Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Peter Dowd Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)]

May I put on record my condolences to the people of Brussels and Belgium? My home town has been twinned with the town of Mons for more than 50 years, and the current Mayor of Mons—Elio Di Rupo—is the former Prime Minister of Belgium. I would therefore like to make sure my views are recorded.

Anything I say about the Chancellor in relation to the Budget will be as nothing compared with the thrashing he received over the weekend from his colleagues and particularly from the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) or, conversely, with the assault that the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green received in retaliation. It was the nasty party in full flow, arguing among themselves for all to see. If Conservative Members do that to themselves, hon. Members can imagine how easy it is for them to do the same to disabled people.

Before our very eyes, the acrid smoke from the smoke-and-mirrors Budget is starting to choke the Chancellor, and the mirrors have cracked. As for compassionate Conservatives, they would not know a good samaritan if he crossed the road to help them—by their standards, they would expect to be mugged. Expecting the country, at this point in the whole unfolding charade, to believe that a mass damascene conversion has taken place among Conservative Members is stretching credulity to its limits.

The Chancellor is fond of talking about cocktails: the problems faced by the economy are the result of a cocktail of external pressures—oil prices, the squeeze in China, the instability in the middle east—that have little to do with him. In my view, what we have seen is more cock-up than cocktail. According to the Chancellor, that has nothing to do with the fact that, as John Humphrys pointed out on the “Today” programme, he has missed virtually every target he has set himself.

Labour Members would be impressed by the conversions we have seen if we did not smell a rat. At the end of the day, however, we all remember the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green punching the air at the autumn statement and trying to claim that the Chancellor was Mr Christmas. Evidently the Chancellor had laid his hands on another £27 billion, and of course Conservative Members were all cheering and chinking glasses. Well, the chinking of glasses is often followed by a hangover, and the hangover is on its way. The Government are going to have to deal with the hangover, because they cannot and must not—and we will not tolerate it—make people in the most vulnerable positions the fall guys for the arrogance, the incompetence and the brass neck of this Chancellor.