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Mr. Howard Flight (Arundel and South Downs): May I suggest to you that, rather than being a huge problem, it was the greatest boon to industry when the United Kingdom left the ERM?
Mr. Stevenson: So, what you are saying is that another ignominious collapse of Government policy is good for British policy. Is that what you are arguing?
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Both hon. Members are referring to me. I am not responsible for these matters.
Mr. Stevenson: I apologise to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but it is interventions of that nature that mean that we sometimes slip up over parliamentary protocol--
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. May I make a general point to the House? The conventions exist precisely so that we do not lose our tempers and get carried away.
Mr. Stevenson: I am extremely grateful, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
The ignominious policy of the previous Government, which we now seem to be being urged to repeat--we shall not--came after two of the worst recessions that this country has ever witnessed.
There was no reference in the speech of the right hon. Member for Wokingham to the other burden on business inflicted by 18 years of the previous Government's rule: their complete and utter isolation in Europe. Time after time, businesses in my constituency asked me why the
then Government did not put forward what they wanted to hear in a positive fashion and why the Government were, instead, left completely isolated. Business representatives asked me, "Don't the Government know that they are not working in our interests, but against them?" That argument fell on stony ground with the previous Government. For 18 years that massive burden was imposed on industry.
I accept that the previous Government did not have a policy of imposing burdens on the coal industry; their policy was to destroy it. They did not need to put unnecessary burdens on the coal industry because they wanted to see it destroyed; they certainly achieved that very effectively in my constituency. Future generations in this country will scarcely believe that any Government could have embarked on such a policy.
Another important area of business involves small and medium businesses. My experience--and I suspect that it is shared by many Members of the House--is that small and medium businesses have given a clear message. They are worried about the business rate that was imposed by the previous Government. In my constituency it went up 30 per cent. in less than three years. Businesses are worried about late payment, about investment and about a chronic lack of skills, which I think was referred to by the hon. Member for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman). They are also worried about the burden of regulation. I shall briefly refer to each of those issues.
The uniform business rate was imposed by the previous Government because they were not prepared, in any way, shape or form, to trust local authorities. They thought that Whitehall knew best the consequences that have been suffered by businesses in my area and elsewhere.
Mrs. Gorman:
Is the hon. Gentleman not aware that the reason the previous Government introduced the uniform business rate was that Labour councils all over the country were doubling or trebling business rates year by year and using them as a milch cow to fund the introduction of their extravagant general policies?
Mr. Stevenson:
I am prepared to debate that point with the hon. Lady at any time she chooses, but I would say now that her general comment would not stand up to scrutiny. What she describes was certainly not the case in my local authority area--I have had the figures checked. Increases in business rates have far outstripped increases in general rates.
Mr. Borrow:
Does my hon. Friend agree that, had the previous Tory Government not neglected the quinquennial revaluation of business properties, the disparity between different regions of the United Kingdom would not have grown to the extent that, in 1990, many of the points raised about high business rates became true? It was the Conservative Government's failure to address the problem through revaluation and the fact that comments made by the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) stopped the revaluation in 1979 that created many of the problems.
Mr. Stevenson:
My hon. Friend is obviously correct, and I am grateful for that intervention.
Late payment is another burden on businesses. They say that they are not getting paid quick enough and that something needs to be done about the problem. Why did
the previous Government do nothing? If they were so interested in lifting the burdens on businesses, especially small businesses, why did they ignore the problem for 18 years?
Mr. Andrew Lansley (South Cambridgeshire):
The hon. Gentleman asks a question and I may be able to provide an answer. I was at the Association of British Chambers of Commerce at the time and I well recall that, in 1988, the then Secretary of State for Employment conducted a consultation on statutory interest on late payments. Industry, for which I spoke, said that it did not want it, just as industry is now saying that it is the wrong way to proceed.
Mr. Stevenson:
That is more a comment on the effectiveness of the previous Government's consultation processes than a statement of the truth of the matter. All hon. Members, with the possible exception of the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley), would accept without much equivocation that late payment is a real problem for small businesses. Why did the previous Government not act? Why did they ignore the problem throughout their period in office? The Labour Government will act to lift that burden from small businesses.
Skills are extremely important to businesses, especially small businesses. It would be useful for Conservative Members to look at the 1995 report from the European Union Court of Auditors. It makes interesting reading: it contains an entire section on training programmes for small and medium businesses and one section refers particularly the previous Government. Why did the court refer to the previous Government? The report states clearly that less than 1 per cent. of the programmes available to support training for small and medium businesses in the United Kingdom had been implemented by the previous Government--less than 1 per cent. The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire is an expert on research, but some of us Labour Members have done our research as well, and the figures are damning.
