One of the important tasks of government in the overall task of keeping the country secure is to keep the lights on, and we need to do more to make sure that that is happening.

I hope that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister will encourage the Chancellor to go further and faster in sorting out the banks. Some of us are extremely impatient about the way in which the Royal Bank of Scotland, the recipient of so much public subsidy and shareholding, is still not able to help finance a proper recovery. It is extremely difficult to have a strong economic recovery in this country at a time when our major bank is still undertaking such a massive slimming programme and trying to reduce its loans and exposure to risk because it got itself into difficulties under the previous regulators and remains in difficulties under the new regulators. There are regulatory fixes; I do not wish to go into the technical details, but I hope that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor will move quickly and more purposefully to split up RBS and create working banks to finance the faster recovery that all parties in this House clearly want.

That would also help with private infrastructure. Those on the Government and, I think, Labour Front Benches are keen to promote more large infrastructure projects, and it would be very good if they could be financed privately. We are many years beyond the initiation of that idea under Labour, and then under the coalition, but we are yet to see the commitment of large financing to the power, transport and wider broadband and other communications projects needed for economic development and to trigger more economic growth through the construction industry. I hope that more attention will be directed to tackling those issues.

I am very pleased that at the core of the Gracious Speech, as the Prime Minister said, is his wish to do more to control our borders sensibly. I am a free-enterprise free trader—I am all in favour of talent coming in and of diversity in our country. However, I think that most of us believe that far too many people came in far too quickly, creating difficulties for housing, health and other service provision. When new people arrive in our country, we want them, as well as the people already settled here, to enjoy a reasonable lifestyle and for that to be achieved at a pace with which the existing community is happy.

I think the big mood of anger that we saw in Thursday’s elections stems from the feeling that many people have that some of those who arrive in our country get free and easy access to public services and benefits before they become British citizens and valued members of our community. People ask, “Is this fair at a time of cuts, pressure and difficulty? Can we really afford to have hundreds of thousands of new people coming in who are immediately eligible for high-quality public services and welfare provision?” When we see the details of what the Prime Minister is suggesting, I hope that a fair and sensible system will be introduced.

In meeting the European Union obligations on the freedom and movement of workers, it would be a very good idea to say that while of course people can come in to take a job, that would not make them eligible to receive a welfare or top-up benefit of any kind, and that it would not give them automatic entitlement to a lot of fringe benefits for their wider family. It should be the free movement of workers, not the free movement of benefit-seekers. I believe that the contributory principle is enforced in other parts of the EU, so why do we not have a rule that says that people can get access to welfare benefits and services only if they have paid national insurance for five years, or—to cover those who are already settled here but who, through no fault of their own, have not been fortunate enough to have a decent work record—if they have been in full-time education in Britain for five years? We need to look at whether we can use that contributory principle to provide some discipline.

Something that is of great interest to the trade union movement and the Labour party, as well as to the rest of us, is the impact that high volumes of migration have had on wages. Because Britain has been such a welcoming home to so many people, it has seen a large number of migrants from the rest of Europe. That has undoubtedly acted as a damper on wage levels at the lower end of the market. Often, people of great talent and skill come in and do jobs well beneath their skill level for very low wages because they are better than the wages where they come from. Some of that is a good thing, but too much of it creates enormous difficulties because it means that people who have been here for many years or were born here cannot get a job, the overall level of wages is rather low and living standards are not as high as we would like. That causes anger and tension in local communities.

[Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it would help if the minimum wage in this country was enforced vigorously?

[Mr Redwood]

I do not think that the minimum wage is high enough for a family. Our ambitions should be rather higher. It is a Labour cop-out to say that all the problems can be solved by enforcing the minimum wage. We all know that, on the whole, people do not live on the minimum wage, but get benefit top-ups. If people have family commitments, they of course need benefit top-ups.

