Oral Answers to Questions

Chuka Umunna Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

The hon. Gentleman is right to acknowledge the big increase in apprenticeships, and it is not simply quantity; it is also about quality. Some of the rapid growth that is taking place is in advanced apprenticeships, including in manufacturing, and we welcome that, but we do not accept that the status quo is adequate. We want to strip away some of the bureaucratic barriers that hinder companies, particularly small companies, and my colleagues are working on that.

[Mr Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)]

A few years ago, the Business Secretary was described by the Deputy Prime Minister as an “economic prophet”. So in January, when the Secretary of State told the House that

“…economic growth is now strong. It will become stronger as a result of the work that the Government are doing in stabilising finances”—[Official Report, 13 January 2011; Vol. 521, c. 429.]

we listened with interest. Given the performance of the economy since January, does the Business Secretary believe he has lived up to his billing?

[Vince Cable]

May I first warmly congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his rapid and considerable promotion? I will not tempt fate by hoping that he makes a success of it, but I none the less wish him well. Of course, one advantage that he has in coming into Parliament only very recently is that he is not personally responsible for some of the disasters that occurred under his predecessors. One of our problems is sorting out some of those disasters, not least of which are the massive deficit that we inherited, a broken banking system, large amounts of personal debt and a flat housing market. All those factors explain why it is now very difficult to launch into rapid growth, but we are putting in place the rebalancing of the economy and the financial discipline to make that feasible.

[Mr Umunna]

I thank the Business Secretary for his kind words, but I wonder when he will take responsibility. In his first speech as Business Secretary, he described his Department as the “Department for economic growth”. The truth is that, under his leadership, it has been the Department for no growth. The economy has stagnated, unemployment has soared and confidence has nose-dived—and that is all before the effects of the eurozone crisis have been felt. Things would be very different if he changed his policy and adopted a proper plan for growth to get demand back again. In January, he thought his policies were working and it turns out he was wrong. He has described himself as a Keynesian, but Keynes famously said:

“When the facts change, I change my mind.”

Why will the Business Secretary not do the same?

[Vince Cable]

Well, Keynes famously wrote in his well-publicised note to Franklin Roosevelt that probably the most useful thing that the Government could do in a depression was keep down long-term interest rates, and that is what this Government have done as a result of their fiscal prudence.

The hon. Gentleman says that we do not have the policies in place; we have two things in place. We have policies for financial stability, which we did not have when we inherited the economy; and on the other hand we have policies in place to rebalance the economy, to reinvent manufacturing, which was allowed to decline catastrophically under the previous Government, and to promote exports and business investment—things that were shamefully neglected when his colleagues were in government.