Debate on the Address

Zarah Sultana Excerpts

Tuesday 11th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)]

In 1945, in the aftermath of the second world war, a transformative Labour Government were elected on a promise to win the peace. Instead of returning to the old, unfair and unequal society of the past, they promised to build a country for the future and for the people. They created the NHS, and built the welfare state and millions of council homes. They brought industries into public ownership, to be run for the people and not for private profit. They borrowed to invest, taxed the richest and set out to eradicate poverty and unemployment. They faced a country brought to its knees by war. It was a crisis like no other, but they rose to that challenge.

Today, as we emerge from the pandemic, we, too, face crises like no other. We face a crisis of public health, with a Government who let bodies pile high in their thousands and underfunded the NHS for a decade. We face a crisis of poverty, inequality and unemployment, with a Government who hand out billions in dodgy contracts to wealthy Tory donors but refuse to give working-class kids food in the holidays. And looming over us is a climate crisis that threatens the future of us all. This is not a time to tinker around the edges or return to the old, unfair and unequal society and economic model that got us here in the first place. It is time to match the scale of the challenges we face with an ambition like that which the Labour Government had in 1945.

That is why at the heart of this Queen’s Speech should be a people’s green new deal, a state-led programme of economic transformation to build a country that can not only avert the climate emergency, but truly be one that works for the 99%, not just the 1%. It is a programme designed and discussed by trade unionists, think tanks, activists and policy experts that would create millions of well-paid, unionised, skilled green jobs. It would do so by mass investment in green technologies; expanding and electrifying public transport; building electric vehicles, with investments in gigafactories in places such as Coventry; creating a national care service; and retrofitting the country’s homes, cutting both costs and carbon. We would go from an economy controlled and run for profit to a society that is working for all of us. To do that, we need to bring industries into public ownership—rail, mail, water, energy and more—and we need to empower workers, which means repealing anti-trade union laws, so that the needs of many come before the greed of the few.

This programme could revitalise industries in Coventry, across the west midlands and across the country. It would kick start a green industrial revolution, building everything from electric cars to wind turbines. While we do that, we need to be tackling inequality, raising the minimum wage and ending poverty pay once and for all. We need to be giving our NHS workers a 15% pay rise, to make up for a decade of lost pay, and raising taxes on the very richest and the biggest businesses, with a windfall tax on corporations that have made obscene profits during the pandemic. A programme such as this can rise to the challenges we face. It meets the needs of the people and takes on the fossil fuel billionaires who are polluting our planet.

That is what a true people’s Government would do, but it is not what this Queen’s Speech is doing. Instead, it tries to take us back to business as usual—to the rigged economy of the past. Let us look at what is in it: “reforms” to planning and the NHS. We have seen what Tory “reforms” mean. They mean cuts and deregulation, creating the

“next generation of slum housing.”

That is not what I am saying; it is what the president of the Royal Institute of British Architects has warned about the White Paper. Today, a Campaign to Protect Rural England branch has called the plans a disaster. Health academics have described the NHS White Paper as consolidating the “market paradigm” in the NHS. Although the Queen’s Speech contains promised new laws for property developers and private healthcare companies, there is absolutely nothing about workers’ rights. There is not a sight of the promised employment Bill. There is no ban on fire and rehire and no end to zero-hours contracts. There is nothing for more than 5.7 million people in low-paid or precarious work, nothing for the 4.2 million children growing up in poverty, nothing for the one in seven adults without access to the social care they need and absolutely nothing that comes close to tackling the climate emergency.

This is not building back better. This is building back for big business and bad bosses, for Tory donors and property developers, and while it is deepening economic inequality, it is also attacking our democratic rights. The Electoral Reform Society called the Government’s voter ID plans “dangerous, misguided and undemocratic”. This is not about stopping voter fraud; it is about voter suppression and stopping young people, black and ethnic minority people and poor people voting. In short, that means people who are less likely to vote for this Government in the first place. If we do not like that, the police crackdown Bill represents an unprecedented attack on our right to protest, as groups such as Liberty have warned. If the Government get their way, not only will people be disenfranchised, but even our right to protest will be curtailed.

This past year, we have seen that it is not millionaire bankers or hedge fund managers who keep society going; it is our nurses, cleaners, teachers, shop assistants, taxi drivers and bus drivers. It is the working class in all our diversity. It is about time that we built a society run by and for them.