Autumn Statement

Lord Lea of Crondall Excerpts

Thursday 4th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)]

My Lords, I draw attention to the contrast between the prospects for our economy, particularly on the deficit, so starkly set out in the report of the Office for Budget Responsibility, and the preposterous gloss put on it by many speakers on the Conservative Benches, who ought to know better and who ought at least to be able to read a balance sheet and understand gross national product figures. I include in that the former Chancellor, the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, whose figures were totally wrong when he referred to ours being the most successful economy in Europe. There are two points here which we have to nail as lies—if that is not an unparliamentary word; if it is, I will withdraw it. What has been said is not true. I will quote from a chart the figures that show what has happened to some economies since the peak of 2007 to 2009, followed by the trough and then a comeback.

First, on the level of economic activity, Germany is still the best part of 20% more productive than we are—over 10% per head. Secondly, Germany has never had a big trough. I shall quote some figures, which are in billions of euros, so they are all consistent. The figure for Germany’s gross domestic product for 2007 was €2,428 billion. It is now €2,737 billion—an increase of 16%. Our GDP stood at €2,086 billion in 2007, and the latest available figure, published by Eurostat, is €1,899 billion for 2013. We understand from recent Treasury announcements that we have just got back to the previous peak. Even France did not have the great trough that we had and its economy is at least at our level of prosperity.

The propaganda coming from the other side of the House is relentless. This is a highly political debate and the more I listen to it, the more I believe that what is coming from the Conservative Party is purely political propaganda. We know that the maxim in the minds of those in the Conservative Party at the moment is that you can fool some of the people for some of time and indeed that you can fool all of the people all of the time—at least until May 2015. However, I do not think that that will happen because, as we have heard, people have their own experiences of productivity, wages, living standards and cuts. My noble friend Lord McKenzie touched on this. The cuts have been not two, three, four or five times but the best part of 10 times more onerous for the bottom quarter than for the top.

I should like to ask the Minister—he has time to get advice on the Eurostat and other figures—whether he agrees that my figures are correct and that the figures from Conservative Central Office being trotted out by the previous speaker and many other speakers are preposterous and wrong.

I want to make one point on our productivity performance, which my noble friend Lord Adonis made one of his major themes. I very much welcome the recognition, finally, in this country that we have to benchmark and learn from other economies in Europe. Mr John Cridland, the director-general of the CBI, in a speech the other day said that we ought to study the Mittelstand—the medium-sized enterprises—in Germany. I hope that there will be an opportunity for the TUC and the CBI to discuss these matters together. I hope that people do not think that that would be a retrograde step; I think that it is a rather good thing to do in all successful economies. So far as the companies in this country are concerned, those economies, as well as the multinationals, need to get together to look at what happens to skills and productivity. World market share is always on the agenda for the European works councils. That is what they are for: to see whether X, Y or Z is needed to increase world market share. However, we do not have that for our companies.

I hope that at some point we can be a little more objective about the prospects for our economy and not just, as too many people on the opposite side have done, regurgitate statistics that relate to a fantasy world. On that, I think that the chickens are coming home to roost with a vengeance.