Government's Management of the Economy

Paula Barker Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab) [V]]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. The story of the Conservative party approach to economic management over the last 10 years has been a tale of two rather unequal halves. For the many it has been a story of a brutal squeeze on living standards and the rise in precarious living, at home and in the workplace, and for this vast majority it has been about the desecration of our public services and a dramatic decline in the municipal offer to our citizens. For the few, the last decade represented business as usual, the distant memory of the global financial crash a momentary blip for the capital as it ploughed on, unfazed by the destruction it wreaked upon us all.

The machine that was assembled to discredit all that was good about the last Labour Government’s domestic agenda was slick and well oiled, and the opposition to this machine, on the contrary, tired and beleaguered. There existed a space for the great lie that was to come: that public spending was the problem and it was public spending that had to be brought back under control, not those in the City who had gambled with our futures. As soon as Fred Goodwin had become public enemy No. 1, this machine had moved on to Gordon Brown, because that was required to sell to the population austerity as a political necessity rather than the political choice it represented.

What do we have to show for this lost decade of political choices? For starters, there is the spectre of underemployment, low wages, low productivity and an economy imbalanced industrially and geographically on a scale never seen before. The indignity faced not just by those on welfare but by those in work at the hands of unscrupulous bosses and immoral methods of employment has been testament to this. Yes, the Government have always boasted low unemployment figures, but those who work in the real economy, not the City, know their stories are not told by the figures. I say “lost decade” because it has been the human cost of austerity that has come to define it. I fear that, when the taps at the Treasury are turned off, and they will be, the worst for our people, beyond the current public health emergency, is still yet to come. Austerity has by every measure left our economy and workers grossly exposed to the economic chaos caused by the pandemic and our public services less resilient to respond to a crisis of such gravity.

The demands of our people are simple: to live well, to be happy, to be secure. These are not luxuries, but fundamental rights and so should be afforded to all people in all their diversity across every region and nation. That is what we should build our economic strategy around. If the last decade is anything to go by, our people could be waiting some time.

Economic Update

Paula Barker Excerpts

Monday 11th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend’s tireless campaigning on this issue. She is a great advocate for the cause. She will know that we have just provided over £4.5 billion of support to many small businesses up and down the country, which I know she will warmly welcome and has called for. Indeed, part of that is half a billion pounds of discretionary funding for local authorities to support local businesses, many of which may include the people she has talked about who will be eligible for that support.

[Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab) [V]]

For 10 months, 3 million people have been forgotten or excluded by this Government, including several of my own constituents, such as Graeme Park, and Karen and Matthew Cox. The Prime Minister said last week that these people will be listened to and that support packages are there to protect people, so can the Chancellor tell us clearly today what package of support is actually available for these groups, how much is available and when will people be able to access them?

[Rishi Sunak]

Rather than me recapping every single thing that we have done, let me say that it is worth bearing it in mind when the hon. Lady talks about 3 million people that for over half of those people self-employment is not the primary source of income; they are not majority self-employed. From memory, the average income from self-employment of those individuals is around £2,000. It is actually the case that many of the other things that we have done will be of more significant support to them. Indeed, the majority of them are actually employed and can benefit from our furlough scheme, so it is not right to say that they have received no support. We have put in place a range of different things, and many people are benefiting from them.

Financial Reward for Government Workers and Key Workers

Paula Barker Excerpts

Monday 14th December 2020 Westminster Hall

[Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship today, Mr Stringer. I start by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) for securing this important debate.

Before entering Parliament, I spent nearly my entire working life in the public sector. I can assure hon. Members and friends that during my 30-year local government career, morale was never worse than during the past decade. The austerity programme initiated by the coalition Government, coupled with pay restraint amounting to substantial cuts in real-terms pay, brought unsustainable stress to public sector workers and the services that they provide. Average public sector pay is still £900 lower today in real terms than it was in 2010. It was hardly a period of shining progress in the run-up to the biggest public health crisis in our country’s modern history. At the core of that unsustainability was the fact that the public sector was never required to deliver less—quite the opposite. The drive for efficiency, alongside the demand to deliver more with less, severely hamstrung the capacity of the public sector to deliver the changes that were promised. Although my direct experience was in local government, the same is true right across the public sector.

