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Points of Order
3.33 pm
Mr. Graham Riddick (Colne Valley) : On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. My point of order is serious. I am concerned about the safety and well-being of two of our colleagues in the House. As the new hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Kilfoyle) was being presented here in the House of Commons for the first time, I noticed that the hon. Members for Liverpool, Broadgreen (Mr. Fields) and for Coventry, South-East (Mr. Nellist) were not in the Chamber. Should we send out a search party?
Several Hon. Members rose --
Mr. Speaker : Order. The House is very full, so I cannot see everyone.
Mr. Cryer : On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Have you had any request for a statement from the Secretary of State for the Environment about the fact that the Bank of Credit and Commerce International is on the current DOE list of recommendations for local authorities to put their money into? A number of local authorities are now deeply in debt because of the freezing of the accounts. Is the Secretary of State for the Environment prepared to come to the House and make a statement to outline arrangements for compensating local authorities that are in debt as a result of the Department's incompetence?
Mr. Speaker : I have not had any further requests for a statement, but we had one yesterday and I cannot recollect that question being asked.
Mr. Robin Squire (Hornchurch) : On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Have you had any notification that the Secretary of State for Transport intends to make a statement? I received a press release yesterday which confirms that a further 15 new or extended bypasses are to be built and that three scheme identification studies are to be carried out, at a total value of £85 million--a significant figure. I should have thought that many hon. Members on both sides of the House would want the opportunity to congratulate the Department on that announcement and to establish any further details about the plans that they may seek on behalf of their constituents. Does this good news have a chance of being aired in a statement?
Mr. Speaker : I have had no request for a statement about that, but I was present for a long Adjournment debate on this very matter, and I thought that I heard the hon. Gentleman raise the subject.
Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) : On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. You will recall that, when the Economic Secretary gave us a report on BCCI yesterday, he said that he might have to return to the subject. Will you therefore agree that we need a statement from the Department of the Environment which, on 28 June, told York city council, "You can borrow money from BCCI"? It is a question of who will be surcharged : the local authority, or, more properly, the Department of the Environment.
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Mr. Speaker : It is certainly not a matter for me.
Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours (Workington) : Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. May I draw attention to a letter from the Department of the Environment to Allerdale council advising it to borrow from this company? Following that advice by a Government Department, recieved by Allerdale on 28 June, Allerdale district council borrowed £1 million from the bank last week. The advice came in the form of a list of banks approved by the Bank of England. Surely we should have another statement to Parliament setting out the truth of the position and the fact that local authorities have been grossly misled.
Mr. Speaker : That may well be, but this is not a matter for me. What the hon. Gentleman has said will have been heard by those responsible for making these statements.
Mr. Tim Smith (Beaconsfield) : Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Could you ask the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell- Savours) to explain what the problem is if a local authority borrowed money from the bank and has got the cash?
Mr. Speaker : That is patently not a matter for me ; these are matters for debate across the Chamber--
Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow) rose --
Mr. Speaker : This will be the last one.
Mr. Dalyell : Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. You said that what my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) said should be heard by those who are present. Would it not be courteous if, for a matter of this importance, either the Government Chief Whip or the Leader of the House were present? By what mechanism may we ask questions on this vital subject, which concerns local authorities and many families who see their futures going up in smoke? By what mechanism do the Government propose to make a response, given the inadequate answers of yesterday?
Mr. Speaker : Order. This is the whole problem about points of order of this kind--they are addressed to me. They should not be matters for the Leader of the House
Mr. Dalyell : Where is the Leader of the House?
Mr. Speaker : Order. The hon. Gentleman is in effect not raising points of order with me--he is raising them with the Leader of the House. I repeat that although they are not matters for me they were heard by the Leader of the House, who is present. Nothing else arises out of that.
Mr. Dalyell : The right hon. Gentleman should not be skulking where we cannot see him.
Mr. Campbell-Savours : Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. May I correct the record? When I said "borrow", I meant "invest in".
