The comments made by Grant Shapps, the Secretary of State for Transport, on 26 February 2021.
I want to restart international travel as soon as it is safe and the slots waiver is a critical part of making that happen.
With airlines flying a smaller proportion of their usual schedules, the waiver means carriers can reserve their finances, reduce the need for environmentally damaging ‘ghost flights’ and allow normal services to immediately restart when the pandemic allows.
The comments made by Luke Pollard, the Shadow Environment Secretary, on 26 February 2021.
The Amazon is our planet’s green lung and it’s vital we protect it from destruction. Social media companies have a moral duty to ensure their operations are not enabling deforestation and illegal sales of forest.
The Government must urgently act to make sure that UK companies do not trade on the back of rainforest destruction.
The comments made by Jonathan Ashworth, the Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, on 25 February 2021.
Our NHS staff deserve a fair pay rise. If Rishi Sunak next week refuses it will be kick in the teeth to our brave hardworking NHS heroes.
The comments made by Jim McMahon, the Shadow Transport Secretary, on 26 February 2021.
Dozens of people have lost their lives on smart motorways, so this investigation is welcome. Ministers must act now and do what Labour has called for – reinstate the hard shoulder while a full review is carried out and the results brought back to the Commons.
The comments made by Kerry McCarthy, the Shadow Minister for Green Transport, on 26 February 2021.
The NAO is absolutely right to call for a clear plan from the Government in reaching net zero emissions from cars.
Transport is the largest contributor to UK emissions, yet the Government doesn’t even have a plan to ensure that we will be ready for the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars in 2030, let alone zero emissions by 2050.
Labour’s Green Recovery plan would prioritise building zero emission vehicles in the UK and rapidly rolling out the charging infrastructure required for a smooth transition to cleaner transport.
The speech made by Paul Maynard, the Conservative MP for Blackpool North and Cleveleys, in the House of Commons on 23 February 2021.
Let us be clear about this debate: it was Labour who failed to fix the roof while the sun was shining, so that when the financial crisis struck, we lacked the resilience we needed as a nation to do what was necessary. Labour spent a decade pretending that it never happened—that it was a global crisis that did not affect us here and was nothing to do with them. But there was no money left, as that famous letter said. Despite having spent the last few weeks campaigning to regulate the “Buy now, pay later” sector, it is clear that Gordon Brown was the founder of the Klarna approach: he spent now and bought now, expecting the British people to be the ones to pay later.
After 2010, the Conservatives did fix the roof, and we now have the financial resilience we need to do what we have had to do to protect jobs and livelihoods as the coronavirus wave broke across our shores. Labour harp on about those they claim have not benefited from a Conservative Government, both before and during the pandemic. However, it would be remiss of me, representing a constituency with so much deprivation, not to observe that it is this Conservative Government who cut income tax by around £1,200 for the average basic rate taxpayer, by lifting the income tax threshold to £12,500. Labour’s approach, of course, was to abolish the 10p rate of income tax. Income inequality, however we measure it, is lower than it was in 2009-10, and a third fewer children live in a workless household. Although there is more to do to tackle in-work poverty, I find it hard to credit that some see this reduction still as a bad thing.
We introduced a national living wage, which raised incomes in areas of low average incomes such as my constituency, and universal credit to address the challenges of seasonal unemployment, which were such a scourge in seaside resorts, and let us not forget that the top 1% in this country pay a greater share of income tax than they did when Labour was in power.
To be fair to the shadow Chancellor, who I believe is that rare thing, a thoughtful politician, I do not think she would deliberately seek to drive the economy over the cliff. However, I fear that she would be too busy rummaging in the glove box for a Labour road map to see what was fast approaching. In her Mais lecture in January, she quoted Gordon Richardson’s 1978 Mais lecture, in which he said:
“We are now at an historical juncture when the conventional methods of economic policy are being tested.”
In trying to apply that to now, she seemed to miss the irony that it was a criticism of precisely the statist solutions that Labour offered in the 1970s and is reheating now.
Like every Opposition day debate so far in this Parliament, this debate has had an air of unreality about it. It is only thanks to Conservative policies that we are in the position we are in to deal with the crisis we face now.
The speech made by Christina Rees, the Labour MP for Neath, in the House of Commons on 23 February 2021.
There is no starker contrast of how flawed the UK Government’s economic model has been than when compared with the approach of the Welsh Labour Government. More than a decade of Tory austerity has left the UK completely unprepared to deal with the global pandemic. Despite UK Government cuts and austerity across Wales, our wonderful NHS staff, council workers, emergency services and many more work tirelessly to keep us safe and keep Wales running.
