Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kelvin Hopkins and Grahame Morris

Monday 23rd November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

4. What his policy is on ensuring the use of UK-produced steel in items procured by his Department.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

10. What his policy is on ensuring the use of UK-produced steel in items procured by his Department.

Deregulation Bill

Debate between Kelvin Hopkins and Grahame Morris

Monday 23rd June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Kelvin Hopkins]

If the right hon. Gentleman wants to challenge those rules, that is fine, but we are talking about the enforcement of the rules that exist. To most people, I think, the rules are probably reasonable, but the enforcement sometimes falls down, and I think that using CCTV to enforce those rules is absolutely right. I do not want the rules to be weakened, and I do not want the enforcement to be weakened. I want to help people who are affected badly by parking. For example, people park across my neighbour’s driveway when football matches are on. It is completely unacceptable that he should be blocked into or out of the driveway by other people parking across it; that is simply not on.

These problems may not be as important as the investigation of accidents at sea, or the potential dangers involved in the licensing of private hire vehicles, but they do affect people and people are concerned about them. I want strong enforcement of the parking rules to continue. As the right hon. Member for Wokingham said, we may sometimes challenge the way in which the rules operate, but they should be enforced none the less.

I entirely agree with what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) about the need for a national register. There is no reason why we should not have one. We have automatic number plate recognition on a national basis. It ought to be very easy for the police to find out quickly who someone is and what his or her car is by means of an electronic register.

I also agree with what the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) said about the Bill. I was a member of the Joint Committee that subjected it to pre-legislative scrutiny. I thought then that it was driven by dogma, and I still think that. The Government want to say “We are the great deregulating Government,” so they must introduce deregulation Bills, but I am a regulator: I want more regulation in certain circumstances; I want life to be made more civilised; I want ordinary people to be protected by regulation. I do not want freedom for people who will make life miserable for other people, and that may mean more regulation. I am a re-regulator, not a deregulator. I shall certainly vote against the Bill tonight, not just because it is dogmatic, but because of what is in it.

[Grahame M. Morris]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the banks collapsed not because there was too much regulation, but because there was too little? The Government are advocating deregulation and a light touch.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I will not get on to the subject of the banks, Madam Deputy Speaker, because you would stop me if I did, but I think that they are too unregulated now. We have banks in public ownership which are still not behaving themselves because they are not sufficiently regulated.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between Kelvin Hopkins and Grahame Morris

Friday 22nd March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

I watched the Chancellor carefully during his speech and he looked to be a very worried man, as if his whole political life was flashing before him because it was not going to last much longer. He was particularly worried when he had to say that the Budget was “fiscally neutral”, when what we need is an expansion for growth and employment.

Labour Front Benchers kindly describe our current situation as the economy “flatlining”. Actually, we are in an ongoing recession. Some 2.5 million people are unemployed. I am considerably older than everybody else in the Chamber and remember the days of full employment. In my youth, unemployment of 2.5 million would have been seen as a catastrophe. At times, unemployment fell to a tenth of its present level. Let us not be too kind to the Government. The economy is not flatlining; we are in an ongoing recession.

We must focus on the continuing economic illiteracy of the Treasury. Its consistent mistakes over decades have put us in this situation. Two years ago, I made a speech in this Chamber in which I referred to the view of Paul Krugman, among others, that the Government were going in precisely the wrong direction. I agreed with him then and I keep repeating that because in politics, one has to repeat things to ensure that they register.

It is instructive to look at the history. There was a similar situation in the 1920s. After the first world war there was big government debt, and the Government introduced what became known as the Geddes axe—pubic expenditure cuts—which drove up unemployment and poverty, and resulted in low growth. At the end of the 1920s—surprise, surprise—deficits were bigger, not smaller. In the 1930s, we had a period, similar to now, when the Conservatives and their friends were in charge. In Prime Minister’s questions, I asked the Prime Minister whether he wanted to be remembered as the President Hoover of our times, whose draconian cuts drove the world, not just America, into the great depression. He made a sarcastic reply—I suppose that was understandable; I was being slightly humorous with him—that I understood later to be a reference to Benny Hill. I would rather refer to John Maynard Keynes and to Paul Krugman, but obviously the Prime Minister is more inspired by the wisdom of Benny Hill.

By contrast, in 1945, government debt was three times what we have now, but we had a sensible Labour Government who ran a full-employment economy. The debt at that time fell dramatically because we had full employment. I have to give credit to the Conservatives, because in the 1950s they carried on with the same sorts of policies. In the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, we saw full employment most of the time. We had the occasional hiccup, but essentially it was a full-employment era. We saw living standards rise and poverty fall, and a much better world than we had ever had before. Indeed, the world was being run so well, I thought we should carry on like that. Instead, somebody reinvented the 19th century, and went back to the kind of neo-liberal policies that were pursued at that time.

Extraordinarily, at that time of full employment, Labour and Conservative Governments competed to build hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of council houses. That all seems to have disappeared now, but it was a very fine and productive competition.

[Grahame M. Morris]

Would my hon. Friend care to comment on the impact of a house building programme on growth and jobs?

[Kelvin Hopkins]

A house building programme is exactly what we need. We do not want to increase demand for houses, but supply. If we increase demand without supply, we get house price inflation.

