Future Government Spending

Debate between Andrew Gwynne and David Anderson

Wednesday 4th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

I am glad that the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West (Paul Uppal) finished his speech by saying that this is Labour’s final Opposition day—hopefully it will be the last for a very long time. Is anyone else sick of hearing the term “long-term economic plan”? Government Members are not; they seem to think it is a catchy phrase. What have we had for the past four years? We have had a short-term economic scam.

The Government promised to cut the deficit in four years, but they have completely and utterly failed. They promised not to borrow, but they have borrowed £219 billion more that they said they would—enough to run the health service for two years. They have decimated public services, destroying hundreds of thousands of good-quality jobs done by people who were delivering vital public services to the people we represent. They were working hard, contributing and paying income tax and national insurance contributions.

The Government have hammered every man, woman and child in this country with a 2.5% VAT rise, and the Liberal Democrats supported it, despite saying they would not. The Government have made life desperate for those people who rely on benefits, so those who were already poor have been made poorer. They have penalised people for having the temerity to be in poverty by bringing in things like the poverty tax—I meant the bedroom tax, but actually I was right first time.

The Government have given away successful public assets such as Royal Mail. They privatised the successful side and nationalised the deficit, which was the pensions. Now even the chief executive worries that it will not be able to keep the universal service obligation. This week they privatised East Coast, the best performing railway line in the country, and now they are talking about privatising Eurostar. We all know, despite their promises, that if they are re-elected the NHS will be moving rapidly towards privatisation, whether via a transatlantic trade and investment partnership or some other route.

My council has been hammered. It now has 45% less money than it did four years ago, meaning that every man, woman and child has been robbed of £328. We have lost 1,700 high-quality people who were delivering services to the people of my town. We have lost a fire engine, and another has been lost in a different part of the constituency, and 130 firefighters had to go across Tyne and Wear. The fire chief’s advice is, “I am being forced to make 35% cuts, and if I do that lives will be lost.” Lives will be lost not only in fires, but on the A1 motorway, which goes through my constituency, the third most congested road in Britain, because firefighters will no longer be available to get people out of damaged vehicles.

There really is a long-term economic plan, and we know what it is: to continue making rich people richer—the same as it has always been with the Tories. They will not stop their friends having dodgy tax deals, because they use the dodgy tax funding for their election campaigns. They will not cut taxes for the poor, but they will for the rich—£7 billion of unfunded tax promises.

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend, as an avid watcher of politics, will have seen that at last year’s Conservative party conference the Prime Minister and the Chancellor promised £7 billion of unfunded tax cuts. Is he as worried as I am that they would fund those by making more cuts to the public services that our constituents rely on?

Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

Debate between Andrew Gwynne and David Anderson

Wednesday 11th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Anderson]

That is par for the course in this debate, Mr Sheridan. The Government are trying to stifle debate, and they are doing that by pushing the Bill through Parliament in record time. They do not want to hear the truth. They do not want to hear the facts. There is a thread running through this debate. It is not about the clauses; it is not about the words on the paper; it is about a political fix. The Minister’s party is colluding with the Tory party in an attempt—a direct attempt, as we heard yesterday—to fix the people in this country so that their voices are dumbed down.

The 1992 Act created the office of commissioner for the rights of trade union members, or CROTUM. There was also a Scottish commissioner for the rights of trade union members, or SCROTUM. That is what the debate, and the Bill, are about. It is fitting in this context. That office was set up deliberately to encourage disgruntled trade union members to get out of their unions and undermine them.

The Minister said that I should return to the subject of the clause, and I shall do so now. Let me ask this: why are we here? This debate ought to be driven by the huge public concern that exists in this country about cash for questions, cronyism, dinners at No. 10 and the buying of favours. We ought to be discussing what was revealed yesterday by my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann): the fact that private individuals pumped £250,000 into his constituency to try to prevent him from becoming Member of Parliament for Bassetlaw. We should be discussing those issues, rather than the minutiae of legislation that is already more than adequate.

As was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray), 40 million people have been registered on union lists in the last seven years, and there has not been one complaint. The people of this country are not concerned about what certification officers are getting up to; they are concerned about cronyism. They are concerned about the influence that Murdoch has, and the influence that private people have. They are concerned about people such as Asil Nadir and Michael Brown, who are languishing in jail while the Government parties keep money that they stole.

