Amendment of the Law

Andrew Griffiths Excerpts

Thursday 22nd March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Griffiths (Burton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to take part in this debate and to listen to the contributions. I was particularly pleased to listen to the speech made by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), who is no longer in his place. In his usual articulate and erudite manner, he opposed every single measure that the Government had brought forward to cut the deficit. He opposed changes to welfare, to benefits and to housing, yet he had not a single idea about how his party would begin to cut the deficit—the terrible legacy that we were left by the last Government.

I pay tribute to the Chancellor and the Treasury team for yesterday’s Budget announcement. I wanted a Budget that was good for business and hard-working families, and I feel that I got that. Thousands of families will be lifted out of paying tax as a result of yesterday’s announcement. It is important that that measure is particularly beneficial to women, who tend more to be part-time or low paid workers. A measure that lifts people out of paying tax is particularly helpful to the women in our society, and that is a good thing.

Now I come to the “but”, both as the MP for Burton and chair of the all-party group on beer. The Chancellor said that he intended to make no changes to the duty regime. That was a little disingenuous, shall we say, as he knew—and I knew, and brewers up and down the country knew—that that meant an increase of 5% on beer duty because of the continuation of Labour’s beer duty escalator. That is putting jobs and livelihoods at risk.

In the past four years, beer duty has increased by 42% in this country. Our beer duty is now the highest in Europe—eight times higher than France, 10 times higher than Spain and 11 times higher than Germany. We pay 40% of all Europe’s beer duty, yet we represent only 13% of its beer consumption.

We have seen a 52% increase in duty over recent years, yet only a 10% increase in revenue and, as a result, a 25% drop in beer sales in this country. Yet beer is a great British product. Some 80% of beer drunk in this country is brewed here. There are 800 breweries across the country, which employ people in all our constituencies. Compare that with the wine we drink, 90% of which is imported, and we see the unfairness of the current duty regime. Yesterday’s announcement will cost an average pub about £2,800. I commend the 106 MPs who signed the early-day motion in support of freezing beer duty.

I turn to the unfairness in how the system treats beer and cider. Cider pays half the duty of a 4% beer, and at high strength—8%—beer pays four times the duty on cider. That means that breweries and pubs suffer. The cider industry tells us that the reason is the increased costs in running an orchard and growing apples for cider.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

Why, in the hon. Gentleman’s opinion, is there such discrimination in the coalition in favour of cider?

[Andrew Griffiths]

I should say that what I meant when I spoke about the Chancellor was a lack of clarity in relation to yesterday’s statement.

I have with me a private and confidential presentation—

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

I welcome what my hon. Friend is saying about beer, but I am worried that he is suddenly targeting cider. There is a great amount of cider in my constituency, and I would be worried if he wanted extra tax on it.

[Andrew Griffiths]

I assure my hon. Friend that I am not targeting cider; what I want is fairness in the system.

The presentation I mentioned, which is used by the makers of Stella Cidre, clearly states the differences in duty. It says that the duty per hectolitre paid on Stella Artois, at 5% strength, is £86.60, the duty paid on Strongbow is £36.01, and that there is a difference of £50.59. At the top it says: “Why cider? Favourable duty position resulting in margin opportunity”. As a result of our taxation system, we are penalising beer. Every time somebody chooses to have a pint of cider rather than a pint of beer, the Treasury loses 50p. All we are calling for is some fairness in the system.

Last week at Prime Minister’s Questions, I asked the Deputy Prime Minister what measures he had in place for beer, and he said that he wanted to support community pubs. The best way to do that is to give beer a break. We want a fair taxation system that recognises the importance that beer, as a lower-strength drink, can have in our society. We want recognition of the efforts that brewers are making in relation to responsible drinking and reducing the alcohol by volume of their products. I commend the Government for their work on the 2.8% strength beers that were introduced recently. We recognise that the community pub is at the heart of the big society and that it has an important part to play in all our communities. I urge the Treasury to look at this again and work out what we can do to give British beer and British pubs a fair break.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Griffiths Excerpts

Tuesday 6th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

We have secured for this country economic credibility and stability in the most intense global storm, with the eurozone crisis and rising oil prices. Of course it is difficult, but where is the credible economic policy from the Labour party? It is completely absent. Is it not striking that we have not had a single Labour MP get up and talk about the good news from Nissan today? The car is called the Invitation, but the only invitation the hon. Gentleman is interested in is one to the lasagne parties held by the shadow Chancellor.

