Liam Byrne
MP for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North · Labour · United Kingdom
“The loss of 4,000 jobs at Jaguar Land Rover is a body blow for workers, families and communities across the west midlands, so I commend Richard Parker, the Mayor of the West Midlands, for moving quickly on Monday to put £500,000 on the table to help ensure that everybody gets back to work.”
“I wholeheartedly welcome this well-rounded statement from the Foreign Secretary, and put on record my thanks to the new Prime Minister for the hard yards that I know he has put in over recent days and weeks.”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, and I offer my warmest congratulations to her on her appointment to the role; she will be a brilliant Minister.”
“Let me start with a word of thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Chester North and Neston (Samantha Dixon), who is not in her place, who said quite rightly that an awful lot has changed since the Bill was first introduced to this House. Indeed, a lot has been revealed over the course of the summer.”
“The effect of new clause 34 would be to ban off-ramping, ban new forms of digital currency transactions and ban memecoins, which are exactly the kind of measures that Ministers now need to bring forward. If we want to take the crypto system out of political finance, this is what we need to do.”
“No doubt we will learn that Mr Cottrell was in fact on the electoral register when that money was passed. No doubt we will discover that his mother, Fiona Cottrell, declared and did not disguise the fact that the money had ultimately come from her son.”
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“I will give way to the Minister in a moment. The whole House wants an explanation of why the promise to get more people back to work has been broken by the Prime Minister, because the Department for Work and Pensions has lost yet another battle to the Treasury. The Office for Budget Responsibility says that the claimant count next year will be 1.5 million, the same, by the way, as this year. The problem is undiminished, yet the help is being cut away—the Minister’s Department is projecting 250,000 fewer places. When the correspondent from the BBC checked the figures this morning, she was told by a DWP official that she was right. So how is the Government’s scheme the biggest back to work plan ever? Is not the truth that the Minister has been done over once more by the Chancellor? Let him explain.”
“Will the Minister explain why a DWP official confirmed to the BBC yesterday that 850,000 places were available under a Labour Government, and that that would fall by 250,000 under the present Administration?”
“This is what the Work and Pensions Committee had to say about that scribbled bit of analysis: “A robust evaluation of the FJF has yet to be undertaken…insufficient information was available to allow the Department to make a decision to terminate the FJF if this decision was based on its relative cost-effectiveness.” That is an extraordinary indictment of the Government’s rationale. The report says that half of future jobs fund graduates get benefits at seven months, but that is because the programme ends at six months. The Government dispute the claim that the scheme created real jobs. I am not sure what Jaguar Land Rover would say about that and the places that it created on the future jobs fund, but surely the point is that when people do not have a job, any job is a good job.”
“The evidence on which it was abolished was simply not there. In my constituency we have the highest youth unemployment in the country. The leaders of my jobcentre on Washwood Heath road have consistently said to me that the future jobs fund was one of the best programmes they have ever administered. Overwhelmingly, they say, the young people they send on the programme do not come back and join the dole queue. In their first months the Government rushed out some hasty research on its expense.”
“That was not a straight answer to a simple question, which was why a DWP official confirmed the figures to the BBC yesterday and again this morning. The conclusion that the House can draw is a point that was made by the Office for Budget Responsibility—that there is not enough confidence that the Government have a plan in place to get people back to work. Indeed, the OBR has so much confidence in the Government’s plan to get people back to work that it is forecasting a declining rate of employment for the rest of this Parliament. I do not claim that the future jobs funds was some kind of celestial design. I am sure there are aspects of it that could be improved. As my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) mentioned a moment ago, it was labelled “a good scheme” by the Prime Minister on his trip to Liverpool.”
“My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. In a recession private sector jobs are thin on the ground. Anything that keeps young people closer to the labour market, closer to the habits of work and closer to the disciplines of having a job must be a good thing. The lesson from the 1980s, when youth unemployment spiralled to 26%, is that if we let young people get too far away from the habits of work, they are scarred for generations to come.”
“As the Cabinet Office’s former chief economist put it this week: “If the Government doesn’t act it will not only damage the employment prospects of young people now but hurt them for the rest of their lives”. The motion that we have tabled asks that the Government look again at the lessons of the future jobs fund, be ambitious about the programme that they put in place, and ensure that they learn the lessons from the 1980s. We fear that a generation is being lost to the clumsy behaviour of the present Administration, so I call on the Government this afternoon to think again, to preserve the promise that this country should make to its young people, to reconsider the action that they are taking to ensure that our children will do better and better than us, and to think again before we confront once again a lost generation.”