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Companies (Subsidiaries in Liquidation)
3.39 pm
Mr. Kenneth Hind (Lancashire, West) : I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make a holding company responsible for certain debts of its wholly-owned subsidiary in liquidation ; and to make other provision for such circumstances. The Bill is aimed at preventing holding companies from retaining factories, machinery, and assets while putting wholly owned subsidiaries with no assets into liquidation, and passing the costs of redundancy payments, holiday pay, national insurance, PAYE, income tax and VAT to the taxpayer.
The Bill will achieve that by transferring statutory debts to the holding company when a wholly owned subsidiary is put into liquidation. It will defeat the practice of creating subsidiaries to avoid statutory debts, and will deal with the problem of what are known as phoenix companies--which effectively rise from the ashes of a liquidated company.
The impact of that practice is best illustrated by a recent example from my own constituency, in Skelmersdale, involving a company named Coppernob Group Holdings plc, which recently made 510 north-west workers redundant.
Before I continue, I want to show the House the most recent fax that I received from that company's solicitors, in which they attempt to prevent me from--
Mr. Speaker : Order. That kind of visual aid should not be used. I ask the hon. Member to make his case orally.
Mr. Hind : This fax contains a threat--
Mr. Speaker : Order. It is not necessary to have such a document shown on television. I repeat, the hon. Member should make his case orally.
Mr. Hind : I was trying to make the point that, in introducing my Bill, I have been subjected, in performing my duties as a Member of Parliament, with threats of being sued and of injunctions. That has been done in an attempt to prevent me from carrying out my duties as the Member of Parliament representing Skelmersdale. That was my purpose in showing the fax to the House. It arrived at half-past four yesterday afternoon.
The Coppernob group of companies consists of Coppernob Group Holdings plc, which has two shareholders. The major shareholder and chairman is an American, Mr. G. I. Fields--"Just call me Giffy" to his friends, but now known in Skelmersdale as "Mr. Sleaze"--and Mr. Ashok Shah. The holding company owns exclusively--with the exception of one share held by Mr. Fields--a number of subsidiary companies. In 1989, a company named Response, which manufactured textiles, predominantly for Marks and Spencer, and owned four factories in north-west England, went into receivership. In March 1990, Coppernob Group Holdings purchased three of the factories-- those at Wigan, Warrington and Skelmersdale--their machinery, and other assets from the receiver, and set up a shell company named Coppernob Manufacturing Ltd. That wholly owned subsidiary bought what Mr. Fields calls "the business"--the company's work force, order book, and good will, but no assets. The company could only run with an overdraft guaranteed by the holding company.
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That division of assets from the work force was clearly set up to avoid damaging the holding company if the subsidiary failed and to evade statutory obligations to the work force. That is a perfectly legal but extremely sharp and dubious way of doing business. After 10 months of trading, on 11 January 1991, Coppernob Manufacturing Ltd. failed, losing more than £750,000 to Coppernob and over £500,000 to the taxpayer.The Wigan work force of 180 were made redundant, but, as Coppernob Manufacturing Ltd was a subsidiary having no assets, its work force were sent down the road to the Department of Employment to receive redundancy payments, which were less than their statutory entitlement. That cost the taxpayer £552,812 in lost PAYE, income tax, national insurance contributions, and value added tax.
We then saw the rising of the phoenix company. In a deal between the liquidator of Coppernob Manufacturing Ltd. and Mr. Fields, the business in the remaining two factories in Warrington and Skelmersdale, employing 330 workers, was transferred to an existing Coppernob shell company having a turnover of £25,000, known as Team Spirit Ltd.--and not to the holding company. That transfer was made at a cost of £20,000, plus stock.
Team Spirit Ltd. failed four months later, on 3 May, and 330 workers were made redundant. Again, Team Spirit made no contribution to their redundancy payments, as the company had no assets. Some £252,000 was lost by Coppernob Holdings Ltd., but £1.2 million by the taxpayer. This left the unacceptable situation that, after two liquidations of subsidiaries, the holding company still held £1.75 million-worth of assets, but 510 employees had no jobs, no redundancy payments and in some cases no unemployment benefit because there had been a failure to meet the full national insurance contributions. Even Barnardo's and the local hospice lost money from the payroll giving scheme.
