Debate on the Address

Debate between Iain Wright and Mike Crockart

Wednesday 9th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), who I know takes a great interest in Hartlepool—largely because he spent most of the 2004 by-election there trying to stop me becoming a Member.

In his opening and closing remarks, the right hon. Gentleman mentioned elections both general and local, and I have to tell him that after Thursday’s local elections, on Hartlepool borough council the Liberal Democrats now have no representation whatever, which shows the scale of the challenge that he and his party face in terms of getting into bed with the Conservatives.

[Mike Crockart (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

I am confused by this continuing slur of “getting into bed with the Conservatives”, because in Scotland we now have coalitions of every possible hue, including Labour and Tory coalitions. Does the hon. Gentleman attack those coalitions with the same vigour that he attacks this one here?

[Mr Wright]

I use the phrase “getting into bed with the Tories” not because it is of my own making, but after speaking to my constituents and people elsewhere who were thinking about voting Liberal Democrat, who might have fallen out of love with Labour following the 2005 general election and who wanted to consider something else in 2010, but who now feel let down and betrayed. That is the scale of the challenge that the hon. Gentleman’s party faces with regard to reinvigorating the trust of the people.

Almost the first words that Her Majesty said in her speech today were:

“My Ministers’ first priority will be to reduce the deficit and restore economic stability.”

Those words were almost identical to the ones that the Queen uttered in the first Session of this Parliament, two years ago, when she stated:

“The first priority is to reduce the deficit and restore economic growth.”

In the intervening two years, the Government have done little that they set themselves on both counts. They have had to borrow about £150 billion more than they originally forecast back in 2010, and they have failed to deal effectively with the deficit and to restore economic growth, because they have focused exclusively—some might say almost obsessively—on the former, reducing the deficit, instead of giving sufficient priority to the latter, economic growth. It should not be an either/or game. Tax revenues are lower because of weak demand and reduced consumer spending, while expenditure is rising because of the need to pay out more in unemployment benefits. The British economy is now in a more perilous state than when the Government took office two years ago.

The Prime Minister and the Chancellor will trot out the excuse of the difficulties experienced in the eurozone, and there is some truth in that, but they cannot escape the fact that the retreat into recession has been caused almost directly by their actions and policies. We are experiencing this country’s longest downturn since the 1920s. Britain is emerging from the deep global recession of 2008-09 more slowly than from previous recessions and, crucially, more slowly than our main economic competitors, meaning that our rivals in the global marketplace are stealing a march on us. The actions of this Government today are compromising our competitiveness in the global economy of tomorrow.

The US economy grew by 3% in the last quarter of 2011 and by 2.2% in the first quarter of this year. Alongside Greece and Italy, Spain is generally—almost universally—acknowledged to be one of the economic basket cases of the eurozone, but even the Spanish economy grew more in 2011 than Britain’s. Today’s publication of UK retail figures, which show a 3.3% fall year on year—the largest fall in more than a year—demonstrates the general weakness of the economy, the lack of demand and the fragility of consumer confidence.