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Tan Dhesi – 2022 Speech on Achieving Economic Growth

The speech made by Tan Dhesi, the Labour MP for Slough, in the House of Commons on 18 May 2022.

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake). This marks my fifth Queen’s Speech in this House. In that relatively short time, we have had two Prime Ministers, Brexit, a global pandemic and now a brutal cost of living crisis, yet one fact has remarkably stayed the same: this Government’s inability to rise to the challenge. They have not risen to the challenges faced by ordinary Brits, and sadly this Government-drafted Queen’s Speech follows the same disappointing pattern and fails to grasp the severity of the situation faced by millions of people across our country.

At every turn, the absence of any real help is an insult to hard-working people. The experts are clear: more than 1.5 million British households will soon face bills for food and energy that will exceed their disposable income after housing costs. Inflation is now at its highest level for 40 years at 9% and is set to soar very soon to more than 10%. Alarmingly, growth is forecast by the Bank of England to be negative next year.

Beyond these statistics are people. Many Members have already eloquently highlighted the real-life struggles their constituents face, and sadly Slough is no different. I have had constituents tell me that they have been forced to cut down to one meal a day or wear extra layers of clothes in their own homes. What is stopping Ministers from acting, for example with a one-off windfall tax on energy companies? Instead of taxing big energy companies posting extra profits in the billions, the Chancellor is more intent on taxing ordinary people, who are now afflicted with the highest tax burden since the 1960s.

Even when people are in work, they cannot expect to be offered adequate protection. The Queen’s Speech was 874 words, yet there was not one mention of workers’ rights. There was no employment Bill, as promised in the Conservatives’ election manifesto. We live in a time when workers’ rights are more important than ever, with insecure work, inadequate wages and unscrupulous tactics from employers, but instead of taking action, Government Ministers go about telling workers to work more or to get another job and do not offer a decent pay rise. It is absolutely absurd.

Where the Government have decided to legislate, they have completely missed the mark. Their priorities are all wrong. On crime in particular, we have had four Queen’s Speeches and three manifestos, yet the victims Bill still exists only in draft. That is of little use to the thousands of victims of crime unable to benefit. Crime is up and prosecutions are down to record lows. The number of arrests has dropped by 35,000, but victims and communities such as mine are still suffering. This Government have made huge cuts to Slough’s local youth services funding, made a real-terms cut to school budgets and cut community safety funding by 40% by 2024, even though our crime rate is 28% higher than the rest of the south-east and 27% above the national average. This Queen’s Speech offers nothing to address all that.

On housing, despite almost 1 million more people now living in private rented accommodation, it has taken this long for us to see the renters reform Bill. Although there is slow progress in some areas, there is no word on the promised 300,000 homes to be built every year by the mid-2020s, a lack of detail on the decent homes standard, and no mention of the lifetime deposit. Frustratingly, five years on from the deadly Grenfell tragedy, far too many of my Slough constituents remain trapped in flats with unsafe cladding and fire safety defects, with no end in sight.

This Queen’s Speech simply fails to address the problems that ordinary people up and down our country face, because Government Members do not fully understand the everyday realities of hard-working people. Where is the ambition to decarbonise our economy and our public transport system, to insulate our homes and to accelerate the transition to renewables? Where are the annual rolling programme of rail electrification, annual targets for more rail freight, and huge investment in green industry jobs? What are a Government for if not to protect people?

Privatising Channel 4 over helping families with household bills, street referendums for extensions over investing in youth services, arguing over what human rights to scrap instead of delivering a properly funded state pension—this Queen’s Speech was written by a Government who are out of touch and out of ideas. I implore Ministers to see what is so plainly happening around them and to do something to help the millions of struggling Brits. If they will not address the serious issues facing our country, they should step aside for those of us who will.

May 19, 2022
Kevin Hollinrake – 2022 Speech on Achieving Economic Growth

The speech made by Kevin Hollinrake, the Conservative MP for Thirsk and Malton, in the House of Commons on 18 May 2022.

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I will focus my remarks on the work of SMEs in driving economic growth. As we often say in this place, they, more than anything else, are the engine room of economic growth.

Taking a step back from that, the most important thing in driving economic growth—the foundation of which is productivity, which leads to prosperity—is more competition. Competition is very good for opportunity but also very good for consumers: it drives down prices and drives up service. When we started our estate agent business back in 1992, we quickly got to a leading market share in our marketplace. We were doing quite well. Two or three years later, we noticed lots of other “For Sale” and “To Let” boards popping up all over the place as new competition came in and was taking market share from us. Suddenly we were no longer the new kids on the block—the people who had got to No. 1. We had been pushed off our perch as the market leader. That made us look at what we were doing and become more efficient and more effective, work harder, and put a new package together so that we could once again become market leaders. That is the effect of competition—the driving force behind all the benefits for consumers that we see from competition. That is how it works in reality.

Clive Lewis

What competition drives the energy, water and rail sectors? They seem to be natural monopolies, if I am not mistaken, so can the hon. Gentleman tell me how the free market and competition help to drive down prices in those sectors?

Kevin Hollinrake

That is quite interesting, because energy distribution was very competitive in this country, with a huge expansion in the number of energy distributors that led to a driving down of prices very effectively. Where people got caught out was with the huge increase in wholesale costs, which drove lots of them out of business. However, that was an excellent example of how competition does work and drives down prices for consumers and increases choice. As to source energy, I agree that there are not enough big producers, which is why we must be careful when one or two big companies dominate the marketplace.

G.K. Chesterton said:

“Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists.”

That is why we need to focus on competition, making sure that the environment is very attractive to new businesses starting up and growing—SMEs. All our policies should focus on small businesses, not on big businesses, which can generally look after themselves.

