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Tag: 2022

  • Grant Shapps – 2022 Comments on the International Transport Forum

    Grant Shapps – 2022 Comments on the International Transport Forum

    The comments made by Grant Shapps, the Secretary of State for Transport, on 18 May 2022.

    Transport binds nations together for the common good. But access to the international transport network is a privilege. It requires countries to act in a responsible and respectful way to each other.

    So we cannot stand back when one state, entirely unprovoked, attacks another, killing thousands of innocent people, violating international law and breaching the UN Charter.

    The targeted destruction of one nation’s infrastructure, in particular its transport system, clearly contravenes the very foundations on which the ITF is built.

    The United Kingdom stands with our partners in condemning the outrageous actions of Vladimir Putin and the Russian military in Ukraine.

  • Maria Caulfield – 2022 Comments on the Maternity Disparities Taskforce

    Maria Caulfield – 2022 Comments on the Maternity Disparities Taskforce

    The comments made by Maria Caulfield, the Minister for Women’s Health, on 18 May 2022.

    We must do everything we can to empower women with the information and services they need to ensure a healthy pregnancy for mum and baby, no matter their background or where they live.

    The latest Maternity Disparities Taskforce meeting brought together experts from across the NHS, health charities to share ideas and experiences on how we can ensure women from ethnic minorities and the most deprived areas receive the support they need.

    By listening to women’s experiences we can better understand the issues they face and how to improve care, and I look forward to making progress in this area.

  • Jeremy Quin – 2022 Comments on Defence BattleLab

    Jeremy Quin – 2022 Comments on Defence BattleLab

    The comments made by Jeremy Quin, the Defence Procurement Minister, on 18 May 2022.

    As the pace of technological change continues to spiral, Defence must be forward leaning and innovative in its approach.

    Collaboration and innovation will be the catalysts to maintaining advantage over our adversaries. The BattleLab will bring together the best talent and expertise in industry and push technology boundaries to equip our Armed Forces with the latest state of the art kit.

    This will be supported by our new Land Industrial Strategy, which will increase transparency with industry to help drive joint working.

  • Chloe Smith – 2022 Speech at the Disability Confident Jobs Fair

    Chloe Smith – 2022 Speech at the Disability Confident Jobs Fair

    The speech made by Chloe Smith, the Minister for Disabled People, at the Disability Confident Jobs Fair on 18 May 2022.

    Introduction

    It is a pleasure to be here today to open this Disability Confident Jobs Fair at Hillman Street JCP.

    I think events like this are so valuable for connecting disabled people with employers and employers with disabled people.

    Because, no-one should be left behind, frozen out of the workplace or lose their potential simply because they have a disability or health condition.

    Everyone should have the same opportunity for a fulfilling working life, to get all the benefits that come from a regular pay packet and to build a secure and resilient future for themselves and their family.

    Work and progressing in work is the best route to raising living standards – and a disability should not disqualify you from being part of that growth.

    The last two years though have been really tough.

    But because of our sustained focus on getting people into work, we had the highest level of employment this country had ever seen when Covid hit.

    And since then, by our Plan for Jobs – whether through the furlough scheme or our wide range of employment programmes – we have protected jobs and livelihoods and helped people back into work.

    Now we are supporting families with the cost of living with £22 billion worth of help in 2022-23. But we’re also focussing on the long-term solutions by growing our economy and getting people into good and well paid jobs. And there are so many opportunities out there right now, with record high numbers of vacancies and employers looking to fill roles quickly.

    I want to help as many disabled people as possible to start, stay and succeed in the strong labour market we have at the moment. I want you to be part of our growth as a country, and the opportunities in your community.

    That means helping the many disabled people who want to work to break down the barriers they may still face and blowing apart remaining perceptions, presumptions or stereotypes.

    For example, the false notion held by some that disabled people have lower productivity or that making adjustments is too difficult or too expensive. Of course, many employers are already welcoming diversity and thinking profoundly about inclusion.

    Today is part of how we break down even more barriers by showcasing the passion, skills, dedication and talent of disabled people and the benefits they can bring to an employer.

    To see past a disability to a person’s potential.

    To focus on what a person can do rather than what they can’t.

    To complete the empowerment through employment that so many disabled people tell me they want.

