Royal Bank of Scotland
Rupa Huq Excerpts(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Jon Cruddas
I will come to the question of demutualisation in a moment. I simply suggest that Government Members read a book called “The New Few” by Ferdinand Mount, who happened to be Margaret Thatcher’s head of policy. He argued for a more resilient capitalism, including a mixed economy in banking provision, with mutuals, local regional banks and a wider distribution of banking products for communities such as mine in east London. Therefore, I do not think that this is necessarily a left-right debate. I argue that this is a live debate on the right, which suggests that simple neutrality or abstention on the motion is not necessarily going with the grain of more innovative thinking across the right of the political spectrum.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is a renowned economist, but even before we get into the alternative models of banking, does he agree that one does not have to be an economist to see that buying something at one price and then selling it off for next to nothing—at the current market rate, shares are £3.21 each—does not make good economic sense? That from a party that prides itself on its so-called long-term economic plan. It is more like what George Bush senior called voodoo economics.
Jon Cruddas
A collective hit of £14 billion on taxpayers does not seem to be good, rigorous or empirically grounded economics, so my hon. Friend is absolutely right.
Let me return to the question of bank deposits. Apart from anything else, the lack of diversity in the UK’s banking system leaves us extremely vulnerable; all our eggs are literally in one basket. If we look at the international evidence on how those different types of bank perform, it quickly becomes clear that the Minister’s claims simply do not stack up.
Let us take shareholder owned banks first. Let us not forget that in 2008 it was shareholder-owned commercial banks that brought the global financial system to its knees. Yes, they were “innovative”—they created some of the most innovative toxic financial instruments the world has ever seen—but much of that innovation was what Adair Turner has termed “socially useless”; it served no real economic purpose except to inflate the profits of the banks that produced them while quietly spreading dangerous levels of risk to every corner of our financial system.
Members do not have to take my word for that. The Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards concluded that the shareholder model itself had a large part to play in the story:
“Shareholders have incentives to encourage directors to pursue high risk strategies in pursuit of short-term returns... In the run-up to the financial crisis, shareholders failed to control risk-taking in banks, and indeed were criticising some for excessive conservatism.”
In other words, the ownership model to which the Government are so keen to return RBS is the same model that helped to bring the bank down in the first place.
Tax Credits
Rupa Huq Excerpts(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
I also add my congratulations to my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) on securing this debate in a week of such high drama on this subject. I am very encouraged by the things that I have heard from some Members on the Government Benches, and I hope that that is conveyed to their leadership.
Yesterday’s headlines made for confusing reading. The Guardian went for “Osborne ready to change tack on tax credits.” The Express plumped for, “Defiant Osborne says that tax credits will be cut despite defeat in Lords.” It is not the first time that there has been confusion over this issue. Before the election, the Conservative manifesto promised to “work to eliminate child poverty.” Two months later, the Government scrapped existing targets and child poverty measures. That is not just moving the goal posts, but ripping up the pitch.
The Prime Minister said:
“We must eliminate the scourge of poverty.”
That is difficult to reconcile with cuts set to put more than 200,000 working households into poverty. Those cuts are being put into effect to fund an inheritance tax cut that will benefit the 60,000 wealthiest estates, which probably explains why we no longer hear the words, “We are all in this together.” This is all such high drama, and we do not know what the next instalment will be.
Christina Rees (Neath) (Lab)
I have been a bit confused as well. The only thing that is clear is that in Neath we have more than 6,000 families on tax credits, and more than 5,000 families with children, and these measures will drive them into poverty.
Dr Huq
I think that we have a similar number—6,500 families—in Ealing Central and Acton. It is the children whom we should be thinking about. They are not just columns on a spreadsheet, but real people.
There was great drama at PMQs yesterday. The leader of the Labour party asked the Prime Minister six times about these plans and whether working people would be worse off next year, and six times, the Prime Minister refused to answer. Even The Sun—not the most Labour friendly paper—referred to that exchange. As my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) said:
“This is not a constitutional crisis; it is a crisis for 3 million families”.—[Official Report, 28 October 2015; Vol. 601, c. 339.]
We could go further, even further than this motion. The Chancellor could still perform a full U-turn, which I would welcome, as I did the rapid conversion to feminism in this place yesterday. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) said, if the Chancellor were to make a U-turn, we would welcome it on the Labour Benches. We would not taunt the Government if they were to do that. There is still time.
The Chancellor has a choice before him. He can continue hell-bent on his tax giveaways to big corporations and to the wealthiest in our country, or he could reverse those tax breaks to the few and go for a lower surplus target in 2019-20 while still sticking to his self-imposed charter. He would still be in a position not to hit those 3 million working families with these tax credit cuts. After all, this is a Government who claim to be on the side of working people. The ball is now firmly in the court of the Treasury Ministers.
My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) said that, often, the lifting of people out of taxation is used to justify these measures, but such a move is not as progressive as it initially appears to be. It helps dual earner households the most, but only those who earn enough. It makes no difference if the Government start taxing at £6,000 or £11,000, because there is little help for those on £5,000—the lowest paid on the distributional curve.
