Business and the Economy

Nia Griffith Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

Let me start with a few words on the Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill, of which I am a keen supporter. I was a supporter of the private Member’s Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen). I have been concerned about the delays in legislating, so I am pleased to see the Bill in the Queen’s Speech and hope that it will not be too long before we see it going through the legislative process.

I am concerned, however, as is the Farmers Union of Wales, that the Bill should have real powers. I want it to include the power to fine retailers for unfair practices. The Select Committee on Business, Innovation and Skills has also recommended that that power should be on the face of the Bill and should not be dependent on the Secretary of State tabling additional orders. I am also concerned that third parties, such as the National Farmers Union or the Farmers Union of Wales, should be able to report issues to the adjudicator. Those organisations are in a better position than individual farmers to see what is happening across the industry, and they are often better equipped than a hard-pressed farmer to raise an issue. There is already a new groceries supply code of practice, introduced by Labour in August 2009, but now, in the Bill, we want more powers. It would be a missed opportunity if the Bill did not include the power to fine transgressors and the power to investigate complaints made by a third party.

Turning to parental leave, Members will remember that it was the Labour Government who first introduced paternity leave, giving fathers the opportunity to share in the excitement and responsibility that a new baby brings. I welcome the proposal in the Queen’s Speech to allow a more flexible approach which lets parents decide how to divide up parental leave between them.

That measure will help families, but let us remember how hard families have been hit by this Government: there was the abolition of the health in pregnancy grant and the child trust fund, the closure of Sure Start centres, cuts in child care support, and the shockingly harsh changes to the tax credit system. It is families with children who will suffer from those changes—low-income families who are trying to do the right thing by going out to work. Now, if they cannot get extra hours, they could be better off on benefits. There are also the bungled proposals on child benefit; the Chancellor seems not to have worked out the effects on one-income and two-income families. The flexibility in parental leave is a very small step towards helping families compared with the many hits that families are taking from this Government.

Turning to the regulatory reform Bill, it is easy to shout about cutting red tape but much more difficult to do it. It came as no surprise to hear the Secretary of State say today that that would be a matter for secondary legislation. We all want to lighten the burden on business, stop unnecessary form-filling, and get rid of excessive admin and box-ticking, but we do not want any erosion of workers’ rights. When we left government in 2010, the UK was considered one of the best places to do business—the best in Europe and the fourth best in the world. Our legislation on workers’ rights was no barrier to business. There was a high turnout of Labour MPs at a recent debate on a statutory instrument on employment tribunals; they came to oppose changing the qualifying period from one to two years. We shall need to scrutinise very carefully what the Government propose in their regulatory reform Bill to make sure that they do not sneak in anything that undermines workers’ rights.

The Government must stop using rhetoric about red tape as a substitute for stimulating growth in the economy. “One in, one out” seems to have gone completely by the board. What we really need is a growth strategy. We need a clear industrial policy that creates the right conditions for companies such as Tata to continue to invest in the UK. That means much better mitigation measures for the high carbon floor price—a unilateral tax, imposed by the Government, with no equivalent in competitor European countries. The mitigation measures are too little, too late.

We need a better deal on energy prices and a coherent energy policy to secure energy for the future, action to get banks lending to businesses, and a much fairer deal on tax. Cutting tax for the most highly paid while clawing back money from low and middle-income households, who are already hit proportionately harder by rocketing prices and the VAT hike, is not just unfair and heartless; it is economic madness, because those people would spend the money immediately, putting it back into the local economy and stimulating local business. At the moment, they are not able to do that; they do not have the money. They are cutting back, so local businesses are suffering and going under. Week by week, we see more of our local businesses folding.

The Government are doing nothing to improve consumer confidence. Far from stimulating growth, they seem deliberately to be doing the opposite. We saw that with the feed-in tariffs fiasco and more recently with the caravan tax, which stifles growth, puts an extra burden on manufacturers and holiday parks, and risks job losses in coastal and rural areas, where there is very little alternative employment.

We need a strategy to get people back to work and to give our young people work. The Welsh Government have that strategy in the form of the Welsh jobs growth fund. The idea is similar to the one that was behind the future jobs fund. We have not heard similar ideas from Government Members. We have not seen a realisation that to pay back the deficit, we need to create wealth. We should do that first, because then we will be in a position to pay back. We need a hub for business in the UK. Again, we see the Welsh Government, where they can, enabling businesses, including some of our fantastically innovative new technological industries, to expand. We need a lot more help for that sort of thing from the UK Government.

In the Queen’s Speech, there are lots of little bits of legislation, but nothing that will deal with the real problems that people face in this country—nothing that will really get our economy going again.