Debate on the Address — [Ist Day]

Part of Outlawries Bill – in the House of Commons at 6:50 pm on 8 May 2013.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Iain Wright Iain Wright Shadow Minister (Business, Innovation and Skills) 6:50, 8 May 2013

I agree with my hon. Friend that, over the past few years, the stance of the insurance industry in general has not helped sufferers of asbestos-related diseases. We have to be sure that the proposed legislation, welcome though it is, provides justice and fairness for asbestos sufferers.

The areas of legislation and priorities that the Government did not include in the Queen’s Speech were deeply revealing. The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden, who is, I think, about to leave the Chamber, mentioned the purpose of a Queen’s Speech, which is to provide not only the legislative programme for the next Session but a strategic direction, outlining the priorities of the Government. As I said, there was no mention of engineering, there was no mention of manufacturing and there was not a word about an industrial strategy. There was no mention of the world-beating sectors that this country has and needs to enhance, such as aerospace, automotives, pharmaceuticals or the creative industries.

Tellingly, there was no mention in the Queen’s Speech of the national health service. Listening to it, I was reminded of the comments made by the then Leader of the Opposition, now the Prime Minister, in his contribution to the debate on the Address on 18 November 2009. He said:

“What about the three letters that should be in any Queen's Speech: NHS? Not a mention. It is clear that the national health service is not this Government's priority.”—[Hansard, 18 November 2009; Vol. 501, c. 15.]

If he was saying that in 2009, why is he not saying it in 2013? In his 2009 remarks, I think he was pre-empting his own lamentable record on the NHS. There was an opportunity in this Queen’s Speech for the Government to right the wrongs of the appalling Health and Social Care Act 2012 and announce its repeal, but they have failed to do that.

Her Majesty also stated in the Gracious Speech that her

“Government's first priority is to strengthen Britain’s economic competitiveness.”

I would welcome measures that would do that, but on the basis of the Government’s record and of the announcements made today, I remain unconvinced. If we are to address Britain’s competitiveness with the rest of the world, the Government will have to tackle the country’s growing lack of productivity relative to our economic rivals, but there was not a single mention in the Queen’s Speech of our declining productivity. In the decade from 1997 to 2007, this country was second only to the US in the list of rich nations in terms of the growth of GDP per hour. Now, we are second bottom, behind only Japan. UK productivity is now 16 percentage points lower than the G7 average—the widest productivity gap between ourselves and other leading nations for 20 years.

Output and economic growth have flatlined for the past two and a half years, while manufacturing output, for all the talk of a Government reportedly determined to rebalance the economy, has declined by a tenth from its 2008 peak and has today fallen by 1.4% from 12 months ago. Productivity across the UK economy has fallen by 2.3% in the past year, and measures of output per hour in manufacturing fell by 5.2% between quarter four in 2011 and quarter four in 2012, the largest fall since records began. We will not address our competitiveness as a nation, and be able to compete with developed, fast-growing and ambitious rising nations in the globalised economy, if we do not address our productivity problem, yet the Queen’s Speech does not even see fit to mention it.

The single biggest social and economic issue facing Hartlepool is unemployment. The notion that some growth in private sector employment is cutting the jobless queue is ludicrous, bears no resemblance to the reality on the ground in my constituency and is deeply insulting for those proud men and women in Hartlepool who are struggling to find a job. Hartlepool wants to work, but Government policies are making it harder, not easier, for decent aspirational people to find a job.

The Gracious Speech talks of

“helping people move from welfare to work.”

The Government are cutting welfare but they are also cutting work. They are moving people in Hartlepool from welfare to poverty and destitution, and moving the prospect of work ever further away from my constituents.

Let me illustrate that with some statistics. The number of jobseeker’s allowance claimants in Hartlepool has increased by 25% since this Government came to power, and it now stands at about 4,700. For long-term unemployment, the situation is even bleaker. The number of people in Hartlepool who have claimed JSA for more than a year is up by 155% since the Government came to office. The number who have claimed JSA for more than two years has increased in the same period by a staggering 560%. One in four young men in my constituency is without a job or a training place, and the House will appreciate that the longer a person is out of work the more difficult it is for them to find any sort of work, let alone well-paid, meaningful employment.

