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Points of Order
3.30 pm
Sir Wyn Roberts (Conwy): On a point of order, Madam Speaker. You will have noticed the total absence of Welsh Labour Members from Question Time today--not to mention members of Plaid Cymru and members of other Opposition parties. I am sure that today will go down in history as a "boyocott"; but surely this abdication of duty by the Opposition has implications. Would you consider it worth while looking into precisely what they are?
Several hon. Members: On a point of order--
Madam Speaker: No, I will deal with one at a time. I do not think that there are many implications. I thought that perhaps there had been a spate of heavy summer colds--an epidemic passing through Wales--but my assessment may be naive.
Mr. John Biffen (Shropshire, North): Further to that point of order, Madam Speaker. Did it occur to you that the quality of Welsh questions was enormously improved today? I wonder, in those circumstances, whether you might use your good offices to have today's proceedings made into a permanent routine.
Several hon. Members rose --
Madam Speaker: Usually I do not take further points of order on a matter that I have dealt with, but hon. Members are clearly in high spirits today--
Hon. Members: On a point of order, Madam Speaker--
Madam Speaker: Order. I am not deaf. As the House seems to be in rather high spirits, I call the Welsh Member, Mr. Flynn.
Mr. Paul Flynn (Newport, West): Thank you, Madam Speaker. You may have noticed that 32 Welsh Opposition Members who represent 90 per cent. of the people of Wales decided today to unstar their questions, because they saw no point in listening to lectures on Wales by a Minister who has been in office for four days. It appears that all he can tell Members who have experience of Welsh politics going back 30 years is that they should listen to the one-liners that he has crammed into his head over the past few days.
No discourtesy to the House or to you, Madam Speaker, was intended, but we must make the point that we in Wales are being treated as a colony, with a Secretary of State who does not represent a single Welsh vote.
Madam Speaker: I am glad to have been informed of the real reasons.
Mr. John Marshall (Hendon, South): Further to that point of order, Madam Speaker. Is it not grossly discourteous of the hon. Members for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn) and for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) not to be here to ask the Secretary of State for Wales their questions, and, then to turn up later to ask other questions? May we be told how much those unanswered questions cost the taxpayer? Surely their behaviour is discourteous and a waste of public money?
Madam Speaker: If the hon. Gentleman believes that it is a waste of taxpayers' money, perhaps he might like to table a question, after which we shall all know the answer.
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Mr. Spencer Batiste (Elmet): If Welsh Members cannot be bothered to ask their questions, is there not a case for offering time to Yorkshire Members or Members representing parts of other regions of England, who are denied specific questions by the present arrangements?Madam Speaker: The hon. Gentleman might like to put that suggestion to the Procedure Committee.
Hon. Members: On a point of order, Madam Speaker.
Madam Speaker: Yes, I can hear you. I call the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner).
Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover): On another topic, Madam Speaker. Have any representations been made to you to have a statement from the Government--obviously, it would be passed by the Deputy Prime Minister, who deals with everything now in governmental terms--about the French taking over the Greenpeace ship during the weekend? Surely this is a matter of public concern. Would it not have been right and proper for absent Ministers to present themselves at the Dispatch Box to explain why, at the recent Cannes summit, the Prime Minister gave a nod and a wink to Chirac to allow the French to take the dastardly action that they took this weekend? He acted like a fool.
Madam Speaker: Order. As the hon. Gentleman and the House know, no statement is to be made on that subject today. If the hon. Gentleman is keen about it, he could always apply for an Adjournment debate. Lady Luck might look his way.
Mr. David Winnick (Walsall, North): As I understand it, Madam Speaker, Ministers are accountable to the House. I wish to bring to your notice the fact that there is no list of responsibilities for the Deputy Prime Minister. We are told in the press that the Deputy Prime Minister, No. 2 in the Cabinet list, will have tremendous responsibilities and powers, perhaps even greater in some respects than those of the Prime Minister.
The Vote Office has no list of the Deputy Prime Minister's responsibilities. How can we question him? I have been to the Table Office. The officials, as ever, have been very helpful and courteous. They told me that they have not been notified. We shall be tabling questions for Ministers when we return after the long summer recess: how can we table questions to the Deputy Prime Minister? What are his responsibilities? I hope that you will be able to advise me, Madam Speaker.
