Finance (No. 2) Bill

Neil Carmichael Excerpts

Monday 11th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Nic Dakin]

My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) will no doubt pick up that point later from the Front Bench, as he is more knowledgeable about the overall position than I am.

There is a relationship between the private sector and the public sector. Properly managed, they support each other. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw pointed out so skilfully, if we take all the spending out of the economy, there will be nothing to buy, and therefore the businesses that sell things will go into a spiral of decline. That is the difficulty that we are on the cusp of at the moment.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

rose—

[Nic Dakin]

I have given away enough.

If the Attlee Government had taken the view that the only solution for dealing with the debt was to cut public spending further, there would have been no NHS, no major house building and no platform for a modern Britain. That Government faced far greater debt problems than we do, and they did the right thing: they built an optimistic future. It is our responsibility now, faced with the challenges before us, not to make things worse, but to make things better. That is why I oppose the measures to cut investment allowances and cancel support for the industries of the future, such as advanced manufacturing, including wind turbine manufacturing, why I oppose the reneging on the loan to Sheffield Forgemasters—a loan that would help to position the UK to play a key role in the civil nuclear energy of the future—and why I oppose the planned increase in VAT, which will serve to dampen demand when the private sector needs a demand stimulus.