The Economy — House of Commons, 2020-04-27
Topic: Macroeconomics
Anneliese Jane Dodds (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to the Chancellor for advance sight of his statement, and to all the Treasury civil servants, and those in HMRC and the Department for Work and Pensions, who have been working incredibly hard to get these schemes running. I fully appreciate that the Chancellor’s job has not been an easy one, but it is our job as a constructive Opposition to point to problems that we are hearing from the frontline, and to indicate solutions. It appears that at least some of those problems are more acute in our country than in many others The Purchasing Managers’ Index figures that came out last week indicated a sharp fall in business confidence. Sadly, that was not a surprise. It has been clear for some time that the economic slowdown we are currently experiencing is sharp and deep. It was, however, unsettling that those figures suggested that business confidence has taken a stronger hit in the UK than across the eurozone. I have heard from small business owners who put their life and soul into their firms, but have less than two weeks of cashflow left, and they are devastated. We all need to work together to get the different support schemes working for our country. We must fix this I am well aware that many of the conditions for shifting out of lockdown are not within the Chancellor’s grasp. However, his Government need to be open about blocks on progress and how they will remove them. That applies to the test, track and trace regime, which must be in place before key sectors can open again. It also applies to the creation of a national tripartite system to ensure that workers and employers have confidence that they can return to work safely when the right time comes The Chancellor is directly responsible for the economic package, and he knows that we supported him in creating the furlough scheme; indeed, we called for it. But the evidence is that some other key elements of the economic package are failing, so, in a constructive spirit, I want to ask the Chancellor whether he would countenance solutions in three areas—first, on CBILS. It is a relief to hear from the Chancellor that he has listened to calls from the Opposition, business and others that we need a full guarantee for at least some loans—he has stated those of up to £50,000—but we need to be clear that the UK has an enormous mountain to climb. Switzerland has a population of under 9 million, yet it approved four times as many loans in its first week as the UK has done in a month. We are running out of time, so how will the Chancellor ensure that the bounce-back loans get to the businesses that need them? How will they get out of the door, and what plans does he have to ensure that the banks will have the capacity to provide those loans Secondly, recent figures suggest that one in 10 in our workforce looks set to be unemployed as a result of this crisis, with all that that entails for people’s future prospects, incomes, and their and their families’ health. Again, I say to the Chancellor that we will work with him. We have indicated many of the gaps in existing schemes to protect incomes, and will continue to push for them to be filled. However, we must be clear: the reason that those gaps are such an income-crushing, insecurity-producing crisis for so many is that, in most cases, the only alternative to coverage by these schemes is universal credit, which pushes people right down to an average of 10% of the income of the rest of the workforce. The DWP has made some welcome changes, but failure to change the initial loan into a grant threatens to create even more of a debt crisis among households. Apparently the Government are sympathetic to changing the loan into a grant, but we are told that the computer system just will not allow it, so my second question is: will the Chancellor knock heads together and get the computers to say yes to switching UC loans into grants Finally, as the Chancellor knows, before this crisis we had an economy that simply did not work for so many. Around a quarter of all families lacked just £100 in savings, even before the crisis began. The UK is the most regionally unequal country in Europe, and we have just had the longest squeeze on living standards—not just in a generation, but in eight generations. The recovery from this crisis must be faster and wider to ensure that as many people as possible have a job to come back to. We need a flexible furlough scheme. The Chancellor told me previously that it cannot currently be made more flexible, but other countries have done so. Will he work to amend the furlough scheme to allow workers to come back on a part-time basis, and will he do as so many other countries are doing, from Germany to New Zealand, and talk about how those hit hard by the crisis can be supported not just now, but in the future, with employment-boosting redeploying retraining schemes? The aftermath of the pit closures tells us that an approach where the Government shrug their shoulders will scar our economy for generations to come, so my last question is: will the Chancellor work together with me, trade unions, businesses and local authorities to develop a plan to offer the hope of work to those who have already become unemployed, and get our economy moving again?