Mr Toby Perkins
MP for Chesterfield · Labour · United Kingdom
“The hon. Member for Bicester and Woodstock (Calum Miller) is absolutely right to say that what is behind this is the deep unpopularity of President Milei; it is not anything actually that the UK has done.”
“In Chesterfield, there will be unmitigated despair at the statement we have heard today from my right hon. Friend. For the authorities for which she is doing a review—the 14 that thought they had got their decision in July—could she clarify the basis of that review?”
“It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I congratulate the hon. Member for Waveney Valley (Adrian Ramsay) on securing this debate.”
“The report spells out the link between degradation overseas and the impact here. The assessment lays out the consequences: food insecurity, economic insecurity, increased migration and refugees, increased interstate competition, conflict and geopolitical instability, all of which will threaten us here at home.”
“The Government are right to take their time and make sure that they get this right—we saw what happened when the previous Government did not do the work that was needed. This is a delicately balanced decision.”
“Thirdly, will the Minister consider bringing forward the fourth national adaptation programme? NAP3, published by the previous Government in 2023, was deemed ineffective by the Climate Change Committee. NAP4 is not due until 2028, but can we afford to wait two more years before we have an adequate plan?”
The complete record
Every one of 3,898 lines we hold for Mr Toby Perkins, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 78 of 78.
“Friend the shadow Chancellor in March. Before the Chancellor’s intervention in the Budget, we were on target for the growth forecast for 2011 of 1.25% that the shadow Chancellor had made. The OBR admitted that the shadow Chancellor’s plans for spending restraint over the next four years would have halved the budget deficit by 2014-15, just as he said they would when he delivered his Budget in March. Uniquely among the main parties, the Labour party is putting forward policies that we campaigned on in the general election a month ago. This could catch on: we could go into elections telling the public what we wanted them to vote for, and then we could come to this place and deliver those policies.”
“I want to consider the huge and unnecessary gamble that the Chancellor has taken with our economic recovery, and why a genuine growth strategy would enable us to grow our way out of the economic crisis without threatening thousands of people with the dole, and without threatening those who rely on housing benefit or the economic recovery. I shall also talk about the Budget’s impact on my constituents in Chesterfield and Staveley. First, I shall deal with the myth that the Chancellor had no choice and that the measures were taken out of economic necessity rather than, as the hon. Member for Bromsgrove admitted, political ideology. That is nonsense. The Chancellor’s Office for Budget Responsibility’s report confirms that the borrowing requirement this year was £8 billion less than that forecast by my right hon.”
“It is interesting to follow the hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid). There was one thing in the past 14 minutes that I am glad that he acknowledged; otherwise there was little with which I could agree. However, I agreed with the admission that the Budget is ideological and that the Conservative party has delivered the sort of change that it always wanted to make and scrapped the massive improvements that the Labour party made in the public sector. It is not an economic but an ideological Budget. The hon. Gentleman’s honesty, at least about that, does him great credit.”
“My hon. Friend makes a valid point: it probably is not the new politics, but it is something that political parties should perhaps consider. Hon. Members should remember that the previous Labour Government were the first Government for many years to start paying off the national debt. The stringent financial rules that the former Prime Minister put in place during his long stint at the Treasury put this country into the position whereby we entered the recession with the second lowest debt to GDP ratio in the G7.”
“It certainly is not the case. The hon. Gentleman should remember that in 1997 we inherited hospitals that were in a disgraceful state and where people died of things that they could have been treated for, if only they had got to the top of the waiting list. We should also remember that we inherited schools where the roofs leaked every time it rained. Our children were educated in quite disgraceful conditions. That was the legacy of 18 years of the Conservatives, which is why when they lost, they lost so massively that they were not even credible as a party for another 13 years.”
“That was the longest period of stable economic growth in this country’s history, yet unlike the Conservatives, we went into recession only when the entire world went into recession. The Conservatives did it differently: they could go into recession when the rest of Europe was in a strong position. It was only the global economic crisis that threw the economy off course under a Labour Government.”
“I was certainly bewildered by the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change’s contribution in opening this debate, and by the idea that when the Liberal Democrats talked about the tax bombshell, what they meant was that VAT was regressive only if it was levied on food, a suggestion that nobody had made and which was never part of the debate. His speech was one of the most bizarre contributions that we have heard over the past three days. I look forward to watching it on iPlayer tonight and reliving the moment, because it is something that will live long in the memory. I want to talk about the choice that the Labour party made. What we enjoyed under the previous Labour Government was 11 years of stable economic growth.”
