Debate on the Address

Debbie Abrahams Excerpts

Wednesday 4th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I will take one more intervention and then I will make some more progress.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

One in six children living in poverty comes from a working household. In some parts of my constituency, it is one in three children. What specific measures in the Queen’s Speech will eradicate child poverty, as promised in the coalition agreement?

[The Prime Minister]

What will help those families is for us to make sure that we have an economy that is creating jobs, that we cut people’s taxes, that we protect those at the bottom who are working hardest and that we ensure that we freeze their council tax, cut their petrol duty and help with the cost of living by reducing the cost of government. That is what we need to do in this Parliament.

I listened to the speech of the Leader of the Opposition, and I have to say that there was a complete absence of anything approaching a coherent plan. There was nothing on the deficit, nothing on taking long-term difficult decisions and nothing on growth. That is his problem. It is not that he went to campaign in some target council seat but did not know the name of the leader of the council, or that he campaigns on the cost of living but apparently does not know the cost of his own groceries; it is that he has no coherent plan for our economy. He has nothing to say about how genuinely to improve our public services and nothing to say about strengthening Britain’s place in the world. What he has is a ragbag, lucky dip, pick’n’mix selection of ’70s statist ideas, which would set back this country, after all the work that we have done to turn it around. He has a policy on rents that would restrict access to housing; a policy on trains that would put up fares and increase overcrowding; a policy on energy that would risk power shortages and higher bills; and a policy on national insurance, which he repeatedly refused to deny today, that would increase taxes for hard-working people. Frankly, it is a revival of Michael Foot’s policies paid for by Len McCluskey’s money.