Living Standards

Iain Duncan Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 30th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

I know that the hon. Gentleman takes these matters seriously, and that he will feel bad about the fact that 10,000 families in his constituency are seeing cuts to their tax credits to pay for the failure of his Front Bench to get people back to work. He is such an assiduous attender of these debates that he will know as well as I do that the OBR’s analysis of our last Budget showed that we were set to borrow £37 billion less than the Chancellor set out to the House yesterday. He should explain that to the 10,000 families in his constituency who are seeing a cut in tax credits.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

The right hon. Gentleman is being generous, as ever, in giving way. I remind him, however, that there is obviously a split between him and the shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, because on yesterday’s BBC programme “The Daily Politics”, she was asked this specifically:

“If you had been writing the autumn statement, borrowing would have been higher? Yes or no.”

Her answer was yes.

[Mr Byrne]

We do happen to believe that further action is needed to get people back to work, because we are now seeing the costs of the right hon. Gentleman’s Government over the past year and a half. We have now seen the Chancellor set out £158 billion of extra borrowing because he has drained the recovery of growth and put the benefits bill up over the course of this Parliament by £24 billion. That is the only part of his budget that is growing.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

I am tempted to ask, “Is that it?”, but perhaps I will not.

Yesterday, the Office for Budget Responsibility published its forecasts for the UK economy over the coming years, which painted a very difficult picture: Britain is expected to grow this year by 0.9% and next year by 0.7%; growth is forecast at 2.1% in 2013, 2.7% in 2014, 3% in 2015 and 3% again in 2016. The OBR showed that in 2009-10 borrowing was £156 billion a year. Last year, that fell to £137 billion. This year, the OBR expects it to fall again to £127 billion.

The OBR did not just publish forecasts. It did us a favour, because it looked back and reopened the books on the era of the previous Government, and an important factor emerged. It told us that an even bigger component of the growth that preceded the financial crisis was part of an unsustainable boom, and that the bust was deeper and had an even greater impact on our economy than previously thought, meaning that the effects will last even longer. It said:

“The peak-to-trough fall in output over the recession is now estimated to have been greater than previously thought at 7.1% rather than 6.4%”

That is a huge change to the figures. It found that from near the end of 2010 we were taking a serious hit from rising global food and energy prices.

I want to add a further quotation from the OBR as these matters form the baselines of our debate today:

“Most of the weakness can be explained by an external inflation shock”.

Its third point is that the eurozone crisis is

“likely to have contributed to weaker UK growth and business and consumer confidence.”

[Mr Watts]

What credibility will the public attach to the forecasts of the right hon. Gentleman and his advisers when despite every forecast they have made, the deficit and unemployment have gone up and growth has gone down?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I hope they will attach no credibility if they were our forecasts. We set up the OBR—an independent body that Opposition Members accepted—and its forecasts are about as good as we shall get, so we should give it credibility for at least trying to get the forecasts right. That is a damn sight better than the past 12 years of gerrymandered Treasury figures, not one of which had any credibility.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State quotes from the OBR, so he might like to add that it stated that we came out of recession quicker and that growth had increased by the first part of 2010. The OBR made its predictions before the autumn statement. Last year, it made its predictions before the statement. Its predictions were wrong, because the Government’s policies were wrong. Its dire predictions this year were made before this new set of policies.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I am grateful for the intervention, as it allows me to remind the hon. Lady that in looking back at the period in the run-up to and start of the recession the OBR said the depth of boom and bust was greater than was anticipated—by more than 1%. The baseline from which we started, therefore, was much lower, which means, as is seen by the Treasury, that the amount we would have had to borrow would have been more than £100 billion if we had not taken our decisions early on. Labour Members’ posturing about their own position is fundamentally incorrect, and they must recognise that.

The OBR said that the eurozone crisis is

“likely to have contributed to weaker UK growth and business and consumer confidence.”

