Peter Bottomley
Main Page: Peter Bottomley (Conservative - Worthing West)Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation
Peter Bottomley Excerpts
Chris Philp
I thought that the former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, had abolished boom and bust, but he had clearly failed to do so. Moreover, I note that the last Labour Government had been running a deficit since 2002. Had they not been so grossly irresponsible as to run a deficit during the good years, the country would have been better prepared when the bad times came, and we would have been able to weather the storm. The blame is entirely to be laid at the door of the last Labour Government.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
My hon. Friend may wish to remind the hon. Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) that the last Labour Government did pretty well on the economy between 1997 and 1999, because they stuck to the Conservatives’ spending plans. When they stopped doing that, things went wrong.
Chris Philp
My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the success that the Labour Government enjoyed while sticking to the economic plans of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke).
Let us return to the legacy with which the Chancellor came to office. GDP had contracted, employment had fallen, the number of housing starts had fallen dramatically —we have heard a lot about housing today—and the deficit had mushroomed to a gigantic 10% of GDP, partly because we were already running a deficit when the recession hit. All those matters were tremendously difficult to deal with.
Let us now look at what the Chancellor has achieved. Over the last five years, we have seen an impressive turnaround. Last year, GDP grew at a rate of 3%, the highest rate in any G7 country. Employment grew by a staggering 2 million over the last Parliament, a greater increase than was achieved in all the other European Union countries put together. As I mentioned in the House yesterday, the county of Yorkshire alone created more jobs than France. That is a record, and I note that the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones), is particularly pleased to hear about it. The deficit came down from 10% to 5% of GDP, and even the cost of living issues experienced in the last Parliament have begun to ease. Wages are now rising at 3% but inflation is zero, so there has been tremendous progress over the last five years, and I am delighted to have heard today that the Chancellor has resolved to finish the job.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
I welcome the chance to contribute to this debate. On 16 March 1944, Mr Henry Willink—later Sir Henry Willink—moved a motion:
“That this House welcomes the intention of His Majesty’s Government…to establish a comprehensive National Health Service.”—[Official Report, 16 March 1944; Vol. 398, c. 427.]
I think there is a lot to be said for having one day each year in this country for the national health service and one day for health. I welcome the Chancellor’s commitment to meet the request of NHS England for funding of the health service and I hope the same will apply in other parts of the United Kingdom. Others have welcomed the commitment to the NATO target of 2% on defence; if I may, I shall speak about the health service for a time.
Henry Willink talked about the importance of ensuring that what we had to pay for the health service, which in those days was going to come from taxation, the rates and social security contributions, would provide a service that was comprehensive and free at the point of use. I think we are maintaining that. We need to go further to see that the funding keeps increasing and that the staff in the health service—those who support the clinicians, the nurses and the doctors—get the support they need, but we also need to be more imaginative in trying to ensure that people live healthier lives and in trying to reduce the demands of visits.
We could have a national health service day and, separately, a health day—one might be on 17 February, for example, which is the day Henry Willink put forward the White Paper, following the Beveridge report of December 1942, and the other might be, say, on 16 March, when the motion was put to this House.
Too often, people with short memories, or political bias, claim that the national health service was created by the Labour party. It was actually created after the Liberal Beveridge published his report. The first party leader to welcome the proposal was Winston Churchill, who was the leader of the coalition Government but, in party terms, the leader of the Conservatives.
The Labour Government did a lot of work on it when they came to office in 1945, but, as in the case of steel, electricity, gas and so many other things, they made the mistake of nationalising the hospitals. I think that if they had left us with a diverse collection of hospitals, including those run by volunteers and local authorities, we would have avoided many of the problems that we have faced over the last 50 or 60 years.
Organising the nation’s finances is never easy, but I believe that the Government are beginning to reach the stage that was achieved by the person from whom I was supposed to have learned economics. He won the Nobel prize for demonstrating mathematically something that is blindingly obvious—namely, that the rich will not pay tax, the poor cannot pay it, and the people in between cannot avoid it. He did not believe in going much above 27% in real terms, although he may have become soft by now and made it about 33%. It was certainly nothing like the amount—over 40%—with which I believe we shall still be left, or the 45% or more that applied when this Government came to office. We must go on finding ways of reducing what is necessary from tax spending, and some of that is going to involve transfer payments.
