Budget (North-East)

Roger Gale Excerpts

Tuesday 17th April 2012 Westminster Hall

[Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I need to make it plain before we start that I have applied to the office of the Chairman of Ways and Means for a time limit on speeches. A significant number of Members have written to the Speaker indicating that they wish to participate, and even more Members are present. Given that we will need to call the Front-Bench spokespeople at 10.35 am at the latest, I suspect that we will be down to four minutes per person, but that rather depends on Mr Mearns.

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

I thank the Speaker’s Office for allowing me to initiate this debate, and also the many Members who have come along. The debate has created significant interest, particularly in our north-east region.

In the Chancellor’s millionaires’ Budget, which will hand back tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of pounds to some of the richest people in our society, including some of his Cabinet colleagues, it is clear who will suffer the most. It will be the poorest, those looking for work when few new jobs are available, pensioners, families, the hard-working, the squeezed middle and the working poor.

Following the Chancellor’s Budget speech, the Treasury produced a briefing highlighting the measures that will benefit the north-east of England. The region has borne the brunt of this Government’s policies. February 2012 figures show that unemployment in my constituency has risen from 8.3% to 10.5% since the coalition took office, and in the latest Office for National Statistics survey, up to January 2012, the figure for the north-east as a whole has risen to 10.8%, yet the Treasury’s briefing runs to a grand total of three measures that it claims will specifically benefit the region.

Although the first measure—the increase in personal allowances—is welcome, it can hardly be regarded as specific to the north-east. The second measure is that Newcastle will receive the princely sum of £6 million, and become a super-connected city. Perhaps the Chancellor and the Treasury do not realise that Newcastle, as important as it is to the entire region, is not the entire region—in fact, it has about a tenth of the region’s population. Finally, in the month when the north-east is losing its regional development agency, its local enterprise partnerships will receive a paltry £10 million from the Growing Places fund.

In the Budget statement, the Chancellor notably consigned to the dustbin of history the phrase, “We’re all in this together.” The imbalance in this Budget means that most of us are in this together, but the few at the top of society will be exempt from it all. The regional disparity is all too plain to see. In the three south-east regions— London, the south-east and the eastern region—nearly 195,000 taxpayers will reap the benefit of the Chancellor’s higher-end tax giveaway, but in the north-east the figure will be fewer than 5,000, and about 4,000 in Wales.

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[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)]

Order. In view of the large number of Members who wish to participate in the debate, I will exercise the power granted to me by the Chairman of Ways and Means and limit speeches to four minutes. I intend to commence the winding-up speeches at about 10.40 am. The Opposition Front-Bench spokesman has kindly indicated that he is willing to curtail his remarks to about five minutes. It would not be reasonable to impose any such limit on the Minister, because of the large number of Members who want to participate and who will expect answers to the debate. Members will notice, if they do the math, that I have built in a five-minute leeway, so one way or another we hope that we will get to where we want to be. The same rules apply as to the main Chamber. We will add a minute to the four-minute time limit for up to two interventions, but Members will appreciate that if that happens, someone will fall off the end of the list.

This is an exception—we do not normally do this—but it might help Members if I indicate now the order in which I intend to call them, because a significant number have written to Mr Speaker requesting the opportunity to speak. Those who are not on the list will appreciate that I have to give priority to those who have taken the trouble to write to Mr Speaker. They may, therefore, choose to exercise their right to intervene, although that, of course, is not in my gift, but in that of the person speaking. The order for Opposition Members is Grahame Morris, Phil Wilson, Pat Glass, David Anderson, Ian Lavery, Iain Wright, Sharon Hodgson and Stephen Hepburn; and that for Government Members is James Wharton and Mr Swales.

Westminster Hall does not have the countdown clock system of the main Chamber, but we do have the high-tech alternative of a bell, which will be sounded at one minute prior to a speech’s conclusion. Without further ado, I call James Wharton.