I am talking about the justice of a system in which there are people in Britain who cannot get a job at all and lots of other people coming in from outside who are taking jobs on very low wages and expecting welfare top-ups, making it difficult to get the welfare bill down. That does not make any sense. There is a double bill for Britain: we have to pay the full welfare costs of the British person who cannot get the job and the top-up costs for the person who comes in from outside. Labour should take that point seriously and worry about it.

British people expect the Government, in trying to keep the country secure, to have the power to get rid of terrorist suspects and other unpleasant individuals who have, perhaps foolishly, been let in. I want the Government to appear strong and to be able to act strongly when necessary. There is huge public will for this House to gain powers that enable us to extradite people who are guilty of crimes or who are suspected of crimes and need to go elsewhere to be tried properly.

My final point is about Europe. I know that the Prime Minister is not keen to have a long debate on Europe. The trouble is that Europe is no longer a single subject; it is about the life that we lead. If we want to be sure that we can control eligibility to our welfare system, we have to sort out European welfare issues. If we want to extradite people from Britain, we need to sort out the European Court of Human Rights and will soon have to sort out the European Court of Justice as well, because there is an important European constraint on the power of Governments to act in that area. If we want to have cheap energy, we may well need to change European energy policy as well as our own. We can make immediate progress through derogations and permissions, but it would be far better to change the overall energy policy, because the whole of Europe is being damaged by its dear energy strategy, which allows America, Asia and others to take the jobs and markets that we need. We need to control our borders, keep the lights on and extradite people who deserve to be tried somewhere else. To do that, we need to sort out the European issue, as well as all the individual issues in their own right. I wish the Prime Minister every success in that.

I do not want to belong to a powerless Parliament. I do not want to belong to an impotent Parliament. I want to belong to a Parliament that can give redress to angry people outside if we think that they are right. I want to belong to a Parliament that controls our borders. I want to belong to a Parliament that settles our energy crisis. I want to belong to a Parliament that can legislate to finalise who has welfare entitlement and who does not. We are not in that happy position today. That is why I welcome the Prime Minister’s statement that we need a new relationship with the European Union. Bring it on as soon as possible and put it to this House of Commons, because without it this House of Commons is, indeed, impotent.

--- Later in debate ---

[Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

The Gracious Speech was hardly an earth-shattering event. It was a short speech that, compared with previous ones, had few proposals for legislation and even fewer ideas about the direction the country should take. Before I refer to some of its contents, I want to make the point that it was more notable for what was not in it than for what was.

To date, the Government have introduced a number of measures seeking to bring about constitutional change, such as the Succession to the Crown Act 2013, the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013, which introduces individual electoral registration, and the House of Lords Reform Bill. The first two Acts reached the statute book with our support. The Electoral Registration and Administration Act, however, was substantially amended, effectively negating the Government’s attempt to reduce the number of MPs and introduce new parliamentary constituencies. The House of Lords Reform Bill, of course—well, we all know what happened to it. There were other measures as well, such as the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 and the legislation allowing the referendum on the alternative vote, and we have seen a commission established on the West Lothian question, which has reported, and a commission established on a Bill of Rights.

It is fair to say that the Government, with varying degrees of success, have at least attempted significant constitutional reform over the past three years, but it is now clear that they have run out of steam. It appears, from the absence of constitutional change in the Queen’s Speech, that they have got cold feet and are playing it safe, to the extent that—believe it or not—only one constitutional Bill was announced, and a draft one at that. I refer to the promised draft Bill on electoral arrangements for the National Assembly for Wales.

Some Members might recall that last year the Wales Office published a Green Paper on future electoral arrangements for the National Assembly. Its main suggestion was that the Assembly might change to an Assembly of 30 constituency Assembly Members and 30 regional list Assembly Members. The Government’s intention was straightforward: having gerrymandered the Westminster boundaries in Wales and reduced the number of Welsh MPs by 25%, they hoped also to gerrymander the composition of the Welsh Assembly. Their objective was clearly to prevent the future election of a Labour Government for the National Assembly. However, as we all know, the ERA Bill was amended so that the Conservatives’ attempt to change the constituency boundaries and the number of MPs was thwarted. With the demise of the Westminster boundary changes, the Welsh Assembly boundary changes also bit the dust.