“My hon. Friend, who chairs the Work and Pensions Committee, makes an important intervention. I hope her comments allow us to strike a note of consensus. My final point is about the long-term costs. In all recessions and in all recoveries, it is our young people who face the toughest challenge. That is especially true of the fight that young women in our country now confront. Overwhelmingly, they are working in the public sector. Overwhelmingly, it is they who are exposed to the cuts and the redundancies that have been announced, which now number around 156,000. We must remember the lesson of the 1980s. When youth unemployment was allowed to soar, and allowed to fester for years, communities were damaged for generations.”
“Will the Minister explain why his colleague Lord Freud described the progress that we made in tackling youth unemployment, long-term unemployment and unemployment in the round as “remarkable”? Was he deluded, or was he right?”
“I am grateful to the Minister for his kind invitation. Will he accept that between 1997 and the beginning of the global financial crisis, the claimant count for youth unemployment fell by 14%? To return to my previous question, why did Lord Freud, the Minister responsible for welfare reform and his colleague in the Department, describe our progress as “remarkable”? Was he deluded?”
“It says that this Government have put the recovery in the slow lane. That is why the figures we saw this morning show that private sector employment is dead flat and public sector employment is falling. It is clear that the Government now need a plan B for the economy. It must start with a proper tax on bankers and the Government must use the money to do something to get young people back to work.”
“If the Minister was so dead against it, why is the right hon. Gentleman leaving it in place until the end of March? Since the Government took over, youth unemployment has started to rise, even though the economy has now been in recovery for five quarters. We were bringing youth unemployment down at a time of economic difficulty; since things have got easier, youth unemployment has gone up. How on earth did the right hon. Gentleman achieve that?”
“The Minister is helpfully rehearsing a series of his uncertainties about the effectiveness of the future jobs fund. Why will he not therefore back the part of our motion which says that a proper evaluation is needed before a further decision can be taken on what is put in place in the future?”
“The right hon. Gentleman surely accepts that the number of apprenticeships increased from about 63,000 in 1997 to more than 250,000 by the time we left office. Surely that is a record of success in backing apprenticeships, and I am glad that it is a point of consensus on both sides of the House.”
“It is curious that the Minister’s colleague Lord Freud noted in his report: “The New Deals have been enormously successful”. He also said: “The creation of Jobcentre Plus…is…seen as…a model for effective public service delivery.” He further commented: “The Government has made strong, and in some respects remarkable, progress over the last ten years.” I hope that those are lessons on which the Minister can draw. There has been some dispute about the numbers that the BBC published. Will the Minister now set out for the House his assumptions for this year, next year and the year after about how many people will flow through the Work programme? If he is disputing the figures, let us hear it from him—what are they?”
“The recession has now been over for a year. Unemployment should now be falling, and the whole House is worried that it is in fact rising, especially among young people. One of the ways in which we tackled that was with the “Backing Young Britain” campaign, which created thousands of job opportunities for young people, including apprenticeships and internships. One of those schemes was a paid internship in the private offices of every Minister in the Department. Is that scheme still in place?”
“Gentleman choke on his pudding when the auctioneer’s hammer came down, and when will this worthwhile scheme go nationwide?”
“I am grateful for that answer and I will try to decipher it later. I was interested to hear the Minister talk about how he is now using the Department’s resources wisely. At some point, he will no doubt tell us why in December his Department spent more on stationery than it did on employment zones or access to work programmes. I wonder whether that is part of an innovative new approach that includes getting more people into study by cutting education maintenance allowances and getting more young people into work by cutting the future jobs fund. I see now that the Conservative party is piloting new ways of helping young people get into internships, by auctioning them for £5,000 a time to Tory party donors. Did the right hon.”
“This morning, figures showed that youth unemployment has rocketed up, and this afternoon we expect the Government to confirm that they will cancel the education maintenance allowance. Without work and without study, surely we need our youth charities more than ever before, yet the National Council for Voluntary Youth Services says that three quarters are now cutting projects. Just what have the Government got against young people, and why is there such a narrow place for young people in the Government’s vision of the big society?”
“As we set about that exercise, and what I hope is the finalisation of our debates on the Bill this afternoon, it is incumbent on us to remember that for 500,000 civil servants—people who have given their lives to working in the public service—the Bill should not be a “blunt instrument” for negotiating purposes. For many people, it is about how they might keep their home, help their children through university or avert financial hardship while they have to look for a new job. The House must remember that the Bill’s provisions are important and will have real-world impacts.”
