2013-05-26T01:20:02-04:00 Angela Eagle http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=angela-eagle Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Angela Eagle Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3223551 2013-05-06T19:00:00-04:00 2013-05-06T13:02:06-04:00

Angela Eagle http://www.huffingtonpost.com/angela-eagle/
Over the last session of parliament we have seen a remarkably thin legislative agenda from the government. Swathes of parliamentary time have been left unfilled and the bills that they did produce have been chaotic, badly drafted and badly managed. I have calculated that since the last Queen's speech, the government have u-turned on average once every seven sitting days. If No10 briefing is accurate, they are u-turning on this Queen's Speech before it's even been delivered by dropping minimum alcohol pricing, plain cigarette packaging and their register of lobbying interests.

This is the government's third Queen's Speech since the election in 2010, and all we've had is three years of failure - low growth, falling living standards and rising borrowing. Despite even failing their own tests for economic success, they are ploughing on regardless with a failed economic plan. They are sitting on their hands while our economy struggles and the public suffer.

This is a government that has run out of ideas and that is too stubborn to admit that it is on the wrong track.

The six bills that we would propose on Wednesday demonstrate that economic recovery is our number one priority. We would bring in:

A Jobs Bill. There are nearly 1million young people out of work and unemployment has risen since David Cameron became Prime Minister. The bill would introduce a compulsory jobs guarantee which would mean a paid job for every adult who is out of work for more than two years. They would have to take the job or lose their benefits. The bill would also guarantee a six month paid job for a young person out of work for over a year, and would place a requirement on large firms getting government contracts to have apprenticeship schemes

A finance bill. Our economy has barely grown since 2010 which means that borrowing is up, and prices are rising faster than wages. The finance bill would kick start our economy and help make work pay with a 10p rate of tax, by reversing the government's VAT rise and by bringing in a one year national insurance tax break for every small firm which takes on extra workers

A consumers bill. Rail fares are rising by up to 9% a year, energy bills are on average £300 a year higher since the last election, and pensioners are discovering that up to half their pension has been wiped out by hidden costs and charges. The bill would take a range of action to demand a better deal for customers, such as creating a new tougher energy watchdog, a new legal right to the cheapest train ticket for a journey and capping pension scheme charges at 1%

A banking bill. Lending to businesses is falling month on month and the government has failed to take any effective action. The bill would establish a British Investment Bank and new regional banks to support businesses and help them grow

A housing bill. The housing market has changed and there are now up to 3.8 million households renting privately. The housing bill would tackle extortionate fees and would take action against rogue landlords in the private rented sector

An immigration bill. There is evidence across certain sectors that migrant workers are being paid less than the minimum wage. The immigration bill would use economic measures to stop workers having their wages illegally undercut

The Queen's Speech will be another reminder that this is a government out of ideas, just watching the clock until the next election. A One Nation Labour government would not squander its chance to lead. We'd devote all our time to getting people back to work and to getting our economy growing again. We know that the British people deserve better than this uninspired, out of touch government.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1527417 2012-05-18T19:00:00-04:00 2012-07-18T05:12:06-04:00

Angela Eagle http://www.huffingtonpost.com/angela-eagle/
It has of course not panned out like that. We had instead a Queen's Speech light on legislation, just 15 bills for the forthcoming session and four draft bills.

Beyond the paucity of legislation what was shocking, for a government so new to office, was the absence from the Queen's Speech of any sense of strategic vision for Britain. A few weeks ago, the senior Conservative backbencher, Bernard Jenkin, lambasted the government's lack of a compelling strategic direction. It is now clear his stinging criticism was understated, this isn't a government lacking a compelling vision; it is a government lacking any vision at all. The European Union (Croatia Accession) Bill is a necessary piece of legislation but it's not what they are clamouring for on the Tory backbenches.

They don't talk about it on the doorstep in Wallasey. Nor have they raised House of Lords reform. I support a democratically elected second chamber. I will vote for it (and support a referendum, as promised in our 2010 election manifesto). But should it be the government's number one legislative priority? No of course not. Its prominence in the Queen's Speech reflects both the government's wrong priorities and its absence of ideas.

The government's spectacular mismanagement of the legislative programme for the last two years has been an unparalleled demonstration of Parliamentary incompetence. Badly drafted bills were hastily redrafted, and redrafted again. Some bills more than doubled in size during their passage through Parliament and ministers struggled to translate their ideas (such that they were) into legislation.

Its record of incompetent parliamentary mismanagement might explain why, astonishingly, one third of the bills announced in the Queen's Speech are to be designated as "carry over bills". Carry over is a procedure that allows bills to be carried over from one session of Parliament to the next. They apparently include Banking Reform, the Children and Families Bill, Energy and Pensions.

Bills in the Queen's Speech should easily pass through parliament in a session - that lasts a year - provided they are more or less ready to go when announced in the Queen's Speech.

The explanation for the astonishingly high number of carry over bills, in a Queen's Speech that was to start with short of legislation, can only be the government hasn't managed to get its act together to draft legislation. Astonishing given the last Queen's Speech was in May 2010 - they have had exactly two years to prepare legislation. You have to ask what have they been doing all this time? arguing amongst themselves?

