Covid-19: Economy Update

Stephanie Peacock Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

Our support for the self-employed remains among the most comprehensive and generous anywhere in the world, and is now approximating almost £13 billion for almost 3 million people. Barnett consequentials of more than £13 billion or £14 billion have been provided to the devolved nations and, if the Scottish Government choose to do something different with that, that is of course up to them.

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

In the past six months, the number of people forced to claim unemployment benefit in Barnsley has doubled. If the Chancellor is saying that livelihoods have to be balanced against lives, should the people of Barnsley expect unemployment to rise, the death rate to rise, or both?

[Rishi Sunak]

It is exactly because we need to adopt a balanced approach that we have taken the more regional and tiered approach that we have. We never pretended there are easy choices here—it would be wrong to say otherwise. We are balancing protecting the economy and protecting people’s jobs and livelihoods while suppressing the virus, in the least damaging way possible. There is no perfect answer. As I said, there are no easy choices. But we will always be honest about that and try to tread that careful path between those two things. What would be more damaging for people’s jobs and livelihoods is a blunt national lockdown, which would inflict unnecessary hardship and suffering on people where the virus is not particularly rampant.

The Economy

Stephanie Peacock Excerpts

Monday 27th April 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

For as long as I have known my hon. Friend he has been an incredible advocate for the small tourism businesses in his constituency, which are a big driver of his local economy. I assure him that I will continue to keep a very close eye on the situation. As we think about exiting from the economic and social restrictions, I will look at the right interventions for every sector.

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab) [V]]

New research conducted by the Centre For Towns has found that one in three ex-industrial towns are among the most economically at risk from covid-19. Worsbrough in my constituency is the 10th most at-risk town. What plans does the Treasury have to help areas like mine in Barnsley to cope with this crisis and then recover from it?

[Rishi Sunak]

The significant economic interventions that we have put in place will help every part of the country, whether north or south, rural or urban—that is what they are designed to do. Businesses in the hon. Lady’s constituency will benefit from all the schemes. More broadly, the Budget set out an ambitious programme of investment in our regions to ensure that opportunity is felt wherever in this country someone happens to live. We remain incredibly committed to that agenda.

Social Mobility

Stephanie Peacock Excerpts

Wednesday 12th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

It is pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone, and to follow the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell). I agree with his comments about the apprenticeship levy, which he made in the debates yesterday and today. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Sir David Evennett) on securing this important debate.

Social mobility is about young people’s chances in life. It is about creating a society where kids can aspire to anything, and about giving them the tools and resources they need to achieve their dreams. I will speak about the current gap between aspiration and opportunity that exists in areas such as mine, and advocate for long-term, sustained investment in our schools and industry, so that children and young people from places, such as Barnsley, have as much chance to succeed as those elsewhere.

Former coalfield communities, such as Barnsley, have been left to weather the devastating impact of the loss of the mining industry and decades of deindustrialisation by themselves. Our economy has lagged behind that of the rest of the UK, affecting how many and what kinds of jobs are available. Older industrial towns in coal-mining areas tend to have fewer higher paying jobs, which obviously has a knock-on effect on the amount of schools and, in particular, on transport infrastructure. A stark geographical divide exists in this country. A child from Cudworth in my constituency is five times less likely to go to university than one from Chelsea. In Barnsley, only 9% of kids who receive free school meals go to university, compared with the national average of 26%.

Accessible vocational education is an important part of overcoming disadvantage, giving young people the tools and employment experiences to get on in life. Right now, in my constituency, there is not one sixth-form college. That is not to take away from the fantastic work of Barnsley college, which is not too far away—it is a fantastic institution and provides fantastic education—but obviously the inability to stay on in a school setting has an impact on encouraging young people to do A-levels.

It is not just about A-levels, but about vocational education; there has been more than one debate on that in this place this week, and I agree that it is incredibly important. But our communities have been left behind and I do not believe that that should or must be the case. This should not be the first generation that is worse off than the one before. Social mobility can be fostered so that children from all backgrounds and areas can reach their potential.

A fantastic example of encouraging that is the world-class Barnsley Youth Choir, which provides choral training, regardless of financial or social background. The choir was set up 10 years ago from absolutely nothing, and I take this opportunity to pay tribute to the fantastic Mathew Wright, who set it up. Now we have hundreds of kids of all ages from across Barnsley coming together, and the choir is ranked fifth in the world. They go all over the world performing. That is a fantastic example of an opportunity that gives young people the ability to express themselves, to sing, to show off their talents and to see more of the world. It is a reflection of the community spirit of Barnsley, and it is particularly inspirational.