[Andrew Griffiths (Burton) (Con)]

14. Does the Chancellor agree that the national loan guarantee scheme has massive potential to help small and medium-sized enterprises grow? Does he also share my view, however, that we need a more enlightened approach from the banks in lending for growth, particularly to support start-ups, exporters and manufacturing?

[Mr Osborne]

We have introduced various tax changes, including our seed capital scheme, creating the most tax-advantaged start-up environment almost anywhere in the western world. Indeed, it is more attractive than that in the United States. On credit easing, I can confirm that subject to final EU state aid approval, which we expect to get in the next week, we will have the scheme up and running before the Budget.

Alcohol Taxation

Andrew Griffiths Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2011 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Griffiths (Burton) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. I declare an interest as chairman of the all-party beer group. I agree with her about the need for the Government to take action. Does she agree with me on this point? Twenty years ago, the price in a supermarket and the price in a pub were much the same at about 75p a pint. Today, a pint costs £3.10, £3.20 or £3.30 in a pub, whereas in a supermarket it remains at about 70p or 80p. That has encouraged people to drink more and more at home and discouraged them from drinking in a safe, supervised environment such as the community pub that is at the heart of many of our towns and villages.

[Dr Wollaston]

I thank my hon. Friend: he makes an excellent point about the decline in rural pubs and why any action that the Minister takes has to take into account the impact on rural pubs and, of course, town pubs.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Wollaston]

Asda has acquired a veneer of respectability by signing up to the new responsibility deal, but I would ask whether it is killing its customers with such pricing. Asda has liked to boast of its responsible approach in removing low-price offers from its foyers, but I put it to Asda that those who conduct proxy sales on behalf of teenage binge drinkers have no trouble in locating the cider at the back of the store. It is the ultra-low pricing that is causing the carnage.

I recognise that the Government are trying to introduce a floor price for alcohol that will include duty and VAT. The trouble is that the policy will not go far enough to solve the problem, as it will still allow white cider to be sold at below 10p a unit. It will establish the principle of minimum pricing without the prospect of delivering any meaningful results. Will the Minister set out what responses she has received from public health experts on that point? All the public health advice that I have seen is entirely pessimistic. The Daily Telegraph pointed out today that the policy will catch only one in 4,000 of the drinks currently being sold and will do nothing to save lives.

[Andrew Griffiths]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it was this Government who introduced, for the first time, a ban on below-cost selling? That was an important line in the sand—the first time that a Government have said that selling booze too cheaply is a bad thing. The question now is how cheaply?

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that the current tax system seems to encourage people to drink ever stronger and stronger drinks? The tax system encourages the strength of wine to increase dramatically, and the drink of choice of young people is now vodka.

[Dr Wollaston]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that point. We need to show what minimum pricing means in practice if we set a reasonable price. If we set a minimum price of around 45p a unit, as the Scottish Government are planning to do, in a Bill introduced at the end of October, it would mean that a bottle of whisky containing 28 units could not be sold below £12.60, a bottle of wine containing 10 units could not cost less than £4.50, and a pint of beer with two units could not cost less than 90p. Such prices would not suck all the fun from a night out; in fact, they would not raise the price of alcohol in the on-trade at all.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Miss Chloe Smith)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) on securing the debate. I recognise that, as a general practitioner, she can draw on direct experience on dealing with the adverse effects of alcohol on health. I also acknowledge her reference to the contribution in The Daily Telegraph today from other professionals in the field.

I can assure all hon. Members who have spoken—it is a pleasure to hear so many—that not only GPs have such concerns about the effect of alcohol on the welfare and well-being of society; that concern is shared by the Government. It is clear that alcohol abuse causes serious harm to health and leads to considerable costs to the NHS and that many towns and cities are affected by alcohol-related violence and crime, as my hon. Friend has said. Like her, of course I abhor behaviour such as that in the example on which she finished her speech.

For all those reasons, the coalition Government are committed to tackling problem drinking across a range of fronts. I shall set out a few points on which action has already been taken. I shall try to do so quickly, to get on to minimum unit pricing, as my hon. Friend has requested. I will begin by trying to tackle a couple of points made by other hon. Members. Irresponsible drinkers, rather than responsible drinkers in pubs and other places of safety, are the problem.

