Jobs and Growth

Luciana Berger Excerpts

Thursday 17th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[David T. C. Davies]

No, I have no more time to give way.

I want to know why Labour Members still maintain that the banks are to blame, when, in all, just £120 billion was given to the banks out of a total debt of £1 trillion, almost 10 times more. They are following the policy of fools, knaves and despots throughout history started by Edward I, who blamed everything on bankers. The reality is that, every year, we are borrowing more from banks than we have given them. We get 10% of our revenue—£50 billion a year—from the banking industry. If Labour Members are allowed to destroy it, they will have to find cuts 10 times greater than the ones that we, unfortunately, have already had to make.

This Government are taking proper and concrete steps and I think that most Members present support almost all those measures. I totally agree with the decision to reform welfare spending, so that people have to go out to work, and at the same time to cap immigration, which has held down wages for the lowest paid, as even Opposition Members have been the first to accept. As one who has experience of trying to run a small business, I am delighted that the Government will do something to reduce the red tape of employment legislation, which makes many businesses reluctant to take people on. It is, of course, a pleasure to read about cuts in corporation tax and, yes, even the cut in tax for top rate taxpayers. We know that that is politically difficult to defend, but there is a strong economic argument for the measure, which is why Labour Members were not prepared to vote against it and will not now say what they would do.

In Wales the public sector is very large, and the Army forms a large part of that sector. I am worried to learn of proposals to amalgamate the Queen’s Dragoon Guards with another regiment. Many Welsh people are employed in the Queen’s Dragoon Guards, which is an excellent regiment. Since the battle of Agincourt, Wales has supplied men and women who have fought loyally for Britain, as I would have been happy to do in the Territorial Army—I saw no active service. I hope that the Chancellor will bear that in mind when the decisions are made.

I hope that the Chancellor will forgive me for expressing the hope that he will also look carefully at the carbon tax. I am one of a growing number of people who worry about the fact that there has been no increase in temperature for the past 12 years. It took me a while to get the figures from the relevant Government Department, but Members should have a look at the Met Office website. I worry about imposing on the manufacturing industry a tax that is not being imposed elsewhere in the world. I am not absolutely certain whether global warming is taking place or not, but I am certain that if we start imposing measures that are not imposed elsewhere, all that will happen is that manufacturers will go elsewhere and there will be no overall decrease in carbon dioxide emissions.

I am coming to the end of my little piece. I want to assure the Chancellor that we are his most loyal supporters, even if we occasionally quibble on certain issues. We are determined to face down the forces of financial chaos on the Opposition Benches. We know that every Labour Government have ended in utter financial catastrophe, whether because of Attlee using war loans to build the NHS on the back of American credit, Harold Wilson devaluing the pound and telling us it would stay the same, Jim Callaghan having to go cap in hand to the International Monetary Fund, as the Greeks are now doing, or the previous Prime Minister, himself a former Chancellor, who told us that he had ended boom and bust and then created one of the biggest booms in history, on the back of lax lending regulations and lax immigration controls, and then the biggest bust in history, which we now have to sort out.

We know, as do most people in this country, that, whether one is a nation, a company or an individual, it is impossible to go on spending more money than one earns. That is why Government Members will be loyally supporting the Government on the Queen’s Speech and making sure that we can build a better Britain, built on real growth, not debts that our children will have to pay off at some point in the future.