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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes): Order. I remind the hon. Lady that she must refer to the Prime Minister by his title or by his constituency.
Mrs. Campbell: I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker.
It is five years since the right hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major) was elected leader of the Labour party--
Mr. Peter Bottomley (Eltham):
Will the hon. Lady give way?
I want to explain what has happened since that momentous event. On average, there have been six tax rises every year; unemployment has risen by almost 500,000; average economic growth, excluding oil, has been only 1 per cent. per year; annual house repossessions have more than doubled; more than one third of those who bought houses in the year that the right hon. Gentleman became Prime Minister now have negative equity; the number of households dependant on income support has risen by 40 per cent.; the cost to taxpayers of benefits resulting from Government failure has risen by £750 per taxpayer; and recorded crime has risen by 12 per cent.
Mr. Bottomley:
Will the hon. Lady give way now?
Mrs. Campbell:
Not at the moment.
Mr. Barry Jones (Alyn and Deeside):
I am glad to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Mrs. Campbell), who made a cogent and caring speech.
I wanted a Budget to create employment, to invest in our manufacturing industries and to create a climate of job security. There is a climate, but it is a climate of fear of losing one's job. Whether one is a humble labourer or a princely manager, that sense of fear intensifies as each month goes by. I do not believe that the Budget will dispel that fear in any way. That is my main complaint about and greatest disappointment in today's Budget. The fear of losing one's job exists even in the cradles of industrial activity in the northern regions, in Wales and in Scotland, just as it exists in the previously prosperous settlements of Hampshire, Sussex and Surrey.
I had hoped for a strategic Budget. I had hoped for a Budget for secure jobs. I had hoped for a Budget that would put manufacturing first, above all else. It should have been a Budget to restore Britain's manufacturing greatness to what it was in yesteryear. Instead, it was a Budget to restore the electoral fortunes of the Conservative party. It was a Budget that was clearly conceived in panic, designed to meet a coming electoral crisis and, I thought, crafted with old-fashioned political cunning. Certainly it was a speech delivered with great panache and steely resolve by the Chancellor.
The Budget speech was competently and confidently delivered by a Chancellor who, most of us would say, had earned a political reputation as a mugger--a mugger of teachers, policemen, doctors and nurses. I must say, however, that he is a cheerful bully--a very cheerful bully--but today he was a parliamentary conjuror. What were the balls in the air? They were taxes, concessions, impositions, cuts, statistics, benefits, promises and giveaways.
I summed it up in my own mind as the Budget of the short term. It does not deal with Britain's pressing problems, specifically that of getting young people back into work. In my view, that is a gigantic task, and the Chancellor ignored the challenge. One in 12 people are out of work; one in six young people in our country are now jobless; 41 per cent. of young black men are out of work; and 61 per cent. of young black men are jobless in Greater London.
Chronic long-term unemployment persists. I understand that more than 800,000 people have been out of work for more than a year, and that 650,000 18 to 24-year-olds are out of work. By any measure, they are the statistics of despair. They guarantee more crime--more drugs-related crime--and they demonstrate an unforgivable injustice. Those statistics put to shame recent Administrations who have received £120 billion of oil revenues since 1979. Those same Conservative Administrations have also received about £80 billion-worth of revenues from privatisation receipts. It is clear that this Budget is a great missed opportunity.
I wanted a Budget to get young people off the streets and to give them work, better training, hope and self-respect. If we do not find meaningful work for the tens of thousands of young people, our society will fall apart.
On the bigger estates in my constituency, there are homes in which neither father nor son has work. There are streets full of citizens who are out of work and have
no reasonable prospect of gaining jobs. That is an injustice and a scandal. It is also a dangerous failing that bodes ill for the future of our society. In my county of Clwyd, some 13,000 people are now out of work. There are 2,500 unemployed people in my constituency, and Wales as a whole has a major problem with long-term unemployment.
The priority must be to create real jobs with real wages and real status. Too many young men and women now leave school and college with no prospect of meaningful employment. Too many housing estates are suffering a terrifying drugs problem; burglary is rampant; there is perpetual vandalism; pensioners suffer foul-mouthed verbal abuse; and women are fearful of going about their business.