I know that Labour Members do not like to hear that that is an issue, but it is seen by everybody, not least of which the OBR.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

We all welcomed the establishment of the OBR because of the independence it gives. The full quotation from the OBR states that

“an external inflation shock constraining real household consumption”

is the reason for the revision in growth forecasts. How does the Secretary of State think that bearing down further on family incomes will help our economy to grow again?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The reality, as the OBR and the Institute for Fiscal Studies make very clear, is that you cannot borrow your way out of a debt crisis. I know that Opposition Members are indulging in voodoo economics—a fake religion—but almost every economist abroad and at home says that you cannot borrow your way out of a debt crisis.

[Charlie Elphicke]

I was just looking at Labour’s five points for growth, which would cost a lot, would require us to borrow from the markets, and would drive up mortgage rates for hard-pressed home owners. Would that not be irresponsible and reckless?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The answer, very simply, is that, yes, it would be.

Yesterday, there was much jeering about the issue of Europe. The Opposition say one thing one day, move on and then say another. I remind the shadow Chancellor, who is not here today, of something he said in July:

“We need to face up to today’s problems. When you see Italian and Spanish bond spreads you can see the situation is incredibly dangerous”—

and that came from a man who yesterday said that we cannot blame anything on the European crisis. That is absurd, and the Opposition must get their act together over the reasons we are where we are.

[Bill Esterson]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I want to make a little progress, but then I will give way.

Whatever we say, in government or in opposition, I fancy that were the previous Chancellor in office he would be saying many of the things that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor said yesterday, because once in government people become strangely rational, and that leads to difficult choices. We can play party games, but I want to run through some of the choices we have had to make. We had to choose whether to invest more in supporting young people, and we chose to invest in the youth contract—about £1 billion over the next three years. That was an absolute priority for us, so we had to tighten two or three other areas to enable us to provide that support. These are tough choices. If we had a pot of money to raid, yes, we might have raided it, but there is none, as the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne) reminded us on leaving office.

Unemployment is therefore a huge challenge for us—it is why we set up the Work programme. None the less, the OBR estimates that private sector employment will rise by 1.7 million by 2016, largely offsetting the forecast reduction in public sector employment.

[Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I will give way in a moment. I promised I would give way to the hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson), too.

The growth plan proposes £6.3 billion of additional infrastructure, £1 billion for new regulated industries and moves, with the Association of British Insurers, to target a further £20 billion of extra investment.

[Bill Esterson]

I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman believes in fairness. I expect he will say he does. If so, why do the Government’s policies target low income families much more than those at the top?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman. I am talking about choices. I remember a great deal of debate, even in the Select Committee, about whether the working-age unemployed would see their benefits reduced. Everybody said it would happen; newspapers predicted it. In fact, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has stuck to increasing them by CPI at 5.2%—just one good example of making a choice about who would be affected most direly by any change or any reduction. That was a bold choice and one on which we should congratulate him.

[Mr Byrne]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State and I am following his argument closely. Further to the intervention from my hon. Friend, the right hon. Gentleman will no doubt have seen the analysis from the Institute for Fiscal Studies this morning. If it is true that the Government are not hitting the poorest families harder, why has the IFS said that for 2012-13 the poorest three deciles in this country are being hit three times harder than the overall average?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

According to the findings of the IFS and of the Treasury, the top decile pays a huge amount more in relative terms than anybody else. [Interruption]. Hon. Members should listen. Taking account of uprating, about 80% of households with children will see their tax credit awards rise at least in line with earnings next year. Members can pluck little bits out, but when they average it across, they will see that there have been some choices.

I am quite prepared to recognise that the pressure on the bottom deciles will always be tougher and harder because of where they spend their money. That is not the issue. The issue is, within the bounds of what we could afford, what were we trying to protect? The decisions we took and the changes we made, which I will come to in a moment, mean that we have protected the most vulnerable as well as we could and better than the Opposition would have done, had they been in power.

