| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
8.18 pm
Charlotte Atkins (Staffordshire, Moorlands): I am especially pleased to follow the hon. Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr. Burnett) because, only the other evening, we discussed our maiden speeches and he told me that he wished to make his maiden speech during the debate on the Budget, as did I. I congratulate him on his maiden speech, which was fluent and interesting. I drive through his constituency to Cornwall when I visit my mother, so I was pleased to hear something about it. As he said, it is a beautiful area.
I am honoured to represent Staffordshire, Moorlands. The name of the constituency often confuses people about its location. It includes Kidsgrove and Talke, which are parts of Stoke-on-Trent and were generously transferred to me by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Ms Walley). Staffordshire, Moorlands also stretches all the way to Derbyshire. My constituency borders no fewer than 10 other constituencies. I do not know whether that is a record, but it is certainly amazing.
The constituency has a large agricultural area. It has many potteries. It has quarrying, engineering, textiles and the computer industry. It also has the headquarters of a large building society, the Britannia, which is proud to maintain its mutual status. Sadly, there are no longer any pits; there is only the awful threat of opencasting, and its blight on the landscape.
Staffordshire, Moorlands is one of the most beautiful constituencies in the United Kingdom. It includes large parts of the Peak national park, the lovely market town of Leek, and Biddulph, which is the home of the famous Biddulph grange gardens. I am glad to say that Biddulph is festooned in flowers at the moment, thanks to the local organisers of the marvellous "Biddulph in Bloom".
I also have the delightful village of Flash, which is the highest village in Britain. Farmers in Staffordshire, Moorlands have the tradition of farming high up into the
hills. They, like the constituents of Torridge and West Devon, are experiencing severe difficulties as a result of the BSE crisis and bovine tuberculosis.
Staffordshire, Moorlands is a very beautiful constituency, so it was no surprise to me that, when the BBC filmed its highly successful adaptation of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice", it came to my constituency in Staffordshire to film Elizabeth Bennett's visit to Derbyshire. Some scenes were filmed at the Roaches, right in the centre of my constituency, which Lizzie Bennett describes as "absolutely beautiful." Like Lizzie Bennett, I recommend my constituency to all who seek a delightful holiday in the Peak district. I also recommend a visit to the local potteries to pick up some interesting Staffordshire pottery.
Staffordshire, Moorlands is a constituency of surprises. Who would have thought that there would be a tornado a few weeks ago? It lifted the roof of the swimming pool in Waterhouses. I am glad to say that moorlanders are equal to adverse weather conditions. They are used to snow, sometimes well into late spring. They take such weather conditions in their stride.
As Member of Parliament for Staffordshire, Moorlands, I follow Sir David Knox, who sat in the House for 27 years. His predecessor, the Labour Member of Parliament, Harold Davies, served for 25 years. I can only hope that my tenure matches theirs.
I am delighted to pay tribute to Sir David. He was well respected by all hon. Members on both sides of the House. He was also well respected in the constituency. He looked after the interests of supporters and opponents alike with great diligence. He has always been kind and accommodating to me. I know that he will be a hard act to follow. His devotion to public service cannot be questioned, and I wish him a well-deserved retirement.
I come into the House 18 years after my father left it. My father is Ron Atkins. I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Mr. Borrow) mentioned my father, because he defeated Robert Atkins, to whom my father lost in 1979 by 21 votes. Hon. Members will notice that they had the same initial and the same surname. It is ironic that, as one Atkins leaves the House of Commons, another arrives to take his place.
William Morris, the socialist reformer, spent much time in Leek, the lovely market town in the centre of my constituency, observing the horrors of the industrial age. I am glad to say that his legacy lives on in Leek in the wonderful stained glass windows of both the grade 1 listed All Saints' church and the lovely, older St. Edward's church.
I wonder what William Morris would think if he visited Staffordshire, Moorlands today. Many of my constituents are forced to accept pay of £2.50 an hour and less and they have to look to the taxpayer to top up their wages. I am pleased, therefore, that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor spoke about the minimum wage, which will create a floor under low wages. Why should the taxpayer have to subsidise Scrooge employers? That only encourages a cheap labour mentality. My right hon. Friend underlined the point by quoting figures for investment in United Kingdom workers. He said that, for every £100 invested in the United Kingdom, Germany
invested £140, the United States invested £150 and Japan invested £160. There is no future in a low-wage, low-skill economy.