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[James Wharton]

I was, of course, referring to private sector investment. The hon. Lady makes an interesting point, but we have to look at the figures realistically. A lot of the spending that has been announced is for specific large projects, some of which are in London, such as Crossrail, and some of which will potentially benefit the north-east, such as High Speed 2. Although it is not yet coming to our region, the benefits are real.

The RDA has been mentioned. I have my differences with Opposition Members on that issue. I always felt that the RDA was too focused on Newcastle and as the hon. Member for Gateshead said, we must remember and acknowledge that Newcastle is not the entire region. I welcome the new local enterprise partnerships because they are more localised and more focused on the areas where the growth that we want to see needs to be delivered. From the growth that we are seeing and the investment that is being announced, the signs are that LEPs are already doing a good job. The LEP in Teesside is certainly doing an excellent job. It hit the ground running and is making a difference to securing the growth that we need in that part of our region.

There were, of course, a number of announcements in the Budget that will both directly and indirectly benefit our region. One of the most significant is the increase in the personal allowance. In total, across all the Budgets we have had so far from the Government, 82,000 people have been lifted out of income tax altogether in the north-east region. That significant and welcome benefit will make a real difference to the lives of tens of thousands of families across the north-east who are on the lowest incomes and who most need that support.

The increase in the personal allowance will also, of course, deliver improvements for our regional economy because that money is not being taken in tax and spirited away to London to be redistributed in accordance with the diktat of the Government—whoever they are. That money is staying in the pockets of families in the north-east, so that they can spend it in our local economy, provide a welcome economic boost and create jobs and growth, which is what we all want to see.

In the north-east, the income tax bills of nearly 1 million people will decrease, although some of them will not be entirely lifted out of income tax just yet. The child benefit tapering changes are a welcome mitigation of the impact of the need to control the child benefit bill because of the financial situation in which the Government find themselves. That will benefit 14,000 families across the north-east and is another welcome measure in the Budget that will leave more money in our regional economies and in the pockets of the people who live and work in the north-east and elsewhere. That policy will make a difference to our regional economy and the lives of those who live in the regions.

Negatives in the Budget do exist. Stamp duty land tax is increasing. However, we are lucky in the north-east because only 1% of the properties affected—

[Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)]

Order. I call Mr Grahame Morris.

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[Phil Wilson]

My hon. Friend is right. That proves how much we have to celebrate what the previous Labour Government did for the north-east of England. The hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) mentioned the minimum wage. The minimum wage has been frozen for people under the age of 21. It has gone up by only 11p this year as a consequence of the decisions made by this Government. At the same time, 4,000 to 5,000 taxpayers on the 50p tax rate in the region will on average receive a tax cut of £10,000 each. If that does not show that we are not all in this together, I do not know what does. The Government put VAT on pasties, but they did not put VAT on caviar.

The 40p tax rate has been ignored by many people. The threshold has been reduced from £42,475 to £41,450, so that 300,000 people will be brought into the 40p tax rate. How many more people will lose a proportion of their child benefit because of the reduction in that threshold? Will the Minister indicate whether she knows that figure? By reducing the threshold, the number of people paying the 40p tax rate in the region has gone up by 8%. There are now nearly 110,000 people paying the 40p tax rate. Little by little, the Government’s fairness agenda is being found out—actually, we are not all in this together.

I am very concerned about regional pay. The hon. Member for Stockton South (James Wharton) mentioned the flexibility in local pay in the court system, but we reduced the number of bands from 40-odd to five; we did not increase the number of bands. The latest survey by the TUC states that 68%—more than two thirds—of Conservative voters do not believe that regional pay in the public sector will boost jobs in the private sector.

The Budget is divisive. It is also complacent. It does nothing for growth, not just in the north-east of England, but in the rest of the country.

[Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)]

Order.

