Fairness and Inequality

Debate between Eilidh Whiteford and William Bain

Tuesday 11th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Dr Whiteford]

Had the hon. Lady been here for the earlier part of the debate, she would have heard some back-and-forth chat about tax rates and such like. I will not rehearse those arguments. For Labour, there still seems to be a zero sum game in which rich and poor have to share out a very small cake. The fundamental point that my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr made earlier was that if we want to tackle inequality, we need to grow the economy. Once we have done that, we will be in a much better position to tackle inequality and poverty alike.

[Mr Bain]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Dr Whiteford]

I will not give way. I want to make some progress; I have a lot to get through in a limited amount of time.

The extremes of income inequality that we see today had their genesis in the late 1970s. The hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr Brown) challenged the motion’s wording about the upward trend of inequality in the UK. I am prepared to grant him that, in the early years of the Labour Government after 1997, there was a stem in the rising tide of inequality, but if we look at the long-term historical perspective we find that it is clear that from 2003 onwards inequality started to rise again. We can argue the piece about that, and I would not take away from the Labour party things it managed to achieve in government that were beneficial to people, but I question the lack of responsibility we have seen from Members on both sides of the House. They have tried to blame each other for not only the financial collapse, but how we have been dealing with the aftermath. It is incumbent on us all to take responsibility for the situation in which we find ourselves and work out how we can build a more prosperous future for everyone, in which the rewards of our prosperity are shared more evenly.

Today, the richest 10% of the population across the developed world have incomes nine times greater than those of the poorest 10%, but in the UK the margins are even more stark, with the richest 10% having incomes 12 times greater than the incomes of the poorest 10%. Can we really say that a person’s contribution is worth 12 times that of another person? I find that a difficult piece of maths to do; I certainly do not think I work 12 times harder than people who are earning a lot less than me in my constituency, as I know they work very hard in difficult and often demanding jobs.

According to the OECD, the UK is now placed 28th out of 34 in its inequality league, as measured by the Gini coefficient. Of course that is not the only way in which to measure inequality, and some commentators who use a wider range of measures consider the UK’s inequalities to be even more stark. For example, Professor Dorling of Oxford university considers the UK to be the fourth most unequal country in the developed world, despite being one of the wealthiest. Those of us who aspire to live in a fairer, more equitable society will have been shocked by the research published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in December, to which reference has been made. It showed not just that 13 million people in the UK are living in poverty, but, for the first time, that more than half of those people live in working families.

We used to hear the mantra that work is the route out of poverty. For people who are able to secure better-paid, full-time jobs that is undoubtedly true, but the reality of modern Britain is that now most poor people are working, but that work no longer guarantees a life above the breadline. About 5 million people in the UK are paid below what would be considered a living wage, and millions of working people find they have to depend on the benefits system to top up their income to adequate levels. My hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) made the point that the report published yesterday by the Living Wage Commission showed that 21% of the work force are being paid below a living wage, which is a 9% increase in the past 12 months. People cannot get out of low-paid work. One of the most important points in the report, which echoes comments made by the hon. Members for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon), and my hon. Friend the Member for Moray (Angus Robertson), was that once people are in a low-paid job, it is extremely difficult for them to get out of it. Only 18% of those people manage to get out of minimum wage work in the course of their working lives; a decade later those people are still stuck in those jobs. So work is a route out of poverty only for those people who have well-paid jobs.

A number of hon. Members, the first being the Minister, mentioned food banks. We have seen a huge increase in their use over the past two years, which is a shocking development in a wealthy country. We know that that increase has been driven by changes to the benefits system, particularly by delays in benefits payments and the increased use of sanctions. It has also been driven by the rising cost of living. One thing that has shocked me most in my constituency is the number of working people who are now dependent on food aid parcels. Half a million people in the UK now depend on food aid, and instead of squabbling about whose fault it is and whose Government the levels rose most under, we should be trying to tackle the problem and ensure that people have enough to eat.

Ours is a mature democracy with a well-developed welfare state, but the tax and benefits system remains the main lever through which Governments mitigate poverty and inequality. The recent reforms of the past couple of years have been overwhelmingly regressive and have exacerbated hardship. The promise from the Chancellor in recent weeks that £60 billion of further cuts are on the way shows that there will be no respite for disadvantaged people in modern Britain. Of all the regressive measures we have seen in the past few years, perhaps the changes to housing benefit best illustrate both the willingness of the Government to squeeze the incomes of the poorest households and the London-centric drivers of policy making. The under-occupancy penalty, or the bedroom tax as it is better known, is punishing disadvantaged people in our society who live in social housing and need help with their rent. It is squeezing the incomes of those who are already most hard pressed financially and driving the most extreme forms of inequality. In Scotland, around 80% of those affected by the bedroom tax are also affected by disability, which highlights that link between poverty and disability. Disabled people are still disadvantaged in the workplace and often find it hard to make ends meet. The proportion of disabled people in the UK as a whole is slightly smaller than it is in Scotland, but it still represents two-thirds of the households affected by the bedroom tax.