Volunteer-run programmes such as the Barnsley Youth Choir show the commitment of parents, teachers and volunteers to giving young people the best start in life. Last week I met the head of Netherwood Academy, one of the schools in my constituency, to discuss its efforts to increase the aspirations of young women. They want successful women from different industries to go and meet young girls and to speak about their careers and ambitions. As a former teacher, that is a project that I welcome, and I hope to welcome them here to the House of Commons.

Sadly, it is not just about having aspirations for more, but about having the opportunity to act on those aspirations. Social mobility should not be a postcode lottery.

The Government can and should support working-class communities such as Barnsley by investing in its people, the local economies and the manufacturing industry, so that people are not stuck in low-paid, insecure jobs with no prospect of development, with the only alternative being to leave their local areas.

We need to invest in the skills of our workforce, which will aid recruitment and increase productivity. We need to invest in education and qualifications to enable people in Barnsley to pursue jobs that are higher paid and more secure and, crucially, we need to fund transport projects to connect our towns and communities across the UK. I believe the Government need to take urgent action if young people from my community are to be given the best start in life.

Apprenticeship Levy

Stephanie Peacock Excerpts

Tuesday 11th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Richard Graham]

The hon. Gentleman kindly glossed over that. Some of the points he made about the flexibility of the apprenticeship levy are important, and I promise that I will come on to them.

In that debate—I have reviewed what I said then—all of us recognised that some work on apprenticeships had been done under the Government in which the hon. Gentleman served. There was no doubt about that, but we needed to put a rocket-boost into the system, and I think the figures confirm that we did, with 2 million apprenticeships being created between 2010 and 2015. Businesses and Government organisations, together with what the Government introduced by way of funding, made a huge difference. However, let us not go over that too much, because I want to see where we are today.

I will start with what the aims of the apprenticeship levy were. It is fair to say that the Government wanted to double the investment in apprenticeships, from roughly £1.2 billion to £2.5 billion, and at the same time deliver on their commitment in the 2010 manifesto to take the number of apprenticeships from 2 million to 3 million by 2020. Right at the beginning, there was also a quality expectation—an ambition to raise the level of the apprenticeships that were being studied for and to have more higher apprentices, who in turn would contribute to some sectors where we had and still have key competitive advantages—cyber and aerospace are obvious examples. In addition, there was certainly the implication of reducing the costs to the taxpayer by getting a greater contribution from the larger employers in particular.

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. The points that he has just made are really important, and I share his view of apprentices—until recently, I had a living-wage apprentice in my constituency office. However, when I met representatives of Barnsley College recently, they shared his views, but one of their concerns was that the apprenticeship levy is not benefiting the school leavers it was intended to benefit and that those who do benefit often are mid-career and doing things such as extra degrees, which is of course to be welcomed but is not what the levy was set up to do. I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman has any comments on that.

[Richard Graham]

That is an important point, and the hon. Lady anticipates what I was coming on to. I have had my own apprentice now for nine years; they do a level 3 business administration course, and there will be other Members here who employ their own apprentices. There is a question mark about whether those at the starting levels of apprenticeships have been supported as well as they could be through the apprenticeship levy.

Interestingly, when I arranged an interview between Business West, which effectively took over the running of apprenticeships from the chamber of commerce in Gloucestershire, with the previous Minister with responsibility for apprenticeships, she said very clearly that in terms of small and medium-sized enterprises

“it has been difficult for the non-levy payers, but we are now transferring them over to a new system which we do want to be simpler for them.”

The Minister who is here in Westminster Hall—the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan)—is not formally the Minister with responsibility for apprenticeships. Indeed, I believe it is true to say that there is still a gap in the Department for Education in terms of an actual apprenticeships Minister, which I hope will be filled soon through an appointment by our new Prime Minister. Nevertheless, I hope the Minister here today will be able to say a little about the speed of transferring the non-levy payers to the new system and how that has progressed. The previous Minister with responsibility for apprenticeships made her comments in July last year, so I hope there has been some progress in that regard.

However, just to respond to the point made by the hon. Member for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock), it is quite true that the numbers of level 2 and level 3 apprentices have come down sharply since the introduction of the apprenticeship levy, just as it is true that the numbers of levels 4 to 7 higher apprentices have risen sharply.