The Welsh Labour Government have provided extra support for local authorities: £500 million to deliver key services such as social care and test, trace, protect; and to make sure that businesses receive vital support grants. In Wales, nine out of 10 people who test positive for coronavirus provide details of their close contacts, and almost 90% are successfully contacted and advised. The Welsh system is working because it is a public service run locally. The Welsh Labour Government have made a special £500 payment to more than 67,000 social care staff working in people’s houses and in care homes, including for domestic and personal assistance. They continued their commitment to free school meals when Wales became the first UK nation to guarantee provision throughout school holidays, and they have now extended this to Easter 2022, feeding over 105,000 children in Wales. At the beginning of the pandemic, the Welsh Labour Government helped homeless people into accommodation, and more than 3,200 people are now in temporary accommodation.
Businesses in Wales have had access to the most generous support package in the UK. The £2 billion economic resilience fund alone has secured 141,000 jobs. At the 2016 Senedd elections, the Welsh Labour manifesto set out six key pledges, and it has delivered on every pledge: an additional £100 million for schools; 100,000 all-age apprenticeships; a cut to business rates for local businesses; a new £80 million treatment fund; doubling the capital limit for older people going into residential care; and 30 hours’ free childcare for 48 weeks for parents of three and four-year-olds. Today, the Welsh Labour Government have announced their strategy to rebuild the post-pandemic Welsh economy, taking the opportunity to look to the future, with a long-term focus on wellbeing, dignity and fairness for people, and supporting workers, businesses and communities to succeed and prosper.
The speech made by Andrew Mitchell, the Conservative MP for Sutton Coldfield, in the House of Commons on 23 February 2021.
I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Member’s Financial Interests.
The background to today’s debate is that no other Government in the western world have given such trenchant taxpayer support to their citizens. I read, as I am sure my colleagues did, the relaunch speech by the Leader of the Opposition, but it seemed to me that his guiding theme merely followed the defining levelling-up agenda of this Conservative Government.
I have no doubt that many speakers today will look at the last five years of this Government, but I would like to look at the first five years referred to in the motion, from 2010. When the coalition assembled in 2010, one in every three pounds of public expenditure was borrowed, and as a result of that difficult and dangerous financial position, tough decisions were taken about reductions in expenditure. Incidentally, the same fiscal tightening took place in Britain as took place in Obama’s America. As a result of those courageous decisions, six things happened, many of which were down to the skilful stewardship of George Osborne.
First, the UK had the strongest recovery among the G7 countries. More British jobs were created than under any other Government in history. By 2015, we had the fastest income growth among the lowest-paid 20% in the country. We had the most sustained and consistent fall in our deficit among the G7, and we introduced the national living wage. Meanwhile, the NHS performed more operations than ever before and crime fell in every year. The UK was the No. 1 recipient of inward investment in the G20.
Like many of us, but especially me, I am incredibly proud to have served in a Government who, in spite of the economic difficulties, refused to balance the books on the backs of the poorest people in the world and implemented our 0.7% promise on international development. I am proud it was a Conservative Government who finally implemented the promise to the world’s poorest to spend 0.7% of our gross national income on international development. I know that the Government are considering breaking this promise, a manifesto commitment that all of us entered into just over a year ago, but I urge them not to do so. We would be the only G7 country to take this action, while America is increasing its development spending by $15 million. Although it is £4 billion, which is a great deal of money, it is just 1% of what we have borrowed in the last year. It will result in hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths, mainly among children, and it will destroy a key and respected aspect of post-Brexit global Britain. I urge the Government, on this point, to think again.
The speech made by Alison Thewliss, the Economic Spokesperson for the SNP, in the House of Commons on 23 February 2021.
I thank the Opposition for bringing this motion to the House. I very much agree with the assertion that, this time last year, the UK was not in the best situation to handle the devastation that coronavirus would wreak on our economy. Let me quote this to the Chamber:
“The UK’s resilience has been weakened under sustained Tory cuts. Wages have barely grown in the last decade. The welfare state safety nets have been torn to shreds. Public services have struggled through chronic underinvestment and asset stripping, and some parts of the UK that have still not fully recovered from the 2008 financial crisis are ill-equipped to cope with a further recession. Coronavirus has the potential to have a lasting impact.”—[Official Report, 12 March 2020; Vol. 673, c. 486.]
