Autumn Statement

Jack Dromey Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

The short answer to that is yes.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

Last year, the Chancellor cut £4 billion from housing investment. Does he accept responsibility for the catastrophic 99% collapse in affordable house building in the past six months, which is 187% in the west midlands? Does he agree that today he is restoring but 10% of what he cut, when the need for building homes and jobs has never been greater?

[Mr Osborne]

The Government’s capital spending plans are higher than those that the Labour party put forward in March 2010, which the Dromey family enthusiastically endorsed and tried to persuade the country to vote for. It is striking that, with the hon. Gentleman’s background, he has not mentioned the strikes, which will do huge damage to our economy and jobs. Why do not he and his colleagues condemn them and make sure that our country is working?

Oral Answers to Questions

Jack Dromey Excerpts

Tuesday 21st December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

That was another of the problems in the in-tray. We have announced reforms to the controlled foreign companies regime, on which we published a consultation paper a couple of weeks ago, and I expect to return to the matter in the Budget.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

The Chancellor has said that he will be tough but fair in his cuts to Britain’s public services. Is it fair that West Midlands police service, serving an area of high need, will be hit twice as hard as Surrey, and as a consequence lose 1,200 police officers, 270 of whom will be compulsorily retired by next April?

[Mr Osborne]

The police settlement is fair. Here is yet another example of the Labour party’s position. In the past hour, we have heard Opposition Members oppose all the welfare reforms, the local government reductions, and the reductions in the Ministry of Justice and Home Office budgets. Their position is completely non-credible.

Comprehensive Spending Review

Jack Dromey Excerpts

Thursday 28th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Danny Alexander]

I will give way to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), then I will press on.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

The House has waited in vain for a straight answer to a straight question. I know the right hon. Gentleman would like to take credit for the sun shining, and indeed for the imprint on the Turin shroud, but will he give a straight answer to the straight question asked by my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Mr Darling), the former Chancellor of the Exchequer? Is it true or untrue that the growth in the first three quarters of 2010 is a direct result of the measures taken by the previous Government to build Britain out of recession?

[Danny Alexander]

The last quarter of growth—Opposition Members were hoping that things would be worse than they are, which is a pretty poor foundation for any sort of economic policy—took place since the Budget. [Interruption.] Of course the previous Chancellor deserves credit for that much of his work in office—[Interruption.]

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Jack Dromey Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD)]

The Labour party’s synthetic anger, and the rather pompous and patronising show that we have just seen, are perhaps a reflection of Labour Members’ inability to accept their share of responsibility for the mess that the country is in. The party is in total denial. It is leaderless and rudderless, and it has not even had the courtesy to apologise to the British people for what it did. Perhaps Labour Members are also reflecting on the things that they could have done over 13 years but never got round to, such as restoring the earnings link for pensions, introducing a bank levy and raising the tax threshold. I do not think that Labour Members will find those on these Benches receptive to a party that has shown no leadership, no responsibility and no ideas, and that does not know where it is going.

We should be grateful that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has set out a Budget that has ideally balanced the need to deliver tough control over our finances with a fair approach that, as the Red Book shows, will mean that in tax terms 80% of people will be better off under the Budget, while the richest 20% bear the greatest share of the burden. That is a proper expression of a progressive Budget.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman talks about balance and fairness. Will he comment on the balance between £11 billion of welfare cuts and less than £2 billion from the bankers, which is offset by the decrease in corporation tax? Will he also comment on the fairness and balance of setting an average of £35 per household from council tax against taking an extra £12 billion in VAT, which will hit the poor hardest?

[Malcolm Bruce]

I am sorry but that intervention also shows no recognition of the fact that we have to find the money from somewhere. Our approach to that gives the poorest the most and makes the richest pay the biggest contribution. I cannot think of anything more progressive than that, and the more the hon. Gentleman and others consider the Budget, the more they will recognise that it stands up to robust analysis.

I had the honour of being my party’s Treasury spokesman between 1995 and 2000. During the 1997 election, the Liberal Democrat manifesto included an aspiration to raise the threshold at which people started to pay income tax to £10,000. That was only an aspiration because, try as we might, we were unable to find the resources at that time to pay for it. However, when the Labour Government were elected in 1997, the first thing that they did was to introduce the most generous capital gains tax relief that the richest people in this country had ever enjoyed—Mrs Thatcher never contemplated it! However, closing such tax loopholes has enabled us to start to deliver the increase in the tax threshold so that people will not have to pay tax and then apply for benefit, as the Chancellor said. I for one am absolutely delighted to support a Budget that fulfils a commitment set out in an aspiration on which I fought the 1997 election.

The hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) suggests that Liberal Democrats should be ashamed of the Budget, but far from it. There is much in the Budget of which to be proud, and I make it clear to right hon. and hon. Friends in the Conservative party that it is not a Conservative Budget or a Liberal Democrat Budget, but a coalition Budget. I would argue that it draws on the best on both parties. Those parties command the support of the majority of the British people, and the Budget’s approach will deliver benefits to the majority of the British people. I said in the election campaign, when I became aware of the seriousness of the financial situation facing the country, that the position would be much better after the election if cuts that had to be made were implemented by more than one party, as they would be forced to engage with each other and find a balance that would be more acceptable than measures adopted by one party running for a sectional interest that did not have the same strength of appeal. I honestly believe that the coalition has found a dynamic that has delivered something that is greater than the sum of its parts: a Budget that is genuinely progressive.

Office for Budget Responsibility

Jack Dromey Excerpts

Monday 14th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

My hon. Friend is right. On page 58 of the report, Sir Alan and the fellow members of his committee set out some of the liabilities that need to be factored into longer-term fiscal forecasts, which include an ageing population, unfunded public service pension liabilities and the PFI contracts. They point out that some £43 billion of PFI contracts are off the national balance sheet.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

In the real world of the real economy, last Friday I met a dozen world-class machine tool manufacturers at their annual exhibition in Birmingham. They were unanimous in their view that the Government were right to borrow to invest in the economy to boost it and their order books. Are they wrong?

[Mr Osborne]

If they are similar to the machine tool manufacturers I have met in Birmingham in recent months, they are also very concerned about the size of the budget deficit and that, unless we get a grip on it, there will be an ever higher spiral of tax rises and interest rate increases that would do enormous damage to them and to the people whom they employ.