Policy for Growth

Elizabeth Truss Excerpts

Thursday 11th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Reed]

I entirely agree. This is not just about the state. However, economic policy should not be used in an ideological agenda to try to destroy the state, and we know that that is happening in this instance.

The “public good, private good” mantra is the one that we should adopt. Our national economy is one economy. “Public” and “private” are not segregated in our towns, villages and cities. As an analysis by PricewaterhouseCoopers has shown, it is not possible to cut the public sector without hitting the private sector hard as well.

[Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk) (Con)]

Is it not the case that between 1998 and 2009, under the last Government, productivity increased by 20% in the private sector and fell by 4% in the public sector? It is the Government’s management of the public sector that caused the two sectors to diverge during that period.

[Mr Reed]

I do not disagree with those facts, but I do not think that they are germane to the “Public bad, private good” mantra that we are hearing; quite the opposite, in fact.

The findings of the PricewaterhouseCoopers analysis are self-evident. The Chancellor has confirmed that as a result of his choices, the public sector will lose 500,000 jobs. PricewaterhouseCoopers has estimated that that will cost at least a further 500,000 private sector jobs, and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has said that the Government’s plans will cost 1.6 million jobs over the course of this Parliament. All the while, in the face of the facts, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor persist with their economic medicine irrespective of the condition of the patient, like Elizabethan physicians with an absolute belief in the benefits of leeches.

As was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley East (Michael Dugher), for communities like ours what matters is where the pain is felt. Of course we want to see growth in all sectors throughout the country.