We have to look at the brutal facts, I am afraid. I was a bit disappointed, as I said earlier, by what the Governor of the Bank of England said to the Treasury Committee about some of the issues we are seeing with labour shortages, which are driving inflation. We looked at some of the issues that SMEs, in particular, are facing in terms of accessing labour. In 2020, the last year we have reliable data for, net migration into the UK dropped by 88% from 271,000 people down to 34,000 people. People may say that is a good thing because we wanted to get a hold of immigration, and some of it may be due to covid effects. Nevertheless, pubs, restaurants and farmers, all of whom are generally SMEs, are finding life very difficult. We have to make sure that there is an available supply of labour. Another issue causing particular problems for SMEs is red tape at the borders—non-tariff barriers, as they might be called. There is a 45% reduction in the number of SMEs exporting to the European Union. These are facts we have to confront and deal with.

Levelling up is of particular interest to me as a representative of the north—from the north and for the north. We need to make sure that we level up properly and that the opportunities are spread equally nationwide. It is a huge undertaking. In relative terms, the gap between the north-east and London and the south-east in terms of productivity per capita is as wide as it was between East Germany and West Germany prior to reunification. It took 30 years and $2 trillion to narrow that gap. It is the right thing to do but it is a long haul. We need to get the private sector to invest, which was the lesson from East Germany. Such things as the enterprise investment scheme and the seed enterprise investment scheme are vital for equity investment to SMEs. Those measures are due to expire in 2025, and we need to see them extended. I would also like to see enhanced tax breaks for the EIS and SEIS so that businesses in the less well-off parts of the country can attract more investment capital into those areas.

Finally, one thing could make a massive difference. Lots of SMEs in this country will not borrow—some 73% would rather grow more slowly than borrow—which is partly because of the lack of trust between small businesses and big banks. Other parts of the world have something called regional mutual banks—Germany is a good example—that expanded lending during the financial crisis. In the UK, we contracted lending during the financial crisis—about 20% on either side. Regional mutual banks lend more into the economy at key times, and that could be a good policy for driving SMEs forward in our regions.

May 19, 2022
Liz Saville Roberts – 2022 Speech on Achieving Economic Growth

The speech made by Liz Saville Roberts, the Plaid Cymru MP for Dwyfor Meironnydd, in the House of Commons on 18 May 2022.

It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey) and his broad critique of the Queen’s Speech.

Today’s inflation figures add to mounting evidence of UK stagflation. The Conservatives’ record is of 12 years of failure to create an economy that delivers wellbeing for people across the United Kingdom—let us remember that they have been responsible for the economy for 12 years. From the banking crisis to the present day, the Conservative party has sought out every opportunity to impose austerity and to bring about a hard Brexit of its own making. Those have combined to aggravate the UK’s cost of living crisis. Yes, there have been other causes, which have been beyond our control, and possibly beyond any Government’s control, but these are ideological choices that will go down in history as Tory creations. Out of ideas other than to centralise powers that they do not possess and blame what they do not know, the Conservatives sit on their hands as the economy for which they are responsible fails to work for households and businesses across the UK.

The Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill does nothing to correct past mistakes or deliver for the future. The Welsh Government have stated that this Government’s post-Brexit funding arrangement for Wales falls short by £772 million of structural funds alone for the period 2021 to 2025. That is not only

“an assault on Welsh devolution”—

not my words, but the words of Labour’s Minister for Economy—but a broken election promise. More broadly, sources including Bloomberg illustrate a failure to maintain current standards, let alone deliver any improvement, across most of the UK and especially across Wales.

That is not what was promised on page 15 of the 2019 Welsh Conservatives manifesto, which said that

“no part of the UK loses out from the withdrawal of EU funding”.

It is certainly not what was promised on page 29, which said that

“Wales will not lose any powers or funding as a result of our exit from the EU.”

Three years into this Parliament and six years on from Brexit, this Government cannot articulate or deliver any clear benefits to Wales. We need an honest funding settlement, devolved engagement and a focus on delivery rather than glossy announcements.

Other elements of the Queen’s Speech also give pause for thought. Rather than correcting Wales’s underfunding of more than £5 billion from HS2, it gives us—wait for it—Great British Railways. Rather than working with Transport for Wales, our publicly owned transport body, it seems that Westminster’s solution to historical underfunding is to override our solution while not correcting the underlying problems that need fixing. Put bluntly, this Government’s approach to a difficult problem is to stick a Union Jack on it and sing a song of praise to past glories. Nostalgia does not an economy make.

Plaid Cymru drove the creation of the Development Bank of Wales, yet its future, and how the new UK infrastructure bank will work with rather than over the devolved institutions, is unclear. We do not know how what we are operating for ourselves to improve the economy of Wales will align with what is being done in Westminster. That is not good government.

Alison Thewliss

The right hon. Lady makes an excellent point. The Scottish National Investment Bank is already up and running, but there is nothing from the Government on how that will interact with their plans either.

Liz Saville Roberts

Exactly. The lack of clarity and working together does not help anybody’s economy.

This Queen’s Speech does nothing for the basics of the Welsh economy or to address the ongoing cost of living crisis. I reiterate Plaid Cymru’s call for an emergency Budget and measures including a windfall tax, increased energy bill support and the expansion of the rural fuel duty relief scheme for Wales.

Net zero is obviously in the Queen’s Speech but, alas, missed opportunities include the devolution of the Crown Estate and the establishment of a Welsh national energy company to support local renewable generation and fix grid capacity—measures, by the way, that Plaid Cymru has agreed with Labour in Wales through our co-operation agreement. It is good to see politicians working together in the common interest of all the people in all our communities, rather than in conflict. I ask the Government to address the shortage of grid capacity somehow, because without further grid capacity in many areas of Wales we cannot grow our own renewable supplies and make the best of that opportunity.