[Mr Byrne]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State. He is being most generous. The IFS was pretty clear this morning. It said that the richest decile would see an impact of just over 0.5%. The poorest decile would see an impact of minus 1.6%. So it is clear that the poorer families in this country are being hit much, much harder than the richer ones.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I am sorry, those are not the figures that I have. The figures on the chart that I am looking at show that the richest decile has a greater proportion of its income taken, even in relative terms. Yes, I accept that, relatively, those in the bottom three deciles do quite badly in many senses, but the right hon. Gentleman should look at the Treasury figures, which show that the wealthiest decile do worse than anybody else, in absolute and in relative terms.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I am going to move on.

The commitments made by the Chancellor in the previous Budget have to be taken into consideration, along with the ones that I have mentioned. The new offer on child care comes on top of our expansion of free nursery education for all three and four-year-olds. We are already set on a path of far-reaching reform in our welfare system, getting work incentives back in order and delivering a system that people finally understand. We will do this through the universal credit, which will in two years rebalance any of the out-of-work incentives that got out of balance, so that work pays.

The Opposition had 13 years to make the kind of changes that we are making. We have already got them under way. They will take about 350,000 children and more than 500,000 adults out of poverty. Some £7.2 billion has been invested in the fairness premium, including the pupil premium, to support the poorest in the early years and at every stage in their education. We have invested in 4,200 new health visitors.

Almost none of those changes is taken into consideration in the rather narrow way of measuring who is in poverty and who is not in poverty, particularly child poverty. This is an important point. I spoke earlier about the money and the effort that we are putting in for the poorest. The wide range of steps that we have taken is, on balance, positive. None of those has been taken into account because it is not possible at this stage to calculate the effect, but I want to do that and we ought to do so.

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[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman’s heart is in the right place, but his head is in the clouds. We can argue over definitions and data, but let me read to him the response of the chief executive of Citizens Advice, who says:

“The Chancellor has broken the promise he made in last year’s Budget to protect families on the lowest incomes from the impact of last year’s harsh cuts by increasing child tax credits above inflation, leaving them now with no protection at all… Make no mistake, this—

yesterday’s announcements—

“means children in the poorest homes are at risk of going cold and hungry to pay for the new schemes the Chancellor has announced today”.

Why do the poorest in society have to pay for the schemes that were announced yesterday? The right hon. Gentleman’s heart is in the right place, but he has not thought this through.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

It is not just the poorest who are paying. Everyone will have to bear a proportion, because everybody is going to pay for this. Yesterday the Opposition claimed that the shocks that caused inflation are not relevant, yet today they stand there and tell us that it is all down to inflation. They need to make up their minds which case they want to mount first.

[Mr Redwood]

Will my right hon. Friend confirm that it is his strong intention always to make sure that it is worth while working, and will he bring us up to date on the progress and timetable on that?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I will indeed. The point I was making was that, as the universal credit comes forward in the next two years, it will do huge amounts to ensure that the incentives to return to work are improved. Secondly—and this relates to complaints from Opposition Members about the tax credit—it will reset the baseline so that those incentives will be increased and improved. Had we remained in the same position as the previous Government with their tax credits, there would be no way back for us now.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I am well aware that the Secretary of State has great hopes for the universal credit to incentivise people into paid employment, but does he accept that the cumulative effect of last year’s Budget and spending review, this year’s Budget and yesterday’s statement is that the incentives to work for low-paid employees have been worsened as a result of the reduction in support for child care costs through the tax credit, the cut in child benefit, the freezing of the lone parent and couples element of tax credits and the fact that it is all set against a rise in living costs that families cannot afford to meet?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Seen over the whole period of this Parliament, and taking into account things such as lifting the tax allowances, the commitment of the coalition to lift them further before the end of the Parliament, and a whole variety of the points that I have already laid out, I do not agree with the hon. Lady. When Opposition Members look back, they will realise that the introduction of the universal credit will result in positive work incentives and we will get people back to work, as we are already doing.

