Financial Assistance (Ireland)

Lord Cryer Excerpts

Monday 22nd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

Of course, the support that we are providing with the bilateral loan is to the Irish Government—to the sovereign—and we have every expectation that that will be repaid.

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

Will the Chancellor now answer the question that the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) asked? Does he believe, as I do, that when British Ministers signed up to Maastricht and the growth and stability pact, they made a mistake?

[Mr Osborne]

To be honest, the real mistake was that countries did not pursue the policies recommended in the growth and stability pact, which was to keep control of their public finances. Year after year during the past decade, the UK was regularly warned that its deficit was growing and that it was not doing enough to deal with it. If we had listened—not necessarily to the European Commission, but to all the other people in the world who were pointing that out—we would have been in a bit better shape than we were when this Government came to office.