Beer and Pub Taxation

Stephanie Peacock Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

It is an unexpected pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I congratulate the hon. Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood) on securing this important debate and on his work with the all-party parliamentary group, of which I am proud to be a member. The fact that the debate is so well attended by hon. Members from both sides of the House shows how important pubs are to our constituents. Indeed, this month, I have had more emails about this debate than about Brexit, so that is some progress.

Several important issues were raised by hon. Members on both sides, including how important local pubs are. They are a world-renowned institution that dates back to the 11th century. In Barnsley, we sadly lost the Black Bull pub a couple of years ago, which was 250 years old. That is just one example, but pubs often have an historical and cultural significance. Through the generations, people have gone to sit in the pub and talk about their everyday lives.

Supporting our pubs makes economic and social sense. The statistics have been rehearsed today. Pubs provide more than 600 jobs in my local economy in Barnsley. The Acorn Brewery is one example. Across the country, they provide 900,000 jobs, £23 billion of economic value and £13 billion of taxation.

A number of issues have been raised, and the Minister has a number of questions to respond to. Labour has called for a radical overhaul of business rates to help local pubs, and a review of the pubs code and pub closures. As CAMRA has pointed out, 18 pubs close a week, which is a tragedy. Once we let them go, we will find it much harder to get them back.

I have a couple of questions for the Minister. What assessment have the Government made of the impact of closures on high streets? I represent a town. I am not saying that pubs are not important to cities, but in small villages and towns, they are the hub of the community, so it is important to look at the impact. That also feeds into the Government’s loneliness strategy, in which pubs were cited. What assessment has been made in relation to that?

The crucial issue for this debate is the impact of high taxation. For every £3 made in a pub, £1 is sent to the Treasury, so surely we need to reconsider beer tax. On average, pubs in the UK pay £140,000 in tax, which is disproportionately high. We need to look at that. There are also important issues about public health. While there is a public health impact, they do provide a safe, secure and perhaps moderate area in which to drink and socialise.

I thank and congratulate all hon. Members who contributed to the debate. I look forward to listening to the Minister.

Special Educational Needs and Disability Funding

Stephanie Peacock Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2020 Westminster Hall

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard, and to follow the hon. Member for Chichester (Gillian Keegan), who made a passionate speech.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) on securing this really important debate. Special educational needs and disability funding is an issue of deep concern for many of my constituents. As a former teacher, I have seen first hand the value of specialist support for children and young people who have special educational needs, and as an MP, I have heard countless stories of frustration and disappointment from parents who only want the best for their children.

Today, I will talk about how children with special educational needs and disabilities are being let down, excluded and denied educational opportunities because of a lack of funding. Right now, parents and pupils must navigate a fragmented and overstretched system to get the special educational needs provision that they deserve and desperately need.

Too many children are being left behind without support, due to delayed and out-of-date education, health and care plans. In Barnsley, some children have had to wait more than 33 weeks. Although that not be the norm and the borough performs above average in that respect, far too many families face long and trying delays.

That obviously has a knock-on and life-changing effect. Recently, a parent told me that their child was denied a place at a specialist school due to their having an out-of-date plan, despite the fact that over a three-year period that parent had made multiple requests to have the plan updated. Another constituent’s 10-year-old child was excluded for bad behaviour at school while they were waiting for the EHC assessment that would identify them as requiring additional support.

In addition, those pupils who attend school can struggle to get through the day. I have heard distressing stories of children being left bruised and scratched after being forcibly restrained. Inappropriate use of restraint is never a solution.

There is also off-rolling, which is the disgraceful practice of removing students from the school roll, and not because of legitimate concerns about their behaviour. Instead, such students are removed from school because it is thought likely that they will perform poorly in exams, which would impact on school performance figures. I know of an academy that temporarily excluded nearly a quarter of its pupils in the 2017-18 academic year. The competitive system of schooling, including the Ofsted framework, has led to a culture whereby difficult pupils are being excluded rather than being managed.

[Sarah Owen (Luton North) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising the issue of exclusions, which is particularly important when it comes to academies. In Luton, school exclusions have—shockingly—tripled in the last five years, and many of the excluded children are children with special educational needs, which risks some of the most vulnerable children in society being further exposed to isolation or criminal elements. Does she agree that exclusion should only ever be the last resort, and not a tool to manage overall performance of a school or the result of a lack of funding?

