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Madam Deputy Speaker (Sylvia Heal): Order. Several hon. Members are hoping to catch my eye. If contributions are brief, more may be successful in doing so.
5.35 pm
Ms Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent, North) (Lab): I can agree with the hon. Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown) on one thing: we need to take action urgently on housing. In that respect, I am pleased that in Budget 2004 the Chancellor paid such regard to Kate Barker's report. Housing is featuring now, and will feature in future. I am particularly pleased about that. It means that in my constituency in north Staffordshire, there will be a £2 billion housing investment programme over 15 years, and we shall invest in housing as we need to do.
Listening to the Budget debate, including the golden oldie that we heard from the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), about the golden rule, I was pleased that the current Chancellor has produced a Budget that will really deal with the economic situation and with investment in jobs, which we desperately need, especially in areas such as mine, where we have the huge legacy of Conservative Governments—the destruction of many of our traditional industries. We must now provide the employment opportunities.
The Budget commends itself to me because the Chancellor is genuinely dealing with environmental issues. Only months ago, we heard from the Government's chief adviser that the threat of global warming was as great as the threat of terrorism. It is important that the Chancellor is at last setting out ways to address global warming. We have environmental issues and we have the prospect at long last of action on energy efficiency. Those of us who have campaigned over many years can now see that there will be real improvement that will make a difference. Many environmental groups will welcome that move in the Budget.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ochil (Mr. O'Neill) talked about the Scotch Whisky Association, and that reminded me that Budgets in the past were often just about smoking and drinking. Whatever he might say about the changes that he would like for Scotch whisky, I have read the small print of the Budget and I am pleased. The Campaign for Real Ale has campaigned alongside the Titanic brewery in my constituency to extend the small breweries relief. It is good that we have a listening Chancellor who is looking at the issues in regional economies. It is important that we listen to what people are saying to us.
I see in his place my hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), who has done so much work on football. In the Budget there is at long last an undertaking to look at the role of football supporters trusts. Many of my hon. Friends, and Opposition Members, have had to deal with the prospect of football clubs going into administration. The Chancellor and the Inland Revenue needed to think about that issue, and there it is—a small welcome paragraph saying that the Chancellor will look at the work of football supporters trusts.
The Budget is about jobs, pensions and, more importantly, education. It recognises that, if we are to provide the boost to the economy that is desperately needed and to build on the success that the Chancellor has had so far, we need to concentrate on employment and ensuring that people have a proper, fair wage for the work that they do. That is why the improvements to the minimum wage, particularly for 16 and 17-year-olds, will be so welcomed in my constituency. No action is ever enough, but the Chancellor has shown that the Government care about people receiving a decent wage, work being made to pay, and local economies being boosted, so that we can have that sense of well-being that does so much to improve our areas.
One key aspect of the Budget is the huge investment in education. I have to say a word of thanks to the Chancellor, because Stoke-on-Trent is again to be at the
forefront of the programme to allocate extra money to the rebuilding of secondary schools. We could never even have dreamt of such a programme under the Conservative Government.The Government are not merely dealing with schools, but are starting with early years provision, and have given a commitment that every deprived ward will have a children's centre by 2008. Only last week my right hon. Friend the Minister for Children visited my constituency and saw how desperately we need a children's centre at Chell Heath. I must tell the Chancellor and my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary that it is critical that the investment outlined in the Budget be made to work on the ground.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge and Chryston (Mr. Clarke) mentioned people with disabilities. There are elements in the Budget that will make ours a fairer society for people with disabilities, which will be welcomed throughout the country.
Bearing in mind that you wish us to be brief in this closing part of the Budget debate, Madam Deputy Speaker, I shall concentrate on just one issue, which I hope the Chief Secretary will address when he replies to the debate. The Budget has given a real commitment to put into practice the findings of Sir Michael Lyons's review. If we are to build on all the investment in the economy, it is important to ensure that in any relocation, civil service jobs go not only to the larger "premiership" cities such as Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham, but to other urban areas that have so far not had their fair share of Government jobs. I put in a particular plea for north Staffordshire to feature in the work that the Chancellor does in the coming months, so that new jobs will be brought to our area.
The two back-up reports for Sir Michael Lyons's review—undertaken by Evian and King Sturge—do not really take account of the extent of deprivation in areas such as north Staffordshire. They tend to see the benefits of taking jobs away from the south-east as flowing from possible synergy with investment that has already been made in certain other parts of the country—for example, in the health jobs already in Sheffield or the passport office already in Liverpool. In transferring those jobs, location is all-important: location, location, location. North Staffordshire should be one of those locations.
My colleagues who represent other north Staffordshire constituencies feel as strongly as the North Staffordshire chamber of commerce, the local authorities and I do that the jobs that are brought to north Staffordshire should not be just back-street jobs, but the professional and managerial jobs that will help to regenerate the area. The introduction of such jobs would sit side by side with the housing pathfinder work that is bringing in £2 billion over 15 years, and would match the investment in learning and skills spearheaded by our learning and skills council and by Advantage West Midlands in the north Staffordshire regeneration zone.
We have to make certain that when the Government tell us how they will proceed with the relocation of jobs, they have a transparent procedure. If the so-called consultants, who have looked at some 102 cities around the country, have not bothered to flag up north Staffordshire as an area that can benefit, I will want to know why. I want the Chief Secretary to get back to the
people of north Staffordshire and start top-level talks to ensure that everything that we want to do on the ground will be reinforced by a proper relocation of jobs to the area.I hope that the Government can take away that message from this debate. We in north Staffordshire are very keen and eager in that regard, and we want nothing more than to work as closely as possible with the Government to regenerate our economy not only nationally, but in north Staffordshire, where this issue matters so much.
5.46 pm
Mr. David Cameron (Witney) (Con): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Ms Walley), who spoke very powerfully for her constituents. I shall talk about whether the Labour tax and spend experiment of the past four years has actually worked, but first I want to make a couple of preliminary remarks. I start where my hon. Friend—and neighbour—the Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown) began, with the so-called shot fox of cost savings and waste in government. I suspect that he is not really in favour of shooting foxes in any event, but as far as I can see this fox is alive and well and living in Whitehall.
We Conservatives have been saying that there is a lot of Government waste and bad spending, and suddenly the Chancellor has said, "Yes, we're wasting £20 billion a year, and 40,000 jobs in the civil service are surplus to requirements." That is a big change in the terms of trade in the debate on tax and spend, because until now, we have been told that every pound that we attempt to save in public services is a pound off the nurses' pay bill, or a pound off front-line services. Now we know that, as we have been saying all along, it is possible to save money in central Government without hitting front-line services.
As I listened to the Budget speech, three points struck me straight away that bear repeating. First, the Budget was highly political. Almost all of it was about us: about Conservative policies that the Chancellor has rejected, and about others—those involving saving money—that he has accepted; he had very little of merit to say for himself. Secondly, he made that last point clear by repeatedly talking about tax rates that he had decided to freeze, as if such taxes normally went up every year and such a freeze somehow constituted generosity. He said that he was generously freezing inheritance tax, income tax and capital gains tax, which proves how little he had to say.
The third point that rang out from the Chancellor's speech is that tax is to come: if Labour gets in again, there will be third-term tax rises. The two figures that jumped out of the Budget speech were the £120 billion that the Chancellor plans to spend over the next five years, and the £140 billion that he plans to borrow.
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