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9.11 pm
Mr. Phil Woolas (Oldham, East and Saddleworth): Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for calling me to make my maiden speech in this important and historic debate. It is not, of course, historic because of my contribution, but because of the importance of the people's Budget to the fortunes of our people. It is a great honour to be called to speak at the end of this debate. I have chosen the one day when rain in Manchester would have been welcome. My constituency straddles real Lancashire and real Yorkshire so hon. Members can guess that cricket is dear to our hearts.
It is a greater honour--more important than speaking today--to represent the people of Oldham, East and Saddleworth. My constituency, formed by boundary changes, is truly among the most beautiful. Indeed, the many hon. Members from both sides who visited the former constituency during the Littleborough and Saddleworth by-election would have to concede that in our Pennine hills and valleys, we have a precious jewel. If, in the words of Blake, the countenance divine shone forth upon our clouded hills and if Jerusalem was builded here, it happened in Saddleworth.
Here, we also have the patent on dark satanic mills. In truth, my constituency is the best of constituencies and the worst of constituencies. In the Oldham parishes of St. Mary and St. James, we know the daily price of poverty, of social deprivation and of all the symptoms that the people's Budget is setting out to cure.
The real number of unemployed people in Oldham is estimated at 18,634--some 17 per cent. of the work force or one in five. In the estates of Higginshaw, St. Mary's, Derker, Sholver, Glodwick and Clarksfield, the people's courage in the face of what was described as "the price worth paying" is testament to their spirit. It has withstood, with the same fortitude as the Pennine hills that those villages nestle against, all that the free enterprise elements
of the past 18 years have thrown against them. In the villages of Shaw, Crompton, New Hey, and Milnrow, industry and integrity, in the words of my school motto, have guided the transformation from weaver's sheds and mills to the modern economy. In the Oldham suburbs of Waterhead and Lees, the same spirit can be seen.
Those who truly want to see the beauty of Britain should come with me to Austerlands cricket club, perched 900 ft above sea level on the Pennine watershed. To the west is Greater Manchester, heartland of the industrial revolution. In the distance, are the great docks of Liverpool and on the far horizon are Jodrell bank and the Welsh hills. To the east, one can see Saddleworth, home of the Pennine culture of brass bands and true northern grit.
The villages of Denshaw, Delph, Dobcross, Diggle, Uppermill, Greenfield and Grasscroft are truly God's own country. It was in my constituency more than 100 years ago that the Independent Labour party was formed. There, for the past 100 years, democratic socialism, liberalism and conservatism have battled for the soul of the people. There, Tom Mann preached the cause of trade unionism, and Victor Grayson swept all before him in the famous by-election of 1907. There, the former Member for Oldham, Winston Churchill, warned, in the sort of language that only he could command--and, it must be said, with a heavy dose of new Labour--that liberalism and free trade was
It was also in my constituency that the people of Lees under their banner of "Death or Representation", marched to Peterloo to demand universal suffrage. Some met their deaths. To be the new representative of Lees humbles me beyond words. As a new Labour candidate, I cannot claim that the Lees brigade were strictly on message. I hope that my former campaign manager will forgive me if I say that new Labour has been warmly welcomed by the successors of Aamon Wrigley. Not only did Aamon help to form the ILP, his family went on to create the Wrigley's spearmint chewing gum empire. Unkind souls might say that between the Labour party and chewing gum, we have done more for jaw-ache than for anything else.
No description of my constituency would be complete without reference to "them there hills". Brooding to the east, above Greater Manchester and east Lancashire, is Saddleworth moor. Nowhere in England does such beauty strike such fear. We all remember those forbidding moors. For the sake of all our children, people in Oldham work together. As their representative, I shall oppose any move to release Myra Hindley and Ian Brady. For it is in the attitude of the people, not the common geography, that the true spirit of Pennine folk, Yorkist and Lancastrian alike, is found.
The alternative service book has one way of putting it. In communion, we say:
From Geoffrey Dickens, I learned that the good representative is an advocate of all the people. Ever one for the soundbite, his populism masked a popular politician respected by all, whatever their persuasion. If I am a fraction as succesful a constituency Member as Geoffrey, I will be proud indeed.
The Liberal Democrat, Chris Davies, understood that also. In his short time as the Member for the constituency, he worked tirelessly and proved himself a doughty campaigner for the people. I suspect that despite our respective parts in the political turmoil between our two parties at the by-election, we share much more in outlook than we differ on.