“May I start by expressing my gratitude to the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General for the way in which he has brought the House up to date on his discussions and negotiations, for the tone and tenor of his remarks this afternoon, and for restraining himself from repeating the history of civil service compensation since 1859? The whole House is in his debt for that. As we have said throughout all the stages of the Bill, we agree that civil service compensation is in need of reform. Indeed, we set it on its way. We now need to take account of the result of the judicial review, which tells us that what is needed is reform, but the right reform made in the right way.”
“If that is true—and I am prepared to accept that it is—I do not see why he cannot accept the very sensible amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington. Although we are happy to accept amendments from the Lords, we shall support amendment (a).”
“Given that it would allow the Government to resurrect the terms of a long-dead provision, it is not so much a sunrise clause as a zombie clause, which would live on for ever. Whatever we call it, the measure is entirely without precedent in a Bill of this nature. Indeed, the only recorded precedent of such a measure is in the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005. We are pleased that there will be a limit of three years on the caps if they are revived, and that the Government cannot extend that period. Given what the Minister has said this afternoon, however, I do not see how he can argue that the correct balance of time and the correct limit to any revived power should be three years. The whole House will welcome what the Minister said this afternoon about his ambition that the revival of the caps should never be triggered.”
“His letter also says that if the caps were ever revived he “would table an order…so as to increase the caps to such a level that would…reflect what would otherwise apply under the new scheme.” Most of us will welcome that good progress. In earlier debates, we raised concerns that the Bill would allow the revival of caps at any time in the future even after a negotiated settlement was in place. We fear that the relevant measure, which the Government call a sunrise clause, would put an undesirable amount of power in their hands during negotiations, as they could simply threaten to revive statutory powers whenever they ran into any dispute on any matter, not just issues of redundancy.”
“We heard, in the Minister’s helpful update to the House, that there is a degree of agreement with at least some of the trade unions, which the Government have declared will supersede the terms in the Bill. Why then do they not seek to introduce a sharp instrument containing the specific terms they have agreed with the trade unions, rather than the blunt instrument containing general powers that is the Bill before us? We are pleased that the Minister has given a clear commitment, in a letter to right hon. and hon. Members, that it is his ambition to “repeal the caps in clause 3 insofar as they could impact on the new civil service compensation scheme”.”
“I want to speak briefly about Lords amendments 4, 5 and 6, as well as amendment (a), tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell). During proceedings on the Bill, my right hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Tessa Jowell) has consistently raised concerns about the arbitrary caps that the Government introduced at the start of this process, which now form the body of clause 2. I confess that we are still not clear about why the caps are still in the Bill given that clause 1, which was newly introduced on Report, effectively gives the Government the power to impose any settlement after the consultations that we discussed earlier have been completed.”
“I believe that strengthening civil society is a common cause between us. Labour is certainly very proud that the sector doubled when we were in government. Now, however, charities are saying that they face cuts of a little over £3 billion during the next couple of years. How many jobs does the Minister expect to be lost in charities that do not have Conservative advisers at their helms or on their boards? To the untrained eye it seems that, worryingly, some charities are now more equal than others.”
“I have only one question: if the Minister is serious about improving government—and I believe he is—will he review the ending of basic rights to high-quality public services across this Government? When it comes to public services, the public want guarantees, but all he has offered them this afternoon is an online gamble.”
“I am glad that the Government have seized on some of the principles set out in our White Paper, “Smarter Government”, published last year. It was described at the time as “a radical dispersal of power to patients, parents and citizens”. Today, however, the Minister tells us that his first step is to make departmental plans transparent. May I tell him that the only revolution he has delivered this afternoon is to make bad plans transparently bad plans? There will be no power shift if he is going to destroy the power of NHS patients to be treated within 18 weeks; the power of parents to get one-to-one tuition for their children if they are falling behind at school; the power of citizens to summon police officers to talk about issues of local concern.”
“I start by welcoming the new Minister for milestones to the House. I could tell that he was the right Minister for this job when I received his statement three hours before he stood up. I thank him for that and urge the same habit on his hon. and right hon. Friends. I also welcome the thrust of the Minister’s statement. When Labour came to power in 1997, we discovered that the Conservatives had run public services into the ground. Now, thanks to Labour’s investment—and, yes, Labour’s management—crime is now down 43%, hospitals have the shortest waiting lists on record and our schools and teachers are delivering record results for our children aged 11, 16 and 18, with 70,000 a year achieving good results. The question was always going to be: what was the way forward after Labour’s job of repair?”