I have already mentioned some of the things that have been introduced in the past year and a half, and yesterday the Chancellor also announced reforms to support working families which no Opposition Member has taken into consideration. We have deferred the fuel duty increase planned for January and cancelled the inflation increase planned for August 2012. The tax on petrol will be a full 10p lower than it would have been without our action in the Budget this autumn, and that means that families will save £144 on filling up the average family car by the end of next year. Fuel and the cost of driving are a very big driver of poverty and we are doing something about it. We are also regulating the rise in fares on national rail, the London tube and London buses, and we have already offered councils the resources for another year’s freeze in council tax, which I hope they all take up. Our plans to raise personal tax allowances will pull over 1 million people out of tax altogether, which is a big incentive for people to go back to work. When the Opposition complain about changes to working tax credits, they should remember their punitive decision to abolish the 10p starting rate of tax. They did not care what happened to the poorest in society.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend has mentioned the 900,000 people who are being lifted out of income tax altogether. Is that not a significant step in the right direction?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I agree with my hon. Friend. The reality is that we are raising people out of tax, while what the Labour Government did by getting rid of the 10p starting rate was to drop more people into higher rates of tax. It was really dismissive, very regressive and attacked the poorest.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

Is my right hon. Friend as surprised as I am that there has been little or no mention from the Opposition of the benefit to living standards that comes from keeping interest rates low?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I was going to come on to that. Had interest rates gone up and had we been paying more for our borrowing, we would all—including those paying mortgages—be poorer.

This debate about living standards is important. Of course, those standards are very tight, and I make no bones about the challenge that we face, but let us not forget where we came from. Let me take the House back to 2007, when personal debt had rocketed to about £1.3 trillion and we had the highest structural deficit in the whole of the G7. That was before the recession began. That is a completely unsustainable picture, and it required very painful readjustment. As my colleagues know, the problem was that we entered the recession ill prepared for the consequences. When Labour Members ratcheted up spending by a massive degree, they simply postponed the inevitable. After all, the IFS forecast for the period 2008-2011 was that living standards would fall by 1.6%. This was a case of a fall in living standards postponed, with pain pushed on to future generations. People do not have to take my word for it—the IFS said:

“Much of the impact of the…recession on UK living standards was not felt until after the economy had stopped contracting, but that…pain was most definitely delayed rather than avoided”.

[Claire Perry]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that adopting the Opposition’s proposals would just delay that pain further for future generations, and that this debate would be irresponsible in the extreme if we did not think about the living standards of our children and grandchildren?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

My hon. Friend, not for the first time, hits the nail firmly on the head. The reality is—

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I will give way in a minute. [Interruption.] Relax—I will give way. The point is that there is a choice: we can either let this thing slide, with higher interest rates and all that goes with that, and let our children pick up the debt and the deficit, or we can deal with this ourselves and give our kids at least a fair chance.

Of course living standards are under a squeeze—we know that—but that is something we utterly regret. Nobody wants to stand here and say that that is the purpose of what we do—it is not—but it is part of what we are having to do, and we need to get living standards up again as fast as we can. The forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility show that that will be the case. If Labour Members were being realistic, they would accept that no matter who was in power, standing here, they would have to deal with exactly the same problem.

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State and the hon. Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) talk about the children of the future, but I would like to bring their attention back to the children of today. Is the Secretary of State aware of recent Government figures that show that the number of children in need this past year has risen by 3,600, with squeezed living standards putting vulnerable families further at risk and pushing more cost on to the state?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The children of today are also, more than likely, the children of the future, so we do not want to split hairs about this. Children are children, and as they become adults we do not want them to have to pick up the debt and the deficit that we leave behind. It is all about taking difficult decisions, being honest about what those decisions are, and recognising that if we do not take them now, we will have them forced on us by other people.

[Mr Rob Wilson (Reading East) (Con)]

May I remind my right hon. Friend of the record of the previous Government, which included imposing a 100% rise in council tax on my constituents, upping the pension rate by a pathetic 75p for our old-age pensioners, and ratcheting up fuel prices? How did that help children and families across our country?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I wish that we saw a little more realism from Labour Members in accepting that they were, in many senses, partly the architects of the difficulty that we are in.

