The Economy

Debate between Jeremy Quin and Imran Hussain

Wednesday 18th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the thoughtful speech of the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson). He referred at the outset to the growth that we are currently achieving and I take his comments about that. The Office for Budget Responsibility suggests that we will have growth higher than 2.4% for each year in this Parliament. As has been said by many hon. Members, that puts us in the best cohort among all those in the G7. It is not a jobless recovery. We have 2 million more people in employment—that is, 1,000 extra per day. As the Minister said from the Dispatch Box, finally average wages are increasing in real terms, a trend that is extended by the national living wage introduced by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor.

That is a remarkable performance for any Government, but it is particularly remarkable in the context of what we inherited back in 2010. Here I respectfully draw a distinction between myself and the remarks of the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell). We can all remember wise people saying back in 2010 that if anybody came in to take the actions required to sort out our economy, they would be out in opposition for a generation; that if people came in to tackle the problems that our country faced back in 2010—the legacy that we were taking on—that would be politically impossible. Those wise people underestimated the British people and the Government. They did not underestimate the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington, whose comments suggested that austerity was a political choice to sort out the deficit. It was not a political choice; at the time it was economic necessity.

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

I have heard from the hon. Gentleman and many others on the Government Benches today about the hundreds of thousands of new jobs, the increase in wages, and this road that leads to economic prosperity. Can he answer one simple question? Why is it, then, that under this Government half a million more children have been pushed into absolute poverty?

[Jeremy Quin]

In relative terms, there are fewer children in poverty than ever before, and I am delighted that half a million children have adults in their families who are working. That is the route to success and long-term prosperity.

I take issue with the suggestion made by the hon. Members for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) and for Hayes and Harlington that our fiscal problems resulted solely from the recession. It is easy to forget the golden legacy bequeathed by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke). When the Labour party came into government, it had the third best structural position of any country in the OECD. When it left government—in fact, before that, on the eve of the financial crisis—it had the fourth worst. The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington cited Gordon Brown. I have no confidence that the same sort of pattern would not emerge if Labour Members were ever again to grace the Treasury Bench. Despite the huge work being done and the pressure that is being exerted by the Government, we are still increasing our deficit by £3,300 a year per household, and still spending £1 billion a week to service that debt. That is why we need a Government who are going to continue to get this under control.

The motion before the House is very long—I counted nearly 300 words—but it does not seem to contain any ideas as to how we should be cutting the deficit. It does, though, contain a couple of aspects that I would like to mention, one of which was referred to by the hon. Member for East Antrim: spend on research and development. It is a pleasure to be able to remind the House that with 1% of the world’s population, we are responsible for 3% of R and D spend and 16% of the most important research; he was absolutely right about that. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer) mentioned the report by the Royal Society, and the hon. Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans) raised the old bugbear of the inability to get our universities and our businesses working together. We seem to be getting on top of that. We are supposedly now fourth best in the world at getting that linkage, as well as being the second-best economy in the world in terms of global innovation. I welcome what the Government are doing through the global challenge fund in preserving the capital budget for R and D spending at, for example, the International Centre for Advanced Materials in Manchester.