Lack of employment is the main problem for 18 to 24-year-olds. The Budget offers no certain remedies for those who have no work, but fear stalks the employed in the now embattled steel and coal communities in my country of Wales. We have made huge sacrifices in our country. We have co-operated constantly in demanning; we have increased productivity and ensured flexibility at work, but the fear of losing one's job remains.
My own community of Alyn and Deeside in north-east Wales experienced Europe's largest ever redundancy scheme in 1980. There were 8,000 Shotton steel job losses in only three months. The losses occurred between new year and Easter. They were a severe blow to my constituency, and the effects of such titanic losses remain to this day. I can report that we have made a new economy, but it is not large or prosperous enough to offer work to all those who lost out in the steel closures. Many of the new jobs are part-time or for women only; many are unskilled and often pay lamentably poor wages. Fear and unemployment remain.
A further problem is that my excellent constituency district council of Alyn and Deeside is to be merged with another on 1 April to form the new county of Flintshire. The leadership of the unitary Flintshire county council fears that we shall start the new financial year with a large budget shortfall. Flintshire fears that the quality of services in, for example, community care and housing will decline or that council taxes will rise considerably. We are millions of pounds short. So that the new Flintshire county council might begin its life with a just and fair apportionment of money from the Welsh Office, I plead with the Chancellor, even at this late hour, not to starve Flintshire of cash. It simply wants fair play, so that it can continue to deliver first-class services and avoid a major increase in council taxes.
The Budget is supremely indifferent to the long-term needs of the economy. Our manufacturing base has shrunk, the balance of trade is wretched, our industries need investment, there are major skills shortages, our society is divided and there is a large underclass that has no prospect of meaningful work or prosperity.
The Chancellor was applauded noisily by Conservative Back Benchers as if he had performed a heroic parliamentary feat, but it was a hollow triumph, if triumph it was. When the cheering fades, the industrial landscape of a once great Britain will still be littered with the awesome wreckage of our once mighty manufacturing industries. The following list is frightening: the coal,
shipbuilding, steel, aerospace, cement, brickmaking, motor, rolling stock and textile industries comprise a grim roll-call of decline, shrinkage and disappearance. They have experienced a blizzard of redundancies since the early 1980s.
Mr. Peter Bottomley (Eltham):
The hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mr. Jones) did a service to the House in reminding us of the differential impact of unemployment on young people. If there is a discernible difference throughout the United Kingdom between young blacks and whites, as there is in Northern Ireland between young Catholics and young Presbyterians and young Protestants, such problems need to be tackled if we want to be fair to people. Whether it is a matter of expectations or of opportunity, we have a duty to ensure that one cannot tell whether someone is likely to find work because of the colour of their skin or the denomination under which they have been brought up.
I hope that, in Northern Ireland, we will not be able to say that a 16-year-old or 18-year-old young Roman Catholic will be three times as likely to be unemployed as a Protestant. I hope that, in London and other cities, we will not be able to say that, just because someone is of an Afro-Caribbean or Asian background, or just does not appear to be the normal sort of colour of people who have been here with different employment experiences, they are more likely to be unemployed. We must tackle the issue and show that there are reasons to work at school and to get training, and reasons why people should be chosen for jobs--their qualifications--rather than disqualified on prejudice.
I pay tribute to hon. Members on both sides of the House who have tackled such issues openly. The problem needs tackling in employment, in terms of clubs, in housing, everywhere, so that people are judged on their merits, needs, talents and abilities, and not on what appears to be the colour of their skin. I look forward to the time when the colour of someone's skin is about as interesting as the colour of someone's hair or eyes or height or weight. It may be noticeable, but it should not be what determines how people are treated.
I say to the hon. Member for Cambridge (Mrs. Campbell) that, besides a slip in her copious notes about the party in which the Prime Minister has been for all his time in Parliament, her arithmetic was not quite right to suggest that, for each year that my right hon. Friend has been Prime Minister, unemployment has grown by 500,000. I thought that we were celebrating the end of his fifth year as Prime Minister. If unemployment had risen by 500,000 each year that he has been in office, the figure would now be 2.5 million. It is less than that, and the figure was not zero when he took over.