The work force then suffered the indignity of a double-page spread in the Daily Mirror on "top fashion house" Coppernob Ltd., two weeks later, followed by a two-thirds-page competition sponsored by the company. The work force would like to have won a prize in that competition, but all they wanted was the contractual redundancy payments that the operation of this company had denied them. The loss to the taxpayer from these two phoenix shell companies is approximately £1.75 million, which could have been spent on schools, hospitals, pensions and social services. Instead, it is propping up the shady operations of Mr. Fields and his associates. The uncaring, cavalier attitude of Mr. Fields and Mr. Shah, who are really asset-strippers with the commercial standards of the gutter, is to be deplored.
The Conservative party has often been accused of association with this sort of thing, but Mr. Fields is not a Conservative. He spent most of his time in the factory telling the work force that he was a member of the Labour party and a friend of the Leader of the Opposition. No doubt the Leader of the Opposition will join me in condemning this shady behaviour. Mr. Fields's concern for his fellow man ended every time that he reached for his wallet. I see no reason why the law should allow doubtful business men like Mr. Fields an opportunity to exploit a loophole in the law at the expense of the public and the work force. The Bill will sort out a part of the law in which there is lack of clarity--that on the transfers of undertakings.
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Question put and agreed to.Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Kenneth Hind, Mr. Chris Butler, Mr. Den Dover, Mr. Henry Bellingham, Mr. Charles Wardle, Mr. Roger King, Mr. John Bowis, Sir John Wheeler, Mr. Brando-Bravo, Mr. Barry Field, and Mr. William Powell.
Companies (Subsidiaries in Liquidation) :
Mr. Kenneth Hind accordingly presented a Bill to make a holding company responsible for certain debts of its wholly-owned subsidiary in liquidation ; and to make other provision for such circumstances :
And the same was read the First time ; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Monday 28 October and to be printed. [Bill 213.]
Mr. Donald Thompson (Calder Valley) : On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. We have just heard my hon. Friend the Member for Lancashire, West (Mr. Hind) give a long catalogue of apparently disgraceful events. He said- -you rightly brought him to order on it, Mr. Speaker--that he had received a threatening letter. What redress does he have if this turns out to be contempt?
Mr. Speaker : If an hon. Member alleges that there has been contempt, he should address a letter to me on the matter, and I shall look into it most carefully.
Mr. Harry Ewing (Falkirk, East) : Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. This is an important point, and I apologise for interrupting the proceedings. Is it not the case that, once an hon. Member uses a communication that he has received and that may be the basis of a contempt complaint, he cannot then raise a complaint of contempt with you or with the Select Committee set up to consider that? My understanding--I could easily be wrong, having been wrong so many times before--is that one is not allowed to raise such a matter on the Floor of the House if a complaint is to be made, and if an hon. Member feels that privilege has been breached, he should take that point up immediately, without raising the substance of the complaint on the Floor of the House. As I understand it, the hon. Gentleman has now raised the substance.
Mr. Speaker : The hon. Gentleman is right. If contempt is alleged, the hon. Gentleman involved should raise the matter with the Chair at the first opportunity. The Chair will then decide whether the contempt should go to the Committee of Privileges. The hon. Member for Lancashire, West (Mr. Hind) did not take that action, and presumably he will not do so now that it has been raised on the Floor of the House.
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Opposition Day
[17th Allotted Day]
Low Incomes
Mr. Speaker : I have selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister. In view of the late start to the debate, I ask hon. Members to make brief speeches.
3.49 pm
Mr. Michael Meacher (Oldham, West) : I beg to move,
That this House deplores the huge rise in income inequality ; and calls on the Government to combat poverty and its effects on health, diet, educational achievement and individual opportunity.
We are debating the growth of poverty and low incomes in our society. There could be no clearer sign of how rattled the Government are on those matters than that the Secretary of State with chief responsibility for the issue has been removed from delivering the main reply and been confined to a mere 10-minute winding-up speech. That speaks volumes for the Government's defensive attitude on the matter. Given their record, they are absolutely right to be defensive.
The Secretary of State for Social Security (Mr. Tony Newton) : It is no more remarkable that my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Employment and I should have chosen to conduct this debate together than it was for the hon. Gentleman yesterday, as the Opposition's social security spokesman, to make his main speech on the minimum wage, which is precisely what brings my right hon. and learned Friend to this debate. Any attempt to debate the problem of low incomes while ignoring the issue of the national minimum wage shows how rattled the hon. Gentleman is.
