amendment of the law

Guto Bebb Excerpts

Tuesday 25th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

Coventry and Banbury are not that far away from each other. When the hon. Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) and I entered the House of Commons together about 30 years ago, I think that the unemployment rates in our constituencies were not dissimilar at about 15%. Unemployment in my constituency today is 1%, so it is possible to make progress if the community works together and drives forward jobs.

[Guto Bebb (Aberconwy) (Con)]

Indeed, progress is being made in Coventry South, where the number of jobseeker’s allowance claimants has fallen 17% year on year. In the 18-to-24 age group, it has fallen 20% and the number of long-term unemployed in Coventry South has fallen 16% in the past year.

[Sir Tony Baldry]

But, of course, Opposition Members simply are not willing to acknowledge that there has been a persistent fall in unemployment. I am not sure that their dirge of pessimism will resonate with electors, however. This past week was a defining week. By Friday, the shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions was acknowledging on “Any Questions?” that the Opposition would support the Government’s pension changes. She obviously had a busy weekend, because on Sunday she acknowledged in The Observer that Labour

“will vote for a cap on welfare spending to keep the overall costs of social security under control.”

Of course, the Chancellor has attached the welfare cap to the charter for budget responsibility in such a way that tomorrow, essentially, the Opposition will be voting for the coalition’s deficit reduction programme. Having spent pretty much all of this Parliament resisting every welfare reform and every attempt to reduce the budget deficit, at the end of the Parliament with just over a year to the next general election the Opposition are suddenly trying to catch up, accepting the fundamentals of the Government’s economic policy and recognising the strength of the Government’s long-term economic plan.

The Opposition can do the big stuff, but when it comes to the detail they still cannot quite bring themselves to acknowledge what they must do. They say that they will reverse the spare room subsidy. I still do not understand why they want to treat tenants in the social housing sector differently from the way in which they treated tenants in the private rented sector, notwithstanding that they will have to find nearly £500 million to reverse that policy. Where do they say the money will come from? The shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions said again from the Dispatch Box today that it would come from taxing higher rate taxpayers through the winter fuel allowance, but that would bring in only £100 million. We can already see that they are about £400 million adrift on just that simple question. It is all very well talking the talk about signing up to the welfare cap, but they cannot bring themselves to acknowledge what they will have to do to enforce that. Welfare budgets were completely out of control under the previous Government. The number of households in which no one had ever worked nearly doubled under Labour. This Government have taken difficult decisions to bring the benefits bill down, saving £19 billion a year for the taxpayer. The new welfare cap will ensure that never again will the costs of welfare be allowed to spiral out of control and never again will the incentives to work be distorted. The level of the cap will be allowed to rise only in line with forecast inflation. Of course people who have worked hard all their life deserve security in their retirement, so the cost of the state pension will be excluded from the cap, as will cyclical unemployment benefits. We need to see a welfare system that returns to the safety net that Beveridge intended, instead of the entrapment that it had become.

We have seen the Government make some brave and positive moves to get the welfare budget back under control. The latest workless household figures show a dramatic fall of 450,000 since 2010. We have record employment figures. I can recall at the beginning of this Parliament Opposition Members all saying that the Government’s long-term economic plan would lead to the disappearance of a million private and public sector jobs. What has actually happened since 2010 is that more than 1.7 million more people are employed in the private sector, which is more than four times the number of jobs lost in the public sector.

As we heard in an intervention from the hon. Member for North Tyneside (Mrs Glindon) in the speech of the hon. Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham), the Opposition’s answer to any conundrum is more public sector jobs. Their default position is still more public spending and more public sector jobs. In reality it is in the private sector that more jobs are being created. Indeed, almost 80% of the rise in private sector employment has taken place outside London, in constituencies such as mine and Coventry and in the constituency of probably every Member who has spoken in the debate. Almost 90% of the new jobs went to British nationals.

There are those, such as the Bank of England, who argue that the increase in employment has to a certain extent been as a consequence of the tightening of the eligibility requirements for some state benefits, which have caused people to see whether they cannot find their way back into the world of work. I visited one of the Work programme providers in my constituency the other day, which is doing a really good job of ensuring that the long-term unemployed get back into work. So the increase in private sector employment is now more than four times the number of jobs lost in the public sector. The rise in employment is being driven by businesses and entrepreneurs across the country who are feeling increasingly confident with the improving economy.

I have few large employers in my constituency. The continuous driving down of the unemployment rate month on month, week by week, in constituencies such as mine is being achieved by the private sector and by entrepreneurs, all of whom found measures in last week’s Budget that were supportive and which they supported.

We heard much about young people in the debate, but the number of young people in work has increased by 43,000 in the last three months alone, and the proportion of 16 to 24-year-olds not in employment, education or training is at its lowest in five years.

Employment is at a record high, up by over 1.3 million since the election. For the first time in three decades, the number of people employed in the UK is better than that in the United States. Unemployment in other European countries is going up, whereas unemployment in the UK is going down. That bodes well and will bode well for the Government come the general election next year.

--- Later in debate ---

[Guto Bebb (Aberconwy) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), who spoke passionately and eloquently on behalf of her constituents. It should be stated, however, that the figures imply that the success of Wigan’s economy is much greater than she indicated. Figures from the Library show that the number of jobseeker’s allowance claimants in Wigan is down by 35%, and the most fantastic thing is that youth unemployment has gone down by 55% in a year. We would kill for such a reduction in Wales, but we have the dead hand of a Labour Welsh Government in Cardiff who have no intention whatever of working with the national Government to deal with youth unemployment.

