Mr. Dave Anderson (Blaydon): Several hon. Members have spoken about the technicalities of the Budget, but I want to talk about the impact it will have on people and how we can address some of the problems facing those who will feel the impact of the decisions that will be made by the House tonight.
I welcome some aspects of the Budget. First and foremost, as a former apprentice mechanic, I was pleased to hear that we will continue to support the development of apprenticeships, which should be welcomed by every hon. Member as a way to address the problems of our young people and provide them with better and different types of education. The lowest number of apprenticeships ever was 25,000 in 1992. Many of the industries that many of us had grown up with had been destroyed, and there was no one to provide apprenticeships. Thankfully, that has been turned round.
We have also done well in supporting 250,000 children who have been taken out of poverty, although there is clearly much more to do. I also want to focus on pensioners. It is noticeable that Age Concern and other groups have welcomed the fact that 600,000 pensioners will no longer pay tax, through the changes made last year, and the increase of the minimum income guarantee to £124. The positive moves on the heating allowance are also welcome, but they would have been a bit more positive if they had been made last year - 2006-07 - when some of us were arguing for a £100 increase in the heating allowance for people aged over 60. It is a shame that that has not been followed through this year.
The biggest impact on pensioners, especially those aged between 60 and 64, will be the removal of the 10p tax band. That is the one issue that pensioners and low-paid workers raise with me, and we must address it in the coming months and years. The £50 on the heating allowance for those aged between 60 and 64 will be more than eaten up, because they will pay at least £2 a week more in tax, according to letters I have received from the Treasury. They will get £50 in one hand and have £100 taken from the other. That is not the way to make progress.
I come back to the issue of the reinstatement of the link between earnings and pensions, which has been discussed before and forms part of the Pensions Bill. We must stop debating whether it will happen, and the time that it will happen should be brought forward, because by 2012 many people will be out of the loop as they will no longer be with us. The other aspect to that is that once the link is restored, it will not be enough to leave it at that, because 15 or 16 per cent. of the average salary in 2012 will be much less in 2020 in cash terms. Although the percentage might be the same, the National Pensioners Convention estimates that in 2012 the link will be worth 15 or 16 per cent. but that the gap will be about £500. Ten years beyond that, if there is not an uprating mechanism, the gap will be nearer to £1,000, and that is not acceptable. I have suggested to the Treasury that when the link is restored we should put in place a commission such as the one that monitors the national minimum wage, which would consider all the factors that impact on pensioners' lives and say that we should uprate pensions above and beyond the current link.
Another positive move, which has not quite gone far enough, is the good news about smart meters. Smart meters are the way ahead for the energy companies, for the green agenda and to help people in this country save money. Reports out this weekend have estimated that, in the North-East alone, if every household had a smart meter put in it would save people £50 million and reduce carbon emissions by 300,000 tonnes. That could be replicated across the country, but we need some impetus. The small discussion in the Budget, although it is welcome, is not enough. We should have the same mental attitude as we had in the 1960s, when we converted every house with gas from ordinary gas to North sea gas. We did not let anything stand in our way. We should say to the utility companies, "If you want to carry on making money in this country, you must work with the Government and put in smart meters as a matter of urgency." I suggest that the utility companies would be up for that; we should be up for it, too.
We must also do something about prepayment meters, because people are being robbed by them. I am glad that the Budget has made moves in that direction, but an Energywatch report this year showed that people were being charged up to £300 more for the same amount of electricity as others simply because they cannot afford or have access to direct debits. That is out of order.
Over the past week or two, there have been a number of programmes on the TV about how alienated white working class people feel in this country. That is a valid point, but it is not only white people. Ordinary working class people in this country feel disengaged from the political process and that they are being overlooked. I believe that our Government should look to the future.
I have three practical cases that we could pursue to bring back those people who feel that they have been left out. First, I suggest that we consider introducing free school meals for every child in this country. It would at a stroke reduce the stigma for those who have free school meals at the moment. It would obviously increase uptake. It would develop healthy eating habits. It would, I hope, give children a more educated outlook about what food is and the importance of a balanced diet. It might also mean that some children would get at least one good meal a day.
I also suggest that we should consider keeping children in schools at lunchtime. It might not be popular with children, but it would certainly be popular with local people because it would reduce antisocial behaviour and litter. It would also give teachers more time to spend with the children and encourage them to develop the children as human beings. There will be a cost, but I believe that the benefits will outweigh the cost. Obviously, some parents would gain financially if they no longer had to pay, but the long-term health benefits and the importance of a healthy diet should outweigh that.
The second issue that I ask the Treasury to consider is the fact that for more than 30 years we have been committed to equal pay for men and women, but for more than 30 years we have failed to address the problem properly. Last year, one in five employment tribunals were about equal pay. Unison and GMB between them have 60,000 cases lodged at employment tribunals against the NHS and local authorities. Some negotiations have seen some success, but ultimately the lack of resources from national Government has prevented real movement. Even the most successful cases, which have been negotiated, are being unravelled by no win, no fee lawyers. The Government and employers have a duty to ensure that pay audits are performed and that they deliver equality. Only real Government support can address the issue.