Alternatively, perhaps the government has realised that the justification for making Lords Reform the centre piece of its legislative programme, namely that the Liberal Democrat leadership was desperate for a 'win' to justify their presence in government to the grassroots, wasn't sufficient to secure the legislation's passage. They now fear reform of the House of Lords will get bogged down, clogging up the Parliamentary timetable, dragging down other bills. Or perhaps they just can't agree on the policy in the coalition. Whichever way you look at it incompetent is the word that comes to mind.

Angela Eagle MP is Shadow Leader of the House of Commons & Chair of Labour's National Policy Forum]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1288936 2012-02-20T19:00:00-05:00 2012-04-21T05:12:02-04:00

Angela Eagle http://www.huffingtonpost.com/angela-eagle/
David Cameron, as you would expect from an ex-PR man, has a smooth answer on why he wants to be prime minister, but I have the sense that the real answer to why he wants the job is simply "because it is there."

And having climbed to the political summit, he doesn't know what to do next.

This is not a government with a coherent vision for Britain. Short of deficit reduction, it is a government lacking any vision for the country at all.

The government's legislative record

In May 2010, flush with excitement having achieved power after 13 years (if not actually having won a general election) the government announced a two year legislative programme they claimed would 'reshape' Britain.

In opposition the Tories lived for the next press release.

They seem to have overlooked the fact that in government you have to implement polices, not just issue press releases and cynically pre-arranged prime ministerial photoshoots in Morrisons.

And as a consequence, 20 months on the legislative programme is crawling painfully to a close.

The government had 28 non-finance bills in its legislative programme - almost two years on a fifth of those are still struggling their way through parliament.

The problem is bills dreamt up in backrooms have not stood up to the bright light of parliamentary scrutiny. The government has tabled over 5000 amendments so far to its own legislation. The length of bills, from a government that claims it is cutting red tape, has increased by a fifth during their parliament passage.

As a result of government incompetence we have this ridiculous situation where legislation is stuck in the House of Lords and the commons is spending several weeks twiddling its thumbs.

It is a mess.

The role of the Commons

The Health Bill is a spectacular legislative disaster - but it is only one example. The Welfare Bill and the Legal Aid Bill are bogged down in the Lords. In all these cases the government used its majority in the Commons to ram the legislation through with little debate.

But in the Lords, despite the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives having a combined majority over Labour of 70, they have been unable to drive through their legislation. Because they have been unable to convince the public, because of widespread concern that legislation is unfair, in the Lords the government has been unable to win over sufficient numbers of cross benches to ram its legislation through.

It is depressing fact of our democracy that in the Commons - the democratically elected chamber - bills get rubber stamped because of the government's legislative majority. In the House of Lords - the unelected chamber - the government is forced to engage its critics.

One of the problems in the Commons is the weakness of the committee system. The executive has too much power and the legislative too little. The public does not send MPs to Westminster to rubber stamp government bills. Select committees should have greater influence over the passage of legislation to give parliamentarians a real say and ensure government legislation is thought out, that critics are engaged and bills are better drafted.

Government power grab

The bulk of legislation the government has successfully managed to ram through parliament has not been about making Britain a fairer, more equal country.

It has been about grabbing as much power as it can.

Labour's record in its first two years was one of devolving power: devolution to Scotland, Wales and London. No government - ever - on coming to office has devolved so much power.

Much as the right wing press knock it the Human Rights Act and Supreme Court - both done in Labour's first two years in office - made tremendous advances in strengthening the power of the citizen vis-a-vis the state.

Devolution has had a profound impact on government in the United Kingdom. There is nobody now who would argue that London did not need a mayor, Wales was not better with its own government or that Scotland better for having its own Parliament.

In contrast to Labour's record the coalition's major reforms have been designed to consolidate their own power - parliamentary boundaries have been redrawn, changes to the electoral roll made to make it more difficult for people to register to vote, and now a (partisan) commission looking at the so-called West Lothian question.

This takes us down the line to a situation you get in the United States where the party in office uses its power to fix electoral rules designed to consolidate its own hold on office. It is a dangerous road to go down - and one that undermines the strength of our democracy.

For all their rhetoric on localism, the reality is it is just a fig leaf for a partisan power grab.

Fairness

Labour in its first two years in office passed legislation that profoundly improved the public realm - the minimum wage, greater employment rights, ending the internal market in the NHS, cutting class sizes. We were a government that wanted to reshape the public realm for the common good.

Unsurprisingly the prime minister has no such ambition. His response to the biggest fiscal crisis that has overwhelmed governments around the world is to view it as a political opportunity to slash the size of the State and dispense with the social safety net - making Britain a far more unequal society.

In response to the biggest political crisis of our generation we don't have a leader in Number 10, one who wants to shape the political weather, the prime minister is merely a weathervane.

The political challenge

Too few people at Westminster, or in the media, have woken up to what a seismic change the economic crisis caused. The electorate has changed. And political parties are playing catch up.

