Comprehensive Spending Review

Nadhim Zahawi Excerpts

Wednesday 20th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I shall make a couple of observations. First, the independent Office for Budget Responsibility—the hon. Lady is, after all, quoting its forecast, so I presume that she would accept its whole forecast—has predicted that unemployment will fall and that more private sector jobs will be created. Secondly, she must accept—even the deficit deniers in the Labour party must accept it, and they admitted it during the general election—that there would have been a reduction in the public sector head count if there had been a Labour Government. I do not know whether the hon. Lady agrees with that—she can shake her head, nod or whatever—but that is the truth. We have had to make some decisions, but there is a high turnover in the public sector anyway, so we hope that much of this can be accommodated by posts not being filled. There will be redundancies—I think the Labour party has accepted that there would have been redundancies under its plan—but we are going to do everything we can to deal with that situation and help those people to find work. In the end, however, the current size of the budget deficit means that we have to deal with this situation, or many, many more jobs would be at risk. Let us remember that this Government came into office with unemployment rising, and that is what we have had to deal with.

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

The shadow Chancellor, although very good at the jokes, demonstrated in his response his confusion about the difference between fiscal and structural deficit. I wondered whether the Chancellor could help by explaining that difference to him.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I do not think that we will go with that. With respect, Members must get into the habit of asking questions about the policy of the Government, not about advice to shadow Ministers. Let us get that straight.