Skills, experience, talent and potential are being lost in Hartlepool and elsewhere, possibly forever, as a result of this Government’s misguided and short-term views on skills and employment. It is economic ignorance at best, and indifference to the economic plight of people in constituencies such as mine at worst, to suggest that the Government agenda is helping communities such as the one in Hartlepool. The worst-hit region anywhere in the country for reductions in public expenditure per head is mine—the north-east—with an average loss of £566 per capita. Hartlepool has lost an average of £724 a head, making it the most badly affected town in a region that in turn is the most badly affected anywhere in the country.

In that context, it is just common sense that enterprise and the private sector will be hit hard. As Mike Cherry of the Federation of Small Businesses told the Financial Times in March:

“Taking more money out of already struggling local economies may well exacerbate the problem”.

I agree. That money is spent in local businesses. Take it away and the private sector in Hartlepool suffers enormously. It suffers disproportionately, with negative consequences for private sector employment and competitiveness, but the measures in the Queen’s Speech seem only to promise more of the same. That means that areas such as Hartlepool and other parts of the north-east will see still-higher unemployment, further contraction in economic activity and falling living standards and opportunities for my constituents.

If the Government were serious about aspiration and tackling welfare dependency, they would have included in the Queen’s Speech a jobs and training Bill, committing the Administration to helping people into work and providing a boost to families’ living standards and quality of life by providing meaningful and decently paid employment, as well as improving the competitiveness and size of our economy by increasing demand in all areas of the country, not just within the M25. If they were serious, they would also have announced a house building and modernisation of housing stock Bill, designed to provide the homes that we need in the 21st century. Yes, more homes would be built, but cold, leaky and inefficient existing homes could also be refurbished, which would provide a much-needed short-term boost and a long-term boost to the construction sector and employment for tens of thousands of people.

That brings me on to infrastructure. The Gracious Speech stated that the Government

“will continue to invest in infrastructure to deliver jobs and growth for the economy.”

However, businesses do not believe that the Government are making a difference. In a report by the CBI and KPMG last September, just 35% of businesses surveyed believed that coalition policies will have a positive impact on infrastructure investment, which was eight percentage points lower than in the previous year’s survey. Today’s announcement of more of the same—of no change when it comes to infrastructure—will not fill business with confidence.

In the past few days, the Public Accounts Committee has rightly criticised the Government’s policy on infrastructure, declaring that the national infrastructure plan is

“simply a long list of projects requiring huge amounts of money, not a real plan with a strategic vision and clear priorities.”

It is the lack of such a clear “strategic vision”—instead, the emphasis is on the short term and policies often change sharply and without consultation with industry—that means that businesses are not provided with the confidence they need to invest for the long term to improve our infrastructure and enhance our productivity and competitiveness for the long term. Short-termism is undermining our competitiveness and innovation, which is the true driver of competitiveness in the modern world. It is also compromising the modernisation of our energy and transport systems.

Again, the Queen’s Speech could have announced firm plans to tackle that issue. It could have announced a British investment bank Bill, which would create the real conditions for patient capital and for lending to new and to small and medium-sized businesses that have the ideas and the innovation to grow our economy. It could also have provided an infrastructure commission Bill, to give a long-term, independent and clear set of priorities for the infrastructure that is needed in this country to allow the economy to function better. It did not do so.

I started my speech by welcoming a measure in the Queen’s Speech and I will end in the same way. One of this country’s competitive advantages, which sets us apart from some of our rivals, is our rule of law, and within that is the long-established and stable framework for intellectual property. Investors and creators come to this country, providing jobs and new, innovative business models, in the knowledge that their ideas—their designs and other creations—will be protected in law. There is a link between design, innovation and competitiveness in manufacturing that is much-needed in the 21st century.

The Government have had a tendency to consider intellectual property as somewhat about red tape or bureaucracy, rather than what it is—legal protection. In the previous Session, we saw the incoherent and ill-thought-through changes to copyright in the Bill that became the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 on which—thankfully—the Government had to back down. The intellectual property Bill announced today, with its proposals to reform design law, can be cautiously welcomed as a means of protecting design rights. I hope that no amendments will be made to it at a late stage without their being discussed with industry or being thought through properly by Ministers, which happened with copyright during the passage of the 2013 Act. However, the general direction of the intellectual property Bill announced today seems to be sensible.

For all that, for all my talk of welcoming certain measures and for all its rhetoric about improving competitiveness, the Queen’s Speech seems to do very little to encourage enterprise, innovation or entrepreneurialism. Given the fact that our competitors are doing more in that field, not less, the Queen’s Speech is a huge lost opportunity, which in the fierce global economic race we can ill afford to miss.