We cannot simply disregard the previous 10 years as though they never happened. They are the historical context for debates such as this one, as we look to the future. Right hon. and hon. Members will know that more than half of all key workers are public sector workers. The race to the bottom has seen Brand Rishi divide up the public sector; apparently, not all are born equal: some are awarded meagre pay increases, while the vast majority are not. There is even new language used; “pause” instead of “freeze” is one example. The public sector is under no illusions. The photo ops on the steps of No. 11 every Thursday evening were exactly that—photo opportunities, and nothing more.

During the summer, the Government went into a spin overdrive, announcing above-inflation pay rises for some of those public sector workers whose rate of pay is recommended by pay review bodies. The Government enacted those recommendations while leaving out those whose pay is not set by pay review bodies, namely local government workers, social care staff and thousands of junior civil servants. Whether workers received a pay uplift a few months ago or not, the entire public sector is now set to be hit again for at least the next 12 months, leaving millions of key workers, who continue to go above and beyond in our hour of greatest need, facing another lost decade. Enough, quite simply, is enough.

I could give many examples, but I will conclude by pointing out that the problems created by more than a decade of pay restraint in the civil service have been compounded by the lack of a coherent pay system, which has led to huge inequalities within and across Departments, with the gender pay gap standing at more than 11%. I ask the Minister two things. When will the civil service move to a national pay structure, to address these inequalities? When will all public sector workers be treated equally and be rightly acknowledged, with a substantial pay increase for the incredible work they do each and every day on the frontline?

Economic Update

Paula Barker Excerpts

Wednesday 8th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

I thank my hon. Friend for that. I wholeheartedly agree with him about gyms, and have hope on that, as the Prime Minister has indicated previously that he is keen to see progress made there. On the issue of early years and children, my hon. Friend knows this better than many others—other than perhaps one colleague sitting behind me—and he is right in what he says. He will know the work we did on the troubled families programme, and I was grateful to him when I was a Local Government Minister for his advice and support on that. I know that the early years working group has put forward a range of suggestions that we can take forward into the spending review.

[Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab)]

The coronavirus pandemic has laid bare the deep and systematic inadequacies of the current social care system and revealed the true extent of the impact that underfunding, structural issues and market instability have had on the system’s ability to respond and protect older people at a time of crisis. Despite the Prime Minister seeking to flagrantly blame our incredible social care sector for excess deaths this week, when will the Government get serious about caring for our most vulnerable and fund local authorities properly to bring social care services back in-house?

[Rishi Sunak]

In our manifesto, we committed to an extra £1 billion a year for social care, and that is what we have delivered this year and will continue to deliver. During this crisis, we have provided £3.7 billion to local authorities and an additional £600 million for infection control in care homes. But as the Prime Minister has said, we remain committed to ensuring that local authorities and care homes get all the support that they need.

Finance Bill

Paula Barker Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage: House of Commons & Report: 1st sitting & Report: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 1st July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Jones]

I share colleague concerns about the prospect of unemployment. One of the best things that happened over the past decade was the growth in jobs, with 1,000 new jobs a day on average. Unemployment in Harrogate and Knaresborough fell to about 2%. The current crisis is, of course, changing that dramatically. We have 9,500 people working in the hospitality sector in my constituency, so I am anxious about that and have welcomed the partial lockdown release this weekend.

The measure to help business prosper that I was most pleased to see in the Bill was the encouragement for further investment in research and development, specifically the increase in the R&D expenditure credit from 12% to 13%. Businesses win in the long term by ensuring that their product or service has competitive advantage—a reason why customers should buy it. I spent 25 years in business before coming to this place and I spent that time making sure that the companies I worked for had the right products for our customers. In some sectors it takes significant resource to develop one’s product, be it automotive or pharmaceutical—both sectors in which this country is strong—or one of plenty of others. There is a strong record of creativity in the UK, but we are not always as good at finding ways to commercialise those ideas, to go from start-up to scale-up. Creating a better environment for the development of ideas is important for the longer-term success of our economy.