The promised Wales Bill is therefore likely to be extremely modest. In all probability, it will seek to fix the Assembly’s electoral term at five years, rather than four, as it is currently, and it will allow individuals to stand as candidates for both a constituency and a regional list. The fixing of the term at five years is probably relatively uncontentious, but I think that it is wrong that individuals might be able to stand for both a constituency and a regional list, because that will mean losers can be turned into winners. In other words, someone can be rejected in a constituency election and yet be elected through the back door on a regional list.

At a time when the people of Wales are likely to see unemployment rise again, when people’s standards of living are going down, and when the Welsh people are crying out for a vision of the future, what do we have? We have a Conservative-led Government promising to introduce only one piece of constitutional legislation, and only one piece of Welsh legislation, and it is specifically designed to promote the interests of Conservative party candidates.

If the Gracious Speech was bereft of constitutional proposals, there are other noticeable omissions. For example, there is no reference to legislation on the recall of MPs, despite the promises that we have had from the Government. As the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) said, there is no proposal to create a statutory register of lobbyists, despite an explicit commitment in the coalition agreement and despite the fact that the Prime Minister himself has said that

“the next big scandal waiting to happen”

concerns lobbyists. Why this omission? Is it because the Prime Minister was leaned on by the vested interests who fund the Conservative party?

The hon. Lady has had a number of her tweets, to which she referred, retweeted. I was grateful to the Financial Times this afternoon for quoting one of those tweets, which says:

“Are alcohol & tobacco lobbyists the real ‘barnacles’ that need to be scraped off the Ship of State?”

That is a very good question. I cannot for the life of me understand what valid and legitimate reason there can be for not having a statutory register of lobbyists in this House. It is a great omission that does not reflect well on the Government.

The hon. Lady made a very important and, rightly, emotive statement about the effects of tobacco on people, which is a real concern. As well as strong lobbying on behalf of alcohol interests, there is strong lobbying on behalf of tobacco interests. I deeply regret the fact that the Queen’s Speech made no reference to legislation that would introduce plain cigarette packets. Again, that is very remiss of the Government.

What, then, do we have in the Queen’s Speech? One of the more significant elements is the promise to introduce further legislation on immigration. I feel that Labour Members will probably support a number of the measures that the Government introduce. However, it is likely that the impact of many of those measures will, by definition, be very limited. I am concerned that by placing such an emphasis on immigration, the Government may convey a wrong impression about the difficulties that this country faces, possibly in the context of the fact that from 1 January there will be free movement of labour from Romania and Bulgaria. It is right that people’s understandable concerns are addressed and that safeguards are put in place, but in some quarters of our political life and the media we are coming very close to whipping up unnecessary fears among people in a rather irrational way.

I am also worried that the Government are apparently determined to do nothing to stop the exploitation of migrant workers and the undercutting of wage levels of indigenous British workers. It is very important for the minimum wage to be strictly enforced, and I deeply regret the fact that there are very few prosecutions for its non-enforcement. I also want the gangmasters licensing legislation to be tightened up substantially. If that was done, I think we could correctly say that the exploitation of all workers was being addressed.

The Government have to match their rhetoric on illegal immigration with practical measures to ensure that the UK Border Agency can do its job more effectively. For example, UKBA should be given the ability to deal with bogus student cases and the shortcomings in student visas. I have highlighted that issue in particular because the Government themselves have emphasised its importance.

In conclusion, this year’s Queen’s Speech is strong on broad intentions, but weak on specific proposals. It identifies issues of concern, but fails to propose measures to address them properly. It is laudable for its succinctness, but lamentable for its lack of vision and coherence. I am confident that in two years’ time the Gracious Speech will be of far greater quality and of much more substance.

Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.— (Mr Syms.)

Debate to be resumed tomorrow.