Public Services

Debate between David Linden and John Redwood

Wednesday 16th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

This week, we meet to debate a Queen’s Speech put forward by a Government who do not have a majority. Many of the Bills in this Queen’s Speech are addressing real public problems of great interest to our constituents of all persuasions, and many of them will attract support from voters who are not planning to vote Conservative. It is therefore particularly disappointing that when I asked SNP Members to say which of the Bills in this Queen’s Speech they would support, the answer came that they would not support any of them. They could not think of any Bill—presumably, including the Domestic Abuse Bill—that they will support.

[David Linden]

The right hon. Gentleman will of course be aware that vast areas of the Domestic Abuse Bill are actually devolved. One of the problems that we in the SNP have in criticising this Queen’s Speech is that the vast majority of the Bills in it do not apply to Scotland. In fact, there was no mention of Scotland in this Queen’s Speech, so there is very little that is relevant to Scotland.

[John Redwood]

What I am about to say is still very relevant, which is that I think the public of the United Kingdom, given the circumstances in which we find ourselves, expect the Opposition to be a bit more positive and co-operative in tackling their priorities. It is not the Government’s fault that we cannot resolve this problem, because the Government have put forward a very simple solution to it, which is to allow the public to choose a new Parliament, and I trust that they would then choose a majority Government. If we are not allowed to do that because the Opposition parties can agree on blocking a general election, surely it is incumbent on them to help us to use the time we have intelligently and productively, in the wider interests of the electorate of the nation.

I want our Parliament to be well thought of by as many voters as possible of all persuasions. This Parliament is doing itself grave further damage if it does not co-operate and use this time during which the Opposition wish us to be here to find things on which we agree, to make improvements for those we represent. Those who represent a part of the United Kingdom with devolved government will, of course, be mainly interested in what their devolved Government do in those chosen areas, but there are still Union elements in this programme, and that is no reason to get in the way of us in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, where appropriate, doing what we need to do here. It would be good if SNP Members said that they were happy for us to do the things we want to do in our part of the United Kingdom, where we do not have the advantage of devolved responsibilities in a separate English or Welsh Parliament.

That is my message—Parliament should think about this. Why should Opposition parties co-operate? Well, for the simple reason that when we get to the general election, the public will take a particularly dim view of any party or group of MPs who have deliberately been negative about everything and unwilling to use the time, money and powers that this place and Government can bring to try to solve some of the problems before us.

On public services, I very much welcome the loosening of the purse strings. In 2010, my party and I thought that the deficit was massively too high and that emergency action was needed—as did, incidentally, the outgoing Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, who was planning pretty draconian measures to correct the deficit that his Government had created by bad management—but in the past two or three years, I have felt strongly that some parts of the public service are not getting enough money, and I have also felt that we had enough flexibility economically to do something about it. I also have my own favourite way to pay some of the bills, which is to stop paying any money to the European Union. I look forward to the day when that comes to pass, but many Members of Parliament here are desperate to spend as much money in Europe as possible, which has made that more difficult.

Let us leave out that contentious issue and concentrate on the extra money we can afford. I welcome that money for two reasons: first, because my local schools, health facilities and police force need that extra money; and, secondly, because our economy needs that money. The fiscal and monetary squeeze of the past three years has been too tight. I predicted that it would slow the economy, and that is exactly what it is doing. Superimposed on those domestic stresses, we now have a nasty world manufacturing recession and a general world economic slowdown. Policies in several of the great economies around the world have led to that slowdown and are taking time to correct. The United Kingdom needs to be part of the process of correcting that. We need looser fiscal and monetary policy to project a bit more growth and create a bit more prosperity.

I am pleased that the Secretary of State for Education is here, because along with other colleagues whose constituencies have seen schools and education services deprived of adequate funding for some time, I strongly welcome the new minimum figures that will be given to my schools that have been below the minimum figures. But I do not think that my schools at or near the minimum figures are getting enough, and I look forward to future settlements dealing with that problem. It costs money to employ enough good teachers. In a part of the world such as mine, facilities and buildings are expensive, and that has to be reflected in the amount of money allocated.