We also have a structural mismatch between the available housing stock and the needs of tenants. Some 23% of the housing stock is one-bedroom accommodation, yet 60% of tenants need a one-bedroom house. Even if it was in anyone’s interest to play musical chairs with housing allocations, there are simply not enough one-bedroom homes to go round. Provision of one-bedroom lets in the private sector also falls well short of demand and, in any case, costs the public purse considerably more than renting from social landlords. As well as pushing low-income households into debt, the policy is costing more than it saves, and the Government’s persistence in pursuing the policy is foolhardy in the extreme.

I know that the Scottish Government have already made extensive efforts to mitigate the impact of the bedroom tax by increasing the budget for discretionary housing payments to the legal limit. In answer to the strange and bizarre interventions by the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Pamela Nash), there are legal constraints on how much the Scottish Government can top up those payments.

Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Debate between Eilidh Whiteford and William Bain

Monday 21st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bain]

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will have an opportunity to make his own contribution later, and that he will recognise that I have been generous in giving way to him once already.

Long-term unemployment in Scotland has risen by 385% since 2008. I welcomed the presence of Scottish National party Members in the Division Lobby with Labour Members the other week, voting for our reasoned amendment to the Bill relating to the jobs guarantee, and I hope that it will not be too much longer before the Scottish Government follow Labour’s lead and introduce a jobs guarantee for those most in need of work in Scotland. They could easily do that. I hope that they will look at the example set by Glasgow city council in introducing a successful jobs fund for the young jobless, because such a measure would supersede the measures in clause 1. Countries such as Sweden, which many in the Scottish Government often ask people in Scotland to emulate, have used jobs guarantee policies very successfully indeed for nearly two decades, while reducing their deficit at the same time.

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

Does the hon. Gentleman also welcome the Scottish Government’s efforts to ensure that every 16 to 19-year-old in Scotland be guaranteed an educational or training place?

[Mr Bain]

I would welcome any measures from any tier of Government that would increase the level of training and skills provided to my constituents and those in other Scottish constituencies. I have to say to the hon. Lady, however, that I have two major colleges in my constituency—North Glasgow college and John Wheatley college—which have seen staggering levels of cuts introduced by the Scottish Government. That is driving more young people in my constituency into unemployment and creating the very figures that allow those on the Treasury Bench to produce measures such as those in clause 1.

Even in constituencies such as mine, it is still the case that people move in and out of unemployment. The calculated framing of this debate by the Government, based on the fabricated and manufactured premise that there is a monolithic army of the permanently idle, unwilling even to open their curtains, and defrauding the system, wilfully ignores that fact. Fraud in the benefit system is only 0.7%, and many unemployed people, including many of my constituents, are struggling hugely on just £71.40 a week. Unemployment benefit as a proportion of average income has fallen from 22% in 1979 to a mere 15% now, so the argument from those on the Treasury Bench that unemployment benefit is somehow unaffordable and that it cannot continue into the decades to come is simply a false premise to put to the Committee tonight.

Scottish Separation

Debate between Eilidh Whiteford and William Bain

Tuesday 10th July 2012 Westminster Hall

[Dr Whiteford]

The Minister makes an interesting point, and it is important to look at the performance of small nations in the vicinity of Scotland. My constituency in the north-east of Scotland is close to Norway, which I think has outperformed every country in Europe over the past three decades. We should also look at the impact of the recession and at how smaller countries such as Austria, Denmark and Sweden have been more resilient and managed to experience a less deep economic crisis. Even countries such as Iceland that went so far down during the economic crisis have bounced back with much greater dexterity than the UK economy—[Interruption.] The Minister is smiling, but he should be hanging his head in shame at the economic recession that this country is slowly trying to scramble out of. That is a shameful record for a country that has the potential to be prosperous.

[Mr Bain]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Dr Whiteford]

I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman just now, but I will later in the debate.

The other key issue connected to the economic languishing of Scotland is the inequality that we have allowed to develop, and the impact that that has had on our society. We live in a United Kingdom in which the top 10% of earners receive about 27% of the income, while the bottom 10% receive just 3%. To my mind, that is not a United Kingdom but a deeply divided kingdom that puts the UK in the top quartile of most unequal countries in the OECD. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, inequality has increased by around a third in Great Britain since 1979. In Scotland today, 780,000 people are living in relative poverty—15% of the population. That is way too high; it is causing real hardship and the long-term cost is immense.

