Meg Hillier
Main Page: Meg Hillier (Labour (Co-op) - Hackney South and Shoreditch)Department Debates - View all Meg Hillier's debates with the HM Treasury
(2 years, 2 months ago)
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Kwasi Kwarteng
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We will link the investment zones to infrastructure projects, because one without the other does not make sense. I would be very interested to talk to him about Weymouth and the opportunities for investment zones in that area.
Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
We have seen this Chancellor rip up fiscal responsibility, sack the senior civil servant at the Treasury and mortgage the future of our children and our country. It is not just me who is concerned about his ambition for growth. The Institute for Fiscal Studies tells us that
“we shouldn’t underestimate the scale of the challenge”.
Hopefully, no one does that. It says that
“an increase in annual growth of more than 0.7% of national income—the increase required just to stabilise debt as a share of GDP…would be equivalent to the difference between the growth in the UK”
experienced in the 25 years from 1983.
There is no “miracle cure”, says the IFS. There is not. Can the Chancellor just admit that he is fiscally irresponsible and that he is gambling with this country’s future?
Kwasi Kwarteng
I do not admit that at all. In fact, the gamble was to do nothing. The gamble was to stick on the path that we were on and simply raise spending and taxes and think that, magically, we were going to get to the promised land. That was not a credible path; this is.