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend is making a superb speech. If his constituency mailbag is anything like mine, he will have received hundreds of e-mails and letters about yesterday’s business. How many people in his constituency have raised concerns about the certification officer?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Anderson]

As the hon. Lady will know, I serve on the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee and I have been involved in the pre-legislative scrutiny of that Bill. The way it has passed through this House is a model of how to handle legislation. We went to Northern Ireland, we met people over there, we brought people to this House, and we talked about the implications of the measures. We talked literally about life and death matters, because people are frightened. They say, “If I’m exposed as supporting this political party, my life could be at risk.” That is a model of how to deal with a Bill, but it is the exact opposite of what has happened with this Bill—what has happened here is an absolute disgrace.

Inconsistency is a problem. I have mentioned a number of times that no one seems to think it is an issue. Three organisations that ought to know whether or not the current arrangements are working are the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the certification officer and ACAS, and they all say they have had no complaints.

We have heard this is part and parcel of a modernisation process. What about the Government’s system of one-in, two-out regulation? Regulations will be involved in implementing this measure, as will costs to the taxpayer, when we employ assessors and investigators. What does that do? I hope that the Minister will tell us how many regulations she thinks might be needed to put this in place and which regulations she will take out to cover for it.

It is clear from our discussions that there are two reasons why this measure is going to be pushed through. First, it will make it very much harder for unions to have democratically effective industrial action—that is clear. Secondly, as has been reported by Liberal Democrat Lord Tyler—this was mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey)—it is about having an impact on the ability of trade unions to fund the political party they choose to fund. It is dead clear that that is what it is about. People are not stupid. Government Members expect the public of this country to be treated like fools, but people are not fools and they can see through this; the Bill is about “transparency”—there is a lot of transparency going on at this time. People know exactly what is happening.

Why should this “transparency” apply only to people who support the Labour party? Why are we not talking about whether it is right and proper that we can see what makes up the Labour party’s political fund? When are we going to see the same from the other parties? When are they going to cough up? When are they going to show us where their money comes from? We can see why they would not want to do that.

This measure is just like yesterday’s in that it is about Government Members trying to shrink away from accountability—the accountability that applies to those such as the TUC, the trade union movement, the Royal British Legion, the Robin Hood tax campaign and the National Union of Students. This is the accountability that people demand of us and that they will want to demand of us coming up to an election, and it is right that they should do so. It is the mark of a civilised society that we stand up and are accountable. Sometimes when we stand up we are found wanting and people get rid of us. Sometimes when we stand up we are not found wanting but they still get rid of us. That is called democracy and we should not be frightened of it. Clearly, Government Members are frightened to stand up and be made accountable.

[Andrew Gwynne]

Do the current regulations governing the trade union movement, which were so eloquently set out by my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery), not mean that few organisations are as transparent and open as the trade unions in the United Kingdom?

[Mr Anderson]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, as there is absolutely no doubt about what he says. I do not think that any Government Member has said that it is not the case. The one Government Member who made a serious contribution was the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly), who spoke about whether this measure should be more restrictive. Although I would not agree with his view, he was making the point that we have something in place. He was asking whether we could make it tougher, but even he accepted the fact that the certification officer was saying, “There isn’t a problem.” The numbers that have been cited clearly show that there is no problem.

The TUC was right to say that this measure is part and parcel of a package that is attacking free speech: it is limiting criticism of the Government or Government policies; it is threatening the legality of the TUC to do its business through its congress; it is preventing the TUC from having a national demonstration in the lead-up to any elections; and it is preventing campaigning. As the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) said, it also raises particular issues in places such as Northern Ireland and has implications there. So, if nothing else, we should be saying, “This is not on.”

My right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne asked the Leader of the House, when he was still here, why he will not do the same as he did when he was Secretary of State for Health—pause and reflect.

Finance (No. 3) Bill

Debate between Andrew Gwynne and David Anderson

Tuesday 3rd May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Gwynne]

Is that not exactly the difference between this measure and the example raised in an earlier intervention about the effect of the windfall tax on the privatised utilities? When Labour was in opposition before 1997, the party was in full discussions with the privatised utilities, which might not have been 100% happy with the proposal but were altogether certain that if the Labour party came to office, it would invest in our young people and get them back to work.

[Mr Anderson]

My hon. Friend is correct. That debate went on in the Labour party for a long time long before that election. It was quite clear to the industry and to the people of this country that if they voted Labour on 1 May 1997, we would impose a windfall tax. Discussions had been going on and the companies were able to absorb the idea and plan for that.

As ACCA says further:

“The sudden change in rate came as a shock to those involved in the North Sea oil industry”—

the change was not a shock in 1997, because companies had been able to prepare for it—

“and has been widely condemned as reducing the competitiveness of the UK as a target for investment”.