[Mr Bain]

I agree with the hon. Lady about the scarring effect that poverty has on the people of Scotland. While on the issue of high pay, will she explain why last week in the Chamber her hon. Friend the Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie) was complaining about the potentially burdensome effect that proposals put forward by the Business Secretary could have on large companies in Scotland? It did not sound as if he was much of a friend to the workers.

[Dr Whiteford]

The Scottish Government have introduced a living wage for all public sector jobs for which they are responsible, and I welcome everybody who supports decent pay for working people. I did not hear my hon. Friend’s speech last week, so I cannot explain its context. I think, however, that we have to tackle inequality, and particularly women’s inequality in the workplace, which has been a long-standing problem in Scotland.

Public Sector Pensions

Debate between Eilidh Whiteford and William Bain

Thursday 8th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bain]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman a little later, because I want to make more progress with my argument.

The average public sector pension in local government is £3,000 a year, and half of female public sector pensioners receive less than £4,000 a year, or £80 a week. As Lord Hutton’s report makes clear, the notion that current public sector pensions are gold-plated is entirely wrong. The Government’s plans mean that a part-time 45-year-old school dinner lady with five years’ service, who is in the local government pension scheme and on a salary of £8,000 per year, would receive £400 a year less in her pension by the age of 65, or £672 a year less if she took it at 68, while she would pay £5,500 more in contributions by her retirement.

In April, the Government altered the indexation of public sector pensions from the retail prices index measure of inflation to the consumer prices index measure. The TUC estimates that the change has reduced the average value of public sector pensions by 15%, and the OBR has assessed the reduction to be 8.7% by 2017.

[Dr Whiteford]

If the hon. Gentleman is so concerned about the switch from RPI to CPI, why did he not vote against it on 17 February?

[Mr Bain]

Sadly, this Government will have had another three Budgets and, perhaps, another three autumn statements by the next general election, so we will make our spending plans clear at that general election—[Hon. Members: “Ah!”] We will, and those plans will not involve the massive cuts in capital spending that have put construction workers on the dole in Scotland—which the Scottish National party has made over the past two years.

Fisheries

Debate between Eilidh Whiteford and William Bain

Thursday 12th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bain]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. The UK and other states that are in favour of reform must build alliances—such as with the southern European countries, who have in the past been resistant to change—so that there is genuine momentum and a sense that reform is being, and will continue to be, pursued by all 27 member states. In 2009, Scottish fishing vessels discarded almost 28,000 tonnes of fish, representing a quarter of the entire whitefish catch in Scotland. That demonstrates the seriousness of the need for reform.

I commend the contributions to the debate of my hon. Friends the Members for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell) and for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins), who have over the years been consistent in their trenchant critiques of the CFP. My hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby has also been a huge champion of the fishing industry in his years as a Member of this House. I also commend the contributions of my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex), who referred to the need for the introduction of long-term quotas, my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead), who talked about the need for fish stock sustainability, and my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner), who talked passionately about the need for an ecosystem approach to fisheries.

It was particularly good to see the hon. Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) in the Chamber, and to hear her speaking with such passion and authority about this subject, to which her community and family have contributed so much. I also commend the remarks of the hon. Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer), who talked about the need for catch quotas, the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George), who referred to the need for a package of reforms and a framework of change, and the hon. Members for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford), for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile), for Strangford (Jim Shannon), for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey), for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Eric Ollerenshaw), for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton), for Morecambe and Lunesdale (David Morris), for Waveney (Peter Aldous), for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) and for Argyll and Bute (Mr Reid). They referred to the social and economic importance of the fisheries in their communities, and the moral imperative for action that this time will result in reform. They put their arguments with great vigour and force.

Global fish and seafood consumption is increasing. The US consumes almost five times more fish than a century ago, and China is consuming almost five times more seafood than in the 1960s. It has been estimated that capture fisheries contribute up to $240 billion per year to global output in direct and indirect economic benefits. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation found in its report, “The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2010”, that the fishing industry supports the livelihoods of about 540 million people, or 8% of the world population. Yet concerns about biodiversity and the condition of our marine environment have grown. OCEAN2012 has estimated that half of the fish consumed in the EU comes from waters outside the EU, through distant-water fleets and a growing reliance on imports.

In 2004 the Food and Agriculture Organisation estimated that discards amounted to 7.3 million tonnes or 8% of total global fish catches, although on another definition of by-catch, it might involve in excess of 20 million tonnes per year. At last June’s EU Fisheries Council, Commissioner Damanaki set out the case for the most sweeping changes to the CFP since its inception. Those changes were based on an assessment that the current system, as last reformed in 2002, was top-down, short-termist in its effects on the fishing industry and weak in its protection of at-risk species. In particular, the system of total allowable catches, which was introduced in 1983 for each commercial species of fish and which was subdivided into quotas for individual member states, has proven grossly inadequate. It led in 2008 to the permitted TACs being on average 48% higher than scientifically assessed sustainable levels.