Madam Speaker: I am very interested in the point raised by the hon. Gentleman. I refer him to the answer given by the Leader of the House last Thursday, in which he said that it was felt that the "sensible course would be to maintain the current rota"-- that is, of questions--
"until the end of this bit of the term . . . and then consider revised arrangements reflecting the new position for the next Session. I include in that whatever might be appropriate arrangements for the First Secretary of State."--[ Official Report , 6 July 1995; Vol. 263, c. 536.]
As I have said, questions were answered on the point during business questions last Thursday.
Several hon. Members rose --
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Madam Speaker: Order. I have answered as far as I can. it is a matter for the Leader of the House. He made his position clear on behalf of the Government last Thursday.Mr. Jeremy Corbyn (Islington, North): I want to ask a question about maritime law, Madam Speaker, as it affects the House. Have you had any requests from the Foreign Secretary or any Foreign Office Minister to make a statement about the French unilateral declaration of a total exclusion zone around Mururoa atoll and their blatant attack on an unarmed civilian ship in those waters by their own commandos? The threat to peace in that region--
Madam Speaker: Order. The answer is no, I have not.
Mr. Skinner: Here is the paper for the Adjournment debate.
Madam Speaker: Application happily received.
Mr. Andrew Mackinlay (Thurrock): On a point of order, Madam Speaker. The Secretary of State for Wales referred to my withdrawing a question. That is not correct. I had the question unstarred, and it will be subject to a written reply. The question was tabled when the then Secretary of State for Wales was doubling up as the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. The question related explicitly to how he split his duties and was schizophrenic.
Is it not time that we considered the framework of Question Time? We spent 15 minutes today on the Church of England, which I put to you, Madam Speaker, is nothing to do with a modern-day Parliament-- [Hon. Members:- - "No."]--but spent only 15 minutes on our criminal justice and court system? It is all out of scale and proportion.
Madam Speaker: The hon. Gentleman must be aware that he does not have the support of the House on that, but whether or not he does, his is an opinion that he has every right to express here.
Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cirencester and Tewkesbury): Further to that point of order, Madam Speaker.
Madam Speaker: No, there are no further points of order. We are not having debates about these matters. If the hon. Member for Thurrock (Mr. Mackinlay), or any hon. Member, wishes to see changes, there is the Procedure Committee to look at these matters.
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Opposition Day
[16th Allotted Day]
Social and Economic Policy
Madam Speaker: I have selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.
3.39 pm
Mr. Donald Dewar (Glasgow, Garscadden): I beg to move,
That this House condemns Government policies that have widened social division, led to damaging inequality and brought insecurity to millions of people; believes that the abolition of the Department of Employment signals the complete lack of Government concern about unemployment, insecurity at work and skill shortages; and believes that the Government must take action which promotes employment opportunities, particularly for the long-term unemployed, increases the skills and adaptability of the workforce and protects the low paid through a national minimum wage.
I have decided to be a determined optimist on this occasion, and am hoping that, over the next few hours, there will at least be a measure of agreement on the nature of our problems. I am a realist, and I recognise that, when we turn to solutions, it is likely that there will be disagreement and some debate; but on the nature and essence of the problems, I very much hope that we can at least recognise what is happening to our country.
Perhaps I should make a proposition to Conservative Members, which I do not think is too ambitious: low pay, social division and growing inequality are a scourge and an offence. Perhaps rather uncharacteristically, I could pray in aid the late Sir Winston Churchill. I offer a piece of Churchill memorabilia, and am happy to throw it into the debate free, gratis, for nothing, and with no claim on continuing loyalties.
Sir Winston Churchill, when President of the Board of Trade, on Second Reading of the Trade Boards Bill of 1909, said:
"It is a serious national evil that any class of His Majesty's subjects should receive less than a living wage in return for their utmost exertions. It was formerly supposed that the working of the laws of supply and demand would naturally regulate or eliminate that evil . . . But where you have what we call sweated trades, you have no organisation, no parity of bargaining, the good employer is undercut by the bad, and the bad employer by the worst; . . . where those conditions prevail, you have not a condition of progress but a condition of progressive degeneration . . . the degeneration will continue, and there is no reason why it should not continue in a sort of squalid welter for a period which compared with our brief lives is indefinite."--[ Official Report , 28 April 1909; Vol. 4, c. 388.] Depressingly, that is, it seems to me, still relevant. Sir Winston talked about an indefinite degeneration. In many ways, in comparative terms, those are indeed the problems that we still face.
