Mr. Dave Anderson (Blaydon): It is an old but true saying that if we do not learn the mistakes of history, we end up repeating them. For some Members of the House, this discussion is not just theoretical, because we have lived it - our families and our areas have lived it. My grandfather was sacked in 1926 for having the temerity to go on strike. He was blacklisted for eight years and died in poverty. My father was forced to go down the mines in 1935 as a 14 - year - old at a time when, he has told me, they were treated like slaves. People did not march from Jarrow to London just for the fun of it: they did it because the private sector had let them down.
In the 1930s, a miner was killed in the mines every six hours because of the success of the private sector. That was not because there was too much red tape, but because people did not invest in the mines. That is why, at the end of world war two, the people of this country, despite having a GDP - to - debt ratio of 262% - not 62% - did the right thing and threw that Government out. They then built a million houses, created the national health service and nationalised the major utilities and the railways. They did all that right and what was the result? In 1959, the Prime Minister said that this country had never had it so good - that was because of the things that Labour Governments had done in the 1940s and 1950s.
Unfortunately, in the next period there was general consensus in the country on one - nation Toryism. Of course, that was done away with in 1979 when Mrs Thatcher came along. She had a view of one - nation Tories from the Wash southwards and we ended up with people on the dole, mines closed, shipyards closed and steelworks closed. That was said to be a price worth paying only because the people represented by the Conservatives were not paying it. The price was paid by the people of my constituency and those of Scotland, Wales and other industrial areas while the yuppies in London were swanning around in their Porches, drinking champagne and smoking big cigars. Conservative Members can smile because they were not there, but some of us were, and we were suffering. People struggled and saw communities going down the drain. People were burgled by their neighbours' children and saw drugs in villages where there had been nothing but hard work for two centuries. We saw houses falling down that people had kept going for a hundred years. This is not a joke; it is serious stuff.
Hon. Members talk about unemployment - in the constituency where I lived before I became an MP, the highest unemployment rate in the past 13 years has been 7.8%, which is far too high, but in 1986, in the week that the mine I worked in was closed and 721 miners were put on the dole, the unemployment rate was 18.6%. The Conservatives should not come here lecturing us about unemployment when it is just some sort of theoretical debate they have had in the students union.
At the end of the 1980s, the public services were attacked, compulsory competitive tendering was introduced and people were put on wages of £1 an hour. We had a situation where people who had given their lives to organisations such as the health service were told, "We don't want you any more - go and work for Joe Bloggs' cleaning company." People were underestimated and undervalued. The next thing was that the private sector came back in. We gave the utilities back to the private sector and we ended up with a utilities sector that was not fit for purpose. The reality is that we will probably end up with power cuts or running out of gas. Alternatively, we will end up, as the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) suggested when he spoke so eloquently about green issues, being dependent on people like the Russians or the Ukrainians for gas and oil supplies. Why? It is because of lack of investment by private companies.
When Labour came back into power in 1997, we took action and used public money to put right some of those wrongs. We introduced the national minimum wage, we brought in rights for people at work and we introduced good - quality health and safety legislation that saves lives. We introduced regulations that stopped business people from exploiting people at work, and we should never move away from that or apologise for it. We also introduced the regional development agencies, which have not been successful in some regions - it is pointless to pretend otherwise - but the areas where they have been successful are probably those where they are needed more than anywhere else, such as in my region, where the RDA has been very successful. Taking RDAs away will cause a repeat of the past and will be the wrong way to go.
Some people say that we have no choice and that we are all in it together, but we do have a choice. We do not have to follow past accidents: we could introduce a financial transaction tax on the banks; we could take real action to attack tax avoidance and tax evasion; and we do not have to cut corporation tax. I know that it is highly unlikely that the Conservatives will want to do that, because they still want to be the party of business at the helm of the work force, but the Opposition will not stand for it. It is a shame that the hon. Members on the narrow Government side of the House - the Liberal Democrats - are supporting the other Government Members in doing that. They should be ashamed of what they are doing.
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