Comprehensive Spending Review

Mark Pawsey Excerpts

Thursday 28th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

Eight days have passed since the Chancellor stood at the Dispatch Box and made it clear why it was necessary to take decisions that many on both sides of the Chamber find difficult. We have heard more today from the Chief Secretary to the Treasury about the scale of the problem and why reducing our massive Budget deficit should be the country’s primary concern. We simply cannot go on borrowing £1 in every £4 spent—paying £120 million every day in debt interest alone. We know that failure to take action would lead to our paying £4 billion more in debt interest alone by the next election. That money would go to foreign creditors and would help to pay for their schools and hospitals rather than being spent on ours.

We know that had Labour remained in government it would have cut spending, so the debate is about the pace of the cuts that are about to be made, not whether they should be made. That became clear to me in discussions that I held on Friday in my constituency with an organisation that gives a clue to its aims and objectives in its name—Rugby Against the Cuts. Its representatives came to see me on the premise that the Government should take no action to deal with the Budget deficit. After our discussions, however, I believe they accepted that some form of action might be necessary. The group issued a press release, which stated:

“Mark Pawsey listened as we outlined our fears, and said he would be happy to meet us again to monitor developments…at least our MP was prepared to listen…Although we did not seem to change his views, overall, the lobby was worth organizing”.

Opposition Members will be unsurprised at that last sentence.

I will maintain that dialogue because it is important. We have offered an honest opinion to the electorate, which is why in the past eight days my hon. Friends have not had massive postbags criticising the measures in the spending review—[Interruption.] Well, many of the proposals were contained in the Conservative party manifesto, so it is no surprise that we are taking the action that we are taking. We are bringing forward the date at which the state pension will begin to rise, stopping the most well-off children receiving child tax credits and cutting spending on trust funds.

Last week, in addition to meeting that protest group I took a survey on to the streets of my constituency. In a poll, 87% of the people to whom we spoke said they thought it right and fair that the Government cut their expenditure at this time. It is clear that from the outset our objectives should be to ensure that people are better off in work. A poll in The Sunday Times on 24 October showed that 57% supported cutting welfare benefits. I believe that the proposals on welfare spending show a new sense of realism. Despite Opposition Members’ claims that they are ideological, they are clearly right.

The Government are committed to a stimulus for business. As someone who ran a business for 25 years, I have every confidence that the private sector will rise to the challenge. We are taking steps to reduce the regulatory burden on business and to provide a stimulus, never more so than through the announcement today of the new local enterprise partnership in Coventry and Warwickshire, whose size will be manageable in contrast with the cumbersome Advantage West Midlands. I believe that the LEP will set out economic priorities for the area that I represent.

The Government are acting responsibly and are in touch. The attitude across the country was for me summed up by a gentleman called George Smith, whose daughter intends to go to university next year. He was talking about the additional costs that his family would have to bear to send their daughter to university, but he could have been talking about many aspects of our public services. In The Sunday Times of 17 October, he said:

“I’m philosophical about it. Everybody and his brother is going to have to start paying more for all sorts of things. Much as we may think it’s unjust and unfair, it’s really a long overdue day of reckoning.”