If the words sound a wee bit familiar, it is because I have said them before—in response to the Chancellor’s Budget plans almost a year ago. I congratulate those on the Labour Benches for finally catching up with what the people in Scotland have long known: we have had 10 years of damaging austerity and five years of Brexit uncertainty crushing investment, and it is likely that the UK would have fallen into recession in 2020 anyway, even before the pandemic began to take hold. Even in the face of the most harmful economic crisis that our generation has seen, the Tories have pressed ahead with a Brexit deal that has delivered near-fatal blows to our export sectors and has cost countless jobs.
The labour market statistics of the Office for National Statistics make grim reading. They state that, in January 2021, 726,000 fewer people were in payroll employment when compared with February 2020, of whom 425,000—58.5%—were under 25. This is both symptom and cause of the precarious and damaging employment practices that have been allowed to run rampant under this UK Tory Government. The Government have not dealt with zero-hour contracts. They have trapped young people in discriminatory and exploitative rates of the minimum wage—a minimum wage I should point out, not the pretendy living wage as the UK Government like to badge it— and they have failed to act on fire and rehire, despite being given options by my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands). Young people deserve better than this. The UK Government must now devolve all powers over employment law to the Scottish Government. We do not forget that Labour blocked devolution of those powers as part of the Smith commission, preferring to leave Scotland at the mercy of the Tories rather than letting the Scottish Government progress a fair work agenda for our people.
I agree with the hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds) that withdrawing furlough in April is too early. Realistically, if we are to prevent a cliff edge of unemployment when the job retention scheme ends, businesses will require the furlough scheme for at least two months after the current lockdown measures come to an end and perhaps longer if the course of the virus does not go as we all dearly hope—we have been here before. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has called for an extension to the end of June and for much greater certainty from the Chancellor to allow businesses to plan properly. Many people lost their jobs unnecessarily due to the previous insistence from the UK Government that the scheme would end in October, which was followed, of course, by a last-gasp U-turn, by which time it was too late for too many.
The CIPD also points out that there is a clear imperative for a lower limit to the furlough scheme so that the incomes of those on the lowest rates do not fall below the national minimum wage. People have been struggling to make ends meet, and 80% of what was already a very low wage is not enough to live on. We on the SNP Benches have long argued that Scotland should have the powers to provide its own furlough scheme as well as the borrowing powers that would be necessary to save jobs.
Labour’s policy of recovery bonds are all well and good, but it is not exactly groundbreaking. The Resolution Foundation has described it as unnecessarily complicated, but not actually harmful. I am afraid that that is probably the best that can be said about it. Let us not pretend that it will have a huge impact on recovery. Money could be much spent on a further uplift to universal credit and legacy benefits, which would put money directly into the pockets of those who need it most. It could be spent on ending the benefit cap, which the Child Poverty Action Group has reported will already affect 35,000 households in the new year, 77% of which are households with children, followed by the capping of a further 41,000 households after the first few months of 2021 as their grace period expires from January through to March. The money could go towards scrapping the appalling two-child limit, which the British Pregnancy Advisory Service has found recently is driving up the numbers of women opting for an abortion rather than bringing a child into the world. This Government should be ashamed of those statistics and they must end the two-child limit now.
Unemployment is expected to peak later this year, so keeping and extending the £20 uplift would help to alleviate some of the uncertainty that families are facing at this difficult time. The UK Government’s plans to scrap this support will take the basic level of support to its lowest level since 1991. The National Institute of Economic and Social Research figures out this week also demonstrate that destitution levels have risen from 0.7% of all UK households to 1.5% in the space of a year under this Tory Government. So even with an uplift, families are struggling to make ends meet. The UK Government know this, and it would be utterly despicable of them to go ahead and remove that vital support, knowing what we all know.
Research by the Scottish Parliament Information Centre has shown that the single most effective policy in alleviating child poverty would be a generous increase in universal credit, and the Scottish Government are doing their bit through the Scottish child payments. The relationship here is very simple: the more money paid in benefits, the fewer children in poverty. It is time—it is beyond time—for this Government to scrap the two-child limit and bring payments in line with the OECD average.
The Opposition are tinkering around the edges of existing policy here, and it is really not good enough. The Labour motion seems stuck in the past by failing to acknowledge that the active state does not have to stop at the end of Whitehall. Holyrood currently has only very limited borrowing powers, leaving us always at the mercy of Tory decisions. Scotland needs bold, ambitious plans to fund large-scale investment and to stimulate the economy. An overwhelming majority of voters in Scotland now believe that Scotland should have the power to borrow on its own terms, but the Opposition have failed to share in that simple ambition.