[Stephanie Peacock]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that important point. She is absolutely right—it is completely clear that something needs to be done to keep children in supportive and safe learning environments.

It is also clear that the number of pupils being excluded is simply far too high; we have seen that in my local area. However, having met officials from Barnsley Council—I have an ongoing dialogue with the council—I can say that it seems very genuine in its attempts to deal with the situation, and I welcome the Barnsley Alliance for Schools and the education improvement strategy.

The efforts of local councils across the country, however, are limited by overstretched budgets and chronic underfunding. Many of the challenges in the SEN system cannot be met within the current allocation of high-needs funding. Sadly, a significant proportion of councils’ high-needs budgets is being spent on sending children and young people to out-of-borough referral units or schools. Vulnerable children are being forced to leave their school friends and travel further afield to access the support they need. Across the country, children are out of school for months, and sometimes years, because of the lack of local SEN provision and specialist school places. That is a direct consequence of councils not having the funds to provide SEN support locally.

The massive commitment of local authority resources has left SEN teams short-staffed, which in turn has left families waiting for months, if not years, to have their children’s needs assessed and a support plan agreed upon. It is an indictment of the whole system that vulnerable children are being neglected, excluded and left without the assistance they need to succeed in life.

With rising demand for SEN and disability support, councils across the country face a shortfall of more than £1 billion by 2021. In areas such as Barnsley, funding for SEN has simply not kept pace with the increase in demand and the increased expectations about provision. The current and proposed high-needs funding allocations are simply not sufficient.

Schools and local authorities need resources to ensure that vulnerable children are given the best start in life. It is clear that everyone’s best interests would be served by increasing funding to support SEN provision locally, and by having a more accountable and less bureaucratic system. Right now, children with special educational needs and their parents are being left behind, without the funding or support they deserve. We urgently need action.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michelle Donelan]

The review is encompassing the EHCPs, and is going to look at exactly those challenges in the system, including the point that was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk), who said that we should look at the threshold. That is something that we will look at, and it will address whether we are giving enough support to those children who have complex and compounded problems. We will also examine the £6,000 contribution that mainstream schools have to put in; that issue was raised by a number of Members, and I know from my own constituency that it can be a challenge for school provision.

The SEND review is looking at how future systems for supporting children and young people should operate, but it is important to recognise that it is not a sufficient answer for those areas that are struggling now, as I have pointed out. I am more than happy to meet any hon. Member who has a challenge locally and go through this with them.

[Stephanie Peacock]

I represent Barnsley, which is projected to have a high needs spending deficit of nearly £6 million in the 2020-21 financial year, taking into account the extra money that the Government have given. Does the Minister accept that there is simply not enough money in the system? It is all very well to talk about all the other issues, which are important, but the money is absolutely critical.

[Michelle Donelan]

We are looking at the deficit issue, as I have just said, and I am more than happy to meet the hon. Lady about her particular local issue.

It is important to spell out the action that we have already taken on funding. We have given the largest cash boost in a decade to increase school funding by £2.6 billion in 2020-21, followed by increases of £4.8 billion and £7.1 billion in 2021-22 and 2022-23 respectively. Next year’s increase includes £780 million of additional funding for those with the most complex SEND, representing an increase of 12% compared with this year. Although the challenges are still stark and there are a number of problems in the system, it would be unfair to say that this Government have not invested in this area, or in education. In fact, every local authority will receive an increase in high-needs funding of at least 8% per head, which is a remarkable figure. This is not just a question of funding; as I said before, it is also about where that money is going, and ensuring the money is best placed to make sure that these children have the very best outcomes that they possibly can.

National Productivity

Stephanie Peacock Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd January 2020 Westminster Hall

[Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered national productivity.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley, and I declare an interest as a metropolitan mayor. I am pleased to see the Minister and the shadow Ministers here this morning. I know they all take this issue very seriously, and rightly so, because it affects all corners of our United Kingdom and all our communities.

I wanted to secure this debate because, for too long, the general debate about productivity has been too narrow—it has been too focused on the purely economic, on gross value added and on national statistics. That is the wrong approach. Growing productivity matters to people, matters to our businesses’ ability to raise wage levels and matters in terms of the types of job our economy makes available and the prospects we seek to create for our young people.

