Budget Statement

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Friday 12th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate all maiden speakers, in particular my noble friend Lady Foster, who I have known for a good number of years, mainly in Brussels. She alluded to her role there on the transport committee and in the transport field for the Commission, where I have to say she was a distinguished and feared figure, because she knew her stuff—and that is the most important thing to get things done. She was also deputy leader of the Conservative group—the deputy leader is the one who gets the jobs that no one else wants—and she survived a good few years there. Finally, although she mentioned British Airways, she did not mention that she was instrumental in setting up a trade union. Labour loves to feel that it has all the TU people, but we have yet another person on our Benches who is an intimate in the trade union field.

I will move on to make myself unpopular with the Opposition, certainly, if not the Government. We cannot keep on living on credit. It is as simple as that; difficult choices have to be made. Johnson compares himself to Churchill. I see the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, opposite; his grandfather was Churchill’s Chancellor of the Exchequer. Churchill spent money like water—but it had to stop, and this has to stop. We have to construct a way of living with Covid.

I say this to our friends the nurses: they have to be subject to the same economic disciplines as anyone else in the labour force. A pound on the wages bill is a pound off the cancer treatment bill. There is no unlimited supply of money. That is the message that I would like the Chancellor to ram home to No. 10. We must start again living within our means and we must make decisions based on hard economic facts, not emotional spasms.