    I’m thinking about disabled People like Sukhraj, who has kindly shared his story for me to share with you today. He has a hearing impairment from birth and had been relying on family members for support. With help from a Disability Employer Adviser, specialist employment support, adjustments like the Calm and Quiet provision, and Access to Work, Sukhraj has got himself trained up and nearly ready to go into a job offer as a pastry chef.

    I think his story shows how with the right support and employer approach, disabled people can succeed. It makes me want to say “ready, steady, bake!” to Sukhraj, and anyone else who will be a star baker!

    This is why Disability Confident itself is such an important scheme to change attitudes, cultures and behaviours, as well as give employers the knowledge, skills, and confidence they need to attract, and help people develop in the workplace.

    One million milestone

    I want to touch on a milestone we hit yesterday. The good news is that we know more employers are reaping the benefits of having disabled people on their payroll.

    The disability employment gap has closed by about five percentage points since 2013.

    And yesterday, the latest labour market statistics showed that we have smashed the commitment we made in our 2017 manifesto to see one million more disabled people move into employment over ten years.

    The fact this has been achieved now, in just half the time, reflects our wider focus on, and success in, getting people into work and the extra support we have introduced to help disabled people move into jobs, as well as broader changes in society, and in the workplace.

    I think everyone here can share in the success of having reached this milestone.

    Employers, work coaches, charities, representative organisations – and most of all disabled people themselves.

    And I hope we can continue that momentum as we continue to focus on improving accessibility and inclusion in the 21st Century world of work.

    Because, we know that while reaching that milestone is fantastic, this job is not done.

    There are still far too many disabled people who could – and should – be enjoying the benefits that employment brings. But this challenge won’t be cracked by Government alone.

    I am genuinely excited about the opportunities across the jobs market and in wider society right now to build on the progress that we have made.

    That is why I am focused on improving, reforming and transforming the support disabled people can access both to get into work and while they are working.

    I will talk about that, and then come on to how others beyond government have every bit as much a role to play.

    White Paper

    As our 2019 manifesto set out, we want to empower and support disabled people. The benefits system is one important lever we have to help achieve this.

    That means taking a close look at how the system works, how disabled people interact with it and looking at ways it can be improved so it better delivers for disabled people.

    Our Health and Disability White Paper later this summer will help disabled people to live more independently, including with more help to move into work, where work is right for the individual.

    The White Paper will set out our plans to ensure the benefits system better meets the needs of disabled people now and in the future, informed by the huge amounts of feedback we received to the Green Paper.

    It will set out how we will go further to ensure that disabled people and people with health conditions have every opportunity and the support that they need to thrive in life and in work, and to improve the experience of everyone when they call on DWP for support.

    More Work Coach support

    We will offer more support to the 2.8 million people with health conditions receiving Universal Credit or Employment Support Allowance.

    From 14th June, we will be trialling an offer of additional Work Coach support for claimants currently awaiting their Work Capability Assessment, initially across a third of the country.

    Later in the year, we will expand the offer to claimants after their Work Capability Assessment with limited capability for work but who want help to move closer or into the labour market over time.

    This additional Work Coach support in jobcentres like the one we’re in here today, will enable disabled people to access employment and wider skills support, and our employment programmes earlier.

    Our increasing numbers of Disability Employment Advisors will help embed the benefits of this additional support, using their expert knowledge to help Work Coaches understand the challenges faced by disabled people and provide tailored support.

    Access to Work reform & pilots

    Turning to Access to Work, this is a fantastic scheme offering financial support to people who need extra help.

    In 2020/21, it provided over £100 million of funding to over 37,000 people. But we want to do more, and support more disabled people to access employment.

    I want it to be even better by improving the service, removing time consuming and bureaucratic parts, streamlining it for claimants and making it innovative, visible, and accessible.

    I know applying for it and receiving it often takes too long and I want to radically improve the service disabled people get and the time it takes.

    And I am pleased to be able to tell you that we are working to transform Access to Work and offer disabled people a more streamlined, digital service that is visible and accessible.

    We are making good progress, with the first phase of the digital transformation, the payments process, being delivered this year.

    We are also piloting Adjustment Passports to help support and empower disabled people to have a more structured conversation with potential employers about their disability, and to speed up the Access to Work process and reduce the need for assessments.

    The passport is already up and running in three universities, including Kings College here in London.

    The pilots are going well, and I was delighted to hear more about how it was going in Wolverhampton and hear from the students who are starting to complete the passport.

    This month we are rolling out the Health Adjustment Passport across all jobcentres, helping all disabled jobseekers to have the opportunity to get access to that.