Mr. Meacher : The right hon. Gentleman should get his facts right. I did not make a speech yesterday on the national minimum wage. I commented on the effects of the national minimum wage in terms of social security cost to the taxpayer. I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman picked it up, because I shall return to that. The right hon. Gentleman knows a thing or two about low pay. He has spent his time in office doing his best to spread it in every way possible. Low pay is a very small part of the wider issue of low incomes, which is the real issue of the debate. The inescapable conclusion is that the Government are so ashamed of their record that they are doing everything possible to avoid talking about it.
The only aspect of a now almost totally discredited economic record, from which the Government still try to rescue some credit, is that living standards, they claim, have risen for all, including those on the lowest incomes. That is certainly not the impression of anyone who sees beggars for the first time in living memory on the London underground and on the streets of our major cities. It is not the impression of those who work in the voluntary organisations dealing with the homeless or of social workers or those who work in benefit offices and come into contact with the casualties of Government policy. It is certainly not the impression of those on the lowest incomes, but the Government continue to chant it.
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The Government say that everybody has gained, that trickle-down is working and that poverty either does not exist or cannot be measured, and that, even if it could, it is not a serious problem. As I shall show, each of those claims is false. In support of their claim that everyone has become better off under them, the Government's favourite fact is that, between 1979 and 1987, the bottom tenth of the population had an income increase in real terms of 0.1 per cent. That is a figure taken from a Government document entitled "Households Below Average Incomes", and it is repeated in an answer which I received a week ago.Never mind that that figure and others associated with it are four years old and that, if they included last year or this year, they would present a very different picture : let that pass. The Secretary of State is only too happy to accept that the figure to which I have referred shows an increase, and I would not wish to disabuse him of his self-satisfaction. For the rest of us, however, what do the figures mean?
The increase works out at a prince's ransom of an extra 3p per person per week. In other words, after eight years of Tory government, the poorest tenth of our population are, I suppose, an Oxo cube or a book of matches better off. I wonder how many Oxo cubes or books of matches Iain Vallance could buy after his recent pay increase of over £3,100 a week, or Tiny Rowland with his extra £4,100 a week. I submit that the mark of a civilised society is that it looks after its weakest members and that there is something obscene about a Government who encourage such huge differentials. Unfortunately for the Government, the evidence in their document does not bear out the case that everyone has gained. Indeed, it reveals the opposite. If the median or middle member of the poorest tenth made only a minuscule gain of 3p a week, that shows that the half of the group poorer than him--that is nearly 3 million people--overwhelmingly made losses. Their standard of living declined, in some instances by substantial amounts. That is borne out by the first report of the Select Committee on Social Security entitled "Low Income Statistics : Households Below Average Income Tables 1988" which was published a couple of months ago. It shows that a fifth of the unemployed were 7 per cent. worse off in real terms, a fifth of younger single adults and couples were 6 per cent. worse off and a fifth of those in rented households were also worse off.
That is confirmed by another piece of conclusive evidence in the Select Committee's report that the Government have tried to play down. On page LXXV of the report, it is stated that the average income, as opposed to the median income, of the poorest tenth of the Torydpopulation, fell under the Government between 1979 and 1988 by 6.2 per cent. I am perfectly well aware that the Select Committee, which is Tory-dominated, states that the
"arithmetic mean could prove a misleading indicator because a small number of extreme and unrepresentative values could bias the average figure for the whole group."
I have news for both the Secretaries of State for Employment and for Social Security, who I suspect will rely on that statement. Means and averages always work as the Select Committee describes, and they are invariably
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accepted as accurate indicators of trends-- except, apparently, when a Tory-dominated Select Committee finds that the facts are unpalatable.If the evidence shows--it clearly does--major falls in living standards for the 2 million or more on the lowest incomes, why should that be written off as extreme or unrepresentative rather than the truth ? To suggest otherwise is surely to fly in the fact of common sense, when everywhere around us we can see evidence of the new poverty.