Westminster’s refusal to countenance legitimate devolved proposals to boost our economy scorns our democratic voice. It emphasises how, until we have full powers over our future, we will always be treated as second best, simultaneously mocked for seeking handouts and told to be contented with handouts.

I hope the Chancellor will address the immediate crisis with an emergency Budget, or whatever he chooses to call it, including measures such as a reformed SME tax relief in Wales to boost productivity as a first step. I also hope the UK Government’s vaunted Great British Nuclear will work with and learn from Wales’s existing Cwmni Egino, which is already at work to develop the nuclear licensed site of Trawsfynydd.

Where there is a problem, it seems the UK Government’s answer is to cobble together a UK-branded institution to wallpaper over the self-perpetuating vortex effect of research funding, public investment and targeted tax relief that keeps the south-east of England within the pale of economic privilege and the rest of England’s regions, Northern Ireland and the nations of Scotland and Wales, as always, beyond it.

May 19, 2022
Mark Pawsey – 2022 Speech on Achieving Economic Growth

The speech made by Mark Pawsey, the Conservative MP for Rugby, in the House of Commons on 18 May 2022.

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis), who addressed the topic of today’s debate, “Achieving economic growth”, by seeming to argue that economic growth is not only not important, but not desirable. I wonder therefore whether he will be having a word with his Front-Bench team, who seem to have spent most of the afternoon criticising the Government for not delivering sufficient economic growth, but that is a matter for him.

It is a pleasure to take part in today’s debate, to address the issue in question and to raise one or two points about the Queen’s Speech. Successful growth will be delivered through the effective role of the private sector. It is the private sector that is the wealth generator. I was delighted that the Chief Secretary accepted that reality in his opening remarks.

Both the economy generally and individual businesses face exceptional challenges, ones that have not been encountered for generations. Those challenges revolve around the recovery from the covid pandemic and, now, the need to address the issues arising from the conflict in Ukraine and its impact on energy prices.

I recently spent a really interesting lunch time with the Coventry and Warwickshire chamber of commerce. I expected those who attended to talk to me about supply chain problems and the challenges presented by inflation, but the biggest single issue they wanted to talk about was ensuring that they had a workforce with the right skills and the recruitment and retention of their staff. We have heard about jobs from many Members, not least my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), who spoke about the “jobs miracle”. The ONS tells us that unemployment is at its lowest since 1974 and job vacancies are at a record high of 1.295 million. In fact, we have more vacancies than people looking for work. The unemployment rate is now just 3.7%, which is the lowest rate for 50 years. The figures for my constituency tell exactly the same story, with unemployment falling and vacancies rising.

However, the current situation creates real challenges for businesses. As consumers, we recognise the effect of staff shortages: short-staffed businesses do not have the time to answer the phone or respond to inquiries, and there is a decline in service levels. Significantly for both businesses and the broader economy, opportunities are missed. In previous years, UK companies were able to look to eastern Europe to fill vacancies when they had staff and skills shortages, but that has become less of an option following our departure from the European Union. Businesses have raised with me the loss from the workforce of people in the 50 to 70 age demographic who either lost or left their jobs during the pandemic. The Government should focus on how we might get such experienced people back into the workforce.

There have been a lot of references in the debate to the ONS and its reports. Just a few months ago, in March 2022, the ONS published a report on its over-50s lifestyle study, which looked at the motivation of 50 to 70-year-olds who left employment during the pandemic. The ONS found that 77% of those aged 50 to 59 had left sooner than they had expected or intended to. It found that 19% had left because of stress or mental health, but that 58% would consider returning the workforce and 15% actively wanted to return. Were those people to return to the workforce, 36% of them would consider a flexible attitude to working to be most important, and 69% would want to work part time. It is important for the Government to consider ways to get such people back into the workforce, because they have valuable experience and can make a contribution. I saw an example of the people I am talking about in the volunteers I worked with on the delivery of the vaccine programme. Demand exists in the economy but it is not being fulfilled. We need to put the two things together.

In achieving economic growth, it is important for investors, customers, suppliers and the workforce to be able to understand the true state of a company. I note the Government’s interest in restoring trust in our audit and reporting systems through our corporate governance system. I am a member of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee and we have looked at auditing, so I was disappointed to see that the audit reform Bill in the Queen’s Speech remains only in draft form. I want to see swift action to ensure that the full Bill comes to the House as promptly as possible. We know about the dominance of the big four, and we have had many reports and three independent reviews, as well as the work done by the Select Committee. I want the Government to make sure that a transparent and effective audit system is introduced. There are plenty of reports calling for change, and we have seen the events at Carillion, Patisserie Valerie, Thomas Cook, P&O Ferries and BHS. We need to rectify the situation, and I hope that the audit reform Bill is brought forward.

It is important to equalise growth across the country, and the levelling-up provisions are incredibly important in that regard. On the planning system, I want to ensure that an adequate supply of land is made available for businesses. That is an issue in my constituency. We are at the centre of England, making ours an ideal location for the logistics businesses that want to serve the country, but land is rapidly being taken up. I am concerned that, even now, many local councils have no up-to-date local plan, and instead rely on applications coming in and development control.

I note some of the provisions on local involvement, but the current neighbourhood plans are too bureaucratic and long-winded and take too long to implement. I note, too, the attempt to give people more involvement in planning issues and the principle of street referendums, but I am uneasy about those proposals as they may become a vehicle for disputes between neighbours. The Government may also have a real challenge in defining what constitutes a street.

Housing supply is a vital part of economic growth. Building homes is an economic activity, and of course new housing provides homes for workers, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) reminded us a few moments ago. In my constituency, we have probably one of the best examples in the country of delivering new housing at volume through the development of Houlton, the sustainable urban extension to Rugby, which is being developed by Urban&Civic. That massive developer has great control over the activities of the house builders, and I believe that it is creating communities as well as building homes. It is vital that we provide the infrastructure first. In Rugby, we now have a link road to the main urban community, and both primary and secondary schools, but the challenge is to get the healthcare provision in place. There is a great deal of development in Rugby, and I am proud of what we have achieved.

