Future Government Spending
Debate between Paul Uppal and David Anderson(9 years, 8 months ago)
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Paul Uppal (Wolverhampton South West) (Con)
I am afraid this Opposition day debate proves one thing more than anything else: Labour has not changed and it never will.
I am a bit of a political anorak and occasionally I watch re-runs of previous general elections. One of my favourite moments is from the 1983 election when, in the early hours of the morning, Robin Day, with a glass of Scotch in his hand, turned to Arthur Scargill and asked him, “Well, Mr Scargill, what do you think a future Conservative Government will mean for all the voters out there?” Arthur Scargill proceeded to give a bit of a diatribe not dissimilar to the utterances of the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) on the Labour Front Bench. He said, “Public services will be smashed and the NHS will be privatised.” I half expected the four horsemen of the apocalypse to turn up at some point and also to see Mr Burns from “The Simpsons” rubbing his hands.
The reality is that everything changes in politics, but nothing does actually change. If my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary wants guidance on where Labour is in the 21st century, he would do well to look at the soothsaying words of Arthur Scargill, because that appears to be the party’s direction of travel.
Mr Anderson
As a matter of historical fact, was Arthur Scargill right that the Conservative Government decimated the public service that was the National Coal Board and the coal industry, putting 200,000 miners on the dole and ending up with this country today importing coal from places such as Ukraine, where 30 men were killed yesterday because of the lousy safety record in that part of the world?
Paul Uppal
The hon. Gentleman’s words prove my point. We need to look forward to the future.
Through 13 years of government and five years of opposition, Labour has not learned from its previous mistakes—mistakes that left us with the biggest deficit in our peacetime history and took this country to the brink of bankruptcy. The Leader of the Opposition has returned to the old Labour argument that cutting spending will work and refuses to accept that the £30 billion of consolidations that we will continue to make are what is needed for the economic health of the country. Labour’s plans to spend more without higher taxes will naturally lead to increased borrowing and an ever-increasing debt burden on future generations. Our children and grandchildren will have to pick up the tab for those plans.
Paul Johnson, the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, who has already been quoted, predicts that Labour rule would mean that the national debt will climb £170 billion higher by the 2020s. The irony is that the Opposition frequently rail against banks and the bankers, but it is their policies that will mean that a higher proportion of our national income flows into banks and bankers’ pockets in debt repayments and interest charges, instead of being spent on public services. Surely the Opposition can see that the only way we can get to grips with Britain’s debt is to tackle the deficit. Thanks to the difficult decisions this Government have made, we are cutting it by half.
Let us not forget that there is some good news out there. Opposition Members seem to forget that. Our economy is growing at the fastest rate in the G7, and the only way to ensure that this continues is the Conservatives’ long-term economic stewardship. Over the past few years nearly 750,000 businesses have been created and unemployment is down by almost 2 million. In my constituency, Wolverhampton South West, unemployment has fallen by more than 1,000 since May 2010, after rising in the previous five years.
There is still much more to do, which is why Britain must stick with our long-term economic plan. Labour still believes fundamentally in more borrowing, more spending and more debt. It does not have a serious, long-term plan to fix Britain’s economy or to reduce our debt. Often when talking about public services we look at what is being put in, rather than the more important point of what is being achieved. Through greater efficiency and a reduction in bureaucracy and waste, we can be smarter with public money. People often say to me on the doorstep, “We want politicians to spend our money the way you would spend the money in your own pocket, your own wallet, your own purse.” We need a long-term approach from a party which has the long-term interests of the economy at its heart.
The NHS provides a good example of how less bureaucracy leads to improved services. We have rightly increased the NHS budget, but at the same time we are using public funds better. The NHS is something to be valued and protected, but we have made tough decisions to improve front-line services. Let us be under no illusion. The only thing that is a long-term threat to the NHS is Labour being in power and running our economy into the ground, because without a strong economy we cannot have good public services. If Labour is not going to borrow more to cover its spending binge, how will it pay for it? I am sure most of the country want an answer to that question.
It is my view, and that of many others, that Labour is planning a post-election corporation tax rise. The BBC has already reported that Labour will pay for some of its spending by not going ahead with our vital 1p cut in the main corporation tax. That is not just a cut in the rate of corporation tax, but simplifies the tax system. I fear that Labour will go further and instead increase corporation tax, taking Britain out of its competitive position. Such a rise would be disastrous for the UK economy and our jobs recovery. We have seen the impact that low taxes have had on the jobs market, and that move would undo the hard work that we have done to ensure that families have a guaranteed monthly pay cheque. Analysis has shown that even a 1p rise would lead to massive job losses, forcing unemployment up and increasing welfare. The Institute of Directors has described it as a
“dangerous move to risk our business-friendly environment in this way”.
The BBC has gone even further and said:
“Labour must realise that you can’t rob Peter to pay Paul.”
Our business-friendly policies have helped the UK become one of the best countries to do business in, increasing employment levels and reducing the deficit. Labour’s plans, or the lack thereof, would wreck that.
I am surprised that Labour has chosen to go down this route on its final Opposition day. It would have done better by apologising for the financial heart attack it inflicted on this country. Thank goodness that the Government have sorted it out. We might think that there are lots of smart people in this Chamber, and there are, but one lesson is absolutely crucial: never take the voters out there for fools or think that they are stupid. They can see the reality of what we have delivered over the past five years.