    We are also continuing to develop our Access to Work Mental Health Support service. Mental health wellbeing is key to enabling people to sustain employment and I’m committed to ensuring that, that service continues to provide that tailored mental health support.

    Access to Work Plus

    We will also be testing a new approach, called Access to Work Plus to open up employment opportunities for disabled people who have the greatest barriers to employment.

    That will provide financial support to those employers who go further in the support they provide and consider how jobs can be flexed to open up even more opportunities.

    My ambition is to enable disabled people who have high in work support needs, such as severe learning disabilities or complex autism, to see work as a real possibility.

    That would be a huge step forward.

    Reforming Disability Confident

    Reforming the way those processes work is important.

    But just as we can all rightly share in reaching the one million milestone that I referred to, we also all share in the responsibility to go further, do more to reduce the disability employment gap.

    And to do that, I need more employers and businesses to sign up. Which again is why it is so great to be here with you today. And see so many Disability Confident employers here today.

    In fact, there are over 700 such businesses in the East London JCP District area, including over 100 employers who have progressed to higher levels of the scheme including the London Borough of Hackney itself.

    There are over 11 million employees who are reported to be employed by nearly 19,000 organisations who have joined the scheme with around 30,000 live vacancies with Disability Confident organisations. 30,000 chances that are likely to be suitable for disabled people.

    But I mentioned that we have record vacancies at the moment of around 1.3 million, so that puts that 30,000 figure in context. I want all disabled people to be able to consider any one of those 1.3m vacancies in the U.K, and any employer to consider all the talent that is available.

    So we need to ensure Disability Confident continues to provide the right support for all employers, particularly smaller employers, and stays fit for purpose.

    That is why we have been reviewing the scheme with a range of stakeholders, including employers of all sizes and critically disabled people, to ensure the scheme remains up to date, credible and sufficiently challenging in support of disability employment.

    The scheme is being refreshed with new guidance and supporting products, to provide specific content designed to meet the needs of small and medium sized companies, which should let more of the 12,000 smaller employers in the scheme to progress to the next level.

    We are really pleased to be working with the Federation of Small Businesses, and smaller employers to make these changes.

    And I was also delighted that DWP could partner with Disability Confident employer Microsoft, who helped to provide training for Work Coaches on accessibility fundamentals.

    This will help the Work Coaches to create accessible experiences for disabled jobseekers and show them how they can use free tools at home as well, to get support with the use of technology and in the recruitment process.

    We all have a role to play, and today I call on you to encourage more employers to sign up to the Disability Confident scheme to create more diverse and inclusive workplaces.

    If you are not already a member of the Disability Confident scheme, please join the scheme by speaking to a member of staff today.

    If you have already begun your Disability Confident journey, consider what you need to do to move to the next level of the scheme, explore the employer packs for Level 2 or Level 3, don’t wait three years to progress.

    If you are already a Disability Confident Leader, I want you to ask yourselves what more you can do to encourage employers in your business networks and supply chains to join up to the scheme.

    I would also encourage you to consider the vital role that expert work and health services, such as occupational health, can play in helping your employees to remain and thrive in your workplace. Employers who use these services value the benefits they provide for their employees and their business. Retention is an essential part of success we’re looking for.

    Conclusion

    Coming to a conclusion then, and I’m so grateful you’ve come here to be part of this jobs fair. Let’s think about this in context.

    One in five people are disabled.

    One in three have a long-term health condition.

    So ensuring that the same opportunities are available for a fulfilling working life is important to all of us.

    I, myself, learned a little about this in a very personal way last year when I was recovering from cancer. The gamut of treatment reminded me how important my work is to me.

    I’m lucky to be in a role about that I’m totally passionate about.

    And I’m even more determined to ensure others with health challenges, and more people like Sukhraj whose example I used earlier on get into work and the benefits of it.

    Sukhraj’s journey to his job as a pastry chef is just one example of the kind of personal story that actually sits behind those big numbers I quoted from yesterday’s statistics announcement.

    Those all represent more disabled people leading independent lives and having the chance to reach their full potential.

    I am immensely proud of the progress we have made.

    But I know there is much more to do.

    My ambition is to close the gap further, by working with you and a broad range of partners, seeking out what has been successful, here and in other countries.

    We had that profound achievement by seeing 1.3m more disabled people go into work, that has improved the lives of many disabled people, but there’s more to do to change lives tomorrow, the next day, next month and in the next decade.

    As a key part of levelling up the country, we want disabled people to be part of our economic growth.

    These have been challenging times, which demand leadership like this on issues like these.

    So let’s not rest on our laurels, lets keep going…lets keep pushing…keep reaching to ensure that growth, has employers finding the talent they desperately need, and disabled people finding the opportunities that are rightly theirs to start, stay and succeed in work.

    Thank you for being part of that today, and let’s do more of that together.

  • Marcus Fysh – 2022 Speech on the Cost of Living Crisis

    Marcus Fysh – 2022 Speech on the Cost of Living Crisis

    The speech made by Marcus Fysh, the Conservative MP for Yeovil, in the House of Commons on 17 May 2022.

    I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

    As a former global investment manager, I am very concerned about the trajectory of the global economy. Unfortunately, I do not think the UK is going to escape that. I am very concerned that the inflation regime around the world has changed substantially in the past couple of months. The deglobalisation that will be one of the impacts of what has happened through the Ukraine crisis will be a permanent feature and a permanent shift. We need to take account of it and be aware of what this House can do to help people with the cost of living in that environment. We know that the price of food is going to go up, but the price of fertiliser is going through the roof because supply has been disrupted to such an extent. We are in danger of being complacent about that and the change it will bring about.

    I do not agree with those on the Opposition Benches who, as ever, are saying that tax and spend is the way forward. We need to look at ways in which we can help out the Bank of England. It is not the Bank’s fault that its only tool is interest rates, but unless we in this House find ways of getting prices down for people now, the Bank of England, like the Federal Reserve in America, will have no choice but to keep jacking up interest rates to the point where demand is destroyed and recession is created. Very severe recession may ensue, and that is incredibly bad for budgets and for balancing them.

    I welcome what our Front Benchers have tried to put forward through the Queen’s Speech—it is fine as far as it goes, and I appreciate the help that is there for people. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) that a focus on regulatory reform is particularly welcome, but unless we take radical fiscal measures to reduce prices now, in a Bill next week or the week after, I am afraid that it will be too late and we will be tipped into severe recession later this year.

    I therefore recommend that we look urgently at bringing forward measures to reduce VAT rates throughout the economy and reduce fuel duty. In essence, unless we try, right now, to keep price rises to 4% or 5%—otherwise, they might be plus 10%, plus 12% or plus 15%; we do not know what they will be—we will be in very serious trouble as a country. Inflation hurts most the people at the bottom end of the spectrum. I encourage the Government to target reforms at those people and to make price help available to them. To be honest, I do not think our side of politics has focused enough on what we can do about absolute prices. It is great to help people out, but subsidising higher prices just perpetuates the problem and makes it worse.

    We have to look hard at some of these things. Yes, we need to look at investment, and I welcome what the Chancellor said about that. Energy investment is going to be particularly important. We need to focus on making sure we invest in domestic food production so that we get it firing on all cylinders. We need to be almost on a war footing in that respect, because it is that serious. We need to help people with prices and to get our economy moving. I fear that if we do not, we will come up against stagflation, which is very damaging to people’s house prices and, in the end, to everything, so we have to focus on that massively.

    I come back to the point that growth is the key. I agree that we should try to limit spending and look at ways to reform administration and services—I welcome the talk of reforming the civil service—but at the end of the day budgets depend more than anything else on economic growth for tax revenue increases over time. I really fear that, unless we take action this day, we will be in for a rude awakening. We cannot let our constituents down.

  • Wera Hobhouse – 2022 Speech on the Cost of Living Crisis

    Wera Hobhouse – 2022 Speech on the Cost of Living Crisis

    The speech made by Wera Hobhouse, the Liberal Democrat MP for Bath, in the House of Commons on 17 May 2022.

    It was interesting to listen to what the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) had to say about green community energy funds, but a great deal is missing from this year’s Queen’s Speech. There is nothing about making misogyny a hate crime or tackling violence against women and girls, nothing about making housing more affordable and, once again, the climate emergency was not mentioned even once. Thousands are struggling because of the cost of living crisis. Now is the time for the Government to be bold on the future of energy, where it comes from and what it will cost.