I conclude by noting that there are many provisions in the Queen’s Speech that will support our businesses and enable growth and development to take place.

May 19, 2022
Clive Lewis – 2022 Speech on Achieving Economic Growth

The speech made by Clive Lewis, the Labour MP for Norwich South, in the House of Commons on 18 May 2022.

Unlike the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, I stand not as a conduit of God but as a heretic shaking my metaphorical fist at the crumbling edifice of economic orthodoxy.

The title of today’s debate is “Achieving Economic Growth,” but to what end? For more than 70 years, successive Governments preened themselves in the mirror and admired what they saw—growth. That mirror is better known as gross domestic product and it has become our key metric for judging how beautiful we are as both an economy and a society. We use it to gauge progress and as a proxy for our collective wellbeing, yet the mirror we have been staring into all these years is less of the bathroom variety and more of the fairground variety, reflecting a distorted image at odds with the reality confronting many of our constituents over those long decades.

Growth is an illusion that is partly responsible for driving three of the key challenges we now face: rising inequality, the erosion of democracy and the climate crisis. We have had GDP growth, albeit sluggish, over the past 12 years. Hence, by our main metric of choice, our collective wellbeing should have increased, even if only incrementally. That is the logic of the message we tell our constituents, “You’ve never had it so good because the economy is growing.”

Yet, by focusing on growth, we too often evade the hard political questions about distribution. If the economic pie is growing, the proportional size of the slice matters less, but the issue still gnaws away at people’s sense of fair play. Back in 2016, during a Brexit debate, a remain campaigner told his audience:

“If we leave the EU, GDP will fall.”

He was, of course, as we have seen, correct, but that is not the point I wish to make. The point is the heckle from a lady in the audience, which came back:

“That’s your bloody GDP. Not ours.”

She knew that for millions like her the proceeds of growth were never fairly shared and that, when the economy grew, the overwhelming beneficiaries of that growth were the rich and powerful, not her. Even when it was growing but not fast enough for its main beneficiaries, it was the public services that she relied on that had to be discarded—again, in the name of economic growth.

That leads us on to the second great challenge of this century: defending democracy, not just from external threats, such as Russia, but from within. Why? Because if people do not see the reality of their lived experience reflected in the political discourse of their politicians and do not hear their reality being discussed in this place, that gulf is dangerous. Citizens end up believing they are being deceived, and nothing is more dangerous or destructive to our democracy. We must understand that our constituents’ buy-in to any political economy depends not just on their absolute wealth, but, rather, on their relative wealth to those around them. As has been repeatedly demonstrated, the more unequal a society is, the less satisfied its citizens will be. That results in political instability, higher crime rates and higher levels of mental health illness—and we wonder why demand for mental health services is going through the roof in this country.

Let us, for the sake of argument, park both democracy and inequality to the side for one moment and ask ourselves: how do we square unlimited growth on a finite planet? It is a fair question but one that never gets a remotely convincing answer. Apparently, it is through increased resource use efficiency and productivity gains. In the next half of this century, the global economy will triple the number of people who will enjoy western levels of consumption, to 3 billion,. That is despite the fact that the l billion of us already consuming that much are using 1.6 times more of the planet’s resources than is sustainable—you can do the maths. In other words, the growth delusion is a fallacy that will drive climate and ecological destruction and kill us all. Only in the warped reality of our current growth-obsessed economic model is expansion without end seen as a virtue. In biology, it is called a cancer.

Bobby Kennedy knew this truth more than 50 years ago when he made his now famous speech on the limits of GDP growth as a metric for success. He understood that GDP is mercenary, blind to morality and indifferent to suffering. GDP growth loves pollution, especially if it has to be cleared up. It relishes crime, especially if more prisons must be built. It delights in war, especially if countries require rebuilding in the aftermath. That does not mean there is no place for GDP as an economic tool but, if we are to successfully face the existential challenges of this century, we need new political tools for measuring wellbeing, the health of our democracy, and the ecological and climate cost of our economic activities.

May 19, 2022
Edward Leigh – 2022 Speech on Achieving Economic Growth

The speech made by Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP for Gainsborough, in the House of Commons on 18 May 2022.

The hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) attacks us for being the party of low growth, but this is the party that has presided over a situation where we have more people in employment than ever before. Unbelievably, the number of vacancies is higher than the number of those who are unemployed. But he is right—this is why I am going to follow the hon. Gentleman—to focus laser-like on what we are told to talk about today, although we are allowed to stray a bit during this Queen’s Speech debate, which is achieving economic growth. That is what the British people care about. In time, we can have an interesting debate about Channel 4 privatisation, about foie gras and about conversion therapy, but those are not the overwhelming priorities of the British people at the moment. What they are concerned about is the cost of living crisis.

There has never been an easier opportunity for the Opposition to attack the Government in terms of broad economic statistics, but that ignores the fact that when the last general election took place we could not possibly have predicted the impact of a global pandemic or, unbelievably, war in Europe as a result of the cruel tyrant Putin trying to recreate an old-style empire. I would argue that no Government since the second world war have faced greater challenges. I would also contend that, generally, the Opposition have failed to provide any substantial alternative policies that would have greatly alleviated the situation in regard to the war in Ukraine or the pandemic.

I am going to hold the Government to account, however. I want to hold them to account on the tax burden. Given that families are suffering and people are lying awake at night desperately searching for a way to pay their bills, and that we are in such a crisis, we have to move in a far more radical direction on the overall tax burden. I put that to the Chancellor of the Exchequer yesterday in Treasury questions, and I was quite pleased with his response when I urged him to make this a priority.