Being part of a productive economy also builds those intangible bonds between our people and our places, and between our role and our contribution. I hope that I speak for all Members when I say that we all want to live productive lives; we all want to leave the world in a better place than we found it; we all want our children to grow up full of ambition and aspiration and to be confident that we are building a world in which their hopes and dreams can be realised; and we all want an economy that creates wealth, enabling us to invest in our public services, in our people and in our communities.

Raising productivity, which is, in essence, about creating more value with the same or less input, is at the heart of all of those aims. Yet, despite the importance of raising productivity, the size of our economy has for too long been the overriding measure of success. That has led to an approach towards economic growth that has neglected the real long-term drivers of success: skills; investment in research and development; a balanced economy, with opportunities available right across the country; and the enabling infrastructure, the lack of which in many parts of the country means that we lag behind.

Perhaps conveniently, we have been able to ignore the growing weight of evidence that we are in the midst of a productivity crisis. The figures are stark. Since the financial crash, the UK’s average productivity growth has been a woeful 0.3% a year. For that reason, the Royal Statistical Society awarded it what in this instance is the unwelcome accolade of the “statistic of the decade”.

That is costing us billions in lost economic output, and the situation is even starker outside London and the south-east. Public policy has entrenched a productivity gap between the north and the rest of the UK of around 12%, which costs the economy about £40 billion. The OECD calculates that regional productivity gaps alone account for lost economic growth of around 10%. Looking across the whole UK, according to the Core Cities Group, which represents cities across the UK, if we brought all our regions up to the UK economic average, we would put around £80 billion into the economy every year. So the current situation is a huge missed opportunity for our people, our businesses and the Exchequer.

There is no silver-bullet solution to tackle the productivity challenge, but the levers to pull are all within our collective grasp, and there are things we can do urgently that will start the process of addressing the national and regional productivity challenges we face. First and foremost, we must win the argument for investing in an active place-based programme of investment that includes every region, city and town across the country. That programme must be focused on investment that is linked to the strengths and capabilities of each individual local area: its people, its businesses and its research institutions.

We must ensure that such investment is better balanced across the UK. Public R&D investment in Oxford, Cambridge and inner west London accounts for 41% of total public R&D spending in the UK. I do not begrudge any of those fine places any of that investment, but we must close the gap between academic research and the implementation of the ideas that we create. That means increasing investment in institutions such as the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, the Advanced Wellbeing Research Centre and the Olympic Legacy Park in the Sheffield city region. Such institutions connect ideas, innovation and research with real-life business challenges. They are ready-made vehicles through which we can supercharge regional economies, and they must be the focus of greater Government investment.

Around such institutions, we must build deep and pervasive programmes of support, to connect them more effectively with the productive potential of our existing businesses. We are already starting to do that in my own region of South Yorkshire; indeed, I believe we offer a national blueprint that shows how we can turn the productivity challenge around through the creation of innovation districts.

Many hon. Members will have heard of the University of Sheffield’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre. At the AMRC, the Government, the university and the public sector have invested alongside industry to build an institution that is focused on tackling real-life industrial problems, operating in that sweet spot between academic research and industry, and applying knowledge to problems.

Through the AMRC, we have been able to attract companies such as Boeing, McLaren, Rolls-Royce and many others to our region. We have built our inward investment offer around that approach. We have built the AMRC training centre, which helps to connect our young people to the opportunities that are being created. We have started to develop supply chain programmes that connect small businesses in the region to the opportunities being created by larger manufacturers. We are also looking to invest in the enabling infrastructure, to enable our workers to get to work by rail, tram and bike. That approach is building a true industrial commons, where academia, the public sector and businesses come together in a way that puts us in the vanguard of the reindustrialisation of the north.

However, there is so much more we can do. To create transformational productivity growth, we must embed this culture of innovation and ideas more broadly, across all our businesses, from sandwich-makers to steel manufacturers, and from education technology to energy production. If the Government are looking to establish a Massachusetts-style institute of technology for the north, they should look no further than South Yorkshire and the assets that we already have in place.

What we need right across the country is the ambition, matched with the investment, to scale up that approach and scale it out. Underpinning it all, the Government must take care of the fundamentals of any modern, regionally balanced and progressive economy. According to the Core Cities Group, deprivation is the cause of up to 40% of low regional productivity. Therefore, economic policy must sit right alongside our social regeneration and skills policies. We must tackle the issue of vocational and technical education head-on, and the Government must reverse a decade of under-investment in vocational education.