Mr. Andrew Robathan (Blaby): I am delighted to hear the hon. Gentleman quoting Sir Winston Churchill, who is, of course, the hero of many Conservative Members. It is, however, some 86 years ago since those words were spoken--in the lifetime of our grandparents and our great- grandparents--and I think that some things have changed a little since then. Will the hon. Gentleman
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enlighten the House and tell us, in real terms and in cash terms, what the average industrial wage was in 1909 in comparison with now?Mr. Dewar: I can tell the hon. Gentleman that average wages are not what the debate is about. I accept entirely that average wages have risen, and no doubt the Minister will make that point very effectively and eloquently when he replies. I am drawing the attention of the House to the fact that 328,000 people in Britain earn less than £1 an hour. Some 1.143 million earn less £2.50 and, as the hon. Gentleman will recognise and will be concerned about, the vast majority of these are women. Women are particularly badly hit by low pay, with more than 670,000 of them falling below the £2.50 an hour limit.
In my view, those figures certainly justify the relevance of the Churchill quote, and I make no apologies for reminding the House that it was a problem seen by someone in 1909, whom the hon. Gentleman is right to say he admires greatly, someone who predicted that the problem would be continuous because of the imperfections of the market mechanism for a very long time. Sadly, he has proved to be right on that matter.
Dr. Robert Spink (Castle Point): The hon. Gentleman is an assiduous Member and I know that he will want to set the scene properly and accurately. Will he therefore accept the fact that 75 per cent. of those who are classified as being on low pay live in a household where there are two or more wage earners? If he thinks that low pay is so bad and wants a minimum wage, will he tell the House where the Labour party would set that wage, because that is the only context against which this debate can have any credibility whatever?
Mr. Dewar: I am glad to say that my judgment of the success of the Labour party is not its credibility in the eyes of the hon. Member for Castle Point (Dr. Spink). I like to think that, on occasions, we impress him, but I am trying to reach an audience wider than one Back-Bench Conservative Member, who is no doubt well briefed for this debate. I congratulate him, however, on his assiduity. He should not despise the point that many people have to earn a second income to raise to a decent level--
Lady Olga Maitland (Sutton and Cheam): He did not.
Mr. Dewar: The hon. Member for Castle Point seemed to belittle my point, and to suggest that there was no real worry about low pay for women if they lived in households in which other people had a job. Such households are often still poor, and both wage earners may struggle. I do not take the view that it is all right to have unsatisfactory and offensive levels of pay simply because a second income is involved, because that second income is often an essential platform on which to build an escape from poverty, and a lifeline to opportunity in our community.
Several hon. Members rose --
Mr. Dewar: I must make progress, but I will give way to the hon. Member for Finchley (Mr. Booth).
Mr. Hartley Booth (Finchley): The hon. Gentleman is generally fair to the House. Does he accept that a comparison with the first decade of this century is fallacious? Today, we have, alongside the £1 per hour wages to which the hon. Gentleman referred, a whole panoply of social security to back up each individual.
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Mr. Dewar: I must confess that, if the hon. Gentleman is putting forward the general proposition that people who quote Sir Winston Churchill are saying nothing that is relevant, or has anything to do with modern politics, I look forward to hearing Conservative Members protesting against speeches on many occasions. When I came across the quotation, it seemed remarkably relevant to the problem we have. Of course the context has changed, and of course the figures have changed, but the essential social problem remains, and it is one to which we should turn our minds.Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody (Crewe and Nantwich): Is it not instructive that, in this orchestrated set of interruptions, it is clear that, for the Conservative party, the fact that women are underpaid and often forced to take low-paid and unskilled jobs is not a matter of worry, but a matter of congratulation? They bitterly resent the fact that women are forced into such a position.
Mr. Dewar: There is, indeed, a general tendency by Conservative Members to underestimate the contribution that women now make. They have a major input and are a major part--soon to be the largest part--in the work force. I do not make a general accusation, because that would be unfair, but I point out that there are still a few people around who see a woman's job as a nice little interest and a little bit of pin money. We should not take that view these days.
Lady Olga Maitland: We are talking about the important subject of women and part-time work. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that part-time work is a blessing for women, because, among other things, it fits in with their family commitments, and because it often becomes full-time work when they are ready to take it up?
