Working People’s Finances: Government Policy — House of Commons, 2021-09-21
Topic: Macroeconomics
Aaron Stuart Bell (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Coventry North East (Colleen Fletcher) It is also a pleasure to contribute to the debate in which my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Jill Mortimer) made her maiden speech. When I went up to campaign for her in Hartlepool, I was struck by the reception that we had on the doorsteps and the faith that the people of Hartlepool put in her. That faith has been entirely justified by the tone of her speech. She stands for putting pride back into Hartlepool, exactly the same as other Members in the post-industrial areas that the Government are levelling up and addressing, like me, in Newcastle-under-Lyme, and my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates). It will be good for working people that Newcastle-under-Lyme has a £23.6 million towns deal, just as Hartlepool has its towns deal funding. The Government have taken on that agenda. Let us be fair: it was originally the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) who said that we needed to do more for towns, but the Labour party decided that it did not want to listen to what people in towns have to say—people who voted for Brexit and wanted Brexit to happen—and it did not vote for her to be its leader. That is why it has been reduced to the state that it is in I turn to the effect of Government policy on the finances of working people. The key thing is that people should be working and the Government have been extraordinary in ensuring that people can continue working. There was a period when people had to stay at home, but now they have jobs and businesses to go back to because of the extraordinary measures taken by our extraordinary Chancellor in extraordinary times. We saved millions of jobs through furlough—more than 10,000 people in Newcastle-under-Lyme were on furlough. We saved tens of thousands of businesses through the grants and loans that we gave them, and those businesses are now recovering and hiring again. We have also protected people’s salaries through measures such as the energy cap. Yesterday, I was grateful to hear the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy say that, with the energy cap put in place by the Government, people will not have to pay much more this winter Above all, the Government have kept people in jobs. Unemployment peaked at 2 million fewer people than was initially feared at the start of the pandemic, which is a tribute to what we have done through the pandemic. As my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge said, jobs are now available—we have 1 million vacancies out there—and wages are rising because the era of unlimited immigration is over. We have the highest growth in the G7, and the OECD predicts that we will have the highest growth this year and next. We also have, as I said in my intervention on the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, a plan for jobs that is about not just getting people into jobs but getting them into better jobs and getting them better skills in jobs. We have policies such as kickstart and restart, and we are doubling the number of work coaches. I thank the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), for visiting the Newcastle-under-Lyme jobcentre with me in the summer, where he saw what our work coaches are doing to get people into jobs in north Staffordshire Of course, the Government also have policies for more skills, including apprenticeships and technical training. For the last two Fridays, I have been giving out awards at Newcastle College, first to those in higher education and last Friday to those in further education. The college’s apprenticeship scheme is outstanding—in fact, it was the first college to be graded "outstanding" across the board with Ofsted—and people who go there and get those technical skills will end up with much better jobs, and much better paid jobs, than they would have done without those innovations. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Daly) mentioned an Institute of Technology bid. Newcastle College also has one in. If it gets that, that will only enhance our offer to young people in north Staffordshire and Newcastle-under-Lyme.