We have put this off for 30 years. It is 11 years since the single status agreement was agreed in local authorities. It is nearly five years since the agenda for change was agreed in the NHS. If we as a Government do not find the resources to give to public authorities, the probability is that the employment tribunals and the courts will make it their responsibility. Neither the NHS nor local authorities will be capable of funding the bills that they will be landed with. Again, as well as doing the right thing we will make working people know that we are on their side.
Finally, I want to put forward a policy that my party and my Government are committed to, at least on paper: the development of a real role for councils in the provision of social housing. Some 2.5 million people have rejected the privatisation of their homes under various ballots for arm's length companies, or arm's length management organisations - you name it. Many more left in-house provision because they were given little, if any, real alternative. In Sunderland, for example, they were told, "Your houses need an investment of £250 million. If you don't vote for it, you won't get any investment, but your rents'll go up £5 a week." Obviously, people did what they thought they had to do.
The truth is that policy debates, political promises and procrastination have been the hallmark of the past few years. While we sit and talk about it, 1.6 million people are on local authority waiting lists. It is the biggest issue that I face in my constituency, and we have decent council housing. My surgery, postbag and phone calls every day bring cases of people with housing issues: they cannot get a house, they cannot get the house they want, they want to be out of the one they are in or the one they are in needs upgrading and they are waiting for it to be upgraded. I am not saying that we have not done anything about that - we have. The truth is that if we want to be faithful to the working backbone of this country, we must give local authorities the tools they need to deliver good social housing.
The official impact assessment that accompanied the new Housing and Regeneration Bill suggests that councils will be allowed to build only 2,500 houses a year, yet the Government have committed to build 3 million. Do we not trust councils? Do we not think that they can deliver? Do we not have faith in them? We should have - they are our people. They are democratically elected to do the job that ordinary working people have asked them to do. We should tell them to get on and do it.
If we do that, I believe that ordinary working people in this country will say yet again, "Yes, the Labour party and the Labour Government speak for us. They believe in what we do." We have aspirations. I do not believe that "aspirations" is a word that can be used by only one side or another of this House. We should all have aspirations to make this world a better place for the people we represent, no matter what their background.
In my community, no one has yet said to me, "Dave, how much extra inheritance tax will I leave to my children?" We have some decent houses where I live. We have people who will leave £1 million and more. The issues that working people in my constituency bring to me are those that affect them day in, day out. I spoke yesterday to a gentleman who runs a local pub, and he said, "What on earth are you doing? Are you trying to drive us out of business?" An increase of 4p on a pint of beer might not sound like much, but the smoking ban - whether we like it or not, and I think we made the right decision when we imposed it - has had an impact on pubs. People can go down the street and buy 24 litres of beer for £16. If the guy who runs the pub wanted to sell 24 litres of beer, he would have to charge £100, which would give the Government and the country a lot of VAT that they would not get from the supermarkets, so we lose in every sense of the word.
We have to realise that we are alienating the people who we would say were our core supporters. We need to look at things like the fact that not only are we putting 4p on beer but we are committed to put it up by 2p plus inflation over the next period. That will not impact on binge drinking or disorder. People are not going to stop going out and getting smashed just because we have put 4p on a pint of beer, but that increase might close community locals where people are just hanging on by their teeth. Surely that is in nobody's interest.
Finally, I want to say a word or two about the people who keep this country ticking over - the police, prison officers, nurses and everyone who works in our public and civil services. Over the past year, they have asked us time and again, "What are you doing to us? Why are you not paying us what we are worth? Why are you cutting our jobs and starting to pay us regional pay?"
Tens of thousands of civil service jobs have been lost, and it has been announced that another 12,000 jobs in the Department for Work and Pensions are to go. We ask fewer staff to do more work for less pay, so it is no wonder that they ask, "Where is our Government going?" It is our responsibility to look after them, because they carry out the work that we decide must be done. If we do not look after them properly, how can we expect them to look after our people properly?
I hope that this Budget, and the one next year, will give us a chance to resolve some of the problems that I have outlined. I am saying not that we should ignore middle England but that we should give priority to the issues that ordinary working people feel are not being addressed - their pay and conditions, their sense of equality, the houses that they live in and the homes that they are proud to have been brought up in. Those homes have been denigrated in this House, and people who live in social housing sometimes feel like second-class citizens. That is not how the Labour party and a Labour Government should behave.
I do not believe that the Conservative party will stand up for this country's ordinary working people. No one knows what the Liberal Democrats would do if they were in charge but, if we do not get our act together and start looking after our working people, we might find out.
+++
Mr. David Anderson: Does my hon. Friend agree that the unemployment experienced in the 1980s was not an accident, but was the result of a policy of which the Conservatives were actually quite proud?
Ian Lucas: Absolutely, and it was a policy of waste. We should remember that during all those years when 3 million people were unemployed, each of those individuals was being paid benefits. A dependency culture developed, and we are still struggling with it today. There are individuals who were put on the incapacity benefit scrapheap by the Conservatives and who are still on incapacity benefit today. That dependency culture cannot be cured overnight; we are working to defeat it, and we are making real strides towards doing so. The most important stride that we are taking is in creating an economy where work is available - something that did not happen under the Conservative Government.
Back to front page | House of Commons Contents
| Promoted by Paul Foy on behalf of Dave Anderson, both of St Cuthbert's Church Hall, Shibdon Road, Blaydon, NE21 5PT |