Jim Dowd
Main Page: Jim Dowd (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)Department Debates - View all Jim Dowd's debates with the Department for Transport
(12 years ago)
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Malcolm Wicks
I will give way in a moment—if the intervention is a good one.
As a Government, we also tried to push forward carbon capture and storage—a formidable endeavour, and I congratulate the Norwegians on the progress they have made. It would be good to hear from the Government at some stage where they think we are on CCS because it is a vital part of our low-carbon objectives, given that despite renewables and nuclear, we will continue to invest in and use a great deal of fossil fuels in the future.
We also need to talk about nuclear energy. The withdrawal of the German consortium has been a formidable blow to our plans for nuclear energy, but I put it to the Secretary of State that, despite what he says, the last Labour Government’s decision to allow a new generation of civil nuclear reactors was a crucial strategic decision. As I recall—again I draw on my memory—one reason why Parliament took rather a long time to reach that decision was that one of our major parties, and I think it was the Liberal Democrats—
Malcolm Wicks
I am a kind person, and I suppose it was major until recently. That party was adamantly opposed to nuclear energy. I ask the Secretary of State whether he has now made a strategic realignment in his own mind to support nuclear energy. I hope he has. I think the fact that the Prime Minister has appointed Liberal Democrat Members to this important role of Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change shows that he maintains a sense of humour—one that he will need in the weeks and the trials, which is a term I use in the generic sense, to come.
While I am speaking about energy policy rather than family policy, which I shall come to in a moment, I want to emphasise the importance of the global context. We cannot discuss this issue only domestically. If I am right, the International Energy Agency projects in one of its central scenarios that global energy demand, mainly from non-OECD countries, will rise by about 40% by 2035. We must view our issues within that global context, we have to take energy security seriously and we have to build up what I have always called home-grown energy as much as we can, alongside reducing energy demand—hence the importance of nuclear and of renewable energy.
Malcolm Wicks
Yes, I am, because our welfare state, although a mixture of universal and selective provision, nevertheless needs that universal core if it is to command public respect. Those of the hon. Gentleman’s constituents who have a couple of children, and who will suffer as a result of this provision, have costs, by definition, which the single person or the childless couple do not have. It is part of a decent society that we recognise those costs. It is also important that we do not move toward arguing, as the hon. Gentleman might want to argue, “Why on earth provide free education or a free health service to people earning £70,000? Why not cut that out?” That is a very slippery slope.
Malcolm Wicks
That is the logic of the position and, to be fair, many on the free-market wing of the Conservative party—such as the Institute of Economic Affairs think-tank—have been arguing for decades against universal provision and for a move towards a residual welfare state just for the poor, guarded strictly by the means test. That is the logic of some of these arguments.
I want to make two more specific points that I think colleagues understand. As I said, this policy is a case study of unintended consequences. The Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Treasury Ministers and officials did not set out to say—I am being generous now—“Let’s design a child benefit policy so that a family in which mum and dad earn just under £50,000 combined will maintain child benefit, but if there is only one earner bringing in over £60,000, that family will lose child benefit.” No sensible Treasury policy would have reached that conclusion, but because this one was rushed and ill-thought-out, that is the consequence. I do not know what the constituents of the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry), some of whom will be affected by this policy, will make of that. Where both members of a couple are earning a lot of money—nearly £50,000 each, following the revision, so they will have almost £100,000—they will keep their child benefit. However, if their next-door neighbours consist of a mum at home looking after the young ones, and a father earning over £60,000, his child benefit will be lost. Not even the hon. Gentleman, in his loyalist rash of enthusiasm, would defend that, surely. Would he?
Barbara Keeley
It is very disingenuous of a member of a Government who have just massively ducked this issue in the Queen’s Speech, causing huge disappointment across any organisation that is involved in social care, to talk about the previous Government.
Jim Dowd
Whether or not this goes back to the letter from the 78 charities before the election, the Local Government Association, on behalf of all the parties represented in social services authorities throughout England and Wales, wrote to the Government immediately before the Queen’s Speech highlighting the fact that there was this crisis which needed to be dealt with now, and that if they did not do so in the Queen’s Speech—not as a draft Bill but as proposed legislation—an already alarming position would be made far worse.