I shall try to tackle a couple of the specific questions. If I do not do get there in time, I hope that my hon. Friend will forgive me if I write to her on a couple of points. With regard to measures that the Government have already taken, I hope that they will demonstrate and reassure her that the Government are committed to an evidence-based approach. I specifically reassure her of that today. It is, of course, a subject on which data speak clearly. It is a complex subject that requires much analysis of evidence.

I shall start that process with what the Government have done. My hon. Friend will know that the Treasury published the review of alcohol taxation in November 2010, which among other things identified a problem with so-called super-strength lagers, about which others have spoken today. The Government confirmed in the 2011 Budget that action would be taken to discourage consumption of those drinks, introducing two new additional duties, which should help. There are also targeted approaches on other types of drink—for example, a minimum juice content for products that qualify as cider. I note my hon. Friend’s point about ciders.

[Andrew Griffiths]

The Minister has clearly got up to speed quickly on her brief. With regard to cider, does she agree that it seems completely incongruous that the 4% duty paid on a pint of beer is twice that paid on cider—2%—at exactly the same strength?

[Miss Smith]

I am aware of that specific point, and I am sure that my hon. Friend and his colleagues will be even more aware of that tonight at the all-party parliamentary beer group’s Christmas party, if I have that correct. If he will forgive me, I will focus on minimum unit pricing in this debate, to deal with points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes. I shall briefly note that she raised the wider impacts of alcohol. Of course, it is not just the duty system that is important. I direct her to the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011, which I hope will help with the late-night economy. To make an important point, I direct her to a forthcoming paper from the Department of Health, which, with the Home Office, is responsible for this area, that will consider the wider social and health impacts of alcohol. I have no doubt that she will look at that in some detail.

Fuel Prices

Andrew Griffiths Excerpts

Tuesday 15th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Griffiths (Burton) (Con)]

It is a privilege to follow a fellow Staffordshire MP in this important debate. I would like to join the long line of hon. Members who have congratulated my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) on securing this hugely important debate. Few debates that have taken place in this House have prompted such a response from my constituents, and I have received numerous letters, telephone calls and e-mails asking me to take part. I congratulate the Backbench Business Committee, in particular, because this is a perfect example of the kind of issue that matters to our constituents and that we should be talking about in this House.

The Prime Minister said a little while ago that he wanted our country to be a nation that makes things. Well, my constituency of Burton makes things. I am proud to say that it is the home of British beer. We make diggers, car seats and produce many other things. I am proud of that and am doing my best to maintain it for the future, but those industries are being particularly badly hit by the massive hike in fuel prices in recent months. I think that this is the Economic Secretary’s first opportunity to reply to a debate in the House and I am pleased to welcome her to her new post and wish her luck. I hope that she will have some positive things to say, because businesses in my constituency are saying that fuel price rises are having a real impact on their competitiveness.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one of the industries that will be hardest hit by the increases in fuel duty is the bus industry? Does he agree that it will be hit not only by two increases in duty next year, but by the Government’s decision to cut 20% from the bus service operators grant? What impact does he think that will have on passengers?

[Andrew Griffiths]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, but I am staggered by the collective amnesia on the Opposition Benches. I will gladly give way again if she can name a single time in all the years her party was in government when it cut fuel taxes.

[Lilian Greenwood]

My understanding is that on numerous occasions we decided not to press ahead with increases in fuel duty, and that had an enormous impact.

[Andrew Griffiths]

That point will not be lost on the House.

Something else that will not be lost on the House is the fact that this coalition Government took the bold steps to reduce fuel duty, to bring in the fair fuel stabiliser and to look at what we can do to help rural businesses. That is hugely important.

[Mr Brian H. Donohoe (Central Ayrshire) (Lab)]

rose—

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

rose—

[Andrew Griffiths]

I will not give way again; I have given way a few times.

I must tell the House what motorists and families in my constituency tell me about the high price of fuel and how it is impacting on them. They, like the constituents of many right hon. and hon. Members, are suffering because they have had pay freezes and, in some cases, pay cuts, because of inflation, and because they have had to cope with large rises in electricity and gas prices. So spiralling fuel prices are starting to impact on their quality of life, and on their ability to survive in these difficult times.

