Oral Answers to Questions

Ed Balls Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

While no responsible Chancellor rules out tax changes, I believe the remainder of our deficit reduction plan can be achieved by reducing spending. Indeed, the reduction in the deficit has contributed to the economic stability that has been a platform for the economic growth we have seen. Perhaps the shadow Chancellor will get up and welcome that.

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

After three damaging years of flatlining in our economy—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Some people are slow learners, so I will say it slowly: keep calm, be patient; Government Members, you have got the man at the Box for whom you were waiting, and now you should just listen. In tennis, new balls come after the first seven games of a match and subsequently after every nine, so patience is required.

[Ed Balls]

After three damaging years of flatlining, today’s growth figures are welcome, but everything we have seen today from the Chancellor shows he just does not understand that for working people facing a cost of living crisis, this is still no recovery at all. Last week, the Chancellor and the Prime Minister tried to use dodgy figures to tell people they had never had it so good. Why will he not today admit the truth: he has failed to get the deficit down, and since he came to office, working people have been not better off, but worse off?

[Mr Osborne]

I am not sure that that was worth waiting for. Since we last met, there has been a very important Labour economic announcement, and one that we wholeheartedly support: the decision to keep the right hon. Gentleman in his job until the general election. He welcomes the economic news through gritted teeth, because he said not only that it would not happen, but that it could not happen if we pursued our economic plan. He predicted that jobs would be lost, but 1 million have been created; he predicted that the deficit would go up, but it has come down; he predicted there would be no economic growth, unless we borrowed and spent more. He has been wrong on all these things. What the Opposition need are new crystal balls.

[Ed Balls]

Very good, Chancellor—a joke about my name being Balls. Fabulous.

The reality is that business investment is still weak, housing demand is outstripping supply, the savings ratio is falling and the average working person is £1,600 a year worse off than they were in 2010. Let me ask the Chancellor about the one thing he has refused to talk about now for four days. He has delivered one massive tax cut for the richest 1% earning more than £150,000, when everybody else is worse off. The Prime Minister and the Mayor of London are now saying that they want to cut the top rate of income tax again, to 40p. Is that really the Conservative party’s priority? If the Chancellor still believes that we are “all in this together”, why will he not stand at the Dispatch Box and rule out another top-rate tax cut from the Conservatives in the next Parliament? Come on, George: stand up and rule it out.

[Mr Osborne]

I will tell the right hon. Gentleman what the big tax cut was this Parliament: it was for working people through our increase in the personal allowance to £10,000. After last week, it is clear that the shadow Chancellor has learned absolutely nothing from the economic mess he brought upon this country. He said that Labour should have spent more money in the boom; he has set out fiscal plans that allow billions more of borrowing; and on the top rate of tax, he announced a plan that was attacked by Labour Ministers whom he served with in government, by the people who lent the Labour party money and by credible business people across the country—and his costings were shot down by the Institute for Fiscal Studies last night. There cannot have been a more disastrous policy launch in the history of the modern Labour party. On the day we learn that our economy continues to grow, is it not clear that the anti-business Labour party is now the biggest risk to the economic recovery?