Clegg & Rowen on the Government's Draft Pre-legislative Statement

1.39.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Wed 14th May 2008

'I have no idea what we can expect him to bring forward next-Christmas, perhaps. How desperate is he?'

Nicholas Clegg (Party Leader; Sheffield, Hallam, Liberal Democrat): I thank the Prime Minister for advance sight of his statement- [Interruption.] Well, it was only a few minutes before Prime Minister's questions, but let us be thankful for small mercies.

It has been a desperate week for the Prime Minister. Yesterday, he brought forward the Budget by a full 10 months and borrowed £2.7 billion to dig himself out of a political hole over the 10p tax rate, yet still managed to leave a million people worse off. Today, he has brought forward the draft Queen's Speech, producing it a full two months before he did it last year. I have no idea what we can expect him to bring forward next-Christmas, perhaps. How desperate is he?

We already knew that the Conservatives would say anything to get elected, but it is now clear that the Prime Minister will try anything to cling to power. He has scraped the legislative barrel to save himself. The long legislative list is a rag-bag of proposals in which he either addresses things that the Government said were not a problem, such as the economy, or tries to turn around problems that the Government created, such as over-centralisation.

The Prime Minister established the banking regulation system. Is he not embarrassed to come here today and tell us that it does not work and that we need a new one? Is he not even more embarrassed to announce a £200 million fund to purchase unsold houses, when, by my reckoning, that will cover only 1,000 homes-far too little to make a genuine impression on the deep crisis in the housing market? He allowed irresponsible lending to over-inflate the housing market. Is he not embarrassed to admit that it needs propping up because of him?

Is the Prime Minister not embarrassed that the statement contains nothing-not a word-on the growing crisis of fuel poverty in this country, which will soon have 5.5 million people in fuel poverty?

How could the Prime Minister tell us, with a straight face, that he wants to empower people and communities? Let us remember that he was the man who turned Britain's doctors and nurses into bean counters and took away our freedom of speech and right to protest. The new Labour Government have made more than 3,000 new things illegal since 1997. By my reckoning, that is two new illegal offences for every day that Parliament has sat since new Labour came to power. They capped communities' council tax and imposed mass centralised school testing. Most shamefully, they took money from the pockets of the poorest workers. Since 1997, the Government have passed 65 home affairs Bills. Today, we are considering six more. If legislation made us safer, we would have been the safest nation on the face of the planet years ago. The NHS-shoved from pillar to post-will get a 14th reform Bill in 10 years.

If the Prime Minister wants to devolve power, why is he introducing so much more central legislation? Another stir of the legislative pot will not save the Prime Minister. If he wants to devolve power and protect us from the economic downturn, he will have to do much better.

Gordon Brown (Prime Minister; Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath, Labour): I thought that the right hon. Gentleman would say that he supported what we propose on the environment, on giving more power to local people, on the community empowerment Bill, on the Constitutional Renewal Bill and on all the changes that we are making that make for a better relationship between individual citizens, communities and the Government. I thought that the Liberal party was supportive of those proposals, and I hope that when it looks at them in more detail, it will support them.

The gist of the right hon. Gentleman's remarks was about the economy. It is right to protect banking depositors; it is right to take new action to do so, given what has happened over the last few months. I do not think that it is a criticism of previous Governments that everywhere in the world people are looking at strengthening financial services regulation after what has happened in the sub-prime mortgage market in the United States of America.

The right hon. Gentleman talks about fuel poverty, but we are the party that introduced the winter allowance; the Conservative party opposed it. We are the party that has raised the winter allowance in the last few weeks to help people who are in difficulty as a result of fuel bills. We are the Government who have negotiated a new deal with the oil, energy and utility companies so that £100 million, and £150 million in future years, will go to help people on low incomes pay their fuel bills. The right hon. Gentleman should be praising us for the action that we are taking to try to protect people against the difficulties of rising fuel costs.

As for housing, the important thing, which the Conservative party forgot when it was in power, is that we can keep mortgage rates low. Some 1.8 million more people have homes as a result of a Labour Government, and the right hon. Gentleman should recognise the fact that that was possible only because we have kept mortgage rates low. Mortgage rates are half what they were under the Conservative Government. It is because we have run a strong economy, with economic stability over the past 11 years, that while other countries have had recessions-and the Government of the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne) had two recessions-we are in a position to continue to grow as an economy.

We will take every action necessary to help home owners and others who face difficulties as a result of the world economic downturn. The right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Clegg) should be supporting us, not criticising us.

. . Paul Rowen (Shadow Minister, Work & Pensions; Rochdale, Liberal Democrat): According to the National Audit Office, the chances of an unemployed person getting a job when coming off the jobseeker's allowance programme vary between one in five and one in 40 depending on their age, sex and where they live. What will the new proposals do to help people in my constituency, for example, where we have lost 4,500 jobs in the past five years and unemployment is on the up? What is the Prime Minister going to do to help those people?

Gordon Brown (Prime Minister; Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath, Labour): Employment is still rising-that is why there are 600,000 to 700,000 vacancies in the economy. Our desire is to help people who are unemployed or moving between jobs to fill the vacancies that are available. The hon. Gentleman will know that in his constituency there is still a high number of vacancies, as there is across the region. Through the welfare reform Bill, we want to make it an obligation on people to undergo a skills test and then for them to be advised as to whether they need to acquire further skills, because we know that the number of unskilled jobs in the economy is falling but the number of skilled jobs is rising. We want to help his constituents and all other unemployed constituents to get the skills that they need for the future.