Oral Answers to Questions

Edward Miliband Excerpts

Wednesday 15th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer will be setting out the details of the loan on Second Reading of the Bill today, but I think that it is worth standing back and asking ourselves, “Why is it that we are able to make a loan to Ireland? Why is it that people are asking us to do that?” It is because Britain’s economy is out of the danger zone and recovering. If we had listened to the Labour party, we would still be in a hole.

[Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)]

May I start by paying tribute to our troops serving in Afghanistan? We owe them a huge debt of gratitude for everything that they are doing for us, and our thoughts will be with them and with their families, who will be apart from them at this time of year.

Does the Prime Minister recognise the concern that there will be about the rise in unemployment of 35,000 that we saw this morning? Does he understand that for all those families around the country, his confidence and indeed his restatement today that Britain “is out of the danger zone” will seem very hollow?

[The Prime Minister]

First, let me join the right hon. Gentleman in paying tribute to our forces in Afghanistan, whom I visited last week, and to all their families, who will be missing them at Christmas time. To be fair, under the Government of whom he was a part and under this Government we are making big improvements on their contact home—on fax time, telephone time and all the contact that they need—and that is absolutely right.

On the unemployment figures, of course everyone should be concerned—and I am concerned—by a rise in unemployment. When anyone loses a job it is a tragedy for that person, and we must do everything we can to help people into work. With the Work programme we will be launching the biggest back-to-work programme in this country for 70 years. To be accurate, although part of the figures are disappointing, they are mixed because we see that the claimant count has come down in the unemployment figures and we are also seeing an increase in the number of vacancies in our economy—every day there are another 10,000 vacancies. So, yes, we have to get the private sector going and increase the number of jobs available. Over the past six months, we have seen 300,000 new private sector jobs. We need more of them, and keeping our economy out of the danger zone is the way to get them.

[Edward Miliband]

The Prime Minister slightly sounds as though he paints himself as an innocent bystander in relation to the unemployment figures. He should not be pressing ahead with a rise in VAT on 4 January and £20 billion of public spending cuts.

I want to turn to another aspect of the Prime Minister’s financial plans. Can he confirm that the Government are now set to break the promise made in the coalition agreement:

“We will guarantee that health spending increases in real terms in each year of the Parliament”?

[The Prime Minister]

Being a bystander would mean having no plans to deal with our economic problems. This Government are cutting corporation tax, abolishing Labour’s jobs tax, reducing national insurance and increasing our jobs programme. No one should be complacent; complacency is having no answers. No one should be complacent, but we do see retail sales up, exports up, manufacturing up, interest rates coming down since the election and growth higher than expected. I am not in the slightest bit complacent about what we need to do, but let us not talk down the performance of our economy.

Turning to the NHS, we have increased the NHS budget by £10 billion in this Parliament. I must say to the right hon. Gentleman that only one party stood at the election on saving the NHS and its spending and that was this party right here. I am confident that we will fulfil our goal of real-terms increases every year in the NHS.

[Edward Miliband]

It is very interesting that the right hon. Gentleman says that he is confident. He should listen to what the Conservative-led Health Committee said only on Monday. It said that with inflation now higher,

“the Government’s commitment to a real terms increase in health funding…will not be met.”

We all remember those posters during the election and we all remember his face, airbrushed, on those posters. Will he now admit that he is breaking that promise?

[The Prime Minister]

We are not breaking that promise. We want to see NHS spending increase by more than inflation every year. Let me be clear about who supports this policy. The shadow Chancellor—this is not vague, but pretty clear—said, when asked whether it is right to protect NHS spending:

“There is no logic, sense or rationality to it at all.”

Let us be clear: on this side of the House, we want real-terms increases in health spending to ensure that we improve the health of our nation; the Opposition are committed to cutting the NHS.

[Edward Miliband]

I know that the right hon. Gentleman is good at the broad brush, that he is good at the airbrush and that he does not do detail, but he should read the report, which says that health service spending will be cut next year in real terms.

Let me turn to his next broken promise on the NHS. He pledged, and the coalition agreement says:

“We will stop the top-down reorganisations of the NHS that have got in the way of patient care”,

but that is exactly what the Government are forcing on the health service. Fewer than one in four doctors think that it will improve patient services and independent experts say that it will cost £3 billion. After six months, is not an old truth being confirmed? When it comes to the NHS, you cannot trust the Tories.

[The Prime Minister]

There are moments when I think I am up against Basil Brush. When it comes to protecting the NHS, only one side of this House is committed to protecting NHS spending and that is this side.

Now we come on to reforming the NHS. We are not reorganising the bureaucracy of the NHS; we are cutting and abolishing it. Because we are making a 45% saving in the bureaucracy of the NHS, that will save £1.9 billion. Because we are increasing the spending on the NHS, that money will go into hospitals, beds, nurses and doctors. All those things would be cut if it was up to the Opposition because they do not have a commitment to maintaining NHS spending.

[Edward Miliband]

The Prime Minister is breaking his promise and he does not want to admit it. What does he want to do? He wants to leave it to the back end of the pantomime horse, the Deputy Prime Minister, to break the promises. It is time that the front end of the pantomime horse took some responsibility.

I want to ask the Prime Minister about another broken promise, on the education maintenance allowance. Why does he not go a couple of miles away from here—I know that he does not talk to students, or only to those in China—to Southwark college and talk to the students and teachers there? The business teacher there wrote to me and said—[Interruption.] I would have thought that Government Members would want to listen to the fate of students and young people up and down this country. The teacher said:

“I see the benefits that the EMA provides for many of my learners. I see how they struggle to pay for transport…books and other essentials. How can we expect them to aspire to a better life if we deny them the means?”

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman wants to talk pantomime. I am afraid it will not be long before he is thinking, “Look behind you!”

The problem with the education maintenance allowance is that research shows that 90% of those who receive it would stay on at school anyway. As we are raising the school participation age to 18, it is right that we replace the education maintenance allowance with something that is better targeted. The right hon. Gentleman has to look at the bigger picture, which is that we inherited a completely wrecked set of public finances. His questions are always about this cut or that cut; we know which cuts he is against, but he has not made one single suggestion about how to dig the country out of the pit of debt that he left us in.

[Edward Miliband]

The truth is that the right hon. Gentleman began the year making promises and now he is breaking them. The promise on NHS spending—broken; the promise on the education maintenance allowance—broken; the promise on universal child benefit—broken; the promise on knife crime—broken; and the promise on new politics—broken. Should not his new year’s resolution for 2011 be to keep the promises he made in 2010?

[The Prime Minister]

It can be put quite simply: Labour started the year with a leader who was dithering and had no answers on the economy and it has ended the year with a leader who is dithering and has no answers on the economy. I suppose, in Labour terms, that is what passes for progress.