The Economy

Debate between Anne Main and Ed Balls

Tuesday 6th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ed Balls]

Of course I will. When I was the Education Secretary we said that there would be over £1 billion of cuts in the schools budget at that time. We said, for example, that we would cut the police budget by 12%, but not by 20% with the loss of 16,000 police officers throughout the country. We would have raised national insurance. We raised the top rate of tax, but we would not have raised VAT to 20%, precisely because it would have choked off the recovery, as it has done this year.

I can tell the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues, the friends of the Chancellor, that I was reading a profile of the Chancellor a week ago, a few days before the autumn statement, in which one ally said:

“‘The autumn statement will correct the idea that we are off course’”.

Whatever were they on? One only needs to read the rest of the article to understand what is really going on. It goes on to say that the Chancellor

“has started taking discreet steps towards the Tory leadership. . . Members of the 2010 intake of MPs . . . are invited to discreet drinks at No. 11. The favourites”—

I do not know whether the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) is one of the favourites; perhaps he could tell us in another intervention—

“The favourites are invited to bibulous soirees at Dorneywood.”

If you ask me, it sounds as if they have been drinking rather too much.

Let me give the House another quote from one of those allies, because it was so revealing:

“Nobody in the Osborne circle is vulgar enough to talk openly enough about his leadership ambitions. . . ‘George has no agenda. I have never heard any talk of a timetable,’”

said an ally,

‘“But the unspoken assumption is that the party would be a lot safer in George’s hands than with bonking Boris.’”

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

rose—

[Ed Balls]

Whatever drinks are served at these parties in Downing street? Maybe we can find out from the back row.

[Mrs Main]

May I say to the shadow Chancellor, with all due respect, that the public deserve better than this? Tittle-tattle may be a joke to him, but the public want to know what his policies are, because they have faith in our policies. Is it still the policy of the shadow Chancellor and his party to make sure that we join the euro, given the huge financial consequences, which he is no longer discussing?

--- Later in debate ---

[Ed Balls]

Obviously the hon. Lady was not invited to the drinks parties. Perhaps she should apologise to the 5,400 families in her constituency who will lose from the cuts in child tax credits. If she wants to talk about deserving better, let me give another example from one of the Osborne allies:

“They were a bit sniffy about George. The Bullingdon is basically for Etonians. But they let him in even though he went to St Paul’s, though they did insist on him reverting to his original name of Gideon.”

The hon. Lady tells us that the country needs better than that. As for the euro, I will happily give way again if she can give the Labour Government credit for keeping the country out of the single currency in 2003.

[Mrs Main]

I am absolutely amazed that joining the euro is still in the right hon. Gentleman’s party manifesto, and that he can still plead that he kept us out of it. I am absolutely amazed that he has the brass neck to say that he is the saviour of this country from the euro—and I am sure that he will now stand up and tell us all that he no longer sees joining the euro at any point as worth while.

[Ed Balls]

I think that the bibulous parties might be starting in the morning, Mr Deputy Speaker. The euro is not succeeding as a single currency, which is why we were right not to join in 2003. There is no possibility of a British Government joining the euro at any time in my lifetime.