Taxes
Debate between John Grady and Joy Morrissey(1 week, 4 days ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
John Grady
I will make some progress if I may.
Our debt to GDP ratio is almost 100%, and we inherited that from the previous Government. Conservative Members object to tax rises while wanting tax cuts and increases in public spending and objecting to spending cuts. That is not realistic. We know from the disastrous Budget of Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng that we must manage finances carefully. Some Opposition Members suggest that we should get rid of the Office for Budget Responsibility. The Conservatives shunned the OBR when Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng put forward their Budget and we know what happened then. I find it quite surprising therefore that we still have Conservative Members who want to get rid of it.
The Conservative approach to the economy simply does not grapple with the serious state of the public finances; it inhabits a world of wishful thinking—a world of higher inflation, higher Government borrowing costs and higher interest rates.
John Grady
No, I will make some progress.
The huge inflation unleashed by the previous Government caused immense misery to my constituents. The interest rate rises made life a misery for hard-working families who had bought their homes in Glasgow East. That is why my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer is right to focus on appropriate management of the economy and not wishful thinking. The real question is this: what has the Conservative party come to. Will it ever return to seeing things as they are, rather than proposing policies that bear no relationship to reality? Its proposals, as I understand them, are a form of magical realism, which is why the electorate have cast them into 100 years of solitude.