European Union objective 4 funding relates to submissions for retraining those who need new skills to re-enter the job market. That is an essential activity, but in 1995-96 there was not a single bid from the previous Government--not one. When I questioned that in European Standing Committee B, I was told by the Conservative Minister that there was no need for such retraining programmes--a staggering reply. When we talk about burdens on business we should consider the previous Government's record--lamentable, not by accident but by design. The Conservative Government did not believe in public intervention in training and retraining and certainly did not believe that such intervention should come from the European Union.
Deregulation is fine in respect of burdensome regulations that are unnecessary, out of date or counterproductive. There is general consensus that we want to see such regulations out of the way, so we support the Select Committee on Deregulation that was set up by the right hon. Member for Henley in 1994. However, there are two problems with that Committee: first, although it abolished between 800 and 900 regulations, between 1994 and the time they left office the previous Government introduced 10,000 regulations. That cannot have fulfilled the objectives of the exercise. It is no good Conservative
Members shaking their heads--it is true; the figures derive from answers to parliamentary questions. Secondly, as I understand it, the Committee does not contain representatives from small and medium businesses--what a lamentable omission from such an important activity.
Mr. David Chidgey (Eastleigh):
I came to the debate with feelings of curiosity and disbelief. I was curious because Conservative Members did not take the opportunity to apologise to the House for the damage that their policies caused to business and jobs when they were in office; and I experienced a sense of disbelief when I saw that they had failed to recognise the verdict of the voters who, having suffered the consequences of their policies, threw them out of office and inflicted the heaviest defeat on the Conservative party since 1906. What does it take before they get the message? What we heard instead was 45 minutes of auto-rant, which is hardly entertaining and certainly not interesting.
Just look at the record left us by the Tory party. In the 1990s under the Tories the national debt more than doubled. It took 300 years to accumulate a national debt of £160 billion. It took the Tories five years to more than double it, to £350 billion. Under the Tories, public sector debt per income taxpayer rose from less than £7,000 to more than £13,000. An independent report by Coopers and Lybrand, a well respected firm, stated that high borrowing and the rundown of state assets had left the public sector technically bankrupt. In 1989, the public sector had a net worth of £243 billion; by 1995, the Tories had reduced it to £36 billion. If they had stayed in office, it would now be zero.
Despite selling off public assets and screwing down public investment, the Tories failed to reduce public-sector borrowing. Let us look at their record on taxation: 22 tax rises since 1992, the biggest ever peacetime increase. The Library has calculated that the average family would need a cut in income tax of over 6p in the pound just to get back to where they were in 1992 at the time of the general election.
Of course, the Tory average family is not average at all. The definition of a family used in Conservative statistics is a family with two children under the age of 11, a male earner on full-time average wages and a non-working wife. That applies to fewer than 2 per cent. of all families. What about all the rest?
Under the Conservatives, the poorest became worse off than ever, and the gap between rich and poor widened. Consider the record on unemployment. The Conservative motion this evening mentions damage to jobs, but unemployment under the Tories rose from 1.26 million in 1979 to more than 2 million in the last Parliament. Consider, too, the damage Conservative policies have done to business and industry. In the year before the Tories left office, investment in manufacturing was lower
in real terms than in 1970, a quarter of a century before. Investment in the UK was the fourth lowest in the EU as a percentage of GDP. When they left office, inflation was the third highest in the EU, and short-term interest rates were the second highest--only Greece's were higher.
So on public debt, taxation, poverty and unemployment, investment, inflation and interest rates the Tories' record is one of failure. No wonder the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) adopted the slogan, "No change, no chance". No wonder, either, that the public took his sound advice and voted his party out of office.
Only now do we hear the hint of an apology--not in the House but in an interview reported in the Sunday Times this weekend. I am pleased to see the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) in her place; I do not like to speak ill of the absent. She reportedly told the Federation of Small Businesses:
"Mea culpa, we did not get it right in all areas".
That prompts the question--how many areas were there left to get it wrong in? Admitting that the Conservative Government did not respond to the needs of small firms, she went on to say:
"We did not listen but perhaps we did not always receive the right message".
The killer point came next:
"There will be little policy coming from the Conservative Party in these initial stages, as is understandable, because we got it wrong."
I am still waiting to hear a formal apology--
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