I look forward to the 20,000 new police officers in the Thames valley, and I was pleased to hear my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary say that progress will be made on that soon, because we have a series of problems with drugs and violence that we need to tackle.

Leaving the European Union

Debate between David Linden and John Redwood

Monday 11th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[John Redwood]

Why would somebody mount an economic blockade of Britain and not sell us their product? That is complete nonsense. This is a competitive world. When the scare stories were first put round that Calais would be blocked by deliberate action, I and others made inquiries and were told that Zeebrugge, Ostend, Antwerp and Rotterdam would love to have the business and were making very competitive offers against Calais, but Calais immediately said, “No, of course we don’t want to lose that business, and by the way we still have the shortest crossing, so it should still be the easiest way.”

Such malicious and unpleasant scare stories are why this Parliament is losing the trust of the public generally. The public expect us to be grown up and manage these things. If there are issues that need managing on our exit, it is our job to manage them, not to scaremonger or try to make them worse.

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

The right hon. Gentleman says that the public are losing trust in this Parliament. I put it to him that the reason the public—and indeed the people of Scotland—are losing trust in this Parliament is that, even at this late hour before our meaningful vote tomorrow, we have a Prime Minister jetting off to Strasbourg and trying to get last-minute concessions. This place is in absolute chaos. Is not that the reason people are losing trust in this Parliament?

[John Redwood]

I think the main reason people are losing confidence and trust is that all Labour and Conservative MPs, as far as I am aware, were elected on manifestos—[Interruption.] The SNP MPs clearly were not, but Labour and Conservative Members dominate the numbers in this Parliament, and we were all elected on manifestos that made it very clear that our parties fully respected the decision of the British people. We knew it was a decision; that was what the Government leaflet to all homes said, and what Parliament accepted in the debates on the referendum legislation, so we must honour that pledge. Our Conservative manifesto went further and explicitly said that we would leave the European Union, the customs union and the single market. There was no doubt about that; we were not muddled; we did not have different views; we did not want Norway plus or a Swiss model; we would leave every aspect of the EU, as described.

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[John Redwood]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. It is also a question of understanding how representative democracy based on elections and referendums works. In all other cases, Members of different parties in the House accept two things. First, they accept that when we have had an election, it is the votes that were cast that determine who gets to govern. We do not say, “Oh well. Many millions of people didn’t vote, and they wanted a different Government.”

Secondly, we also accept that it was the voters’ decision. We do not say, “Oh deary me. I’m still in Government. You tried to throw me out of Government—I’m sorry, electorate, you’re too stupid to understand. I’m doing a wonderful job and I’m actually going to carry on in Government, because I don’t agree with you. I might give you another vote in two three years’ time if you still haven’t come round to my point of view, but we’re just going to ignore the vote.” No right hon. or hon. Member would dream of saying that—not even members of the SNP, who have bitter experiences of referendums. They say they love referendums, but every time they hold one, they lose it. Every time they lose one, they then say, “That one didn’t count. Can we have another one?”

[David Linden]

As usual, the right hon. Gentleman is speaking with complete consistency on these issues—it is normally tripe. On democratic mandates and referendums, I have listened to him talk about how the majority of people voted. He has not once made reference to the fact that 62% of people in Scotland voted remain. What does he have to say about that? What does he have to say about the people in Scotland who spoke with one voice and said that they wanted to remain? Sixty-two per cent. is a rather large number, yet he seems to be ignoring that.

[John Redwood]

It is a United Kingdom matter and it was a United Kingdom referendum. As someone who believes in the Union, but believes in the politics of consent above all, I am very proud that our country offered the people of Scotland the opportunity to leave our Union. I hoped they would stay, but I thought we were right to offer them the vote. Just look at the dreadful mess in Catalonia, where the Spanish state will not offer people a democratic choice.

We were right to say that only the people of Scotland should determine whether it stayed in the Union or left. We did not ask the people of England, Wales and Northern Ireland; we let the people of Scotland determine their own future. They decided—I am very pleased and think they made a good decision—to stay in the Union. The next thing the Union did was have a referendum on whether the whole Union should stay in the EU. They had full opportunity to participate in that referendum and explain why more English people should have agreed with them, but they did not succeed. Under the rules of the Union, they have to live with the Union’s judgment.