Barbara Keeley
I thank my hon. Friend for that clarification. The letter went on to say that “delay or half-measures” cannot be tolerated because of how hard it is for people to manage, as I have just outlined.
In July 2010, the Government promised that they would introduce
“legislation in the second session of this parliament to establish a sustainable legal and financial framework for adult social care”.
That could not have been clearer, but we do not have that legislation. All that was mentioned in the Queen’s Speech was a draft Bill on social care law, with no Bill on the funding of social care.
What does the delay in reforming the funding of social care mean? It means that people who need care will have to continue paying larger and larger bills or go without and struggle. There are also costs to the NHS and to the economy. That should concern us. The lack of appropriate social care for older people at home is costing the NHS £18.5 million a month, or more than £600,000 a day, in delayed discharges. Since August 2010, the total bill to the NHS of delayed discharges has been £324 million. Delayed discharges keep on increasing, which is an indication that the crisis in social care is deepening.
On the cost to the economy, a recent report by Carers UK suggests that failing to address the funding of care, as other countries have done, means that we are missing out on jobs and growth. The biggest thing that was missing from the Queen’s Speech and the Budget was action on jobs and growth. In France, a development strategy for the home care sector led to a growth of 100,000 jobs a year. A recent report by Dr Linda Pickard of the London School of Economics shows that it costs about £1.3 billion a year in lost tax revenue and benefits when carers give up work to care. The adult social care system has been pushed into crisis by cuts, and that is costing the economy more than a billion pounds and the NHS hundreds of millions of pounds. Surely that shows that we should do something about social care.
The Government’s distinct failure to deliver on their promise to bring forward legislation, which I think will become more apparent in the coming months, is hitting older people and those who need care. It has cost £324 million since 2010, and that bill is climbing by £18.5 million every month. As carers give up work to care, it is costing the economy £1.3 billion every year in lost revenue. It is time the Government delivered on their promise and addressed the vital issue of the funding of social care.
Jim Dowd (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
I am conscious that there are many more Members—certainly on the Opposition Benches—who still wish to speak, so I shall be as brief as I can. I am happy to speak in today’s debate on the Queen’s Speech about the cost of living, and to support the amendment in the name of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, concentrating as it does on energy costs, fares and petrol prices.
Fares, and particularly rail fares, are critical to people in Lewisham generally, and in my part of it especially, as we have the highest proportion of residents in any London borough who commute to work outside their borough, although we do not have as many people in work as we once did. I welcome today’s marginal fall in unemployment, as any sensible person would, but in Lewisham in particular there are still 20 people unemployed for every vacancy. The cost of commuting by rail from my part of the constituency into London Bridge, Charing Cross and Victoria is extremely important, which is why I am keen to support what the Opposition are saying today.
Following on from what many other colleagues have said today, my constituents are also very concerned about the conduct of the big six energy companies. There is a strong feeling, not just across my constituency but across the country, that people do not get a fair deal from the big six—that they effectively operate a cartel, with myriad deals, special deals, “supersaver” deals, “half-past-Tuesday deals” and God knows what else, so that people do not know whether they are getting the best deal. I accept that the big six have stopped the scandalous cold-calling campaigns of recent years—as far as I am aware, all but one do not do that any more. However, there is still a major concern among the public generally that the big six are not as accountable as they should be.
The previous speaker, the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry), mentioned smart metering and the opportunities that it provides. Smart metering could be a huge benefit to the economy and to the public more broadly, provided that it is done in the most objective and reasonable fashion, and not merely to accommodate the whims of the big six, which of course have a critical role to play in its implementation.
I also had a passage in my speech about the social care Bill, or rather the lack of a social care Bill in the Queen’s Speech. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) dealt with that issue far more elegantly and eloquently than I could, I will not belabour the point—although it is not unusual in this place for at least half a dozen people to say something that somebody else has said already. Nevertheless, the absence of a social care Bill is a huge missed opportunity, given the amount of spadework that has been done on the subject by local authorities and by the Dilnot review.
