Financial Assistance (Ireland)

Nadhim Zahawi Excerpts

Monday 22nd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I would say to those students, and, indeed, to the hon. Gentleman, who represents them, that their prospects of getting a job later in their lives depend on a stable UK economy that is growing and a stable Irish economy that is not having contagion effects on the UK or anywhere else. That is why we are taking action domestically to put our own house in order. Even his students, I am sure, would recognise that, in the end, we cannot live beyond our means and we cannot sustain an economy on debt alone. I am also sure that if his students asked themselves what connections they had to Ireland, they would find quite a lot of connections in their family, in the businesses that they know about and the like. Our two economies are interconnected.

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

People at home will be listening to this statement, or they will read it tomorrow, and wonder whether we can borrow a few more billion and spend a few more billion. Does the Chancellor agree that market concerns over sovereign debt remain, and that the priority for the coalition Government must be to keep the UK out of the financial danger zone?

[Mr Osborne]

The sovereign debt concerns are very heightened at the moment—that is a statement of the obvious—and a Chancellor of the Exchequer who represents the country with the largest budget deficit in the G20, and the largest budget deficit in the EU until Ireland started to overtake us, must make moving Britain out of the financial danger zone their immediate priority, which is what this Government have done.