    One of my constituents told me, “I do not heat my home properly, and I stay in bed to keep warm.” I welcome the upcoming energy security Bill, but will it say, in no uncertain terms, that the future must be renewable energy and not fossil fuels? Will it set an end date for the UK to stop all fossil fuel extraction and leave gas and oil in the ground? Where is the windfall tax on the super-profits of oil and gas giants that the Liberal Democrats are calling for? Where is the retrofitting programme to save energy and ease the burden of rising bills? Why are developers still able to build homes that will need expensive retrofitting in a few years’ time because the Government have failed to introduce legislation to build net-zero homes now?

    Unless we see a decisive legislative programme now, households will struggle with the cost of living crisis far into the future. In Bath and North-East Somerset, the average household energy bill has risen to a staggering £1,360, and research suggests that the Government’s short-sighted decision to scrap the zero carbon homes policy has added nearly £400 a year to people’s energy bills. Insulating our homes is not just about getting to net zero; it will protect the British people from volatile energy prices and rising bills. The sooner the Government get on with a meaningful and resourced plan to improve the energy efficiency of our homes, the better.

    Access to health causes increasing anxiety to my constituents. Bath and North East Somerset has been named as one of the UK’s 20 “dental deserts”; we have only 44 dentists per 100,000 people. For many of my constituents, NHS dental treatment remains a distant prospect. One constituent told me that she was afraid to eat in case she broke one of her temporary fillings—anything more permanent would cost private fees. We will face an exodus of dentists from the NHS if the Government do not act and reform the dentists’ contract.

    What about ambulance waiting times? People in the south-west are waiting longer for ambulances than people anywhere else in England, with waiting times regularly exceeding two hours. This crisis is driven by the crisis in social care. The Royal United Hospital, my local one, has at least 100 beds filled with people who are medically fit to be discharged but have no one to look after them at home. It is essentially a workforce crisis in social care. Unless the Government understand how to make social care a valued and well-paid career, the crisis will continue into the future and get worse.

    Finally, where is the promised employment Bill? Ministers have been promising to enhance redundancy protections for pregnant women and new mothers since December 2019, as a direct response to the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s landmark investigation into pregnancy and maternity discrimination in the workplace. This Government have wasted six years talking about pregnancy and maternity discrimination at work, and have failed to do anything to tackle it. The Conservatives have been running the country since 2015. In that time, we have become poorer, more divided, more unequal and less able to face the big challenges of the future.

  • Richard Fuller – 2022 Speech on the Cost of Living Crisis

    Richard Fuller – 2022 Speech on the Cost of Living Crisis

    The speech made by Richard Fuller, the Conservative MP for North East Bedfordshire, in the House of Commons on 17 May 2022.

    It is a pleasure to listen to the right hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) and to follow her. It is also a pleasure to be able to welcome Her Majesty’s Gracious Speech, introduced by this Prime Minister and this Chancellor. They are leading a Government who continue to look at finding long-term solutions to large, persistent problems and having the courage to pursue them fully. The debate today is entitled “Tackling short and long-term cost of living increases”, and many of the contributions have rightly focused on the immediate pressures on the cost of living. If I may, I want to mention a couple of points that look at longer-term solutions.

    The first relates to an issue that came up in our Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee: the problem of decarbonising home heat. If we wish to achieve our net zero goals in the timeframe that we as a Parliament have set out, one of the most significant challenges will be how our households are to afford changing the way they heat their homes to be consistent with net zero. The up-front cost appears to be about £12,000, and it is well beyond the ability of any household to afford that, essentially to replace something that is working perfectly satisfactorily with something that will hopefully work perfectly satisfactorily but have much less impact on the climate. It was clear in our hearing that no obvious solutions are around today that would solve the issue. That led to a significant debate in the Committee.

    I want to draw the attention of those on the Front Bench to solutions around the idea of net zero community green schemes. In a previous contribution I talked about the possibility of attracting the enterprise investment scheme towards a net zero scheme, but there are also ways to get patient capital and pension fund capital in. Bankers without Boundaries has been working with the UK Cities Climate Investment Commission on green neighbourhood funding models that combine the opportunity to retrofit housing—putting in the insulation that many very poorly insulated houses require—with the installation of heat pumps and other work on a community basis, while also considering ways to make the step change in recycling that the Government are trying to accomplish, so that we can make a big step forward on the circular economy.

