Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Mark Garnier Excerpts

Wednesday 19th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr Brown). I want to start by welcoming the Budget and reflecting on the legacy the Chancellor inherited before bringing us to where we are today. Let us not forget that we had a deficit of £156 billion a year, which has now gone down by a third to £109 billion a year. There was a structural deficit from 2002 onwards, and throughout the Labour years there was a total failure to regulate the banks and our banking system, which left it massively exposed, and unemployment rocketed.

The Chancellor had the most difficult inheritance in this country’s history in many ways. He has turned things around these past four years so that this country is now on the path to recovery. The economy is growing, jobs are up and the future looks promising for Britain. In the past, the roof was not fixed while the sun was shining, but while it has been raining we have been furiously fixing the roof and doing so with some success.

Areas such as my constituency of Dover and Deal do not have enormous amounts of money and there is a lot of deprivation. The rise in the personal allowance to £10,500—it was £6,475 when I was elected—will make a real difference to those constituents of mine who are not well paid. It will make an enormous difference for people without a lot of money.

The freeze in fuel duty will make a massive difference for the many people in my constituency who have to travel by car. It is now 20p lower than it would have been under the previous Government’s plans. A freeze in council tax year after year makes a massive difference to my constituents, after it had doubled in previous times. Moreover, given that unemployment in Dover and Deal rose by 50% in the previous Parliament, it makes a massive difference to my constituents that it has fallen by 20% in the past year alone: more jobs, more money, more aspiration and more success. Aspiration matters, too: the number of apprenticeships has risen from 440 when I was elected to 880 today, so there are more chances for our young people.

Not everyone in my constituency is extremely badly off; there are areas where people have more money and are trying to find somewhere to save it in order to get a return. I greatly welcome the fact that we are incentivising ISA saving with a £15,000 limit. It is really important that we encourage a savings culture in this country. Let’s face it: it was destroyed by the pensions tax and everything that followed in previous times. We have to rebuild that savings culture, the idea of a rainy day fund and the ability of our constituents to take more responsibility.

What this Government have done is not just about practical help in terms of more jobs, more money, more prosperity and fewer taxes. In my constituency they have made a much bigger difference in terms of infrastructure and investment. When I was elected, the port of Dover was about to be sold off, having been stuffed in a car boot sale by the previous Prime Minister in a desperate bid to raise some cash. It was going to be sold off to the French or whoever—we did not know who. Our hospital had been decimated over the past decade and was not fit for purpose. A new hospital was needed and had been talked about for years. There were stalled construction sites all over Dover and Deal. I ran a campaign against “coming soon” signs, because they had said “coming soon” for so long—for the past decade—that one of them had rotted away and had to be replaced.

Fast-forward to 2014 and the port has been saved: we are now talking about a community-led port that can get the investment that the port of Dover has needed for so many years. A new hospital is being built, which will make a practical difference to people in their daily lives and will open its doors next year. More jobs have made an enormous difference to people. A compulsory purchase order has been served on Burlington house, which scars the seafront of Dover. That is making a difference and giving people more confidence and hope and a greater sense of belief in the town’s future. A fast train now rolls up at Deal—which was previously considered a village—and shortly will do so all day long. That kind of infrastructure makes a massive difference to people’s prosperity, success and aspiration.

Whereas in previous times the regional South East England Development Agency spent £20 million building a business park near Deal without anything on it—there were not even any buildings—now the coastal communities fund and the Homes and Communities Agency are supporting the Hadlow college project at the former pit site of Betteshanger, which promises to create 1,000 new jobs. That sort of practical help on the ground, which goes beyond high-level policy discussions, makes such a very big difference to people in their daily lives.

That is why I regret hearing the Leader of the Opposition’s speech. He reminded me of Marshal Foch saying, “My centre is collapsing, my left is in retreat and my right has gone altogether”—because all the Blairites have been chased away, sacked and discredited or have resigned. The Labour party’s lurch to the left has done it no good whatever. In its centre, Labour Members have no economic policy, except for more spending, more welfare, more debt and more taxes. Those discredited policies of the past will not take this country forward. To try by sleight of hand to say that they will have a current surplus—thinking that people will not notice a 25 billion quid bit of wriggle room and that he will get away with it—is not the right way to do it. The Leader of the Opposition should have come to the Dispatch Box today with a plan and a positive case, but all he did was rage against iniquities largely created by his party in past times or during the previous Parliament.

[Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con)]

My hon. Friend will also have noticed that the Leader of the Opposition referred to nothing having been done to reform the banks. He seems to have been asleep for the past four years, during which banking reform and financial services legislation has gone through and a huge amount has been done to reform the banks. Does my hon. Friend think that the Leader of the Opposition has been asleep or has just ignored what has happened?

[Charlie Elphicke]

My hon. Friend asks a very important question about what the Leader of the Opposition has been doing for the past four years. He has certainly not been preparing a high-quality response to this Budget, that is for sure.

Even though the Leader of the Opposition wants to say, “Situation excellent; I am advancing”, not only is there a complete hole or collapse in the centre of the Labour party, with the Opposition having no long-term economic plans, but on its left flank, which is in retreat, Labour Members are talking about the cost of living. What will they say if wages rise above inflation in a few months’ time? It little behoves them to talk in that way, because people will start to see through everything they say. They are now saying that long-term unemployment is terribly high and all that sort of thing. However, when they talked about high unemployment, it started falling, and when they then talked about the lack of full-time jobs, people started getting such jobs. The risk is that the number of long-term unemployed will start to fall in a few months’ time, and they will have to look for another selective statistic to cite. Such talk will not do them any good, because people will see through it.

It is therefore time for the Labour party to think more carefully and more long-term about what it can offer this country, because right now it can offer very little indeed. This Government can and rightly do now say that we cannot give back the keys to the people who crashed the car, particularly when they are still drunk, still will not listen and still have not learned anything, but will carry on and do it all again.