Oral Answers to Questions

Lindsay Roy Excerpts

Wednesday 11th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I certainly join my hon. Friend in praising his county council. That does sound like a tragic event, and it comes on top of the fact that, as everyone knows, we need to provide more primary school places. I commend the council for its quick action.

[Lindsay Roy (Glenrothes) (Lab)]

Q14. Since the Government took office, the United Kingdom has suffered the second biggest fall in wages that we have seen in any of the G20 countries. Does the Prime Minister think that that is evidence that he has saved our economy?

[The Prime Minister]

As I have said on several occasions during this Question Time, if we want to see living standards recover properly—and I do—there is only one sustainable way of making that happen. We need a growing economy, we need to keep on top of inflation, we need to ensure that mortgage rates are kept low, and we then need to cut people’s taxes by raising the personal allowance. That is how we can help households with their disposable income. If we listened to Labour and had more spending, more borrowing and more debt, the first things to go up would be interest rates and mortgage rates. For all the talk of the costs that families face, that increase in mortgage rates would wipe out all the hard work that we have done. [Interruption.] The shadow Chancellor says “You wait.” Well, we are waiting—for one single sensible suggestion from a party whose Front Benchers have got it comprehensively wrong in the last three years.