    Interestingly, by doing it on a community basis, we have two significant public gains: a financial model is created that can attract pension fund money because it has a long-term return and is at scale; and we get over the inequities of saying that individual households ought to be providing the finance for achieving net zero, which means many poor families and households will never be able to make that leap. Attracting such private capital can substantially reduce the cost to the Treasury of achieving that long-term gain. It will not affect energy bills in the short term but, my goodness, it is the sort of idea we need if we are to find a pragmatic rather than ideological solution to achieving green energy change.

    I echo the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers), as we need substantial regulatory change in this country. Even since our exit, we have stuck with the EU’s sclerotic regulatory powers for too long. We have made insufficient progress towards getting the agility she described, and we rely too much on regulatory agencies that, I am afraid, too frequently show themselves to be asleep at the wheel.

    The BEIS Committee has previously looked at the Financial Reporting Council and the Pensions Regulator and their issues with BHS and Carillion. It is nice to see an audit reform Bill in the Gracious Speech, but it is only a draft Bill. We need to look at the issues with Ofgem. Where on earth was Ofgem last year and the year before? Absolutely nowhere. Ofgem’s job is to improve competition. We had someone before the Committee who was then at university. When asked whether he had a finance director, he said, “I don’t need one.” When we pressed him, he said, “Well, I’ve got my dad.” He was responsible for £300 million of consumer expenditure on energy. Ofgem is asleep at the wheel, just as the FRC and the Pension Regulator were historically asleep at the wheel and the Bank of England is potentially asleep at the wheel, so let us have real, substantive reform of our regulatory agencies to ensure that we have performance indicators and oversight by this House and by the public.

  • Valerie Vaz – 2022 Speech on the Cost of Living Crisis

    Valerie Vaz – 2022 Speech on the Cost of Living Crisis

    The speech made by Valerie Vaz, the Labour MP for Walsall South, in the House of Commons on 17 May 2022.

    It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anneusb Marie Morris). It is sad that our Gracious Sovereign missed announcing the Government’s programme, but we look forward to seeing her again in the future.

    The cost of living is one of the biggest crises engulfing our nations and regions. That is what people have said to us in the recent local elections; from Cumbria to Westminster, they are facing a cost of living crisis. In April, benefits and pensions rose by 3.1%, yet the rate of inflation was 6.2% and is to rise tomorrow. The Government’s independent fiscal watchdog, the Office for Budget Responsibility, says that living standards are set to fall by the largest amount in a single year since records began in the 1950s, and the Resolution Foundation says that the income of an average household will be cut by £1,200 this year. That is the background of life for our constituents, but the Gracious Speech contained nothing to help them.

    Some are okay. The oil and gas companies have said they have

    “more cash than we know what to do with”.

    That is why a windfall tax is the best way to ease people out of this crisis. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) eloquently set out, the proposal has been costed; it is not borrowing. It will raise £2 billion, and will give £600 to each household that is most in need and extend the warm home discount. Even businesses are suffering from the increase in energy prices, but it seems that the Government prefer windfall donations or windfall fast-track contracts for their friends to a windfall tax. A Minister says, “Work harder, people”, yet people have to face more insecurity at work because there were no measures to remove the pernicious fire and rehire policy, which must end.

    This Government are wasteful, not innovative: £8.7 billion was wasted on personal protective equipment that was unusable, past its sell-by-date and overpriced; the Government are burning £45 million of PPE a month to get rid of it, and the contract for the waste companies is £35 million; and £11.8 billion was lost to fraud through covid support schemes. Just ask the Minister, Lord Agnew, who said it was

    “a happy time to be a crook”.

    And £71 million was wasted on the Chancellor’s eat out to help out scheme, which Warwick University said accelerated the second wave of the pandemic. We have also had a Government Minister leaving a note on the desks of civil servants telling them to come back, then a week later leaving the note to tell them that he was going to get rid of 90,000 of them. It might be a new Gracious Speech, but it is the same old Government incompetence.

    I want to touch on two other points. Planning was mentioned in the Gracious Speech, and some of those proposals will need to be looked at. I welcome the fact that the Government will enhance the green belt but I am not quite sure what they want to do with the revised national planning policy framework. Street votes would pit one neighbour against another, and they must be based on planning grounds. And what do you do with a council such as Walsall Council? Despite 2,000 residents not wanting a transit site in Pleck, the council went ahead—against the wishes of those people, against the site allocation document and against the planning inspector’s agreement—and put it in one of the most dangerous places, where, by Walsall’s own assessment, the acceptable nitrogen dioxide levels are being breached. Young children will be living on that site. It is costing £500,000, yet the council says it has no money for allotments.