Studies have shown that the national living wage, which is not an actual living wage, will only affect a small minority of people and it will never help those under the age of 26. My right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) also pointed out that the childcare element is quite limited. In my own constituency, parents would be hard-pressed to find a nursery that could offer a place, because there is not the commensurate resource to match the policy.
People have been wondering, even before the mess of this week, how they can trust a Prime Minister who blatantly said one thing on TV as recently as 30 April and then quite a different thing just a couple of months later in July. He made a promise of no cuts to a voter on a phone-in programme. That was then followed up by David Dimbleby to check that what he said was clear. By July, that promise had gone. That must be the fastest U-turn in history. In PMQs yesterday, we heard some MPs say that they had claimed tax credits. I do not know whether that is true. Perhaps we can put that down to the theatre of PMQs.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. If the hon. Lady was not speaking to the motion, I would stop her.
Dr Huq
We need to look at tax credits in a wider context. There is the four-year benefit freeze, and the reduction in the household benefit cap. New claimants are no longer entitled to the “family element” of tax credits and, controversially, there is the proposal that, after April 2017, families will not be able to claim for their third child. I cannot imagine that happening in any other policy area. Can Members imagine the Government saying that a third child could not go to school? If such a policy had been in place, my sister Connie would never have been educated.
A number of millionaire Tory lords voted on Monday to cut help for Britain’s poorest workers. Lord Lloyd Webber was even flown in from New York for the vote. It did seem as though the Government were throwing the kitchen sink at this whole issue. There is growing awareness of the consequences of such a measure. Etched into the consciousness of those on the Government Front Bench should be the words of that caller who phoned in to that programme before the election, or the words of the woman who cried on “Question Time” the other night. Through old and new media, we have all received hundreds of messages on this point so we await the next instalment, the autumn statement. I hope that kids have been saved the unseasonable tidings of the notices that would have been plopping onto doormats at Christmas.
At the very least, the Government should publish a full impact assessment of their cumulative cuts to tax credits and benefits in the so-called emergency Budget. The Prime Minister said at his own conference that it is not pounds and pence but people that fire him up. Those 6,500 children in Ealing Central and Acton are real people with real lives, not columns on a spreadsheet. Some 70% of the money that the Treasury will save will come from working mums, so I urge the Government to reconsider their proposals and protect those on the lowest incomes.
Tax Credits
Rupa Huq Excerpts(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
I know that this Government and this Chancellor in particular are fond of political cross-dressing, but robbing 6,500 children in 3,500 hard-working families in my constituency of £1,300 a year makes a mockery of all that—and that is in an affluent west London suburban constituency where the average property price is over £500,000. The Prime Minister pledged during the election campaign not to cut tax credits, but the fact that he is doing this only months after the election is not just a concern to the Opposition; it brings politics into disrepute.
We have heard about the so-called compensation that will come from the national living wage. It is not a living wage, and it is compensation for only 26% of people. Politicians like to go on about hard choices, but this is about whether to penalise people who are doing right and playing by the rules, or to give a tax cut to the 60,000 wealthiest estates at the expense of 200,000 working families. Some 6,500 families in Ealing Central and Acton are a chunk of 3 million families across the country. The fact that the notices informing them of the changes will arrive just before Christmas is deeply immoral. It shows the Scrooge-like attitude of this Government.
I have had dozens of emails about the cuts, both around the time of the emergency, that is the crisis, budget and now. I urge Members in suburban London seats like mine—the Comptroller of Her Majesty's Household, the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell), the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), whom I can see, and the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr Mathias), constituencies where those affected by the change outweigh the majority that those Members have—to join us in the Lobby tonight.
European Union (Finance) Bill
Rupa Huq Excerpts(10 years, 9 months ago)
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Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
Thank you ever so much, Madam Deputy Speaker. The hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) is a difficult act to follow, but I will try.
I have been a bit slower than some of my fellow 2015 intake at getting around to making my maiden speech, but as a former university lecturer who is used to speaking in one-hour bursts, and with 43 years in Ealing behind me, I wanted to do justice to the magnificent seat of Ealing Central and Acton. With this being a Thursday, I think I might get the time to do this. All hon. Members have assured us that their constituency is the best one in the world, but in my case it is true. As a lifelong local, I am honoured and humbled to be serving its people in this place.
My immediate predecessor was Angie Bray. Although we did not always see eye to eye politically, we did get on, and it was a mark of her generosity of spirit that when my two sisters—both constituents—and I lost our father last September, she handwrote a note of condolence to me. I wish her well.
Before its boundaries were redrawn, my seat included areas now represented by my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) and my hon. Friend the irrepressible Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound). I therefore succeed and join Bray, Slaughter and Pound, which sounds like a vaguely pugnacious firm of solicitors. I am happy now to be Huq in the mix.
Previous Conservative MPs for my seat include Kenneth Baker, immortalised for a generation of school users back when teacher training days were known as Baker days. Then came Sir George Young, “the Bicycling Baronet”, from whom I received an 18th birthday card reminding me of my newly enfranchised status and politely suggesting that I might want to vote Conservative. Members will not be surprised to learn that I did not take his advice.
