Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Bill Esterson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is absolutely right. Before the election, in his constituency and mine, the Lib Dems made much of their opposition to cuts in the current year, saying that it would increase unemployment, hit those on low and middle incomes, and increase homelessness and business failures. They were right to say so. When they changed their tune after the election, they did so purely for opportunistic reasons, not because they are interested in representing the people in the sorts of communities that my hon. Friend and I represent.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

How does the hon. Gentleman account for the fact that in 15 years of economic growth based on the success of the previous Conservative Government, the Government he defended at the election managed to produce social welfare dependency to the extent that more than 5 million people were on social welfare payments, with the corrosive social impact involved in that? Is that something that he defended and lauded to his constituents in Sefton Central?

[Bill Esterson]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. In Sefton, unemployment was running at half the level of what it was during the last Tory recession, as were home repossessions and business failures. That, to my mind, is a sign of economic success. Given that, as I said, this recession is the deepest since 1931 apart from the period after the war, that is a measure of the success of Labour’s policies in seeing off the worst effects of the global recession. That is an important difference between what Labour Members see as the way forward and what the coalition is trying to do.