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate and on all the work he has done on this issue. He is absolutely right to highlight the lack of funding, because it has had a huge impact on areas such as ours, in Barnsley. Does he agree that skills are the missing link in South Yorkshire? We need more investment in vocational education, so that all kids can access courses.

[Dan Jarvis]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and parliamentary neighbour for that intervention. She is precisely right about all of that. We are seeking to do a huge amount of work across South Yorkshire, working with our further education colleges, our universities, our training providers and our businesses. I am incredibly concerned to ensure that, within our local enterprise partnership, we have the requisite knowledge, skills and experience to develop our skills sector. It is a fundamental and crucial pillar of our strategic economic plan, but it requires more thought and certainly more investment, as my hon. Friend rightly suggests. I give her an assurance that it is right at the top of my list of priorities, and I look forward to working with her and with colleagues right across South Yorkshire to ensure we have the investment in our skills system that we so need and deserve.

I was just making the point about the importance of investment in vocational and technical education. We need to ensure that we create parity of esteem across academic and vocational education routes so that we give businesses, our young people and their parents confidence in the skills system. We must better connect our businesses to the skills system. Notwithstanding the excellence of our civil servants and the capabilities and competences of Ministers of this Government, there is no way that skills, innovation, enterprise and transport systems can best be brought together at the national level. I know the Minister understands that.

To make all that happen, our places have to be given the right tools, so we must empower our places up and down the country to build their own industrial commons. Following years of austerity and systemic neglect, the manifesto on which the Government were elected contained a raft of ambitious infrastructure projects and a promise to level up investment across Britain, much of which was aimed at voters in the north of England.

If the Government are serious about building a collaborative, sustainable and inclusive economy where everyone shares the benefits, reversing the prolonged stagnation in productivity should feature at the very top of their agenda. The way to do that is by redistributing power to our nation’s regions through a programme of meaningful devolution. Westminster needs to give us the tools to do the job. I say this with the greatest respect to colleagues in the Government, but it is time to let go, because it is no coincidence that a country that has this level of political and economic centralisation also has some of the lowest levels of productivity growth and some of the highest regional inequalities. That is not good for the state of our nation. Nor is it good for the state of our public finances or the health, happiness and wellbeing of our communities. Let us make a change.

British Steel Pension Scheme: Transfers

Stephanie Peacock Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2019 Westminster Hall

[Nick Smith]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Given reports that the FCA is investigating so-called introducers in connection with a major scam, the Government should now ensure that they, too, are regulated. The Treasury has to take action to ensure that financial advisers always have—this comes to my hon. Friend’s point—sufficient insurance to pay out, should they go into administration.

Will the Minister ensure that the FCA updates the Treasury on how it is supporting the potentially several thousand steelworkers who might have received poor transfer advice in this instance? The Treasury needs to co-ordinate with the Department for Work and Pensions and other key bodies in order to help victims of mis-selling to access the support they need. Although BSPS members have been supported by a strong team in Port Talbot, including a financial adviser and a lawyer, there needs to be a single initiative, aimed specifically at people who may have been mis-sold in cases such as BSPS.

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

I am very grateful to my good friend for giving way and congratulate him on securing the debate and on the powerful case that he is making. In the consultation on the changes, concerns were raised that the burden could fall too heavily on scheme members, and we worry that that is the case. Our mining and steel communities built this nation. Does my hon. Friend agree that they should be looked after in retirement?

[Nick Smith]

My hon. Friend is a champion for miners’ pensions, on which she has done some great work, and I think she is absolutely right.

I press the Minister on the Treasury’s response to recommendations that others have made about the crisis. The Rookes review suggested that the FCA needs to look at how it handles advisers who have had regulatory issues in the past. Phoenixing, as it is called, has allowed some advisers to reinvent themselves to sell anew. There must be greater scrutiny to stop rogues re-emerging in the marketplace. The review also suggested that the FCA work with the Treasury and the DWP to use digital channels to help to communicate important information to pensioners and to help them.

Finally, the review suggested that the Pensions Regulator work with BSPS, trustees and trade unions—Community and Unite have been particularly good in south Wales—to select a panel of reliable financial advisers that members can use. Those advisers must be able to deal with the scale of the problem with BSPS and with the insurance needed. Can the Minister explain how the Department is progressing those recommendations and when we can expect the changes to be fully implemented?

