Michael Meacher

Labour Party | Oldham West and Royton

Burnley May Day festival, Townley Park

Monday 4 May 2009

Speech by Michael Meacher MP

Not the best week, the last one. Some Labour MPs, I read, have given up, resigned to defeat. That is not my view, and I want to tell you why:

1. I could say: When Cameron, with a year to the election, is already proclaiming “an age of austerity” and Britain being governed as never before to force it to live within it’s means (as he said at Cheltenham last week), he’s telling us in the plainest possible terms that public services will be cut to shreds with him as Prime Minister. And if that’s what you want, vote Tory.

But true as that is, that’s not enough in my book as a reason for voting Labour.

2. I am a Socialist, and I vote Labour, because I passionately believe in
• Equality and equal opportunity
• Social justice for the disadvantaged and downtrodden
• Public services as the bedrock of a civilised society
• Democratic rights holding to account power and wealth
And much as I think Government needs to go a lot further in this direction, I also think people don’t recognise just how far Labour is now returning to its roots, to principles that make us all proud to be Labour.

3. We’ve just had a Budget to deal with the wreckage left by the most irresponsible and reckless blow out in modern financial history. In the crisis brought about by bankers (who should be hung out to dry – not literally – perhaps a bit), the Government has done two things exactly right:-
(i) when money is scarce, it has put thousands of millions of pounds into protecting the vulnerable –
• By a big uplift to pensions this year
• A major new reskilling programme for young unemployed
• Using the need for lower carbon technology to fight climate change as a means to create hundreds of thousands of new green jobs
• Building more social housing, including reviving Council house building programme for one and a half million people on waiting lists.

(ii) secondly, when extra taxes have to be raised to meet the deficit, the Government has hit the rich, the very richest, hard, raising the rate of tax on those earning more than £150,000 by 10% [hands up!] while ensuring that the other 99% of the population pay no more tax.

Do you think Cameron would do that?

4. And there are two other things the Government has just announced which make my equality aspirations tingle.

One is the Government is at last cracking down on tax havens, and that matters because if the rich pay their fair share in tax, everyone else can pay less. Did you know that wealthy individuals and big companies every year cheat this country of £25 billion in tax revenues? Well, Government this year is beginning to claw a lot of this back.

Second, Harriet Harman has just published her Equalities Bill designed to end the scandal that women are still paid on average 17% less than men for doing the same job of work. The Government is at last righting a wrong that has lasted for far too long.

Of course more needs to be done – in particular, in a world where the average wage is £400 per week and top Chief Executive Officers take home £70,000 per week, I’d like to see a maximum ratio imposed between top and bottom pay in all organisations, so that if the boss wants to increase his own pay, he has to drag everyone else with him.

But let’s not forget two important achievements of this Government over pay:
• That Labour brought in a minimum wage – one of the most important things we’ve done, in my view - which has benefited over 4 million people; two thirds of them women. It’s £5.73 an hour, yes, it should be higher, £7 in my view, but if it weren’t for Labour, there wouldn’t be one at all.
• Labour has reduced child poverty. Thatcher increased it to 3 million blighted lives, one of the most callous and cruel consequences of her regime, but Labour has now substantially reduced that.

5. And let’s not play down the huge improvement in public services under this Government. However much the Tories jibe at our achievements,
• educational standards have been significantly raised,
• waiting times for hospital appointments and for GP consultations have been dramatically cut,
• pensioners are now much better off (although certainly not enough),
• housing standards have been substantially improved, and a major new Council house building programme is now under way which will provide jobs, ease shortages and reduce waiting lists,
• if you’re buying your house and there is a risk of repossession, local authorities are now empowered to buy up the property and switch owner occupancy temporarily to tenancy.

Do you think Cameron would do any of those things?

6. And part of my Socialism is empowerment, giving people rights of redress against injustice and rights to make their own choices in life irrespective of income,
• and in this area steady progress has been made to reverse the class-ridden tyrannies of the Thatcher era,
• rights against unfair dismissal have been significantly widened,
• part-time and temporary workers are now much better protected,
• the powers of gangmasters to exploit their workers have been cut right back,
• I’d be the first to say this is not enough, that trade unions should have an equal role with business in running the economy, and that there should be worker representatives in the boardroom ,as in Germany, to fight the workers’ corner.
But only Labour is pursuing this agenda, and what the Tories want, if we given them half a chance, is to return to the master-and-servant relationship in the industry of the Edwardian era a century ago.

• And Labour is giving people rights to increase their choices for a better quality of public service and rights to see your GP or walk-in clinics when it’s most convenient in the evening or a weekends.
• Rights also for disabled people to get the individualised care they choose, not what is prescribed, take it or leave it, from a limited service.
• Rights under the Freedom of Information Act to find out what public authorities don’t want to tell you.
• I think we may have persuaded the Government to give people the right to keep the Post Office as the public service they want.

7. That’s what I look to Labour to do – not to keep a power structure that serves Tory interests, but to change it to serve the interests of ordinary people, not top-down state control nor free-wheeling out-of-control market systems. But a balance that provides innovation and incentive for business, aspiration for people with opportunities and ambition, and justice and protection for those who need help to get the quality of life we all want. That’s what I joined the Labour Party for, that’s why I’m proud to be Labour, and that’s why we all need to fight to keep our Labour Government.