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[David Linden]

The right hon. Gentleman is genuinely being very generous in giving way, and he has hit the nail on the head with that point. He is right to say that in 2014 the people of Scotland voted to remain in the United Kingdom on a prospectus of leaflets that were put out by the Better Together campaign and stated:

“The only way to secure Scotland’s membership of the European Union is to remain in the United Kingdom.”

We did that: we voted to remain in the United Kingdom and now find ourselves being dragged out of Europe. Does the right hon. Gentleman even begin to see—even through his Unionist-tinted glasses—just how difficult it is to reconcile that with a Unionist argument in Scotland?

[John Redwood]

Not at all, because that was an entirely truthful statement at the time. Clearly, Scotland had no right to independent membership of the European Union, which was the issue. It was already clear in 2014 that my party would campaign for a referendum. I always thought that we would win both the general election and the referendum—I was about the only person who thought that we would win both, and I am very pleased that we did. It was an entirely democratic process. Scottish voters could see that might happen when they made their decision to stay in the Union. As very welcome full members of our Union, they then had every opportunity to make a decisive intervention in the debate we had together on whether we stayed in the European Union.

I want to finish on the economic issues, of which much has been made. It is a strange debate, because most leave voters voted on the issues of democracy, independence, sovereignty, making our own decisions and spending our own money. I am someone who thinks that we will be better off—not worse off—by leaving the European Union. I have consistently argued this before and after the referendum. The case is very easy to make. I would like us to have a Brexit bonus Budget as soon as we leave the European Union at the end of this month. Such a Budget should boost our economy by between 1% and 2% of GDP.

Let me take the more modest version—a 1% boost from a £20 billion stimulus, which would provide a mixture of increased money for much-loved public services. It would also include tax cuts. The kind of thing I have in mind is more money for our schools budgets and teachers. We need more money for our armed forces and security, and for our police and the work on gangs, knife crime and so forth. We need more money for our social care, where the shoe has been pinching. The Government have already found prospectively large sums for the health service, and the challenge is to ensure that—where we vote those sums through—we get good value for money and are buying something that really does provide a higher quality service, which is what the public expect.

There should also be a series of tax cuts, firstly on VAT—the tax that we are not allowed to cut or reduce in so many ways, because it is an EU tax. I would take all VAT off green products, because it is wrong that people have to pay rather large taxes on better boiler controls, insulation and various other green measures they can take in their homes to cut their fuel bills. I would like to get rid of VAT altogether on domestic fuel. The budgets of people on the lowest incomes have the highest proportion of expenditure on fuel—there is fuel poverty. Why do the Government contribute to it by adopting an EU tax on domestic fuel? It would be good to get rid of that.

I would like stamp duties to be put back to the same levels as before the big hikes. I would not put back stamp duties that have been cut, but those that have been increased—it has clearly done a lot of damage to the property market by stopping transactions and stopping mobility—so that people can afford to live in the right-size property that is appropriate for their stage in life.

I would also like quite a big reduction in business rates. There is definite unfairness for high street retailing by comparison with online retailing, and now would be a good opportunity to reduce business rates. It is eminently affordable. The Government have provided their estimate of £39 billion, which is largely to be spent in a couple of years over the period of further negotiation. I think it will be much more than that in the long term—there are no numbers in the withdrawal agreement. Quite a lot of that money falls in the first couple of years, and I would like us to spend it in the next couple of years in the way I have described, with a £20 billion increase in the first year to get things going. There is a running saving of £12 billion a year or more from the saving of the net contribution, leaving aside any special payments under the withdrawal agreement.

The Chancellor has already let it be known that there has been a big overshoot of his fiscal tightening: we are borrowing far less than he was expecting, so he has a bit of leeway. We might learn more about that later this week. Putting it all together, the package I suggest is very modest, but it would give a very welcome improvement to our public services and give quite a good economic boost through targeted tax cuts. Our GDP would go up in the first year after we left the European Union, rather than go down on what it would have been otherwise.