More than one constituent has told me recently that they have had to choose between doing regular maintenance on their vehicle and filling it up every month to get to and from work and to pick up the kids. We have to look at the impact, because our constituents have only so much to spend on motoring every month and every year, and, if we do not do something to help them soon, they will have to find savings elsewhere, and that could affect road safety.

[Gemma Doyle (West Dunbartonshire) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a good argument for bringing down fuel prices. Will he therefore support Labour’s plan to cut VAT?

[Andrew Griffiths]

I am sorry, but the hon. Lady’s argument would have more strength if her party had done something to cut fuel duty when it was in power.

In the few minutes that I have left, I will raise an issue of particular importance to my constituents.

[Nick Smith]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Griffiths]

I have given way a number of times; I will continue, if I may.

I represent Uttoxeter, a fine market town situated between Stoke and Derby. It has a race course, and it is a great place to live and to do business, but my constituents have to pay 6p a litre more for their fuel than motorists who live just a few miles down the road in Stoke and Derby, because—I believe—of the supermarkets’ power and their virtual monopoly on forecourts throughout the country.

I have already written to the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, and he has advised me to write to the Office of Fair Trading to make an argument, but it is time we looked at how the supermarkets operate, because they have an anti-competitive effect on the market place and drive prices up. It will not be lost on colleagues that petrol companies quickly put up prices on the forecourt when there is an increase in the price of a barrel of oil, but are much slower to reduce them when the price of a barrel comes down. It is time that the supermarkets and the big petrol companies starting acting fairly towards our constituents, and I urge the Economic Secretary to do what she can to help.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Clarke]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I have a big constituency, which stretches from Cumbernauld right through to Chryston, Coatbridge and Bellshill. The prices at Asda, welcome as they are, do not deal with the problems elsewhere.

These are truly worrying times. We have sluggish growth, rising unemployment, falling confidence in the manufacturing sector and depressed business confidence, so this is no time for complacency from the Government.

By September 2011 the cost of petrol had increased by 17.7% in a year. Our constituents are now paying petrol prices that are the highest in all 27 countries of the European Union. The only country in the world that seems to beat us on motoring taxes is Turkey.

[Andrew Griffiths]

The right hon. Gentleman is making the point that we are the most expensive country in Europe. Will he tell us when our prices became the highest in Europe?

[Mr Clarke]

We are where we are.

What the Chancellor does on fuel duty increases next year could make or break many people’s ability to go about their everyday lives, whether they are looking after their family or running a business. Failure by the Government to take effective action would mean winding the clock back on travel and mobility to a time when the freedom of the road was the preserve of the middle class. That cannot be right or fair. It would be a retrograde step for my constituents and would place their finances in an intolerable position.

With 80% of the population living in a car-owning household, a car is now a necessity, not a luxury. Unlike here in London, where vast transport links provide the necessary infrastructure for people to live their lives effectively, in constituencies such as mine people use and rely on their cars daily. Lower-income families, elderly people and those living in rural areas will be the most adversely affected and hit by rising fuel prices. In September, the then Secretary of State for Transport suggested that the railways had become a rich man’s toy. If that is the case, how can the Government’s policy, which is allowing exorbitant fuel prices literally to drive people off the roads, be justified?

Despite the Government’s seemingly generous gesture of a 1p cut in fuel duty, the public will simply not be fooled. The simultaneous increase of 2.5 percentage points in petrol tax that accompanied the VAT rise from 17.5% to 20% in January makes a mockery of the Government’s proposal. Their meagre attempt to placate motorists will benefit only the Treasury.

The fuel duty stabiliser has not shielded drivers from pump price volatility. That is why I believe that the Government need to take real urgent action now to help ease the squeeze on struggling families and kick-start the economy by temporarily reversing the VAT increase.

The Economy

Andrew Griffiths Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Mensch]

rose—

[Andrew Griffiths (Burton) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Meacher]

I will give way only once. As the hon. Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths) has had plenty of opportunities to intervene, I will give way to the hon. Lady.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ben Gummer]

The hon. Lady makes a perfectly reasonable point, but it is not one that she has conveyed to Opposition Front Benchers, because they chose as the subject of the motion, “The economy one year since the Government’s first Budget”. I am merely commenting on that, not on the rather crass detail in the motion. So far, we have growth in manufacturing, growth in retail sales and growth in the economy. Let us go on to the next thing that they are talking about.

The motion refers to

“a welcome recent fall in unemployment”.