The previous Government helped to create skill shortages in my constituency by their policies. That is why I am so pleased that the Budget allocates an extra £2.3 billion for schools. I follow the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) in pressing the case for Staffordshire in terms of education funding. Staffordshire has some of the largest class sizes and worst school buildings in the country. It has consistently come bottom or second to bottom in the standard spending assessment funding league. The area cost adjustment unfairly discriminates against Staffordshire, so that, for example, Bedfordshire gets more than £160 per primary pupil and £230 per secondary pupil more than Staffordshire. That injustice must be remedied by the Government.
I hope that my constituency gets its fair share of the £1.3 billion allocated for school capital spending. When I visited Moorside high school in Werrington, I was appalled by the conditions under which teachers have to teach. Their labs are especially disgraceful. Most are not even large enough to take full-size classes. The school has been awaiting modernisation for years and it is still waiting. Is it any wonder that students decide to opt out of science--a subject that is vital for Britain's prosperity in the 21st century?
As my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury is due to sum up the debate, I must put in a plea for the Leek tax office. Its future is under review by my hon. Friend. With self-assessment upon us, the office has never been needed more. Already, the staff see 10,000 taxpayers a year. The office covers a vast area from Buxton and Uttoxeter to Stoke-on-Trent. If it closes, people will have to go to Stoke-on-Trent for advice. Public transport is appalling in my constituency as a result of deregulation. If people take a bus from Buxton to Stoke-on-Trent, they have only 15 minutes to conduct an interview on their tax affairs if they are to get back to Buxton.
I am told by experts that the self-assessment form takes at least three quarters of an hour to go through. I appeal to my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to ensure that the Leek tax office is not closed. It would leave the people of Staffordshire, Moorlands, the elderly, small businesses and farmers at the mercy of so-called independent tax advisers. I urge my hon. Friend to reprieve Leek tax office. It means so much to the community.
Mr. Piers Merchant (Beckenham):
It is a pleasure to take up the remarks of the hon. Member for Staffordshire, Moorlands (Charlotte Atkins). I congratulate her on making an excellent maiden speech and I look forward to hearing many contributions from her in future. She took us on an interesting tour of her constituency, which seemed at times to live up to its name. The prospect of a holiday in the area is certainly enticing. I was rather concerned about her new Lib-Lab pact, but reassured when she paid a generous tribute to her predecessor, who was a much respected colleague of mine and Member of this place, whom we shall certainly miss.
There are some who no doubt felt that they might reasonably expect a new party in government for the first time for many years to launch a Budget that was inspiring, radical and inventive. Such a Budget was introduced by the then new Conservative Government in 1979. If people were expecting such a Budget this year, they must have been sorely disappointed. The only radical feature of this Budget is the new red box that the Chancellor of the Exchequer produced. The rest of the Budget is a disappointment. It harks back to old Labour Budgets of tax rises and public spending increases, with no new economic direction charted.
I fear that a trend will be set for future Labour Budgets. As Government Front Benchers find themselves put under strain by vested interests and by right hon. and hon. Members on the Back Benches championing their own causes--all, of course, requiring more public spending--they will bow, bend and ultimately break. To fund additional public spending, they will have to increase taxes. They will return to the House again and again with tax-increasing Budgets, no doubt clothing them in the language of demand management. That is an old, tired phrase which is almost forgotten but with which the Chancellor, rather weakly I thought, attempted to defend the Budget.
As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) said in his excellent speech, the way to treat an overheated economy, where necessary, is by monetary policy and interest rate rises, not by increasing taxation. The Government are increasing taxation because they want more money to spend. They want to increase public spending, but not because they are interested in demand management.
The Budget is about tax rises, and there are 17 across the board. At the end of the day, it will be the ordinary man and woman in the street who will pay the increased taxes. There is a thinly veiled disguise, one so thin that we can see through it already. The Government take the view that somehow the money will be raised elsewhere.
