Regional Development (North-East)

Debate between Guy Opperman and Martin Caton

Tuesday 22nd March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow a fine, long and detailed speech that took us on a lovely journey through your constituency and touched on many local areas, but not on many others. I waited—I probably waited too long to intervene—for you to acknowledge that the £120 million-a-day debt with which the Chancellor must deal is something that you caused. It did not arise out of nowhere. I hope that it is accepted that whoever was in power—this applies just as much to your good selves as it does to us—would have had to deal with that debt. To ignore the huge debt that we must deal with when addressing the economics of the situation is unacceptable.

If I counted correctly, there were few things of which you were in favour: simplification of tax, a possible VAT cut to 5% and the relaxation of some planning regulations. In 35 minutes, almost no description of anything that we are doing did not chime with McCarthyite zealotry, which is the most eloquent and powerful description of what you were trying to do—

[Martin Caton (in the Chair)]

Order. Mr Opperman, you keep saying “you” and “your”. You are supposed to be addressing me, and you are ascribing to me views that perhaps I do not hold.

[Guy Opperman]

I apologise. That is entirely true, Mr Caton. I could not possibly comment on whether anybody had McCarthyite zealotry.

I have listened to the hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland and hope that he will advance the issue. It is wrong, however, to describe enterprise zones as a bad thing and to say that policies should be implemented in a way that ignores tremendous benefits. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) would describe the great benefits of Corus, and we should not ignore the fact that the North East of England Process Industry Cluster has come forward. All of those are good things.

Frankly, it is important, at this moment in time, to deal with deficit reduction. If there is a manifest difference between the proposals of the hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland and ours, it is about whether the deficit is the key or not. I suggest that, at a time in which we are in so much debt, the deficit is always the key, because if we do not address it, we will disappear into a situation akin to that of Greece or Portugal.