Global Economy

David Rutley Excerpts

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

It is because of the global lack of confidence in Governments’ abilities to deal with their deficits. We have not seen turbulence in our bond markets precisely because we have in place a credible deficit reduction plan. I note that I have been answering questions for more than an hour and it has almost been an hour since the shadow Chancellor said that the Labour party needed a credible deficit reduction plan, but has a single Labour MP got up and proposed any component of that reduction plan? No, they have not.

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement and the fact that over the past year we have seen the private sector create four times more jobs than have been lost in the public sector. Does he agree that this is a better approach to job creation than the overreliance on the public sector, which was all too prevalent over the past decade in regions such as the north-west under the previous Administration?

[Mr Osborne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. First, I should take the opportunity that I did not take in answer to the previous question—as my hon. Friend, too, is a Cheshire MP—of praising the work of the Cheshire police, who have shown outstanding bravery over the past few days. My thoughts go out, as the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller) said, to the injured officers.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Surely we have learned something from the past decade, which is that relying on an unsustainable housing boom, unsustainable Government spending and unsustainable bank lending is not a model of growth that this country can pursue again. We have to get off this country’s addiction to debt, not just in the Government but in banks and households. That is what we are doing and it is a difficult adjustment that many western economies are having to go through. Unfortunately for us, given that we were the most enthusiastic participants in the debt boom, that adjustment is particularly difficult here in the UK.