So my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister deserves congratulations on helping to get unemployment down. Those congratulations should be shared with people in industry and the services, who have helped to create the
jobs. In the end, customers guarantee jobs. Indeed, customers around the world and in this country have caused the resurgence in our motor industry, and have helped by buying typewriters, electronic processors, computers and television sets made in this country.
Many things which we previously thought were always going to be made overseas are now being made here. I have in my pocket my Psion computer, which is made in Greenford in Middlesex. Who would have guessed that 16 years ago, during the last days of the Labour Government?
In this debate, many hon. Members have spoken about the major issues, and I shall not repeat what has been said, except to echo that if the so-called average family gains by £450 a year, that is a bonus, and it is far better to receive it in tax reductions than by artificial pay increases which lead to a resurgence of inflation.
We can rightly say that one area of agreement across the Floor of the House is on the belief that inflation is bad. It is bad for employment opportunities, and there needs to be the kind of rigour that we have seen during at least the past three years, and which it would be right to say that we saw in the last three years of the Labour Government up to 1970. In times in between, both the Labour party and the Tory party forgot about some of the essentials.
I turn to one or two details of the Budget. I welcome some of the changes to the taxation of motor vehicle fuels. To recognise the lower levels of pollution caused by liquified petroleum products and compressed natural gas is worth while, and builds on the changes made to charge a lower excise duty, and therefore a lower retail price for unleaded fuel.
I welcome what the Chancellor has done to take away the tax subsidy for super unleaded, which I regard as an unnecessary fuel. It is not important, nor does it have a real market share, and the sooner that people decide on commercial grounds to get rid of it, the better.
Having said that, for those who use petrol, I think that I am right in saying that about a third of vehicles are still refilled with leaded fuel. When I was at the Department of Transport as an assistant Minister from 1986 to 1989, it was calculated that only 10 per cent. of vehicles needed to use leaded fuel. That means that, for every vehicle that should use leaded fuel, probably twice as many use it unnecessarily. I recommend that people contact their motoring organisation or the car's manufacturer, and check whether their car can use unleaded fuel or can be adjusted to use it. That would be a saving in the pocket.
The Treasury team have missed one opportunity to extend the alteration of fuel duties on environmental grounds. They should look at what I call low-sulphur diesels--otherwise known as city diesel, which is not a proprietary name. I am aware, as a result of the parliamentary answer that I received today, that, in fact, most of its low levels of sales are made through one supermarket chain of stores.
If there were a sensible rearrangement of the duties on that low-sulphur diesel, not only would more people think of using it, but more of the major oil suppliers would think of making it available on their forecourts. As they get rid of the super unleaded, there would be an opportunity to provide the cleaner diesel.
I cannot go into the full air quality details in a short speech, but if the Government chose to make an adjustment at some stage during the year rather than waiting for the next Budget, it would be greatly welcome. At the moment, many people who have moved to diesel wonder whether they were right. I suspect that providing the opportunity for a low-sulphur diesel would be welcome, and the tax regime should give it some encouragement.
While on that subject, I hope that some vehicles which are used almost exclusively in towns and cities--taxis and metropolitan buses--should also be given great encouragement to use a low-pollution fuel. I suspect that it would be possible for such vehicles to move on to the use of liquified petroleum gas or compressed natural gas, which would produce far fewer pollutants than diesel. I do not know the difference between low-sulphur diesel and those cleaner fuels, but such a move would be sensible. Vehicles which are working virtually all day in built-up areas must be contributing a fair amount to pollution.
I congratulate the Chancellor on not giving supernatural adjustments to the married person's tax allowance. Back in the days when Lord Healey was Chancellor, he claimed that, instead of raising child benefit, he would raise the married man's tax allowance, on the grounds that it would help people with children. Half the couples receiving the married man's allowance have two earners, so there is no need to have a super-allowance, and half the people getting the married person's allowance do not have dependent children at the time, so, in those cases, children would not be helped at all.
Such help is very badly targeted. In time, I suspect that the best thing would be to be able to transfer the personal allowance from a non-worker of a married couple to the earner, as a way of applying some adjustment in a one-earner household.