We are now facing the heaviest tax burden since the 1940s. Freezing income tax thresholds, combined with more inflation, will push many people into higher tax thresholds. Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that

“almost all workers will be paying more tax on their earnings in 2025 than they would have been paying without this parliament’s reforms to income tax and NICs”.

The rise in inflation is projected to spark the biggest decline in living standards in any single financial year, so I follow the hon. Member for Aberavon in calling for radical policies. I am not against a windfall tax, but I am not sure that, on its own, it will make a great deal of difference after we have divided its receipts between every household in Britain. Frankly, the Chancellor has to come back to this House in time for the Budget, or preferably before, and introduce a cut in the overall tax burden.

I also want to talk about the housing crisis. If we are going to kick-start the economy and help our young people get into housing, we simply have to build much more housing. The number of dwellings where, according to building control figures, building work had started on the site was 41,600 in October to December 2021. That was a 3% decrease compared with the previous quarter and a 3% decrease compared with the same quarter of the previous year. The number of dwellings completed from October to December 2021 was 41,330, a 4% decrease on the previous quarter and an 11% decrease on the same quarter of the previous year. The fact is that this is a crisis.

I welcome that, through the Queen’s Speech, the Government are honestly attempting to find a way through the planning controls to get the housing we need, but we need a similar effort to the one we had after the second world war, when Harold Macmillan built 300,000 council houses a year. We have to see this as an absolute priority.

There is no point building more housing—and it is a crisis we need to address—or cutting taxes if, at the same time, immigration is out of control. The Government have to understand that we simply cannot replace mass immigration from the EU with mass immigration from the rest of the world, which is why the channel crossings are so totemic. The Home Secretary is right to try to address the crossings, for all the controversy.

Last week, from 9 to 15 May, 607 migrants aboard 25 boats were detected in the channel. In the week before, from 2 to 8 May, 792 migrants aboard 30 boats were detected. From 25 April to 1 May, 254 migrants aboard seven boats were detected. This cannot continue. We have to build houses, we have to control immigration, we have to cut taxes and we have to kick-start the economy.

Although there has been great criticism of the Government’s handling of the Northern Ireland protocol, we have to unite this United Kingdom. We cannot have a situation in which there is no proper Government in Northern Ireland. The fact is that the DUP will not come back into government unless we address the protocol. I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) that of course we want to respect international law, but we have to sort this out.

The issues we face are urgent and important. I am sure the Government are listening, and I urge them to address these issues as dramatically as they would address the issues following a world war. The effects of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine are so grave that we should all unite, with a sense of compassion, to help people who are suffering with this level of inflation, rising costs and rising taxation.

May 19, 2022
Stephen Kinnock – 2022 Speech on Achieving Economic Growth

The speech made by Stephen Kinnock, the Labour MP Aberavon, in the House of Commons on 18 May 2022.

In the recent local elections, the Conservatives lost almost 500 council seats across Britain as the public delivered their verdict on the Conservative Government’s performance at Westminster. Voters expressed their dismay at the Chancellor’s refusal to get a grip on rising inflation or offer families support through the cost of living crisis. This Gracious Speech provided the Conservatives with an opportunity to reset by introducing legislation to meet three major challenges: tackling rising household bills, starting to grow our economy again and building into our economy the all-important resilience that we require at a time when hostile foreign states such as Russia and China are on the rise.

The Conservative Government have offered none of those things, so the entire Gracious Speech has fallen utterly and spectacularly flat. Despite the Government’s promise in the opening sentence to

“help ease the cost of living for families”,

there was nothing of the sort to be found in the speech. With household energy bills rising by £700 a year and inflation outstripping wages, we needed a Government who were ready to tackle this crisis head-on. Instead, the Conservatives are raising taxes on working people, and in this they are an outlier: no other Government are responding to the cost of living crisis by hammering working people with more taxes.

The Labour party has a clear plan. First, we would scrap the national insurance rise. Then we would reduce energy bills by as much as £600 per household per year, expand the warm home discount, and support the businesses that are hardest hit. That would be paid for by a windfall tax on the spiralling profits of oil and gas giants which, by the admission of BP bosses themselves, have

“more cash than we know what to do with”

and are effectively “a cash machine”.

However, we would also look to the long term. As well as taking those immediate crisis management measures, we would fix the foundations of Britain’s economic model. Despite the Government’s latest attempts to shift the blame, it is clear that the roots of this cost of living crisis are not global but national. The reality is that the Chancellor is presiding over a high-tax economy, and that is because, for more than a decade, the Conservatives have presided over a low-growth economy, based on insecure work and chronic underinvestment, driving a productivity crisis. Indeed, Britain has a 20% productivity gap with other leading nations. There has been chronic underinvestment by consecutive Conservative Governments in research and development, but the impact of that has been a real shortfall in investment by the private sector in the UK, compared with Europe. Figures from the OECD show that Britain’s private sector investment as a share of GDP is the lowest among the 36 members assessed.

At the heart of the decline in productivity has been the decline in our manufacturing sector. Since 2015 alone, the Government have lost more than 230,000 manufacturing jobs. The result has been an increasingly unbalanced economy, in favour of London and the south-east, and proof that the Conservatives are not levelling up, but levelling down. Communities across Britain’s proud industrial heartlands in the midlands, northern England and South Wales—home of my Aberavon constituency and our Port Talbot steelworks, of which we are immensely proud—are struggling to get a look in.

What we need is a modern manufacturing renaissance. It is far easier to drive productivity gains in the manufacturing sector than to do so in services, but this is not manufacturing based on the old industries of the past; it is modern, it is green, and it is in the high-tech industries of the future. Those are the industries that deliver the good, meaningful, productive, well-paid jobs on which people can raise a family on, and they are the jobs that will get our economy firing on all cylinders, throughout the UK. We need to get Britain making and exporting at levels that reflect our true potential.

