Edward Leigh
Main Page: Edward Leigh (Conservative - Gainsborough)Department Debates - View all Edward Leigh's debates with the HM Treasury
(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Neil Carmichael
Inflation did go down, but after the IMF loan was made. It reached a peak in 1976, which I think was 26%. That happened to coincide with the time of the IMF loan, so that is the position that we should discuss.
Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
My hon. Friend has been very generous in giving way. He will accept—will he not?—that we should not have stayed in the exchange rate mechanism.
Neil Carmichael
Well, we were blasted out of the ERM. We do not want to repeat that fiasco, and we should all recognise that.
We talked briefly about the United States. Gerald Ford, President of the United States in the mid-1970s, refused to bail-out New York, and quite right, too. He was a fiscal conservative. That was the right decision in the long run, and, of course, a decision that did not affect New York’s membership of the dollar. I just wanted to put that on the record.
We must focus on two things, and the Prime Minister identified them both in his speech yesterday. I want to ram home the importance of reforming the European Union, because that is what it needs. In particular, we have to drill down on the single market, to ensure that it is a single market and that competitiveness in goods and services is enhanced. We can really do that.
On euro measures, this country would be making a big mistake if we assumed that the euro will not affect us significantly, because it certainly will. [Interruption.] I shall wind up. I have been so generous with interventions that I do not have the time to point out that we need fiscal union in the eurozone, the ECB to be enhanced—as my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) rightly said—and much more rigorous auditing of what is going on.
Last but not least, there is a democratic deficit, although the IMF extension was discussed in the House and we voted on 11 July. I have noticed two things. First, Germany and France are effectively bypassing the Commission in a lot of their decisions—