Economy and Jobs

Edward Miliband Excerpts

Thursday 29th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to follow the right hon. Member for Meriden (Dame Caroline Spelman).

The Queen’s Speech debate after a general election is a chance to reflect on what we heard during the election. That is particularly important given the result we have just seen. Let us be honest across the House—we were all a bit gobsmacked by the result. Jon Snow went on television the day after the election and said, “I know nothing”, and I think that probably applies to many of us.

Having heard the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who has departed, I am bound to ask, “If it is all going so well, why did it go so badly?” In other words, the result did not exactly meet Conservative expectations. I believe that there is a deeper explanation. It has been said that many people have

“a sense—deep, profound and let’s face it often justified—that…the world works well for a privileged few, but not for them.”

Those are not my words but the words of the Prime Minister in her party conference speech.

If we look at the remarkable turnaround that took place during the election campaign, we can blame the social care policy, we can blame the Prime Minister, but I think it is deeper than that. The tide is going out on a certain way of running the country—large inequality, the next generation seeing their chances diminish, and permanent austerity. The crucial point about the campaign—I think Conservative Members know this—is that the Prime Minister who stood on the steps of Downing Street as the agent of change became the agent of the status quo. The reality is that my right hon. Friend the leader of the Labour party became the agent of change. That is why we saw the change that we did in this election.

The question about this Gracious Speech is whether it shows that the Government understand the lessons of the election campaign. Listening to the Chancellor, one would think that it had all gone brilliantly and the Conservatives had got a landslide majority, as they had planned. They did not. I look at the Gracious Speech and I ask this question. Does it include an attack on the burning injustices that the Prime Minister promised in her words in Downing Street? Is there the transformation in life chances that she promised? Is there a determination to stand up to the most powerful as she promised? The answer, to coin a phrase, is no, no, no. We do not see any of that in this speech.

I want to make some positive suggestions about how Members across the House, working together, can rectify the gaps in the Queen’s Speech, and I will make three in the time I have. The first—it will not surprise hon. Members to hear me talk about this—is on energy prices. I do not normally read The Sun—people might recognise that, but on 9 May I read something that caught my eye. It said:

“I am making this promise: if I am re-elected on June 8, I will take action…by introducing a cap on unfair energy price rises…It will protect around 17 million families.”

That is brilliant, I thought. That is my policy, more or less. It was from the Prime Minister. Then I look at the Queen’s Speech—where has it gone? Where is the price cap legislation? All we have is a consultation and a letter to Ofcom—a U-turn on the U-turn, which happened yesterday as well.

Let me put it this way: 84% of people supported parties with a price cap in their manifesto. Not a soft cap but a hard cap. It was proposed by the Labour party and the Conservative party. So let us do it. I welcome the intervention by the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) in the Queen’s Speech debate when the Prime Minister spoke.

Secondly, the Prime Minister says that she cares about insecurity. Zero-hours contracts may have started under the last Labour Government, but let us be honest about the situation. The number has gone from 168,000 in December 2010 to 900,000 by the end of last year. If we care about insecurity, it is unfathomable that we are not acting on this. We heard it from our constituents on the doorsteps. We heard that sense of insecurity; it is part of the explanation for the result of the general election.

Thirdly, the Chancellor of the Exchequer talked about corporation tax. We have cuts in corporation tax still to come that will cost £5 billion over the next few years. If there is no magic money tree, is it really the priority that Apple, Starbucks and other companies should pay 17% tax when ordinary families in Britain pay 20%? Why? Where is the fairness in that? Where is the sense of tackling the burning injustice that the Prime Minister talked about?

I want to end on this thought. Ever since 2015 I have stopped believing opinion polls—people will not be surprised to learn that. I make an exception in the following case, which is not about voting intention. I was reading the newspapers on 9 May, and people were asked by Ipsos MORI whether they thought that the country was rigged to the advantage of the rich and powerful—76% of people in Britain agreed and just 16% disagreed. The question for all of us, whether we like it or not, left and right, is what is our answer to that. For my money, the next election will be decided by who has the compelling vision to meet that desire for change. On the evidence of this Queen’s Speech, the Government have no answers and it will be up to Labour to provide them.