PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES - United Kingdom Parliament

43 Debate on the Address
9 MAY 2012
Debate on the Address
44
[Simon Hughes]
and that is the truth now. We were therefore right to
legislate to make the constitutional reform necessary to
have a fixed-term Parliament, in order to give the certainty
that the county needed. If anyone does not believe that
political certainty is a good thing, they should look at
what is happening on the other side of this continent at
this very moment. In five days, we were able to bring
certainty to our country, despite an indecisive election
result.
May I remind the House what the election achieved?
The Conservatives won 306 seats, and got the support
of just over a third of those who voted.
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op): Are we
talking about the council elections?
Simon Hughes: No, this was two years ago. Labour
won 258 seats and just under 30% of public support. We
won 57 seats with 23% of public support. Labour and
the Liberal Democrats combined did not make a majority.
Indeed, Labour and the Liberal Democrats along with
the next largest party, the Democratic Unionists, would
not have made a majority—we would still have been
short—whereas the Conservatives plus the Liberal
Democrats made a majority, and the country needed a
majority Government. We therefore did our duty, by
agreeing to work with people who were normally our
opponents, in the national interest, to deliver a common
programme. We have done that twice in Scotland, working
with Labour in the national interest, and once in Wales,
again working with Labour in the national interest. I
believe it was right to do so on all those occasions, and
that it was right to do so on this occasion, too.
Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/
Co-op): Given the Prime Minister’s not-so-ringing
endorsement of Lords reform from the Dispatch Box, is
the right hon. Gentleman absolutely sure that the coalition
is still joined together in a common purpose?
Simon Hughes: The answer is yes, and if the hon.
Lady will bear with me, I will deal later with Lords
reform, as it is in the Queen’s Speech and the programme
for the coming year.
We need to remember where we were two years ago:
there was turmoil in Greece and in the eurozone, and
our constituents were paying out of their money—not
our money—£120 million a day just in servicing the
interest repayments on our debt. That is not a way to
use taxpayers’ money for the good. There was a financial
crisis caused by a banking system that was entirely
focused on short-term gain for the people at the top—as
my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business,
Innovation and Skills said regularly in the previous
Parliament—rather than on creating long-term value
for the many small businesses that provide work for
most people across the country. The public finances
were out of control, we had the largest public deficit in
the developed world and the living standards of those
on low and middle incomes were being eroded, which
had been gradually reducing the spending power of the
British consumer over the previous decade. The cost of
living was spiralling; for younger people, certainly in
constituencies such as mine, a home had become an
unaffordable dream. The economic system often encouraged
people to take as much as possible for themselves rather
than incentivising them to create long-term value and
spread wealth and work as widely as possible, and the
economy was reliant on energy from scarce resources,
the price of which was rising year after year.
Two years later, we are still not where we need to be.
We have unacceptably high unemployment, especially
youth unemployment, which started long before this
Government came to office and was on a significant upward
trend in the last years of the Labour Administration.
We are in an economic recession and banks are still not
lending enough to viable small businesses, as we all
know from our constituency casework, whereas the pay
of those at the top is rising more than can possibly be
justified by their performance. We heard the figures just
this week: an 11% increase in salaries at the top last
year, whereas the increase for the working population as
a whole was 1%.
It is therefore absolutely right that the Government
continue to focus on doing all we can to promote
economic growth and recovery, it is right that we continue
with the programme we set out and it is right that we
have a programme that, as the last Budget did, seeks to
put more money into the pockets of those low and
middle income working people and to make work pay.
The programme should regulate the banks, encourage
the growth of renewable energy and put the public finances
back on a sustainable footing so that the spending
priorities of the Government, about which we care—health
care, education and support for the less well-off—can
be adequately financed. No Government have ever invested
in better schools or hospitals by bankrupting themselves.
It has been difficult and we on the Liberal Democrat
Benches know that. There was no parliamentary majority
for getting rid of tuition fees and we were not able to
deliver that—it just became undeliverable. The Health
and Social Care Bill, the Welfare Reform Bill and the
Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders
Bill needed significant changes and we changed them
and made them hugely better—all of them. The evidence
is there in the legislation that is now on the statute book.
The Budget was grossly misrepresented. Its most
significant element was that many millions of people
were taken out of paying tax. Many more will be lifted
out of tax next year and the year after, so that nobody
will have to pay anything in tax on their first £10,000 of
income. It was also forgotten that last month pensioners
had the largest increase ever in the state pension since it
was introduced by the post-war Government. Then there
was the youth contract, the huge growth in the number
of apprenticeships, and the support for further education.
There has already been huge success, but we must
ensure that we focus on the priorities. The Gracious
Speech started by setting them out very clearly: economic
growth, justice and constitutional reform. We are proud
on the Liberal Democrat Benches that the Secretary of
State for Business, Innovation and Skills, my right hon.
Friend the Member for Twickenham (Vince Cable), will
see through the creation of the Green investment bank
in Edinburgh, for which some of us, as members of an
environmental party, have argued for many years and
will now see delivered. We are proud that the Secretary
of State for Energy and Climate Change, our right hon.
Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr Davey),
will introduce an energy Bill to give us low-carbon
energy generation and to develop renewables, which