Living Standards

Claire Perry Excerpts

Wednesday 30th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)]

rose—

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Byrne]

I will give way in a moment.

The Government are now set to put on the national credit card £158 billion more than they planned a year ago—£6,500 for every house in this country. Why? It is because they are planning to put on the dole another 250,000 people over the next year or two. They are bringing down the number of people in jobs by 300,000, and they have put up the benefits bill—that sign of welfare waste—by an incredible £29 billion over the forecast period.

Once upon a time, the Chancellor told us that we were all in this together. Not any more—it is back to the economics of, “You are on your own.”

[Claire Perry]

rose—

[Sajid Javid (Bromsgrove) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Byrne]

I will give way in a moment. There are not too many speakers on the Treasury Bench today, so there will be plenty of time for interventions.

Let us consider what the Chancellor’s proposals mean for jobs. The OBR now predicts that unemployment will rise next year, and unemployment forecasts for the years ahead are up year after year until 2015. The Government say that there is no alternative, because they still believe that unemployment is a price worth paying. Unemployment is bad this year, but it will be worse in the years ahead: the OBR said yesterday that it will rise up to 8.7%, while youth unemployment already stands at over 1 million. The brutal price that our young people are paying for the Government’s failure to get people back to work is now clear to hon. Members across the House. Those young people will be at the sharp end of rising unemployment in the years ahead. I will give way to the hon. Member for Devizes (Claire Perry), who will perhaps tell me how the Government can do more to get down youth unemployment in her constituency.

[Claire Perry]

Does the right hon. Gentleman think that the words, “There is no money,” were sufficient excuse, or is that actually a fact?

[Mr Byrne]

The Chancellor said yesterday that he is putting £158 billion more on the national credit card—£8 billion more borrowing than I and my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling) set out. The Government are set to borrow £37 billion more than we set out in the Budget before the election. The tragedy is that 7,700 people in the hon. Lady’s constituency will see their tax credits cut next year to pay for the failure of those on her Front Bench to get this country back to work.

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[Claire Perry]

rose—

[Mr Byrne]

The Pensions Minister should reflect on the following point. When we add together the cuts to children’s benefits and the cuts to families’ working tax credits, the total is £20 billion over the course of this Parliament. That is twice the amount of money his party is taking off the country’s bankers. Surely he would reflect on the wisdom of taking more off children and working parents than off bankers? I think he should reflect on that further.

[Claire Perry]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sajid Javid]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

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[Mr Byrne]

It takes some audacity for a Member on the Government Benches to stand up after a Budget that has added £158 billion to the nation’s credit card and throw cheap jibes across the Chamber.

[Claire Perry]

rose—

[Mr Byrne]

The hon. Gentleman should explain to his constituents how £6,500 for every household in his constituency has been added to the nation’s credit card. [Interruption.]

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[Claire Perry]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that adopting the Opposition’s proposals would just delay that pain further for future generations, and that this debate would be irresponsible in the extreme if we did not think about the living standards of our children and grandchildren?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

My hon. Friend, not for the first time, hits the nail firmly on the head. The reality is—

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[David Miliband]

My hon. Friend has demonstrated that it is harder to make a short speech than a long one, but she has summed up very well in a few words what I am trying to say in rather more.

Fourthly, the Chancellor says that without austerity we would be in the same position as Greece, but the maturity of British bonds is closer to 14 years than to the 14 weeks or 14 days that seem to afflict the Greeks; much more of our borrowing is covered by domestic savings; and above all—unlike countries including Italy, which the Secretary of State mentioned—we have our monetary sovereignty. Far from the Government’s having instilled confidence and stirred entrepreneurial spirits for the future, confidence has dropped further and faster in Britain than anywhere else in the last 18 months, and had done so well before the euro crisis. Moreover, the level of confidence is lower than it was when the Government came to office.

[Claire Perry]

It is so refreshing to hear a grown-up make a speech from the Opposition Benches. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree, however, that quantitative easing took place originally in 2009—so the money was effectively already in the Bank of England’s coffers at the time of the election—that since then interest rates in Britain have dropped by more than one percentage point, and that we are now borrowing money more cheaply than Germany?

