The Economy

Debate between John McDonnell and David T C Davies

Thursday 24th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

Let me put on record that we pay tribute to Gordon Brown for the work that he did during that period. He committed himself to lifting children out of poverty and, my God, he delivered it.

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

I am listening with great interest to what the right hon. Gentleman is saying. I do not share his perception of the economy and I am wondering whether he still believes that Venezuela offers a better economic model than that of my hon. Friends on the Front Bench.

[John McDonnell]

I said that I would limit interventions, but I accept that they can often be a job application, so I do not want to limit this job creation scheme that we are creating here—I wish the hon. Gentleman well in his future career.

The scale of human suffering and hardship inflicted on our people over the last nine years is never mentioned by the Government. The reason is that they would have to explain why our people have endured so much. They would have to admit that austerity was never—as we have said, and let us repeat it—an economic necessity; it was always a political choice. The choice the Tories took was that the bankers—their friends, many now populating the Government Front Bench—would never have to pay for the crisis that they had caused through their speculation. Instead, they determined—[Interruption.] The Chancellor of the Exchequer says, “You caused it”—this is the man who was selling the CDOs through Deutsche Bank. Deutsche Bank was a major contributor to the economic crisis that we faced—they have a nerve coming here blaming others, when they caused it. They determined that they would not pay for the crisis, but that the rest of our society would. They also took the view that they would never let a crisis go to waste, so they used it as the excuse to cut the taxes of the corporations and the rich. They have made £47 billion in cuts to our public services and, on their plans, they will have given away £110 billion in tax cuts to the corporations by 2022.