Jobs and Growth

Debate between Lyn Brown and George Osborne

Thursday 17th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr George Osborne)]

I rise to support this Queen’s Speech, and I will say something about the Treasury Bills on banking and pensions that feature in it. But first I had better address, head on, the complete nonsense we have heard for the past 30 minutes. Given the claim by the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) that the eurozone has had no impact on the economic difficulties in Britain, and his claim that his 13 years in government did nothing to lead to the debt and the deficit that this Government are trying to clear up, it is no wonder that there were some rather long faces on the Opposition Benches—[Hon. Members: “Where?”] Over there.

My hon. Friend the Government’s Treasury Whip has just received a text from a Labour Whip saying, “Please, please come to the Chamber for the start of the final day of the Queen’s Speech debate. Ed Balls is opening for us and really needs his support.”

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Osborne]

I give way to the lady who sent the text.

[Lyn Brown]

May I explain to the hon. Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands), who is sitting over there, that we have a very different and more effective way of whipping those on our Benches than he clearly has on his? Finally, as with everything to do with the economy, the Chancellor needs to pay more attention to detail, because that was not the right reading of the text. Indeed, it was not accurate, like much else he does.

[Mr Osborne]

The Labour party certainly does have a different whipping operation: it sends all its information to the other political parties.

Let us get back to discussing the economy. The central argument that the shadow Chancellor was trying to make, and the argument he makes in the amendment, is that the British economy is not as strong as the German economy—that is what we are all being asked to vote on tonight. He is absolutely right about that. The British economy is not as strong as the German economy, and I will tell hon. Members why. It is because for the past decade, in the good years, Germany fixed the roof when the sun was shining and he did not when he was in government.

I will tell hon. Members what happened when the right hon. Gentleman was in government. Over the decade before the crash, Germany maintained its share of world exports while Britain’s share almost halved; Germany was selling more than £10 billion of goods a year to China while Britain was exporting one fifth of that—indeed we were exporting more to Ireland than to Brazil, India, China and Russia put together; and Germany’s manufacturing sector grew by 34%, whereas our manufacturing sector not only did not grow but halved as a share of our total output, while our over-leveraged banking sector grew by 100%. Germany, after years of sustainable economic growth, entered the financial crisis with a budget surplus. Britain, in the years that he was in charge, led a debt-fuelled consumption that drove an expansion in deficit and in debt. Under Labour we entered the financial crisis with the largest budget deficit in the G7 and left it with the largest in the G20.

Instead of making us more like Germany, the right hon. Gentleman made us more like Greece when he was in the Treasury. Britain’s economy became over-borrowed, unbalanced and unsustainable. The person more responsible for that than anyone else active in politics today, the person who encouraged the borrowing, dismantled the banking regulation and gambled the futures of 60 million people on the City of London, is sitting right over there—the shadow Chancellor. It is the people on this side of the House who are clearing up the mess he left behind.