The Opposition concede that. It was not just welcome; it was the largest fall in unemployment for 10 years—88,000—and larger than that achieved at any point when the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), whose Parliamentary Private Secretary questioned me a moment ago, was Prime Minister.

[Andrew Griffiths]

Returning to the point about manufacturing, is my hon. Friend aware that under the premiership of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, we saw a sharp—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman must refer to another hon. Member by his constituency.

[Andrew Griffiths]

Does my hon. Friend agree that manufacturing declined more sharply under the previous Government than it did under the premiership of Margaret Thatcher? Under the Labour Government, we saw an unprecedented decline in manufacturing.

[Ben Gummer]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. In my constituency manufacturing fell more quickly in the 1970s than it did in the 1980s. The last bit that was left in the 1980s was stolen by Robert Maxwell, a previous Member of Parliament for the Labour party, though happily not in my constituency.

Let us move on and go through the motion, which says that

“the Office for Budget Responsibility predicts that future unemployment will be up”

by 200,000. The Opposition Front-Bench team fail to be able to read a fan chart. That is the upper part of the forecast, but there is also a 200,000 dip at the bottom end of the fan chart. The OBR has said that unemployment is performing much as it had predicted. The forecasts are not changing and unemployment is going down more quickly than the OBR estimated in March.

A series of suggestions from the Opposition Front-Bench team follows. I wonder if I can prompt an intervention from the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle). The announcement on VAT mentioned in the motion was mentioned to her before it was mentioned to the shadow Cabinet or to the London School of Economics. She tuts me away. It is, according to the Financial Times, the biggest change in Opposition economic policy since the general election. I wondered whether the hon. Lady could comment on when it was announced to her colleagues, so we must take it that it was not.

We then come to the gravamen of the motion. It refers to the

“long-term damage to the economy”

caused by the Government’s policies. Let us look at underlying trends, which are probably the best indication of how the economy is performing. The savings ratio is higher now than it was at any point, apart from one quarter, in the whole of the previous Government’s time in office. The investment intention of the private sector from the CBI industrial trend survey is also higher than at any point in the 13 years of the previous Government. It reached that level previously only in the first quarter of 1997. Export orders are at a 15-year high, and CPIY—underlying inflation, excluding tax rises—is within the Bank of England remit.

We know that tax increases are coming through into inflation, and that there was a massive injection of cash into the economy through quantitative easing by the previous Chancellor of the Exchequer. It is the combination of those and the necessary tax increases to deal with the appalling deficit which is causing the unfortunate inflation figures now, but the underlying figure is at about 2.4% or 2.5%, and I hope that in time it will return to that, as the OBR predicts.

The last part of the increasingly risible motion refers to

“temporarily cutting VAT to 17.5 per cent.”

When VAT was put up in the emergency Budget, I remember hearing from those on the Opposition Front Bench that that was an iniquitous rise that should never happen, but now it is to be temporary. Can the shadow Minister tell us why she is proposing a temporary cut rather than a permanent one, as she was proposing this time last year?

The motion mentions the bank bonus tax, a canard put out constantly by the Opposition. The bank bonus tax raised £2.4 billion on the best estimate, but £2.6 billion has been raised by our bank levy, which will be set every year in this Parliament, unlike the bonus tax which, by the previous Chancellor’s own admission, was a one-off event.

Finally, we come to the two most egregious statements in the entire motion. First, there is the reference to the need for “25,000 affordable homes” from the party that built fewer affordable homes in every single one of its years in office than were built in every single year of the Major and Thatcher Governments—but Labour does not admit to that shocking record in its motion. Secondly, we return to the issue of jobs. The motion calls for the creation of

“100,000 jobs for young people”

just days after we have heard of the greatest fall in youth unemployment in 10 years.

So the Opposition have come to this House with a motion judging the Government on the economy one year after our first Budget, yet they cannot choose one single figure by which to judge the Government’s record, and in the end they put forward a series of disingenuous statements by which their own record would look very poor.