Jobseekers (Back to Work Schemes) Bill

Debate between Kelvin Hopkins and Grahame Morris

Tuesday 19th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

It is not often that, when I rise to oppose a Government Bill, as I do again on this occasion—for the avoidance of doubt, I will be going through the No Lobby—I follow six hon. Members in succession with whom I agree. Perhaps that is an indication that no Government Back Bencher is prepared to stand on their convictions and argue the point. Therefore, this is quite a rare occasion.

I am proud to represent the Easington constituency. This is a matter of social justice for me and I have a number of concerns about the Bill. The issue of retrospection is an important and fundamental one. I suspect that the Government are opening a Pandora’s box here. In the debates on last year's Finance Bill, I heard the same Minister warning of the dangers of retrospective measures to deal with tax avoidance and loopholes, so using this route will have consequences. If he was so confident about the quality and strength of his argument, why did he not challenge the decision in the Supreme Court, rather than using primary legislation? Perhaps he might answer that question in his response.

It is not just an issue of retrospection—the Government's arguments are wrong. They are trying to justify this measure, but they have made the mistake. It is an issue of wording. Nevertheless, the Government have made the mistake and they are seeking to sell their argument to hon. Members on both sides of the House by saying that, if the funds are not recovered from those who were incorrectly sanctioned, they will have to be recovered from elsewhere in the welfare budget. That is outrageous blackmail; I am sorry if that is not parliamentary language, but I find that deeply offensive. It goes against every grain of fairness in Members on both sides of the House. The view I am expressing is the view that has been unanimously expressed to me. I have received numerous e-mails and messages from my constituents over the past 48 hours, all of them asking me to vote against this Bill as it is unfair and unjust.

The Government, and especially Government Back Benchers, have characterised jobseekers who have been sanctioned as workshy and feckless—the sentiment expressed was “Are you really suggesting these people shouldn’t be sanctioned?” Let us have a look at the Work programme, however. It has gone from chaos to farce. We talk about “workshy”, but what about wage-shy employers who exploit the unemployed, with the connivance, approval and funding of the Government?

Many commentators have severely criticised the Work programme as not representing value for money, and so, too, I believe, has the Public Accounts Committee—I am sure the Minister will correct me if I am wrong about that. Indeed, it has been suggested that the programme is worse than doing nothing, and I am certainly aware that major retailers have exploited free labour from the Work programme to meet seasonal demand, rather than, as would otherwise have happened, employing temporary staff or, even, giving existing employees additional hours. The programme has therefore had the perverse effect of blocking real jobs, and I agree with other Opposition Members who feel it should be subjected to a root-and-branch review.

What we have is a £3-million black hole, and it seems to me that the only people profiting from it are the privately contracted organisations—some of whom were mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell—who have done well out of the programme. I am therefore surprised that one of the Government’s principal arguments here is about the protection of the national economy, when they are seeking to introduce primary legislation to rewrite history and withhold social security payments that were denied because of unlawful sanctions. We must not beat about the bush. The judgment is clear and specific; my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) read it out in her passionate and excellent speech. The Government are at fault here, in how they have implemented things.

I oppose the concept of two nations, as does my party, but what will the consequences of these measures be? The Government are creating two nations. They are seeking to penalise and punish the poor for the mistakes of the rich and powerful, in part of a continuing series of policies that are badged as “austerity”. Those policies are pushing the poorest in society further into poverty.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) said, one of the most galling things is that Ministers have shown absolutely no contrition or understanding of the consequences of their actions. That might be because they do not understand the consequences, because they do not live in the real world where they would rub shoulders with some of the poorest people in society who are suffering hardship. People in my constituency in east Durham ask me, “Why are we suffering for the consequences of this crisis? Was it created in Horden, Shotton, Haswell, Blackhall or even Murton?” No, of course not; the crisis was caused by the mistakes of the banking sector and City speculators. I raise that point not only because I despise the casino bankers for the state they have reduced the economy to, but because there is another avenue that Ministers could pursue to recover the £130 million, which I will return to shortly. In fact, we touched on this issue last year in the Finance Bill Committee. Why on earth do the Government not legislate for a general principle of tax avoidance? Instead of robbing people who have been inappropriately sanctioned, the Government should consider the huge reservoir of unpaid tax that individuals could well afford to contribute to. To my mind, there was a failure by Governments.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech and a very good point about where money could be found. He mentioned the tax gap, which, according to Richard Murphy and others, is some £120 billion a year. We are talking today about £130 million, which is roughly one thousandth of that amount.

[Grahame M. Morris]

My hon. Friend, who is very knowledgeable and has a background as an economist, has hit the nail on the head. The general public, my constituents and many Opposition Members do not understand why the Government do not address this problem. There is a relatively straightforward way to do so: by legislating for a general principle of tax avoidance. The Government are quite happy to use primary legislation retrospectively to deprive people who have been illegally sanctioned of £130 million, but they will not use the same route to recover moneys properly due to the Exchequer.

There is a contradiction here. Although the Government have been highly critical of what has happened, they continue to push the case for further deregulation. Just yesterday, in a Delegated Legislation Committee the statutory period of notice for compulsory redundancies for employers employing more than 100 people was reduced from 90 days to 45. This Government are still very much pursuing the Beecroft agenda.