I wish to make a few comments on a significant issue before us in this section of this debate, which is off-payroll working. That has attracted much attention and there are clearly some problems to solve, but they are not easy to solve. In some cases, the issue is straightforward, in that people have been working for one employer for prolonged period, perhaps for many years, and they are really employees. They do similar jobs to the person who is sitting next to them and they use the same company equipment, but it could of course be on totally different terms of employment. They could be paid better or less in terms of their headline salary, but the situation is more complex than that because they will not be paid for holidays, pension contributions and so on. I have read of cases where the imbalance of power that can exist between employer and employee has led to pressure on people to choose a particular route—in effect, people being bullied into self-employment by unscrupulous employers seeking to save on costs and national insurance. That is wrong for all parties—wrong for the employee certainly, wrong for the employer, and wrong for taxpayers too, as revenue for public services is missed. However, that is not the case for the vast majority of people. They choose a route of self-employed, freelance or contractor work expressly because they enjoy the challenge of that type of work, or perhaps they want to be their own boss and more in control of their own destiny, or there could be all sorts of other personal reasons. That is a good thing. It is to be encouraged, because the flexibility that that provides has been a great boost to our economy.

Contractors and consultants play a huge role in the economy. Their work is one of the ingredients that has contributed to the recent economic progress. Being swift of foot in response to commercial opportunities is competitive advantage. It has allowed companies to bring in extra resource when they need to boost operational capacity, or extra skills when they are needed. I have been contacted by or met many people, including many in my Harrogate and Knaresborough constituency, who have built careers adding real value to their clients. In some sectors, there is more use of contractor work than in others; such sectors include IT and technology more broadly, as well as marketing and the creative industries—sectors where the UK is strong. There is also the growing sector of interim managers.

I see a balance to be struck here—a balance between protecting some employees and recognising that the vast majority have chosen this route and are providing real value; a balance between employment rights and protections, and between those who are employed and self-employed contractors. That balance has to be struck while ensuring that the rules do not have a sclerotic effect on the economy. Flexible and nimble companies responding to their customers, adding value, creating wealth, seizing opportunities—that is how economies grow, it is how jobs are created. Fair taxation, employment protection, company flexibility, highly skilled contractors and freelancers—finding the right balance of these benefits everyone in our economy.

[Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab)]

I remember the 1980s: 3 million people on the dole and my city of Liverpool left to managed decline. We did not cope then, but people got by. There were the remnants of the welfare state, we had council housing to provide shelter, and with whole communities often devastated simultaneously, people came together. However, this is 2020: many workers have hefty mortgages or face sky-high private rents, and as we know, private household debt in this country is completely unsustainable. It is household debt that has artificially driven economic growth for much of the past decade, when previous Tory Chancellors were declaring a sound economic recovery. Now we will see the consequences of the destruction of the welfare state in the past decade.

If this Government do not act in the coming weeks and months, I truly dread to think what happens when thousands of workers with mortgages of £180,000 to £250,000-plus, or rent payments of £650 to £1,000-plus per month are forced to apply for universal credit. It is in this Government’s power to ensure we do not get to that stage. The Government must continue to act and extend support for workers, the self-employed, small and medium-sized enterprises and all sectors of the economy, or else our recovery will be a slow one. A decade of austerity, under-investment, low productivity and a dwindling manufacturing base has blunted the levers we need to deal with this crisis properly. Despite the Chancellor demonstrating considerable ambition at times, I fear he will be hamstrung by the warped economic thinking of his predecessors and the inertia of his future self.

I saw the impact that the last tidal wave of unemployment had on my generation. We cannot subject this generation to the same. I have already seen apprentices being laid off, redundancy notices being served across the board, and even in non-unionised workplaces that may escape redundancies, cuts to pay being forced through with little or no consultation with the workforce.

The economic hardship faced by our young people will lead to a disaffected generation of adults who have had their hopes, dreams and aspirations for the future dashed by a crisis they did not cause. My first question to the Government is: does their ambition match that of our young people? How are they going to support the good, well-paid, unionised jobs of the future that our young people—my own children—will need to thrive?