“What he was probably referring to was 11 years of stable economic growth. What he did not foresee was that we would be hit by the biggest global economic crisis for more than 80 years. Of course, nobody foresaw that. There were no Conservative Members suggesting that the ways in which our banks were regulated would lead to the economic crisis. To pretend that you knew that that was coming or that the deficit that has been built up is somehow irrelevant to that is just ludicrous, and no one believes you, so you really must stop trying to treat people like fools when you say that the deficit that has been created was something that happened just because we had a Labour Government—”
“Member for Bromsgrove told us that we could not keep living beyond our means, but of course we already knew that; that is exactly what the shadow Chancellor was referring to in the previously attributed quote. He made it absolutely clear what our strategy was.”
“Please accept my apologies, Mr Deputy Speaker. I shall make sure that I address you and hon. Members correctly in future. It is right to talk about the choice that Labour made, which was to protect the jobs that people relied on and to prevent an extra 500,000 going on the dole. Labour’s choice was to protect the homes that people had saved up over their whole lives to be able to buy. Labour’s choice was to support industry and bring forward public spending projects to keep the construction industry working when the private sector was sitting on its hands. Labour knew that the price of salvaging those jobs, those homes and those businesses would be an increase in our deficit. We delivered a plan for the recovery, which is working, and a plan for reducing the deficit after the recovery had been secured in the following year. The hon.”
“My hon. Friend effectively anticipates my speech, for which I thank him. He makes a very wise contribution. The reality between 1999 and 2008 was not that the Conservatives were calling on the Labour Government to reduce spending; quite the opposite, they were complaining about all sorts of things that we were not spending enough money on—from police to flood defences and all sorts of other things. Now they sit there and say that we should have known all along what was going to happen. No one can take what they say seriously.”
“Where was the mansion tax? It does not exist. Where were the green taxes? How can one justify a £2 billion bank levy that will be compensated by corporation tax cuts for the banks that caused so much damage? Where was the Robin Hood tax on bank transactions, which would have brought in more than treble the amount?”
“Cutting the allowances on which manufacturing firms were relying, and replacing them with a corporation tax cut over the next few years, will result in businesses being less likely to invest and more likely to focus on bottom-line profits. The starkest aspect of the Budget, however, was a complete lack of a sense that the Liberal Democrats have been a moderating influence on the Tory plans. Where were the Lib Dem influences in this Budget? Seriously, does anyone in the House believe that if the Budget had been delivered by a Tory majority Administration, the Liberal Democrats would have marched through the Lobby and supported it? I will take that as a no. Where was the £2 billion capital gains tax increase? It was less than halved. Where was the commitment to restrict tax relief on pensioners to the basic rate? It disappeared.”
“That will have a knock-on effect on business. The Government seem to think that reducing the corporation tax burden, already historically low on businesses, will stimulate growth, without recognising that the environment in which businesses trade is the most important part of making a profit. Taking money out of the pockets of consumers also takes money out of the pockets of businesses. It increases redundancies and business failures, and it stunts our ability to grow our way out of recession. For the hundreds of extra businesses that will now struggle to stay afloat, the thought of a cut in corporation tax will merit little more than a mirthless laugh. At every level, the Budget stunts growth.”
“When even the TaxPayers Alliance denigrates the policy as hitting the poor, we really have to listen. This will take approximately twice the amount from the incomes of the bottom 20% as it does from the top 20%, and it will stunt growth. That is acknowledged on page 97 of the Red Book, so the Chancellor is introducing a policy that he knows will stunt growth. As a business owner myself, I know that this tax will directly remove 2.5% from the bottom line of my firm if it were not passed on to my customers. I also know that cuts in corporation tax are not as important as having a market in which one can make a profit. While the VAT cut introduced by Labour in 2008-09 stimulated growth, this VAT increase will take about £300 out of the average family’s pocket at a time when families are crying out for more help from Government, not less.”
“Just as Labour made a choice—an ethical and a political choice as well as an economic one—so the Chancellor has made his choice with the Budget. He did not choose fairness; he chose to gamble. His gamble is based on an ideology that says that the growth of the public sector somehow constricts the private sector, but it is utterly fallacious to suggest that the success of the one has to be to the detriment of the other and that the role of Government is to keep taxes low for businesses and keep out of the way. That is the wrong choice. That is taking a gamble with the recovery that Labour was delivering in a stable and managed way. It threatens our recovery at a time when the economy is still fragile. The choice to increase VAT is, of course, regressive.”