Let us examine the main tax increases that are instituted. Who will pay for the windfall tax on the utilities? Of course, the consumer will pay for the smash-and-grab raid on the utilities through the increased prices that the utilities will have to introduce sooner or later to fund the mammoth £5.2 billion tax that the Chancellor has imposed.
What about the tax on pension funds? There has been the greatest attack on pension funds since the war, according, rightly, to the National Association of Pension Funds. This £5 billion attack is one that will be paid for by the ordinary man and woman through their pension contributions. They will have to increase their funding so that they might have a reasonable pension at the end of the day.
There is an increase in transport or fuel tax along with vehicle excise duty. The Government mask these increases in rhetoric about the environment. Car and freight use on the roads is inflexible, and users will not abandon their cars despite the 16p a gallon increase and notwithstanding the increase in vehicle excise duty; instead, they will simply pay up. Again, the Chancellor's hand is going into the pocket of the ordinary man and woman.
There is a strange contradiction in the Government's environmental rhetoric: they claim that, by increasing taxes on transport, they will restrain the use of transport
and improve the environment; at the same time, they are decreasing taxation on house fuel--without mentioning the impact it will have, if their theory is correct that demand will be affected--thereby increasing consumption of home fuel and accordingly harming the environment. There is a peculiar contradiction that destroys the myth that the Government's measures are designed to help the environment. They are not; they are designed to raise increased taxation.
There are other tax increases on tobacco, alcohol and insurance premiums. They are all designed to raise extra money, but with a thinly veiled disguise. The Budget is about raising taxes and about the Chancellor's sticky paws being slipped into the pockets of working men and women, thereby taking from them a larger proportion of their hard-earned wages. It is about transferring choice from the individual into the state's centrally planned economy. It is also about increasing state power and influence and decreasing choice and the amount of money that an individual keeps to spend or save as he wishes.
That is not the way to inspire an economy to grow and to be healthy--far from it; it will have the reverse effect. It ignores the lesson that is apparent throughout the world. Strong, vibrant and growing economies come about when taxes are kept low, when public spending is controlled and when individuals are given the initiative and encouragement to do and earn of their best. Those are the conditions in which economies grow. That does not happen when Governments plot and plan to take a larger proportion of the income that would otherwise flow into individuals' pockets.
My greatest concern about the tax-raising Budget that is before us is the attack on home ownership. All my constituents will suffer from the other measures to which I have referred, but the measures that will hit them most in the longer term are those linked with taxes that will specifically hit home owners.
I happen to believe that home ownership is a good thing in itself. I also believe that there should be an onus on Government to encourage home ownership. That is because it builds for individuals a stake in the community. It encourages them to be individually responsible financially and in other ways. It makes for easier mobility. In addition, it takes the burden away from the state to provide housing, as much as possible, and leaves it with the private market and individuals making their own choice.
The Labour party has always been equivocal about home ownership. It has been responsible in the past for many measures designed to restrict home ownership or to discourage it. The Budget, however, is a downright attack on home ownership. Through three measures, the Budget will ensure that life is made more difficult for home owners, and that those who wish to move into home ownership will find it more difficult to do so.
First, there is the reduction of MIRAS to 10 per cent. That will cost the average mortgage payer about £120 a year. That sum will increase as interest rates increase. That is the second consequence of the Budget. The inevitability of interest rate rises will additionally hit home owners.
Home owners will be hit also by the increase in stamp duty that the Chancellor has brought forward. Stamp duty is an iniquitous tax because it taxes mobility. It is a tax
on a simple transfer, and I would like it to be non-existent. To go in the opposite direction and increase it will certainly be harmful.
Most of the impact on home owners will not be on the rich; it will be on the ordinary, struggling middle classes who are attempting to stay in home ownership, or young people who are moving into home ownership in the first place, because they require mortgages and have to service them. Those people sometimes have to move into houses of higher value, particularly if they live in areas of the country such as mine, where property prices are much higher--as, indeed, they are across London and the south-east. Many of those people will have to pay the new increase in stamp duty which has been introduced in the Budget, which will have a serious impact.
The Budget, which is merely the first step in a series of Labour tax-raising Budgets we will see, will have a particularly adverse impact on the ordinary men and women who want to move into home ownership or want to retain their stake in the nation via home ownership. It is despicable that the Government should attack those hard-working people in that way.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |