Future Government Spending

Debate between Lord Jackson of Peterborough and Stephen Mosley

Wednesday 4th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jackson]

No, I will not give way at present.

As we have already heard, the 45p tax rate has raised more income for public services than was ever done by the 50p rate, which was put in place for cynical political reasons. We will not take any lectures from the party that abolished the 10p tax rate for the poorest working families. What sticks in my craw is the moral superiority of the Labour party in this debate. In 2011, 1,200 people in my constituency had been parked on out-of-work benefits—incapacity benefit or invalidity benefit—for more than 10 years during a period of economic growth. Some 5.2 million were parked on out-of-work benefits when the economy was growing quarter by quarter during the 13 years of the Labour Government. We will not take any lectures or moral indignation from the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Gemma Doyle) and other Labour Members.

The top 1% of taxpayers are paying 25% of income taxes. We have driven up employment levels. More women than ever are working. Some 30.9 million people are working, despite the ludicrous prognostications of people such as David Blanchflower, who told us that 5 million people would be unemployed, and the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls), who said that we could not cut expenditure and have growth in private sector jobs—complete and utter nonsense. In my constituency, unemployment has gone down by almost 60% and youth unemployment by almost 66%.

[Stephen Mosley]

Under the last Government, almost 1 million young people were out of work. Through apprenticeships and job opportunities, those people now have opportunities and hope for the future. They are the people who are benefiting from this Government. Does my hon. Friend agree?

[Mr Jackson]

I absolutely agree. My hon. Friend has put forward the strong views of his constituents in Chester for the past five years, and I expect him to be handsomely re-elected.

What I find depressing is the pernicious smear and myth that we are going back to the 1930s, when there was no NHS. That is a lie. It is disingenuous to make that point. First, the figures were not even collected until 1956. Secondly, the economy is at least 10 times bigger than it ever was in the 1930s. As I made clear in an earlier intervention, expenditure as a proportion of GDP is more or less the same as it was in 2002—the fifth year of a Labour Government.

I will not dwell on Labour’s record on the economy, other than to say that we had a record decline in manufacturing—that is for the benefit of the hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson)—we had disastrous school results, youth unemployment doubled, a quarter of all public expenditure was borrowed by the end of Labour’s rule and there was a structural deficit when the economy was growing. While we are at it, inequality grew between 1997 and 2010. The gap between the poorest 10% and the richest 10% grew wider during the time of the Labour Government.

What a contrast that is to what we have done. We have capped benefits, focused on capital investment, driven up the number of apprenticeships, created 760,000 new jobs, increased the state pension and come up with a properly costed plan for our future. I am proud of the work that this Government have done, given the appalling financial inheritance they were encumbered by in May 2010.

Let us have a little humility from Labour Members. The reason they have zero credibility with electors on the deficit and the management of the economy is that they do not believe they did anything wrong. That is normal for a party that won 258 seats, even though if we had got the same number of votes, we would have got fewer than 200 seats because of the boundaries. They think, “One more heave. More spending and more borrowing is absolutely fine.”

However, the election of a Labour Government is an existential threat to the health and prospects of the economy and my constituency, and to the mortgages, jobs, pensions, savings and businesses of my constituents. Higher mortgage rates, higher unemployment, higher prices, more debt and borrowing, punishing middle-class earners, punishing aspiring wealth creators, same old class envy, same old spiteful prejudice, same old economic failure, same old Labour—on 7 May, the British people just won’t risk it.