“Yes, as the shadow Chancellor made clear, we would have maintained spending over the course of this year and put in place a different Budget from that of the Conservatives, along with headline measures about what future spending would be. Of course it was too early for us to have a comprehensive spending review; when the Conservatives were in opposition, did they ever do a comprehensive spending review and tell us every line of the Budget they would have carried out? Of course not. That is the reality of the situation. My hon. Friends have pointed out that under the former Prime Minister the Labour Government led the rest of the world to the solution when the global economic crisis was at its worst. Labour made the choice to protect jobs, as I said.”
“I am afraid that I do not have time. This was a Tory Budget without a shred of Lib Demery about it. I will applaud the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) if he sticks to his guns and refuses to vote for it. The Chancellor had a choice: he made the wrong choice, and we will all pay a heavy price for years to come.”
“The hon. Gentleman will be aware that those rules were changed only in the face of huge, global economic crisis. His party supported the change when the economic crisis struck, so was it incorrect to do that?”
“The hon. Lady has referred to the election result a couple of times, but we remember the election result in 1997 after a long period of Conservative Government, when that party lost so badly that it was out of power for 13 years. If people were so dissatisfied with the Labour Government, how come the Conservatives could not even secure a majority?”
“The hon. Lady mentioned higher interest rates and, of course, her party knows all about that because it was under a Conservative Government that we had record repossessions and interest rates went up to 15%. Is she aware that interest rates under the Labour Government have been lower than at any other time in history?”
“The hon. Gentleman is raising an issue that many of his colleagues have raised, and said that somehow under a Labour Government there was profligate, wasteful spending that could easily be tidied up— [ Interruption. ] They all agree, and I am glad to hear it. Why, therefore, have the Government cut not that wasteful spending but the future jobs fund, thus pulling the rug from under the economic recovery? Why has the Sheffield Forgemasters loan been cut? Why do they not cut this waste, rather than all the things that will hit the poorest people most?”
“For several weeks, I have been attempting to obtain support from IPSA to offer jobs to people who want to work in my constituency office. The failure of IPSA to respond to me by phone or e-mail is putting tremendous pressure on my office’s ability to provide a service to the people of Chesterfield who sent me here. Will the Leader of the House make a statement on what support he can give to new Members who are attempting to staff their offices, but who are having to rely on voluntary contributions to provide a service to their constituents?”
“In the days when the Liberal Democrats were in a separate party from the Conservatives, did they not say in their campaign that they would not make cuts this year and pull the rug from under the feet of the economic recovery? Did the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg) make any representations to the Chief Secretary about Sheffield Forgemasters, and when he stood for election did he make his constituents in Sheffield aware that a vote for the Liberal Democrats would lead to hundreds more people in Sheffield losing their jobs?”
“The Chancellor says that he is keen to learn the lessons from the economic problems that happened. Is one of those lessons that he was wrong to say that the Government should have let Northern Rock fold?”
“The Secretary of State will know that he is viewed, in his own party at least, as an economic Nostradamus. Does he seriously expect us to believe that the Office for Budget Responsibility report told him something of which, even with that huge brain of his, he was previously unaware? Most serious financial journalists are saying that the report showed that the previous Government’s forecasts were accurate, so is he seriously telling the House that it led him to a policy so totally different from the one he had been campaigning on for all those months?”
“Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. It is a great pleasure to speak for the first time in a debate chaired by you. I am sorry to see that the hon. Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) is leaving us.”
“That was a brave attempt. Before the hon. Lady spoke, I thought we had already been patronised more than we could stand, but she raised the bar considerably.”
“Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan), who is not with us at the moment, say that she keeps speaking to people who tell her that the East Midlands Development Agency is not contributing and is not doing a good job, and they want to get rid of it. In fact, for every £1 the development agency puts into the local economy, we get £9 of benefit coming back. I do not know who the hon. Lady can have been speaking to, because local businesses and business organisations are queuing up to support it.”
“I hope that he will continue to stick to that line after he has spoken to his Whips. In our area, the East Midlands Development Agency is not, of course, the whole solution, but it is an important contributor. In Chesterfield, there is an organisation called CPP that employs 270 staff. When I went to visit it before the election, people there told me that they were able to carry out the initial set-up only because of the support of the development agency, which put in £1.7 million. The east midlands engages in more manufacturing than any other area. The Secretary of State has said that he wants his Department to be the Department for growth, but cutting investment allowances will not speed the growth that we need in our economy. I was horrified to hear the hon.”
