Economic Policy

Debate between George Osborne and Lord Watts

Monday 25th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. If we lose that credibility in the markets and are unable to convince the world that we can pay our way—that would be the case if we had a reduced commitment to fiscal consolidation—interest rates would go up, which would affect families with mortgages and small businesses with those crucial loans that are helping them to expand and take people on.

[Mr Dave Watts (St Helens North) (Lab)]

Will the Chancellor change the economic medicine before he kills the patient?

[Mr Osborne]

We have revived the patient from the near-death experience it had under the Labour Government.

Eurozone Crisis

Debate between George Osborne and Lord Watts

Thursday 27th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I agree with my hon. Friend that we have to be alert to the danger of the 17 eurozone members, which will have a qualified voting majority, caucusing on areas that are legitimately the preserve of the 27 member states. When this country, under the previous Government, allowed the eurogroup of Finance Ministers to be established and accepted that Britain would not be at that eurogroup, there was the fear that the eurogroup would caucus. That was one of the concerns of the then Government and Opposition. That actually has not happened. If anything, they have not co-ordinated and worked together closely enough over the past decade or so. However, he is absolutely right that we need to ensure that they do not caucus in the future in a way that undermines our voice and influence or that bounces all 27 member states. All member states not in the euro are alert to this challenge. Indeed, last night the Prime Minister had dinner with the Polish and Swedish Prime Ministers to discuss precisely that issue.

[Mr Dave Watts (St Helens North) (Lab)]

Will the Chancellor be crystal clear? Is he guaranteeing that no British money will be used for this bail-out directly, through the IMF or through any other vehicle?

[Mr Osborne]

I can guarantee that British money is not going into the special purpose vehicle.

Jobs and Growth

Debate between George Osborne and Lord Watts

Wednesday 12th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr George Osborne)]

I welcome this opportunity to discuss the very difficult economic situation that this country and the rest of the western world face at the moment. After that vaudeville act, I am trying to remember whether the shadow Chancellor actually set out the five-point plan. He did not actually go through it, so we will go through it for him.

Of course, the concern of everyone here is to see growth, support jobs and get Britain through this debt storm; that is what we are talking about and working on. As this is an Opposition day, however, before I turn to what the Government are doing it is worth considering what the Opposition propose, and what the shadow Chancellor did and did not say. We should consider what his political friends, as well as his political opponents, are saying about him.

The right hon. Gentleman dismissed the intervention by one of my hon. Friends about Charles Clarke—[Interruption.] Well, there you go. It was not picked up by the microphones, but the shadow Chancellor just dismissively said, “Charles Clarke!” The Opposition dismiss everyone with whom they served in government. They boo their ex-Prime Ministers, they dismiss their ex-Ministers. Here is what the man who was the Labour Home Secretary said, not weeks ago but yesterday:

“I think the Labour conference failed to come across strongly with an alternative to what the Government is doing. I think the economic proposition that Labour puts at the moment is unconvincing…we are simply dismissed by most people thinking about the most central question facing the country today, which is the economy.”

That is the verdict not of the Conservative party, the Liberal Democrats or anyone else but of former members of the Labour Cabinet.

If we want to know why the shadow Chancellor is failing to convince the country, let alone his own party, of why he has not come forward with a convincing alternative, I suggest that we focus on three things that were not in his speech. I will cover each in turn. First, there was absolutely no plan to deal with the deficit. There was a not a single suggestion of how public expenditure could be saved. Let us remember what he said—

[Mr Dave Watts (St Helens North) (Lab)]

Will the Chancellor give way?

[Mr Osborne]

I will in a moment, because perhaps the hon. Gentleman can respond to this point.

The shadow Chancellor said, when we debated the matter in August, that he would set out

“a tough, medium-term plan to get our deficit down”.—[Official Report, 11 August 2011; Vol. 531, c. 1110.]

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Osborne]

I will take the hon. Gentleman’s intervention in a second.

Last week, the Opposition tabled an amendment to the Welfare Reform Bill that would have cost this country £11 billion. That one amendment on one day in this House of Commons shows how completely incredible they are.

[Mr Watts]

The IMF is changing its policy and calling for a plan B, as is business, the general public and everybody else. When will the Chancellor introduce a policy that will deliver growth?

[Mr Osborne]

The policies that we have set out deliver the low interest rates that are essential for economic growth.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Osborne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The previous Chancellor’s memoirs reveal the very divisive role that the shadow Chancellor played in stopping the previous Labour Government coming up with a coherent economic policy and a credible economic plan, and even in stopping Nos. 10 and 11 talking to each other.

[Mr Watts]

Will the Chancellor tell the House what level of growth he inherited and what it is now?

[Mr Osborne]

I shall tell the hon. Gentleman what I inherited as Chancellor and what this country inherited from the previous Government: we inherited the second deepest recession in the entire world. The hon. Gentleman talks about GDP, but we had the biggest fall in GDP of any country in the world with the sole exception of Japan.

Autumn Forecast

Debate between George Osborne and Lord Watts

Monday 29th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. What is happening here is a rebalancing of the economy. I hear the shadow Chancellor muttering away about what he calls slow growth, but according to the European Commission forecasts today our growth is more rapid than that of Germany, France, the United States of America or Japan, as well as than the EU average and the eurozone average. I am not sure what his proposals are to increase that growth rate but if he has some, now is the time to produce them.

[Mr Dave Watts (St Helens North) (Lab)]

Is it not the case that most of the public sector cuts will take place in the north and that any jobs that are created—there are not likely to be many—will be in the south? Is not the policy unbalanced?

[Mr Osborne]

In the last decade, under the Government of which the hon. Gentleman was a member, for every 10 jobs created in the south-east only one was created in the midlands and the north. That is the situation that we have inherited and the economic model that we have to change. It is precisely because we want to see exports and investment increase that we are aiming for a more geographically balanced model of economic growth. Announcements such as the one we have made today on the investments by Glaxo will help that, as will the first-time-ever tax cut for new employees that is specifically directed at regions outside the south-east.