Rating and Valuation

Paula Barker Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to make my maiden speech in this place. I congratulate you on your election and wish you the very best for the future.

I want to take a brief moment, at the beginning of this speech, to pay tribute to my predecessor, Luciana Berger, who served my constituency for nine years. In particular, her commitment to raising the profile of mental health issues was very encouraging. Although it is an issue more widely talked about than ever in society, it sits far too low down on the political agenda. I wish Luciana and her young family the very best for the future.

My wedding day was the best day of my life and my two sons are my proudest achievement in life, but it is the greatest honour of my life—and a most humbling one—to sit in this Chamber as the Labour Member of Parliament for Liverpool, Wavertree. I represent a wonderfully diverse constituency in south Liverpool. It has a number of communities—from Childwall to Church, from Kensington to Old Swan, from Picton to Wavertree itself—unique with their own characteristics, rich in their own history and proud of their contribution to our city’s story. I will speak for all our people in all their diversity, not least for some of the longest-established minority communities in our nation. Our Yemeni community, our Jewish and Hindu communities, and our Afro-Caribbean and African communities. I cannot go on without mentioning how much it means to our city to finally have a black MP from Liverpool sitting on these Benches—my good friend, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson).

My constituency is economically diverse, too, and that is something I am less inclined to celebrate. Liverpool, Wavertree is the story of two constituencies. The economic disparity between the wealthiest and poorest parts of my constituency is far too great. My socialism is aspirational: it is not about levelling down, but rather levelling up communities that for far too long have suffered at the hands of crushing Tory austerity.

I was born in the constituency at Sefton General Hospital. My mother and father both worked at the sweet factory, Barker and Dobson—the name a mere coincidence. Both were workers on the shop floor and members of the Transport and General Workers Union. When my dad tragically died two weeks before my second birthday, my mum raised me as a single mother—so, according to the Prime Minister, in his own words that makes me “ill-raised, ignorant” and “aggressive”. In all honesty, I may well be the latter—it comes with the territory of being a woman with an opinion, and a Scouse one at that.

I joined my trade union, Unison—or NALGO, as it was then—on my first day working for Liverpool City Council, so it is apt that we are discussing a statutory instrument on local government finance today. Liverpool City Council is a council that has had its funding reduced by 64% since 2010, equating to £640 million; a council that is the backbone of our communities, providing services from cradle to grave; and a council that, along with so many others, needs to be funded properly and equitably.

I did not find politics; politics found me. I owe most things in life—I make no apology for this—to the trade union movement. It was that movement that gave me security at work. It was that movement that made me understand the power of solidarity. And it was the working-class movement that made me realise that we, the collective, are the tide that lifts all boats. All these principles were reaffirmed—and thank you to Conservative Members—by the Conservative party, which waged an unrelenting assault on my city, attempting to put us into a state of “managed decline”.

We are self-reliant, hard-working and independently minded people. There is no such inclination towards “welfarism” or a prevailing sense of “victimhood”, as The Spectator once asserted while the Prime Minister was undertaking tough, arduous graft doing real work in that infamous sweatshop that was its editorial room. Like my party, we are a city of work and workers—human beings with long memories, united in our ideals and fundamentally optimistic about our collective future. I will always champion my constituency, my city, wider Merseyside and our beloved north-west region, so long as the good people of Wavertree continue to put their faith in me.

I want to give a warning to Conservative Members using a contemporary example, but before I do, I must say that the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government is not better qualified to understand the problems that our city faces than the actual people who represent it. The point is this: if devolution is to mean anything whatsoever, it is Liverpool City Council and the city Mayor who should have the power to decide whether to continue the successful landlord licensing scheme. I know that my constituents will suffer on the back of the decision to withdraw the scheme, and we will not take it lying down. We seldom take anything lying down in my part of the world.

Bill Shankly had it right when he said:

“The socialism I believe in is everyone working for each other, everyone having a share of the rewards.”

It is the way he saw football and life. I and my fellow Scousers are not much different. My party has a long road back to power. United in our common aims and values, we can and will overcome the odds to achieve power, because it is only through power that my constituents will be able to realise their hopes, dreams and aspirations.