The Scottish Government are already delivering policies such as the youth guarantee, which will ensure that everyone aged between 16 and 24 has the opportunity of work, education or training. We are putting money into growing the economy while tackling the deep-seated inequalities we have seen highlighted by the covid-19 pandemic, but without the powers of a normal country, Scotland still cannot do things like extending the furlough scheme. We cannot deliver our own tailor-made support schemes for those who have been excluded from the UK’s support, such as self-employed people and certain women on maternity leave.
The Scottish Government are delivering on capital investment through the Scottish National Investment Bank, the single biggest economic development in the history of the Scottish Parliament and the UK’s first development bank. The bank will provide finance and catalyse private investment to grow the economy through innovation and accelerating the move to net zero emissions and a high-tech, connected, globally competitive and inclusive economy. However, it is hampered by a rule that does not allow the Scottish Government or the investment bank to allocate funds between years. The Treasury must stop standing in the way when Scotland wants to get on with the job.
Scotland has bold ambitions for the future, but the hard reality is that we need more powers to deliver a bigger-scale fiscal stimulus to future-proof our economy. This lack of powers is going to have real-life consequences for the tens of thousands of Scots whose jobs are on the line. Reading the Labour motion, we can see clearly how little the Union has to offer to the people of Scotland. It is little wonder that more and more Scots—now in 21 consecutive polls—are waking up to the reality that only an independent Scotland can provide the fair, just economy that we all need.
The speech made by Steve Barclay, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, in the House of Commons on 23 February 2021.
I thank the hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds) for securing this debate, which is an important opportunity to take stock ahead of next week’s Budget. With the leave of the House, Mr Speaker, I shall also close the debate for the Government later.
The hon. Lady, and Members from all parties, will appreciate that I cannot discuss any of the specifics of next week’s Budget, but I can say that although we may not always agree on the way ahead, I believe that we in this House all want the same outcome: a vibrant and prosperous economy that gives people everywhere the opportunities that they deserve.
In responding to the motion, I intend to do three things. First, I shall briefly remind the House of the economic and fiscal situation that we inherited in 2010. [Hon. Members: “Good idea!”] It is a welcome motion for enabling that. Secondly, I shall examine the state of the economy a decade later, noting the difference, for which the credit goes to previous Treasury Ministers—not current Conservative Treasury Ministers—who took difficult decisions in the national interest. Finally, I shall say a little about the Government’s ambitions now, with the obvious caveat that a Budget is imminent.
As Members will recall, the outlook in 2010 was not good. The financial crisis had torn a hole in our country’s future, the economy was shrinking and the deficit was ballooning. As George Osborne said at the time of his speech in the Queen’s Speech: Economy debate in 2010 :
“Getting over the worst economic inheritance any modern government has been bequeathed by its predecessor is not so easy.”
He also noted that the British economy had become
“deeply unbalanced…Unbalanced between different parts of the country…Unbalanced between different sections of society… Unbalanced between different parts of our economy”.
As set out by the most recent Labour Chief Secretary, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne)—I accept that it was a light-hearted note and that much of the criticism he has received has probably been unfair, but the substance remained—there was no money left.
The coalition Government took power in 2010, at a moment when one thing mattered more than anything else: strong leadership prepared to make the right decision in the national interest. As hon. and right hon. Members will recall, in the years that followed the Government took steps to put this country back on a stable financial footing, because we need a strong economy to fund strong public services. The economy expanded in every year of the decade that followed. In fact, between 2010 and 2019, it grew by a total of 19.2%, which was faster than France, faster than Italy and faster than Japan—a reality not reflected at all in today’s motion. Achieving that success was about many things, not just fiscal discipline. In 2010, for instance, the Government created the Office for Budget Responsibility, which introduced independence, greater transparency and credibility to the economic and fiscal forecasts on which fiscal policy is based. Indeed, 10 years on, the OBR is considered by many of its peers to be the gold standard of independent fiscal institutions.
Just as now, a key focus for the Government throughout that period was protecting, supporting and creating jobs; here, too, the numbers are impressive. Participation in the labour market reached a record high of 79.8% in the three months to February 2020—three percentage points higher than in 2010. In the same year, the UK had a higher employment rate and a lower unemployment rate than both the OECD and G7 averages. Between the 2010 election and the end of 2019, we saw over 3.8 million more people in employment—equivalent to an average of nearly 1,000 extra people in work every single day—and 85% of that growth was in high-skilled occupations. Importantly, that growth was across the board. The employment rate increased for all regions in the country, as well as for women, for young people and for poorer households. Indeed, prior to the pandemic, the employment rate among women was at a record high of 72.7%, and youth unemployment was down almost half on 2010.