    On the subject of tinkering with the Human Rights Act, this is about the right to a fair hearing and to be represented; all it does is enact the convention into UK law to provide an effective remedy. Lord Bingham said that every one of the convention rights was breached in the second world war. Just ask the people of Ukraine if they think there should be a Human Rights Act. The Government must remember that the margin of appreciation doctrine allows our country’s unique legal and cultural traditions to be incorporated without flouting the objectives of the convention, and they cannot fetter the ability of judges to do their job, because they hear the evidence.

    I agree with the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) about a public advocate. That would end the hurt of the people involved in Grenfell Tower, the Horizon post office system, Bloody Sunday and Hillsborough. Remember that the Hillsborough inquiry took 27 years. I also want to congratulate Jürgen Klopp and Liverpool on winning a fantastic FA Cup.

    Our constituents are faced with an increase in mortgages, fuel prices, food prices and energy costs; they are all going up. The Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers has found that wages are now lower in real terms than they were in 2008. Our constituents deserve better. They deserve a safety net in bad times but, most of all, they deserve opportunity and prosperity.

  • Anne Marie Morris – 2022 Speech on the Cost of Living Crisis

    Anne Marie Morris – 2022 Speech on the Cost of Living Crisis

    The speech made by Anne Marie Morris, the Conservative MP for Newton Abbot, in the House of Commons on 17 May 2022.

    What do we mean by the cost of living? Well, we really mean the cost of housing, utilities and food. The argument has been put that they are all out of the Government’s control because they are driven by international pressure, but housing is a domestic competence.

    I am concerned that the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill has missed an opportunity. Certainly in my part of the south-west in Devon, finding affordable housing is well neigh impossible and social housing is almost invisible, and that is because there is nothing in the planning system to, first, ensure that “affordable” really means affordable—there is no regionalisation of the term —or, secondly, stop the argy-bargy between the developer and the planning authority, which means that the sum set aside for affordable and social housing is, in effect, tiny. Local authorities need more power, and they need to be able to hold the line so that we get the affordable property we need, not what the developers want.

    Of course, we also have to deal with those problems that, while not generated by domestic drivers, none the less affect every man and woman on the street, and we have to provide help and support, as the Chancellor did very effectively during covid. The support that has already been provided to the poorest in society is very welcome, but I sometimes think that the Treasury does not recognise that everybody is hurting. We need only look at the statistics provided by the Office for National Statistics to see that everybody needs some support. Pensioners on fixed incomes and those who have done the right thing and invested in a home cannot just move or change their mortgage and utility supplier; they are struggling with the same issue of trying to meet the costs of housing, utility and food bills. They need some help. We should not reject solutions just because they impact on and benefit more people than just the poorest.

    I am not a great believer in increasing tax; I am a great believer in reducing it. As I have said on a number of occasions, we could move forward by cutting VAT on energy bills. Now that we are renegotiating the Northern Ireland protocol and looking at talking to Brussels, it cannot be right that the VAT on residents across the United Kingdom is not under the Government’s control. That would be a sensible way forward. Tinkering with having MOTs every second or third year, rather than every single year, will not really cut it.

    There would effectively be a windfall on the Treasury, which is more appropriate than a windfall on those who provide productivity and general growth in our country. However, the Government need to make ends meet, so there needs to be a thorough look at the various spending commitments and projects. We talk about HS2, but it is only one of many projects in which there is so much vested interest. I recommend that the Government ask the National Audit Office to set up a commission specifically to look at which projects we can and should cut. They may be nice, but they are not necessary.

    There is one area that we have not touched on, which is causing a lot of grief. We rightly say, “Isn’t it wonderful that unemployment is at a low level?” But there is a reason for that: the fundamental reshaping of the labour market that has caused a number of people to fall out of employment. In Devon, a number of people in their 40s and 50s are out of the market, meaning that we have a 25% shortfall in that age group. Something is not working. I have talked to employers in my constituency. Unless we fix the issue, we are not going to help them to survive, and we need them to survive in order to carry on paying wages.

    We need to look at what is causing the problem. There are at least two things, but there might be more. One is our benefits system. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) did a grand job and the Government have implemented much of that work, but the market has changed, so the system needs to be reviewed. It seems that what is stopping people is the challenge of losing housing benefit and childcare. We have addressed this to some extent, but there is more work to do. I suggest that the Government ask my right hon. Friend to set up a taskforce to look at that issue, at the whole structure of employment and at how we can attract people from overseas to work in our markets.