I want to deal with an issue mentioned by the hon. Member for South Thanet (Laura Sandys), my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) and others—the setting up of an adjudicator on the groceries code of conduct. Everyone has welcomed it, quite reasonably, but I fear that there is not as much to it as meets the eye.
I am sorry that the hon. Member for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell) is no longer in his place. He used to be vice-chairman of the all-party small shops group back in 2005 when I was the chairman. We conducted an inquiry into “High Street UK 2015”, looking into what the future of the high street would be 10 years on from 2005 if the current trends in retailing and the current regulatory regime remained in place. Staggeringly, we are now only three years away from 2015, and much of what we suggested in the report has, sadly, proved to be true. That was echoed in the report by Mary Portas and the proposals she made to address the situation.
Having looked at this subject in great detail over a long time, I have to admit, sadly, that I am deeply pessimistic. I am not sure that many of our traditional high streets have not changed for ever—and not necessarily for the better. The belief that something probably cannot be achieved should not stop us from making the effort, and I welcome the efforts of those involved.
One recommendation in our report was to establish a supermarket ombudsman, but one who would have power across the whole sector, not just across the supply chain, important though that is. When the detail of the Government’s legislation is made public, I believe people will see that only a narrow and restrictive role is proposed for the adjudicator. We wanted the office and the office holder to have the ability to examine in detail the effect that the disproportionate power of the big supermarkets—the big four, as they are known—has on dictating the climate for retailing, and the disproportionate impact they can exert on small and independent retailers.
All we are likely to get from the Bill will be enforcement of a code of conduct that already exists. Even six years ago, a code was in place, but no one ever used it. The suppliers were able to take things up directly with the big supermarkets, but nobody ever did. There was not a single recorded case of suppliers ever taking forward an official complaint about one of the big supermarkets they supplied. Some would say that it is fairly obvious why they did not do so—because they would have lost the business, and it was better for them to carry on with the business, even under onerous terms, than to lose it altogether. On the other side, some argued that it showed how effective the code was—that it did not need to be enforced, that nobody needed to have recourse to it and that people could continue their relationship with their suppliers.
Incidentally, the bulk of suppliers are not, as many people think they are, small farmers with small supplies. That is not true. The bulk of suppliers to the big supermarkets are large corporations and large food processors. Most of the supermarkets’ product comes from them. While I welcome the introduction of the new office, I am pessimistic about its effect, as I do not think it will address the real problem, which is the disproportionate market power of the big four.
I shall skip over a few other matters and move on to the heart of the debate on the Queen’s Speech. I accept the qualification that some Members have highlighted—that the Queen’s Speech cannot say everything and that a Queen’s Speech cannot necessarily legislate for everything. That is perfectly true. Within the past few weeks, however, we have become aware of both the Budget and the Queen’s Speech. Those two items together should demonstrate the priorities, direction and intent of the Government. We now have a pretty good view of what their priorities are.
All this should be seen against the economic background of a double-dip recession at home and a eurozone crisis abroad. We are witnessing convulsions in Greece, Portugal, Italy, Spain and perhaps even France: the southern economies in the eurozone are in a parlous state. There is also growing concern, both nationally and internationally, not about debt, inflation or interest rates, but about growth, or rather the lack of growth. The Federation of Small Businesses drew attention to that last week, and yesterday the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Survey of Fund Managers observed:
“The proportion”
of leading international investors
“saying global fiscal policy is ‘too restrictive’ has… doubled to a net 23 percent”
within a month. That lack of demand is the most acute problem. It is more significant than either employment law or the impact of regulation. Even access to finance and credit is cited more often than those factors as a cause of businesses’ inability to expand and become profitable.
Today the Governor of the Bank of England downgraded the growth forecast from last year’s 2% figure to 0.8%. The Government must look, listen and learn, and reverse the damage that they are doing to the people, businesses and social fabric of this country, for it is that, more than anything contained in the Queen’s Speech, which will determine whether the future of the people of Britain is bright or bleak.