Finance (No. 3) Bill

Andrew Griffiths Excerpts

Tuesday 26th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Danny Alexander]

I agree that energy efficiency is important, of course. That is precisely why the Department of Energy and Climate Change has been working so hard to bring forward the green deal scheme, which will start next year. It is designed precisely to give additional encouragement and incentive, and to provide a mechanism for people to engage in the sort of action on domestic energy efficiency in which they have not previously engaged over the years, which I hope the hon. Lady agrees is very important. Also, there are not delays in respect of the green investment bank. Quite the contrary; we announced in the Budget both a trebling of the amount of public money going into the bank, partly through asset sales, and that it will start its operations in September next year, thereby providing yet another strand to the additional investment we all want to see in green energy.

The measure I have been discussing will make us the first country in the world to introduce a carbon price floor for the power industry. It will help to provide an incentive for the billions of pounds of investment in cleaner sources of energy that this country needs, so ensuring we are on course to meet our carbon reduction targets. We have also preserved the link between the climate change levy and prices, through clause 23, to act as a further incentive to low-carbon investment.

The Bill will also help to address other important social issues. The new duty on high-strength beers in clause 15 will help to tackle problem drinking, increasing the cost of a typical can of high-strength lager by 25p. That is coupled with a reduction in the duty on lower-strength beers to help encourage the consumption of alcohol in a more responsible way.

[Andrew Griffiths (Burton) (Con)]

I agree with the intention of the measure, which is to encourage people to drink lower-strength beers. However, does the Chief Secretary agree that what would help both the industry and the health of the nation would be if the Government were to go to Europe to argue for that level to be raised from 2.8% to 3.2% or 3.4%, so that brewers could brew something tasty and drinkable that would nudge people to reduce their alcohol consumption?

[Danny Alexander]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. He will perhaps know that the Economic Secretary, having taken this measure forward, is making that case for greater flexibility at a European level. As this country has taken a lead on having greater flexibility in beer duties, we are in a stronger position to argue this case. Similarly, as this country has taken the lead on deficit reduction, we are in a stronger position to argue the case that we must argue at a European level, which is that further increases in the EU budget are unacceptable. So in a number of ways the actions this Government have taken put us in a position to make strong cases at European level.

Budget Responsibility and National Audit Bill [Lords]

Andrew Griffiths Excerpts

Monday 14th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sheila Gilmore]

The hon. Gentleman is wrong about that. Up to the point of the recession, most of the borrowing was for investment in schools, homes, roads and transport projects. Yes, there were some PFI schemes, and I was interested to hear the hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) castigate such schemes, because it is my recollection that PFI was a favourite mechanism of the previous Conservative Government, who introduced it. Many of my colleagues in the Labour party were less than enthusiastic about it even during the years of the Labour Government.

I am trying to make the point that there are different ways of looking at the economy and at what the appropriate policies are. I was interested in a brief debate in the Treasury Committee about whether the OBR should look at other policies: should it look at the policies of an Opposition what might be? Outwith that, why should it just look at the particular ground rules that the Government have set out? Those rules will represent one view, but there might well be other views and policies that could lead to different results. The Government appear to have rejected the view that the OBR should look at anything other than Government policy, on the grounds that that would not make it politically neutral, but we need real transparency and a proper debate in the country about the best way forward.

[Andrew Griffiths (Burton) (Con)]

I have been listening to the hon. Lady’s analogy. She does not like talk of the credit card being maxed out, and thinks it more akin to taking on a mortgage to purchase a home. Does she not agree, however, that having to pay £120 million a day in interest alone is actually more akin to using a credit card to pay the mortgage every month?

[Sheila Gilmore]

Clearly, I do not agree with that. These two analogies are interesting ones, in that they show the different viewpoints of the different sides of the House. They are both legitimate viewpoints, and it is right that we pull them out and have this debate, because there is not just one way of coming to a conclusion on what we should do.

If the OBR is to develop in the future, one option is to look at different ways of arriving at the ends we all want. There is no suggestion, despite what Government Members say, that Labour Members think it right to run a very big deficit on an annual basis. We have never said that; we have said that we want to reduce the deficit. However, we differ with the Government over the speed at which that is done. That will determine all of these forecasts and where we go from there. If we have those different viewpoints, would it be helpful—other people might think it is not—for a truly independent OBR to be able to look slightly wider than the tramlines that the Government are setting down and about which we have heard so much? Should we be able to forecast only on that basis? It would be interesting to consider whether alternative policies could lead to a different and—I would hope—better outcome.

I do not want to add anything else because I can see that some people here have somewhere far more interesting to go. I hope that some people receive red roses and chocolates tonight in celebration of the day.