The Economy

Debate between Kwasi Kwarteng and Stephen Twigg

Wednesday 22nd June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng). Reflecting on the lack of Labour representation in Spelthorne, I am reminded of the similar lack of Conservative representation in Liverpool. I am prepared to bet the hon. Gentleman that Spelthorne will get a Labour councillor before Liverpool gets a Conservative one.

We have seen some extraordinary complacency on the other side of the House today, given the economic circumstances that people are facing in communities up and down the country. Sometimes we forget the human cost of the decisions that are made in this House.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

The hon. Gentleman talks about the human cost of economic mismanagement. Could he tell us more about the human cost of Labour mismanagement over the past 10 years?

[Stephen Twigg]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, but it is the only one that I will take. I want to give other colleagues on both sides a chance to speak. We have heard a lot about Labour’s legacy, and about where Labour stands, and we get severely misrepresented by the Government parties opposite. We are not denying the deficit. We adopted a plan to halve it over the four years of a Parliament. We have been very clear that we would have made cuts in public spending, that we support some of the cuts that are now being made, and that certain tax increases would have happened under a Labour Government.

The real challenge in this debate is to address the questions of growth and employment. There is no value in cutting public spending as the Government are doing if it damages the prospects for growth. The impact on the economy is that tax revenues go down, unemployment goes up, benefit costs therefore rise and the deficit position gets even worse. My right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor reminded the House earlier about what both the parties that are now in government said when they were in opposition. My hon. Friend the Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin) has pointed out that the then Leader of the Opposition, now the Prime Minister, said in July 2008 that

“we are sticking to Labour’s spending totals.”

That was the view on the Conservative Front Bench in July 2008. In fact, my hon. Friend did not quote him in full; the right hon. Gentleman went on to describe those Labour spending totals as “tight”. The views that the current Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer are now expressing are not the ones that they held at that time.

A year ago, in the emergency Budget, the Chancellor of the Exchequer said:

“In this Budget, everyone will be asked to contribute…everyone will share in the rewards when we succeed. When we say that we are all in this together, we mean it.”—[Official Report, 22 June 2010; Vol. 512, c. 167.]

Our motion today welcomes the recent fall in unemployment, and I have heard hon. Members on the Government Benches talk about falls in unemployment in their constituencies, but are we really all in it together? Let us look at the figures.