Charter for Budget Responsibility

Debate between Ed Balls and Michael Ellis

Tuesday 13th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Ed Balls]

No. Our plan will deliver the rising living standards and stronger growth needed to balance the books: We will have more free child care, paid for by the bank levy; we will properly capitalise the business investment bank; we will raise the national minimum wage faster than wages; we will repeat the bank bonus tax to get young people back to work; we will devolve full growth in business rates to city and county regions; and we will get the houses built that we need—200,000 a year more by 2020. That is all part of a proper long-term plan for growth and jobs.

The OBR figures show that if our economy was not to slow down next year, the year after and the year after that but instead grew 0.5% faster, that cumulatively would bring in £32 billion in the next Parliament. If we could increase the underlying trend rate of growth in the next Parliament by 0.25%, that would mean £19 billion a year more in tax revenues by the end of the Parliament. This is not only about tax rises and spending cuts; it is also about growth, jobs and the underlying trend. This Chancellor has seen growth downgraded—we have got to do a better job. Unless we do that, we will not see the books balanced in the next Parliament. So that is what we mean by an economy that works for working people and a tough, fair and balanced plan to get the deficit down.

[Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)]

We are only 114 days from the general election and the shadow Chancellor has spent the past four years and more criticising and saying what he would object to. Why does he not put before the House and before the people of this country his proposals for increasing taxes, which he has said he will do. Will he say where those are going to come from for the hard-working people of my constituency and other constituencies in this country?

[Ed Balls]

When preparing an intervention it is always dangerous not to listen to the speech being given—I just did exactly what the hon. Gentleman requested. The interesting thing is—

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Debate between Ed Balls and Michael Ellis

Monday 13th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Ed Balls]

The hon. Gentleman knows the answer to his own question. He can wave his arms around in a histrionic way, but the reality is that the previous Home Secretary said that he could not guarantee the individual decision of every chief constable of the 43 forces. However, he said that on the basis of a 12% reduction over four years, there would be no need for any reduction in police numbers. Under the coalition, the Police Federation estimates that 20,000 officers will be cut. We know that 1,100 officers will be cut in Birmingham and that 1,400 will be cut in Greater Manchester. The difference is that under our proposals there would have been no cuts to police numbers, and under the coalition proposals there will be cuts in every constituency and in every police force in the country. Those cuts will be made worse by the additional expenditure on the ridiculous and flawed proposals before us.

[Michael Ellis]

Am I correct to say that the shadow Home Secretary admitted that £1 billion of police budget cuts had to be made? If so, where would he make those cuts?

[Ed Balls]

If, rather than framing his intervention, the hon. Gentleman had listened to the previous one, he would have known the answer to his question and would not have had to bother asking it. HMIC said that a 12% reduction in the central Government grant over four years was deliverable without cuts to front-line policing. That advice has not been taken by the Government: they have gone not for 12% but for 20%, and it will be front-loaded on the first two years. The coalition policy will mean not 3,000 more police officers, but visible, front-line police officer cuts in police forces up and down the country. That is not the manifesto on which Government Members were elected, and they will be held to account.

Controlling Migration

Debate between Ed Balls and Michael Ellis

Tuesday 23rd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)]

I congratulate the Home Secretary on this statement. The shadow Home Secretary has apparently admitted in the media that the Labour party, when in government, made a mistake in 2004 by not applying transitional controls to enlargement of the European Union then.

[Ed Balls]

indicated assent.

[Michael Ellis]

I see the right hon. Gentleman nodding. Can my right hon. Friend assure the House that such transitional controls will be applied to any further enlargements of the European Union?