Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between Jonathan Reynolds and Toby Perkins

Thursday 24th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Toby Perkins]

Please accept my apologies, Mr Deputy Speaker. I shall make sure that I address you and hon. Members correctly in future.

It is right to talk about the choice that Labour made, which was to protect the jobs that people relied on and to prevent an extra 500,000 going on the dole. Labour’s choice was to protect the homes that people had saved up over their whole lives to be able to buy. Labour’s choice was to support industry and bring forward public spending projects to keep the construction industry working when the private sector was sitting on its hands. Labour knew that the price of salvaging those jobs, those homes and those businesses would be an increase in our deficit. We delivered a plan for the recovery, which is working, and a plan for reducing the deficit after the recovery had been secured in the following year. The hon. Member for Bromsgrove told us that we could not keep living beyond our means, but of course we already knew that; that is exactly what the shadow Chancellor was referring to in the previously attributed quote. He made it absolutely clear what our strategy was.

[Jonathan Reynolds]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is something deeply disingenuous about the fact that the Conservative party supported our Government spending plans until 2008—before the economic crisis hit home? They believe that we are living beyond our means, but they supported our spending at the time.