“If voluntary service for young people is to work, the third sector has to still be alive. This afternoon the Chancellor is going to try to drive a steamroller over the big society. Can the Minister explain why, in answer to parliamentary questions from my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Anas Sarwar), three quarters of Whitehall could not say what contracts they had in place with the third sector? How can the Department protect the third sector from cuts this afternoon if it does not know what contracts are in place? Is the Minister not, in effect, flying blind?”
“His party’s manifesto promised 20 new quangos—one third of the extra quangos that he has abolished today. Will he confirm that those quangos will not go ahead?”
“Thirdly, the principle of independence is sometimes important, and I am glad that he acknowledges that, but it is not clear how he has applied it in all cases. For example, we need to hear a little more from the Minister about the Football Licensing Authority. The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport infamously had to apologise for blaming Liverpool fans for the Hillsborough tragedy; now the Government are scrapping the organisation established to ensure that a Hillsborough never happens again, without being clear about what will be put in its place. Finally, in March I introduced a new principle whereby quangos would be set up only as a last resort. The Minister’s statement confirms his presumption that state activity should be undertaken by bodies that are democratically accountable.”
“In fact, it could cost more money than it saves at the Audit Commission, the RDAs, the UK Film Council, Standards for England and the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. I am afraid that the Minister has become the most expensive butcher in the country. His friend the Chancellor will no doubt be delighted. Will the Minister, first, set out the total cost of implementing the plan this year and next? He should have those figures at his fingertips now that the review is almost complete. Secondly, can he explain the impact on jobs and unemployment? Organisations such as the UK Film Council help to strengthen industry and tax revenues. What estimate has he made of the impact of his announcement on growth and jobs?”
“All of us want to improve accountability—it was one of the three principles that we set out in the ALB review in March—but we also want to save money, and once upon a time I thought that the current Prime Minister agreed, because, in a typically thoughtful and measured intervention, he said in October 2008: “Sound money means…destroying all these useless quangos and initiatives.” Now the Minister tells us that the Prime Minister in fact got it wrong. Saving money “is not the principal objective”, he told the “Today” programme this morning. Labour’s plan would have saved £500 billion by 2012-13. Now we are told that the Government’s approach will not in all cases save money at all.”
“I am grateful, too, that his tests largely confirmed the approach that I set out in March. I welcome his endorsement of the principles of a sunset clause for quangos and of triennial reviews. I am especially grateful for his confirmation of our decision to mutualise British Waterways, which will be an important institution in the third sector that I know we both support. May I, however, raise the slightly obvious question about the way in which the right hon. Gentleman has conducted this exercise?”
“I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for early sight of his statement—in the Financial Times, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph this morning. He is a man who appreciates the courtesies of this House, so I know that he will provide you, Mr Speaker, with an explanation of how the media could possibly have been briefed before Members were. May I, however, start on a note of consensus? I thank the Minister for his work in completing a process that was set in train during my time at the Treasury. In March I told the House that 123 quangos would need to close, and from first glance at this statement it appears that two thirds of the 192 arm’s length bodies that need to close are those that I announced in March. Instead of 20% of quangos being closed, the Minister has announced that 25% will be.”
“Fourthly, how quickly does the Minister want to complete this process? I am glad that he wants to get started next year, but the House will want to know how quickly he wants the final payments to be made. Finally, what appeal mechanism will the Government put in place for those policyholders who want to challenge their individual determinations? It is incumbent on all of us to speed this matter to resolution. I am glad that the Minister has set out legislation this afternoon, and we will support it going through as rapidly as possible, but there are questions that our constituents will want answers to today. I hope that he will be as full as he can in replying to what I have asked.”
“Sir John states in paragraph 6.3 that help should cover new investments made between 1 September 1992 and 31 December 2000. Does the Minister agree with that approach? How many policyholders will be included on that basis, and how many will be excluded? Thirdly, how much are policyholders actually going to get? Part 6 of the report sets out an approach and a method for calculating losses. Can the Minister confirm that what he has just said is that the maximum compensation will be based on a quarter of the relative losses faced by policyholders, and that that figure will itself be capped at absolute loss? Many policyholders will find that hard to square with what he said in the House earlier this year. What the House will want to know this afternoon is how much, on average, policyholders will actually get.”
“So here we are in July, and there are a few questions that I should like to put to the Minister this afternoon. First, is the Minister actually accepting Sir John’s recommendation? Earlier in the year he did a good impression of wanting to ditch Sir John’s approach and revert to the one set out by the ombudsman. Today, Sir John makes it clear in paragraph 10.17 that the ombudsman’s approach “poses very difficult issues of principle, and would be impossible to implement within any realistic time-frame.” Can the Minister confirm that Sir John’s approach is the right one? He called it one of the building blocks, but will he set out whether he is accepting Sir John’s report? The second question that the House will want to know the answer to is who precisely will be entitled to help.”