Mr. Dewar: I am extremely anxious that women should have the opportunity of getting both part-time work and full-time work if that is what they want. I do not undervalue the importance of part-time work, which gives flexibility, as it melds with household duties and other interests. However, even though it may be a blessing, as the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Lady Olga Maitland) put it, it should not be a charter to allow exploitation. That is unfortunate. The hon. Lady has drawn herself to my attention. She is one of the Conservative Members who, on occasion, has an unrealistic view of these matters. She may remember a debate on 8 July 1994 in which she intervened to make a point about the number of people who were on benefit and who had televisions, freezers and so on in their homes. She then asked:
"Does he"--
she was referring to me--
"agree that it is a problem not so much of people living on a set income, but of how they manage their budgets? A person in one flat may manage perfectly adequately while someone else may not. Surely we need to teach people the art of household management."--[ Official Report , 8 July 1994; Vol. 246, c. 607.]
There is a certain unreality about that view. [Interruption.] Conservative Members should not wave at me. The hon. Lady's view is totally unrealistic when it is compared with the experiences of my constituents and the constituents of many hon. Members who must cope with the problems we have been discussing.
Several hon. Members rose --
Mr. Dewar: I can see that my optimism about getting some initial agreement about the nature of the problem has perished.
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Dr. Spink rose --Mr. Dewar: I recognise that the hon. Member for Castle Point (Dr. Spink) is a sincere Conservative. I am told--although I have not checked it personally--that the Conservatives lost every seat they held on the district council in his constituency in the elections. Therefore, the hon. Gentleman should go away and think about his position and his party's policy before he comes eagerly back to the fray. I have let him in more than once, and I hope that he will be content with that.
There is obviously not going to be agreement, but my view is that, if we follow present trends, there is a real danger that social cohesion will be challenged, undermined and put at risk by what I described--I stand by the description--as evils.
There are always healthy arguments about salary. I remember with pleasure the Secretary of State's evidence to the Select Committee on Social Security on 25 January. The right hon. Gentleman was perhaps led astray by questioning, although he led himself astray to some extent, about our salaries--always a matter of prurient interest to the House. He said:
"When I was a backbencher I thought that, on the whole, MPs should probably be paid less to encourage them to have outside interests, which I believe enriches Parliament".
I liked that, because I like plays on words, and we can agree that such a scheme would probably "enrich" Parliament in a very narrow sense. But I doubt whether it would enrich the life of Parliament. I was entertained to see that the Secretary of State went on to say that Ministers should be paid more and back-bench Members less, and added:
"Now I am a Minister I hold both views even more strongly." There is a man of courage, although whether he is in touch not just with Lord Nolan but, more importantly, with the world outside, I would beg to doubt.
I was interested to see the evidence given to the Nolan committee by the right hon. Member for Norfolk, South (Mr. MacGregor) just after he had left ministerial office and picked up--no doubt to his and the company's benefit --a directorship. He said that to bar Ministers from directorships in companies with which they may have had some dealings during their ministerial office would
"expose them to the risk of comparative poverty on leaving their posts."
I thought that I would just read that out, as a touching human gesture.
I would argue that there is every importance in recognising both where we are heading and the growing inequalities in society. I recognise that we are not here today to have a reprise of old arguments which we have made at the Dispatch Box on more than one occasion. I know, for example, that the Secretary of State has severe doubts about the findings of the Rowntree report, and went to great lengths to discredit its authors and rubbish its conclusions. As so much of the report's material was taken from research conducted by the Department, he was in effect mounting a root-and-branch attack upon the Department's statistics and methodology. That is something for him and the Department to sort out.
An enormous amount of evidence is massing--not just the Rowntree report-- from many sources that we have growing inequality at the same time as we, like every western country, are seeing many people increase their prosperity as average earnings move up. We know that 14
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million people now have incomes below half the average earnings, compared with 5 million in 1979. More than 10 million people are now dependent upon income support, which is probably an increase of a multiple of two or three since 1979. Since 1979, wages for the lowest paid have hardly changed in real terms, while they have increased greatly for those at the top end of the scale. This divergence and moving apart ought to worry all of us. One of my concerns--Mr. Nigel Waterson (Eastbourne): I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who has been liberal about giving way. Has he seen the report of the Institute for Fiscal Studies entitled "Why Peter Lilley was Right", which concluded that the poor have not been getting poorer?
