Government's Management of the Economy

Matt Western Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

I am left bemused by some of the contributions today. Perhaps some Conservative Members are auditioning for roles on university campuses as champions of free, if not historically accurate, speech.

I will start with a few facts. The 2008 crisis was a global financial crash. Thank goodness we had some adults leading the country at the time, with Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling working in concert with Angela Merkel and Barack Obama to avert more serious disaster. They acted, while David Cameron and George Osborne suggested that markets be allowed to run their course. When there was a run on banks such as Northern Rock—we remember the scenes well—they said, “Let them go to the wall.” That is easy to say when one’s savings are in the Cayman Islands, as was the case according to the Panama papers.

The coalition Government claimed they were a roofing contractor—probably one hired as a mate of the Health Secretary—but they and the Conservative Government that followed simply undermined the foundations of our economy, our communities and our health and social care services. That is why the UK was the G7 country least prepared to face the pandemic—that and the Government’s failure to prepare or to act. Listening to John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron, one realises what a blundering, blagging Government we have.

This is the Prime Minister’s failure. He missed five Cobra meetings a year ago that could have set us on a different course. He had two weeks more to prepare than France, Spain or Germany, yet here we are with the worst economic performance for 300 years. Gross domestic product is down 10% compared with 2019. Compare that to Germany on minus 5%, France on minus 8%, Italy on minus 9% and the US on minus 3.5%. I repeat: the Conservative Government managed to cause a drop in growth three times that of the US and twice that of Germany. That is some crash in prosperity. Let me put that into some tangible, understandable stats. In my question to the Prime Minister in December, I used car sales as a proxy, as they are the bellwether of our economy. Car sales were down 29% in the UK, down 25% in France and down 19% in Germany; that is a loss of 180,000 car sales versus Germany. That is the reality behind the Government’s mishandling of the crisis and the economy.

There are many other indicators. For example, the premier league reopened a full month after Germany’s Bundesliga. Why? There is the damage to and the underlying challenges for our hospitality sector, including the penalty of business rates. For 11 years, the Government have failed to address the desperate need for fundamental change to those unfair and disproportionate taxes. No wonder the UK high streets are looking so terrible.

There is one positive; the Government did listen to my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds) and introduce the furlough scheme, but the statistics are crystal clear: this Government have failed the economy, they are failing our communities and they are failing our people. Sadly, it is the people who will end up paying for the Government’s mistakes.