Amendment of the Law

Debate between Ed Balls and Sajid Javid

Thursday 20th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Ed Balls]

The Chancellor promised that he would abolish the structural deficit in this Parliament and he is going to fail absolutely. We went into the financial crisis with a lower national debt than America, France, Germany and Japan. The deficit went up because of a financial crisis and the failure of the banks. There was a recovery in 2010 and his failed policies choked it off. That is the reality. Let me tell the hon. Gentleman the facts. The Chancellor has already borrowed more in the three years of this Government than the last Labour Government borrowed in 13 years. Perhaps he should be apologising for his abject failure on the deficit, the debt and growth. That is what we should be hearing from him.

It will take the next Labour Government to clear up the mess left by this Chancellor. The Government have failed to get rid of the deficit. We will have to do the job. That is why we have been clear that we will balance the books in the next Parliament. We will have the current budget back in surplus and the national debt falling as soon as we can and before the end of the next Parliament. We will abolish his discredited idea of rolling five-year fiscal targets, which he never meets, and instead legislate for tough fiscal rules.

I will tell you what else we will do, Mr Deputy Speaker. I hope that the Chancellor will reflect on what I am about to say and think again.

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Sajid Javid)]

I don’t think so!

[Ed Balls]

I do not think he will either. May I ask the Financial Secretary how it is going since his comments on women and the Monetary Policy Committee? Is he still revelling in that? If things were done on merit, he would be out on his ear.

I hope that the Chancellor will think again and join me, the Chair of the Treasury Committee and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury in supporting reforms to allow the Office for Budget Responsibility to audit independently the spending and tax commitments in the manifestos of the main political parties before the next election. We know from the head of the OBR that that can be done. Let us be honest: it is all a matter of political will. The problem with the Chancellor is that he wants to set traps, but he cannot be transparent on the matter of OBR audits. Why does he not think again, join the cross-party consensus and do the right thing?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Ed Balls and Sajid Javid

Tuesday 10th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Sajid Javid)]

At Budget 2013 the Chancellor announced that the Government would make ex gratia payment to Equitable Life with-profits annuitants who were excluded from the Equitable Life payment scheme because their annuity began before September ’92. Thanks to the legislation this Government have brought forward, we are now ready to make those payments. Today, I can confirm that over 9,000 people will receive lump-sum payments of £5,000 each next week, before Christmas, and a further 450 in receipt of pension credit will receive an additional £5,000 each.

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

On Thursday the Chancellor claimed in this House that living standards are rising, on Friday the Institute for Fiscal Studies said that living standards are falling, so who is right?

Financial Services Bill

Debate between Ed Balls and Sajid Javid

Monday 6th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ed Balls]

There were failures in auditing, in corporate governance, in regulation—

[Sajid Javid (Bromsgrove) (Con)]

In government.

[Ed Balls]

In Government regulation, in credit rating agencies and in Governments throughout the world. I shall come to some of the wider failures in a moment.

Jobs and Growth

Debate between Ed Balls and Sajid Javid

Wednesday 12th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ed Balls]

I think that the Chancellor will regret talking down the British economy a year ago, because the rise in private sector jobs has been swamped by public sector job cuts. That is why employment is falling. That is why the private sector is not investing. That is why his corporation tax cut has had no impact on private sector investment. Will he repeat his claim made in January 2009 that

“quantitative easing is the last resort of desperate governments when all their other policies have failed”?

Those are prescient words, because we know the truth, and so do his increasingly desperate-looking supporters on the Government Benches.

Let me say what the Chancellor cannot admit: the private sector-led recovery he promised has proved to be a fantasy, as we predicted. In the past year, the growth that he predicted has failed to materialise.

[Sajid Javid (Bromsgrove) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Ed Balls]

In a moment.

Unemployment is rising, and a vicious cycle of higher unemployment, fewer people in work paying tax and more people on benefit means that the Chancellor’s deficit reduction plan is going badly off track. We all know the truth, and so does he—plan A has failed.

[Sajid Javid]

Can the right hon. Gentleman name one country that has got out of a debt crisis by taking on more debt?

[Ed Balls]

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point. If, rather than preparing his intervention, he had listened to my last point, he would have understood why borrowing is already set to be £46 billion higher than the Chancellor planned. The reason is that if unemployment goes up, if the economy flatlines, if fewer people are paying tax and if more people are on benefits, you borrow more. In the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, 50 more people are unemployed than a year ago. Perhaps he should be apologising for backing a Chancellor who got it so badly wrong.

This increasingly desperate Chancellor is now relying on plan B—or should I say plan BOE? But quantitative easing cannot work on its own, and any sensible economist can tell him why that is. The new shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), who is a former Bank of England economist, can certainly explain to the Chancellor why quantitative easing cannot do the job on its own. Whether the current Chief Secretary—the former national parks press officer—could explain to the Chancellor how quantitative easing works is another question. As the shadow Chief Secretary could very well explain—[Interruption.] Does the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock) want to intervene? If so, I will happily take his intervention.