I think the Bill is not just a lost opportunity but a thinly veiled attack on workers’ rights. It pretends to be about growth, but contains no real growth strategy. In Britain and across Europe, the big political issue is growth versus cuts to get down the deficit and balance the books, but we are seeing that austerity literally is not working. On Sunday, the Greeks will hold another election, but what are they being offered? Cuts in their pensions, their salaries and their jobs—further poverty. On the plus side, why are they not being offered investment in solar forests across Greece, to provide energy for Europe; in railways, to connect up the tourism business; in universal broadband, to connect them to the world; or in a share of research and innovation? Where is the balance? It is not working.
In south Wales, the area I represent as a Swansea MP, we want electrification of the railway to Swansea, a lowering of the bridge tolls and cities working together in city regions—an initiative I am pushing forward locally. We want a fiscal stimulus like the one seen under Brown and Obama, when what could have been a world depression ended up becoming fragile growth. Now, we have zero growth thanks to the Chancellor suddenly announcing that he was going to sack 500,000 public sector workers—Bob’s your uncle, people stopped spending
their money, growth came to a standstill and the deficit is £156 billion higher than previously forecast. Austerity simply is not working.
I welcome the green investment bank and the £3 billion fund, but I think what we really need to do is refocus our procurement on green companies and SMEs generally to generate the jobs and production needed to support public services. As I mentioned earlier, in Wales, 70% of procurement is spent through SMEs, 50% of which are based in Wales, whereas in England the figure is 7%. The Government spend 93% of the taxpayers’ money with great big companies—normally international companies that generate jobs abroad and do not pay tax here. It is completely crazy. We should be using our procurement facilities to generate green jobs, in particular in SMEs, but the Government simply are not doing that.
What about the devolution debate—devolving tax powers to Wales and Scotland? I am highly sceptical about that. At a time when, across Europe, we are seeing a monetary union that increasingly requires fiscal and political union to work, we are being urged to devolve borrowing and tax to the regions and nations of the United Kingdom. Obviously, the political trick here is to say to Wales, “You can borrow. You can tax. If you want some more spending, raise your own money from a weaker tax base.” We can see where that is going and I do not think that people will be fooled.
Beecroft’s proposals are the hidden agenda. The Business Secretary says that they are a load of rubbish, but we can see a diluted version of them coming through. It is basically a charter for intimidation and harassment. As I said earlier, if a female employee says no to a boss who asks, “Will you sleep with me?”, the next thing that is going to happen is that she will lose her job. It may be a bit more subtle than that, but that is the sort of pressure that we are seeing through a re-invention of Dickensian Britain and a forthcoming Dickensian workhouse. This is retrograde, unnecessary and completely contrary to where Britain should be going.
Regional pay is another attempt, certainly in Wales, to reduce pay. It is to be reduced by about 20%, at a time when 40% of workers in my constituency are in the public sector. They are seeing their jobs cut, their pensions cut and their pay frozen, and now the Tories in England are saying, “We’ve got a good idea. We’ll cut your pay by 20% and completely take the base out of the local economy.” This is completely ridiculous. It would mean that a GP from Swansea would be paid more if they were in Bristol. We want to attract inward investment from people who want decent schools, decent health services and all the rest. Are they going to come to a place where the Tories have denuded that in the name of regional pay? Aa time when the local authority offers 10 apprenticeships and gets 800 applications, there is no shortage of people wanting to work.
This Bill is a mean-minded, pathetic and unambitious bit of nonsense. Nye Bevan pointed out that, in times of great economic difficulty, there is dynamic struggle between private property, equality and democracy, and ultimately the Tories will attack democracy in order to load the burden of the mistakes of the rich people—the bankers—on to the backs of the poor. What we are seeing in Wales is not only the reduction from 40 to 30 MPs, and not just individuals now not required to register to vote and not just the latest attempt to say to the Welsh Assembly Government, “You will never have a majority Government again, because 30 will be
elected by first past the post and 30 by regional list”; this is all part of a carefully choreographed situation where poorer people will have fewer MPs and will vote less, particularly in places such as Wales, in order to keep a Tory Administration nationally. This goes back in time to the orthodox austerity, and making the poor poorer and giving back to the rich on the 50p tax rate. This stinks, and it does nothing for growth. We have a Prime Minister who preaches growth while he is in Europe but practises austerity at home. This is a mean bit of legislation and it is a lost opportunity. At a time when the global spotlight is on Britain with the Olympics, we should be ashamed of ourselves.
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