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[Grahame M. Morris]

I am sorry to stop my hon. Friend in full flow, but it is important to place on the record that, although we welcome the additional jobs and the announcement about Nissan, it must be put in context. Does he agree that although 250 jobs are welcome, they do not go anywhere near even offsetting the private sector job losses in my constituency alone? Reckitt Benckiser has lost 500 jobs; Fortress Doors has lost 100; Carillion, Cumbrian Foods and, most recently—

[Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)]

Order. I am terribly sorry, but the hon. Gentleman is beginning to make another speech. This must be an intervention. I remind hon. Members that each of the first two interventions adds a minute to the time that the speaker is allowed. Hon. Members are in danger of pushing one of their colleagues off the end of the list, if they are not careful.

[Ian Lavery]

Thank you, Sir Roger. I agree with everything that my hon. Friend said.

We in the south-east of Northumberland are a million miles away from Nissan. The perceived jobs bonanza at Nissan is two bus journeys, a Metro journey and a further bus journey away. We wish that we had the same opportunities as there are at Nissan. We hope that they will come. We have not even got a rail service in my area: there is a railway line but no trains to run on it. We cannot even get to Newcastle, Sunderland or Middlesbrough city centre from where we live, because there are not the transport links and the much-needed transfer links.

I want to focus on a strong appeal to the Minister to hear the case of the people in south-east Northumberland. If we in Wansbeck are to have an opportunity for growth, a Northumberland extension of the North Eastern local enterprise partnership enterprise zone—the port of Blyth and the estuary—needs to benefit from capital allowances and rate relief at the same time. It is not enough to extend the enterprise zone without the provision of the additional allowances and incentives necessary to attract businesses and jobs. We need those guarantees. In addition, with the appropriate allowances and incentives, further extension to the enterprise zone is desperately needed, so that it stretches through Wansbeck as far up the coast as the Alcan site. A failure to do so will place Wansbeck and south-east Northumberland at a distinct disadvantage, by further damaging employment opportunities for our communities.

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[Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)]

Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Lady. Hon. Members have participated in the debate and should do the Minister the courtesy of listening to her response.

[Miss Smith]

Thank you, Sir Roger. The new right-to-buy discount introduced by this Government is more than three times the current limit in the north-east of £22,000.

In his opening comments, the hon. Member for Gateshead used words such as “outdated”, and various other words have been bandied around today. I think that the hon. Gentleman, and other hon. Members, need to look around and see the threat to today’s economy, which in one word is debt. Debt is a problem both in the UK and globally, and this Government are determined to sort it out. Fiscal consolidation is necessary. Those in the Labour party seek to spend more, borrow more and owe more, and therefore to pile more debt on their children, and indeed my children. The hon. Gentleman, and those on the Opposition Front Bench, still believe that child benefit should be claimed by millionaires. We do not; we believe that there should be consolidation.

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[Miss Smith]

I am afraid that I do not have time because I must respond to concerns about local government funding and the claim that local authorities in the north-east have taken disproportionate cuts. As I have made clear, the previous Government left an appalling economic and financial mess, and we have a moral obligation to pay back our debts as quickly as possible. Therefore, tough decisions are necessary. The hon. Member for Gateshead will know that the formula grant in his area will be nearly £555 per person in 2011-12, compared with an average of £372 across England. That reflects the higher level of need in Gateshead, and I expect him to welcome that. In the light of issues raised by hon. Members, the Government’s key priority is returning the UK economy to sustainable, economic growth.

Before time runs out, I want to talk about local enterprise partnerships. Such partnerships have radically reshaped the way businesses and the Government interact at local level, and they mark a sharp break from the top-down, politically driven regional policy of the previous Government. The winners of the first two rounds of the regional growth fund are expected to create over 13,500 direct jobs and 25,000 indirect jobs in the north-east, including at Gateshead college in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. The Government are taking forward an ambitious work programme that will assist with city deals for core regions, and I encourage all hon. Members present to engage with that.

[Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)]

Order. Will hon. Gentlemen and Ladies who participated in the last debate and are leaving please do so quietly? As they are doing so, I thank everyone for their courtesy and patience this morning, which has allowed every hon. Member to have at least some say.

Women in the Church of England

Roger Gale Excerpts

Tuesday 28th February 2012 Westminster Hall

[Sir Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)]

I start with an apology: I am due to chair the Committee that is considering the Civil Aviation Bill very shortly. That may take me 50,000 feet closer to God, but it will not allow me to hear the winding-up speeches in this debate, and for that I apologise to colleagues.

I am a fully paid-up reactionary. This is not part of the debate, but it has been raised, so I will make my own comment. I happen to believe that marriage is a union between one man and one woman and anything else is a partnership and should remain as such.

On the issue that we are debating this morning, I have a very strong view indeed. The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) and others have referred to equality. However, this is about not equality, but the right person for the job. As with the House of Commons, so with the Church of England and others; we need the best people in the job. Simply, ladies who have been ordained have proved that they are very good. There may be some bad women vicars, but I can think of one or two bad male vicars as well. In whatever walk of life—whether in the House of Commons, the Church of England, industry, medicine or education—we need the best people in the job. Some of those best people will be men and some will be women. If there are more best women than there are best men, there should be more women bishops than there are male bishops. If that is a counter-reactionary point of view, I apologise to my hon. Friends who might expect me to take an alternative view.

To conclude, in the final line of “Saint Joan”—I know this because as a schoolboy I was required to utter the words—George Bernard Shaw said:

“How long, Oh Lord, how long?”

This has been going on for far too long. The moment is not with us; it is way past and the decision should have been taken by now. The bishops will be doing the Church, of which I am proud to be a member, no service whatever if they duck this issue. It is time to move forward, and I hope very much indeed that we in the House of Commons and our colleagues in the upper House will be given the opportunity to vote for this Measure and to see women enjoying the episcopacy as soon as possible.

Economic Regeneration (Glasgow)

Roger Gale Excerpts

Wednesday 16th February 2011 Westminster Hall

[Margaret Curran (Glasgow East) (Lab)]

Thank you very much, Mr Gale. I am very pleased to speak here this morning. This is my first Westminster Hall debate since I was elected as a Member of Parliament at the last election, and I am pleased that the subject is my own city of Glasgow—the great city of Glasgow. I am sure that you will hear much of that this morning, Mr Gale.

Of course Glasgow is vital to the current economy of Scotland, and over the years it has also contributed a great deal to Scotland and the United Kingdom. Although Glasgow has suffered many setbacks and difficulties along the way, I argue that the city has fought to overcome them with significant success. It is important that we understand the key ingredients of that success and that we do not repeat the mistakes of the past. Instead, we must deepen and enhance the processes of regeneration, so that we can benefit from them in the future.

The second city of the empire, Glasgow inspires great pride and loyalty in its people: pride in the skills and contribution made by working people to the economy, and loyalty to a city famed for its humour and resilience. By 1870, Glasgow was producing more than half of Britain’s tonnage of shipping and a quarter of all the locomotives being built in the world. Of course, our interest in shipbuilding continues to this day, as I am sure Ministers know. In my constituency, Glasgow East, we had Parkhead forge, which was a powerhouse of the steel industry. It was one of the biggest steel employers in the world—at one point, it employed 30,000 people—and it made an enormous contribution to the war effort. The plant finally closed its doors in the 1980s.

I argue, with some regret, that that great contribution to Scotland’s economy has not been properly recognised or rewarded over the years. There is a real sense among Glaswegians that our work and contribution were used when times were good, but that we were abandoned when change was under way, and we cannot let that happen again. As a result of that abandonment, we were left with a legacy of ill health, high poverty and mass unemployment. That situation was particularly bad during the 1980s, when unemployment soared. There was a sharp decline in public services, urban decay set in and a cycle of worklessness and hopelessness became embedded in too many communities and too many families. The next generation worked hard to tackle that legacy through economic and social regeneration. As I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, there were many successes along the way. As a result of economic diversification and increased investment in infrastructure, health and education, Glasgow achieved a great deal.

