Economy and Jobs

Robert Syms Excerpts

Thursday 29th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Kirsty Blackman]

That does not make me feel confident about the gender equality legislation that is coming forward, but we can only hope that this Government do things differently to their colleagues in Scotland.

We have never had a female Chancellor of the Exchequer or a female shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer. Today, I proudly stand here as the first ever House of Commons female spokesperson on the economy. That demonstrates just how far we still have to travel to achieve true gender equality.

[Mr Robert Syms (Poole) (Con)]

I just point out that Margaret Thatcher was shadow Chancellor under Ted Heath.

[Kirsty Blackman]

I apologise for that oversight. I did check the facts, but obviously not well enough.

To best protect our workers, we need a UK Government who recognise the importance of trade unions and want to secure their rights, rather than systematically dismantle them. As we leave the EU, the protections for workers will be reduced, because we will lose the oversight of the European Union. We need to ensure that workers have the protection that they need and deserve.

Successive Tory-led Governments have caused untold harm to the nations of the UK: they have increased inequality; created spiralling household debt; presided over drastic reductions in people’s savings; reduced access to in-work benefits; closed jobcentres, which has reduced the opportunity for people to get back to work; and attacked the vulnerable, the sick and the disabled. Those people who are most in need in the nations of the UK have been worst served by this Government.

This Government have consistently failed to support policies that recognise the problems that millennials face. Generation Y are set to be poorer than their parents. Everybody who was born after 1955, which I understand is when the Chancellor was born, is set to be poorer than their parents’ generation. We are seeing wealth accumulation by the age of 30 decrease, and that is storing up problems for the future. There are major issues for millennials, and the Government have not moved fast enough to recognise the difference in the level of home ownership, in the age that people have children, in the social structure, and in the way that millennials are coping economically. Our economic policies have not moved towards making things better. They also have not taken into account the massive levels of student debt. As an aside, it is a pretty terrible fiscal policy to have people paying off their student debt until, eventually, it gets written off, with most of them never managing to pay it all back.

The people who live in the nations of the UK cannot cope with another unfettered Tory Government. A message was sent to the Tories at this election that said that we cannot be dragged out of the single market. An end to single market membership means the loss of 80,000 jobs in Scotland and £2,000 per person. That would be an economic travesty. Given that the Tories have already presided over a decade of wage stagnation, spiralling household debt, decreasing household debt, decreasing household savings and the drastic dismantling of the social security safety net, I do not see how the nations of the UK can cope with the drastic economic hit that will come as a result of Brexit.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Robert Syms (Poole) (Con)]

I have followed the right hon. Member for Twickenham (Sir Vince Cable) in past debates, and I must admit that I did not expect to follow him again so soon. I welcome him back, and welcome what looks like his coronation as leader of his party. He has made some very sensible points about industrial policy that we ought to take on board.

I want to correct an intervention I made earlier on the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman). Margaret Thatcher was not shadow Chancellor but a member of the shadow Treasury team. I remember, when I was a schoolboy, some of her savaging of the then Labour Front Benchers, which of course led to her challenge of Ted Heath, and then, let us say, the rest was history.

The Conservative party came into government in 2010, and Eddie George, the then Governor of the Bank of England, said just before that election that whoever took on the challenges of the British economy would probably be destroyed politically for a generation. Yet we took on the challenges of the British economy, at that point in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, and we took tough decisions, but on the whole we took the British people with us. Here we are, after two general elections, still standing on the right side—the Government side—of the House, so evidently we have managed to win the argument with the British people. I do understand, though, that several years of difficult economic decisions leave their legacy on people and families, and the Government have to pay heed to that. Clearly, we are going to need to have a think about pay policy and a number of other things in future.

Since 2010, we have not only managed to reduce the deficit very substantially—we know the important reasons for that—but created well over 3 million jobs and taken many of the lowest-paid out of the tax system. The Government have done a very good job, and this is the worst time to turn round and say, “Let’s change policy.” We have to stick to the policy that we have because it has proved that we can grow and we can create jobs, and ultimately that will lead to higher living standards—perhaps not as fast as people want, but we are on the right track and we have to stick the course. Particularly with the uncertainties of Brexit, which a number of hon. Members have raised, the Government’s economic policy is perfectly sensible. We have a little more flexibility in our plans than we did prior to Brexit, but that is perfectly sensible since there are a number of uncertainties that the Government are going to have to deal with. The economic policies of this Government are good and should be stuck to, but perhaps we ought to do a lot more to persuade the British public that what we are doing is right. I think that people have forgotten the deficit that we had in 2010, forgotten that we are still borrowing a lot of money, and forgotten the task that we still have ahead of us.

I rather approve of the Queen’s Speech. It was a short Queen’s Speech. I wish I had seen shorter Queen’s Speeches in my time in this House, because if the British Parliament and British Governments have a mania, it is for legislating. If legislating made us richer and more prosperous, we would be the richest country on earth. Time and again I have seen British Governments introduce legislation similar to that of the previous Government so that they can rebrand what they were doing. What I want to see from this Government is good government, not masses of legislation. If they want to make changes, they have to look at legislation passed not only by the Conservatives but by the coalition and, indeed, by Tony Blair during his years in office. There is an awful lot of legislation already on the statute book that can be used as levers of power. We do not have to keep on reinventing the wheel and jamming up this place with lots of legislation.

As somebody who once or twice, or three times, has been in the Whips Office, I do not think that legislation is the answer to all our prayers. If we are going to be a successful economy in the future, sometimes we need not to legislate but to change people’s attitudes—to change the way they do things and the way they think. That is an element of leadership. If we keep a stable economic policy and limit the amount of legislation, and stay the course and continue as we are doing, we will deliver for the British people the outcome that they want.

This modest Queen’s Speech is the first of probably another three or four Queen’s Speeches, because the arithmetic of this Parliament means that we could last five years in government. Although there has been lots of speculation that there might be an election in one, two, three or six months, there is a job to do. We have to get on with the negotiations with the European Union and with nursing the economy back to health. The Conservative party is certainly up for that.

There is a job of work to be done. The Queen’s Speech will deliver for two years and some very important legislation has to go through—a lot of it, I suspect, on Brexit, on the Floor of the House. There is certainly a lot of work we can do to hold the Government to account, and I am sure that many of us on the Back Benches will do that. I say stay the course with the economy; do not legislate too much; bat for Britain in Europe and get the best deal that our constituents want; and let us keep this country on course for success in the future. I think we will do so under our Prime Minister.