The Economy

Bim Afolami Excerpts

Wednesday 8th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

The hon. Gentleman makes a really important point. Of course, the devolved Administrations can provide their own policy responses, but we know that decisions taken here on public spending have a direct impact on their ability to respond accordingly, too.

We have said throughout this crisis that we would not criticise for criticism sake, and beyond the kick-start future jobs fund announced today, we welcome the attempt to make sure that the furlough scheme gets people back to work, instead of making them redundant through the jobs retention bonus. We are glad that the Chancellor included provision to get people into training and apprenticeships in his statement, and we welcome the additional resources provided to the Department for Work and Pensions to help get people back into work. In so far as they can, we hope that the cut in VAT and the limited “eat out to help out” scheme will be of some assistance to our tourism and hospitality industries, but this falls far short of what we called for and what was promised. We were promised a new deal, but the Chancellor’s big announcement was a meal deal. The Chancellor said that we cannot have endless extensions to the job retention scheme, which was echoed by the Chief Secretary, and that we cannot allow furloughing to go on forever. We agree. We have never argued otherwise. This straw man argument does a real disservice to the concerns coming from those employers and industries that face the biggest and longest hit as a result of covid-19.

[Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman not accept that, as the Chancellor confirmed, there is still a Budget to come later in the year and that the announcements today were not the sum total of everything that the Government will do? He should continue the constructive tone that he has used in part of his remarks and say, “Now we should work together on both sides of the House to see how, in the autumn Budget, we should extend things and see what needs to happen once we understand the economic situation at that time, which will be different from what it is today.”

[Wes Streeting]

The shadow Chancellor has always been willing to work with the Chancellor and we would be very happy to engage with the Government in terms of the flexibility that we are calling for in the sector-by-sector approach. In fact, as the Government did in establishing the job retention scheme, we would encourage them to sit down with employers and trade unions to look at what support is needed, for how long and across which sectors to make sure that people come through this crisis. The challenge with what the hon. Gentleman describes is that for too many businesses it will simply be too late. When there are some businesses that are still shut down through no fault or choice of their own, it is completely unreasonable for them to see Government support beginning to wind up before they can actually open their doors to business. The public health response and the economic response have to go hand in hand. I would have thought that point would be obvious to the Government.

Part of the Government’s challenge is demand and getting consumers spending again, as we have heard, but many of the challenges are also supply side, where a cut in VAT or a £10 discount on a Tuesday night is neither here nor there. Beyond tourism and hospitality, we have seen job losses across a range of sectors in recent days and weeks. The Chancellor offered nothing for manufacturing, including for companies at risk in aerospace and automotive industries, and nothing for the businesses whose doors are still closed. We fear that the Chancellor’s refusal to accept a more flexible and tailored sector-by-sector approach to business support and job retention is a failure of judgment that will be reflected in higher unemployment figures. I would be delighted to be proven wrong on that point.

In his statement, the Chancellor said that people need to know that although hardship lies ahead, no one will be left without hope. I am afraid, as we have already heard, he offered no hope whatever to the excluded, those who have consistently fallen through the cracks of the Chancellor’s support for employed and self-employed workers. Instead, they remain forgotten. Some of this is about choices and priorities. It is not clear why many of those facing the greatest financial hardship were offered no direct financial support in what the Chancellor announced today. Those who will benefit from the cut in stamp duty will, by definition, be better off.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

Like everybody in the House, I welcome the Chancellor’s statement, and I think it is worth considering that we have a twofold economic problem here, which we will have to deal with over the next few months. The first difficulty is one of demand, as there is a chronic demand shortage. The Government have done their best to stoke and increase demand over the summer and autumn, and I think those measures will be successful, but there are other fundamental structural problems with the economy that this crisis has shown us.

One is accelerated technological change on the high street in retail, and in automation in the industrial sector. The second is skills. We talk about building infrastructure, building back better and a green recovery. None of those will matter—all the money from the Government will not deal with the problem—if we do not have people with the right skills who can do the work.

The third structural problem we have is within our financial sector, with companies not having sufficient equity, or rather having too much debt, so that when the crisis is behind us they will not be able to grow sufficiently fast. Again, that is a structural problem with the economy.

There are three things that the Government and the House should consider over the coming months. First, while the crisis is here, we should maintain a loose fiscal policy and loose monetary policy. That is very important, because there needs to be sufficient demand growth over a sustained period of time for businesses to expand with confidence and not think that it will be pulled away in a couple of months’ time. For them to expand with confidence, there needs to be sufficiently loose monetary and fiscal policy. If they can do that, spending will grow robustly enough for there to be demand to create private sector jobs without subsidy from the public sector over the medium term.

The second thing we can do is adapt our financial system to make sure we can get more equity into businesses and reduce the debt burden. I have proposed certain things in work I have done. The Chancellor referred earlier to my work “Unlocking Britain”, which discussed how we can recapitalise the SME sector. Something like that needs to happen within our financial system so that we can reduce the debt burden for companies to give them equity so that they can grow.

The third thing, which connects with skills directly, is that we need to improve the ability of labour—people—and capital, money, to move from sectors and companies that are declining into those that are growing and have the potential to power forward our recovery. Those are the measures that the Government need to consider in the months to come.