Future Government Spending

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Wednesday 4th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Chris Leslie]

Now we are coming to some of the issues. The hon. Gentleman feels that the Chancellor did not make an error when he promised back in 2010 that by now we would have no deficit and that it would all have been eradicated. The esteemed Chancellor of the Exchequer promised in his autumn statement that

“we will meet our fiscal mandate to eliminate the structural current budget deficit one year early, in 2014-15.”—[Official Report, 29 November 2010; Vol. 519, c. 532.]

That is the year we are in now. This is about the Government’s record for the past four and a half to five years.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Chris Leslie]

I will give way to my hon. Friend, whose constituents have been very much affected by the squeeze in living standards. He knows that it is the health of the economy and of the finances of working people across the country that determine the health of our public finances.

[Chris Bryant]

Will my hon. Friend explain to the hon. Member for Braintree (Mr Newmark) and everyone else who seems to have forgotten that, in 2008, the massed ranks of the Conservative party supported Labour’s public spending plans, so they cannot now pretend that they were not in this as well?

[Chris Leslie]

It is amazing how quiet Conservative Members are on that particular point.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gauke]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have seen remarkable progress in creating jobs. As I say, that is providing greater security for millions of people up and down the country.

[Chris Bryant]

May I ask the Minister about cuts to the Arts Council budget? So far, this Govt have cut it by 30%, but on 5 January, the Tory party produced a report saying that £83 million more would be cut from Arts Council, and that this

“cost is based on the real terms decrease in the Grant in Aid for the Arts Council from 2014/15 to 2015/16”.

Does he stand by the figure that the Arts Council will be cut by £83 million this year?

[Mr Gauke]

I recall the debate on arts spending at the beginning of the year. If I remember correctly, the note that was published showing the Labour party’s areas of spending commitments included a commitment on the arts, but the shadow Chancellor very quickly ruled it out. He said it was not correct, and the deputy leader of the Labour party had to withdraw what she had previously said on that subject. That is my memory of it.

[Chris Bryant]

rose—

[Mr Gauke]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman one last time.

[Chris Bryant]

This is a serious matter, and if the Minister cannot give a precise answer now, I would be very grateful if he wrote to me. Does he think that the Arts Council budget will or will not be cut from this year to next year by £83 million?

[Mr Gauke]

If we have any future announcements about the Arts Council budget, we will make them in the usual way.

As we have seen only today from the report of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, average household incomes are back to the levels they were at before the recession began and they are expected to grow by well above inflation this year, while income inequality is down and pensioner poverty is at record lows under this Government: our plan is working.

The Labour party claims that we are taking public spending back to the level of the 1930s, but let us look at the facts. Even on the assumption that 100% of our future consolidation comes from cuts to departmental expenditure, which is not the Conservative party’s approach, the Government’s plans will, as my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) has pointed out, put spending on public services at their lowest real-terms level since 2002-03, so instead of the late 1930s, we are talking about the early 2000s—only 65 years out.