Finance Bill

David Rutley Excerpts

Monday 2nd July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sheila Gilmore]

It could, and there could also have been significant investment in the building of affordable housing, which is dear to my heart. That would not just give people houses but create jobs and apprenticeships and boost the local economy. The Government could have done that if they had really wanted a Budget for growth. Our criticism of the Budget was that however balanced it may have seemed—it now turns out not to have been quite so carefully balanced as we were told—it was not a Budget for growth. Very little was put into building up jobs and growth. Perhaps it was only a practice Budget, although I always thought that was what the autumn statement, which used to be called the pre-Budget report, was for.

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

Fiscal responsibility is clearly an overriding priority, but does the hon. Lady agree with President Hollande, who recently said that

“national debt is the enemy of the left and the enemy of France”?

It is also the enemy of the United Kingdom.

[Sheila Gilmore]

National debt is sometimes essential. After all, I seem to recall that it was very much higher at the end of the second world war than it has been at any time since. There were reasons for that, and I believe we finished paying it down only a few years ago. Sometimes, we have debt because we have made essential or useful investment, and of course it is not the same as deficit.