Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Pamela Nash Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Pamela Nash (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood). Interestingly, he used the analogy of walking out of the bad weather. The Chancellor used exactly the same analogy on Radio 4 this morning, but he blamed the economic weather for everything that was going wrong with the Government’s economic policy.

I am grateful for the opportunity to put forward my constituents’ deep concerns about the Budget. A Budget should speak to the entire country, but when the Chancellor delivered his statement yesterday, he spoke not for one nation, but for individuals, such as the millionaires who will benefit from his top-rate tax cut in just a few days. Today, I shall focus on the impact that the Budget will have on my constituents and the effects that his economic policies have had in Airdrie and Shotts.

The unemployed claimant rate in my constituency stands at 8.4%. That is not only higher than rates in the rest of Scotland and the UK, but much higher than when Labour left office. The same applies to the employment count across Scotland. Today, there are 145,000 jobseeker’s allowance claimants in Scotland—the same as the population of Dundee. This dole queue of people would reach from Edinburgh to Glasgow. The claimant count in my constituency is now three times what it is in the Chancellor’s constituency. In 2007, two people were going for every vacancy, but now 12 people are chasing every job.

Long-term unemployment is also an issue in my constituency. According to the stats, the number of people who have been unemployed for more than a year is up by 52% and the number of young people who have been unemployed for 12 months has risen by 116% in the past year alone. That is not acceptable. Youth unemployment in Scotland is one third higher now than it was in May 2010, with 38,000 young people claiming jobseeker’s allowance in Scotland—more than the entire population of Airdrie. How can it be acceptable that such a large number of young people are blocked from achieving their dreams and aspirations after two years of austerity measures?

The Chancellor called this Budget the aspiration Budget, but not one word of it spoke to young people. These are not faceless statistics; I am speaking about my constituents and people I have grown up with and known my whole life. Just a few days ago, a constituent I went to school with contacted me. He wanted to tell me how much the Government’s policies were affecting him. He served his country in the Army, before returning home and working as a security guard on a construction site. Like many of those in the industry, however, he now finds himself unemployed.

Not only does my constituent have to worry about finding a job in an economy facing the increasing likelihood of a triple-dip recession, but he will now be hit by the bedroom tax. He rents a modest two-bedroom home to allow his child to visit him at the weekends, but owing to his current situation he is now dependent on housing benefit and has the choice either of not having his child stay overnight in their own bedroom or being forced to move away from the area in which, like me, he has lived his whole life. How many Government Members truly understand the problems he is facing? When they talk about tough choices, I doubt that any of them ever have to make the decisions that he has to make, choosing between seeing his child and paying the rent.

The case of my constituent is not an isolated one. The National Housing Federation has said that 2,000 people in my constituency are losing out from the bedroom tax. My local authority of North Lanarkshire council has 5,500 tenants who will be affected by it, but at the last count it had just 26 one-bedroom properties available to rent. With those figures, where are those 5,500 people supposed to go? There is nowhere for them to go; they simply face a painful benefit cut. This is an attack on our most vulnerable and on many who are struggling with bills every month and with under-employment, and it is resulting in millions of pounds being taken out of my local economy.

If the Government really want to solve the problem, one of the things they should do is build more houses. That would go a lot further to support growth than the bedroom tax or the mortgage guarantee that was announced yesterday, which is already falling apart at the seams. In Scotland, housing makes up 40% of the construction sector. Every £1 spent on housing generates £3 in the wider economy. It is a no-brainer. Every new home creates two jobs in the construction sector and four in the supply chain. When construction makes up a third of the businesses in my constituency and around one in 10 jobs, hon. Members can see why I was hoping that capital spending in Scotland would be a bit higher than was announced yesterday. The Scottish Government could also do a bit more with the money they already have. Some 40,000 construction jobs have vanished in Scotland since the Scottish National party came to power, and in December more than 14,000 construction workers were still on the dole.

There are things the Government could be doing. For example, my local council—Labour-run North Lanarkshire—is working to help to create private sector jobs through its youth investment programme, which helps small businesses by paying 50% of the cost of employing a young person for the first year. It also has programmes helping older workers to return to work. I hope that the Government might go away and look at that example—I am happy to provide more information on it—to see how simple, practical support is making a difference to help small and medium-sized businesses and create employment just where it is needed.

To conclude, yesterday’s Budget offered none of the helpful measures that I and my constituents were hoping for. We need a change of course to bring growth back into our economy. If this Chancellor will not change course, the next Labour Government will.