We see people sleeping in cardboard boxes. There are people begging in the streets. There is a huge increase in bed-and-breakfast homelessness. There are lone parents with young children who are short of food. There is the growth of low-paid, low-skilled and insecure jobs. There are youngsters who never obtained a proper job. There are middle-aged or older men with obsolete skills whose factories or pits have been closed down.
Mr. William O'Brien (Normanton) : I appreciate the opportunity to advise my hon. Friend of further figures that have been released recently. In the Yorkshire water authority, cut-offs have more than doubled during the past year since privatisation, because people on low incomes cannot afford to pay the massive charges imposed by that authority. At the same time, the chairman of the Yorkshire water authority has had a salary increase of 250 per cent.
Mr. Meacher : My hon. Friend makes a good point. That is another clear indicator of the growth of poverty. We must consider not only the rise in water charges of the newly privatised utilities, but the growth in low pay and the inability to pay the charges. I repeat that that is obscene when compared with the increases sometimes doubling the pay of those who are now the chief executives and chairmen of the water companies.
Mr. Simon Burns (Chelmsford) : If I may take the hon. Gentleman back to his earlier remarks about low pay, does he accept that family credit is a great help in topping up the earnings of those who receive it? Would the hon. Gentleman care to tell the House today his view of the future of family credit? Does he agree with his hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) who, in, I think, September 1989, said that he believed that family credit should wither on the vine?
Mr. Meacher : The hon. Gentleman makes a pretty ill-advised point. First, family credit goes to only about one-third of a million, and the number of low-paid in our society is certainly well over 10 times that level ; secondly, it has only a 50 per cent. take-up ; and thirdly, it just exacerbates the poverty trap. Therefore, it is not sensible to promulgate family credit.
Ms. Clare Short (Birmingham, Ladywood) : Does my hon. Friend agree that family credit amounts to a subsidy of the worst employers in the land and that we are handing out a state subsidy to employers who cannot pay a wage on which people can live? Is it not much better to have a national minimum wage so that such industries could be more efficient?
Mr. Meacher : As we well know, the Tories believe in low pay. That is why they refuse to prosecute those who underpay their workers. Family credit, about which they make so much, is little more than a bandage on the wound, and one that does not staunch it, either.
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Mr. Burns rose --Mr. Meacher : I shall not give way again. I want to make some progress.
What has been the Government's response to the evidence? One reaction was to declare that poverty did not exist any more. Regrettably, the survival of poverty turned out to be rather more firmly based than the survival of the previous Secretary of State for Health who espoused that view. The Government then promoted the idea that market forces would soon solve the problem, because wealth would soon trickle down from the top. In fact, it has been the unleashing of market forces in the Thatcherite decade which, so far from resolving the problem, has created it.
If I may return to the parliamentary answer that I was given a week ago, while the poorest tenth in the population had a rise--if we can elevate it to that title--using the Government's preferred formula of median income, of 0.1 per cent., the richest tenth had a rise of 40.3 per cent.--that is 400 times more. There is not much sign of trickle-down there.
Even leaving aside the poorest and the richest, the growth in inequality has still been enormous. According to the same parliamentary answer, the bottom third of the nation had an average rise in income between 1979 and 1987 of less than 2 per cent., while the top half of the nation had an average rise of 24 per cent. The Government would like to argue--no doubt we shall hear it said today--that that is the result of merit or effort. If only it were. In fact, the pattern right across the spectrum has been consistent during the past decade that the weakest in society get least and the strongest get most. It is obvious to all but the most myopic observers that power and class are the determinants, not merit and effort.
Another parliamentary answer that I was given recently revealed that, in the 10 years from 1979, the lowest-paid tenth of manual workers received a 4 per cent. increase in real earnings, while the highest paid received a 17 per cent. increase. The lowest-paid section of non-manual employees also received 17 per cent., while the highest-paid received 46 per cent.
Far from there being a trickle down from the rich man's table, the nearer that the crumbs get to the floor, the thinner and fewer they become. According to the trickle-down theory, the more wealth there is at the top, the more reaches the bottom. Under the present Government, there seems to be a gummed-up filter ; nothing is getting through.