In my constituency, we have seen a drop in unemployment, including youth unemployment and long-term unemployment, which the people of the constituency have welcomed. However, young people on the Work programme are not allowed access to educational programmes, because the Welsh Government refuse any Work programme client access to any programme using funding from the European social fund. They do that to try to ensure that the Work programme fails, and it is left to me and other Conservative Members from Wales to put on job fairs.

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Guto Bebb]

The hon. Lady makes comments from a sedentary position, but—

[Susan Elan Jones]

No, I want the hon. Gentleman to give way.

[Guto Bebb]

I will happily give way after I have made this point.

My comments about the Welsh Government’s failure to support the Work programme are endorsed not just by Conservative Members but by the Welsh Affairs Committee, on which the majority of those voting were Labour Members.

[Susan Elan Jones]

The hon. Gentleman has returned from Patagonia as partisan as ever. Why does he not commend the fact that 80% of traineeships under Jobs Growth Wales are in the private sector? Surely, as a former small business man, he welcomes that.

[Guto Bebb]

The hon. Lady makes an interesting point about Jobs Growth Wales. When I wrote to local businesses in my constituency, I mentioned the possibility of young people getting on to the Work programme, but I also mentioned the possibility of using Jobs Growth Wales. I find it odd, however, that because somebody who is about to leave a youth detention centre in England, for example, is automatically enrolled on to the Work programme, they cannot access Jobs Growth Wales owing to the policies of the hon. Lady’s party. It would be well worth her while to read the criticisms that the Welsh Affairs Committee made, with cross-party consensus, of the Welsh Government’s actions on programmes that are there to support and train young people and to give them skills to take up opportunities that exist in their communities. She should raise that issue with members of her own party.

We have a success story on jobs. We are seeing a fall in unemployment in my constituency, with positive measures to support small businesses. We depend entirely on the small business community for the growth and development of jobs, and one key thing that we are doing is reducing the burden of employers’ national insurance contributions on small businesses. The reduction of £2,000 in the next financial year will be a great boost to small businesses that are looking to employ members of staff, and that is crucial.

The hon. Member for Wigan mentioned the need to ensure that we deal fairly with small businesses. Again, we can compare and contrast the efforts of the UK Government under difficult financial circumstances with what is being done in Cardiff. For example, there have been calls, demands and cries for help from small businesses in the retail sector, which have stated clearly that they need help with business rates. The Chancellor has responded so that, for example, any small business in England that has a rateable value of less than £50,000 will not only have a cap on their business rates this year but get a £1,000 rebate. That might not sound like a lot of money to some Members, but for a small retail business in my constituency that is struggling to survive, £1,000 could make the difference between success and failure. Again, though, what is happening to that £1,000 rebate in Wales? It is not getting through to small businesses. The Welsh Government are retaining it in Cardiff to support another of their pet projects.

We hear from Opposition Front Benchers—we heard it from the shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions today—that people in this country face a cost of living crisis. I invite them to look at the situation in Wales. In my constituency, a Labour-Plaid Cymru council has increased council tax not by 5% or 10% but by 23% since 2010. That increase could have been avoided if the money made available by the UK Government had been passed down to local authorities in Wales, so that they could try to support hard-working families at this difficult time by freezing council tax. It is a fact that only one council in Wales has managed to freeze council tax for two years. Conservative-controlled Monmouthshire has done so for two successive years, despite the lack of financial support from the Welsh Labour Government.

In my own authority of Conwy, we have had increases of 5% and 4.8%, with a total increase of more than 25% since I was elected, simply because the Labour party in Cardiff and in my constituency is happy to place further burdens on hard-working families at a time when they need support. The situation is unacceptable, because money has been made available under difficult circumstances by the Chancellor but the Welsh Government have decided that they would rather keep it than to support hard-working families in north Wales. That is clearly a disgrace.

This is a solid Budget that will allow us to look to the future with confidence. I would be delighted if some of the changes in England were also to be implemented in Wales. Unfortunately, that is not the case, but I hope that the people of Wales will be wise enough to identify the failures of the Welsh Government in that respect.

The other key thing that has been welcomed with open arms by my constituents is the change to pensions. We have heard some reservations from Opposition Members, but not perhaps from Front Benchers, who seem to be aware of the popularity of the change. The change is popular, because it is right to tell people that they need to take more responsibility for their own lives. We have seen that in relation to the changes in personal taxation, on which the coalition have said, “Let’s increase the personal tax allowance and allow people to keep more of the money they earn.” The Labour version is to say, “Give us the tax, and we’ll put it through a bureaucratic system and then we’ll give you something back, which you must be grateful for.” I must say that when it comes to a general election, it was very handy for people to be able to phone up and say that the Conservatives are getting rid of tax credits.

The key point is that we believe in increasing the personal allowance because we trust the people. In the same way, we are making the change to pensions simply because we trust people to make the right decision about their own money. What is key is that if people are willing to save and invest for their own pensions, surely they have the right to make their own decision about how they best make use of their pension pot on retirement. The change will be welcome in my constituency, in which the average age is among the highest of all constituencies in Wales; indeed, my postbag tells me that it is being welcomed now. The key thing is that we are making the change not because we have a party political agenda, but for the simple reason that we trust the people to make the right decision about their own money.