[Glenda Jackson (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

I find it absolutely incomprehensible that the Secretary of State is able to discard the real pain that is now being suffered by children because of his Government’s bizarre choices based on the argument that they are going to become adults and will then have to pay further down the line. Is he really equating the possibility of a child losing its home, its school, its friends, its family, its support system, and watching its parents having to give up work because they cannot afford child care, with what is going to happen further down the road? That is bizarre.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Of course, the hon. Lady would be right if that were what I was saying. What I am saying is quite simple: it is that our responsibility right now is to get the economy back in balance so that children do not have to pick up the debts. Let us remember that the deficit that we are dealing with is the pump that fuels the debt, and that debt is the legacy that we will leave them.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Wait a minute—I am trying to answer the hon. Lady. She may not like the answer, but I want to finish it. The reality therefore is, yes, of course, but I think that we have done as much as we can to protect those who are in difficulty.

In answer to the hon. Lady, I should like to list a few things that we have done. Bearing in mind the changes we have made to taxation, more than half of those who will be lifted out of income tax will be women. We are investing an additional £300 million in child care support on top of the £2 billion already being spent. There will be 5,000 mentors to support women entrepreneurs and we are creating the women’s business council to advise Government. There will be up to £2 million to support women to set up and expand businesses in rural areas. We are improving child tax credits this April with a £180 real-terms permanent increase in the child element. Next April, there is an increase of 5.2% and a further £135. We are doubling the number of two-year-old kids who receive 15 hours of free education a week. There is also the £2.5 billion pupil premium. I could go on and on. We are doing huge amounts to try to protect the poorest in society.

[Mr Watts]

Part of the help package that has been set out is the money that will go to London families to keep rail and bus fares down. Does the right hon. Gentleman have a similar package for my constituents?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

It is all rail fares, but I do not want to split hairs with the hon. Gentleman about whether he thinks it will help his constituency. I think it will.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State talks about protecting women but he will know that House of Commons Library figures show that women are paying two thirds of the contribution in tax and benefit changes. He also said that the personal allowance increase benefits women more than men. Does he admit that the truth is that the Library figures show that while 13,500 women benefited from the personal allowance increase even though it was compensated for by other cuts, 16,800 men benefited, so in fact women are a minority, even from the personal allowance increase that he parades as a change to help women?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I can look at the Library’s figures and decide whether they or our figures are correct. We will have a look at them. My view is that the figures that we have show that more women than men benefit from that change. We can debate that if the right hon. Lady likes, but at least she is admitting that, one way or the other, a significant number of women benefit dramatically. That is a good starting point.

I want to move to an important subject. Given that this is an Opposition day debate, I had rather hoped––

[Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

Before we move from the topic of hard-working women such as those in my constituency, especially those on the lowest incomes, who depend on informal care from grandparents, perhaps my right hon. Friend could share with the House the many things we have done to support grandparents on low incomes.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend who, as ever, talks sense, and I agree with her.

This is an Opposition day debate and I had hoped to hear something about what they would do to fix things. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) asked a very specific question but never received an answer from the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill. We have today had to endure the usual waffle and confusion. On the one hand, the Opposition criticised us yesterday for borrowing too much, but on the other they seem to think that more borrowing is the only way to fix the deficit. The director of the IFS was pretty clear yesterday on the Opposition’s position on borrowing more to spend. He said:

“You would have to believe some pretty surprising things about the way the economy works to think that if you reduce tax by a pound then borrowing would go down rather than up.”

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree with the director?

[Mr Byrne]

Does the Secretary of State acknowledge that the benefits bill rising on his watch by £29 billion is a sign of failure? It is too high and it would come down if the Government helped more people back into jobs.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

With respect, that is not a policy; that is just a lot of waffle. In reality, what the right hon. Gentleman has to tell us—[Interruption]—and I will give way to him again or to the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper)—is whether he agrees with the shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who yesterday said that if the Opposition had made the autumn statement, they would be borrowing more.

[Mr Byrne]

We think that we could get more people into jobs if we had a temporary cut in VAT to get shoppers back on to the high street; if we cut national insurance for small firms to hire extra workers; if we brought forward infrastructure projects, none of which we saw yesterday; if we cut VAT on home improvements; and if we had a tax on bankers’ bonuses to get 100,000 young people into jobs.

