Treasury and Work and Pensions

I apologise for my absence earlier. I had to attend an all-party parliamentary group meeting. The hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne) seems to want us to have collective amnesia. Unfortunately for him, while he was at Eton some of us were in the real world, dealing with the impact of a low-tax economy and the reality of the social policy led by his leader’s former employer, who really did believe that unemployment was a price worth paying. Who paid it? Not him or his ilk. It was paid not by the elite in this country, but by the poor, the old, the weak and the vulnerable, and the millions who were forced on to the dole. It was paid by the families of men and women who were left devastated by the so-called modernisation of British society, and by the towns and villages up and down the country that had the heart pulled out of them. In 1986, as a member of the National Union of Mineworkers, I attended the National Coal Board review hearing with my hon. Friends the Members for Easington (John Cummings) and for Sunderland, North (Bill Etherington). Few other people bothered to attend. In 1986, unemployment was at 18.2 per cent. in the region where we lived. It was said that"““Councillor Cummings gave a graphic and depressing picture of the damage to the social fabric caused by job losses in the mining industry when added to the existing picture of unemployment caused by a far more widespread decline in local manufacturing industry and services. The general scene was one of a decline in population, of the district being left with an ageing population many of whom were chronically sick, and of a general lack of resources.””" At the time, the National Coal Board said, ““It is not for us to decide.””"““It was for the Government and Parliament to decide what action might be necessary to alleviate the social consequences inherent””" in the closure under discussion. The gentleman heading the review team said:"““the economic and social factors, though disturbing, can carry little weight.””" There can be no discussion of poverty and deprivation in this country without mention of the word ““Easington””. My hon. Friend the Member for Easington was chair of Easington council, and what he said in 1986 came true. It came true because people did not listen to the words that he and other people spoke. Who else lost out because unemployment was a price worth paying? The young kids who had to resort to the youth training scheme and the youth opportunities programme; elderly people forced out of care by public service budget cuts, and those who could not get care in the first place; young people who turned to crime and drugs as a way of life instead of following their parents into the world of work; the skilled men who could not get work and were told to curl up in the corner and go away. I am also thinking of people like my friend Keith Lamb, a skilled mechanic for 26 years who spent three years on the dole from 1992 and then got a job making cardboard boxes for £82 a week; the children taught in leaking classrooms in classes with too many pupils by teachers who were ground down by the lack of opportunity of the pupils in their charge; the dedicated ancillary workers in our public services—the porters, the cleaners, the school-meals workers—who were either forced out of their jobs by compulsory competitive tendering or forced into a future of reduced wages, fewer holidays and disgraceful sick pay schemes and were told that they were no longer part of the NHS team; and the public sector professionals trying to hold together our health and social services while expending their skills and time in constant budget cutting, reorganisations and redundancy negotiations, watching a lifetime of work disappearing before their eyes. Those people are not figments of my imagination, and such job cuts are not imaginary. They are real people. I am talking about the simple statistics of the nightmare of that time: 3 million people on the dole and one in four people living in poverty, and generational unemployment having become a way of life. They are real people: people I lived with, grew up with, worked with and played with. They are the people I represented as a trade union activist, the people who came before me as a member of the social security appeal tribunal and the people I looked after as a care worker in social services. They are the people who paid the price for the arrogance, the short-termism and the lack of concern and care of a political ideology that did not believe in responsibility and the concepts of society or community. It was for those reasons that not only people from my background but the people of this country rejected the Conservative party. Its current position is riddled with inconsistencies and fake promises rather than real policy, and people know that it is not possible to have good social policy at the same time as massive cuts are being made in public services. I do not know whether the sums for that are £17 billion, £21 billion, £40 billion, £50 billion or more, but I do know that if the Conservatives do that they will not find it possible to protect and defend public services, and the most vulnerable people in our society who rely on them. No matter how hard they flip-flop and how hard they pretend that they care, people will not be conned by them again.