Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Austin of Dudley and Danny Alexander

Tuesday 6th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

9. What assessment he has made of the effect of fiscal policy on the level of economic growth in 2011.

[The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Danny Alexander)]

Tackling the deficit is necessary for supporting sustainable economic growth. The Government’s credible consolidation plan has restored confidence in the UK’s fiscal position, helped avoid a rise in market interest rates, and allowed a more activist monetary policy to support the economy.

[Ian Austin]

We know that this Government’s Ministers think they are always right and everyone else is always wrong, but how do they explain why growth in America, which took a more balanced approach to dealing with the deficit, was twice the rate here in the UK, and if it is, as they insist, all the eurozone’s fault, why was it only exports that prevented the British economy from lurching back into recession last year?

Comprehensive Spending Review

Debate between Lord Austin of Dudley and Danny Alexander

Thursday 28th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Danny Alexander]

I am going to press on; I will give way again in a moment.

The House and the British people will never forget the financial position of this country when we came into office, with £1 borrowed for every £4 spent—the largest deficit in our peacetime history. Debt interest payments alone stood at £43 billion a year—that is £120 million a day.

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Danny Alexander]

I think it is panic stations on the Opposition Front Bench if they do not have a single answer to a single question about the action that they would take to reduce the deficit. The story that the measure is unenforceable is nonsense; it will be introduced as planned. The savings were signed off by the Office for Budget Responsibility, which considered the compliance risk involved as well. Higher-rate taxpayers are of course required to disclose all relevant information.

[Ian Austin]

The Minister’s whole plan is based on two things: achieving, first, the biggest rate of export since 1974 and, secondly, a rise in business investment that has been matched only once in our history. Achieving both those things in the same year would be unprecedented, but the Government want to achieve both every year for three years on the trot. I know that the Chancellor and the Prime Minister do not live in the same world as the rest of us, but where did they dream that up—fantasy island?

[Danny Alexander]

I had planned to give way a few more times, but that intervention took so long that there will not be time to take any more for a while. The spending review is based on one simple principle: cleaning up the mess left behind by the Government of whom the hon. Gentleman was part.

We are making other welfare reforms too. We will cap household welfare payments at the average earnings of working households and we will reform housing benefit so that support better reflects the housing choices that working families have to make. That must be right. The welfare system should provide an effective safety net, but it should not pay workless families far more than most working families earn. That is where benefit traps and dependency start. Our reforms mark an historic shift from dependency to independence. Our measures are tough but fair.