PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES - United Kingdom Parliament

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683 Debate on the Address 15 MAY 2013 Debate on the Address 684 [Sir Bob Russell] for tied publicans to only pay a fair, independently assessed market rent to the pub owning company—a ‘market rent only’ option.” It is estimated that this would bring down the cost of a pint in pubco-owned pubs—around a third of all British public houses—allowing many pubs to survive and thrive. It would also lead to fairer access to public houses for small brewers, which would boost their businesses and increase choice at the bar. I would have thought that the coalition welcomed such measures. It must be stressed that all family brewers would be excluded, because the code would apply only to companies that own more than 500 pubs. This relates to pubco public houses, but legislative help would also benefit other neighbourhood public houses. In commending the Fair Deal for Your Local campaign, I congratulate the excellent work of my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland), who tabled early-day motion 57. I also remind the House of what I have said on this subject in previous debates. In November I said: “We need to amend the tax levy on beer sold in our traditional public houses. We should have a tax-neutral approach to keep the Treasury happy and bring huge social benefits, including job retention and creation, rather than there being the loss of jobs that we continue to witness in the sector. Most publicans of neighbourhood and village public houses run responsible establishments. Their customers should be rewarded, not financially penalised because of the irresponsible marketing carried out by supermarkets and mega-drinking establishments.”— [Official Report, 1 November 2012; Vol. 552, c. 429.] I returned to this theme in the Budget debate in March, when I observed that “there are mixed messages on alcohol tax and the coalition Government’s desire to tackle binge drinking and improve the health of the nation.” I described the confusion caused by having a debate on whether there should be minimum unit pricing alcohol when the Chancellor was knocking 1p off the price of a pint of beer, and added: “We need a variable price structure to help traditional, community and village public houses, which would fit well with the coalition Government’s localism agenda and the last Government’s sustainable communities legislation.”—[Official Report, 25 March 2013; Vol. 560, c. 1362.] Time prevents me from mentioning other Bills that I would have liked to be included, such as one on building council houses. The lack of council house building over the past 30 years under the policies of the Tory Governments led by Thatcher, Major and Blair has led to a housing crisis. Unlike some, I will loyally support the Queen’s Speech this evening. 3.9 pm Mr Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab): As always, I listened carefully to the Queen’s Speech with the intention of examining how the new measures would affect my constituents. I was also looking for measures that would ease the strain on the families in my constituency who are worried about unemployment and the rising cost of living. I was sadly and expectedly disappointed. Before listing my concerns, I will place on the record a couple of observations on how we got into the deep economic difficulty that is causing desperate hardship for many families in my constituency. The fundamental error of this stagnant coalition Government was to assume that they could clear the deficit in four years. Their plan was to use the final year in office to hand out sweeteners to the electorate, who would be so overwhelmingly grateful that they would elect a Conservative majority. Dealing with the deficit is the defining issue facing this country. However, that should never have been conditional on or linked to the outcome of the next election. That was a political fix that was destined to fail. Everybody could see that it was politically too far-fetched, except for the opportunistic Liberal Democrats who disregarded their electoral mandate and traded their principles for government office. The UK economy is 9% smaller today than was expected when this stagnant Government took over. In 2009-10, the deficit was £159 billion. It is now forecast to be down to £121 billion. However, the public debt overall is rising from £795.5 billion to a predicted £1.1 trillion. On any reasonable analysis of our economic situation, two significant themes scream out loud and clear. The first is the continual anaemic economic performance and the second is our ability to pay off the debt, which is becoming increasingly strained as a consequence of the first point. While those two heads travel in opposite directions, our economy will never recover. The policies simply have to change. It is time that this stagnant Government chose to put the national interest first and their party political interests second. Ordinary hard-working people and their families are struggling. Rents and mortgages have to be paid, as do ever-increasing energy and water bills. Families who spent £600 a month to cover those costs in 2005 now spend more than £800 a month. We have record fuel prices and record amounts of people in fuel poverty. We have 1 million young people out of work and left behind. Lending to businesses is continuing to fall. We have soaring unemployment. We have a Chancellor who has to borrow £245 billion more than he planned, who has failed his own economic test of retaining our triple A credit rating and who, over the course of this Parliament, will have delivered growth of a mere 1.7%. Ordinary working people are paying the price of this out-of-touch Government’s economic stagnation. Mr Jim Cunningham: Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the methods that the Government are using to make ordinary people pay for their incompetence is the bedroom tax? Mr Clarke: My hon. Friend raises a very important point. While we witness the introduction of the second home subsidy, the effects of the bedroom tax are being seen in my constituency, where an estimated 2,128 individuals will be affected, two-thirds of whom are believed to have disabilities. Citizens Advice Scotland has revealed that nearly 800 victims of the welfare axe are desperately seeking its support. Welfare recipients are an easy target, but we should not point the finger too quickly because no job is safe in this economy.
