Oral Answers to Questions

David Winnick Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

No, I will not do that because there is a sincerely held difference of view. I believe that if we are to complete the job of further fiscal consolidation we need to do what pretty well every mainstream economist in the world advocates, which is a mix of, yes, public spending restraint, welfare savings and fair taxes on those with the broadest shoulders. If the Conservative party chooses to do it all through further sacrifices by the working-age poor who are dependent on welfare, that is its choice. It is not a choice that my party has signed up to.

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

Given that this Government have been waging war on the poorest and most vulnerable in our society, how much more is the Deputy Prime Minister willing to put up with? Is it what he came into politics for?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

For an hon. Member who has been here so long, the hon. Gentleman’s questions are truly infantile. The most regressive thing to do is to shrug one’s shoulders, like the Labour party does, and say, “We can’t be bothered to fill the black hole we have left in the public finances. We’ll let our children and grandchildren do it.” There is nothing more infantile than doing what the Labour party is doing—going around pointing at things that are expensive, but never actually spelling out how much its own policies would cost.