UK Economy

Debate between Bim Afolami and Chris Bryant

Monday 19th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Bim Afolami]

I thank my hon. Friend for pointing out once again what a brilliant champion he is for his constituency. I am sure his constituents have heard that comment, and that he will continue to make that point.

[Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Lordy, lordy! It is like listening to the Red Queen in “Alice Through the Looking Glass”, who invented six impossible things before breakfast! How on earth can we have confidence in what the Minister says when the UK Statistics Authority had to tell off the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott), for making false claims about tax cuts; when Evan Davis had to school her at length and she refused even to understand how wrong she was about debt falling as a percentage of GDP, when it is going up; and when the Minister himself actually said that the NHS accounts for 42% to 43% of everything the Government spend, when it is only 15%? Can he confirm one fact: these two years will see the biggest fall in living standards since records began? That is why people are going to vote the Government out, isn’t it?

[Bim Afolami]

I have already explained the Chief Secretary’s comments. In relation to my own, I was referring to current spending and not overall spending. I clarified that as well. Look, there have been difficulties for so many millions of people across the country and, as the hon. Gentleman knows, I have never sought to minimise that from this position or from any other position in the House. We have faced once-in-a-hundred-years challenges. The Government have faced them and taken the right action to deal with them. The cost of living support package is worth over £100 billion, to the tune of more than £3,700 per person. We have dealt with those challenges and we have a plan now to grow the economy to grow our way out of them. I am afraid that Labour Members and the Labour Front Bench do not have that sort of plan, which is why I would not make the assumption that he makes about the election.