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[David Linden]

I am—unlike the hon. Gentleman, I was here when the right hon. Member for Wokingham spoke earlier. I am indeed aware of his expertise in finance and some of the advice he has given people, including recently when he advised them to take their money elsewhere.

[John Redwood]

That is completely untrue and I hope the hon. Gentleman will withdraw that false allegation.

[David Linden]

No, I will not. I will continue with my speech.

The equivalent of the entire working population of Dundee stands to lose their jobs. The economic effect on Scotland is expected to be even worse than that of the 2008 recession. Businesses, institutions and notable leaders are up in arms over this dereliction of duty. The CBI, the Scottish and Welsh Governments, the National Farmers Union of Scotland, car makers and manufacturers are all united in their opposition to a no-deal Brexit advocated by some speakers in this debate. On top of all that, we face the loss of the free movement of people, which has helped to grow and support our ageing population.

The SNP has been consistent—not a popular position in Parliament—in supporting calls for the extension of article 50 and a people’s vote. That is the only sensible course of action left. The UK Government cannot continue to attempt to strong-arm Parliament into accepting their deal by threatening a no-deal scenario. In his dystopian novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, George Orwell described “doublethink” as

“holding simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them”.

Instead of reading the book as a cautionary tale, the Prime Minister seems to have taken it as an instruction manual. She has expected the Scottish people to accept three conflicting opinions at the same time: first, we would leave the customs union—a promise made to appease the European Research Group. Secondly, there would be no hard border in Northern Ireland—a promise made to appease Dublin and adhere to the Good Friday agreement. Thirdly, there will be regulatory alignment between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK—a promise made to the Democratic Unionist party. There is no world in which all three are simultaneously possible. The Prime Minister knows that, but instead of showing real leadership and working to reach a compromise, she hopes to placate different groups with promises she cannot deliver on, and scare them into voting for her deal by threatening us with no deal.

I will be absolutely clear: we must not crash out of the European Union with no deal. To allow that to happen would be a complete failure of governance and an abdication of responsibility. The Conservative party might be happy with that, but we in the SNP are committed to building a fairer and better future for the Scottish people. Our preferred option is for the whole of the UK to remain in the European Union, but, failing that, our compromise is that the UK should remain in the customs union and the single market. I believe there would be a majority for that in the House. It is clear that further negotiations are needed to find an outcome that works for everyone, so we support the extension of article 50 and a people’s vote.

The Prime Minister is content to lead the country down the garden path with no idea what waits at the end. That is utterly unacceptable. The Scottish people deserve a Government that have their best interests at heart, but Westminster has shown repeatedly throughout this Brexit mess that it does not have our interests at heart. It is for that reason that many Scots, including many of those who voted no in 2014, are rapidly concluding that the only way to have a Government with our interests at heart is to have an independent Government and to rejoin the family of nations.

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[David Linden]

That is absolutely on the record. The right hon. Gentleman’s declaration of financial interests shows that he does give advice for financial planning. Indeed, that was pointed out by the hon. Member for Gravesham (Adam Holloway). I said on the record what is already in the public domain about advice that has been given by the right hon. Member for Wokingham, and I stand by those comments.

[John Redwood]

Ms McDonagh, I think what was at issue was the accuracy of the statement. The hon. Gentleman said that I have urged people to take their money out of Britain because of Brexit. I have never said that, it is completely false, and I wish it to be withdrawn.

[Siobhain McDonagh (in the Chair)]

Does the hon. Member for Glasgow East wish to withdraw his comments? The right hon. Member for Wokingham has not, in his view, advised people to take their money out of Britain because of Brexit.

The Economy

Debate between David Linden and John Redwood

Thursday 22nd March 2018 Commons Chamber

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

I have declared my business interests in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, but I do not plan to talk about them today.

What a catalogue of misery we heard from the Scottish National party spokesman, the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss). It was just bizarre. I thought there was an SNP Government in Scotland and that she might have found something about Scottish public services or the state of the Scottish economy of which she was proud, but no, everything is miserable and, of course, everything is the direct fault of the Westminster Parliament. The SNP takes no responsibility for anything. I thought the Scottish Government had put up taxes and were going to endow their public services with even more, but the hon. Lady did not mention that. Perhaps she does not like the potential economic consequences of that, but it is absolutely typical that we get nothing positive and the SNP accepts no responsibility for the economy.

