Cost of Living

Gordon Birtwistle Excerpts

Wednesday 27th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Leslie]

Government Members see what they regard as green shoots for our economy. They hope that the public will just forget what has happened for the past three and a half years, but the public have long memories and will remember the harm and anxiety that the cost of living crisis is now causing them. Perhaps those record-breaking extremes from this Prime Minister and Government reflect the new extremism in the Conservative party and the drift away from the centre ground of British politics.

[Gordon Birtwistle (Burnley) (LD)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Leslie]

I will come to the Liberal Democrats in a moment. I am talking about the Conservative party.

The Conservatives and the Prime Minister like to pretend that they understand the concerns of hard-working people. When they finally realise the strength of public opinion, they will grudgingly come up with a half-baked effort on energy bills, just as they finally caved in with a long overdue cap on payday loans. The trouble is that they just don’t get it, because their hearts aren’t in it. As with the action on payday loans and banking reform in this week alone, why does the Chancellor always have to be pushed into doing the right thing?

The forces of moderation in the Conservative party—I am looking around desperately to see them; perhaps there are a couple of them here—complain that they are seen as the party of the rich and that voters do not trust their motives. Twenty-five of the dwindling number of those anxious Conservative Members of Parliament had a meeting with the Prime Minister to express their concerns, although that was before some of them announced that they were standing down from Parliament.

The moderates—there is one opposite me—are right to worry, because the Prime Minister’s pretence that he represents the middle of British politics has finally stretched beyond belief, as time and again his true instincts shine through. In the lord mayor’s banquet speech a fortnight ago, the mask slipped as the Prime Minister proclaimed the need for permanent austerity and the shrinking of public investment in perpetuity. The true ideological intentions of the Conservatives are there for all to see. Perhaps that is why the party’s Free Enterprise Group published its plans—

--- Later in debate ---

[Sajid Javid]

My hon. Friend tempts me and I will do just that in a moment, after I have given way to my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Gordon Birtwistle).

[Gordon Birtwistle]

The shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury did not want to take an intervention from a Liberal Democrat, perhaps because it used to be a Labour Member who sat here and now it is a Liberal Democrat. Will my hon. Friend comment on the fact that in 2009 Burnley was classed as a basket case under the Labour Government with a Labour MP, but it has now won an award for the most enterprising town in the UK? Unemployment has collapsed under this Government.

[Sajid Javid]

I will comment on that because it reflects the hard work of the people of Burnley and their local MP. Why are people facing challenges up and down the country? The reason is simple and can be summed up in just three words: the Labour party.