That brings me to child benefit, and I urge the Government again to make two changes to it. I re-emphasise that my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) is right in emphasising the remarks made by Lady Thatcher, that it is correct to have an allowance for children. When one goes from having two incomes and two mouths to feed to having-- normally--one income and three mouths to feed, taxable capacity goes down, needs go up and an allowance is worth while and justified.
The second question is whether it should be a tax or a cash allowance. For two reasons, it would be better to provide a cash allowance. The first is that a tax allowance gives greater help to people on higher rates of tax--who justifies that? Secondly, a flat allowance is available whether someone is working or not, and whether they are separated or not. The money is a reliable source of income, and in practice, the only reliable of source of income in a household with children.
The mistakes we made were to say that it was to be set in theory by the Secretary of State for Social Security. In practice, it is not an income support measure, relating to means testing. It should be settled openly by the Chancellor as part of the Budget and in line with other tax allowances. That would avoid the Chief Secretary to the Treasury asking the Secretary of State for Social Security whether he really wanted an increase in child benefit, or whether that increase should be given to those who are really poor.
In any one year, we should always try to give cash to those who are really poor. If we do that for a succession of years, we take away the citizenship of benefit for children. I would call it the child cash allowance, and have it settled by the Chancellor. I hope that, during the next year or two, the Government will do that.
I am glad that the Chancellor did not change the arrangements for mortgage relief. I am a great supporter of the idea that those who want to buy their own homes should be able to do so, regardless of whether they are housing association tenants or other social tenants, and whether or not they are starting for the first time. I am also a great believer in the idea that people who want to move from home ownership to being tenants should be able to do that, too.
Those who argue for house price inflation are, I believe, missing the point. We want to make homes affordable for people, and there is no reason why most of people's disposable income should go towards having a more expensive home. It would be better to put more of their money into a small business, or some other such investment, rather than all their assets and everything else being tied to the value of their home, while they make the highest mortgage payments possible.
I welcome the fact that the changes over the past two or three years have encouraged people to pay off their mortgages when they can. That strikes me as proper. Five or 10 years ago, the system encouraged people to have as large a mortgage as possible, and to keep it going as long as possible, well into retirement. That was perverse, and the present arrangements encourage people to pay off their mortgages as and when they can.
My last argument is about bringing the family life cycle and the family perspective into social and economic policy. The Budget can help with that. Over the past 40 or 45 years, we have often made the mistake of looking at still photographs of society and saying, "Here are the apparently unchanging elderly; here are the people who are out of work; there are the lone parents; there are the people of one ethnic background or another."
Instead, we should look at the things that people have in common--the ups and downs of needs and resources, as we change from being dependent children to being independent, and as we move to family formation, and sometimes to family deformation. We move from being in work to being out of work, from being ill to being healthy; we may become disabled, or we may retire. We may be retired and well, and then retired and looking after elderly parents, which is the lot of many people as they move into retirement.
Those predictable ups and downs affect each of us differently, but the general pattern is obvious. When we look at the children born today, we are looking at the pensioners of 55, 65, or 75 years' time. The arrangements that we make now give them signals about what would be good for them or for society, about what contributions they can make, and about what they can expect both privately and publicly.
We should ask the Government every five years or so to feed a family life cycle analysis into social and economic policy. That would be a way of trying to open up some
of the targets that might be useful for people--and I can give one example of it that has nothing to do with the Budget.
When I brought the family perspective and the family life cycle into the treatment of drink-driving, we managed to cut out two thirds of drink-driving, and then two thirds of the deaths, in two years, with no change in law, in sentencing or in enforcement. It was a change of culture-- the sort of change in understanding that leads to a change in behaviour, which in turn leads to a change in consequences. The same approach could be used in many other areas that matter.
Finally--I apologise to those who have heard this from me too often before, in private as well as in public--I do not approve of cutting the overseas aid budget. This country has been getting wealthier over the years. Our long-term commitment has been to give 70p in every £100 of our national wealth to countries far worse off than ourselves, yet at present we give about 31p, if that. As we become wealthier, we should give more, not less.
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