Let me return for a moment to the demands on the health service. If it is true that most people my age—and, indeed, those 20 years younger—should be taking statins, why on earth do we still have a system that requires me to go my doctor and obtain a form that will enable me to have my blood tested in another part of the health service, in order to establish my cholesterol level, and then requires me to go back to my doctor to find out whether I should be taking statins? We are told that virtually everyone should be taking them anyway.
Why is it impossible to obtain birth control pills, which are needed by many people during their active reproductive years, without having to bother the doctor so often? Obviously nurses can deal with more of that, and there are other ways of arranging things. I have encountered some GPs’ surgeries where, in order to be given a flu injection, people had to ring up, or else go to the surgery and book in advance so that they can go there at a particular time. In others, people were told, “It is open house: come on Saturday morning”, and were processed in about two minutes, without the need for administration and without burdens being placed on the surgery.
Let me now turn to the subject of the economy itself. When I was knighted, the economics supervisor whom I mentioned earlier wrote to me saying that I was the fourth of his pupils to receive a knighthood, and that, having shared the credit with the first three, with me he shared only the pleasure. That was fair enough, as I was probably his most useless undergraduate student. I was certainly the laziest.
In economics, there must be people who are willing to take risks. I am glad that the House now contains—especially among the new intake—people who have been entrepreneurs, handling serious issues involving distribution, manufacturing and the like, and who can contribute their wisdom and knowledge. I think that that matters. I have been incredibly impressed not just by the way in which Members in all parts of the House have spoken, but by the kind of people who are now in the House. When I spoke just after the first speech of an SNP Member, I said I thought that what she had done in the past was an example of a useful qualification.
Of course, some Members arrive here almost by mistake. They may have said when they were selected, “Darling, I promise you that I will not be elected”, and then had to go back after the election and say, “I apologise; I was elected.” However, even if Members are here for only one or two Parliaments, their contributions will matter. I think that in future we shall be grateful to the new Labour, SNP and, certainly, Conservative Members. I am not sure that the Liberals had new Members this time.
I think we shall have a Parliament the quality of whose membership will match the intake of 1945. I am talking about people with experience not just of war, but of helping to run the country and keep the factories going, including those on the trade union side. I am talking about the contribution of people who have been foremen, people who have been owners, and people who have been salaried managers.
The House of Commons benefits when people can bring their experience to it. Too often, we come out with a straightforward “We were better than you”, or “We are going to be better than you.” What we ought to do is try to ensure that when parties lose elections, they say, “We were wrong, and we will now adopt some of the policies that the people have preferred.”
It is remarkable that, within a week of the general election, when the people—unexpectedly, in the opinion of some—put the Conservatives into government without the need for a coalition, it was being said that what the Conservatives proposed had been right, and that the people were right to trust the Conservatives to govern alone. We will not get everything right, but this Budget has shown that it is possible to trust the Conservatives, and I think many people will be grateful that this has happened. I believe that when we have an election in five years’ time—if Parliament lasts that long, which it probably will—people will say this Budget was a good foundation for the economy and an even better one for society, and gave hope to all kinds of people.
I shall end with some remarks on minimum wages. I once went to see a Secretary of State for Employment and said, “Do you know what your Department has agreed with the trade unions to pay employees aged 17, 18, 19 and 20?” He said, “No.” I said, “Here’s the list”— I had looked it up and found it. I said, “Do you know how many people aged 17, 18, 19 or 20 you employ in this Department?” He said, “No.” I said, “One. You’ve agreed a rate of pay at which you will not employ people, not a rate of pay at which you will employ people. I suggest you start a cadetship, because if people can come into the civil service aged 17, 18, 19 or 20 and spend a year or two with the excellent training the civil service provides, you’ll find that they can go on either in the civil service or in outside jobs with the qualifications and the reference and the opportunity to move forward.”
Whatever our achievements in school, college or university, all of us deserve the chance to show what we can do, learn from others at work, and get into the kind of habits that will make us valuable to others and give ourselves a more productive life. I suspect that that way we will leave fewer people behind and we will work together for a better future for us all.
Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.—(Jackie Doyle-Price.)
Debate to be resumed tomorrow.