I wish to talk about the huge opportunities for the United Kingdom economy as we leave the European Union. I know it is fashionable for Labour Members to be wholly negative about the Brexit for which their constituents voted and which—to try to keep their constituents’ vote and have some confidence from their vote—they said in their 2017 manifesto they would deliver, but their voters, like me, think that there are huge opportunities for a United Kingdom that will be more prosperous and successful outside the European Union than inside it.

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

The right hon. Gentleman says the SNP talk about misery; may I enlighten him with a little reality? This week, Dunnes Stores, an Irish company, announced that its store in the Parkhead Forge in my constituency was closing down. The company said that that is because of Brexit, and it will have a direct impact on jobs in my constituency. That is the reality.

[John Redwood]

I can find many examples of companies that have come pouring in with extra investment post the Brexit vote. The national figures show that we have had more jobs, investment and growth following that vote. Those ridiculously pessimistic Treasury forecasts were launched just in time for the referendum vote. At the time, I and a few others put our professional reputations on the line, said that the forecasts were completely wrong, explained why the economics behind them was misleading and why the forecasts were likely to prove widely inaccurate. We were right; the Treasury, World Bank and others were comprehensively wrong and have been rightly confounded.

I am pleased that my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury agrees with me that it is a pleasure that those forecasts were wrong. She and the Chancellor are exactly right to be cautious about the latest set of official forecasts, which are likely to prove too pessimistic for the future years. It is important that we aim to beat those forecasts. We know that they keep changing the forecasts and that they tend to be too pessimistic, on average. Now is a good opportunity to go out and beat those forecasts. We should make that one of the main aims of our policy. I look forward to Opposition Members trying to help us, instead of doing all that they can to peddle misery and gloom to try to dampen spirits and reduce confidence at a time when there are good reasons to be more confident and to believe that those forecasts were wrong.

Let me take one obvious point. I have some disagreement with my Front-Bench colleagues, because I would like to stop paying any money to the European Union after March 2019. Some of my Front-Bench colleagues seem to wish to be more generous than me, but I think they agree that we must quite soon get to the point at which we are not paying any more money to the European Union. When we have full control of our money, which is what we voted for, we will have £12 billion to spend on our priorities here in the United Kingdom rather than on the European Union’s priorities somewhere else across the continent. That will give us an immediate 0.6% GDP boost. When a country is growing at 1.5% to 2%, an extra 0.6% represents a material improvement in its growth rate. We will not just get that £12 billion as a one-off in the first year; we will get it in every successive year, because we will have that money available to spend.

I campaigned in the previous election for the Brexit vote to be properly implemented, and my constituents gave me a majority knowing that that was my view. I also campaigned on the ticket of prosperity not austerity. I do want more money spent on the schools and hospitals in Wokingham and the local area. I am very pleased with our latest settlement, because health staff need more money. I am also very pleased that the weighting of the percentage increases is much more generous to those on low pay, because in my area it is extremely difficult getting by on those low pay rates. We need to recruit and retain more and to give more people in those jobs the hope that they can go on to better paid jobs with good career progression.

I want more money spent, but I do not want it spent irresponsibly. I am offering the Government the biggest spending cut that they will ever make, which is the £12 billion a year that we do not need to keep on sending to Brussels. In the spirit of the Brexit vote, I say bring our money back, take control of it and spend it on our priorities.

Before the referendum, I took the precaution of setting out a draft Budget that I would like the Government to adopt. I explained that I was very unlikely to be the Chancellor of the Exchequer and that people could not take my draft as a promise; it was a set of ideas on how that money could be spent. I suggested, mainly, more spending on areas such as health and social care and education, and also on tax reductions—getting rid of our damaging VAT rates on green products, on feminine hygiene products and on domestic heating fuel, which hit those on the lowest pay most heavily. Those are things that we cannot do for ourselves all the time that we are in the European Union.