Jobs and Growth

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Thursday 17th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I agree with Tony Blair on that and, indeed, on his views on the shadow Chancellor.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

One of the difficulties is that some of the cuts that the Government have made are counter-productive in terms of trying to deliver economic growth. The Chancellor referred to this country’s relationship with India. I think that everybody in this House agrees that we need to do more business with Brazil, India, Russia and China. However, if their businessmen find it impossible to get a visa to get into this country or they encounter massive queues when they arrive at Heathrow because of the enormous cuts to the UK Border Force, they are not going to want to do business with this country. Stop cutting off our nose to spite our face.

[Mr Osborne]

There have been queues at Heathrow for far too many years, and of course those queues need to be addressed—[Interruption.] There have been queues for years. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we need a visa regime that offers support to enterprising individuals—entrepreneurs, people who can bring real skills and value to this country—to come here, and that is precisely what the visa changes we have made will allow. But I have to say that we can have a visa regime that allows in the brightest and the best only if we can command public confidence that we are in control of our borders and that we have a cap on immigration numbers. Remarkably, not only has the Labour party set itself against a cap on benefits, which it will come to regret, but it has opposed the cap on immigration, and that is a huge mistake.

Let me discuss the progress we are making. As the Governor of the Bank of England reminded us, we inherited the largest budget deficit in peacetime but two years into this Government, we have cut the deficit by more than a quarter. In 2010, the state consumed 48% of national income in this country. Today, it consumes 43%. We took office when Britain’s market interest rates were the same as Spain’s. Two years later, our market rates are the lowest in our history and Spain’s are more than 6%. That is the practical benefit our fiscal credibility has brought.

When we came to office, manufacturing had been withering for years, but after two years this country is exporting more cars than it imports for the first time since 1976—the last time a Labour Government bankrupted this country and went begging to the IMF. Today—as Government Members have mentioned, but, strikingly, Opposition Members have not—we hear that when faced with the choice of which plant to invest in General Motors has chosen Ellesmere Port, in the county that I represent, Cheshire, as the site of their future. That is a successful industrial strategy at work, with Ministers, management, employees and employers working together to secure investment.

The chairman of Vauxhall has just said that the Government have put a strategy in place to attract inward investment and support manufacturing, which all helps to make the UK a great place to build cars.