Budget Resolutions
Debate between Nigel Farage and Nesil Caliskan(3 weeks, 3 days ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Nigel Farage
Maybe one or two Members of the House ought simply to grow up, but there we are—it’s a bit sad. I have worked in private business, and I do think picking winners is wrong. I think we leave that to the free market, and we let people either make money or lose money. Frankly, if they do their dough, well, that’s just the way these things work.
Any business employing five or more people has been hammered today. I have set up and run companies, but nobody on the Government Front Bench has ever worked in private business. None of them understands what genuine risk capital is. From what I can make out, our Business Secretary has never even had a job.
Nigel Farage
I have had plenty of jobs—well, apart from being in the European Parliament, which doesn’t really count, obviously.
What is dismal about this Budget is the growth forecast. If the ambition of our Chancellor is that in four years’ time growth should be 1.5%, that is very bad news for everybody, particularly because it takes no account of the rise in population that will happen through legal immigration. It basically means a rise of 0%. Nobody has even mentioned the fact that gross domestic product per capita—wealth per capita—has been falling consistently nearly every quarter for the past two years. The bigger our population becomes the poorer we are becoming, and we must wake up to that reality.
The big picture is that we are in decline. We are getting poorer. There is no £22 billion black hole—that is nonsense. It is £2.7 trillion. Our debt repayments are £90 billion a year, and from all the figures I have seen today, that will be worse in five years’ time than it is today. We need a complete change of culture. We need to start saying that success is a good thing, and making money is a great thing. People becoming rich is something we should encourage. We have to change our culture of work. There is this idea, “Oh yes, work from home, do a four-day week, get your work-life balance right”—well actually, why do we not say to young people that hard work is a good thing? Hard work is the only way that anybody succeeds individually, and the only way that we will have a chance as a country to turn any of this around.