I never imagined in those days that I would be one of three Ealing Labour MPs supported by a council of the same complexion. A leading Tory at Ealing town hall remarked the other day that we were living in a one-party socialist super state. If only! On the subject of mixing, which I referred to, I can now claim to be the only one of the trio of Ealing Labour MPs to have been a DJ, and, interestingly, I am the only one of the three of us who has never been a bus conductor. In part, that is a function of my age—but hey, never say never.
Transport is a key issue for my constituents. In fact, large parts of my constituency would not have existed without the electrification of the railways. Ealing, Acton and Chiswick feature strongly among the stops on the London tube map. I want to use my position to speak up for the suburbs, which are neglected parts of our nation. If our great cities drive our nation, the suburban districts fuel it.
To sketch a pen portrait of Ealing Central and Acton in 10 minutes is no mean feat. As well as the two towns in its title, it comprises bits of NW10, bordering Harlesden in Brent, near the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner), and bits of W4 in Chiswick. Madam Deputy Speaker, you have probably seen my seat before without even knowing it. In the opening titles of “Only Fools and Horses”, the tower blocks of Del Boy’s Peckham were actually the South Acton estate. For sci-fi fans, it featured in several episodes of “Doctor Who”, including the classic 1970 episode, “Spearhead from Space”, which depicts zombies taking over tranquil Ealing green. I think they were called Autons, or something like that.
Dr Huq
Yes, Tories. That’s it.
The whole episode, with people marauding over Ealing green, eerily prefigured the events that unfolded in August 2011, when rioting sadly hit parts of London and further afield. It hit almost the same spot as depicted in the episode.
The seat’s cultural footprint goes wider than on screen; it also covers musical matters. If Members exit Ealing Broadway station, they will see a blue plaque marking the club where the Rolling Stones played their first concert, and The Who formed at Acton County Grammar School, now known as Acton High. At the University of West London in my constituency, there is a Freddie’s Bar, named after Freddie Mercury, who studied at its former incarnation, Ealing Art College. I was reminded of that by Brian May, from the same band, the week before last in this place when he came to lobby against animal cruelty.
The cumulative effect of 43 years in Ealing meant that the 18 months I spent as a candidate knocking on doors in some ways felt like watching my whole life flashing past me. I never knew who I would get behind those doors—would it be my mum’s friends from the swinging Ealing of the ’60s, or my own teachers from the ’70s and ’80s who I never even dreamed had first names, or people I see every day nowadays as a mum on the school run?
The constituency has seen pioneering social experiments. In Bedford Park suburb W4, we had the world’s first garden suburb, while in W5 we have the Brentham estate, which was the birthplace of co-operative housing, where Fred Perry learned to play tennis in the communal facilities. I know that MPs have been fond of the so-called John Lewis list, but they might like to know that its offshoot Waitrose opened its first branch in 1904 in Acton High Street.
Although we witnessed riots in 2011, the spontaneous broom army that came together in the aftermath of the disturbances demonstrated the resilience of what is a mixed community. It is a seat with lush suburbia of Victorian, Edwardian and 1930s-style varieties at one end and the more post-war urban densities and high-rise properties at the other.
My 18 months as a candidate opened my eyes to things I had never seen before in 43 years there. Some of my visits were to places such as the Ealing food bank, the Ealing soup kitchen, the Ealing churches’ night shelter and the Ealing Samaritans—all of whom report an unprecedented take-up of their services. In this day and age in Ealing, which was once known as “Queen of the Suburbs”, that cannot be right. While our victory in Ealing was a great result against the tide, it was tempered with sadness that my dad never lived to see it and disappointment at the broader national results.
I note that my predecessor’s maiden speech pledged to campaign for keeping local A&Es open. She will have been disappointed that we lost Central Middlesex and Hammersmith in September. Maternity at Ealing hospital—we are talking about the London borough with the third highest birth rate out of 33—is about to go at the end of this month, with the last projected birth on 24 June. That can be only a precursor to the A&E going, and Charing Cross A&E is also under threat. With west London’s population going up, not down, that is just plain wrong.
The two immediately preceding maiden speeches for my constituency both praised its multi-faith, multi-ethnic nature. Of course, I shall do the same, as I am a product of it, as can be seen from looking at me. Old and new Europe live side by side and have done for a long time in this seat. I went to school with kids—and teachers—from the immediate post-war Polish ex-servicemen generation, who long predated the 2004 EU expansion. The seat, then, spans tradition and modernity; continuity and change; urban and suburban: it is a microcosm of London at large. Enormous opportunity is coming our way with the regeneration of the Old Oak district, with some 24,000 dwellings, which is being touted as the Canary Wharf of the west; the Crossrail link, which will have two stops in Ealing and Acton; and HS2 is planned to come through, too. It is important that these opportunities serve local people. We do not want to see unaffordable flats being bought off plan by absentee overseas investors. That is buy to leave, not buy to let. As the area’s MP, I will press for the UK to maximise EU funding for these major infrastructure projects, as it is needed to support them. That seems an appropriate point for a debate on EU finance—I did get it in somehow—and the subject of today’s Bill.