Business of the House

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Thursday 24th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for reminding us of the imperative of simplifying the tax system. He will know some of the initiatives that we have already taken. The Finance Bill is before the House, so there may be an opportunity to table amendments to introduce some of the initiatives recommended in the publication he mentioned. There may be an opportunity for a further debate when the Finance Bill returns to the Floor of the House. I applaud the work of the Office of Tax Simplification, and I hope that in future Budgets, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor will be able to make further progress in making the tax code easier to understand.

[Tony Lloyd (Manchester Central) (Lab)]

The Leader of the House will be aware of early-day motion 55, which strongly opposes the concept of regional pay for public sector workers:

[That this House notes the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s decision to give Government departments freedom to localise public sector pay; believes this will undermine pay review bodies by shifting wholesale to local bargaining in the public sector; further believes pay review bodies nationally are a better way of delivering flexibility while keeping a lid on costs; considers the Government’s plans will set hospital against hospital and school against school; opposes unfair discrimination against nurses, teachers and civil servants according to where they live when they are doing the same job; recognises that many successful large national companies use national pay bargaining for their staff pay; further recognises that with record unemployment and more than five jobseekers per job vacancy across the UK there is little evidence the public sector is crowding out the private sector; further believes this policy will offer nothing to private sector workers in low pay regions; fears this policy will instead remove substantial sums from the regions and devolved nations with the least, and reduce spending power and harm local economies as a consequence; and calls on the Government to suspend this policy until a full and independent assessment takes place on the economic impact of the policy and to engage meaningfully with all stakeholders affected by this policy across the UK prior to implementation.]

He will also be aware that a significant number of those sitting on the coalition Benches have signed up to it. May we soon have a debate—in Government time, but on a free vote—so that we can work out whether the Cable tendency in the coalition is going to oppose regional pay, which would be of enormous advantage to the nation?

[Sir George Young]

The hon. Gentleman will know that we have asked a commission to look at the whole issue of regional pay, so I think it would be premature to have a debate before that work is completed, which I believe is expected in the autumn. Thereafter it might be worth while to have a debate on the issue. So far as tensions within the Government are concerned, let me remind the hon. Gentleman that he was a member of a Government where the tensions within a one-party Administration were far greater than any tensions in the present two-party Administration.