Comprehensive Spending Review

Debate between Angela Eagle and Stephen Gilbert

Thursday 28th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Ms Eagle]

I am certainly more than happy to pay tribute to British business, but I do not connect the first part of the hon. Gentleman’s question with the second.

Last week two more myths were added to the Chancellor’s own special edition of Grimm’s fairy tales. He now claims that the measures in the spending review are fair, and even that the scale of the cuts would have been greater under Labour. Let us start with fairness. Last Wednesday, the Chancellor told us that fairness was

“one of the guiding principles of this spending review”.—[Official Report, 20 October 2010; Vol. 516, c. 955.]

Not for the first time, this spin lasted barely 24 hours, before the Institute for Fiscal Studies comprehensively rejected it, proving that, far from the poorest being protected, it is the poorest who will bear the brunt of the cuts. It is families with children who will pay the most. We should not be surprised at that, because the Institute for Fiscal Studies was scathing of the Treasury’s analysis of who loses what.

[Stephen Gilbert (St Austell and Newquay) (LD)]

How is it fair that in the time that the hon. Lady has been on her feet at the Dispatch Box, we as a country have spent almost £2 million servicing the interest on the debt that has been created? That is £5 million an hour and £120 million a day. What plans do the Opposition have to bring that under control?

[Ms Eagle]

I have talked about the importance of getting the deficit down, but the hon. Gentleman is falling for the idea that the coalition have perpetrated that it is somehow not viable to have a bill that needs to be paid. People who have mortgages have to pay them off over time, and they have to pay interest on them. However, it is not sensible for anyone to deal with their mortgage by paying it off so early that they cannot afford to feed their kids in the meantime.