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[Mr Duncan Smith]

Borrowing, borrowing, borrowing. More borrowing—isn’t it wonderful? Interestingly, the Opposition were supposed to say that they would stick to the original Darling plan, but the measures just laid out involve borrowing way above that, because, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham has said, if we look at what the Opposition have opposed, out of all that that we have had to do, we find that the bill now stands at some £91 billion extra a year, or £326 billion for the next five years in which they might have been in government.

These are all the spending cuts that the Opposition have opposed; the VAT position—opposed; welfare savings—opposed; in-year spending cuts—opposed; local government reform—opposed; capital spending on education—opposed; two-year public sector pay freeze— opposed; cuts to capital investment allowances—opposed; increasing public sector employee contributions—opposed; Ministry of Justice reform—opposed; police reform— opposed; DEFRA reform—opposed; cuts to the HMRC budget—opposed. That is not a policy; that is a joke.

[Mr Byrne]

The truth is that the plan laid out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling) would have halved the deficit over four years and, according to the OBR, resulted by the end of this Parliament in borrowing £8 billion less than that which the Chancellor set out yesterday. It would have involved borrowing £37 billion less than the Chancellor over the forecast period. The truth is that he has put borrowing through the roof, because he has put welfare through the roof, because he has put unemployment through the roof.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The reality is that the OBR yesterday told us categorically that the position in which the Labour Government left us was significantly worse than anybody expected. It also said that unless we had taken the decisions that we took last year, we would be borrowing more than £100 billion in each year of this Parliament. On top of that, the Labour party’s measures would have resulted in even worse, but at least we had a little honesty from the shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who said that borrowing would rise because she would borrow more. Given the economic situation, the Treasury estimates that such measures would cost far more—on the back of the OBR figures.

We now know what the Government at the time were doing, and what the Opposition today are about. They are determined to put hard-won interest rates, which we have held down, at risk. Last April, under Labour, our interest rates were higher than Italy’s; 18 months later, we are the only major western country to have seen its credit rating improve. Italy’s interest rates are now about three times ours, despite it having a lower deficit—actually, almost half the deficit that the previous Government left us. So, while the rest of Europe is under intense pressure, the UK remains a safe haven and the Labour Opposition are completely confused.

Yesterday the shadow Chancellor insisted that low interest rates were the sign of an economy in trouble. That is the same man who, back in 2004, described long-term interest rates as

“the simplest measure of monetary and fiscal policy credibility”.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Let me lay out the facts to make things simple for the Opposition before I give way. A 1% rise in our market interest rates would add £10 billion to mortgage bills; the average family with a mortgage would have to pay £1,000 more every year; the cost of business loans would increase by £7 billion; taxpayers would be forced to find an extra £21 billion in debt interest payments—and the ex-Chief Secretary to the Treasury has the front, the absolute front, to talk about squeezing living standards. If the Opposition had their way, living standards would collapse.

[Hugh Bayley]

Does the Secretary of State not recall that at the time of the general election Britain’s national debt was significantly lower than that of Italy, France, Japan and the United States? The reason Italy faces its economic problems is that its national debt is much higher than that which this Government inherited from the Labour Government.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

It is well worth reflecting on the fact that the previous Government’s debt cannot be detached from their deficit. In case the hon. Gentleman does not understand it, I will explain that what they did was ratchet up spending before the recession began. We had the largest structural deficit of any G7 country before the recession began.

[Mr Byrne]

rose—

[Mr Duncan Smith]

No, I will not give way. The previous Government then went on a spending spree, ratcheting up the deficit, which now pumps the debt. It is no good playing silly games—

[Hugh Bayley]

rose—

[Mr Duncan Smith]

No, the hon. Gentleman can sit down. It is no good. He is not going to play games over the difference between the deficit and the debt. The reality is that Labour cannot weasel out of it. It left us with a tragedy that we are having to put right, which is why we will oppose the motion.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—