Oral Answers to Questions

Ed Balls Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

Yes, we will support enterprise and innovation in tomorrow’s Budget, but my hon. Friend will have to be patient and wait until then to hear about the precise measures that are involved.

[Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)]

Manufacturers up and down the country and the whole House are awaiting the Chancellor’s long-delayed growth strategy to be published tomorrow, but I have a copy of that document with me today. It says:

“Growth comes first for this Government”

and that their strategy will

“underpin private confidence, investment and job creation.”

The Chancellor has no need to worry however, as I will not be handing this document to the press. I read it last night and, frankly, there is nothing in it worth leaking. Has this document been audited by the Office for Budget Responsibility? Is the Chancellor really clear that getting rid of maternity and paternity rights and enterprise zones will boost jobs and growth in our economy? Is this going to be enough to stop the Budget growth forecast tomorrow being downgraded for this year and next?

[Mr Osborne]

I am not sure that that is the document in question—but if the right hon. Gentleman hands it over, I will have a look—because we are not getting rid of maternity and paternity rights, so I do not know where he got that from. Besides, I have a copy of his document, and it contains all the spending commitments he has been making. If he cannot control his own Front-Bench colleagues, how on earth is he going to control the nation’s finances?

[Ed Balls]

Is this really the best the right hon. Gentleman can do? I bet he will have Treasury officials scrabbling around all afternoon trying to deliver a further 1p cut in corporation tax tomorrow and a further tax cut for the banks. Let us wait and see. The fact is that a year ago inflation was low and unemployment was falling, and a year on, as we see today, inflation is up to 4.4% and borrowing is higher than a year ago, not to mention unemployment. If the Chancellor will not listen to me, will he listen to his colleague who said:

“We must not cut Government spending too soon and risk plunging a fragile recovery back into recession. Cuts without economic growth will not deal with the deficit”?

The Business Secretary was right. Why will the Chancellor not listen?

[Mr Osborne]

The right hon. Gentleman really needs to brush up on his question practice, but let me say this to him: the idea that we were somehow left a fantastic economy by the Labour party is quite the most ludicrous claim in the country, and the only reason he makes it is because he was responsible for the economic mess that left this country on the brink of bankruptcy.