“I am grateful for the work done by the all-party Equitable Life policyholders group, chaired by the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) and my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North East (Mr Hamilton). When I came to the House earlier in the year, I said that there was a clear ethical obligation, even if not a legal obligation, for compensation for Equitable Life policyholders. Equally, however, I knew that case-by-case compensation for policyholders, as suggested by the ombudsman, was not practical. I said that there were two tests for the right solution—speed and justice. I went on to say that we expected the Government to produce a report within two weeks of Sir John’s final report, which we wanted to see in May.”
“I thank the hon. Gentleman for early sight of his statement and for the opportunity to review Sir John’s report in full at the Treasury this morning. I would like to start by repeating the words of apology to Equitable Life policyholders that I made to the House earlier this year for the failure of regulation of Equitable Life under successive Governments between 1990 and 2001. I thank Sir John Chadwick for his detailed report, which we commissioned. He has taken on an extraordinarily complex matter, and he has done an admirable job. I also thank officials at the Treasury for the work that they have done over the past six months in getting ready the legislation which I am glad to see that the hon. Gentleman has published today. I, too, thank EMAG.”
“I appreciate the argument that the Minister is rehearsing this evening. As the Chief Secretary to the Treasury at the time, I was involved in negotiations about this loan. I insisted on certain conditions and certain restructuring, including the issue of equity warrants. Is he aware of advice to me from Her Majesty’s Treasury officials that recommended acceptance of the loan on the grounds that it was indeed value for money?”
“I appreciate the partisan point that the Minister is trying to rehearse. My question was much simpler. Was he aware of Her Majesty’s Treasury officials’ advice to me that this loan should have been accepted and was, in their judgment, value for money? Yes or no?”
“(Urgent Question) : To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make a statement on the structure and approach of the Office of Tax Simplification.”
“Simplification is a good thing, and I am sure that the whole House will welcome the thrust of the hon. Gentleman’s proposals. But I am afraid that today’s announcement sounds rather more like an attempt to grab headlines than like real evidence of a push to improve legislation—legislation that is the responsibility of this House.”
“Secondly, there are a series of questions to be asked about the nature of the new beast that the hon. Gentleman has told us about this afternoon. We have heard a lot of talk in recent weeks about the Chancellor’s push for a bonfire of the quangos. Can the Minister tell us how much the new office will cost? Can he promise us that this is the last quango that the Treasury will announce this year? Can he tell the House how Mr Jack was appointed, and whether his appointment is fully in line with Nolan principles? What reassurances can the hon. Gentleman give the House this afternoon that, unlike the Office for Budget Responsibility, the Chancellor’s last independent creation, this office will not release its reports to help the Prime Minister get through a sticky Prime Minister’s Question Time?”
“If he is all for simplification, will the Office of Tax Simplification be advising him on his proposals to complicate the tax system by introducing a marriage tax allowance, all for the sake of sending an ineffective £3-a-week signal about his party’s views on what a family should look like? Will the office be advising the Chancellor either to advance or to drop those plans, and if so, on what timetable? Can the hon. Gentleman tell us whether the Office of Tax Simplification will be advising him on dropping the measures announced in the Budget to increase the number of people facing marginal deduction rates of more than 90%? And if he is all for simplicity, why is the Treasury briefing that it wants a more complicated stamp duty system in connection with energy conservation in housing?”
“If we wanted a timely reminder of the importance of the first debate to be held on business nominated by the Backbench Business Committee—on information relating to statements—the hon. Gentleman has just given us one. Let me turn to the substance of the hon. Gentleman’s announcement. From all parts of the House this afternoon he will hear an endorsement of the principles of a simpler tax system that allows people to focus on their business affairs and profitability. He will see, too, an endorsement of the use of outside experts; that is nothing novel. But will he confirm the answers to a couple of questions about the office’s scope?”
“I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his statement. He will hear this afternoon that there is wide-ranging interest in the questions that he has raised, which is why it was all the more unacceptable that the statement was delivered at a press conference before it was made to Members. That, I am afraid, is becoming a pattern of behaviour. First, £6 billion of spending cuts were announced in the Treasury courtyard rather than in the Palace of Westminster. Then the approach to the spending review was announced in a press conference, not in this Chamber. Then reforms to the institutional arrangements for bank regulation were briefed to newspapers before the House was told. Then plans for a bank levy were outlined in a speech in the City, not from the Treasury Bench.”