If hon. Members remember just one key statistic, perhaps it should be this: real household disposable income per head—the Treasury’s preferred measure of living standards—was 11.4% higher in 2019 than at the start of 2010, and incomes grew most strongly for households on lower and middle incomes. Remember that this was also the decade when we made significant personal tax cuts and introduced the national living wage, which we have increased every year. Taken together, changes to the national living wage, personal allowance and national insurance contributions mean that an employee working full-time on the national living wage is more than £5,200 better off than in April 2010. This is a track record of which any Government of any political persuasion should be proud.
It was not just households across the country that understood the benefits; the world recognised them too. In 2018, the UK topped the Forbes list of best countries for business for the second year running. A year later, the World Economic Forum acknowledged our strengths in innovation capability, business dynamism, institutions and market size. Businesspeople everywhere felt the same. The UK has the third highest foreign direct investment stock in the world after the US and Hong Kong, and more foreign investment than Germany and France combined. None of this reflects today’s motion; indeed, it reflects strong leadership, fiscal responsibility and a Government prepared to act in the national interest.
Coronavirus has been a great challenge that we, as a country, have had to face together. Every country has had to reckon with the virus’s economic impact, but because of the decisions made by successive Chancellors over the past 10 years, our economy and public services were strong when the pandemic hit. The markets understood that we were a Government who could plan for the future and make decisions when they mattered. As a result, we have been able to respond in the way in which we have. This House has heard about that response numerous times. It is one of the largest and most comprehensive responses in the world, totalling more than £280 billion since March 2020. Millions of jobs and livelihoods have been supported through the furlough scheme and the self-employment income support scheme. We have allocated billions of pounds in loans and grants to businesses across the UK. It is a response that the IMF singled out as
“one of the best examples of coordinated action globally”.
It called the response “aggressive” and “unprecedented”—that is a frequently used word, but I do not apologise for using it again. Indeed, the Resolution Foundation has said that the response
“prevented an unprecedented collapse in GDP from turning into a living standards disaster.”
The fact that we had rebuilt the public finances in recent years, combined with the UK’s strong institutional framework, gave us the wherewithal to borrow to provide the significant economic support that was required. Our decade of economic success made all of that possible.
I know that the Opposition wish to keep talking about the past, which is surprising given that many of those years were spent supporting the economic policies of the previous Leader of the Opposition. I am always more than happy to speak about our record over the past 10 years—I welcome today’s motion as providing an opportunity to do so—but I, like this Government, want to look forward to the future.
Last year’s spending review tells us everything we need to know about this Government and this Chancellor’s direction of travel. There was significant additional funding to help our public services in their continuing fight against the pandemic—we are making record investments in public services, including an historic settlement for the NHS, which provides a cash increase of £33.9 billion a year by 2023-24; we are providing better lifelong learning, such as through the £375 million to deliver the Prime Minister’s lifetime skills guarantee; we are recruiting more police officers to make our streets safer, with more than 6,600 already recruited towards our 20,000 target; we are implementing our 10-point plan to tackle climate change, mobilising £12 billion of Government investment, which will in turn create hundreds of thousands of green jobs across the country, including in carbon capture and storage, electric vehicles and renewable energy; we are investing in technology, innovation and the digital economy, as part of our goal to make the UK a science superpower—this Government are increasing investment in research and development at the fastest speed and greatest scale since records began; and we are investing in the UK’s economic recovery, with more than £100 billion of capital investment next year to spread opportunity, create jobs and drive economic growth.
The motion states that the last decade “weakened the foundations” of the economy, yet we saw nine years of continuous growth, while we reduced the deficit from 10% to below 2%, The motion says that the UK was “particularly vulnerable”, yet we have consistently protected our NHS, with the 2018 NHS settlement being the biggest cash increase in public services since the second world war. The motion says that our actions during the pandemic have “exacerbated the problems”, yet we have vaccinated more than one in three adults, which is far more than any other European country. The motion says that the UK has suffered
“the worst economic crisis of any major economy”,
yet independent bodies such as the IMF have praised the UK’s response, which in turn was possible only because of the economic decisions of the last decade. The motion talks of “inequalities”, yet distributional analysis of the Government’s interventions shows that we protected the poorest working households the most, through schemes such as the furlough. It is because of our economic record that we have been able to place the protection of jobs at the heart of our covid response, with the furlough and the other business support measures.
As the Chancellor said last month:
“Sadly, we have not been and will not be able to save every job and every business, but I am confident that our economic plan is supporting the finances of millions of people and businesses.”—[Official Report, 11 January 2021; Vol. 687, c. 23.]
He was right, and jobs will remain at the heart of his economic plan, as we work together to build back better and level up the whole of the UK.