The Economy

William Bain Excerpts

Wednesday 26th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)]

It is very important to have this debate today, a week before the autumn statement. It is very important that this House can show, through the debate, that we get it. We understand that offering people hope and having an economy where more ordinary people have more opportunities to get work, to progress in work and to get better wages, where there is more prosperity and more shared prosperity, is the only way we will have an economy that will work in this century.

This has been a very interesting debate. I was particularly struck by a couple of counter-intuitive contributions from the hon. Member for Watford (Richard Harrington), who is no longer in his place, and the hon. Member for Winchester (Steve Brine), who quoted Bill Clinton. I am going to do something counter-intuitive as well, which is to quote Ronald Reagan. [Interruption.] I am not sure there will be cheering by the end of the quote, which I think goes to the heart of the problem that will face the Government when they go to the electorate next May. In the famous debate of 1980, Ronald Reagan said:

“Ask yourself, are you better off now than you were four years ago? Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago?”

We know that in every constituency in the land the answer to both those questions is a resounding no. That is the heart of the economic problems our constituents face on a weekly basis. Those problems are faced by the young man whose mother spoke to me in Springburn two weeks ago. She said that he had been offered insecure, part-time work that paid even less than the national minimum wage—he was being offered work at just over £2 an hour. They are the problems faced by the man I met in April on the doorstep in Blackhill in my constituency, who told me that despite working for 15 months with the same employer he had no guaranteed hours at work. An economy that fails those people is one that fails the entire country.

The Exchequer Secretary offered support for a particular industry: revisionist historians. She said that poverty was falling. I am not sure whether she has had time to look at the latest research produced this week by the Institute for Fiscal Studies on behalf of the Northern Ireland Executive. It states that in the years between 2012 and 2015-16 child poverty will have risen. It will rise in Northern Ireland and across the UK, so we are not seeing falling poverty occur with the economic policies followed by this Government. She appeared to indicate that the previous Government had made no difference at all on these matters. The truth is that we saw a massive fall in child poverty under the previous Government. As my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) alluded to in her speech, pensioner poverty was halved under the policies of the previous Government. So we have done it before, and next May I hope we will show again that a change of Government can change many people’s circumstances.

The recent ONS data on public borrowing released last week showed that a Government without a proper industrial policy for creating sufficient high-skilled, high-paying jobs are a Government without a policy to decrease public borrowing on the scale required. It remains a great deficiency of the Government that they have not yet responded properly to last year’s damning report from the OECD on the skills deficiency and crisis across the country. Only when we have a Government prepared to reform the banks; set up institutions such as a British investment bank; boost our infrastructure planning; and tackle other such fundamental problems in the economy will we see the greater prosperity and equality that is so crucial.

In Scotland, there are some welcome signs—52,000 jobs have been created in the past year—but manufacturing is still 5.6% below its pre-recession peak, and there is a worrying surge in insecure, self-employed work that is simply not meeting people’s needs or paying the bills. We are also a seeing a worrying rise in household debt because people are coping with declining wages by running down savings or running up more debt. The debt ratio has risen to 170% in the last year. These are worrying statistics.

The upcoming autumn statement is the Chancellor’s last chance to show that he is listening and capable of change. If he is not—if we need to change our policies on living standards—it is becoming clearer that we need a change of Government.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—