Charter for Budget Responsibility

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Tuesday 13th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

We have delivered exactly the spending plans that I set out and which the shadow Chancellor opposed. If he is complaining about those spending plans, and if he would like to spend more, he should be honest with the British people and say that a Labour Government would like to borrow more. Why does he not have the courage to tell the truth? The truth is that he does not tell the British people the truth because he knows that when they discover he wants to borrow £170 billion more, they will not let him near Downing street again.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

Does the Chancellor recall, when the Government outlined their deficit reduction plan, that Opposition Members, including the shadow Chancellor, said we were going “too far, too fast”? Now the right hon. Gentleman criticises us for not cutting the deficit enough. Will he make his mind up?

[Mr Osborne]

It is a totally chaotic and farcical position from the Labour party. It has spent the first two weeks of this year complaining that the Conservative party is cutting too much and promising that it would not cut as much, but now Labour Members are going to troop through the Division Lobby with us in support of a charter that requires £30 billion of fiscal consolidation over the next couple of years. To be fair to the Scottish National party, I think its Members are going to vote against us, as too is the Green party, but Labour Members are sitting there in total silence. They are going to go through the Division Lobby with us to support £30 billion of spending cuts. [Interruption.] Cheer up, it is what the Labour Front-Bench team has asked you to do. It is going to lead the party through the Division Lobby because it does not want to admit to the British people that its plans involve spending more money.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

I welcome the motion, which is another step on the path to long-term responsibility in Government fiscal policy and, indeed, debt management. It is useful to look at the position that this Government inherited to see why the charter for budget responsibility is absolutely necessary.

Before the Government came into office, the deficit was 10.2% of GDP, the highest in the EU and one of the very highest in the developed world. The independent Office for Budget Responsibility expects the deficit to be reduced by half this year: it will finish at 5% of GDP, and then fall to 4% of GDP next year. The Government have achieved that by reining in public spending and creating the conditions in which our GDP growth could outstrip that in virtually every other country in the developed world.

All that was done with policies that, in the overwhelming majority of cases, were opposed by the Labour party. It has opposed virtually every one of our necessary spending reductions. At the same time, Labour doom-mongers predicted mass unemployment and often repeated their mantra that we were going too far, too fast on deficit reduction. They sound like a nervous passenger in the back seat of a car, which is a useful analogy because I believe that Labour Members are completely unfit to be given the car keys, given that this Government have only just got the economic wheels back on the car after the last time they took it out for a joyride when they were in government.

Let us again remind ourselves of where we were in 2010, when Government spending represented almost 50% of GDP, which is a completely and totally unsustainable level.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend recall that the previous Government also presided over a record increase in public spending, which was 50% higher in 2010 than it was 10 years earlier?

[Andrew Bridgen]

Yes, of course. As the previous Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), had ended boom and bust, the whole country embarked on a Government-inspired orgy of credit, safe in the knowledge that there would be no day of reckoning, but such a day came in 2008, as we all recall; that is history.

The Labour party opposed our reductions in public sector work force numbers. Rather than those people returning to the productive part of the economy—the private sector—they would have stayed in the public sector and the deficit would have grown even further. In fact, five private sector jobs have been created for every one of those that had to be lost in the public sector. That tells us all we need to know about the Labour party’s view of deficit reduction.

Let us consider the announcements at the Labour party conference. The shadow Chancellor announced paltry measures that would save only £400 million, and he failed to rein in shadow Ministers who promised an extra £20 billion of spending. As we all recall, the Leader of the Opposition famously forgot even to mention the deficit—he did not recall it—in his conference speech, which shows where it ranks on his list of priorities for the country.

The truth is that Labour has not learned the lessons of the past. It still believes that it can tax and spend its way to prosperity. We know that the Leader of the Opposition admires the economic model currently pursued by President Hollande in France, which is delivering double-digit unemployment and anaemic rates of economic growth.

There is much for my constituents to fear from a Labour Government. North West Leicestershire is delivering one of the highest growth rates outside London and the south-east, thanks to a strong private sector. As with the national economy under this Government, the economy of my constituency has been rebalanced and strengthened. That has resulted in a 60% fall in unemployment and a 70% fall in youth unemployment since 2010, meaning that hundreds of extra people are in work, paying taxes and looking after their families, without Government support.

In conclusion, it is essential that we continue to reduce our deficit. We must have a plan to ensure that public sector net debt continues to fall consistently as a percentage of GDP. By contrast, the Opposition clearly intend to run deficits indefinitely for our children to pay for. They have not learned the lessons of the past, and their plan is for more borrowing, more taxes and more debt. That will lead to higher interest rate payments, meaning less money for schools, hospitals and infrastructure, as well as lower economic growth. By looking across the channel to France, we can see where the socialist economic policies of the Labour party will lead our country. Labour’s plan B always stood for bankruptcy. That shows how essential it is that we win the next election, stick with our long-term economic plan to deal with the deficit, and keep on the road to economic recovery and prosperity.