Mr. Dewar: Yes, I was interested in that conclusion, and of course I have looked at the report. As the hon. Gentleman knows, the IFS has produced a number of reports--he has obviously read widely through them. He will remember that the one to which he refers studied outturn and expenditure patterns, rather than income patterns. As he will have noted carefully, it did not take into account income saved or invested, which gave a rather incomplete picture.
Building on the substantial evidence on my side of the argument in other IFS work, I remind the hon. Gentelman of the author's conclusion that
"the gap between the richest and the poorest in terms of both income and expenditure widened over the period."
Even though that report, which the Minister optimistically said "blows a hole" in Labour's case, concluded that the figures were not as startling as those in the IFS report of between six and nine months earlier, it reinforced the same pattern and general picture. If the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson) is trying to say that there is not growing inequality in this country, he is on very weak ground indeed. I suspect that some of his braver colleagues would argue that it does not matter if the rich get richer and the gap grows greater.
Mr. Alan Duncan (Rutland and Melton) indicated assent .
Mr. Dewar: The hon. Gentleman is always there on cue--a small, dynamic figure shouting his case in the second row from the back of the Back Benches, where he will probably remain for some considerable time.
Mr. Bernard Jenkin (Colchester, North): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Dewar: I cannot resist it.
Mr. Jenkin: If the hon. Gentleman insists that poverty is increasing, is it not incumbent on him to tell the House which income group's spending has fallen since 1979?
Mr. Dewar: The hon. Gentleman should look at some of the Government's statistics. He will be familiar with those for households below average income, about which there is an interesting argument. The Government maintain that the statistics are unsound, because the bottom decile of households contains farmers, taxi drivers and accountants. All I can say is that I hope that their affairs will be investigated with the rigour that we are told is being properly applied to benefit fraud. If so, I think that there will be a considerable increase in prosecutions in the courts.
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The answer to the hon. Gentleman's question is that a large number of households are in the bottom two deciles, even when we have made every conceivable allowance for the small and rather errant group who are stranded at the bottom of the pile.The Minister suggested that there was great movement in and out. We are given that impression as many pensioners have moved out because of the maturing of occupational pension schemes--
Mr. Dewar: Yes--good, indeed. A large number of families--including a large number who live in my constituency and those of my hon. Friends-- have become trapped there, however, and have lost hope, are dependent on benefit and are offered nothing by the fiscal and economic policies of this Government. The level of alienation that is beginning to emerge ought to be a worry to every one of us. The trouble with the Secretary of State, or with many of his hon. Friends, is that they tend to adopt the Government's statistics as absolute truth when it suits their case, but, as soon as we get a series of Government statistics that do not, they are rubbished with great energy, and we are told that they are "unsound and misleading."
The shape of the statistics leaves us in no doubt that the general proposition is that gaps have widened, with social consequences which every one of us can see--whether in the health, education, or social mobility statistics--and which are opening up real dangers for our society.
I have spent most of my political life denying that there is an underclass. I do not believe that we have reached that situation, but I seriously worry that, if present trends go unchecked, I will find it harder and harder to make that case. Once I have reached the point where I can no longer do so, we will be facing very real penalties in the form of economic efficiency, lost talents and a threat to social stability.
Some old texts are still horribly relevant. Some texts may not be familiar to those on the Conservative Benches who recognise the words of Sir Winston Churchill. I cannot resist giving the House a short quotation from R. H. Tawney, who wrote in the 1930s about what he described as the "tadpole theory". He said:
"It is possible that intelligent tadpoles reconcile themselves to the inconveniences of their position, by reflecting that, though most of them will live and die as tadpoles and nothing more, the more fortunate of the species will one day shed their tails, distend their mouths and stomachs, hop nimbly on to dry land, and croak addresses to their former friends on the virtues by means of which tadpoles of character and capacity can rise to be frogs."
The point that he was making was that it is dangerous if a society embraces the tadpole philosophy and we reach the position where the consolation that it offers to social evils consists in the statement that exceptional individuals can succeed in evading them. We are very near the position where, if one is outstandingly able or unusually lucky, one can escape from the social evils that surround too many of our citizens. But if one is not exceptional in one of those two ways, one is lost, trapped, and in a real sense remaindered in society. That is the same argument as Sir Winston Churchill was making when he said that one would imagine that the market would put that right, and then went on to point out that the market does not put it right.
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