“Of course, everyone running a business and everyone in society wants to pay less tax. More important than a small cut in corporation tax is an economy supported by Government to run successfully. Hon. Members should remember that corporation tax is 5 per cent. lower now for big firms than it was in 1996-97. All the parties are talking about manufacturing, yet only Labour has put in place the financial means to support manufacturing and to boost industry, which is what should be happening. I was pleased to hear the contribution by the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), who I think might be joining the proud tradition of Tory rebels over the years in his call for more support for industry. He said that the British Government should support our manufacturing firms in the way that the American Government support theirs.”
“No, I should like to make progress. Other Members wish to speak. My background as a small business owner and now as an MP in the east midlands, in a coalfield and manufacturing area, gives me a broad perspective on the debate. That broad perspective is one of the things lacking in the arguments that we hear from the Government Benches. People seem to fail to understand that the private sector and the public sector do not live in two entirely opposite worlds that never have anything to do with each other. As a business man, I rely on people buying products from my firm. Some of those people might be doctors, some might be teachers, some might work in private industry. What all of us who run a business need more than anything else is a strong economy and a strong environment in which to do business.”
“His approach is not supported by manufacturing companies, which want to see Government driving growth, or by local businesses and business organisations in the east midlands, which are saying that we need investment in allowances, in development agencies, and in our manufacturing sector. They need a strong and unequivocal message from the Secretary of State, and in that regard he is failing them.”
“The manufacturers’ organisation, the EEF, argues against a more local approach, saying: “Local authorities lack the critical mass, the funds and the ability to step outside local politics to identify the priorities for their region, to set out how best meet them and to make it happen.” What we need now is consistency from the Government. We need to see that there is support for our industries. Business wants Government to take a proactive role, but it also wants support to be there through measures such as investment allowances and the excellent car scrappage scheme that the Labour Government put in place—an example of Government investment supporting private industry. The Secretary of State is saying that he wants to send a clear and decisive message, but in fact he is painting a confused picture.”
“The all-important private sector has forged a strong and helpful relationship with the agency and we believe it has made a positive contribution to the regional economy. There are a number of instances where we believe Emda’s intervention has been crucial in resolving key issues and unlocking opportunities to develop strategically important sites.” The hon. Member for Mid Worcestershire (Peter Luff), when he was Chair of the BIS Committee, said that every business organisation that he had spoken to, from the Federation of Small Businesses to the CBI, said that development agencies help the economy, and that abolition would send completely the wrong message. We absolutely support his comments.”
“I am sure that the hon. Gentleman knows his local area better than I do. I do know, however, that Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire chamber of commerce has spoken out strongly in saying that it would like the East Midlands Development Agency to be left in place. It is up to Members in other areas to ensure that they get schemes before the agency and try to work with it in a positive way. The current lack of certainty from the Government will not lead any organisations to think that they should be talking to the development agency, as they cannot be sure that it will even be there in a few months’ time. Pat Zadora, the chair of the east midlands business forum, has said: “We can’t speak for other areas of the country, but there can be no doubt that” the East Midlands Development Agency “has been extremely effective.”
“T2. Can the Secretary of State explain to people in Chesterfield, who suffered so badly from unemployment under the last Conservative Government, why one of the first measures that he has taken is to move £160,000 out of the working neighbourhoods fund? That money was being well spent by our council helping unemployed people back into work. Was not the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), right when he said that the poorest people will bear the cost of the cuts under this Conservative Government?”
“As I stand here in this magnificent place, bearing a dual responsibility, sent here to represent the people of Chesterfield and the Labour party, there is not a prouder man alive.”
“From my perspective, however, I will provide any support that I can to help him to convince his own party of the need to invest more in jobs, not in cutting them, and to understand that benefit recipients are more often the victims than the architects of their circumstances. Alongside a call for personal responsibility must come governmental responsibility to put job creation before the benefit cuts and to ensure that the most needy are not the victims of the simplification of benefit payments. Chesterfield has a great deal going for it; under Labour, it improved so much. I came into politics to fight for the next generation of working opportunities for Chesterfield and Staveley—to fight inequality and to protect the public services that our people rely on.”
“The Secretary of State is right to say that benefit recipients should be free to try to work their way off sickness-related benefits while retaining some security, as previewed by the previous Labour Government in the pathways to work pilot. No one could object to his intention to make benefits simpler and fairer, but surely one of the key reasons benefits are complicated is that so are the circumstances of people’s lives. The current system at least attempted to reflect logically the complexities of ordinary people’s lives, and the Secretary of State has not yet demonstrated how he can simplify the system without increasing unfairness; until he does, I will remain a sceptic.”