In his valedictory speech, Mark Neale, the outgoing chief executive of the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, strongly advocated increasing the compensation limit in cases of poor transfer advice. They were powerful remarks, so let us listen to him. I ask the Treasury to actively support that proposal and to investigate how many people are currently suffering uncompensated financial losses because of poor advice.

We need justice for steelworkers who are ripped off. If the FCA will not do that, local police forces in south Wales need to pursue what appear to be complicated cases of fraud. The crimes are committed locally; the losses are clear and often substantial; and those responsible are identifiable. I call on the police forces across south Wales to open files and thoroughly investigate whether those cases amount to fraud. Criminal investigations have to start. If they do not, I call on the forces to state publicly why not.

The financial and emotional toll that this crisis has taken on my constituents and many others has been heavy. They worked hard for decades to earn their pensions, and they expected a secure pot to provide for them and their families. That was put at risk because of the wrongdoing of a few bad actors and a weak response from the regulators. Steelworkers and their families have been let down. The Government and the FCA must improve their act and support those people better. The rogues who ripped off steelworkers and their families must be held to account. If the regulators cannot do that, the police need to step in. We need to make sure that good people see their hard-earned money better protected in future.

Beer Taxation and Pubs

Stephanie Peacock Excerpts

Thursday 28th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mike Wood]

I will take one last intervention and then I must move on, otherwise you will shout at me, Mr Deputy Speaker.

[Stephanie Peacock]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate and on his powerful speech. The Black Bull pub in Barnsley East closed last year, and the 250-year-old building is due to be demolished. Does he share the sadness, and what does he think we can do to improve the situation?

[Mike Wood]

I share the sadness whenever a well-used pub closes for any reason, and there is a particular impact on the community when that pub is a heritage building in a town, city or village.

Last autumn, 116,000 people up and down the country signed the Long Live the Local campaign—many of them emailing their MPs. It was launched by Britain’s Beer Alliance, and quickly garnered public support from licensees, beer drinkers and many more groups. I know that the success of that petition due to everybody who united behind the campaign was pivotal in persuading the Treasury of the need for action to support beer and pubs. I am delighted that the Chancellor listened to those passionate calls and froze beer duty once again.

The beer and pub sector is vital to our country. Nearly 900,000 people up and down the United Kingdom rely on the industry for work; 43% are younger people aged 16 to 24, and more than half are women. Supporting the pub trade is a fantastic way to reduce youth unemployment and develop skills among young people. This House saw at first hand the impact of apprenticeships across the hospitality sector and the opportunities available, during the apprenticeship showcase in National Apprenticeship Week.

Transport for Towns

Stephanie Peacock Excerpts

Tuesday 19th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Austin.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) on securing this important debate. I despair, however, at the necessity for it, because once again hon. Members find themselves discussing transport struggles. As usual, we see that smaller towns have been overlooked. In fact, two months ago to the day I stood here in Westminster Hall to relay the disgraceful experience of many people in Barnsley with our local rail services: prices are extortionate, delays regular and, when trains arrive, they are dilapidated, overcrowded and, frankly, better placed in a transport museum.

For many, the bus services around Barnsley are little better. Too often, they are run in the interests of profit, rather than as the essential public service that they provide. Many of my constituents in relatively rural towns are left isolated or out of pocket because of decisions made by the bus companies. Those companies pay no mind, for example, to my older constituent who, when his local service was changed, faced the prospect of spending a third of his weekly pension on a taxi to his local hospital appointments. They care little about my disabled constituent who, since the removal of her bus service, is forced to rely on the good will of neighbours to access the shops, library, post office or hairdresser. She is left, in her words,

“so isolated, lonely and fed up”.

That is simply not acceptable.

Bus services are the lifeblood of towns such as mine, but are too often run solely in the interests of profit. When unprofitable routes are cut, little mind is paid to the impact it has on the people who rely on them. Bus services should remain just that: a service.

Two months ago, the Minister admitted that

“it is fair to say that rail services across Yorkshire and the north as a whole have not been good enough.”—[Official Report, 19 December 2018; Vol. 651, c. 313WH.]

The fact of the matter is that that is true for many transport services in towns throughout the country, in particular northern towns such as Barnsley. It is about time that the Government finally addressed that woeful imbalance, and ensured that the interests of the public are taken into consideration in town transport services.