    The Gracious Speech has many factors to commend it, but addressing the cost of living is not one.

  • Maria Eagle – 2022 Speech on the Cost of Living Crisis

    Maria Eagle – 2022 Speech on the Cost of Living Crisis

    The speech made by Maria Eagle, the Labour MP for Garston and Halewood, in the House of Commons on 17 May 2022.

    I will begin by talking about something that I care a lot about, which ought to have been in the Queen’s Speech, but was not: the Hillsborough law and, particularly, the Public Advocate Bill that my noble Friend Lord Wills first introduced in the other place in 2014. He and I have been introducing it in both Houses ever since.

    The Bill’s aim is to prevent families bereaved by public disasters from ever again having to endure the horrors that the Hillsborough families and survivors have endured over the course of 33 years. Something similar was in the Conservative manifesto in 2017, but it has disappeared, and I do not understand why. Disasters continue to happen and, although each has its own particular circumstances, there are common themes—issues that a public advocate, as proposed in my Bill, would work to ameliorate at an early stage, saving those affected years of heartache, pain and cost, and saving the public purse millions of pounds. My right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) mentioned the issue in her speech, and the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) told the Prime Minister on the first day of the debate that he should simply adopt my Bill. Naturally, I agree. The Bill would fulfil a manifesto promise. Why has it disappeared? I simply do not understand it. The Public Advocate Bill should be enacted, and the Hillsborough law should be passed by this place; that is long past due. I hope that, even now, the Government decide to do it. They would get a lot of support from Opposition Members.

    The past 12 Tory years have seen economic growth stagnate. It has fallen from 2% a year on average under Labour to just 1.5%, and is forecast by the Bank of England to go negative shortly. Inflation has hit 7% and is forecast to reach 10% later this year. Energy bills are already up 54% this year and will rise further in October. Food and fuel prices are soaring because of the end of frictionless trade with Europe after Brexit, and because of the shocks caused by the Ukraine war and covid. The coming food price increases will be “apocalyptic”, according to the Governor of the Bank of England yesterday, yet the Office for Budget Responsibility says that real wages will be lower in 2026 than in 2008, before the global financial crisis.

    My constituents have faced 12 years of frozen wages, and real-terms cuts to the support that they used to rely on in difficult times. The Government recently cut universal credit by £1,000, and have increased benefits by 3% when inflation is more than 7%; that is a real-terms cut for some of the poorest in our society. The Government have just increased taxes for working people by increasing national insurance. It is one of 15 Tory tax rises that have left taxes at their highest for 70 years. The Government’s failure to help the poorest people now is exacerbating the cost of living crisis faced by thousands of families in Garston and Halewood. We need measures to tackle the cost of living crisis, and an emergency Budget that imposes a windfall tax on the oil and gas companies, which are coining it in because of the soaring price of energy—and we need it now. That is why I very much welcome the Opposition Front Benchers’ amendment to the Loyal Address. We really need short-term measures that will help immediately, when the bills need paying, not promises of jam tomorrow, or at some time in the future, when it will be too late to avert serious crises for many families in my constituency.

    I say to Ministers, and to some Tory Back Benchers, that the old Tory trick of blaming poor people for their misfortune, as though they were morally culpable, is heartless and shows that, in addition to being callous, they are out of touch. Many of my constituents have been trying to get more hours or better jobs, buying cheaper supermarket brands and cooking on a shoestring, but they are still sinking financially. They simply do not have enough money to live because of increasing costs and real cuts in their income that have gone on for years. Many are disabled, and some cannot work, even though they want to, or change their circumstances easily. Those with caring responsibilities lose more in additional childcare costs after increasing their hours than they gain from the increased wages that they get for working for longer. Pensioners on small, fixed incomes do not have the financial resilience to cope with huge increases in the cost of living. Many budget their incomes to within pennies, and it is not fair to imply that they are at fault for their situation, or could easily change it if only they bothered to. When this Government begin to realise the truth of that, they might start to think that they should do something about it.

    Energy bills are set to rise by a record amount later this year. It is shameful that the Chancellor is not really doing anything to prevent that, and is more intent on feuding with the Prime Minister about his political future than on the future of millions of people in this country. Conservative Members could do some good: they could vote for the amendment tonight.