“The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has stated that his purpose is to improve the quality of life for the worst-off in society so that they can play a part and, one hopes, pay tax themselves one day. No one on the Labour Benches would oppose that aspiration; indeed, it was that aspiration that led Labour, in the face of Conservative opposition, to introduce the national minimum wage and the tax credits system. The starting point in reducing benefit dependency is not an increase in the rhetoric against the unemployed, but an increase in work opportunities. It is therefore depressing that the coalition should choose the future jobs fund as one of the first examples of waste to be cut.”
“Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner), working with Labour party councillors who have fought for the area for so long, such as John Williams, Walter Burrows and John Burrows, Chesterfield and north Derbyshire finally get the investment in jobs that we needed—indeed the biggest investment in the area since the pits were sunk. As Chesterfield rebuilds its economic prosperity, tourism also plays an increasingly important part, our world-famous crooked spire being just the highlight. While it is true that the number of people drawing the dole is less than a quarter of those who did so at its peak in the ’80s, thanks to the Labour Government’s steps to save jobs during the recession, the need for skilled work for those who do not go to university, or for graduate and apprenticeship opportunities, is still keenly felt.”
“Chesterfield football club, the Spireites, is a useful metaphor for the town, having had its moments in the hearts of the nation, as it did in 1997—a great year—when, as a third division club, it was cruelly denied a place in the FA cup final by a combination of the Old Trafford crossbar and a short-sighted football referee. Now, after a quiet period, the club gets ready to welcome the new season at the sparkling new B2net stadium—a brand new home on the north entrance to the town, and a symbol of the regeneration of Chesterfield. The campaign that brought me here to represent the people of Chesterfield focused most strongly on jobs. With Junction 29A, or Skinner’s Junction, a huge site open for business as a result of the tireless work of my hon.”
“Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah), George Stephenson was actually from Chesterfield. Thanks to the vision of Bill Flanagan, the council leader for 27 years, an innovation centre now stands on the Stephenson family’s former estate; new firms grow in new industries, overlooked by the grandfather of innovation. Football fans will know of the town as the home of goalkeepers, with legends such as Gordon Banks, the England World cup-winning goalkeeper, before him Samuel Hardy, the England goalkeeper for 14 years at the end of the 19th century, and Bob Wilson, who served Arsenal, Scotland and sports broadcasting with tremendous distinction, all learning their trade in the town.”
“I am pleased to inform the House that on the basis of an informal survey that I conducted during the recent election campaign, Sir George’s stance against corporal punishment still enjoys some support. In Eric Varley, a local miner’s son who rose to the Cabinet and was posthumously given the freedom of the borough of Chesterfield, my constituency had a famous son who is fondly remembered across the borough. There is also, of course, Tony Benn, one of the greatest political figures of the 20th century, a man who bestrode the politics of his time as few can. I am mindful of those who have trodden this path before me in Chesterfield’s name. Chesterfield has made its mark in other ways than through political history. Despite the comments of my hon.”
“As a former secondary school teacher, he was also an outspoken advocate of comprehensive schools and the teaching profession. As MP for an area that suffered a great deal from firms that went into liquidation with failed pension schemes, he consistently added his voice to those calling for a fair deal for those pensioners. As a guide to the history of Chesterfield and as a commentary on the times, I also want to reflect on the maiden speeches of some of my other predecessors. Sir George Benson was a stalwart member of the Government who is still remembered fondly by some of Chesterfield’s most experienced citizens. His first major address to the House was in 1931, when he controversially called for the end of flogging with the cat o’ nine tails.”
“I congratulate hon. Members who have made their maiden speeches, particularly the hon. Member for Orpington (Joseph Johnson), who should not be so self-deprecating. If it is in fact true that he has no sense of humour, someone has written him a great speech. It is a great privilege to be only the fifth person to represent the Chesterfield constituency in Parliament in the past 80 years. The most recent of my predecessors was Paul Holmes, and I should like to start my maiden speech by reflecting on some of the strengths that he brought to the House in the nine years during which he served it. He was a diligent constituency Member of Parliament and a determined fighter for council housing, particularly through his membership of the Defend Council Housing group.”
“Q7. Does the Prime Minister share the concerns of two schoolteachers from Chesterfield who came to see me this weekend, that children from areas of greater deprivation will suffer disproportionately from his plans to cut 10,000 university places?”