That is why the shadow Chancellor’s “make, buy and sell more in Britain” policy is so important. A Labour Government would change procurement laws so that the British Government must buy British by default. A Labour Government would introduce a green steel deal, creating a world-leading steel industry to power us through the century ahead. A Labour Government would back 100,000 businesses with start-up loans to boost British small and medium-sized enterprises. Labour’s plan is to build a better post-covid economy, to drive growth and truly get our economy firing on all cylinders, with good jobs at its heart.

Let us contrast our approach to work and good jobs on which people can raise a family with the Conservatives’ axing of the long-promised employment Bill, which was expected to outlaw the type of dreadful business practice that we saw when 800 P&O Ferries workers were sacked and replaced by foreign workers paid less than the minimum wage. Labour would outlaw that practice immediately, across the board.

A modern manufacturing renaissance will not only help to boost growth and help us to build a vibrant, modern economy for the future; it will also help us to build that resilient economy for the future—a Britain that can stand more firmly on its own two feet. By backing British manufacturing, we can reduce supply chain pressures caused by the behaviour of authoritarian states such as Russia and China, and by the covid-19 pandemic. In that regard, an energy security plan is also crucial. Frankly, it is staggering that China owns 33% of the Hinkley Point nuclear power station.

There is too little in the UK Government’s new agenda that actually gets to the core, underlying issues that underpin this cost of living crisis. A wasted decade of low growth has left us with a weak and insecure economy that is ill-prepared for the challenges and turbulence of an uncertain world. Building that economy is the job of Government. Politicians are not bystanders in this. The Chancellor is not a victim. The Tories have become the party of high taxes and low pay because they are the party of low growth and insecurity. We believe that Britain deserves better. A Labour Government would help workers and families through this cost of living crisis and deliver the resilient, growing, sustainable economy that will get our country fit for the future.

May 19, 2022
Crispin Blunt – 2022 Speech on Achieving Economic Growth

The speech made by Crispin Blunt, the Conservative MP for Reigate, in the House of Commons on 18 May 2022.

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, and I rise to give general support to the Queen’s Speech. There are areas about which I am particularly enthusiastic, and there are one or two areas where I have to sound a note of warning for my Whips.

I thought that the tone adopted by the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) and the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) was rather surprisingly wide of the mark. Their remarks were perhaps a little ungracious about the Gracious Speech. The hon. Gentleman said that the Queen’s Speech lacks content and does not really have a theme. I have here the explanatory notes for the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, given that we are talking about substance. He complained that there were Bills that would be no more than clauses in other Bills, but this Bill has 11 parts, all of which could be very substantial Bills in other cases. It recognises that the reputation of this Administration will very much depend on whether, by the next election, we have put in place the path to delivering levelling up and regeneration in practice, and that those parts of the country that lent us their vote in 2019 will convert that to a rather more permanent arrangement when they see this Administration beginning to deliver in a way that they have not seen for decades. This Bill provides a most important centre of the legislative programme and, by and large, it will have my full support.

There are specific opportunities in the Queen’s Speech. For example, the genetic technology Bill, which has been championed by our absolutely marvellous science Minister—the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman)—will open up potential opportunities for growth in our economy and investment in science and research. The United Kingdom should take the opportunities to establish global leadership in this space.

I am a veteran, and although I did not serve in the Province in my time in the armed forces, I think that the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill is the product of long consultation and wise reflection to try to find the right balance to deal with the difficult issues involved.

The Social Security (Special Rules for End of Life) Bill is to be welcomed. It recognises the long periods in which people now have to live with the prospect of knowing that their lives are coming to an end, and will extend benefits from six months to 12.

In general, I welcome the Public Order Bill, which will hold to account people who are intent on disrupting society. As for its content, however, I feel that we might have slightly missed an opportunity in imposing criminal sanctions on those people. Why not civil sanctions? If they are determined to go to the greatest trouble for the greatest number, and to impose costs on our public services and costs on people whose activities are disrupted in an unfair way—as regards the cause that protesters are trying to promote—I think that we should have explored civil sanctions rather more carefully. If people with resources are going to stick themselves to the road or tie themselves to the top of underground trains, so that the travel arrangements of others are disrupted, there is a specific opportunity to provide restoration to those who have been inconvenienced by them. As a great supporter of restorative justice, I think that we should try to widen the spread of that in the justice system, so that we hold people accountable for their actions against and damage to others.

Obviously I welcome the inclusion in the Gracious Speech of the conversion therapy ban Bill. It is still being drafted and has not yet been presented to the House, but we hope to see it before we rise for the summer recess. I say gently to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister that it may be easy to make a quip and laugh at the Leader of the Opposition’s expense about what a woman looks like, but perhaps he does not need to look very much further than Bridgend to see that the question can be just a little more complicated than a first glance might suggest. I therefore think that gender identity should be included within the scope of the conversion therapy ban Bill. I will certainly lend my support to colleagues on both sides of the House to work in the direction of ensuring that we have a proper conversion therapy ban that protects people in respect both of sexuality and of gender identity.

I understand the purpose of the boycott Bill, which is described as legislation to

“prevent public bodies engaging in boycotts that undermine community cohesion.”

However, I think we need to be a little careful. I am afraid that in the last Session I supported an amendment on the subject tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick); that was an error of judgment on my part, because I was not paying sufficient attention to the business, and I do not intend to repeat that mistake if the boycott measure comes back to the House. It is designed to take away people’s ability to make a statement of their beliefs about the policy of a nation that is in gross breach of international law. Obviously the nation is question is Israel, and obviously the community cohesion being thought about relates to antisemitism within communities. I fully appreciate the Government’s concerns about the matter, but if a nation is in gross breach of the fourth Geneva convention, has invaded and then settled an occupied territory, and is killing journalists in that territory who are observing what is going on, we might just want to reflect on what capacity or ability there is in our society to say, “We don’t think that’s right,” notwithstanding the obvious associated issues of antisemitism.

