The Economy

Debate between Kwasi Kwarteng and George Freeman

Tuesday 11th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[George Freeman]

I am grateful for that intervention. If the previous Labour Government paid down the debt, why have we inherited this historic debt legacy—a legacy, it is worth reminding the House, that sees us paying debt interest payments that are set to rise to £76 billion a year, which is more than the amount spent on more than three Departments? This is a historic legacy, for which the Labour party should be ashamed.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I was wondering what my hon. Friend thought about the fact that the previous Labour Government ran consistent deficits from 2001 to 2007—even while the economy was growing.

[George Freeman]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, principally about the structural deficit. The public are not daft: they know the difference between a Government who spend more each year than they receive and one who wilfully disregard the underlying causes of the deficit, which were and still remain for us to tackle—the problem of an ageing society for the NHS, the public sector pensions bill and the out-of-control welfare state. I shall say something shortly about the Government’s important reforms in that regard.

I welcome this autumn statement, which begins the process of tackling once again the toxic debt legacy left to us by the Labour party. I welcome the fact that a Conservative Chancellor in a coalition Government has been able to deliver substantial savings—£33 billion in the welfare budget, £60 billion savings in interest repayments and £70 billion savings on the cost of government in Whitehall—allowing us to create the incentives for work, taking a million of the lowest-paid employees out of tax altogether, raising the tax threshold and abolishing Labour’s planned fuel duty rise, with the net result that over the last two years we have seen the creation of more than 1.2 million net new jobs in the private sector.

Amendment of the Law

Debate between Kwasi Kwarteng and George Freeman

Tuesday 29th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

With respect to the hon. Lady, that is entirely irrelevant. Her party was in office; her party had the ultimate responsibility for the government of this country—not only in 2007, but for the 13 years before the last election. It is a strange paradox that when Labour Members got into power in 1997, they did the right thing. They balanced the books; for four years, we were not running deficits, as they stuck to our spending plans. The Chancellor was prudent; “prudence” was his favourite word. Then, all of that was deliberately swept away, and they went on a mad spending spree, which directly caused the deficit and the savings that have to made now.

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the honest answer to the question put thrice by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) is that if we were guilty of anything, it was to fall for the same lie that the British public fell for—to believe that new Labour had become the party of economic competence and that in government it could be trusted with the public finances?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. I think there was an element of delusion in the country inasmuch as people believed that Labour could be trusted with the economy. That was clearly not the case. Older voters I speak to in my party association and more widely in Spelthorne remember the appalling legacy of the 1970s, when exactly the same thing happened. None of this is new; we have seen it all before. Exactly the same thing has happened 30 years later: Labour came into power, made all sorts of spending commitments with the best intentions, but found that we had run out of money. It was that simple. On that note, I urge the House to vote in favour of the Budget motions.