Oral Answers to Questions

Geraint Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 8th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

May I say how particularly pleased I am to see my hon. Friend in the House? His victory was one that I found particularly satisfying on election night.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that the ambition of a low-debt, low-tax economy is one to which people who care about the long-term economic future of this country should aspire. The key challenge, of course, is getting there, and that means dealing with the 11% budget deficit.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

The right hon. Gentleman will know that the budget deficit at the time of the Budget was £22 billion less than was predicted four months earlier in the pre-Budget report, showing that the major engine for reducing the deficit is economic growth. Will he give an undertaking that the cuts that he intends to make will not cut the capacity for economic growth in Britain, thereby increasing the deficit?

[Mr Osborne]

May I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his return to the House, as we both served on the Public Accounts Committee when I first arrived in the House? I make this point: he makes an original observation that somehow the British budget deficit is low, when, actually, of course, it is an 11% budget deficit and we are borrowing £156 billion—[Interruption.]