Finally, on the Northern Ireland protocol Bill, the statement that we make in the Gracious Speech about our values as a society—the values of Britain post Brexit—is incredibly important. We need to be a nation that stands up for the rule of law and the rules-based international system to sustain our security and our role in the world. The enormous reputation of the City of London and of the commercial part of our justice system, in which companies from countries around the world come to have their disputes adjudicated under British law in British courts, is a huge credit to our country and our system. British law, in general, is trusted. I do not think that we should play quite so fast and loose with powers to overturn the protocol until we have explored every other conceivable option, including holding the European Union responsible for the consequences of an overly legalistic approach, which I think would be a better route.

May 19, 2022
Rupa Huq – 2022 Speech on Achieving Economic Growth

The speech made by Rupa Huq, the Labour MP for Ealing Central and Acton, in the House of Commons on 18 May 2022.

The Gracious Speech the other day was most memorable for being a Queen’s Speech without a Queen. It was also an agenda from a Government without clear direction, flailing around in their 12th year. As the Institute for Government said,

“it reads like a manifesto aimed at the party base more than a realistic programme.”

That is what we get when we have an Administration diverted from the real issues of the day by self-preservation. While 38 Bills is, on the face of it, a frenetic level of legislation—it is the most in almost a decade and four times that of the last Queen’s Speech—when we strip away the bits that are reheated leftovers that the Government could not get through the Lords last time and the bits and pieces that will scrap EU regulations, we see that, paradoxically, it is a very thin speech. It is a scattergun of afterthoughts, and it puts off all the really big decisions.

When, the other day, the Prime Minister had a go at our hard-working civil service by saying that it had a mañana culture—I am told that the word translates as “tomorrow”—he seemed to identify that his own Government have been gripped with putting everything into a “too difficult for right now” box to be dealt with tomorrow. Although the words “cost of living crisis” were included in the speech’s text, it was missing any big, overarching ideas for dealing with the crippling of household finances when it comes to the weekly shop, leaving the lights on, heating the house or filling up the tank. The Government’s answer for when they might deal with any of the above, or the record inflation that we see today, is some ill-defined date in the future, but the problem is now.

Take the flagship pledge to ban buy-one-get-one-free on junk food—again, kicked into the long grass. I do not know if that is because the Conservatives are not into the nanny state or whether it was nanny who told them to do it. Whatever it is, it just reeks of timidity. The whole thing is like a bad episode of “Neighbours”, where we have No. 10 and No. 11 at war with each other. They only thing they are agreed on is that if you break the law you can get away with it—you don’t have to resign.

From the content of the Queen’s Speech, we would not know that we are in the midst of a European war, that we are coming out of a global pandemic with a spluttering economy edging perilously close to recession, or that we are in a climate crisis. Instead, what do we have? Ideological hobby horses and populist posturing. We have a higher education Bill consisting of student number controls and a lifelong loan entitlement—more dumbing down than levelling up. Then there is the freedom of speech Bill roundly condemned by everyone in the higher education sector. That is what you get when you have had enough of experts. There is a Bill to curb Insulate Britain, but nothing that would actually help to insulate Britain’s homes. With high streets increasingly boarded up and turning into cash deserts, it is shameful that food bank usage is rocketing but that in Acton banks are an extinct species. TSB has now gone in Ealing, which is going the same way.

Faced with crises at home and abroad, what is the Government’s priority? It is to privatise the widely respected Channel 4, which costs us all not a penny. It is a solution to which there is no problem. The proposal is condemned by prominent Conservatives, such as the former Culture Secretary who is now the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, the right hon. Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt), and the right hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green), a former deputy Prime Minister, who is no longer in his place, so even their own side do not like it. It was not even in the Conservative manifesto and it looks like revenge. Members might remember that that was promised when the Prime Minister did not turn up to the Channel 4 election debate and he was replaced with an ice sculpture.

We now have a Bill for BO—the laughably titled Brexit opportunities Bill—with more dead ends and might-have-beens, and more re-writing of history all over. The Prime Minister trumpeted removing VAT on domestic energy during the referendum campaign. His exact words were:

“When we vote leave, we will be able to scrap this unfair and damaging tax.”

The country obliged, but six years on, in the middle of an energy price crisis, nothing. Then there is the manifesto pledge that Brexit would allow them to ban the import of foie gras, which is so cruel to ducklings and geese. Vanished, all because the Prime Minister is too chicken to do anything about it. [Hon. Members: “Groan!”] Only warm words, but no concrete proposals on trophy hunting. All our constituents write in in their hundreds about these things—but the proposals are gone. Two years on since the promise of an employment Bill—that sounded really good, didn’t it?—employment rights, flexible working and carers’ leave have also disappeared from the Queen’s Speech, despite the P&O scandal. BO seems, concerningly, a handy cover to euphemistically deregulate and scrap protections in a race to the bottom Singapore-on-Thames, which we know at least half the Cabinet salivates for.

We now know that the plan is to leave the European Court of Human Rights, and repeal and dilute EU law bypassing Parliament. It is all very fitting for a Government with an aversion to being held to account—wasted time and populist headline chasing when we could be addressing the real crises of a country feeling the pinch. The Financial Times said it is

“red meat over real reform”,

a bunch of ill-considered, ill-timed, unnecessary and nakedly political measures: flogging off that great Thatcher legacy, Channel 4; waging a trade war with the EU; joining Russia—only Russia has done this before—in quitting the ECHR; and regulating street naming. I have knocked on loads of doors over the years every day in the run-up to elections, and no normal person on the doorstep wants any of that. Yet there is nothing to tackle the climate crisis, or to cut energy bills, or to make people more secure at work, or to turn around our struggling economy—none of the stuff that people desperately need.