[David Miliband]

The hon. Lady is right, in that the zero stock held by the Bank of England in 2007-08 meant that quantitative easing had not yet started. When it did start, the stock went up. However, as she will know, since the general election there have been three further rounds of quantitative easing, including the most recent injection of £75 billion. That does much to explain why, although yields have fallen, international market ownership of the stock has not changed. I hope that she will engage with the issue that I am raising in all seriousness, because it is a serious problem for the Government’s argument.

In respect of the future, I want to concentrate on an aspect of the debate that relates directly to the Secretary of State’s responsibilities: youth unemployment. Let me repeat something that I said on television last week, half of which the Prime Minister and the Chancellor have enjoyed quoting. The current Government did not invent the problem of youth unemployment, but my goodness, they have made it worse. That is the charge against them. As the Secretary of State will know, it is a fact that structural unemployment among 16 to 25-year-olds stubbornly refused to fall below 10% even in the good years, when the economy was cantering along, and it is true that unemployment rose in 2005-06.

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[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

May I start by saying that I completely agree with the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier)? When we politicians talk about billions, deciles and quantitative easing it does not resonate in my constituency. It is 25 days to Christmas and 61% of people say that they are cutting their Christmas spending this year, but we often fail to recognise that.

In my short speech I shall therefore try to concentrate on what happens to the pound in someone’s pocket when it enters a household in my constituency, where the average income is £23,000—well below the national average—and where public sector employment is about 35%.

The top slice is taxation. The Government have done a huge amount, especially at the lower end of the tax scales, to lift the poorest people out of taxation. I am incredibly proud of the fact that from next April more than 1 million people will be lifted out of taxation altogether, 60% of whom will be women. That is a far more efficient way of delivering benefits through the tax system than dealing with tax credits, which though a laudable idea are expensive and difficult to manage and result in huge fraud and complexity amounting to billions of pounds a year.

There has been a council tax freeze across the country. We have given councils money to renew that, which is worth £72 a year to my working families in Devizes.

According to the family spending survey, families’ second highest expense is housing, about which we have heard much today. There are families who are struggling to get any housing. In Wiltshire, more than 12,000 families are waiting for affordable housing. My constituents, Nicky and Lee of Pewsey, who are expecting a child, are living in hugely overcrowded, damp conditions, which I have seen and in which I would not house an animal, let alone a young family. The Government’s radical housing reform is designed to help exactly such people. We must get Britain building again, and we must build sufficient affordable housing, which we have failed to do for the past 13 years.

We have heard much about mortgages. Significantly, mortgage payers across all income deciles, to use that hideous term, are saving £10 billion a year as a result of low interest rates—an important benefit to families across the country.

Given the preponderance of service families in my constituency, the Government’s work to put service families at the top of housing allocations, where possible, is hugely valuable.

Families’ next highest expense is fuel and transport. Like many Members, I live in a rural constituency where we have to use our cars. I welcome the fact that by next April fuel will be 10p cheaper and that, by the end of the year, we will save ordinary working families £144 a year in filling up their cars.

We have focused massively on energy consumption. Through the green deal, we are working on greening the most vulnerable households, which is very important.

I welcome this debate and the chance to talk about those whose voices are often the quietest—pensioners and children in care, for example—and it is our job to speak up for them.

Let us be clear: the tough decisions facing this Government would have faced any Government. We must be fair to the next generation—the children of today who will be the workers and taxpayers of tomorrow and who will pay for our pensions and meet our NHS expenditure. Let us have less ideology and more common sense.

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[Amber Rudd]

It is great to hear about that marvellous triumph of the private sector. There is another example in Hastings: a year ago Saga moved into the town with up to 800 new jobs. Only 350 have been filled so far, but I hope that they will continue to build on that number. We have high public sector employment in Hastings, so with these changes and cuts, we are delighted to have a major private sector employer able to provide jobs.

[Claire Perry]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, while we must not forget about the public sector, which is so very valuable to so many families, the best way to protect jobs in the public sector is for pay restraint and pension reform?

[Amber Rudd]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, and I would like to take the opportunity to say how much I respect the people who work in the public sector. I value the important work that they do. I and my family have used our local hospital in Hastings and they do an excellent job. It is important that we recognise the enormous value that the public sector provides, but we need more job creation in the private sector.