For Labour, Bryan Davies, who represented the seat of Oldham, Central and Royton, was a magnificent Member of Parliament. It seems strange to me to be paying tribute to him given the huge amount of service he has yet to offer. In Oldham, we all hope and expect that he will be given that opportunity. As the previous Member for Enfield, as secretary of the Parliamentary Labour party, and as a friend and adviser in circumstances where egotists would not have bothered, he has gained the friendship and respect of those with whom he worked.
It is that common spirit which I will seek to articulate. I will articulate the social diversity of my constituency--from the grinding poverty and exclusion of Glodwick to the beauty and prosperity of Saddleworth. I will seek to build opportunity for all, recognising that it is by the strength of our common endeavours that we achieve more together than we achieve alone. This Government and Labour Members have set their course according to that and it is against that that we will be judged.
The Prime Minister was right when he said that we are the servants not the masters, but what divides those on the Labour Benches from those on the Conservative ones is our understanding that the Government are the master of the economy. We must never again allow free trade and the free market to determine people's fate. This Budget takes control for the people.
Mr. David Heathcoat-Amory (Wells):
I congratulate the right hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Darling) on his appointment as Chief Secretary to the Treasury. I wish him well in his post. He will shortly respond to the debate and will have a number of questions to answer. I should like to summarise if I can some of the questions that have been posed in the debate by my right hon. and hon. Friends. I should also like to pick up on one or two comments made by Labour Members.
The main feature of the debate is that we have finally got near the truth of what the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced last week. It was a massive, unnecessary, tax-raising Budget--new Labour in presentation certainly, but old Labour in all its effects.
The Chancellor said that it was a Budget for the long term. He was right in one sense, because it hit the long-term plans and aspirations of millions of savers and pensioners. The damage caused by the Budget will indeed be long term.
The Budget was also completely unnecessary: the Government have a golden inheritance. They have taken over the strongest economy in Europe, which hasbeen brought about because of structural reforms, privatisations, deregulation and reform of trade union law, all of which were opposed all the time by all of the Labour party. It was our reforms, however, that not only transformed the output of the economy, but, combined with the strict control on public expenditure that we managed, delivered the steady reduction in unemployment which was far more effective and far more secure in dealing with the problems of long-term and youth unemployment than the present Government's attempts through their welfare-to-work programme. Again, those supply-side reforms were opposed day in and day out, night after night, by all the Labour party, including hon. Members who are now on the Government Front Bench.
Old Labour attitudes broke out once or twice in today's debate, but, nevertheless, I sincerely congratulate the hon. Members for Bury, South (Mr. Lewis), for Dumfries (Mr. Brown), for North-West Norfolk (Dr. Turner) and for Oldham, East and Saddleworth (Mr. Woolas) all of whom made confident and fluent maiden speeches. We very much appreciated their tributes to their immediate predecessors, all too many of whom used to sit on the Benches behind the Treasury Bench.
The debate has not, however, answered why the Government are forcing through a tax-raising Budget of this scale. The PSBR last year was £3.3 billion better than expected. That rate of improvement in the public finances is set to continue all the way through the current financial year and into the future, due mainly to buoyant tax revenues. The reason for this huge, tax-raising Budget is no clearer if we examine exactly who has been hit and how.
The Chancellor increased the duty on road fuel. He also increased, from the day of the Budget statement itself, duty on heating oil. As was shrewdly spotted by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr. MacGregor), the Chancellor has raised this additional revenue by putting up these duties five months earlier than we planned in our Budget statement last November. In addition, he increased road fuel duties by more than we had planned--by a full 6 per cent. above inflation. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Ruffley) rightly pointed out the burden that this imposes on a rural constituency. That point was also made by the hon. Member for North Tayside (Mr. Swinney), who also represents a large rural area.
With the additional increase in hydrocarbon duty, and by bringing it forward a full five months, the Chancellor has on his hands a real and genuine windfall. It is far greater than the cost of the 3 per cent. cut in VAT on
heating oil. It adds up to an additional £735 million this year. That was not altogether clear from his Budget statement.
The Budget represents an enormous additional burden not just on the driving public, but, because he has put up the duty on heating oil, on the people who rely on that form of heating in their homes, outweighing by far the benefit of the cost of reducing VAT on domestic heating.
"the cause of the left-out millions."
In 1906, he looked forward to
"the universal establishment of minimum standards of life and labour and their progressive elevation as the increasing energies of production permit."
We will not have to wait much longer.
"Though we are many, we are one body because we all share one bread."
In Oldham, we have another way of putting it, "If you kick one, we all limp." Not only because of convention but because they shared that common outlook, I wish to pay tribute to my three predecessors.
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