More than 53,000 jobs were created in the city between 2000 and 2005, which was a growth rate of 32%. Between 1998 and 2001, the city’s financial services sector increased by 30%, and it is now one of Europe’s largest financial centres. In 2005, more than 17,000 new jobs were created. In 2006, private sector investment in the city reached £42 billion, which represented a 22% increase in such investment within a single year. That shift in Glasgow’s fortunes marked very significant progress and played a vital part in helping to change Glasgow’s image of economic decline and worklessness. In doing so, it inspired confidence in the people of Glasgow, and it inspired investors to have confidence in the city. Of course, it also demonstrated that the famous Glasgow resilience pays off.

A debate about regeneration is about not only the physical aspects of a place but its people. Glasgow has had a strong sense that the process of economic regeneration and the accompanying process of cultural renaissance that it experienced in the 1980s and 1990s should benefit all its citizens and not only those who were skilled and able to make the most of those opportunities. Too often, Glasgow was characterised as a city of two halves, and there was a real push to ensure that all the people of the city benefited from any regeneration process. Glasgow’s problems of ill health, poverty and deprivation were so deep-rooted that there needed to be a step change in how we tackled them. A vital ingredient was the regeneration of some of the most disadvantaged communities, a number of which are in the east end of Glasgow in my constituency. Long before the big society was ever heard of, Glasgow pioneered community development.

We are all aware of the mistakes that were made in the past when things were “done to” communities rather than “with them”, particularly in relation to housing. Economic regeneration is at its best when we work with people who have experienced the problems and have a vested interest in finding the solutions, rather than when we impose top-down reforms. That is best illustrated in the housing sector. Through housing stock transfer, the city has been able to bring additional major spend into housing investment. That process not only involved tenants in a completely new way but delivered a programme of sustainable housing in Glasgow. In my previous role as a Member of the Scottish Parliament, I was the Minister with responsibility for housing in different ministerial capacities, and I was substantially involved in housing stock transfer. If anyone wants to hear me talk for half an hour about housing stock transfer, I am very willing to oblige, but such talks are obviously not in great demand at the moment.

Given the challenges facing Glasgow, it is important to understand how we made progress. Glasgow city council was instrumental in building a lasting partnership with the private sector, a partnership which continues to this day. That partnership with the private sector will be the theme of my contribution to the debate, including how it is possible to get the public and private sectors to work together. My real fear is that that partnership is being jeopardised at the moment. The experience that we had in Glasgow of the partnership between public and private is relevant to the discussions of today and the priorities that we set.

In Glasgow, the private sector understood the need to invest in education and the benefits that it accrues from that investment. The private sector benefited enormously from the developments in housing and in particular from housing stock transfer. For example, the £1 billion investment by Glasgow Housing Association has seen unparalleled improvements in housing throughout the city. Perhaps the employment opportunities that arise from such housing investment are not properly understood, but in fact 4,000 people were directly employed between 2006 and 2010 as a result of the investment in housing in Glasgow. Nearly half those people were employed through community benefit clauses, which shows that public intervention works by creating sustainable employment. Of the 2,000 people who were employed through community benefit clauses, half of them were trainees or apprentices. Once again, that employment has had a real impact in the communities in which those people lived and worked.

We have experienced a bit of a jolt to the process of regeneration in Glasgow in recent years, since the Scottish National party came to power. I would argue that during that time the partnership approach to regeneration has been undermined. That is exemplified through the development of the Scottish Futures Trust. That trust was set up by the SNP Administration, and it was meant to be part of a new approach to raising private finance, allegedly for investment. However, it has failed to commission the building of a single new school, and funding for capital investment projects has fallen by £1 billion at the cost of 37,000 jobs in the construction industry.

The SNP Government have refused point blank to listen to the pleas of the business community in Glasgow, and as a result of that cut in capital investment and other cuts, the construction of school buildings has been scrapped and thousands of teachers and nurses have lost their jobs. The “Salmond slump”, as it is now termed in Scotland, has also seen the cancellation of vital capital infrastructure projects such as the Glasgow airport rail link. The cancellation of GARL has meant the loss of 1,300 jobs. For the first time in a long time, Glasgow unemployment figures have begun to fall behind those of England.

There is no doubt that the decline in investment under the SNP Administration has hit Glasgow hard. In my own constituency, the number of new or refurbished schools between 1999 and 2007 was 14, so we had 14 brand new or refurbished schools in the east end of Glasgow in that time. Since the SNP came to power, not one school in my constituency has been built or refurbished—there has been no investment at all in schools. Recently Glasgow city council has had more than its fair share of budget cuts, as the council itself will confirm. There has been a 3.6% budget cut, which is the highest cut for many years and above the national average.

Glasgow is battling on, and there are still regeneration projects that matter enormously. I want to refer to two of those projects that are of great importance—first, the Commonwealth games, and secondly the Clyde Gateway. The 2014 games will be an exciting occasion, and there was great celebration in Glasgow when we won them. It is an occasion to celebrate sport in a city famed for its sporting achievements. As the Member of Parliament for the great football team of Glasgow Celtic, I expect everyone to be aware of our great expertise on the football field, and I am sure that we will inspire interest in other sports when the Commonwealth games are held. It is, however, also an opportunity to foster economic regeneration, most particularly in areas of the city that still need rejuvenation. More than 9,000 businesses entered the bidding process for affiliated contracts and subcontracts, and it is expected that the games will create 1,000 jobs and stimulate £1 billion of infrastructure investment in Glasgow, most particularly addressing our urge to ensure that the most deprived areas benefit. In the east end of Glasgow the games are of great significance, so will the Minister, in his response, focus on the games? We could perhaps learn things from the UK’s experience with the Olympic games, and the UK Government could perhaps play a part in ensuring that the Commonwealth games are an important success.

The Clyde Gateway is another important development in the east end of Glasgow. It has been identified in the national planning framework as Scotland’s top regeneration project. It has the target of creating 21,000 jobs and 10,000 homes over two decades. It is vital to the success of Glasgow, but recently there have been some problems with its funding. The SNP Government have taken some action to address the concerns, but the role of Scottish Enterprise has, I think, been controversial in its support of the gateway. We cannot afford to let the project slip, and some of my hon. Friends will perhaps want to make more detailed reference in their contributions to the progress, or lack thereof. Hopefully, we can particularly focus on that in the coming months, as it is key to the regeneration of Glasgow. Both the Clyde Gateway and the Commonwealth games are important to regeneration, particularly as they have a focus on and locus in addressing the issue of deprived communities, as well as having a stake in Glasgow’s future.

Glasgow is, of course, facing the double whammy of a Tory-led Government—hon. Members will have expected me to move on to this topic. In debates such as this, I always want to be polite, so I will say this in the most generous personal terms, but I cannot resist making political criticisms and I hope that the Minister will take what I say in the tenor in which it is meant. We have seen some difficulties and challenges since the election of the new Government, including the cancellation of the future jobs fund, which was doing so much to tackle problems of unemployment and particularly of youth unemployment, where we were just beginning to grapple with some of the more deep-seated issues. We have seen the cuts in public expenditure, and we have heard from the Government that when cuts are made in public expenditure, the private sector will step in to fill that gap. I say assertively to the Government that that did not happen when the SNP cut expenditure. In fact, the business community put quite a different case in Glasgow, where it said that when public expenditure is used wisely, it can assist private sector development, and we have seen the details of that in Glasgow and the real success of the model.

We have also seen a raft of cuts in housing benefit, which has undermined that twin process of economic and social regeneration. I would be the first at the barricades saying that welfare reform is important, particularly because of the constituency that I represent. I was a great supporter of the welfare reforms introduced by the previous Labour Government, but how reform is done is critical. The number of people on incapacity benefit tripled under the previous Tory Government, but fell during the previous Labour one. It is concerning that this Government’s welfare reforms are perhaps undermining regeneration. A particular example is the Government’s decision to take away 10% of housing benefit from someone who has been on jobseeker’s allowance for a year. Even if that person is doing all that is required of them and is desperately looking for work, they will still lose their benefit. That not only has a harsh impact on the family but undermines housing-led regeneration, because it affects funding for housing associations in Glasgow, which would be a desperate setback for our city. In all honesty, such a punitive, nasty cut reminds Glaswegians of the bad old days. We have had the higher education cuts that have come through the block grant, and investment in education, particularly at university level, matters so much for a skilled work force, because it enables growth in key sectors such as life sciences and finance.

Centre stage in this discussion has to be unemployment. The numbers have been creeping back up in Glasgow, particularly with the real concerns about the retraction in the economy shown in the recent growth figures. In Glasgow in December, 15 claimants were chasing every vacancy—in my constituency, the figure was 25. That is deeply worrying for those individuals, families and communities, and it has an enormous impact in the city as a whole. It is all very well telling people that they must go back to work, but there are no jobs to go to, which cuts the feet from under the policy. We cannot have welfare to work if there is no work, and it is employment and the lack of it that lies at the heart of the regeneration debate.

For generation after generation, Glasgow has experienced surges in unemployment through profound economic shifts without the right action to protect its people and to get its economy back on its feet, and it looks as though we are experiencing that yet again. I have no doubt that the Government will respond by saying that it is all the fault of the previous Government, and that there is nothing else that has to be done apart from tightening our belts. That has been said to Glaswegians before, and it is has been proved very wrong indeed, many times. I argue very strongly that the people of Glasgow understand that the banking crisis was the fundamental cause of the recent economic experiences, and there is great resentment that that sector is not being made to contribute more to the solutions. Britain’s debt was among the lowest in the G7, and the Tories actually argued that we should perhaps have gone further in our plans for public expenditure. In reality, as Glasgow has shown, it is not “public sector investment bad,” as if that were somehow a drag on the economy that stifles private sector development; it is both the public and private sectors working together in partnership that is good and that matters.

I will draw my remarks to a close, and I thank hon. Members for attending the debate. One of the first demands that I had when I became a Member of Parliament came from Glasgow’s Evening Times, that other significant element of Glasgow life, which my hon. Friends know. The paper contacted me and insisted that my job here is to stand up for Glasgow and that I should make that one of my central claims, which is what I agreed to do—we always agree, I am sure, with the Evening Times. I will continue to do that, because it is our job here to highlight the city’s strength and potential.

People have many images and stereotypes of the city of Glasgow, and I never deny the problems that we face. I have hopefully done some work to try to deal with some of our city’s great difficulties, but it is also a city of great strength, promise and resource, and we have to learn from not only its problems but its great successes. I hope that the Minister will listen and will take back Glasgow’s message to the Government. That message is that they should think again about cuts in housing benefit in particular and that they should support our fight for jobs, particularly as we have seen the job crisis increase. They should recognise Glasgow’s contributions and work with us to support economic and social regeneration.

[Mr Roger Gale (in the Chair)]

Four hon. Members on the Back Benches wish to participate in the debate. The Chair chooses to give preference, when possible, to Members who have written to Mr Speaker to indicate that they wish to take part, so I propose to call Mr Greatrex next. It might be for the convenience of Members if I also indicate that I shall then call Ms Swinson, Mr Bain and Mr Sarwar, in that order. If hon. Members would be good enough to confine their remarks to 10 minutes, that will enable me to call the Opposition Front-Bench spokesperson at 10.30 am.