Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between Neil Parish and William Bain

Wednesday 19th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)]

This is the Chancellor’s fifth Budget, the aim of which is to turn the focus of the Government towards the election, and given the events of recent days, that election must be the leadership election, which is drawing ever closer within the Conservative party. As Government Members return to their constituencies to prepare for Opposition next May, they will have many weeks and months to decide how they can explain to voters why this Government is the first since the 1870s to leave households worse off at the end of a Parliament than at the beginning. Rather than their taking to the airwaves to produce ideas to tackle the country’s growing trade deficit, or our deep problems with productivity, the principal topic of debate among Conservative Ministers is the surfeit of Etonians around the Cabinet table. Nothing demonstrates how out of touch and ill-equipped they are to comprehend, much less end, the historic cost of living crisis that has enveloped the country. We should make no mistake: this was a Budget by the few, of the few, and for the few.

Like a stage magician asking his audience to suspend their disbelief at his latest rope trick, the Chancellor attempted to persuade the country that the money that has disappeared from people’s bank accounts and pockets over the past four years was all an illusion, and it is still there after all. The partial use of information cannot conceal the real-life experiences of millions of ordinary people across the country. In my constituency, the median wage fell in real terms by 5% in the year to last April, and median incomes across the United Kingdom will not reach pre-crisis levels until 2018, according to the Resolution Foundation.

[Neil Parish]

It is the hon. Gentleman who is under an illusion, because he does not seem to remember the £150 billion deficit that we have managed to halve. Is it morally right that our children and grandchildren should labour under more and more debt? Do we not have to deal with that, as this Government have done?