The CFP is also unresponsive to changes in fisheries practice, because it is linked to the relative proportions of species fished as long ago as the 1970s. In mixed fisheries it is hugely wasteful and leads to the discarding of unacceptable levels of whitefish in order to comply with the quota rules after one species quota has already been exhausted. Across the EU, nearly half the whitefish and up to 70% of flatfish are discarded. Recently, and particularly in her statement this March, Commissioner Damanaki has pursued a new settlement that will build upon catch-quota trials that have proven successful in substantially reducing discard levels in Scotland and Denmark among pelagic fisheries. There is also the prospect of an extension to other fisheries, including demersal mixed fisheries, in the second year of any new CFP.

The Opposition welcome the lead that successive Governments and devolved Administrations have provided in extending the use of longer-term catch quotas and supporting the stronger involvement of fishing communities in the management of quotas and fisheries waters. However, we believe that a stronger impetus is required to deal with the root cause of the scandal of discarded fish and by-catch: the delay in the introduction of an EU-wide ecosystem approach to fisheries management. The Commission has established that 88% of EU fisheries stocks are being fished beyond sustainable levels, and that 30% are near to collapse. The introduction of ecosystem management in this cycle of CFP reform is obligatory under the EU’s integrated maritime policy and is strongly linked to the marine strategy framework directive’s overarching commitment to the achievement of good environmental status. It is strongly supported by the Commission’s green paper on CFP reform, and has proven successful elsewhere in restoring fishing stocks in large-scale fisheries in California, the north-east of the United States and parts of Australia.

The introduction of ecosystem management would balance environmental, social and economic concerns and involve a range of policy changes, including the introduction of financial incentives to reduce the pressure on stocks of species nearing over-exploitation; further action on ocean acidification, which particularly threatens shellfish stocks; the regional management of fisheries waters; fishing area closures; the incentivisation of new technology to monitor what is being taken from the sea and landed on fishing boats; and the use of more selective nets and fishing gear to reduce levels of by-catch of younger fish and other species. The multiple small trawl nets now used to catch prawns in the North Sea, for instance, have led to a 50% reduction in discarded fish.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North pointed out, in Norway the use of minimum catch sizes has proven successful in reducing levels of discards and fishing of undersized or juvenile fish. However, OCEAN2012 has recommended an alternative approach: the introduction of a minimum marketing size that would still constitute a strong disincentive for the sale of juvenile fish. It also raises the significance of applying new bans on discards and by-catch to EU fishing fleets operating in third countries or distant-water fisheries.

Key to the success of such a system of fisheries management would be the greater involvement of the fishing industry in devising such schemes at a regional level and reporting on their effectiveness and compliance, together with improved monitoring of ports. As well as a prohibition on discards at EU level, however, over-fishing must be addressed. Simply permitting all caught fish to be landed and sold without proper enforcement may lead to the catching of undersized fish, with the further depletion of fish species that could thereby emerge. In the past, however, with cod, fisheries closures have led to displacement of fishing to adjacent areas, so any successful package of fisheries closures this time would require the active involvement of the fishing industry. There is support across many member states for the principle of introducing rights-based management of fisheries as a means of tackling overcapacity, although there is understandable hesitation about introducing a scheme of individually transferable quota rights that could see large-scale companies exert excessive dominance over the market.

[Dr Whiteford]

Does the shadow spokesperson share my concern that the privatisation of our seas through individual transferable quotas would inevitably over time lead to concentration and consolidation in the industry in such a way as to undermine these efforts in the longer term and hugely damage fishing communities?

[Mr Bain]

There is a real danger of that occurring, which is why I would refer the hon. Lady to the speech given by Commissioner Damanaki in Berlin in March. She reflected on and took on board the concerns that the hon. Lady has expressed and we wait to see how they will be phased into the reform proposals that are to be discussed in July.

The EU needs a common fisheries policy and it requires one that meets that challenges that the present policy has failed so abjectly to address. With a strong motion passed by this House today, concerted action by the European Commission and member state Governments, we can turn intentions into deeds worthy of the cause raised in the Fish Fight campaign. Let us work for an ecosystem approach to fisheries, let us introduce a regionalised structure to the common fisheries policy, let us establish long-term catch quotas, and let us provide incentives for new nets and new technologies. By those means, we will tackle the root causes and end the scandal of discarded fish that has so appalled so many people in this country.