Business and the Economy

Debate between Baroness Burt of Solihull and Stewart Hosie

Monday 14th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

The Queen’s Speech contained precisely nothing to help growth in the economy. It set out a feeble programme. The Government talk about growth but are doing precious little to achieve it. We have all noticed the change in rhetoric over the past few weeks; growth is now important. It is not enough to hope for growth or will it and then fail entirely to introduce in the Queen’s Speech the policies that would deliver it.

We are now in the absurd situation where we have gone from the Chancellor upgrading his growth forecasts in the Budget in March to the announcement of a double-dip recession in April and warnings today from Marian Bell and Howard Davies, formerly of the Bank of England, that the Government might have to slow their deficit reduction plan before they effectively squeeze the life out of the recovery entirely. Howard Davies said that even

“the markets recognise that if the economy turns out to be weaker than expected and you try to compensate for that by tightening even further, then that way madness lies.”

One could paraphrase that by saying, “Trying to stimulate economic growth by cutting consumption is very foolish,” and I would agree entirely, but that is precisely what the Government are attempting to do.

So there is nothing in the Queen’s Speech to compensate for the shrinking demand in the economy that the Government’s own policies are creating; nothing to compensate for the £73 billion of fiscal consolidation that they inherited; nothing to compensate for the £113 billion of cuts and tax rises planned for 2014-15; and precisely nothing to compensate for the £155 billion that will leave the economy every year from 2016-17. Indeed, they are exacerbating the problem with cuts to Government consumption and expenditure of between 1.3% and 2.6% a year from 2013 to 2016.

[Lorely Burt]

The Institute for Fiscal Studies confirmed that Labour’s plan would necessitate borrowing £201 billion more. What effect would that have on the market, on investment and on growth?

[Stewart Hosie]

I think that the words of Howard Davies this morning were very interesting. I shall find the quotation if the hon. Lady wants it, but it was about the credibility of the plan, not the speed of the cuts.

There is, of course, one other thing: trying to cut one’s way out of recession and to generate growth by spending less money, putting in place a series of measures that militate against the business investment growth on which the entire strategy is dependent, is not a very clever way to proceed. But that is precisely what this Government have planned.

I said that the Government have done nothing to stimulate a shrinking economy—unless one thinks that the Foreign Secretary’s berating of businesses for not working hard enough counts as an economic strategy. Of course it does not, but his intervention shows just how out of touch the Government are. I am sure that the Liberal Democrats have a little speech to say that they are not really in the same Government as the Foreign Secretary, but that will not wash either.

The Government could have taken action in the Finance Bill or through measures in the Queen’s Speech to ease the price of fuel, which members of the Forum of Private Business say is the main cost pressure on their businesses, but they did not. They could have taken action to bring forward direct capital investment, the most effective thing that any Government could do to stimulate economic growth, but they did not—and that was a particularly short-sighted piece of inaction, given that the fall back into recession, the double-dip recession, was led by a large fall in construction output. One would have thought that even the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the Chancellor or the other Treasury Ministers had read the economic indicators.

Indeed, the Government had such a programme in their election manifestos, and they could have brought forward the legislation on high-speed rail. It would have given the signal that a large capital investment programme was coming, and it could have stimulated economic growth throughout the UK, but the political imperative of one or two shire Tories in the south seems to have overtaken the rather sensible measures that High Speed 2 would have delivered.

So what are the Government doing? They are introducing a banking reform Bill to ring-fence narrow retail banking activities. I welcome that measure, which is fine so far as it goes, but, as the Scottish Chambers of Commerce said, it

“does not go far enough in terms of providing a direct boost to business lending”

to small and medium-sized enterprises—a vital part of any recovery.

The Government are introducing an enterprise and regulatory reform Bill, and we will look very carefully at each measure that they intend to introduce, but, in general terms, if one is trying to rebuild an economy and to grow out of recession, one needs confidence. I can understand why keeping people in their jobs would help confidence, but I am at a loss to understand why the Government believe that making it easier to sack people will bring any confidence into the economy, particularly the consumer spending sector.

There are no measures on direct capital investment, which is the most effective thing that any Government could do—not even proposed legislation on HS2. There is no action on SME lending and no action to build confidence; indeed, the Government are making it worse by making it easier to sack people when keeping them in their jobs would help to rebuild confidence. That lack of action explains why we are in recession, why unemployment is high, why net debt is going up, why net borrowing is higher for 2011-12 than was forecast a year ago, and why the deficit is planned to be higher for 2011-12 than was reported in the Budget a year ago.

At their heart, this Government have a problem. They are sticking ideologically to a rigid, fixed-term deficit consolidation plan that offers no flexibility whatsoever. The one Bill that they should have had would have put in place a new fiscal responsibility plan so that instead of a rigid, ideological slashing of costs, we could have a flexible, medium-term, credible deficit consolidation plan that allowed growth in the economy.