Mr. Tim Smith (Beaconsfield) : Surely the comparison that most people will want to make is between this Government's performance and that of the last Labour Government. Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that, in the past 12 years, the take-home pay of a married man with two children, on half average earnings, has risen by 30 per cent., whereas, under the last Labour Government, it did not rise at all? Will he also confirm that today's social security budget is larger in real terms than ever before?
Mr. Meacher : The reason why the social security budget is so much higher today than under the last Labour Government is that the level of unemployment is now more than twice as high as it was then.
Mr. James Paice (Cambridgeshire, South-East) : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
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Mr. Meacher : No ; I want to make a little progress.
What makes the enrichment of the already rich so deplorable is the fact that the Government have created that enrichment at the expense of those who are on or near the poverty line. The cascade of tax reliefs showered on the better-off during the past decade was made possible by the savings-- they now amount to more than £30 billion--from cumulative cuts in benefit. Breaking the link between pensions and earnings has saved more than £25 billion ; the child benefit freeze saved a further £1 billion ; and, each year, further cuts in benefits for the unemployed have saved another £1 billion. Lest there be any doubt among Conservative Members, let me emphasise that those figures are taken directly from a parliamentary answer.
That must rank as the biggest redistribution of income from the deprived to the affluent that we have seen this century.
Mr. John Butterfill (Bournemouth, West) : Are not those figures-- which compare the low-paid with other groups--essentially selective? I note that the hon. Gentleman did not cite any post-1987 figures ; for example, he did not quote from the report of the Social Security Committee. Is that because he knows that the more recent figures would provide a much better comparison from the Government's point of view, and would not aid his case at all?
Mr. Meacher : The hon. Gentleman really has put his foot in it. Our complaint is that the Government have deliberately concealed the most recent figures. Under the last Labour Government, we were given the figures relating to incomes--including the lowest incomes--within a year. Under the present Government, that became first two and then three years ; now, the figures are four years out of date. Let me tell the hon. Gentleman that, if we had the most recent figures, they would show that those on low incomes are considerably worse off than before.
The reason why all that matters is that it exposes the Prime Minister's rhetoric at last week's Tory women's conference--his talk of a Britain with opportunities open wide to all--as the meaningless bombast it was. I see that the hon. Member for Bournemouth, West (Mr. Butterfill) is leaving the Chamber. He has obviously gone to look for some better figures, but I do not think that he will be able to find any.
Can the Secretary of State for Employment tell us what opportunities are open to the 2.5 million unemployed when the Government, and the right hon. and learned Gentleman in particular, have made drastic cuts in the training and enterprise council's training funds, even though we have the worst trained work force in Europe? What are the opportunities for the 150,000 families designated as homeless last year when the Government pressurise those on low incomes into home ownership that they cannot afford and then pull the plug on them with crippling mortgage rates? What opportunities are there for the 15 million people who live on local authority housing estates, the condition of which the Prime Minister recently described as "an absolute disgrace", when his Government's policies have produced that disgrace by cutting the housing budget by a crashing 85 per cent.?
Mr. John Bowis (Battersea) rose --
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Mr. Meacher : I must make progress if other hon. Members are to have the opportunity to participate in the debate.Low incomes matter because several research reports have recently demonstrated that they severely undermine the quality of life. Last month, a survey was published by the National Children's Home which found that one child in 10 had gone without food in the previous month because there was not enough money to buy that food. It revealed that one in five parents had gone hungry because they did not have enough money to buy food and that one in three had gone short of food to ensure that other members of the family had enough. I hope that the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security is listening carefully, because that detailed nutritional survey found that no parent or child was eating a healthy diet. Contrary to the offensive and ignorant remarks that the Minister made--she seems to be following in the "Edwina Currie" tradition of blaming the poor--they had such a diet not because they did not know what constituted a healthy diet, but simply because they could not afford one.
Mr. Graham Riddick (Colne Valley) rose --
Mr. Meacher : I shall not give way again.
Poverty is the cause not just of an inadequate diet, but ill health. Even the Secretary of State for Health now admits that, but he immediately made it clear that he would do absolutely nothing about it. He said that the divisions were so fundamental and long lasting and the issues so complex that they were not a suitable subject for a Government target. After the ravages of a decade of Tory Government, surely there could not be clearer evidence that the Tories had given up on poverty altogether than that contained in the quote.
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