685 Debate on the Address 15 MAY 2013 Debate on the Address 686 To get our economy moving again, we need investment—investment for jobs, investment for the future and investment in the ordinary hard-working people of our country. We have been treated to a more-of-the-same economic plan, with no change on anything of importance. The Government are cutting taxes for millionaires while cutting support for our economy. Led by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, this stagnant Cabinet of out-of-touch, upper-class millionaires has run out of ideas and run out of steam, while our country is running out of time. What a way to run Britain. 3.15 pm Richard Ottaway (Croydon South) (Con): As a secondary modern schoolboy, I am always pleased to follow the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr Clarke). In the regrettable absence of a debate on foreign affairs, I will use today’s theme to focus on the EU’s rule in economic growth. The British economy is not an isolated beast. It is part of a global economy and, in particular, a European economy focused on the EU. That European economy needs reform, but we need to be part of it. Global economic success is to be found in single markets around the world. We should look at the economic growth in Brazil, Russia, India, China and the USA. What do those countries have in common? They are all single markets. The EU single market, an invention of Margaret Thatcher, which stretches from Athens to Oslo, is the largest single market in the world. We in the UK are 60 million in a world of more than 7 billion—less than 1%. Do we want to face the global markets alone or as a member of a trading bloc that represents 500 million people? What is the alternative? Perhaps we could be outside the EU, negotiating our own terms of trade. Perhaps we could be an independent sovereign state, calling the shots on our own terms like Norway and Switzerland. Those propositions may sound attractive, but I disagree with the Secretary of State for Education, who says that life outside the EU would be “perfectly tolerable”. Norway and Switzerland do not call the shots. They pay billions every year for access to the single market and Switzerland has been forced into renegotiation. We would have to renegotiate our own free trade agreements. The holy grail of trade agreements is an EU-US deal. We would look pretty dumb if we were leaving the EU just as it was signing up to such a trade agreement. Imagine the impact on our car industry, which exports five out of every six cars made in the UK, if it had to pay the EU import tariff on cars of 9.6%. Where would a foreign car manufacturer invest, faced with that situation? Mr Jenkin: The United Kingdom has a trade deficit with the other 26 EU member states of £70 billion. I cannot imagine that the EU would want to cut itself off from the British market by getting into a trade war with the United Kingdom. May I also point out that we export more to the rest of the world than to the EU? The EU is declining in relative terms, whereas markets in the rest of the world are expanding. Surely we are a global trading nation, not just a regional trading nation, and that does not require us to be a member of the single market. Richard Ottaway: We can all trade statistics on who trades what with whom, but about 50% of our exports are to the European Union. We export four times as much to the EU as to the United States. Mr Jenkin: Will my hon. Friend give way? Richard Ottaway: I will not give way. We sell more to Sweden, which has a population of 9 million, than to India, which has a population of 1.1 billion. That is the truth of the matter. Mr Jenkin: Will my hon. Friend give way? Richard Ottaway: I am not giving way. The EU is not going to let us set up an offshore free trade island like Hong Kong, undercutting its industries. We will have to pay for access to the single market. The EU will dictate the terms of trade, and we will still be under the thumb of Brussels. I say to my hon. Friend that that is not gaining sovereignty, it is losing it. The plan to impose an EU-wide financial transaction tax is just a warning shot. As a member of the EU, we can go to the European Court of Justice and challenge it. Outside the EU, it would simply be imposed and we would just pay the tax. I say to the Economic Secretary that his policy on the eurozone is spot-on. Supporting policies that will stabilise the single currency area and encouraging growth through integration is exactly the right approach. At the same time, we expect the Treasury to keep a watchful eye on the national interest in the single market. A good example of that is the agreement on the single supervisory mechanism in the banking union, which shows the clout that we still carry in the EU and how we protect our position inside the single market but outside the eurozone. He should continue with that approach. That example also illustrates how far we have come in building alliances inside the European Union since the veto in December 2011. Inside, we simply have more strength. No one denies that the EU needs reform, and I am no great Europhile on this. [Interruption.] MayIsaytomy hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) that that sort of contemptuous laugh does no good to the debate whatever? No one denies that the EU needs reform. Primarily, it has to choose between being a social market economy and being something tougher. In his Bloomberg speech, the Prime Minister set out a course of action that recognises British Euroscepticism but keeps us at the table, using our influence. Within the EU, the UK will continue to thrive as a major player on the world stage and our economy will be stronger, but outside, I believe that the future will be bleak. 3.21 pm Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP): It is a pleasure to take part in the debate. This Queen’s Speech is important, sandwiched as it is between the Budget and Red Book, which we already have, and the forthcoming spending review, the details of which we do not have but
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