People are frustrated about their community, frustrated that they have so little control over the institutions that shape their lives; they're lacking faith in democratic institutions but wanting real democratic control over their future more than ever.

New Labour made Britain a better, fairer country. But fundamentally it did not change the political consensus of Thatcher/Reagan. It blunted the edges. That settlement has now collapsed and the political party that grasps this essential truth will be the one which has the chance to help people shape the new future. ]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.1027340 2011-10-23T19:00:00-04:00 2011-12-23T05:12:02-05:00

Angela Eagle http://www.huffingtonpost.com/angela-eagle/
He answered questions about his Government's ongoing negotiations to join the European 'Common Market.' Wind forward fifty years and our current old Etonian Tory Prime Minister is going to spend this 50th birthday of PMQs frantically trying to force his backbenchers not to vote for a referendum to get us out of it again.

In 50 years, 10 Prime Ministers have walked into this weekly bear pit and answered questions from 19 Leaders of the Opposition and countless backbenchers looking to score a hit. None of them enjoy it because it is a genuine test of their character and a barometer of party morale for the Opposition as well as the Government.

No other Parliament has anything quite like it. Like trapeze artists performing on the high wire without a safety net, triumph and disaster lurk in every moment and no-one quite knows what is going to happen next. That's why it is watched in fascination around the world. And that is why amidst all the barracking and heckling it has provided some very revealing and politically decisive moments over the years.

Think of Mr's Thatcher's 'No No No' on European integration. This final straw moment triggered the plot amongst exasperated Tory Europhiles which finally brought her down.

Gordon Brown's Freudian slip about saving 'the world' instead of merely the banks caused much hilarity and did him damage close to an election. Three little words albeit repeated over and over again, destroyed six years of Tory rebranding of David Cameron in one telling moment. His 'calm down dear' blunder to me revealed his inner Flashman, a trait his minders had tried hard to hide. The mask slipped and millions of women clocked it.

Then there was the purple flour incident when campaigners evaded Common's security by smuggling flour filled condoms into the gallery in their underpants and successfully lobbing one at Tony Blair. It was only after we had all evacuated the Chamber that the awful possibility dawned on the House Authorities that they might have contained anthrax or something worse. The result was the installation of the screen which now separates the public gallery from the newly flour-proof Commons Chamber.

Even though there are those that loathe it, there is no way that the reputation of a Prime Minister or a Leader of the Opposition who persistently failed at Prime Minister's Questions would not suffer. It is a test which has to be regularly faced and passed too.

If further proof of its value were required we need only remember that Prime Ministers hate it. And a look at the recess dates recently announced for next year reveal that the House will rise six times out of seven on a Tuesday ensuring that there will be no Prime Minister's Questions that week. I rest my case.

Angela Eagle is MP for Wallasey and Shadow Leader of the House of Commons. ]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.909624 2011-07-26T10:46:20-04:00 2011-09-25T05:12:01-04:00

Angela Eagle http://www.huffingtonpost.com/angela-eagle/
Today we've heard the additional bank holiday due to the royal wedding, the wedding itself and the warm weather in April all being held up as reasons for this poor performance. Not so long ago, the Chancellor of the Exchequer came to the House of Commons and blamed the winter snow for Britain's shock plunge into negative growth at the end of 2010.

We've had a multitude of excuses from this government but its time they accepted that their decision to increase VAT coupled with cuts that go further and faster than any major economy has resulted in the economy flat lining since the autumn.

Today's results mean that we are now 0.6% behind achieving the latest OBR growth forecast for 2011 and that has already been downgraded three times.

When Labour left office recovery had begun, growth was 1.8% in the second and third quarters of 2010 ahead of the EU average and the USA. Last spring we were turning the corner, but now thanks to the choices the Chancellor made last year, things have taken a turn for the worse.

I've long said that the Tory economic approach is a dangerous experiment with people's jobs and prosperity and the evidence shows the economy has been faltering over the last nine months.

Yet the Chancellor's astonishingly complacent response to today's GDP figures suggests he plans to carry on regardless of the evidence, clutching at excuses and refusing to accept that his plan is not working.

We warned the Chancellor last year that the VAT rise and spending review risked choking off the economic recovery and would deliver the slower growth and higher unemployment that we are now seeing.

It is not too late for the Chancellor. He can change course and consider a 'Plan B'. He should follow Labour's call for a temporary VAT cut to help get our economy moving again. Even the IMF and the Federation of Small Businesses have called for temporary tax cuts if the slow growth persists.

The Chancellor should also repeat last year's bank bonus tax and used the money raised to support the jobs and growth that Britain badly needs. £2billion could be raised from repeating the bank bonus tax which would help create over 100,000 new jobs, pay for the construction of 25,000 new homes and boost the Regional Growth Fund.

It's time for George Osborne to forget the dogma, admit his mistakes and take notice of the warning signs around him. It's time for an alternative that puts jobs and growth first and gets Britain's economic recovery firmly back on track.]]>