Debate on the Address

Debate between Andrew Percy and Geraint Davies

Wednesday 9th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I was interested to listen to the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), whose speech was remarkable for one thing, as has been the case with so many speeches. We are currently seeing a fundamental clash in Europe between democracy and austerity that has been reflected in the polls in France and Greece, and indeed in Britain in the local government elections, with a choice between growth and making cuts to get down the deficit. There seems to be no acknowledgement of the fact that we are hurtling towards a fundamental change that will mean the end of the euro and perhaps the end of Europe as we know it. We need to focus on the need for proactive growth to invest in the capacity for productivity across Europe and to change course while we see the emergence of the far-right-wing parties that have been mentioned by my colleagues. Instead, however, the main preoccupation is still with the House of Lords.

I am sure that people like to talk about the intricacies of the House of Lords—about whether having someone elected for 15 years without re-election is really democracy, whether there will be a clash of democracies between the different Chambers and so on—but I think we all know that this is a very difficult issue, and that this is not the time to confront it when we are facing such severe economic issues on our doorsteps and such fundamental changes in the nature of Europe and our exporting prospects.

[Andrew Percy]

I am not sure whether my accent was the problem, but I think I made it very clear that House of Lords reform was a completely marginal issue of absolutely no interest to my constituents. As I said time and again, my constituents expect that the economy and growth should be the priority.

[Geraint Davies]

I am not talking about whether the hon. Gentleman and others referenced growth, but whether they took any notice at all of the fact that across Europe we are seeing these fundamental changes. The economic orthodoxy wants to ignore the wishes of people who are being downtrodden by these austerity measures, and we are facing a real challenge as regards the future of democracy in parts of Europe, the future of the euro, and the future of the European Community. In this year of her diamond jubilee, the Queen should have been given the opportunity to demonstrate that the Government are showing greater leadership by example in developing a proper, coherent strategy for delivering growth instead of cuts to get the deficit down. Instead, we have had the same old medicine with the familiar side effects of less money being spent in the public sector, leading to less money in the private sector and a downward spiral of unemployment and poverty. We have seen that across Europe.

What we need in the UK and Europe is a combination of fiscal stimulus and co-ordinated investment. The party with the best record on growth is of course the Labour party. Between 1997 and 2008 there was unprecedented and continuous growth that we had not seen since the war. In 2008, of course, we faced the financial tsunami, and to the credit of my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) and Barack Obama, the introduction of the fiscal stimulus enabled the world to avoid depression and deliver shallow growth into 2010. Then the Conservatives took over a deficit that was two-thirds caused by financial institutions and one-third caused by the Labour party investing beyond earnings to continue growth. Their immediate response was to announce half a million job cuts, which deflated consumer demand and led to negative growth. Indeed, the deficit projection is up by £150 billion.