The rollercoaster nature of the Government is that they are prone to knee-jerkism and tearing up their own manifesto commitments rather than thinking through problems. On this occasion, this ostensible blizzard of Bills is ultimately a too-little-too-late Queen’s Speech without a Queen. I was pleased to see that Her Majesty was on Crossrail yesterday and has been enjoying the horses recently. HRH has been an able stand-in, but maybe we can all agree that Her Majesty will deliver many more addresses from the throne, starting, as soon as possible, with one from my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), the Leader of the Opposition, when we re-take the reins. Bring it on!

May 19, 2022
Andrew Selous – 2022 Speech on Achieving Economic Growth

The speech made by Andrew Selous, the Conservative MP for South West Bedfordshire, in the House of Commons on 18 May 2022.

I am delighted to be called in this debate. I want to talk about three areas in my seven minutes: the economy, general practice, and skills and schools.

Yesterday I was delighted to receive the very good news from the House of Commons Library that unemployment had fallen by 1,725 in the year to April in my constituency. Every one of those people is an individual, able to contribute to a household budget and help with the family finances. Sometimes I do not think we realise what a jobs miracle this country’s economy has been over the years. In the middle of the last decade, the United Kingdom was creating more jobs than the whole of the rest of the European Union put together. That is an amazing jobs creation record. The fact that the economy is still enabling those jobs to be produced after the covid shock and the Ukraine shock is quite incredible. I pay tribute to all businesses large and small, and to Government policy, for enabling that to happen.

What is happening in Ukraine is having a consequence on people’s cost of living. One thinks of the storehouses in Odesa, full of grain that could go around the world to feed hungry people and that would help grain prices to come down and help us in the United Kingdom. However, because of the evil action of the Putin regime, that is not allowed to happen. Ukraine is also the world’s fourth largest producer of ammonia and fertiliser, which is having a huge impact on the problems that our farmers are facing.

I am also acutely conscious that housing, particularly in my constituency and large parts of the south-east, is a mammoth part of people’s outgoings. There is a lot of talk at the moment, quite understandably, about increasing energy and food costs. In my part of the world, it is not unusual for people’s rent to be two thirds of their income. That is simply not sustainable. It is really tough for people on lower incomes in high housing cost areas. We need to confront that. I know that the Prime Minister and the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Secretary get that, and in my view this issue at the heart of poverty issues in large parts of the south.

As has been pointed out for years by the British architect Bill Dunster OBE, the architect of Portcullis House—if that does not put those of my colleagues who have offices there off him—it is possible to build zero-energy-bill homes that sell back more energy to the grid than they draw down. Those homes would not have gas and electricity bills, which would be fantastic for our greenhouse gas emission targets and the huge energy shock that is causing so much worry and concern for many of our constituents. I know that we are reducing carbon in new homes by 70%, but I would encourage the Government to go further and faster in this area.

I note the £22 billion and the £83 billion in debt interest, but I was pleased to hear the Chancellor say yesterday:

“we will do more to support the most vulnerable”.—[Official Report, 17 May 2022; Vol. 714, c. 585.]

That is absolutely right, and I look forward to seeing the details, particularly for the disabled and pensioners. Given the Chancellor’s record in getting the country through covid, I know that he will not disappoint in that area.

Richard Graham

Does my hon. Friend agree that the statistic that emerged yesterday—that we have increased the number of people with disabilities in employment to 1.3 million, after setting a target of 1 million in 2017, which we have achieved within five years—is astonishing and the result of hard work by many people, including the applicants themselves?

Andrew Selous

I am so grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. There is a wonderful Indian employer in my constituency who calls his disabled staff “differently abled”. That is a wonderful way to put it, because they have amazing gifts to bring. Often, employers will say that they are some of the most hard working and dedicated, which is why our disability confident campaign, which has clearly been successful, is so important, so I thank my hon. Friend for raising that point.

Secondly, I am focusing in particular on the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill and what it needs to do, and I want to raise the appalling difficulty that many of us on both sides of the House have in getting sufficient additional general practice capacity where there are huge new housing developments. We are a country that generally does public administration and planning well—for example, I rarely come across a child who does not have a school place—because we have brilliant civil servants and brilliant local authority officers. However, I must say that a major exception is general practice, where the system is not working well. I ask my Front-Bench colleagues please to note that and take it back across Government.

There is an alphabet soup of different places to go to try to get a health hub or extra GP surgeries. One could try section 106 or the community infrastructure levy. One might be lucky with the housing infrastructure fund. Perhaps one’s local authority—or even Government capital from the Treasury to the Department of Health and Social Care—will come to the rescue. It is complicated and uncertain, and we are not serving our constituents well in ensuring that general practice capacity is available. I have 14,000 new houses being built, which will help with the housing issues that I mentioned, but that is more than 36,000 new residents coming to my area for which we must have the general practice capacity. I will keep campaigning on that issue until it is resolved.

I turn to the Schools Bill. The Government are doing lots of good things in schools and skills, and never has that been more important. I am pleased to report to my hon. Friends on the Front Bench that the Church of England is particularly pleased with the Bill. Why is that significant? The Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church run a third of the schools in England, so it is a big stakeholder. The Bishop of Durham and Nigel Genders, our chief education officer, have said how pleased they are and that they have extremely good co-operation with the Secretary of State for Education, which they are delighted with. They think they can do a lot more together. I like what we are doing on lifetime skills. T-levels are really important. There is a little more work to do on apprenticeships, but what we are doing on employer representative bodies is absolutely right.

I have a particular issue with computer numerical control operators in my area as engineering businesses are screaming to get hold of them. I am working closely with the Bedford College Group on that, which we must press through. Those jobs pay about £48,000 a year, so it is not right that we cannot get people to do them. The skills Minister—the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart)—is coming to Houghton Regis on 6 June and I look forward to his visit.

May 19, 2022